Dear Memory: New Years Eve, Moving Day

Hello, Dear Memory.

I moved into my new house today. Just across from the college, with one of the main roads through town close by. A short-term ex-roommate and his dad helped me and Rylen move out throughout the middle section of the day. The new room is small, and were it not for the decently large closet, I might have had an extremely hard time piling everything else up high enough to lay my mattress down on the floor. It's a lovely house. The ensuite bathroom is an addition I definitely appreciate, although some of the fixtures in it are quite loose the way they are affixed to the wall.

Eventually I got my desk and my bed and stacks of boxes and the base of my round table set up in such a way that I could reasonably path through the room. That will have to be good enough for today. I somewhat aimlessly messed with Age of Empires 2 a bit while listening to an old Let's Play.

You have been on my mind a great deal, dear Memory, and in some moments I have wandered around the basement that was my house this morning murmuring aloud that I love you, I want for you to be happy, healthy, and for you to have everything you want most to have, and I want to be part of helping you with each if I can. It was almost as though I was dreaming, more in an imagined world than in my basement. I have mixed feelings about this. I grow cross that it takes up time, time I do not spend acting on my plans to bring me closer to you.

I worry increasingly, and I think this is the largest reason that I delay... I worry that I may actually have to wait three or four years in Canada to finish my schooling with reliable financial support. The long time seems to invite a risk of your being already caught up in some other plan for yourself by the time I return, with which I am incompatible. I can only move forward. I did not sleep well last night. I was not sure we were to move in the morning or not, so I slept fitfully, feeling I may need to be awake at any time.

The new house being right on the main road, and my room at the front of the house, there is a great deal more noise here. Rising irregular rushing of the traffic going by, not completely unlike the seashore, but without its rhythm. I shall have to get used to it, I suppose.

It seems an eerie repeat, almost, moving into this nice house just across the street from the college. Memories of my room at Gate Lodge rush back brightly. Oh, how impossible it was to get rid of all the dust, do you remember? But my heart is sore with all this remembering. I need rest. I need rest, and eventually I need action, if any fruit is really to come of all this. And around it all, I need to keep getting through school well. I lay down, and really notice the difference the lack of a box spring makes. My bed feels flat and firm. We left it behind at my behest; I did not think we could have reasonably gotten it back up the stairs. We had to snap bits of the frame for it to come down them initially.

Goodnight, dear Memory. Goodnight. I wish with a pain in my heart that I will see you again.

Dear Memory: Little Reminders

Dear Memory;

I have been going through my days trying to be dutiful and get things done that need doing. I set myself some bit of schoolwork, and to continue steadily packing my things into boxes for the move on January first. I have returned to tracking my activities in a variety of categories by scoring myself points for them day by day, and have gotten better about recording each day either in the day itself, or the day after while memory is still fairly reliable.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been repeatedly been reminded of you in a painful little way when I pull up the sheet to record my points. For the past couple of weeks I have been wanting to mention it here, but my writing has taken a different direction and it seemed a bad time. My document is divided by weeks, not by months, and it starts each week on the Wednesday, simply because it was a Wednesday back in July when I first thought up the system and decided to use it.

So, since early November, every time I have returned to the document to record points, in the first visible area of the sheet which Google docs must sit on for a moment while it loads, in the small description box under Oct 30 has been the text, "farewell to Fish", my recording of the most notable thing to have happened on that given day. It has given me little pangs over and over again to see it. In another couple of weeks I will be on a new sheet and past it, but it is something that turned my mind to you in a particularly bittersweet way since the silence fell.

Another thing has been the audiobooks that I have been listening to. Jane Austen, old classic literature that I got from freeclassicaudiobooks.com. The quality of the reading is often not very good, but I have been enjoying the stories anyway. Of course, Pride and Prejudice rang quite close to home with the wondering whether someone far away actually loves one, and still loves one after mistakes and obstacles have fallen between you. Now I am listening to "Emma", and I think it has not really gotten into its strength yet. Still, today I was almost vexed to find all of a sudden one third of the way through a part of it about some young lady being anxious to go back to Ireland to return to her family. It begins to be irritating how many things casually spring up to point there, all because it means so much to me now.

