Day Thirty-one - Goodbye horses

End of month one. Let's see if this merits making a sort of 'state of the union' thing. Out of all the things I unofficially decided I'd start doing - because, remember, the only resolution was no resolutions - I've managed to keep one going on a daily level, and by now I think it's blatantly obvious what that is - writing here every single day. There's a small caveat that's involved in that particular undertaking, but now is not the time to reveal what it is. And writing on a daily basis is something that I have not done in many a year; in fact I don't think that in any of my previous blogs I ever managed such a feat. Maybe some days I wrote more than just the one post, but In don't really think I did it in such a regular level.

And so far, I think I'm succeeding in what I set out to do; just today I realized that I've not yet mentioned something that was happening concurrently with my going to school, and that may yet yield some worthwhile posts in the near future. There's still a lot for me to sort through, and It's becoming increasingly clear that this iteration of the project has a very clear end in sight. AH well, it'll be up to me to come up with more things to write about. Hopefully, by then I'll be able to put in motion a long gestating project of mine. We'll see.

Now about the things that I haven't yet been able to get under a more precise control : 

a) I've not yet started exercising. Oh, I knew early on that It would be something hard for me to start doing straight away, so I decided to put a moratorium on it. Should I have pushed through and tried to make it? Well, possibly. But now I do feel that I am better suited to start exercising. And here's the thing, the only kind of exercise I like doing is running. Not jogging, but runining on the treadmill, mind you. And before I started to tear myself slowly apart, I used to go the gym everyday and run about 20 km or more. This made me feel real good, and I was in the best shape of my life. Now, I know that right now that's a very unrealistic goal for me - but way back in 2006 I decided that a 3 km run would be enough for me to get in shape, and though that me back then was nowhere near as annihilated as I am, I managed to get into that running groove with some ease. So 3 km is what I'm trying to do as of tomorrow. How often? Buggered if I know - but I'd love to do it a few times a week.

And for this to happen I need...

b) to improve my eating habits - which have changed, for sure, I've not been drinking sodas or any booze, and neither have I been eating crap. But that can be improved. And improved it shall be.

As for me trying to keep my room as clean as possible... well, that's still a work in progress. But it will get better.

Day Thirty - This is the last time

So midyear I went back to the same school where I'd gone for my third grade. I'm not sure now, but as I remember it I didn't have very many classmates that had been in the school in or around that time, but one in particular I knew for sure had been in my class - a gilr called Ana Lucia. And hot damn, even in the third grade she was the prettiest girl in school, and by the sixth, she'd become even more beautiful. I can't tell you how many times she caught me staring at her during class, I just couldn't help it. Her eyes transfixed me, eyes of a very light green that became pools in my mind, in which I wanted to dive forever. And when she'd catch me staring at her, she'd always stare back smile - I was such a coward back then that I never followed up on anything that might or might not be there. Then, as in a way I do still, I felt that I was utterly undeserving of affection, especially coming from such a breath-taking nymph. 

I once again struggled to many any friends, but there was this kid in my class called Pedro, and he sat next to me. One day he told me he was a 'neo-nazi', and me, never having heard of a such a thing, asked him what that meant. He thought about it for a bit, then said that he thought that it meant being against nazis. And I thought oh cool, nobody likes that guys, so I'm a 'neo-nazi' too. Maybe a couple of days later, as my famliy was sitting down at the table for lunch, I announced proudly my decision. My father slapped the shit out of me, but that wasn't the worst part - no, that was seeing the disappointed look on my mother's face. And though I tried to explain what I thought I was trying to convey, I still got sent away from the table and duly grounded. And from then on, though I already knew it, I knew even better.

This school I was going to, it was a private school, and you couldn't really fail as long as your parents paid enough. And though I still struggled with maths, here I seemed to be doing a lot better than in my previous school. We only had, I don't know, maybe three different teachers, and each taught us a few different classes. For example, my physical education teacher was the same guy who taught us science, and maybe the guy who taught us the art class also taught us history, stuff like that. As a kid, it never really made any sense to me, but what did I know? What I did know was that the physical education / science guy never liked me. Maybe because I was a transfer student, maybe because I may have been a bit of a smartass, this guy took a an immediate dislike to me and would often tell me how I was going to fail his class. He was in for quite a surprise, though.

Day Twenty-nine - Winter in my heart

There's a kid I met circa this time frame, and I honestly can't say whether I went to fifth or sixth grade with him. But I'm more inclined to say that it was the sixth grade, though I might honestly be wrong. And that's as good a spot to begin this part of the story. So, my sixth grade was actually spent in two different school. I've established that the school I started going to for fifth grade was both less than ideal as well as very poorly situated. Somewhere midyear, and for reasons I no longer can recall, my parents made the decision to move me to the school where I went for my third grade. Let's focus on the first half of that school year. As far as I can recall, I didn't have many, or indeed any at all, classmates from my previous year, so that meant a whole new set of people for me to get to know, but mostly steer away from and ignore. And out of that slew of new characters, I mainy remember just the three : there was a girl with a cleft palate and I couldn't understand a single word she said, while pretty much everyone else could. I'm guessing that in this grade there might have a been a bunch of students who might've known each other from other grades, I don't know. But certainly a few, for sure. And one of those was a beautiful blonde girl who looked uncannily like that beautiful blonde girl from fourth grade, and I'm pretty sure they both had the same name - Joana. And though at first I might've they were one and the same girl, though it made no sense to me as to why she would be going to that pigsty of a school. And I soon enquired, maybe not directly, and found out that no, they were just two different beautiful blonde girls who looked a lot a like and maybe had the same name. But it did make those five or six months or so I spent there far more appealing to the eye, at least. 

But the kid I mentione at the beginning, he was the one kid that year who I got along with really well. I knew very early on that he came from a very poor family - he wore the same clothes pretty much every day, and you could tell he didn't wash very often, but I didn't care for any of that, I just wanted to be friends with him. We got along so well that I eventually asked my parents if he could maybe spend a weekend with us - I wanted this kid, his name was Paulo, to at least have some good square meals, and sleep in a warm bed and take as many - or as little - showers he wanted. I felt really sorry that our budding friendship never got to grow, because after moving I lost all contact with him, as his family didn't have a landline phone.

Funny thing, many years later, and as I was entering my adult age, I was working in a convenience store, and every now and again I'd see a customer there who reminded me of him a lot - this kid had a very peculiar face - and though on occasion our gazes briefly met and maybe there was a mutual sense of recognition, but neither of us dared take that step. What if he wasn't the same kid I went to school with? 

Day Twenty-eight - Papillon

The fifth grade, continued. That girl whose bits I partially saw, she was named Helena. And she was best friends with another classmate of ours, a tiny but ferocious girl called Sandra. Eventuallly, I came to give her my phone number, and though I was living in the city and staying there during the week at my grandparent's, I still went home during the weekends. And me and this girl, I don't know that we really got along very well : she could be very aggressive towards me, even to the point of physical confrontation, which ended up with her and a bunch of other girls ganging up on me to beat me up. But be that as it may, my home phone number indeed she had. And eventually she started calling me home around dinner time to bug me for money. See, she was from a very poor family - I never knew may details, but she was onf of the very many students in that school whose families lived almost exclusively from the welfare state, which meant that they didn't live very well at all. When she called, she wanted me to explicitly ask my dad for money - which he always refused. And trust me, many faults my parents no doubt had, but to those in need? They could be very generous. My mother did grocery shopping for a family who lived in the street near where she worked, and if anyone asked her for food, they would not go wanting. But they wouldn't give money away, no, not to anyone.

This year also marked my first true attempts at more meaningful friendships : there was a kid in my class called Carlos, he was loud and brash and for some reason I really wanted to make friends with him. If I remember it correctly, he was also a bit older than the rest of us, and he was smoking already, so he had all the makings of a bad influence. Still, for maybe a few weeks this kid Carlos tolerated my presence, and I mistook that for friendship. It all ended when one afternoon, out of the blue he headbutted me in front of a bunch of other kids, and left me in tears. There was another kid I met that year, he was in a different class than mine, but one lunch hour I went to a nearby mall to go check the toy store. Back then I was in full swing of my collecting G.I. Joe action figures, and he saw me there and struck a conversation with me. He knew me from school and it turned out that both he and his brother also collected the action figures. And yet, I wouldn't say that this was a real friendship. It was more of a communion of some mutual interests. 

