Treading Water

I can be a miserable bastard.

I tend to mope a lot. Live alone with a cat, have a part time job and not a lot of spare cash.

However it’s only recently occurred to me just why I didn’t actually like enjoying myself and preferred the dull, metallic tang of isolation and boredom to going out and having fun.

If you enjoy yourself you may, in the midst of throwing throwing caution to the wind, packing up your troubles in an old kit bag, and letting your hair down…actually remember that your life the rest of the time is a bit shit.

So instead of going out at the weekend for a beer, what could be more mind-numbingly safe than just staying in and watching movies/ porn/ reading a book?

You may be bored, you may feel lonely but HEY! at least it’s consistent.

If you had gone out for a wonderful night out with great people, pulled a tall, brunette girl with a huge rack and a tight pussy, shagged her till 4am, woke up and shagged her again, had breakfast and then shagged her in the shower, exchanged phone numbers and then…..realised I had to clean the house, feed the cat, change her litter tray and fix my bike.

Surely better to just stay in. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t get to shag some well-fit nympho who regards getting on her knees as merely being polite. Maybe instead I’d just pay a lot of money for booze and come back alone, too drunk for a wank and wake up with a hangover. This in turn would exacerbate my paranoia and anxiety and as it’s currently snowing like a bastard in the Midlands and my gym membership has lapsed…I couldn’t even do any exercise to burn it off!

Better to just mope.

Analogy would be that you are eternally treading water in some personal vision of Hell. The devils guarding you invite you to step out of the pool, relax and talk to some other people and maybe have some food and drink. You are entitled to do this, they won’t stop you and there is no catch…EXCEPT you have to get back in again after an hour and keep treading water. Eventually you realise that the conversations and the company of others won’t help your long term situation so you elect to simply tread water in the eternal pool. Why feel better if you’re just going to have to feel bad again as soon as the “better” is over.

I have done this for most of my life. This isn’t mature or rational but it’s a sub conscious defence mechanism to being hurt that I picked up as a child.

The various cow pats through my early life consisted of a few that made me believe that enjoying myself would result in either bad things happening or a miserable return to a miserable world of abject misery later on.

At 11 me, my brother and my parents spent a very lovely 3 or 4 hours at Kenilworth Castle. My old dear rarely came out with us as she deemed her presence in our house as the only thing that prevented it from being sucked into a black hole. When we got back the central heating was going full blast (in summer). My mother ran swearing upstairs and threw the switch to turn off the boiler, with all the desperate enthusiasm of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley trying to turn the Nostromo’s self destruct system off in “Alien.”

Apparently it was completely and utterly my fault that the heating had been blasting away for 3 or 4 hours like that. I’d been CLEARLY told to throw the switch to the LEFT of the boiler in the airing cupboard and I had stupidly thrown the switch to the RIGHT of the boiler in the airing cupboard. My age had no factor, nor did it provide mitigation. I had been given concise and clear instructions to perform this task I’d never performed before and I had cocked it up. It was my fault and my fault alone. We couldn’t possibly afford the heating bill (whatever it might turn out to be) and would probably have to sell the house.

The icing on the cake was that I was specifically told that I was to blame for the fact that my mother couldn’t go out with us as a family any more. She couldn’t let her guard down even for a second, because when she did, things like this would happen.

We’d had such a lovely day and I basically made the agreement with myself that having fun led to bad shit.

If you don’t start work till 10.30am (like me) then why get up at 7am, have a freshly made smoothy and go for a run in the park? Better just to stay in bed till about 9am. Because as fun as your smoothy and jog might be…you’ll know when you’re doing them that you have to go to W.O.R.K after and the pleasure is on a measure.

Similarly if you trust a woman with your heart and get burned, it seems easier just to not try and get close to anyone. If you do they might hurt you, so stay superficial and nothing bad is (probably) going to happen.

This is similar to “comfort zone” in that it is easier to stay put than to actually do something. However this isn’t really a comfort zone, more of a caravan in North Wales in May, with only an old Andy Capp annual and a game of Ludo for company as it rains outside. It might be crap, but at least it’s not going to hurt you.

So fuck all that right off.

I think I’m going to:

Write two chapters for my third book tonight. After all, the last two I wrote last night made me cry. You know you’re doing well if you make YOURSELF cry when writing fiction.

Finish reading The Wheel of Time Book 2: The Great Hunt, that I started about 9 months ago.

Do 100 push ups a day so I’m ripped and look magnificent when I take my shirt off.

 Call my friend back in Spain, and tell her that “yes, I really would love to knock one out on the webcam while you watch. That’s what Skype’s for isn’t it?!! I take it you will be a lady and return the favour?”

And most of all…start drinking filter coffee from coffee beans that I grind myself. Even though it’s more effort than that instant shit Nescafe makes.