That Ship Has Sailed

I'm feeling sick and dopey at the moment. Have switched off my phone because it bothers me, and am just hanging out with my cats (one in front of me and one directly to my left, where he can lie and watch me without me watching him), surfing the net, reading my books, and maybe writing letters.

More and more I'm beginning to see that the mistakes I made decades ago, those that I thought I could get over easily, those that I haven't thought off for years, were fundamental wrong turns in my life. I kept rubbing up against failure because I had chosen wrongly. I was afraid of the powerful feelings invoked and so I deliberately turned away and drowned myself in another, that I didn't love, not really, because I thought of it as a way to avoid greater pain.

All the mistakes of my life come home to roost.

Right now, I lie in bed until evening, sick and unable to move, dreaming strange dreams, waking up only to feed the cats and then go back to sleep.

And when I'm awake, I'm distracted, unfocussed, wanting to do so many things at once - wrap presents, write letters, play with the cats - and not doing anything at all. At least, not anything productive.

It's nice to have my phone off. No outside noise.

Nothing to distract me from my loneliness.

If you choose wrongly, if you deliberately choose wrongly, one day you will sit alone, surrounded by cats (who are loving creatures and who try to assuage the pain, but cannot entirely) and feel deep regret.

You will Google the one you turned away from because you were afraid and find that they have gone on to live wildly successful, happy, fulfilled lives, without you.

That ship has sailed.

And you will wonder, what meaning there is in your own, and how you are to draw out your days, in a world full of strangers who become stranger (or maybe it is you who is strange and about to be stranger) as time ticks on.