Every new year brings a series of emotional challenges. We must work through shock, pain and anger before there’s hope
Shock and denial No. no, no, no, nope. This is not… appropriate? It can’t be January – time has broken, has been dropped on a tile floor, much like that bottle of Champagne, oh God it’s coming back to you now. Wait. Wait, surely you didn’t then say, “DON’T WORRY ALL UNDER CONTROL” and, on top of the glass, sprinkle salt? It was shortly after this that time cracked and it became 2019. Which is no coincidence and which you object to.
Pain and guilt There used to be some quiet joy in a hangover. There used to be some comfort there, in clean sheets with suitable ibuprofen stocks and a series of the American Office, and Philadelphia on toast, and that sort of ripe peach gleam to the skin that sometimes comes from four hours’ sleep. But it’s fine, because the comfort of a hangover has been replaced by something far more interesting, a cartoon anvil wrapped in existential blackness. Sickness that remains two weeks later, having settled somewhere infinite near the heart. Sickness that makes itself known in myriad sly little ways – how you feel when somebody uses trigger words such as “wine”, or “Matthew”. Of course, that doesn’t make you feel good. Because it reminds you of the cupboard, and his married hand, and the dark power you felt at midnight, and the awfulness of daylight. As January crawls its way up your spine, this memory is nightmarish, stained, lodging itself within you like a stone in a shoe.
Continue reading...
0 comments :
Post a Comment