One thing I will always remember about this school year was this teacher I had who smoked his pipe during class and stunk up the entire place. I've always disliked the smell of tobacco smoke - my parents smoke all the time - and pipe smoke I especially loathe.

Day Twenty-seven - Figurehead

I've not had an easy life - not overly hard, mind you, but definitely not easy by any stretch of the imagination. And for that, I blame entirely no one, not a soul, not some vague concept, not a single circumstance : every single choice I made, I made so willingly. No one ever put a gun to my head and made me make bad decision after bad decision. 

And if I could pinpoint the moment in which things started to fall apart for me, I'd safely say it was fifth grade. What I mean by this is that fifth grade was such a massive paradigm shift for me, in pretty much every single facet, that I quickly realized that I really, really didn't like going to school. And I also disliked a great part of the curriculum we were being taught  nothing against the subjects thereof in and of themselves, but because I either couldn't grasp any of what I was being taught, or because I found it so useless for my life, then and in the future, that I just could not connect to what I should be learning. I also really, really, really, disliked studying. Even more egregious, I abhorred the notion of homework. For me, it was like an extension of what I was already hating, and having it be replicated at home. Now, obviously, in my previous school years I had to homework - of course I did. But that was the simple stuff. Things not only became more complex, they became almost unbearably dull. It became such a chore that my second term really didn't go that well, and I had to put in the effort on my final term in order to pass. 

It also didn't help that a) this was my fourth school in five years and b) this particular school, which thankully doesn't exist anymore, was right by one of the then dodgiest places in the city. Rife with drug trafficking, gun crime, and altogether with very nasty people. I went to this school for my fifth and part of my sixth grade - about half of it, at which point my parents decided to get me out of that hell hole and put me in another school, the very same where I had gone for my third grade.

This school year was rife with firsts for me : this was the year where I first saw a porn magazine; some random kid had brought it to school and was surreptitiously showing it around to other kids. I remember little of it, other that the girl being dressed as a nurse, and I found everything that was happening there to be so, so confusing. Little did I know...

That year I guess I also saw part of a girl's bits for the first time. Believe or not, I had two classmates who were a bit older that the rest of us kids, they'd been held back a few times, and apparently they'd been together before... and on one occasion, she was lying spreadeagled on the floor, and this kid who'd been her boyfriend pulled up her skirt and I briefly caught a glimpse of that part of her. Again, I found it to be weird as hell. Truly, how little did I know.

Day Twenty-six - The story

Now, how much, or indeed if any, of the following you want to believe is entirely up to you. Some may read it and understand because they experienced something similar, but most may just downright dismiss it as hokum - and that's ok, really, because herein I present not only my truth, but also that of my family.

So to cut a long story short - the house we lived in in that small town until the end of my fourth grade? It was haunted. And when I say haunted, you have no idea, really. It's something almost straight out of Poltergeist or some other horror movie. And me and my family had to go through some pretty weird shit - including levitation (my brother), walls suddenly becoming blood-stained, things disappearing from one part of the house and then appearing in another, surface reflections that reflected not your image, but of something other. And those were the most normal parts of the ordeal, believe it or not. You see, apparently the area where we lived in had been the site of some pretty horrendous and bloody battles centuries past, and that created something there that attracted the very bad kind of energies. Also, and unbeknownst to me as a kid, apparently my mother's side of the family had some history with events of this sort, and it was something that followed them throughout the years. Understand, please, that on the one hand I was very young when this happened, and on the other I do not know every single part of the story - both my mother and grandmother chose to keep a lot in the dark, maybe to protect us.

But what I do know is that very early on in my life, when I was still a baby, I started talking to my mother in another person's voice, describing to her how I had died at the bottom of the sea and fishes were eating my dead body. This, naturally, scared the living daylights out of her, and maybe around that time they decided to take some precautions. For as far as I can recall, the smell of incense hung heavy in the air. And not the sort of nice sweet smelling incense, no. It was that kind of incense used in religious ceremonies - I loathe the smelll of incense since then. 

As a kid, and this probably before I even started going to school, I used to love sleeping in our living room. And back then, I'd sometimes have entire sleepless nights because on one corner of the room there would be a fox that stared at me all night long. Though I don't recall ever being afraid of it, I also had my guardian angels by my side - pretty heady and out there stuff, I know, but real lived experiences my family shared. But not everyone. At least not to my knowledge, there might be something else I don't know, and I'm not in a position to ask either party... but my father seemed to go through all these weird things completely oblivious of what was happening.

This is but part one of the story. There will be more.

Day Twenty-five - Just

That kid who I sort of made friends with on the fourth grade, his parents a newsagent's just across from the school, and besides the usual magazines and newspapers, they'd also stock some comics and these crappy Mastesr of the Universe knock-offs. Now, for some reason I never quite knew why, I always sensed that his parents harboured some animosity towards me. Maybe it was because I was having my own 'punk' phase, and as I said, styling your hair in the fashion of spikes with gel wasn't seen in a good way, and that's how I rolled back then. I remember there was one incident at school one afternoon where I was chasing after some kid down a school corridor, and I hoenstly can't remember now who it was, but whoever it was, was faster than me, and as we reached a dead-end - actually the locked door to our classroom - the kid ducked and turned round past me and I put my left arm straight through a window, making a nasty gash in my wrist. I was then taken to a nurse's office by one of the school's employees, and on one hand the nurse just looked at my gash, threw a bit of iodine on it, cleaned it up and maybe stuck a band-aid there. Then, instead of promptly returning to school, the employee and the nurse talked for hours while I listened to their seemingly unending drivel.

But I'd remiss if I didn't mention this girl Sara who was also so, so nice to me. She was directly related to the family who owned a bookshop where I'd go pretty much every day to check what was new and we struck a kinship right then and there - we weren't what I'd say the best of friends, but we got along very well. Midyear there was a returning student who joined the class. Everyone but me knew her, and I was completely taken aback by this girl's beauty - she was most likely my very first crush! Obviously, I was all but oblivious to her, but damn... that girl really made my heart skip a beat. I remember little about her now, other than her shoulder length blonde hair, and very clear blue eyes. About a couple of years later, in my sixth grade, I'd meet another girl who I think was also called Joana, and looked extarordinarily like her, yet they were not the same girl... I had to know, so I asked! 

This year was almost uneventful, both in school and at home. With greater or lesser difficulty I cruised through my fourth grade, and even before the school year ended I knew that next year I'd be moving to yet another different house. And that was because my parents had decided to move house - we went from the small town we lived in to a tiny, tiny village even further on the suburbs. My father had an office on a somewhat larger village some 8 kilometers away, but my mother had to commute to the big city every single day, and she'd bring me - and maybe my sister - to go to school. As we move from one stage of my life to another, I am now ready to tell you The Story.

Day Twenty-four - The Heinrich maneuver

Recently, but in a completely different context, I wrote about this kid I met when I was doing my fourth grade - Isaac. He was maybe in the first grade, I guess, because he was way younger than myself, and his only relevance to this story is that he was the kid who had all the toys. I mean, all the damn toys. He had all the Masters of the Universe, and all of the Star Wars action figures, and G.I. Joes, and everything else - and while I had my wee fare of toys, it was positively paltry compared to this kid's stash. And no lie, I really envied this kid. Every day he'd bring all these toys to school, and he never let anyone else play with them. 

Now, I said that this school year proved to be another pretty much friendless one. I sort of assumed it would be anyway, but I did try in the beginning to make a few friends. There was this kid, and unfortunately for me I learned of his nickname before I learned his name - he started school a few days later than the rest for some reason, and as he was a returning student from previous years, everyone knew him but me. So when everyone saw him they started calling him by his nickname, and maybe because he had that kind of familiarity with the other kids that would allow for that name to be freely thrown around. And he was a nice looking kid, seemed to be pretty popular, and so I wanted to make friends with him. All that came to an end the moment I called him 'Pharmacist' - his nickname, on account of that being his dad's profession. And he told me that I should call him by his real name, but me being the young iconoclast I thought I was, kept on calling him by the nickname. Soon after the kid never talked to him again. Eh, screw him, anyway.

