Day 162: Blinking

Cold city gleaming down the hill. Frost on the windshields. Puffs of breath. Streets black and crisp in the night air.

I’ve been editing photos since getting in from work. Listening to Chopin. Watching easy videos on Youtube. No energy for anything more. I don’t feel depressed, I don’t think, but I don’t feel great, either. Another day on Earth. Got work first thing tomorrow, then Katie’s leaving do.

Pssch, I don’t know. Got no words inside me tonight. Been sat with the cursor on this blinking away for hours now, keep tabbing away and procrastinating more.

Guess I’ve got to refill the well, is all. So I’ll carry on listening to soft elegant piano music, I’ll ready some poetry, then get into bed and get some rest.

All is good. All is as it should be. Just keep on going.

Day 161: Mini-Frankenstein

I had a mole removed from my shoulder this week. The doctor wasn’t worried about it when I asked him to take a look during a check-up, but he said my surgery offered a private service that would remove it if I wanted to pay, for peace of mind or for cosmetic reasons, though he reiterated that there was no need to take it off at all.

I’ve got lots of moles. I don’t mind the smaller ones. The larger ones have always made me self-conscious - at least since early adolescence, when my body became something awkward and ungainly, secreting smells and sprouting hair and spots, and I started to hate the way my moles marked me out as different - fat, dark targets all over my skin.

In theory I’m one for learning to accept one’s physical form, for loving yourself as you are, rather than paying vast sums to questionable plastic surgery clinics that convince you perfection is but one operation away. I rarely wear aftershave, don’t get my hair cut often, and I’ve long since grown weary of designer tags on clothes. I’d rather spend my one life concentrating on literature and art and the beauty already inherent in the world, in all its flawed crumbling glory, than on manipulating my appearance and persona to win some kind of approval from the countless morons all desperately attempting to win approval for themselves, all of them scrambling towards some unattainable ideal sold to them by brands owned by ugly CEOs getting rich off desperation.

But in practice it’s not always so easy, and when my doctor mentioned the mole removal service, far cheaper than the private clinics - and with a comfortable amount of money in the bank saved from not drinking and working with Steve and a tax rebate - I decided to book myself in.

The doctor who performed the surgery was old, experienced, and awkward in his bedside manner. He spent the majority of the time I was with him explaining that there might be a very small scar, initially red but fading to white, if not fading completely - repeating this over and over, until I told him that I’ve suffered from moderate acne all over my body since I was 15, and one more scar to add to the tapestry wouldn’t cause me even a moment’s thought.

The doctor nodded and looked at me a long time, then coughed and looked away.

As he was preparing his scalpel he asked me to take my top off. I hesitated, and then mumbled whether I could keep it on, “because of the acne.”

“Ahh, yes. Got some self-consciousness, have you?”

I mumbled yes.

“Well, I can probably reach the mole with the neck of your shirt pulled to the side. Yes. That should be fine.”

He turned away and continued fiddling with his tools.

He barely spoke through the rest of the procedure. I lay still, the local anaesthetic numbing my shoulder, doing nothing for my sense of shame, until I became bored, and found myself wondering whether I should make small talk, like at the hairdressers, or whether the doctor needed silence to work. I didn’t want to distract him while he had a scalpel inside my skin.

But it was over after ten or so minutes. The worst part was the noise. I could only feel a faint tugging of the skin in my back, but as the operation was happening close to my ear I could hear every slice into my flesh, every squelching sound, the scrunch of stitches being pulled through the skin, the gently horrendous rustle of the sides of the wound being drawn together. The sounds, untethered from any sensation of pain, made for a surreal, and disquieting, experience.

When it was done the doctor applied a dressing, told me to keep it on for three days, and bundled me out of the examination room with an invoice to pay at reception.

And that was that. The dressing is off now, I’ve got an inch-long line of red skin on my shoulder crisscrossed with dark stitches, what Fran is calling a “mini-Frankenstein”, and an appointment on Monday to have the stitches removed.

Since a couple of kids at school pointed the mole out, and one guy I hated made fun of it repeatedly, I’ve tended towards wearing tighter-necked t-shirts or collared shirts that covered it up. And now finally it’s gone. I don’t know if having it removed was exactly the right course of action, but it’s one I’m pleased with. It’s much easier to not care about your appearance when there’s nothing egregiously different about it.