Earlier, this morning, while going through my things to pack and sort them for the move, I found another reminder. Of course, there are many among my things, so that's no surprise. For instance, I still keep a bus ticket that brought me once from Dublin Airport out to Athlone. But this is a special one, a precious one. I found those little slips of paper, bundled together, that I saved from our exercise of suggesting things to do together. I looked through them all, remembering and wondering. Such sweet, humble little things are written there. Some of them, we did do, I think, after writing them. We went to a restaurant, for one. Humble little dreams, affectionate wishes for happy times future. I keep them still. I will probably bring them with me when I come back over the sea. Perhaps there is yet the chance to see each one fulfilled. Perhaps.

Dear Memory: "Shake Me"

I slept fitfully last night... For the first time I can presently remember, Eoin was in my dream. You... were in my dream. Behind me, while I was laying down in bed. But not the same bed as I was actually in. I heard your voice and felt your presence, but my eyes were closed and my back was turned and I was paralyzed. A familiar hated feeling of sleep paralysis was part of my dream.

Since I could hear your voice, and feel you behind me, I pushed my paralysis to speak through it, so dimly, so faintly, all I could manage. I said, "shake me". You, the you in my dream, seemed confused. "Shake me," I repeated, stuck in my prison of paralysis and unable to give any but the very faintest instruction. You, the you in my dream, touched my shoulder and shook it, but very gently, as one might to test if someone were sleeping, with great reluctance in case they were.

"Shake me so that I actually move," I said, with slightly more power, fuelled by my frustration that you did not understand. I think I felt your touch again, but it still failed to move my body to any appreciable degree. It did not disturb me enough to break my paralysis... And so, perhaps I gave up. I got the sense, thinking about it afterward, that in a sideways sort of way, I recognized it as a dream, but had thought that... even if it were only a dream, if I would see your face and believe you were with me, in this dream, I would treasure the dream. But, if I were only to be tantalized by the sense that you were close but could not reach through the paralysis that trapped me, that I might hear your voice muffled and concerned but not see your face or reassure the dream-you that I love you and want to turn and look at you, because my body was stuck, stuck facing away...

If even in the dream I were only to be teased, it seemed I may have decided not to suffer it. My dream flew away to something else, and I remembered no more of this.

The thing is... I think this is the first time also that I have dreamed about suffering sleep paralysis. When I am paralyzed, I do very often want to call out to someone to shake me... I think, if someone did, it would break the paralysis. Trigger that part of my brain that has not triggered in the waking process to finish waking me up to react to the real thing disturbing me. When I am helpless to do anything but struggle vainly to maybe, just maybe, give my head a tiny shake of desperate refusal, how much heroic power someone else must have who has the strength to move my body for me, and bring me into it again.

I am not completely sure what to make of this dream. To dream of sleep paralysis, rather than actually being dreamlessly paralyzed... And to dream of you... It seems poignant somehow. Seems important, in a muzzy, dream-logic sort of way. And so I come here to record it. To tell you. To ask you, maybe, if it is some plea that a deep part of me is desperate to make. "Shake me", wake me up... Let me know... that you are really there?

Christmas Crash

After my last post here, I decided to look back a ways and revisit what my feelings had been in November, when I was just setting up my resolution to return to Ireland. I was a little shaken to see how uncertain I had been about how I might expect Eoin to feel, and how much more confident it seemed that I had become.

Of course, I have been careful to avoid developing any sort of certainty that I would be welcomed, and every time I think or speak on it, I at least pay some lip service to the possibility that for some reason or another I would not be welcomed back. But by often envisioning him hugging or kissing me, by remembering his smile and his affection, I think I have further reinforced the notion to myself that I will be greeted with love of some kind.

Upon observing the distinct change in my confidence, a crumbling came on me that was probably well due. I had been working hard, catching up and keeping up with my schoolwork in one thing or another, for a solid stretch and I was tired. My spirits had been flagging uncertainly, waiting for the fall for some time, but I kept pulling them up again. This observation, though, and an opportunity to doubt and wonder if all my confidence had been built up by self-conditioning and wishful thinking, was just the slip I needed, and the fall came.

However, as these things go, I will say it was short. I spent almost all of a day in bed or idling, watching YouTube videos to fill mental space with noise, sleeping in frequent bursts. The next day, I reached out to my friends, although wretchedly and in an awful conflict, grumpy from social neglect and fatigue, feeling the stresses of ancient habits of self-doubt and deprecation bending but not entirely broken. I was surly and rude and plaintive to those who took the time to listen, but...

