Leaving
Leaving
The first thing I see on leaving the house, four days after returning home, is the Mini. It’s burnt out, vulnerably small, precisely placed in the centre of a vast concrete square. I instinctively think installationart. Too long with Jake’s crude approximations of Naomi Klein, too long promoting music that doesn’t deserve my time. Perspective jolts, and photographing the singed metal scars it into my mind. Assaulted on every side by my own uncouth voice, gratuitous expletives and drawn-out vowels, I’m scared. Caught longing for Katie’s grace, Chris’s sarcastic drawl, Richard’s superior sneer. Their Southernness middle-classness everything I never wanted. Brand new DVDs falling off battered trucks, police chases around the library’s stacks of maps. Men leering in a way I used to love. Nelly blasts out from every other house, bhangra filling in the gaps, a town still segregated and years behind. In twenty more, generations of a Northern mining family will terminate in Islington. I love this place, but I’m the class traitor they hate. I can’t stay here. I’m not strong, or selfless, enough.
***
They presume that it’s sad to think entirely in the abstract, but they’re wrong. Clinical depression at seventeen put me off for life, and though la tristesse durera, I could never be unhappy in a world with Idlewild, with Take That, with music. With a piano nearby and a pen in my hand. These things are mine, and despite love and loyalty for friends, I have always lived in my head.
“A good line, well delivered, was half, I sometimes thought, of what you needed to keep her happy.”
Norman Mailer, Tough Guys Don’t Dance
***
Strange, leaving a safety net so ironically termed. The Zodiac, drinking myself to death; the PT, hack-like and always on guard; New, avoiding debauchery and childishly running away. My protectors a Tory graduate lawyer with a crush, a kind councillor living in Center Parcs, the computer millionaire with long hair who swore he didn’t touch.
***
Michael bounces in, enthusiastically enquires as to the music. I grin, holding up Bedingfield, and his face falls. He talks of deception and delusion, and I’m reminded how inadequate I am.
I look around the quad one last time, nod appreciation, and walk away. Immaturity grips me, his face knowing my pain, and, inevitably, I’m forced to run.
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
The way I feel today - 10 July 2004
Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004