Some of us live in a world where we can never be good enough. Even now, as I write those words, my mind is scrambling through a stinking pile of potential ‘buts’ – reasons why even that little sentence is wrong, misjudged, and worst of all, defining.
Whether it’s how others perceive us in the daylight, or how happy we are amongst the silent but oh so sharp reflections of the night, some of us are deeply troubled by invisible nothings – nothings which, by their very lack of substance become perhaps the most frightening troubles of all.
It is thanks to these that we can’t find peace. Thanks to these that, very far from a pained but heroic sufferer, trundling through life, we become everything we revile: jealous, petty, unreasonable. In moments which all too soon become hours, and coming ever more frequently the more we hide from them, we bite and snarl, seeing ghosts over the shoulders of those who, mostly innocently, cross our paths. Our bonds waver, and in others we feel a growing distance, as their image, their memory of us is dirtied forever.
At least, so we think.
Does it ever occur to us that this lovely, but sadly overblown picture is just a fantasy? A nightmare film played by some little fucker in the cinemas of our minds? It occurs, yes. But it never sticks. Ever tried watching two films at once? Because that nightmare movie doesn’t make a habit of stopping.
But it needs to. We need to. Again I find myself asking the same question, the one that is coming to define this page – how do we stop the film rolling? Can it really be as simple as, ‘Switch it off’?