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got to say for the moment. I’ve been feeling low again today, but I’ve not let it get in my way. I’ve washed clothes, bought food from Unwrapped, walked to town with Mike, done writing, played Switch, and cooked a healthy tea. Got an open shift first thing tomorrow, joy of joys, so I’ll leave this here.

Take care x

Day 160: Storm

I can feel myself getting depressed today. I can feel it coming on. Everything is slower, more difficult. I'm wading through sludge, there is black tar between objects. My thoughts are dragged downwards into negativity. I force myself to think something positive, and immediately a weight is tied to it and it plummets down through the clouds into frustration and despair. The flowers of thoughts begin to sprout and immediately curl into weeds and rot and die as ash.

It's tiring. Getting from one thing to the next takes so much effort. Nothing flows. There's no buoyancy, no accomplishment, no reward. I must drag myself by my fingernails into the next moment, and all that is waiting is the need to drag myself again to the moment after that.

My soul has no poetry. Words are leaden and crusty and weak.

So I do what has to be done. I write long lists of reasons to be grateful. I shower, put on clean clothes. I do three loads of washing, clothes and towels and sheets. Drink water. Eat food. Walk around the houses as the sun goes down.

And I don't ask too much of myself, I accept that when I'm like this I can only get a basic post up on my blog.

It's so disheartening being like this, falling into this mindset every couple of weeks, every week.

But what does arguing with reality get me? Nowhere. Better to stay completely still, be very calm, do the things that help even though they don't feel like it, avoid the things that make it worse though they whisper of momentary relief.

Stay still. Accept this. Let the storm within me bluster, rage, and pass.

Day 159: Piddling

Piddling rainslicked snarl of a night, cruel bar shift dragging on, bin juice on hands, smeared juice on jeans, mind roiling with the beginnings of a cold. Finally home to Earl Grey steaming and Chopin soaring and desk and keyboard aflame in whirring darkness.

I notice these things. I feel the moisture in the cool night air. The streetlamps casting pools of light upon the wet ground. The pressure of my gluteal muscles against the chair. Debussy over my television’s cheap inbuilt speakers. The clutter around this attic bedroom.

I am here. I am in here. In flesh and thought and blood. I’m skeleton and toes and regrets and heartbeats, I’m a failing flickering memory of a dream.

OK, that’s all I got. That’s all the words that are inside me on this cruel coiling October night. That’s good. Well done, Robbie. Well done for saying some words. I’ve been doing this blog for ages now. I’m not ever going to stop. I have no idea where it’s going. It’s going somewhere though. It’s a toboggan ride at midnight, only steering round a tree at a time. That’s as it should be.

Sleep now. Off tomorrow and there are towels to be washed and a shower to be scrubbed and bed sheets to be changed and foodstuffs to be purchased. Will the thrills of adult life never end?

Day 158: Gratitude

Here are some reasons for me to be grateful, because it always pays to train your mind into recognising what’s great in your life. Going down to the soil of the brain and carving little plots and filling each one with a seed of gratitude. 

