I made a very grave mistake a while ago, which was reactivating my Instagram account. And though I set it up to see only content from people I follow, eventually I start getting posts from randos with their opinions on everything, and I literally do not care. But the other downside to this is just how many people from my past I get suggested to add as 'friends'. And if I'm honest, most of them bear no effect on me, but
some do. And that effect translates itself through memories, through things I recall from moments spent with people who were once important to me. One such memory I had recently actually informed a lesson that took me far,
far, too long to learn : that something that once was important in a moment of your life spent with another, something like a book, or a movie, or a song, won't necessarily have the faculty of being replicated with another person that you're later with. This comes from a suggestion I had for an Instagram 'friend', an ex of mine called Sonia. I'll spare everyone the details of that relationship, and though it ended in somewhat of an acrimonious manner, we eventually managed to be on normal terms with each other, the very few times we've seen each other ever since. But one of the very many times where we just clashed, in terms of pretty much a lot, was when I gifted her a book I love and that I had presented to another, much more significant ex, years earlier. And that gift, that book, that memory that had been created, I look very fondly upon even unto this day. But Sonia hated the book. She
hated it with a passion. And when I asked her what, exactly, she didn't like about the book, she went into like an hour long diatribe which left me sobbing on the other side of the phone. And that book? That book is called 'Nation', by my favourite writer of all time, Terry Pratchett. I love that book, read it multiple times, cried many times reading it, loved the stage adaptation I saw at The National Theatre in London.
Memories lead you to winding pathways, and now, as my spirit is ever more broken, as it readies itself to be broken even more, by magnitudes I can barely begin to fathom, I sit thinking about Terry Pratchett - and more specifically about a bit from one of his books, a little gem of a novel called 'Eric'. Long story short - and this is a very short book - what we have here is the Discworld version of the tale of Faust, he who would sell his soul for unlimited access to knowledge and all earthly pleasures. By the end of the tale, both the titular Eric (a 13 year old Demonologist) and Rincewind (an inept wizard who, in his haste to run away from the very many horrors, eldritch or otherwise, that want to kill him, tends to run towards destiny in the making, often saving the whole of creation completely by accident), escape hell, or more precisely Pandemonium, the capital of hell in Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. And what makes that escape all the more poignant is when they notice that the cobblestones that make up the road to hell are actually inscribed with 'good intentions' :
'I meant it for the best'
'I thought you'd like it'
'For the sake of the children'
'We are equal opportunities employers'
Before I write about now, I have to rewind time and go back a year. And a year ago, almost to the day, one night I was home, it was a sunday, and it was the last day of a week off work I had. At that time, I wouldn't be able to go to sleep before five or six a.m., and so what I'd do was play some game or the other until I felt sleep weigh heavy on me and I'd go to bed. I was sitting on my chair, my headphones on, turned to the max, focused on the game. From the corner of my eye, I see something that catches my attention, and it's my grandmother leaving her room to go to the toilet. It's a scene I'd seen so many times before, that I mostly had stopped noticing her comings and goings. This would have been around one a.m. or so, and just before I go to bed a few hours down the line, I get up and now it's my turn to go to the toilet. As I enter the small corridor leading to it, I see my grandmother laying down on the floor, barely clothed. I can barely make out anything she's saying, but in that jumble of words, I realize she's saying she had been calling me for hours, and I never heard a thing. That was the day my grandmother started to die.
And her death, almost a year on, is still deeply felt in my heart, in my soul, in my mind. And in my life too - it brought about change that the optimist in me hoped would not come, but that the realist in me dreaded - nay, knew - would come. Earlier this year we had to move house, I guess I've already written about it here. I embraced my new reality with a grim certainty that hell hadn't yet reared its ugly, inevitable head. There is far too much chaos in this equation for it to be solved, and some of that chaos, some of that chaos I invite into my life. Part of it began when, in the first week of being at my new place, a stray cat jumped inside my house - we live on the ground floor - and decided to stay. She joined the ranks of our army of cats, which was four strong already. But this cat - we named her Olivia - came bearing gifts : we soon realized she was pregnant, and in late January the kittens were born. I fell in love with them at once, all six of them. A few weeks later, after they'd opened their wee eyes, and were now starting to roam about the house, I said to the other party involved - my mother - that I wanted to keep them. I could afford the extra money that would have to be spent on them, not only through my savings but also there was a lot of shit I could do without and could easily cut back on. I looked at them, and saw them : tiny, frail, beautiful, and my heart burst with such love for them all. I thought that maybe if this could be my last one good thing I'd do in this life of mine, then it would be a worthy thing. If I could protect them, and shelter them, and love them, and keep them from harm, then I would do it with all my heart.
But of course - chaos.
Sometimes I do wonder if I actually died all those years ago, and if my hell, my eternal torment, my unending nightmare, would be to live out my life with my mother. If such is my fate, I find myself envying Sisyphus and Judas, Prometheus and Loki. My punishment is harsher.
It's my bane - maybe temporarily, maybe forever - that by choice, by necessity, and a combination of other factors, I have to share my house with my mother, who is, at best, at the very best, mentally unbalanced. Adding that to an already precarious mix, which include me, a broken man, eleven cats, and a lunatic, then chaos multiplies by a hundredfold. And chaos, being the unpredictable bitch it is, tends to surprise me at unexpected moments. And then what happens is fighting, and shouting, and me - close to fifty years of age - crying myself to sleep every night. And this isn't the life I wanted - I wasn't born for shouting, for fighting, I was born for birdsong, I was born for peace. I was born for the sighing of the wind over rustling leaves, and to hear the laughter of my children and my wife. But that was not the life I got. It was not the life I fought for, or, indeed, made any real effort to achieve. To achieve, let alone deserve.
I had such good intentions. Such good intentions. I just wanted to do something good, you know? Something tangible. Something that could bring solace to some souls who are thoroughly undeserving of the cruelty of this world. And yet, even at that I fail. Lunacy impedes me of doing this kindness, at whatever cost it might have come to me, a kindness I'd do until my dying breath. It's two a.m. where I live, and as I type this I look at the photos I've been taking of the kittens throughout the day so that I might forward them to the local vet, who'll upload them to their social media, and in my heart of hearts, I can only hope they can find new homes with people who will love them at least one tenth as I love them.
Already I find myself missing them, though they are still here. One, a small tabby beauty, lies lazily beside me, her inquisitive eyes watching my every movement. Three others are playing, they're on the floor, and as they move around and about my feet, I feel their tails swishing past my leg. I have to say goodbye to them. How? My dear God, how, how can I say goodbye to them? Already I envision the scenarios wherein they are leaving, for me never to see them again. Already I imagine the last kiss goodbye I'll give them, and me asking for a promise from whomever takes them to love them. Already I imagine myself, heartbroken beyond all the words in creation, awash in tears that I don't know I can still cry.
O Lord. O Lord. I often ask myself just how many times more must I mutilate my soul. And every time I think that the tattered remnants of my core can no longer be shredded, here I find myself at the gates of yet another sundering. My heart, it becomes a charnel. My soul, it becomes an all encompassing abyss. Were I to solve and open the lament configuration, no hell in existence could offer me more pain than what I now feel.