Then there was another kid who I tried to befriend, but I again developed this sort of friendship with him that hinged on his unending sycophancy and obsequiousness towards me. Again I found myself in a position where someone would willingly put themselves in my hands like so much putty. Whenever I told him to do something, he'd do it. If I told him to hang with me rather than the other kids, kids he'd known since the first grade, he would. And worst of all, he'd never complain. This weird goblin of a kid was really small, and he had a weird speech impediment that got worse and worse the more nervous he got - and all the other kids used to make fun of him. Maybe I never did, and that's why he chose to stay at my side? Whatever the cause, this wasn't a true friendship - by that time I was still a few years away from my very first real friendship, but before we get there we must stay here for a while longer.

Day Twenty-three - Still

My fourth grade began a change in my day to day paradigm that would be de facto by that school year's end : rather than commuting back and forth with my parents everyday, I started spending my week days at my grandparent's house in the city, and then spending my weekends at my parent's. I'd moved to yet another different school, and as it was quite near to where my grandparents lived, it was agreed that I'd be spending the week here, as I could easily walk to and from school unaccompanied. This would also be the era that marked my journey of the discovery of the big city, seeing as I enjoyed that very same freedom here that I did back in the small town where my parent's house was. And now, besides being able to just walk around the city as I pleased, I also had access to a transportation network that I knew only very slightly of; as we usually came to the city on my parent's car, there was never a real need to use said network, though on the very occasional situation we did. I did have a lot of leeway here, but in a certain sense, things were stricter here : the fact that I was living now at my grandparent's, especially with an increasingly elder grandfather, meant that I should be seen rather than heard, and that schedules were meant to be adhered to. Aside from that, I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to.

One good thing about this strictness my grandparents enforced was that it fostered in me that hunger for reading I already had, and two somewhat close by libraries would prove to be fundamental for me, they'd become a haven for me - and I would sorely need that place, as this school year would prove to be yet another virtually friendless year. So I started going to a different school, still a private one, and once again I had to start things from scratch. Now, because my older brother somewhat influenced me, and because he himself was discovering punk, this led me to ape him in a number of ways - one of them was spiking my hair with gel, something which, I guess, wasn't looked at very well back then. And my teacher took and immediate disliking to me at once, and so did the principal, who also owned the school. He was a peculiar man, I knew nothing about his past, but he had all the hallmarks of maybe having had a military school education. He always carried himself prim and proper, and shaved every single day - and yet, he had a grey-ish hue to his skin that somehow made his clean shaven face look somewhat green on the cheeks. He was peculiar, for sure, and at least to me - not very kind.

And I unfortunately had his pedantic son as a classmate - what a snot-nosed brat he was. He had this curly haired noggin that bugged the hell out of me, and lord, how I wanted to take a baseball bat to that melon.

Day Twenty-two - Dead stars

What did I want to when I grew up as a kid? At first, I wanted to be an astronaut, and later I wanted to be a lawyer - both for very different and yet similar reasons. There were two inciting incidents for me wanting to be an astronaut, and as far as I can recall, they would  have happened around the same time frame : I was in the third grade still, and one day we took a school trip to the planetarium. Now, I'd never heard of a planetarium, I had no idea what it was, and my wee self's mind was just blown away. I couldn't believe that I could see the stars, and the planets, and the comets - the whole cosmos was spread above me in a way that I never thought would have been possible. Oh, and there were also the northern lights as well, something that to this day I long to see in person. Then there was that fateful day when one weekend I was sat in front of the TV just after my family had lunch, and we had this habit of watching this show that played the top charting hits, when suddenly I heard for the first time what would be a song that became pretty much anthemic to me all throughout my childhood - Jean Michel Jarre's 'Fourth Rendez-Vous'. I couldn't comprehend, really, what kind of instrument he was playing, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen before, but my mother explained to me that he was playing a synthesizer. Another word I'd never heard before, though I'd certainly had listened to a lot of synth based music, though I never knew so then. The video, of course, had images of the Challenger Space Shuttle that tragically broke apart a little over a minute into its flight, and the album is dedicated to the memory of the crew, who all lost their lives on that sad day. 

These two events combined - in addition to a predilection I already had for science fiction - really made me want to be an astronaut. And then, I don't know if that if it was that much longer after I started nurturing the idea of going to space, 'L.A. Law' started being broadcast on TV, and frankly, it seemed to me to be a far easier thing for me to accomplish - being a lawyer rather than an astronaut. And I confess, I was completely swept up by the glamour of that office, of that L.A. that to me was as alien as Jupiter or Mars. It was henceforth my main goal in life - though I wasn't ever a brilliant student, and not much longer after the time frame of which I write about, I'd become a pretty mediocre one, in me there was always that drive, that will to study law. I'm not really sure where I lost that will, though. Maybe because sometime in the very early 90's my mother decided to go back to school and study law herself, and when I realized how much work it would be and how hard it was, I sort of gave up.

Day Twenty-one - Decades

As I write these posts and ponder about certain specific times in my life, the passage of time weighs heavy on my mind. Just recently I was talking to my brother, and I was relating something to him and I off-handedly said that it was something that I had done just a while ago, and then I realized that that 'while ago' was actually really over a decade ago. And now, these recent writings of mine, I'm relating things that are now either four decades old or fastly approaching that mark. I remember, as a kid, that my school years seemed to last forever - each term an eternity that went on and on and on, until at last that cherished break came along. But it wasn't just school, the summer holiday also seemed to be a time that stretches for far longer than it really did. Maybe because as a kid I managed to pack those days with just as much fun as I could? It's a true thing that those pre-internet, pre-videogame, pre-enterntainment 24/7 were somehow better. If anyone would have told me back then that not that very far into the future I'd have a portable slim rectangle that could play any music I desired, any game I wanted, any comic book I wanted, any show  I wanted, I would have called them crazy. It would have been science fiction for me, really - something so far out there that not even the movies or TV show I was watching could conjure up. And who'd want such a thing, anyway? I truly loved my moments spent in my bedroom reading my first comic books, and making my first forrays into the realms of the sci-fi classics. I truly treasured the moments I spent in my living room watching the cartoon classics of my childhood. But just as important, the freedom I enjoyed as a kid to just basically go anywhere I wanted, as long as I let someone know I was going out, and made sure to be home before it got dark, was something that I'll never lose the sight of. 

Those were the parts of my childhood where I'd take the time to know the lay of where I lived, the town first, then the village later, and even later the big city - all of which I'll write about in the future. I loved just walking around -  something that to this day I still love, but unfortunately fell out of the habit of doing. Maybe this year I'll be able to resume that good habit. But as early as maybe five, my mom would give me money to go to a grocery store not far from where we lived to go get some things she might need, or she'd give me money to go to buy an ice-cream elsewhere in the town. There really were no limits, I could freely go from one side of town to the other, and never once did I feel that I was in danger. 

Simpler days. Better days.

Day Twenty - Auf achse

An interregnum, if you will. My mind, when it's at its most idle, is certainly something to behold, and I write this in not a so positive light. Oh, it doesn't mean that I end up doing some stupid thing that can be measured in a pactical way - these are mostly affairs of the hypothetical realm. 

What I mean by this is that sometimes - not very often, bur far more often than I would really wish - I find myself coming up with these scenarios that are so unlikely, they boggle the mind. And the unlikelihood comes from the fact that me, as I am, in this point in my life, and at this particular moment of space and time, could not possibly afford to either have nor chase after. This, of course, relates to the possibility of me entering a relationship with someone. You see, years ago I realized that I could not have anyone in my life, certainly not before I fixed myself. Because there is a form of chaos in my life that I can't yet control, it would be a foolish thing to invite someone to dwell in it. I learned my lesson years ago when I opened up a window for such an opportunity, and within minutes of meeting someone I had travelled hours to meet, that what I did was supremely unwise - for all parties. It was neither wise nor productive nor... nor anything, really. I should have known better, because by that time I'd already decided that the best course of action would be to keep to myself - and keep on keeping that way. But the undeniable truth is that the flesh is heir to specific weaknesses... and when the chance to sate those appetites is presented to you on a platter, it becomes hard to say no. And I knew... I knew... that I wasn't ready to dive into something meaningful, and that I couldn't give anything worthwhile, and still I went. In search of what, really? Companionship? Sex? A chance for something more? The first was questionable, the second a given, and the third a vague possibility.

