And because misery loves company

I am loving my guitar lessons; I find them difficult and challenging, and sometimes my brain wants to shut down because it simply doesn’t ‘get’ it, or my fingers just can’t think where they should be going next, and I laugh and curse and stamp my feet in frustration – but still, there is enough of a moment where it is beginning to fit together, moments where I see the possibilities… and then it falls to pieces, but just for that moment…

There’s a chap who works at the shop where I go for my lessons, who last week commented that he thought I looked very tired. I was pretty hungover, so I probably did look rather shocking. This week I wasn’t hungover, but I had a few drinks last night, and could feel the tired sensation sagging around my eyes that alcohol tends to cause. When I went into the shop and waited for my teacher, this chap again said I looked tired. I laughed and said that he’d said so last week as well. He said yes, it was because my eyes looked… and he dropped his eyelids into a sleepy manner.
Ah. Here I was thinking it was my dark circles that looked bad. I have always been heavy lidded. Year after year of school photos show me looking sleepy and dopey and stupid. But that’s the way I was made. Not much I can do about it. I’ll just have to tell him next time that this is as good as it gets, and as awake as my eyes will ever look. Nicely. Because he is a nice man.

I finished Lighthousekeeping the night before last, and I had to read through my tears for the final pages. I cried for her loneliness. Her loss. She had learnt to love, perhaps, but the loneliness seemed to define her. I’m beginning to understand that.

I’m perverse. I feel lonely but then find myself so uncomfortable in the company of others. I worry that I might be sliding back into a dark place. I’m hanging on, desperately, to the things that I enjoy in my life, and I am trying so hard to not completely alienate every person in my life.

I have told people that I have resigned myself to being alone, and in part I believe that to be true. They ask how I cannot be lonely. I am. But I accept it. I don’t rail against the world because of it. What is the point? It isn’t the world’s fault. It is mine. I deserve it. I am not willing to do whatever it takes to make myself attractive to others. I have given up. And even if I were to attract them initially, they’d soon be so uncomfortable around me. I am awkward. I say the wrong things. I am too serious. I laugh inappropriately. I don’t accept things at their surface level. But I guess the truly telling thing is that I would not be able to trust… I would be simply waiting, keeping an eye on the door, watching to see their back as they walked out. And who could blame them. I’d probably walk out that door too, if I could simply figure out a way of leaving myself behind.