THE NOTHING/DARK WATER
CHAPTER ONE
Life began to rot.
The problem was I had never known how to ask for help when I needed it, and in the rare moments when circumstance displayed a problem beyond my power of prevention; a request was forced to be made, only to be denied. This has stemmed an irrevocable fear of taking the plunge when the chips are down and exposing the gut-rot stench of the problem for all to witness and to have it smirked at or wafted away as something no one wishes to be associated with for one reason or another, leaving me feeling embarrassed, brittle and more afraid than ever.
I had been so angry at my own disgusting stupidity over the years; more and more I felt the only redemption would be to lie down in the sun and perish, and had often fantasised about doing just that on some bright, quiet road leading to oblivion; surrounded by air and trees. If a car was to come tearing in and finish me off, so be it. In my aloneness during in these times, I had wondered the point of any of it. Life had never been something I’d excelled at.
There were moments of euphoria in my mid to late teens, all woven neatly into the blind naivety and my ferocious appetite for the endless pies in the sky. I had moved in with my mother after sixteen turbulent years and one prolonged parental custodial court case with my father. The relief from this shift was immense, as the two households were often polar opposites in terms of tranquillity. I have brilliant memories of being with my sisters and brother, and our mother would come through the door on some summer afternoon with supermarket bags rammed with French bread, brie, vine tomatoes, paté, fresh salad, new potatoes, pasta, cold chicken and tea cakes and we’d spend the warm evening sat in the garden gorging ourselves, drinking tea and talking about anything and everything until the light was gone and the dew was glistening on the dark silhouettes of the bracken and the rose bushes. Or of turning the corner into our street after a day of college and hearing Queen’s It’s a Kind of Magic booming mercilessly into the neighbourhood, and no matter what sort of day I’d had; being unable to stifle a smile; knowing full-well the source of the music, and having my suspicions confirmed upon walking through the door and finding my mother in the living room embraced in the near-religious throes of dancing, and reminding me of the Tasmanian Devil.
There were moments of bliss between my father and I too; completely unfractured by the tests of time, when we’d sit on the sofa until midnight discussing the complete works of Alfred Hitchcock, the lyrics of Bob Dylan and how much of a genious we thought him to be, despite the fact he couldn’t much carry a tune to save his life. Sometimes we’d watch classic movies, listen to Pink Floyd records and just be at total ease in more of a friendship than a parent-child relationship. My father, a strict disciplinarian, was curiously lenient on the subject of alcohol (in moderation) and when I was aged fifteen, would think nothing of sharing a beer or a bottle of wine with me. I have such a nostalgic ache for these times; a mere decade or so ago. But then suddenly it all stopped; these moments became extinct, and life began to rot. The problem was me and the intoxicating stale air I began to accumulate and drag around with me.
The winds of change did their thing and my rare, indigo family gradually shattered in its own little way. Death has interferred, of course. But other elements too. We, the people, have a nasty habit of trying to expell ourselves from conscious or unconcious discontent, only to add loneliness and other sorrows to the equasion, and the fruitless desire to rush back to the womb.
CHAPTER TWO
“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals, and then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk.” – Stephen Hawking.
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