This way I have walked many times and maybe even had the same thoughts each time but for some reason those thoughts, or that thought, stuck today long enough to warrant more attention and pondering. The choking exhaust from the buses on the main road where I walk beside, the spindly fingers of bare-ish branches reaching down to claw me on the path where underfoot is a mush of sodden leaves that has had me nearly on my arse more than once, the tired lifeless faces who look straight through to some other time and place listlessly moving through the grey of what could be morning, the smashed wall never repaired, the smell of the take-away flowing down through the nostrils to give the stomach a stir, the off-colour once-white blank sky and the rot of a land past its best, well past its best. But it was like seeing it for the first time though not with any nostalgic warmth or the glow of discovery. It was just like waking in the morning and letting the familiar soak through the veil of sleep. Nit unlike seeing a friend for the first time in years and getting past the awkward stage to where you left off. Nothing heartening to take from it. Just an observation that probably could have been made on any day of the 4 years that led to to this one and given my lack of memory it probably was.
I want to rip off the goggles but they are not real. They are an idea, they are a perspective. They are a hall of mirrors which give a vague representation of the world as it should be but obscured as if the world is being viewed after being dropped in a pond when the ripples have parted and something strangely recognisable is left with some guesswork. Its familiar yet foreign. Its there yet not. Kind of like that drive on auto-pilot I suppose where you suddenly awaken to the surrounds and what you knew was there but different in a more alert awakened state.
And I get it sometimes with the kids and my wife. Just sitting there as I always do and suddenly I start to take in those around me that I have just taken for granted as just being there in the knowledge that life just ticks on regardless. I see they have grown, they have aged. I wonder where the time went. Where was I before? Was I really here? Of course I was- in body. To them nothing has changed. The old man's asleep in his head but as always the lights appear on so no need to ask if anyone is home.
I've also become less of an observer. I used to mentally note everything- it was all stored in this little brain. Maybe that is why my memory is so bad now with the banks of my memory full of rubbish and not a bit of space left for new junk. So now things pass me by. To my mind the girls still hadn't cottoned on to the fact that I have a problem that keeps me indoors and yet just the other day I heard the youngest girl say: daddy can't come because there is something wrong with him and he can't go outside. Not wrong but they obviously no more than I realised. No need to hide it but a bit of a shock all the same. Paranoia of sorts in the shape of wondering what is being said to whom and how much about me and also how much is kept from my knowing. A bit like when my wife went into hospital and only family knew about the anxiety and her friend came to take the kids to the hospital. I opened the door to her approach waving here hand smiling and saying: Before you say anything I know all about it, do you really think she would keep a secret from me? Yes. But its probably better to be out there and deal with it than trying to mask it or pretend I am not who I am with the limitation I have at this point in time in my life.
This awakening on occasions is a symptom of introversion. Its a symptom of residing too long in the head as I have been doing lately. Like someone staring into space looking outward, but only seeing in, I really could have done with someone snapping their fingers in my line of vision to snap me out of it. But there was no one here. Two days alone. Not bad though. There was a time it was a problem but this time it wasn't, I imagined (in my head again), floating on a raft in the middle of the sea with no land to any of the three-sixty degrees surrounding. No one to see. Just lie back or even do a stupid dance, no one to see. Freedom ultimately, shackles off. Then after two days from the heavens my family plopped back down upon the raft with such a force of noise that it shattered the tranquility I had slipped into and the raft rocked violently and although a day later momentum has slowed it sways still. This was the process of slipping too far in and suddenly being jolted out. From looking inwards to being dragged out kicking and screaming into the real world.
My own fault I suppose. I should have used the time to get out more. I did in short spells but it rained and as much as I needed to get out from this little box I daren't have spent much time out less I get chill or some other darn ailment. I see though I don't feel this in periods of nice weather when even just sitting on that little patch of dirt we call a garden for hours at least pulls the mind out of internalising. The weather has a lot to answer for.
But days have passed and the outside has welcomed me back and in those moments out there things are fine because I have no place to hide and internalise. Well fine aside from the anxiety of course which shoves me back in doors too soon. The periods out though help the mood which darkens all too quickly the longer I am stuck inside. But not much to report so I haven't been posting. The days have not had much variety in the past couple of weeks so very little need in writing it down.
We've been doing a lot of driving which has been good and I have been seeing a lot of woodland walks around about. God I really do wish I could walk a bit. The idea of of just walking through some woodland appeals to me. Again anyone who thinks an agoraphobic doesn't want to get better doesn't know what its like to desire something as simple as a walk in the woods and not be able to do it. Why? I don't know. If I lived next to it and no-one else did I would probably be fine. One day though.
