Sam GraingerAs someone who doesn’t talk about their problems, opening up to someone is a regrettable experience. The emotions you’ve pinned down and locked away rear their ugly head to the surface. It’s human nature; unless you’re a sociopath. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t throw kittens in a bag and drown them in a river when I was younger. So, I’m safe from prying psychologists. I’m just another emotionally dry human being, with boring issues, that hundreds, thousands and probably millions of similar human beings have felt before me and will continue to feel. It’s nothing new or exciting and it certainly isn’t original. And, that is what aggravates me the most. I’ve succumbed to the mediocre plod of life and the trudge of standard existence. The exact same emotions and the exact same complications that everyone else has to deal with, or has dealt with, I have fallen foul of. Every story in history about a boy and a girl, who fall in love, battle adversity together, attempt to mend the tatters of an unravelling relationship and eventually fall apart and out of love, has become my life. And I’m left to deal with the aftershocks following the quake.
I’ve sat and wondered what I’m actually doing with myself. More often than not, I’ve decided that I’m hiding away. Trying to find a deep recess of my mind to retreat to, where I was once a happy man. But somewhere along that happy line something changed, and I’m reduced to a bundle of pent up guilt. Did my feelings of protectiveness towards the girl I’d loved for four years outweigh my selfish intentions? Or did my happiness mean more to me than her broken heart?
How fucking depressing does that sound? That’s some real clichéd, delusional adolescent feelings that really couldn’t matter less in the grand scheme of things. I might as well be fourteen again; angry at everything and everyone, threatening to throw punches with one hand whilst masturbating furiously with the other. It’s funny how a girl can turn a boy into a ruined figure like this. I never thought about the after effects of our relationship when we were together.
It was a stomach kneading moment, knowing it wouldn’t be the same; and that it hadn’t been for a while. You end it because you feel differently about her. These different feelings have no link to fucking other women, or a heap of passive aggressive hatred built upon from a combination of pressure and time. It’s not even good old fashioned boredom. The feelings stem from a change of heart that shakes you to your very core. After spending the majority of your developing adolescent years with someone who took your virginity and played a massive part in your young adult life, emotions become warped and jaded when you finally sever the emotional bonds to that person. It’s always the future that looks greener, not the present, because the present is pretty fucking desolate.
I never like writing depressing dog shit like this, but sometimes it helps to open the floodgates. At least it’ll stop me drowning for a little longer.
But, in the famous words of Ernest Hemingway:
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don’t cheat with it.”