And so, because I deny myself any such instances, because I have shunned myself from the physical and virtual world as possible, in terms of engagement at least, all that comes with having someone in my life is utterly beyond me, and I do not harbour any hope - nor do I think that I shall seek it in the future - even if I manage to rebuild myself back up again. 

Ultimately what that does is create those moments where my imagination runs wild and I see things in my mind that can't now be, and maybe never ever will. These outlines my mind creates always leave me feeling somewhat empty on the inside, because they remind me of what is absent. They make me crave the touch of a hand, or of the opening gambit of a romance... But I can't. Not now, and maybe really not ever again. 

Day nineteen - Pink rabbits

That paradigm I wrote about earlier, of me changing schools very very often would begin in the third grade. I went to this private school alongside with my brother, and it's not even like it was a really good one - if anything it was decidedly mediocre. And again, why this happened, I don't think I'll ever know. But I have more clear memories of the third grade alone than both previous grades combined. So, one thing that changed in my routine was me having to wake up earlier than usual to get ready for school because we had to commute to the city, and that's where my parents were working anyway. 

Again, I don't think I made many friends that year - I remember being friendly with maybe just one or two kids. I did make a sort of nemesis though - one of the kids in the school, and I can't remember now whether he was from my grade or a different grade, but this kid bulled me all the time and kind of got a free pass to do it. The two worst moments of my time in that school happened at his hands : in the first, and as I was trying to run away from him in a playground in front of the school, stupid kid me was looking behind, and when I turned my head in the direction it should have been looking at all along, I bumped it hard against a metal playset and my left eye got so badly swollen that I all but looked as if someone had punched me in the face. In another instance, this kid - who was taking some sort of martial art lessons - really wanted to goad me into a fight with him. No two ways about it, this kid could, if he so wanted, break me in half. He was taller, stronger, wiry, while I was already the sort of soft, pudgy kid I guess I never really stopped being. And he did try to break me : me not wanting to fight him led him to manhandle me, and he threw me down on the floor so hard that I sprained my wrist. I scurried crying back to our teacher, and she took us to the pincipal's office : the dolt listened to my story, looked at me with disdain, and forcefully grabbed my arm and waved it up and down, my limp wrist flailing around, and I legit thought that my hand was going to fly away from the rest of my arm. That stupid man left me in so much pain, but the worst part? While he was doing it he was singing a mocking song, and god damn, that left me wholly pissed off.

One other thing I remember vividly is my teacher - I have no idea now what her name was, my memory has always been at fault with these things, but she was a jovial yet strict, rotund Brazilian woman; she was blonde and blue-eyed, I'm certain there might have been some German in her.

Day eighteen - I know

So, yeah, as I said before, first and secong grades are all but indistinguishable to me - I don't have very many individuals memories of both years in my mind, and It's actually likely that most of them are from the first grade itself. It's mainly because from one grade to the other, the only thing that changed were those two kids who failed first grade I mentioned. We remained the same school class with the same teacher, and nothing pretty much seemed to change. But what I can remember is the other friendship I truck in the first grade, one that lasted all through the end of the second grade - with a kid called R.

One of the very first things I recall is this kid having a die-cast Spider-Man helicopter, and from the moment I saw it, I knew I wanted it. So I traded him a big coffee jar full of marbles I had for it, and he went along with it. And that, I guess, is where his 'enslavement' began.

Now, I know that that word is quite heavy, and obviously no, the kid wasn't my slave. And yet, he did anything and everything I asked him to! We sat side by side in school, and one day I drew a 'futuristic' wrist-watch on my, huh, wrist, and it included a screen, you could see and hear who was calling you, listen to the radio, watch TV, play computer games - the works! Never in my young age would have I thought that in the future all of that would be pretty much possible. I'd speak into my wrist-watch and issue R all kind of commands, and he'd do it no matter what.

One other classmate we had was a little girl - I can't remember her name, but she gained the unfortunate nickname of 'panties', because when we took the class photo she sat with her legs spread wide open, and everyone who got a copy of that picture could see her panties. It was actually my bother who gave her that nickname; he went to the very same school I did, and when he saw the picture at home he immediately picked up on it. Unfortunately, he also sought to frame that poor girl as my girlfriend, something she clearly was not. This girl, she was sort of the teacher's pet, little miss know it all - and maybe she did, she certainly seemed to! 

One other thing I remember is that right at the beginning of first grade, when we were learning what classes we would be having moving forward, we were supposed to have a music class. Now, during my two years there we only had the one music class - ever! And i recall it being very early in the school year, maybe even as early as the first week. We had this music book, filled with songs we were supposed to learn how to sing, but we did it just that one single time, the books went into one of teacher's drawers, and were never seen again. And to this day I have no idea why. 

Day seventeen - Epicentre

These memories I've been putting down on word, I'd place right about just before I started going to school. Most, if not all, of these writings, would have happened when I was five or younger. That was the age I was at when my sister was born - and I can barely recall my mother while pregnant. I sort of remember her with a very big belly - me not knowing nothing about nothing, I thought she was sick or something, and then I remember going to the hospital to see my sister right after she was born. There's a memory of just me, my brother and my father having a kind of indoors picnic, eating sandwiches on our sitting room floor. It'll be, as I shall be telling in further detail somewhere down the line, one of the very few memories that involve my father that I look upon with some kindness.

But as I started school, so too did a pattern begin to weave itself, though I wouldn't know it for years to come. You see, my first four years of school were spent in three diffrent places : first and secong grade I spent in the same public school, then third and fourth grades were both spent in different private shools. And why the change from public to private, I never quite figured out. I mean, I'd say we were that kind of middle class family that, while not being too ostentatious, we never lacked for food, or the occasional trip to the movies, sometimes we'd eat out, but more often than not our parents took care of our food at home. And it wasn't like I'd been doing bad in the public school, far from it. I wouldn't say I was a model student, but I was certainly competent enough.

So, ok, let's begin with the first two years in public school, which to my mind is something that I can't really distinguish from one another. I'm not sure that I have any lasting memories from that specific summer between shcool years, so it all kind of rolls together.

I've heard many a tale over the years about people's first day in school - how it was very traumatic, and everyone cried, and such things. Me, I don't remember having a difficult time of it. Rather, what I remember is how quickly I struck up a 'friendship', so to speak, with three other boys. I mean, day one, me and two other kids were already singing Queen songs in broken english, and let me tell you : these were quite likely the two dumbest people I ever met, because how in heaven's name do you fail first grade? These two kids - let's call them A and F - were so incredibly dumb... and they'd turn out to be the very first bullies I'd ever meet : that early friendship fast evaporated, and soon thereafter these kids took every single opportunity to bully me and the other kids in the schoolyard. Thankfully, I only had to endure them that year, but what a long nightmarish year it would turn out to be.

Day sixteen - Untrust us

The amount of downright stupid things one could do as a kid is just staggering. Walking down this memory lane I'm on, I'm reminded of the time when, after being thoroughly impressed with a cartoon I'd just watched - The Mysterious Cities of Gold - I decided to paint my right thumb gold. I had a mini can of gold paint for some reason, and I don't think I ever used it for any purpose than this bit of body painting. I tried - without success, I might add - to convince some of the neighbourhood kids that I had a 'gold finger' that could, if I wanted to, turn things into gold. Alas, to no avail. To top things off, when I got home and my mother saw what I'd done to my finger, she scrubbed it off and it hurt like hell, and then she grounded me. 

