I haven’t written in a while…
I can’t remember the last time I did… mainly because I’m not some ‘blog tosser’ who spends every waking minute online… dunno…
But I think it’s because I’ve been living in my own head and trying to coast from positive wave, to positive wave, like a determined Grandmother hunting for an amalgamation of fluff, once a humbug, at the bottom of her purse.
It’s never positive when you realise you lost company along the way, in this battle for “life success”.
I grew up mostly as a bit of a tw*t, in the context that I was loud and brash and argumentative; but I was also in love with the idea of being connected to people, the energy, making people laugh and I thrived in any social environment, always surrounded by lots of people and in particular an odd, close knit group of misfits…
I remember John, writing his first song for Niamh with piano accompaniment. I remember Ali bleeching his hair and walking in, with his full length trench coat, his aim to look like Spike off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only he’d burnt the skin off the tops of his ears with peroxide… I remember Steve and Dan’s constant trigger happy TV and Harry Enfield impersonations, Julia’s caring, Duncan’s subtle and quite shyness that made him so genuine, Mark and my renegade trips to X-Men, but I really miss seeing Laura with her art folder, endless fabrics and sketches, the designer to come, wondering what colour clash she would go for tomorrow… I miss all that…
But, as I grew up I saw more of the reality, of how we live our lives as human beings…
I saw how we offer lip service, how we distance ourselves from those who make us feel socially awkward, how we avoid someone at a social/business event… the things we think think but do not say, is one of the biggest issues in our society today.
I lost those friends a while back and this stands testament to the reality of the unspoken word. The assumptions people make about us, without the dignity to understand who we are, expecting a montage of Facebook snaps to fill in the back story… It’s those ones you lost along the way, almost unnecessarily that hurt the most.
I’m not saying I’d hang out everyone today, a number of the old crowd are dull as pants, in terms of how they see the world and not what I want in evolving my life. But there were a few that I felt a deeper connection for, that I do miss seeing grow and I will miss seeing their kids and who they are in the future. Not necessarily because we had loads in common, but in some cases just because they were beautiful people.
This loss is probably a big part of the catalyst that created that warped element of my mind today. The bit that feels lost and alone most often.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not crying into my pillow every night at the thought I don’t have any friends, I do have friends that I hold very dear. I just didn’t get to where I wanted to be; I didn’t hang on to enough of those who I started with… whether that’s because of social trends suggesting I should have an elevated end gain, in terms of what my Christmas calendar should look like, or because of my over evolved optimism for what was beneath those individuals skin in the early days, or who they are now…
The true answer could just be me… but I sense there’s a mix of issues I was too inept to understand at some point and we’re past that stage now…
I’ll never fully understand all of the mistakes I made along the way, all I know is that today, I stand alone in mind.
I watch as the annual Christmas dinner takes place again without a service for me, I see others with rafts of friends all the dads and the kids, annual ski holidays and beyond and I have to accept and know that this just wasn’t the way it went for me.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish there was a part of me there. I feel like I’ve disconnected from society in a sense sometimes, like I’ve seen behind the curtain; I caught mommy kissing Santa Claus… if we’re to put a festive spin on it!
The reality is, that if you are willing to shut up about indiscretions, then people will tolerate you, but if you call a spade a spade, or remain open to evolving the dynamic in a relationship, more often than not, the issue is put on you as an individual, or you’re ostracised, regardless of circumstance.
In reality, since getting kicked out of drama school and being rendered obsolete and no longer a ‘value add’ to most of that crowd either, I’ve spent the last 12 years upgrading myself…
I say “upgrade” myself over the years, because I think of it like Neo in the first Matrix, when they offered him the various skills and training uploads…
Today, I’m a martial artist, I’m a Rescue Diver, I work as a consultant for one of the biggest British brands in men’s fashion, I’m a climber, a Skier, a mountaineer, an all terrain endurance biker, a proficient horse rider, an attack/working dog decoy & handler, I’ve travelled nearly 20% of the planet and seen every reality that comes with it, but with all of the a-fore mentioned attributes there comes a certain energy, that either envelopes in wonderment, or is excluded, as the jack of all… purely because divided focus can’t be channeled apparently, if you don’t do 1 thing to death, then you’re not wasting enough time on 1 thing. God forbid we should all be expanding our horizons…
It’s the isolation we build in our mind, that stunts our development…
When we head into the festive season, we often wonder why it doesn’t feel like it did for us back then.
We can’t hold onto everything that makes us feel safe, in fact I don’t know what safe feel’s like any more to some degree, we can only hope it all end’s happy.
So I let this go and I amble on, conscious of what has been, but not restricted by it, aware of what may come, but not blinkered by it… open to today and the eyes of my son and the want for his world to be different, to flow peacefully unlike his father, to give him the freedom of calm that I’ll never quite find.
We still have the memories right?! Just savour them for what they were, without regret.
THE BIPOLAR BUSINESSMAN 