Dude Looks Like a Lady
Chapter 45: Thinking.
The Chapter before (Chapter 44) has been edited. Go re - read before reading this one, please, people. Cheers!! Oh - big shout out to all my faithful commentors. Y'all make my world!!
I’m still thinking about the fans and what I was saying. I always preached that self harm wasn’t the answer, and that if you did self harm then you needed someone to talk to. If you self harmed without a reason you needed to see a shrink and if you self harmed with a reason you just needed to take the anger and sadness out in another physical way – try a sport out. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe all the people self harming had reasons to. Maybe the conformist ideas of self harming to be cool showed a want to be accepted, an insecurity.
Here I was damning them for wasting time. I was just making them worse. I wasn’t helping them at all. I was helping to compound their problems – make believe in my eyes or not. Just because they weren’t as obviously emotionally troubled didn’t mean they weren’t at all troubled.
Still frowning I grabbed my jacket and my iPod before heading out the door, “I’m just going for a walk.” I tell the bus in general, grabbing my phone on impulse and wrenching the door open.
I wasn’t sure where I was going, but all my bags and coats had pens in them so I could write on my hand the names of the streets I came across. I wandered about the city looking for a reclusive spot, attempting to lose myself in the places and faces of this heaving town.
It wasn’t working.
Everywhere I looked I saw people I should be helping. I saw people who were hurt and I could have passed judgement on them… dismissing them as unworthy. Dismissing them as unimportant. Just like everyone else. Hadn’t I promised myself since my teens years never to do that? To find an importance in everyone? To help all those I could?
Eventually I broke down. Tears fell from the glands in my eyes, down my cheeks in un – hastening streams and trickles to my chin to splash to their death on the pavement. Leaving a trail of salt water on the pavement. My salt water. Salt water that was important. As was everything about me. Everything about everyone.
I had broken a promise to myself. A promise I thought I’d kept for so long. A promise that was so important to myself; since my own troubled years. Those years that hurt even now. Those years I’d never quite managed to forgive myself, my parents, my friends and my teachers for ignoring or allowing to escalate into something I couldn’t control.
I sighed as I saw the familiar Starbucks sign and headed towards it, patting my pockets. No money. Shit.
Sighing a little more heavily this time I turned from the warm, comforting smell of freshly made coffee to the cold, stinging streets. Somehow I wound up in the park, swinging like the pathetic excuse of a mother or adult that I was on the ancient, creaking swings.
Every swing forwards felt like I was cheating the world. I shouldn’t be allowed forward motion until I had atoned for my mistakes.
Something about that sentence struck me. Was I going to spend my life atoning for a few years of adolescence? Was I going to live out a modern day “Atonement”?
The immediate answer to those questions was a strangled, “Shit.” Would Robbie be the personification of the love I shared with Mikey…? Would I be Briony forever attempting to atone for something that I had got all wrong? Would my mistakes and their catalysts be like Cecilia?
As these questions chased themselves round my brain, becoming louder and quieter, more and less imprinted on my brain and dancing more and more intricately as they weaved together into a path I couldn’t follow I felt my heart sink. Would I seriously lead a life that could be seen as the living out of a modern day “Atonement” if I always wondered about the other people I had written off?
If I had written off some people who genuinely needed help the odds were that someone would look into their cases. I was not the only roving Samaritan or Agony Aunt. I was not the only troubled 24 year old. There were others like me.
Saying everyone’s unique is very close to saying everyone’s the same. There will only ever be one Lou, and there will only ever be one person feeling how I’m feeling at this moment for these exact reasons. But, there will be someone very similar who has had similar experiences, thinking similar things. And there will be someone completely different, who has had different experience thinking different things.
I stopped swinging, dragging my feet in the mulch at the bottom of the swing pit. Unravelling my arms from the chains connecting the seat to the frame I rested my elbows on my knees and my forehead on my hands. My head was beginning to ache as I turned over unanswerable questions in my mind.
As my head began to pound and I began pushing the heels of my palms into my eyes a flash of insight burnt itself into the centre of my inner eye. Burning bright, in letters I could read were the simple questions:
Can I live with myself if I keep on this track? Can I live with myself if I stop worrying about every person on this Earth? Can I live with myself if I ensure the happiness and peace of my immediate friends and family?
The answer that was being beaten out on the bass drum in response to these questions was also simple:
Yes.
I’d managed so far. My task in life was to bring happiness to those closest to me. That was what I was doing – bringing joy to my nearest and dearest. I was doing extra helping others that weren’t as close.
The promise I’d made myself at 18 as I overcame my most difficult years was an impossible one to keep without having a break down. I had to learn my limits. I could not kill myself with worry and empathy for others. Well, I could, but then I’d be failing in the task I had been set.
Mikey, Gee, Ray, Bob and Frank had been set the task of saving people. My task was to keep the saviours happy, feed and emotionally stable.
The promise I should have set myself should have been to be true to my purpose. To be true to myself.
Was that my new promise?
