It's stupid o'clock, I've got to face four hours of public transport soon enough, so I decided to update my blog. Mostly out of guilt. I've tried a few times the past few months to write something. Evidently that hasn't gone well. My main problem being that I've gotten stuck down the back of an emotional sofa, and this is an analogy I'm going to roll with. Yes, really, I'm going to talk about metaphysical furniture.
Imagine your favourite seat in front of the television: the place you automatically bee-line to when you want to sit down and do as little as possible. Even though you are actively being inactive, going to that spot is a preference that you have made and therefore an activity you engage in. Over time, if you are anything like me, you start to build up a nest of things around that seat; favourite mug within reach, charger cables coiling round your feet, half a packet of crisps that you set down beside you because you know you will be back here to finish them, and so on. The more you make this spot your own, the more it becomes like you. Even the seat itself starts to bow where you have dropped your backside day-in and day-out. Over a really long time, the seat barely operates as a seat at all, and every time you sit down you slowly start to slide backwards and downwards whilst the amount of conveniently placed knick-knacks grows and grows around you. You are now part of that piece of furniture, shaped into one another, until something important crops up and you heave yourself up again with a groan and complaint as you fight gravity and stupor.
So yeah, my life is like the sofa. Over the past few months I have established myself a base line of emotion that I deal with day to day. Until very recently I had my crappy job, the height of stress that I only endured a few hours every week. My frugal lifestyle, penchant for takeaway food excluded, afforded me a comfortable lifestyle on minimal income. My spare time was split between maintaining social harmony in a shared house, following my hobbies and spending as much time as possible smiling. It sounds pretty good really. It was. I made zero demands and life made very few demands of me in return. The comfort of familiarity though also made murky the levels of repetition around me and not just in how I chose to spend my time. Eventually it dawned on me that my range of emotion had pretty much been boiled down to either contentment at the continuing status quo or mild aggravation at inconveniences that briefly interrupted the snail-trail. I rarely asked for much, but quietness had not afforded me excitement.
It almost sounds like I am having a sudden urge to invite chaos and stress into my life, and no doubt there is some terrible masochistic gremlin within me that does want that, but specifically I feel the challenge of escaping the deadening of my senses. I'm not after a dangerous life, but if you sit still for long enough you disappear. I am being eaten by a sofa and I have been too comfortable to notice.
So, how does this relate to the blog? Well let us be honest this is a blog designed for me to pour into my worries, fears, speculation and doubts, with the ultimate aim of coming out better for it. In return, you guys read it and hopefully get something out of the shared experience. That is where my problem is rooted though: I have had no experience to share. Months have gone by and I have been me, but only in as much as a cardboard cut-out is me too: sharing my likeness but most certainly lacking depth. (The cut out and the sofa are two different analogies. I can't think of a way to connect the two but apparently I mostly associate with the inanimate... which sounds about right really...) I haven't even dressed in an effeminate manner for all this time. I have a proper beard and everything! This version of me doesn't very much feel like me, but like so much around me it is 'ok' and infinitely just so.
That is an interesting point though: if my gender was a problem before my slow-poke ways settled in, is ignoring it more of a solution than my worrying was? It certainly has been more peaceful this way! I know though, with both a heavy heart and a contradictorily positive mind, that if I let it be then the problem will grow and become a silent burden. You can only sink so far into the sofa before you hit the springs, after all. The rest of this year will involve a lot of change for me in general and maybe, just maybe, I will enjoy the roller-coaster and come out better for it.
You never know, you lot might even get to read about it!
xx
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