• I’ve got money in my bank account
• I can afford a trip down to London to see my cousin's newborn daughter in October
• I can afford a long weekend to Berlin with Fran in November
• I can afford a fixed 50 lens for my camera
• I ate three pains au chocolat for breakfast this morning
• I drank lots of strong black coffee
• I’ve been able to lie in bed for hours and play Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Switch, which has been fantastic
• I’ve got a roof over my head
• I’ve got two lungs, two kidneys, a heart, digestive tract, liver (bombarded with less poison these days)
• I’ve still got some hair left on my head, and lots on my face
• Got ten fingers, and ten toes
• Got this sweet mechanical keyboard, and this gaming mouse with EXTRA BUTTONS
• No work for the entire rest of the day
• There’s a chill to the air outside but these sturdy walls keep me warm
• Been listening to, and appreciating, classical music, which appreciation of music I was not able to do when I was in the depths of depression, it was all just harsh noise, meaningless, cold, cruel, empty
• I’ve kept this blog up for 158 days, I don’t think about it now, it’s just what I do, and it’s often only half an hour at the end of the day, but I’m still doing that, turning up, over and over, even for a short time, and that must be helping to slowly build a sense of responsibility and dedication and willpower and pride inside me, even if at glacial speed. Glaciers can be powerful forces, they crush and smoosh everything in their paths. So keep turning up, buddy-roo, keep putting little snowflakes, unique, glittering, some beautiful in their symmetry, some wonky and broken - keep putting them one on top of the other until there is an unstoppable wall of ice moving forwards
• The low pale light gleaming in through the skylight window hitting the wall turning the blacks of the poster there to silver and gold
• Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians playing on Youtube
• Stompy steel-toe-capped boots that Steve bought me for my man work with him, now to be reappropriated as excellent winter/delivery-day boots for many months to come
• I’ve got plenty of clothes. I mean, I’ve got hardly any clothes compared to many of my friends, but I’ve got way more clothes than lots of people on this planet, which is the only planet we know of that has any people on at all, and there are an infinitude of empty atoms twirling in the cosmic void that possess no clothes at all, so I think on balance I’m up
• And hey, anyway, the fashion industry is now the second worst polluter in the world, after only the oil industry, due mostly to the trend of recent decades towards disposable fashion, buying outfits for a tenner made in Bangladesh by basically slave labour, then chucking the outfits away after a month and buying new ones, because you’ve been manipulated by high street retailers who want all your money and tell you lies and make you feel worthless to trick you into handing it over. So it’s a good thing I’ve got three-year-old shirts and stretched t-shirts and jeans with the knees all worn down, is what I’m saying. Everything you dislike about yourself is something great, seen from another angle
• I’m grateful that Fran is in my bed not commenting on how loud my EXCELLENT mechanical keyboard is as I clatter the keys down one after the other after the other - but I probably shouldn’t push it too far, by which I mean I'm going now, goodnight!

Day 157: Blancmanging

The sky is a fiery black phantom; silver clouds shiver across aphotic night. Foul-limbed birds slumber in crooks of trees. Cars howl down murky lanes. Street sweepers trudge the crunching gravel. I limp doorward, synapses stuttering from onset migraine, nauseated, senses overloaded, concepts jostling and vomiting up into consciousness, mind a fetid roiling marshland, vision blancmanging, but shift ended and heading for home.

Day off tomorrow. Day off. Blessed day off. Going to stay in bed. Play my Switch. Read Naomi Klein. Pour over New York Times. Get up eventually just to make coffee, walk to the shop for croissants in grubby clothes. Wait around for Fran and then order takeaway and watch noisy television in bed. Get takeaway on the covers. Put takeaway leftovers aside for later. Do glorious elastic excessive nothing, and nothing, and more of nothing, and lie in tangled blanket lair.

But first: sleep.

Day 156: Bollard

Sat on a cold stone bollard outside the expo centre, under a brooding sky, waiting for the go-ahead to start packing down the display. John in the cab of the van checking whether his Ryder Cup bets have come through. Steve wandering in his cut-off shorts. His father off on a reccy somewhere. A dark bird flapping against the wind. Cords tied to metal pipes snapping in the breeze. Concrete and rusted iron girders. Splintering wood. The sounds of private jets taxiing on the runway. Transits and artics snaking into the distance ahead and behind. Marching mashed potato clouds clumped one against the other. Sombre land, utilitarian, sad.

…

Echoey hall emptying of use. Clatter of dropped boards, metal plates. Plastic Coke bottles kicked into aisles. Workmen in hi-vis carrying bits of stands in twos, threes. Clank of ladders. Men in groups, strolling. Other men by themselves, leant on pallets, hunched on the floor, bent over their phones. The scriiitch of duct tape pulled from the roll. Gathering darkness outside the loading bay doors. The melancholy of evenings, of eternal afterwards - after weekends, after Christmases, after all excitement and action completed, the central illusion abandoned - the illusion that the event would save you, would show you something you don’t already know, would provide the glamour and sense of belonging that you have for all of your life lacked. But there is only this. Ripping up cheap carpet and flinging spent screws to the ground. Vinyl stickers torn from their displays. Vans loaded, detritus abandoned, and workmen driving off into dusk without once looking back.