As I go through these memories, there's a bit of me that's sort of transported to those times. Again, I wouldn't say that life was good there - as you'll soon see there were a bunch of very weird things that would happen - but there were certainly times that were just good enough. One of the most prevalent persons among those memories is my grandmother - she had a nursery / pre-school kind of thing when we lived there, and it was literally on the next door, in the very same building we lived in. Though my grandmother didn't live there, no - she lived in the city with my grandfather, who was becoming increasingly elderly - he was 67 already when I was born - and she drove back home every day to take care of him. As I remember it, my grandfather had mobility issues for a long time, and he couldn't just walk around unaided. But I spent a lot of time in my grandmother's nursery, what with living right next to it. Don't get me wrong, it was a delicate business first and foremost, so I could never be up to any sort of antics there. Strangely, though, there aren't very many memories I can conjure from that place : I remember one time just dying to go to the toilet, and as I wasn't being able to, you know, do anything, I started to panic - I legit thought I was going to die with a big poo inside of me. Then as I started to get up from the seat, well... it just slid down. Thankfully, into the bowl.

Now one other thing that I remember is my grandmother teaching me to read and write. It's one of those things where I'm not sure whether or not my memory is playing tricks on me, but I sort of remember being able to read my brother''s comic books before I started school. I still live with her now, it was a kind of family choice that I had to make a few years back - I had to serve as a buffer between her and my mother, and oh boy, things in that regard are pretty chaotic.

Day fifteen - I know very well how I got my name

It being the 80's, it probably accounts for just how much leeway and freedom we kids got. I remember that I could just go out anywhere, pretty much anytime, and if asked, just say I was going for a walk, with rarely ever any questions asked. This town we lived in back then, it was a tiny thing. So tiny, it didn't even have a supermarket - we always had to go shopping somewhere else. But it had a very small theatre, which I dearly loved. They didn't play anything other than the likes of lower grade Cannon Group films, the likes of which made 'Missing in Action' look like a masterpiece, or teen coming of age erotic dramas like 'Lemon Popsicle'. Every movie they showed there was just awful, and I loved them for it. I loved the bags of sweet popcorn and other assorted bagged sweets you could get at the lobby. It was here I saw the 1980's Spider-Man movie, 'The Dragon's Challenge'. I was already familiar with the character from the comic books my older brother had and were lying around at home, and though I couldn't yet read, I'd be mesmerized by the pictures, the colours, the action. When we found there was a Spider-Man movie, and in our local theatre no less, we just had to go. To be fair, I haven't seen the movie ever since - I never felt that urge to donwload it or look for it online, but even as a kid I realized I was watching something that was really not that good - to put it mildly!

One of my favourite spots back then was this sort of triangulation station - a small-ish structure that was part of our Geodetic control network, and to get there I had to go some ways away from my house. I couldn't now tell you what that very young me found endearing in that particular place, maybe I felt some sort of peace, or maybe it was because I didn't yet know what its purpose was - I might've found it esoteric and was drawn to it because of those qualities. 

It's a funny thing, because as things will be soon apparent, me and my family really didn't have a good time there, but in a way I did have a decent time there. Many of my days as a very young boy are still etched in my mind : the sunny saturday morning where I raced to the top of a street in order to buy a pack of stickers from a local shop, only to find it had just closed, and then running back down the street while, for some reason, looking back at something, only to crack my head on a lamp-post when I crashed into it. Blood running down my face, I cried my way to the caffee where my mother was sat having her coffee. Being the no nonsense woman I guess she always was, she took me home, cleaned the blood from off my face and slapped a band-aid in my forehead. Different times, huh?

Day fourteen - Nowhere fast

This probably happened pretty much anywhere else in the world, but when the Rambo movies came along in the 80's, it took kid's imagination by a storm. I mean, every kid wanted to be Rambo : they wanted to have the physique, the guns, the look, the bad-assery... and the knife. And I wanted to have it too, but my parents never got me one. 

This prefaces a memory I have with some of the older kids that sometimes hung around where we played - these would be the kids that came all the way from across town, for reasons I cannot now recall. But there were maybe three or four of them, all of them older, taller, bigger. Sometimes they'd take us to their side of the town, which was basically just crossing a small bridge anyways, but sometimes we'd go the long way around and make our way through a particularly bushy area - my memory may be tricking me somewhat, but I do seem to remember us going through some sort of forested area, though I can't imagine exactly where it'd be. However, on one of those expeditions, so to speak, a bunch of them had these big Rambo knives - long blades, and serrated as well, with a compass on the pommel. A couple of our local kids had the same sort of knives - and the only thing my brother and me had that we could produce, boy oh boy, it just didn't make the grade. My dad had a knife, he called it his hunting knife, but it was positively tiny and antiquated compared to the ones those guys had. It was pointy, sure, but neither did it have any serration nor was it sharp - at all!

That was a weird bunch of kids, that one. I wouldn't say that they came from the wrong side of the tracks, not necessarily, because where we lived in it wasn't great all over. In a way, if anything, we were the wrong side of the tracks because ours was the oldest part of town, while theirs was the newest, and parts of it were still in construction. Their side of town even had our one and only theatre - more on that in the future! But for some reason, their side of town wasn't exactly seen with good eyes. My family always warned me about going there, as if something awful could happen. And while I never found it to be dangerous as such, I always found it to be pretty weird. I'm very certain that the first time I saw someone doing drugs was there... Near where one of the kids lived, you'd always see this sweet black van, with tinted windows, and it had these crazy paintings all over it, as if the paintings had come from 70's prog album covers. Maybe they did, who knows? Weirdly enough, I'm not sure if I saw an attempted homicide. One of the older kids had a lot of family problems, and one day his dad saw him with us, and just beat the crap out of him. He even picked up some rocks from the sidewalk, and hit his own son with them. Strange stuff.

Day thirteen - Waiting on a sunny day

In trying to remember things that are now decades old there are some things that have been surprising me of late, and increasingly so, as I ponder these long gone years. It's not unsurprising that I can't perfectly recall some things, what surprises me is that when I look back I can't even remember the names of many of the kids I used to play with. Mostly they'd be kids from my building or the building adjacent to mine, but I remember some other kids that used to hang out where we lived and they were either from the neighbourhood or from even across the (admittedly) tiny town we lived in back then. Some of these kids I knew better than others - they were all mostly older than me, and would be in the same age range as my brother, who's three years older than me. I don't think I could've called any of them my friends, and there were no real enmities there - except with an idiot kid I always disliked called Marco. This thug of a boy was the bane of my early life, moreso than a pair I'll eventually write about, and one of my earliest humiliations came at his feet, or more literally, his foot : in a sort of baseball game we kids used to play, I got into a verbal fight with this kid and out of nowhere he just kicked me in the mouth. That left me fuming, and for the duration of the time we lived in that place, I plotted a revenge that never came for years on end. When my parents told us that we were moving to another place, I imagined myself on my parent's car as we were leaving for the last time, and as the car drove past stupid Marco, I'd open the window, and throw stones at him, cracking his giant head and leaving him bleeding on the street. None of this, sadly, ever came to pass.

I remember a couple of families that lived in the building right next to mine - one of them was a mixed race family, and they had three kids : a girl, who was their eldest, and two kids who would be roughly the same age as me and my brother. We were frinedly with them, as kids go, but I don't think we ever really liked them. Their parents were complicated folks, they fought a lot - like epic shouting matches that everyone in the neighbourhood could hear. I'm very sure the guy was a piece of shit who was up to no good - It wasn't uncommon for his wife to be waiting in front of the building for him, only for her to berate him and then proceed to beat the hell out of him. Eventually the guy cracked, and mid-afternoon one day, as we kids were on the street playing or doing kid's stuff, the elder sister emerged from out of the building completely naked, crying and shouting that their dad had gone crazy and tried to kill them.

No one actually died, but shortly thereafter no one ever saw them again.

Day twelve - Why don't you find out for yourself?

