Friday 23 November 2012

Reassessing


The Winter is coming and it's not giving Autumn a look-in. It seems to have become Arctic in a matter of weeks here in Tenby. The wind is bitter and ferocious, the sea icy and aggressive. The town itself has become ghost-like. No one seems to be here, no one walking around or drinking coffee or even working.

All this quietness and coldness seems to have infiltrated my conciousness. It suddenly seems like the fall from Summer is over and I've landed hard on the solid cold sand of the beach, the wind slicing at my bare skin, threatening to erase me completely. I'm a graduate with a good degree from a good university and here I am- in Pembrokeshire again, waitressing.
And I know I am here through choice, but it's beginning to wear thin. I'm bored of not using my brain. I'm freelancing but it's not enough to fill this gap that's telling me I'm underachieving.

I know I'll have my time to get serious about work after travelling, and that my priority needs to be saving right now, but it's hard seeing friends I graduated with off doing the real deal,whilst my writing is lying dormant.

The last six months have been so unlike any others in many ways. I've graduated, I've moved back home, I have an uncertain future ahead of me. With no real plans or guarantee's it's hard to be confident about where I'll end up.

I've also had a few revelations. That time changes a lot. And even though you hope someone had stayed the same, it doesn't make it so. And nor does it mean you are the person you once were.

It's easy to get stuck in an intrinsic time warp- believing something or someone is a certain way because that's how you remember it/them. And then the bubble is popped. It only takes one incident or realisation and the reality of the matter forces its way back into your deluded mind, tearing the lining as it breaks through. That's a strange feeling. To suddenly understand that the very thing you've been holding on to doesn't exist as you believed it to.
Fool on you for believing it could be preserved like a diary in a museum. No matter how hard you try to keep it in mint condition, the writing on those pages has to fade eventually, the light of day has to take some of what was written and dissolve it in it's brightness.

It can be hard to be faced with this reality, but it's probably for the best. It's probably going to make some space for a new chapter to be written. Maybe a happier one, without the stress that the chapters before brought with them.

Where friendship turned sour, there are new people for you to meet and find a bond with. And where love faded, so it will be again.

Sometimes it's good to reassess where you are, who you are and who you want around you. Because with that in mind, it's hard to go wrong.