Dinner with old friends tonight. Christ. Awful. Pretentious city bar with generic dark decor and glass tables, vase of beheaded flower stems on the table, full of bankers with their ties hanging from jacket pockets. I'm out of place, got caught up in my work, had to make do with the clothes I keep in the workshop. The mirror over the table reveals, barely, through too low light, a scattering of sawdust still in my hair. I smell of fresh cut wood and epoxy, bandaged hand where I was too avant-garde with a chisel. Our friends are in suit pants, tailored shirts and gelled hair, clean shaven, too much cologne. I barely recognise them from the idiots I met stealing road signs outside University halls. Somehow our roles have reversed; at Uni I was the smart one, always smart and well dressed, they were sure I'd be an advertising exec - a wanker in a tight suit. Somewhere along the line they became the executives with the tidy wives and the pressed shirts and the children and I...I became someone else entirely.
When something terrible happens, something life changing, something which completely alters your perception of yourself and the way you live your life, the way you do everything; you're broken down. You're in pieces and have to work to put yourself back together. Some things are simply thrown out, some are reforged, reshaped, twisted and turned until they fit somehow in the new you that's being created. It happened when I crippled myself, it's happening now. And somewhere in all of that I stopped being the guy that wore snappy suits and stole road signs with his friends. Now I turn up to swanky city bars covered in sawdust, wearing steel capped boots and plaid shirts, I wouldn't choose these friends. I'm not the same person, and my 18 year old self would have had nothing to do with this guy. I'd have wondered why he couldn't afford cologne instead of eau de woodwork.
The first time I put all the pieces back together I somehow became the man that disappears overnight to have frantic adventures on the other side of the world and has to send postcards to let people know he got married. Somewhere in that wreckage I became the guy that steps up and volunteers for things. I liked that guy. I was certain that I was a good man, my wife was proud and endlessly frustrated by me. I took that to mean that I was doing the right things. Now, I'm not quite sure.
Everything's all mixed up and tumbled around and spread out on the floor of the spare room with her life. I've been back in London for four months and still wake, disoriented, straining for the sound of cicadas. I'm not sure where the old pieces fit or what the hell to do with these new pieces; these jagged red and black slivers of grief and guilt and fear that have somehow become mixed up with the familiar, worn edges of the pieces I knew so well. They'll fit, eventually but I get the feeling I'll lose some more friends, put up some more walls and maybe those new sharp pieces will re-shape the old ones into something else I don't recognize.
I never did have the patience for jigsaws.
When something terrible happens, something life changing, something which completely alters your perception of yourself and the way you live your life, the way you do everything; you're broken down. You're in pieces and have to work to put yourself back together. Some things are simply thrown out, some are reforged, reshaped, twisted and turned until they fit somehow in the new you that's being created. It happened when I crippled myself, it's happening now. And somewhere in all of that I stopped being the guy that wore snappy suits and stole road signs with his friends. Now I turn up to swanky city bars covered in sawdust, wearing steel capped boots and plaid shirts, I wouldn't choose these friends. I'm not the same person, and my 18 year old self would have had nothing to do with this guy. I'd have wondered why he couldn't afford cologne instead of eau de woodwork.
The first time I put all the pieces back together I somehow became the man that disappears overnight to have frantic adventures on the other side of the world and has to send postcards to let people know he got married. Somewhere in that wreckage I became the guy that steps up and volunteers for things. I liked that guy. I was certain that I was a good man, my wife was proud and endlessly frustrated by me. I took that to mean that I was doing the right things. Now, I'm not quite sure.
Everything's all mixed up and tumbled around and spread out on the floor of the spare room with her life. I've been back in London for four months and still wake, disoriented, straining for the sound of cicadas. I'm not sure where the old pieces fit or what the hell to do with these new pieces; these jagged red and black slivers of grief and guilt and fear that have somehow become mixed up with the familiar, worn edges of the pieces I knew so well. They'll fit, eventually but I get the feeling I'll lose some more friends, put up some more walls and maybe those new sharp pieces will re-shape the old ones into something else I don't recognize.
I never did have the patience for jigsaws.
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