Pretty much like everything else in my life, what I write here won't necessarily be linear. Meaning that here and there I may deviate from my intended purpose, but I'll come back - I'll always come back. So today I'm taking a step back from what I was doing here and vent for a bit. And I'm doing just that because today was not a good day. Not a bad day, by any stretch of the imagination, but not a good one. You see, where I am right now is at a junction in this journey or whatever where the smallest thing can derail it. It's still too early, still too fragile, and I know far too well what it is to start this process and have it all fall apart because I created the circumstances for that downfall. I began last year with the same mindset, and I made a choice for which I knew I wouldn't be ready, and the consequences of that choice led me down what was quite probably my worst year in a very long time. I chose to chastise myself over that choice for the best part of last year, so I can ill afford to let the same thing happen now. And I don't really want it to.

One thing that is becoming increasingly prevalent is that this thing I'm doing, I have to do it on my own, with little to no distractions. I can't depend on or trust anyone else to help me get through this. I refuse that dependence. And that will help mitigate any attrition I might be liable to encounter. I knew that coming into this iteration of my trek towards feeling better, some of my very bad vices would have to go - and for me the easiest of those to do away with was the poison I drank daily : the alcohol, the sodas, the energy drinks. That alone has been having an impact in me, I already feel less swollen, and while not necessarily lighter per se, I do feel a bit more limber. The next step, while keeping this discipline up, is to start exercising. 

But for all this to happen and keep happening at the same time, for as long as possible, I can't afford to have a moment like today where an altercation with someone who I know cares deeply for me and only wants the best for me - my grandmother - almost left me out of sorts. It shouldn't have happened, none of it should have happened. But now I know better - I know how to circumvent these issues now. I know what to do in order for them not to happen, though it means a little bit more of me being closed to the world. For the moment, at least, it's the best course of action.

Well, that's it, rant done. I thought I'd better just get this thing off my chest and let my head do the cooking. I need to feel lighter not only in body, but in the mind as well.

Day eleven - Camera

One thing I know for sure is that there isn't a lot of my childhood mementos/keepsakes/photographs still extant. Again, these are things that were all either eventually lost or thrown away, who knows. So that means that there isn't much now that I can use to look at and try to see if I have any memories regarding it. Up until a few years ago, there used to be a box filled with photos and polaroids of me and my family from decades ago, but I've not seen it in ages. There is, though, a photo of my brother and two other kids - god knows who - and me in the background riding a tricycle. In it I am wearing the very same cap from the rollerskating memory - was I a cap kind of kid? I don't remember liking headwear all that much as a kid, really.

All this to state that prior to me going to first grade I don't have many tangible memories. I remember a gypsy family that lived in the same building my family lived in, and one day one of their dogs had a litter of puppies and they gifted two of them to me and my brother. My doggie was named Elias. But that there may have created a problem - Elias was also the name of a guy who lived in the building as well, and I'm pretty sure no one liked him. He was a kind of normal guy, I guess, not too tall nor too short, maybe skinny, and he either had light brown hair or was blond, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard. But whenever I looked at the guy, something about him creeped me out - I'm not saying he was the devil, but if the devil ever looked like someone, it would be like him.

From what I can remember, and because when we were given the puppies they were still very young and had to stay with their mother, one day someone found them dead - the rumour was that Elias - who was  a teacher - has poisoned them. I don't think we ever got to find out what really happened. 

There was also a contentious black family that got into everyone's nerves - even the other black families that lived in the building or who were neighbours to us, and one of the kids my age used to enjoy doing my head in. One day I just flipped and went into my house, grabbed a hammer, and bonked him in the head. I'd never do anything of the sort these days, but man, for that to have happened, that kid really must have made my life miserable. I didn't have many friends in the neighbourhood, if any at all. Oh, I knew them all, but we never reallly got along. I was already feeling out of place, and as soon as I learned how to read, I distanced myself from the other kids even more, though occasionally I'd still play with them.

Day ten - The suburbs

Yesterday I wrote about two places I lived in when I was very young, though I have little to no recollection of ever having lived there; as I dredged up those memories yesterday, I also recalled one time when I was very young - I'd say this was in the same time frame as that memory of me rollerskating. In this memory, I was - possibly - getting out of a car in the street where I to this day live, my maternal grandparents's house. I seem to recall holding what in my recollection was a huge clear plastic bag filled up with tiny plastic toys - spaceships, or cars, or some sort of vehicle or the other. They'd be made up of blue and white parts, with orange windows, and here and there in my adult life I've seen these very toys being sold, but I never had the inclination to get any for myself.

Where all these toys came from, and what their purpose was, I guess I'll never know. My older brother, three years my senior, seems to remember that our parents had a shop - though he recalls it being a tiny place that sold clothes and suchlike. So why we would be carrying all those toys is a mistery to me.

What I can remember more clearly is about from 4 years old or so onwards - as my birthday is in august, all my memories of my early birthdays involve the summer. One in particular, and I want to say it was my fourth birthday, or maybe my fifth at the latest, we were already living in that place where we lived in until the end of my fourth grade, I guess '87. So this memory might have occured in either '81 or '82... but as I was so wont to do then, I fell asleep on the couch we had in our living room, and I woke up with the early sun, already warm, pouring through the blinds. Under my pillow, I found my first birthday gift - a set containing plastic construction or DIY tools : a hammer, a screwdriver or two, probably something else I can't recall. But I do remember that back then all sorts of tools fascinated me, and so, maybe with my safety in mind, my parents procured this set for me. I remember being so incredibly happy - you know, that childlike happiness you rarely will ever feel in your life. I felt loved, and this was something I didn't feel many times as a kid, as I shall explain in more detail in the near future. My mind wants to tell me that there may be a memory associated with a birthday party, but it's not quite clear to me if it pertains to that particular birthday or not.

But the most important thing is that it's in this house that my memories of my self and my family truly begin. This house where we'd spend the next few years of our lives would prove to be very important, though probably not in mays many can imagine.

Day nine - Í Gær

To think about the past and not merely wallow in it can be a worthwhile endeavour, I deem. There's value in looking back and trying to see if you can still remember who you were, what you did, what you learned, what were your missteps. Of these I have many, I'm sure, that I'll eventually be looking into with some detail. But far be from me to do this just to simply chastise myself for things I can't change - the past is, after all immutable. The joy here, I think, will be me seeing how much of me I can still bring forth from those days long past. So, no time like the present, let us take the first step down these winding paths of memory's domain.

I have a couple of very early memories, and I can't place them chronologically : in one of them, I'm rollerskating by the door of a building in which my family lived when I was very young - maybe around three years old, I guess. A few years ago I was helping out my brother carry a washing machine he'd bought up to his apartment - sadly it was a very old buildding with no lift, and as it was during the height of a very hot summer, by the time we reached that, what was it, was it the third floor?

... Jesus, I went up those stairs so many times as a kid, it was my paternal grandmother's place, and I can't even remember which floor she lived in. Maybe it was the fourth? It always felt like an eternity going up those stairs. Anyways, by the time we lugged the machine up to his place, I was soaked in sweat, and soon thereafter we had to rush out to go buy a part the machine was missing - some sort of tube or the other - and as fate would have it the shop was right by that building we lived in when I was a young, young boy. A part of me could almost see myself in my red corduroys, with blue knee patches, and a chequered cap on top of an unruly mop of hair. 

But I also remember being with my family, which at the time meant its was just me, my brother and my parents - my sister was a few years away from being conceived, and my father drove a Ford Capri at the time, and I recall being absolutely enamoured with that car - funny that, as I don't pay attention whatsoever to cars or motosports, never have, never will. But I'm sure that had to have been circa the same era, though I'm also of the mind that at the time we lived elsewhere entirely different. In the time my family existed as a whole unit, we only stayed in a couple of places for more than a few years at a time. If I remember this right, I was already living in yet another place before I started going to school, and by the time I finished fourth grade we were already calling home to a different house.

Day eight - Another desire

Before I start delving into the past and what was, I'm going to write a bit about what I'd like for the future and what will hopefully be. So one of the things that's been on my mind for a long while now is how I basically just stopped living, these past few years. Anything and everything I used to do, I just stopped. I haven't gone out in years - well, other than for the occasional meal and drink with a few friends, but that's here and there only. No outings like I used to, and that's not a bad thing really... maybe I'm just not that kind of person anymore, maybe I don't feel comfortable in those spaces anymore. I've not been to a concert in a very long time, nor have I been going to the movies frequently... to be honest I hardly ever go nowadays. Nothing seems to strike my particular fancy.