No. I wasn’t going to make promises to myself anymore. I’d end up breaking them. And myself. I’d already wasted today.
I’m still thinking about the fans and what I was saying. I always preached that self harm wasn’t the answer, and that if you did self harm then you needed someone to talk to. If you self harmed without a reason you needed to see a shrink and if you self harmed with a reason you just needed to take the anger and sadness out in another physical way – try a sport out. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe all the people self harming had reasons to. Maybe the conformist ideas of self harming to be cool showed a want to be accepted, an insecurity.
Here I was damning them for wasting time. I was just making them worse. I wasn’t helping them at all. I was helping to compound their problems – make believe in my eyes or not. Just because they weren’t as obviously emotionally troubled didn’t mean they weren’t at all troubled.
Still frowning I grabbed my jacket and my iPod before heading out the door, “I’m just going for a walk.” I tell the bus in general, grabbing my phone on impulse and wrenching the door open.
I wasn’t sure where I was going, but all my bags and coats had pens in them so I could write on my hand the names of the streets I came across. I wandered about the city looking for a reclusive spot, attempting to lose myself in the places and faces of this heaving town.
It wasn’t working.
Everywhere I looked I saw people I should be helping. I saw people who were hurt and I could have passed judgement on them… dismissing them as unworthy. Dismissing them as unimportant. Just like everyone else. Hadn’t I promised myself since my teens years never to do that? To find an importance in everyone? To help all those I could?
Eventually I broke down. Tears fell from the glands in my eyes, down my cheeks in un – hastening streams and trickles to my chin to splash to their death on the pavement. Leaving a trail of salt water on the pavement. My salt water. Salt water that was important. As was everything about me. Everything about everyone.
I had broken a promise to myself. A promise I thought I’d kept for so long. A promise that was so important to myself; since my own troubled years. Those years that hurt even now. Those years I’d never quite managed to forgive myself, my parents, my friends and my teachers for ignoring or allowing to escalate into something I couldn’t control.
I sighed as I saw the familiar Starbucks sign and headed towards it, patting my pockets. No money. Shit.
Sighing a little more heavily this time I turned from the warm, comforting smell of freshly made coffee to the cold, stinging streets. Somehow I wound up in the park, swinging like the pathetic excuse of a mother or adult that I was on the ancient, creaking swings.
Every swing forwards felt like I was cheating the world. I shouldn’t be allowed forward motion until I had atoned for my mistakes.
Something about that sentence struck me. Was I going to spend my life atoning for a few years of adolescence? Was I going to live out a modern day “Atonement”?
The immediate answer to those questions was a strangled, “Shit.” Would Robbie be the personification of the love I shared with Mikey…? Would I be Briony forever attempting to atone for something that I had got all wrong? Would my mistakes and their catalysts be like Cecilia?
As these questions chased themselves round my brain, becoming louder and quieter, more and less imprinted on my brain and dancing more and more intricately as they weaved together into a path I couldn’t follow I felt my heart sink. Would I seriously lead a life that could be seen as the living out of a modern day “Atonement” if I always wondered about the other people I had written off?
If I had written off some people who genuinely needed help the odds were that someone would look into their cases. I was not the only roving Samaritan or Agony Aunt. I was not the only troubled 24 year old. There were others like me.
Saying everyone’s unique is very close to saying everyone’s the same. There will only ever be one Lou, and there will only ever be one person feeling how I’m feeling at this moment for these exact reasons. But, there will be someone very similar who has had similar experiences, thinking similar things. And there will be someone completely different, who has had different experience thinking different things.
I stopped swinging, dragging my feet in the mulch at the bottom of the swing pit. Unravelling my arms from the chains connecting the seat to the frame I rested my elbows on my knees and my forehead on my hands. My head was beginning to ache as I turned over unanswerable questions in my mind.
As my head began to pound and I began pushing the heels of my palms into my eyes a flash of insight burnt itself into the centre of my inner eye. Burning bright, in letters I could read were the simple questions:
Can I live with myself if I keep on this track? Can I live with myself if I stop worrying about every person on this Earth? Can I live with myself if I ensure the happiness and peace of my immediate friends and family?
The answer that was being beaten out on the bass drum in response to these questions was also simple:
Yes.
I’d managed so far. My task in life was to bring happiness to those closest to me. That was what I was doing – bringing joy to my nearest and dearest. I was doing extra helping others that weren’t as close.
The promise I’d made myself at 18 as I overcame my most difficult years was an impossible one to keep without having a break down. I had to learn my limits. I could not kill myself with worry and empathy for others. Well, I could, but then I’d be failing in the task I had been set.
Mikey, Gee, Ray, Bob and Frank had been set the task of saving people. My task was to keep the saviours happy, feed and emotionally stable.
The promise I should have set myself should have been to be true to my purpose. To be true to myself.
Was that my new promise?
No. I wasn’t going to make promises to myself anymore. I’d end up breaking them. And myself. I’d already wasted today.