I know you I walked with you once upon a dream

Sitting in the nice lounge waiting for my flight at Terminal 2.

Airports are no longer bittersweet places for me.  Or rather, they are, but with less of the melancholy aftertaste.  Airports, the imminence of travel, getting away, has managed to maintain its sense of lightness it brings to me.  The freedom of self and nerdy love of watching the constant ballet of movement even at 3am.

I'm here at that most previous of times, dusk, when the lights of the airport start to glimmer identifying myriads of different points along the field.

I know what each of those lights means. I understand the entire layout, the significance, the warnings and clearances.  And I am so glad I do.

I miss flying.  Somewhere in the multitude of imaginary universes (i use imaginary in the H6D sense) I am doing so.  I didn't fail my medical, I didn't have dreams I poured years of my heart and head and self into crushed, I didn't have to find a new dream - something I'm still working on daily.

But it no longer hurts.  10 years later, I love flying again.  I just wish I could afford to once more.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

I have no idea why I never posted this, it was written five years ago now when I was still with Chris.  But everything contained within is still perfectly valid.




Chris is not a console gamer. he never had one himself, and unlike the rest of our generation, seemingly neither did anyone he was friends with as a child.  In fact it's kind of pityingly funny to put a console controller in his hand, be it PS3, Xbox, N64 whatever.  "What's fire?!  Wait, Left 1 AND Right 2 AT THE SAME TIME?!?!  Z BUTTON?!?!  Where the hell is the z button?!  UNDERNEATH?!?!"  I blame his lack of console gaming as a child for Chris generally having issues playing any kind of FPS genre game.  Anyone who played goldeneye as a kid (or indeed still does, for let's face it, that game is a genuine classic), learnt how to aim, shoot, jump, and maintain camera angle all at the same time by necessity.  And equally, I find that regardless of what console you play/ed above others, you can generally adjust to a different console with relatively little difficulties; there is always at least one L and R button, the z button, if it exists, is always underneath.  The trackpad is usually movement, if there's 2 of them, the other is camera angle, and the fire button is almost always the button nearest your right thumb.  Simple.

Chris criticizes the need to memorize strings of button presses to execute special moves, as this doesn't happen at all on computers really.  Fair point, though I reckon that's a skill you learn through playing consoles naturally.  And I think it allows for more flexibility than a PC game, you don't need to have certain spells or moves readied all the time, you can cast a heal simply by remembering what button sequence you need, and the most commonly used actions often have rather memorable sequences anyway.

Despite only owning a wii (and also technically a PS2), I love console games.  For one thing they're social, sure, you can play Starcraft 2 on battlenet with someone, or even have an Unreal Tournament LAN party, but a few hours spent playing Halo, or Goldeneye, or Mariokart, encourages so much more social activity, is so much more active, something to do with actually sitting next to each other and sharing the same screen.  Especially when there's 4 of you and you have to squint to find your own quadrant and what's happening in it.  I could quite happily spend a Sunday afternoon only half getting dressed in the most comfortable, loose fitting clothes I own, ordering pizza 'cause nobody can be arsed to cook, and blowing the hell out of each other with rocket launchers or dune buggies. 

So if anyone wants  to be my dossing-around-the-house-buddy, let me know.  Though for the next few months, 'Sunday' might have to seem suspiciously like 'Tuesday'.

Six feet happily underground

A friend told me they're still trying to work out what to say for my eulogy.

I didn't tell them I currently have every desire to be at theirs.

Truth is Singular

Mine.
...sort of.
How so?
*after a long pause* in many and varied ways, yes and no.

...stop being so accurate.

Silos

I can't talk to you about the dark things.

But you're the first person I run to whenever this happens.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

People have been rereading my blog and commenting, making me reread my blog and prompting me to actually write something

6 weeks ago I ended up in hospital.  I disappeared for a few days, and my parents eventually tracked me down,  turned up, got me discharged and took me home.

Not home.  Their home.

A place I will always have a bed, for sure, but it is not my home, I didn't grow up there, I've barely slept 2 weeks worth of nights there combined, and it's in the country.

It was the worst possible place I could be.  I barely spoke to them, I beat my hands against the backseats of my car as I was taken home because the voices in my head were screaming so loudly.  When I finally slept, I had bad dreams, I woke up early and immediately asked to be allowed to go home.  My home.


A few days later I was staying with a good friend and #superaggressivefb.  It was probably the first major incident of my mental state he's had to deal with, at least directly.

And so, very quietly and calmly, at one moment we were alone, he simply said: "And next time, you will call me."

I grumbled non-commitantly.

"The next time, you WILL call me."

"Fine." I whisper, resignedly adding him to the mental list of people to inform in the first instance after the event.

"So next time, it won't be your parents picking you up, it will be me and you'll come here."

20 different thought streams fire off in my head at once.  Huge senses of anger and relief.  The imagined conversation between my friend and #superaggressivefb where he explains how my parents are a trigger.  Irritation that #superaggressivefb knows me so well already as to use my own though process against me.  Frustration.  At him.  At myself.  At my friend.

...#superaggressivefb smirks.  That smirk that he knows all of the above has passed through my mind in a heartbeat.  The smirk that makes me want to see him bleeding on the floor in front of me.

"I will." I say, conciliatory, lacking the grit of teeth my previous response had.

It was the moment that he went from someone I was becoming really good friends with, to getting catapulted into the upper echelons of my trust.  However he knows it and uses it, someone who can gauge me that well is fully capable of walk through every defence I have if they so choose to do so, so I inevitably trust them when implicitly when they demonstrate only a judicious application of this skill.  

(As an aside, the fact that #superaggressivefb has this total level of trust from me, and yet still instils fear and uncertainty when he asks me if I'm sure before he hits me, is the exact thing that turns me on the most about him.

It was also the moment I realised not only was #superaggressivefb a good friend, he was a support network I didn't even know I had.

This weekend I ended up in hospital.  Through my own stupidity more than anything else.  And waiting there, when I awoke, was #superaggressivefb and my other friend.  They took me home.  To #superaggressivefb's home.  They took care of me.  And then they made sure it didn't ruin my weekend.   I remember giving their names as my emergency contacts in the ambulance, but it took me until this afternoon to realise that I didn't have to think who I'd contact, I was just asked and those were the two names instantly in my head.

10 weeks ago I was struggling to rebuild the close support network I'd surrounded myself with over 2 years and lost all in one week.

Now I have the first block to it.

I still don't have my reason.  I have something keeping me interested however, something that for now, I choose to keep very personal.  I'm angry more days than I'm happy.  I bailed midway through a friend's birthday this weekend because I couldn't handle that much social interaction.  Work continues to help distract me from my problems, and exacerbate them as everything bottlenecks at me.  Today is a struggle and time just stretches on and on as the clock refuses to budge.  But it's perversely reassuring to know that when it all goes wrong, I won't be so alone next time, there'll be someone there beside me.

Hiding the words that dont come out

The other day, I was given a very privileged insight into a friend.  It was short, and understated by them. But a lot of our friendship is.  We say little, often passed-over, things to each other, because we don't need to respond.

That little action spoke more volumes than I could possibly put down in a simple blog post.  It's more than a matter of simple trust, it's the understanding of our friendship that one simple comment was all that was required; the peek into how they've come to be the person they are; who they once were; an idea of some little bits of a person that few might know about.

It was, quietly, an emotionally intense moment for me, and I find myself still reeling slightly this morning.  Trust is easy to repay, privilege is a much more tricky beast.