But more than this, and this is what bugs me the most, is how I just stopped going to the places where I felt at home and at peace, even if sometimes I would have people around me. Look, I literally have a train station on my doorstep that takes me to one of my most favourite places - Sintra - in less than an hour. I used to just hop on the train, and spend an afternoon there, whether in summer or winter, be completely lost in thought, listening to music, writing on a journal or reading... when the time was right, for this particular service is only in operation during certain months of the year, I'd catch the tram down to the beach and just enjoy that whimsical journey. When taken during the autumn, it can be magical.

And I just sort of gave it all up. Oh, I came up with numerous excuses - the prospect of accidentally meeting an ex that works not very far from where the train station in Sintra is, or of bumping into someone from my past on the train ride, something that, believe me, is wholly possible... well, these things alone, in and of themselves, were daunting enough to start keeping me at bay. I started to apply this twisted rationale to pretty much everything I did : everything time I pondered going somewhere, I came up with far too many cons, and not enough pros. Staying still at home became by default the easier choice.

And damn.. I miss that. I miss living. Not necessarilly the going out bit, though a part of me sort of yearns for the confidence to do it again, but to just do the things I used to love. I owe myself a good summer - I've not had one in god knows how long. But I also owe myself my favourite season - Winter. If summer is the season of life, then winter is the season of the soul. I miss my long walks through the forest in winter's bleakest days. And I highly doubt that I'll be able to do it this very winter, but I swear I shall work on it so that the next one will be fully enjoyed.

Day seven - Dream a little dream of me

Damn, I don't think I can go that far back yet. At least not today.

Let me write a bit about my dreams - they're always so crazy and vivid, and unfortunately for me I lost the good habit I had many years of keeping a record of my dreams, a diary of dreams. I can't remember now if it was like every single night, but most nights I'd wake up, groggy, half-asleep, and write down what I could remember from what I just had dreamt, before it became like so much sand falling through my hands. And I've always had pretty weird dreams, a bunch of them are either related to the end of the world or downright post-apocalyptic. Those are always very strange, very tense, very sort of claustrophobic dreams - but I like those kinds of dreams. This past week or so I had a couple of these dreams, including one where the world was invaded by Transformers and it became a hellhole, and everyone was just waiting for the world to end because there was no hope left. 

Sometimes I dream of places that don't, and could never exist. Other times I dream of people under circumstances that won't ever come to pass. Those dreams I just brush off, and are often washed away from my mind in a blur.

But for sure the worst kind of dreams I have are dreams that bear some semblance of verisimilitude to my actual life. These dreams present visions of things that though they never were, and in most instances could never be, sometimes there is a kernel of truth hidden there that shows me things that had I made either the right or different choices - there's a huge difference between them - then things could have been pretty close to what my dreams showed me.

It's not surprising that what regrets I carry with me aren't necessarily related to my own self, but rather to what happened between me and others. Some were significant others, some were friendships that fell through the wayside, and I find myself missing those people. 

Dreams often colour what memories you have from people that were once near and dear to you, they enhance qualities that you want to remember and omit faults that you either failed to see or worse, never wanted to see. You dream of the ideal, you dream of the person you fell in love with, you dream the hollywood technicolor dream of the perfect happy ending where you meet the one that got away years into the future, and everything is still magic between the both of you, the chemistry is there, the sexual tension too, the laughter, the yearning looks at one another... as if life had never happened, as if life had extracted no toll at all. 

These dreams are fleeting and I have them but seldom, thank god. Yet they remain in my mind sometimes for weeks on end. And every time I have one of these dreams I somehow wish that I would never dream again.

Day six - Discipline

So, coming into this new year, I made just the one resolution : no resolutions. They never worked for me in the past, so I eventually stopped doing that altogether. But... I did decide on a few things. 

There was a part of me that really believed that I would not have been able to survive last year, what with all the idiocy I put myself through. And it's not like I didn't have enough warning, for the past few years every time I went to work related doctor's appointments, they'd telll of my high blood pressure, of my need to correct my eating habits, to exercise again. As well, my body was letting know that things were not alright with me; it wasn't just the feeling exhausted all the time because my sleep is all shot, it wasn't just the fact that after taking two steps I was already huffing and puffing. My feet and my legs have become swollen, and if I wear something that's even somewhat tight, I can feel it - literally feel it - in my skin. And because I'm me, because I'm too proud to listen to advice, even when it's good one, I lust let things slide. 

But maybe I want things to be different now. And maybe I can't change everything. But it is my hope that I can change some things. So that meant identifying the areas where I need improving, and where I knew that I could immediately effect some sort of change.

There are three key things I felt I needed to begin doing : two would impact the body directly, and the other would impact the mind. As of now, and because it is far too early for me to start tooting my own horn, I'd rather keep to myself what those things are, but let me say that out of these three, two I've managed to do on a consistent, daily basis. The third part of the equation... well, that's still up for grabs. I still need to figure out what I want to do, how I want to do it, and I have to see if it's just a question of timing. I'll probably know in a few weeks.

There's a fourth thing I plan on introducing, which though it's not something that I need to do on a daily basis, it's something that I really want to do and get used to do it very often - possibly once a week or more - which is keep my goddman room clean. What with my cats and eating at the desk while I work or do other stuff, it's really easy for things to get out of hand quite quickly. It may seem like a small thing, but if it's something that I can do, then I know that that will help my mental health.

I think by now I've painted a clear picture of how I got to where I am. From tomorrow what I'll do is start to see how far back I can remember things.

Day five - Arclight

Funny thing about memory is that sometimes there are things which you absolutely remember, but rarely ever think about. As I finished writing yesterday's post, I found myself wandering back to a moment that happened right about that doctor's appointment I talked about. I was working then in a big multimedia store, and I began my so called career there by working as a cashier. Not long after that I'd move to the music department, and I felt way more at home there. But one of the girls who supervised the cashiers I actually knew before I started working there, she had done the same kind of job where my then girlfriend worked (and damn, still works). I didn't know her personally, but she and my girl got along fine, and I did know who she was.

So one day I was working the till, and sat next to me was this guy that I never really liked. Can't even remember his name, but man, did that guy have quite the opinion about himself - and maybe he had reasons to, but I always find a certain lack of humility in that regard to be somewhhat telling of one's character. And the girl, she was doing some sort of overseeing in the cashier line, so she was really close to us. Bear in mind that in this point in time I was bloated, fat, yet almost completely oblivious of my outward self. And the guy asks her if she'd like to do it with a fatso like me. She uttered no word, but made one of those mock disgust faces, as if she was about to throw up, and that cut right through me. 

A few things about this girl : very pretty, bordering on the girl-next-door beauty, and physically very attractive; she was a girl that took care of herself very well, and had half the world vying for her attention. And it wasn't really her reaction that truly got to me - I got more pissed off at the guy for putting me on the spot like he did. 

I can't piece these events precisely in the timeline that led me to eventually getting better, getting in shape, but in my mind these two events happened quite close to one another - I doubt they happened on the same day, or in the same week even, but they are correlated for sure.

I have not seen that girl in many years now, Sandra her name was, but looking back, I find nothing that needs forgiving. She just had  a normal human reaction, and I can't fault anyone for that. Hell, I've had plenty of those myself. The guy, last I saw him was back in 2006, me and Silvia P. literally had started going out, and in probably our third date together we went to this bar and I guess he was managing it. Even then I no longer harboured any sort of resentment for him, nor do I do now, even if I find myself writing about him and this event. 

I do it because I need to get into that very same mindset.

Day four - This is yesterday

The first time I wrestled with depression, even though I wasn't aware that that was what I was going through, must've started bay back in '98 or so. Looking back at that particular time in my life, I know that I wasn't a particularly happy person, rather I was very content with everything I had. There's a pattern there, for sure, this contentment that so easily enevelops me.

