the winter of my discontent

"With tired eyes, tired minds, tired souls, we slept"
This is the title of an episode of my favourite American teen drama- One Tree Hill. The quote is the lyric to a song by Explosions in the Sky. And today, as i write this, it seems quite fitting.

A day of dreams that ends in what is quite frankly peaceful disaster. Goodbyes are rarely pleasant in life, today i wished goodbye to three of my closest friends. And i felt their eager anticipation, nervous excitement and hope-filled energy. And it sorrowfully reminded me of the feeling i got exactly a year ago as i went to sleep for the last time in my own bed before embarking on the roller coaster journey that is freshers year.

I am happy for them, but their joy brings me a little sadness and remorse; for it signals the beginning of my year of isolation. Living a hollow life in-between two towns; travelling home to work 3 day weekends and then back to Sheffield to live in my decadent house. Living in the red on borrowed money; which feels like borrowed time. Today i blew £100 at the bookies. Remember what i said about short term goals? Another set back. Another anti-climax on my pursuit of sanity. A relapse, i think is the technical term. Why? I dont know.

It had started out on a beautiful day, one of only two days off work i enjoy this week. I had risen early in the unfamiliar morning to go uptown and have a coffee with my closest girl mate, Becky. It ended with Reece and Phil, slumped in an empty pub on a windswept Cleethorpe's coastline, £100 worse off. A visit to see my little sister raised the mood, she is reading one of the famous five adventures this week, how i wish my life was shuffled back to that innocent age of freedom. She wanted to play tennis with me tomorrow, i lazily declined.

I am a very moral person; one of my utmost beliefs is in a strong core of family and friends. While i feel, since establishing this moral compass in the past year, i have made greater efforts to be there for my friends, if not always entirely loyal to them, it is with my family where i have spectacularly failed. An only child until the age of 10 i should have thrived in the role of older brother. A responsibility i have guiltily slacked away from. There is so much i could have taught her, so many things i could have opened her eyes to and helped her enjoy. Instead i have been self-interested and utterly self-centered.

I often justify this with the fact that i am a teenager going through an emotional time, but there is a never a good time for anything in life. For those important things like friends and family you should always make time. Like i did for Becky when i sacrificed my cushy lie in and got up early today to go see her. I tell myself i will be a good father who brings up his son properly like i think a man should. Not just wave an empty cheque book and buy love like my father has done. But when i come to think about the kind of person i am right now- i am exactly the same as my father- a promiscuous, selfish, soulless mistake. I hope that by writing this blog and emptying my guilty mind i can somehow drag myself out of this self-pitying, pathetic corridor of despair.