Remembering how easily you bruise...

...and other 3 .a.m lessons

“Juno” by Angela Farquharson

It has been a difficult last few weeks; the kind of period where it is all too easy to lose your hold on the positive - especially at 3 a.m. in the morning when, mind racing, you’re unable to sleep and so find yourself sitting in your study typing something you’re not sure you will ever finish, never mind post.

And bizarrely I’m reminded of how I was nearly fifty years ago when my occasional romantic ambitions were thwarted; how easily I would bruise, and how I would then force myself to suffer tragically until the next encounter. Maybe I thought that was ‘poetic’ - but it was just growing up, right?

Not that romance plays any part in this recent bruising. The component parts are entirely different: an as yet unresolved encounter with a member of my family; a badly handled argument in the ether of the internet; after a self-enforced sabbatical, the resurrection of an essentially negative nurture-not-nature pecuniary habit (forgive me for being coy); and the destabilising arrival of an unexpected heart condition.

That’s some cocktail! There’s little positive in it; in some senses the first three are application of a layer of the self-inflicted - which, given the last of those four, is something I can do without.

When I was a youth I wallowed in the aftermath of failed romantic encounters (ah, so here comes the link!) using them as fodder for my writing - mainly the sallow and self-indulgent kinds of poetry which is now embarrassing to read. Perhaps you know the feeling.

Taking my racing mind to bed last night, I think I knew that at some point it would get the better of me; even that I’d find myself sitting here engaged in a kind of exorcism, preparing a confession to perhaps (or perhaps not) send out into the void - even while knowing that everyone has their own issues to deal with and that, compared to so many, mine are small beer.

But this is no unravelling. There will be no awful poetry penned as a result. (Okay, there may be poetry at some point, but I hope it won’t be awful!)

The lesson - even if it’s more of a reminder than a lesson - is that the majority of my four-item list is subject to my control, my own choice. The door is still open with regard my kith and kin, and I’m hoping for the rapprochement we both want and which is still achievable. I can banish the old and negative habit: I’ve done so before and I know what needs to happen. Click, click; done. I can’t do anything about the internet argument - that bird’s flown - but at least I can try to stop myself from falling into that trap again. (You won’t be surprised to know that I’ve already a draft post prepared on that one!)

Other than awaiting medical resolution, I can do nothing about my heart, of course - though resolving those other things will take some of the pressure off. Boy, was it galloping yesterday! And I can focus on the positive, on the upsides relating to my writing life.

In the context of the latter, I confess that for a while yesterday there were the obligatory ‘what’s the point?’ moments. And then I tried to imagine myself without my work - irrespective of whether that work is good, bad, or indifferent. It was a staring into a vacuum. The worst of all worlds, perhaps.

So I’m not done yet. For now I’ll just park this missive in ‘drafts’, switch off the lights, and go back to bed. In the morning - later this morning - I’ll open it up and decide whether or not to post it (though I do have a weakness, a compulsion to share what I’ve written!)

And I hope you’re good wherever you are - though given it’s now nearly 4 a.m. here, I suspect most of you are safely tucked up in bed...

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