But then I was OK with life as it was, I didn't feel there was much that needed improving, nor did I make any effort to do so. However, I know where my unhappiness mainly stemmed from : I was stuck in a relationship that had no future whatsoever and one that would yield a child in '99, and instead of ending things when they should have come to a close, I let it slide. But to be fair, I really liked her... however it was much more as a friend than anything else. We had a sort or relationship that fizzled out quickly and then continued mostly out of convenience. Again, it's that contentment thing : I didn't even overly care for the lack of sex between us, because things were OK as they were. OK enough, at least.

But not caring about the state of our relationship meant also not caring for myself. During that time, I began a trek down a path not unlike the one that led me here : though I wasn't drinking other than casually, my eating habits and my lack of exercise led me to gaining a lot of weight. For the next few years, I truly did not care for how overweight I was; maybe I was in denial, maybe I just didn't feel it. It only crashed down on me when on a work-related visit to the doctor I was told that I was obese.

Obese? What the hell? Who's obese? Not me, that's for sure. Because when you think of obese people you think of very overweight people with huge bellies and who only wear XXXL+ clothes. And I realized that was me. I also realized that somewhere along the way I'd lost the habit of looking at myself in the mirror, excepting for when I shaved, and then I saw only my face's reflection, which at the time seemed perfectly normal to me.

That day, that very day, then and there I put in motion events that would lead me to shed all that extra weight I'd gained. Jesus, those were some hard months. I ran every day, and OK, maybe it wasn't very much nor for very long, but I did it every single day. And I destroyed my back doing abs workouts on the floor of my living room. Also, obviously, I cut everything that was detrimental to me healthwise from my life. 

I miss that guy. I miss that gumption. That will that felt so indomitable. 

That was not my last fall, inbetween I had moments where I lapsed, and moments where I picked up myself from the floor.

I look back now and search for that past self, in search for the inspiration needed for the coming trials. 

Day three - In the shadow of our pale companion

 If I look at the official definition of an alchoholic, I'm not one. At least I don't think I am. 

I always liked drinking : I began in my teens, drinking beer and wine, but rarely straying from that. Even today, I rarely ever touch the harder stuff, my stomach doesn't quite agree with it. I'll have a shot or a cocktail every now and then, but it's wisest if I don't mix things up very much.

As I grew into my adult age, things didn't overly change - I'd mainly drink in a social way, or more rarely at home. There were way too many times when I drank myself sick, to my eternal regret, but eventually I (mostly) strarted to learn my limits. But about a decade or so I began this ritual, part of which I still do : every wednesday evening, I'd draw a long, hot bath, and while in it I'd drink a bottle of red wine. It was only once a week, what could it hurt? What it eventually led to was me drinking a bottle of wine almost every night.

And here's the thing : I rarely felt that urge to go out and buy booze just because, I can safely say that for the most part the actual drinking was a source of pleasure. Not only just the drinking by itself, naturally, but eating crap along with it, then drinking a big bottle of Coke every day to help with the hangover, and also I sort of but not really felt like I was sleeping better because I was drinking. I wasn't, I still don't sleep as well I should.

But... this escalated a bit these past few years. Probably last year was the worst one - I went from drinking a bottle of wine to drinking wine and beer, then to two bottles and ultimately to three - though these didn't occur very frequently because they made me feel like I was truly stretching my limits. The thing is, I can (and could) stop (and stopped) anytime. I haven't drank at home for a while now, nor do I feel that urge that the truly addicted feel. I can do fine without the booze. But having ingested untold gallons of poison surely helped me arrive at where I am now. I don't now nor have I ever felt the need to search for any kind of help; in this instance I always knew that I had the strength in me to commit to stopping. 

I do ponder if the mental energy that I have to allocate for that task keeps me from having the strength I need to feel for the other, just as important, things I have to work on. 

So one step in me moving forward is to sever all ties with the poison I imbibed. As I wrote so so long ago in a story I published in a long defunct blog, though possibly not quite verbatim because I dare not revisit that piece of the past at this very moment, 'Let water be your best friend'.

Day two - Arriving somewhere but not here

 Also : arriving somewhere but not now, I guess. 

It's like this - I do know what I have to do, I have always known. But in betwixt knowing and having the discipline to perservere, well... therein lies the rub. In me resides the knowledge of where I am and where I see myself. But the road between is fraught with many dangers and temptations, and they're there because I allow them to be there.

So : the state in which I'm currently in, I'd say it began circa 2016. There are things - many things - that led to then, and to now, but all will be told in due time. What I remember is that I went from feeling on top of the world late 2016 - I was in tip-top shape, I was not really but kind of dating a girl I really liked (she'll be henceforth known as Silvia H., and I make this distinction because eventually I'll speak of another, more significant Silvia), I was content with the work I was doing, and still in fact do, I was writing some occasional articles for a music zine. Life was... not necessarily good, but liveable. And that, really, was enough. It's always enough for me, I'm easily contented with not much, really. That might help explain some things that happened before, but all in due time. Early 2017 a lot of stuff happened / started to happen. For one, that thing with Silvia H. ended - not acrimoniously, not with a bang, but rather with a whimper. Things were said between us that made it likely that we'd never see each other again. The whole situation was very complicated because she was married and had kids, so I was the side hustle. And I always knew I couldn't make any kind of demands, because I'd never be able to give her the kind of life that she already had. Her happiness being of paramount importance to me, from then on I kept my distance, to the point where we don't talk anymore. That same time frame, a weird thing started happening to my right leg - whenever I walked it hurt like hell, and before it got better, I stupidly made it a lot worse. It took a lot of treatment, and a lot of medication and therapy in order to overcome that particular ordeal. Ultimately that led me to stop exercising almost entirely. Oh, to be sure, every now and again I'd try to pick up where I left, but my heart's never been really in it. More fool me, then.

Picture this : virtually no exercise, I was on a chemical cocktail I would not wish on my worst enemy, I only ate crap... and then came the alcohol. Not that I didn't like drinking, I'd been doing it since my teens, and sometimes I drank a lot, but... it was never like it turned out to be this time. This time... I'm not so sure if I didn't become an alcoholic or not. But more on that tomorrow.

Day one - The return of the son of nothing

 There's something to be said about coming back to something, you never quite know if you do it out of a sense of pride, or maybe duty, or if part of it is you crawling back, feeling thoroughly deteated. It also begs the question, 'why am I here?' - not in some metaphysical way, to be sure, but rather why do I find myself returning to a place that I abandon time and time again? Maybe this time I want to stick around and see if it works. This feels way too 2006-ish in a sense, it's me retreading stuff I did, jeez, almost twenty years ago, but still, after all the experimenting, after all the different platforms - maybe it was here where I was at my most genuine, at my most honest. And that's something that has eluded me for many years now - that capability to be honest with anyone else other than with myself.

And one might argue that being honest with oneself, in and on itself, is something of some import. To the best of my knowledge, I have rarely been dishonest about myself to myself, but it's letting what's on the inside come out and me sharing it with someone else that became first a chore, then an obstacle, and ultimately something I shunned. It's easy for me to explain why I do so - time and experience have afforded me the necessary data to realize that I harbour some very deep and heavy thoughts. And maybe everyone does, I don't know, but mine are the kind that gets me labelled with acccusations of being overly negative or depressive. And I feel I am neither of those, but far from be it for me to not understand why someone else might see me that way.

I guess we are never prepared for the heavy and heady stuff, maybe we never were. And how would you do it? After all, you do not want to trouble an young mind with too much of what it is like to be an adult. Sure, you teach them kindness and you teach them empathy, but that only goes so far. The truth is that we really are all islands. Connecting to one another has become something so hard to do. For me, personally, it seems impossible because in that equation of connecting where it must be a two way thing, I find it unlikely that I would on one hand find someone that would want to connect to me, and that on the other hand I would find someone I could connect to. It's a strange dichotomy, that one - 'Would/Could'. But for this moment I'd rather not focus on connections, real or imagined. There are many things inside me I dare not share with a living soul, no matter how great my love for them. I have found it nigh impossible to just sit down with a close friend and bare my soul. I always feel like I am intruding upon their own well-being, and I wish for nothing of the sort.

So from now on I'm going to try to have some conversations with myself, right here. What words will be laid to rest will be me at my utmost brutal honesty. Maybe that'll help me move forward. We'll see.