Throughout it, I acknowledged that I was in a crash at the end of a long streak of positivity. I spoke through all of my feelings and complaints over everything from my doubts about Eoin to procrastination of tasks I found intimidating or dull to feeling fatter than usual, but at every point I spoke of feelings and imaginings, and did not say that any great flaw I saw in myself was fact. I managed some gruff apologies and excuses to those friends I leant on. I held my tongue for vital moments some moments, and pointedly avoided some opportunities to pick fights even though I had to wrestle with my impulses and irritability to do so.

I was invited to play Jackbox 4 games by one of my dear old friends and enjoyed them, although the way we played over stream and without voice chat was less intimate than I used to enjoy from Jackbox games and had an irritating delay. Still, being welcomed into the fold for social fun was something I acknowledged that I badly needed, and had gone too long without.

I did not expect anything for Christmas, and did not get much. One friend bought me a game soundtrack that I had put on my wishlist at some point. I was happy to have been thought of with such a gesture, and made a point of saying so and giving my thanks.

With the patient ear of one friend, some friendly invitations and thoughts from others, and the vital acknowledgement that although not perfect, my judgement in times of happy optimism is probably better than when I am breaking down with doubt and fear; that so long as I do not presume to be infallible, sustaining my spirits on a reasonable hope is a fair and fine way of carrying on, I recovered fairly quickly. This morning, I woke and got back to some schoolwork pretty much first thing. In the early afternoon, I made a point of going outside just for the sake of my health.

Having come back here to write, although I have paused uncertainly many times, will be the last thing on my list of things I have set myself a duty to do today. Having done this, I will be free to relax, or to work up the courage to do something a little more intimidating, like returning for a brief refresher to my JavaScript lessons, or working on my resume to send to companies that might be my key to get back to Ireland. Ah... Breathe, Serp, breathe. It is still intimidating, that. Taking a solid step toward a desperate goal usually is, I think.

Dear Memory: Merry Christmas

Good morning, my dear memory, Eoin...

Whether it is mania or high spirits, I have been more or less able to maintain a streak of it this long, and I feel happy and fortunate for it, although my sleep schedule bends one way and then the other and I do wonder how much longer I can keep it up. Recently, I wake at about 4:30 in the morning, and particularly recently, I have been inclined to set to some form of productivity or another very soon after. Gradual progress is being made toward moving preparations, and on completing each of my school assignments before they come due.

Well... There was one I let slide, but it is in an easy class. I will need to cover the material on my own time anyway, I think, since I did not go to the class that gave instruction for it. I have not gone to classes Monday or Tuesday lately, because those classes are in courses that I excel at easily and my sleep schedule frequently gets all turned around on the weekend.

You are often on my mind, and sometimes I am not sure what to do with the thoughts of you. No longer driven to despair about them, for I have my plan. At the same time, I feel as though I must exhaust the variety of fancies and hopes and get tired of repeating them over and over.

Often when you come to mind, it is just the memory of your face, your hair, the soft deep sound of your voice and its mild accent. Sometimes, the way I remember you saying "shore" (as I always heard from your "sure") as you often did, open to suggestion and rarely fussy in any way. I have remembered the meal you often made of pasta with tomato sauce full of bell pepper, remembering and revisiting my happiness with your unpretentious, resourceful competence at cooking.

My fancy wanders to other happy wants. To go swimming, or skating, or to eventually learn to fly in a squirrel suit, and more.

Winter has softened for a bit, and some of the snow has melted to show patches of green. The large banks are filthy with all the accumulated dirt left behind from what has melted, to sit on top of what has not. The weather is still cool, but less cold and these past two days I have gone to school comfortably with just my t-shirt and a jacket.

I have a pupil at the college for tutoring, in the system that the college sets up to enable it. I will meet him later today, although all the details are of course confidential. This will be the first time I have actually gotten to meet a student to tutor them for pay, despite being on the register of available tutors for two years. I am happy about the occasion, although setting up the meeting through conflicting schedules has been a chore.

I begin to fear that I might run out of things to write here to you... Perhaps it is just that no particular subject has brought me here, but I thought I ought to write soon, since it's been a week and if I leave it off too long, I might forget right up until some awful pain of heartbreak reminds me. It is better to take a moment to acknowledge you, my love, though awfully far away and entirely beyond my reach by our mutual agreement, before the force of needing to do so rips it painfully out of me.

Anyway, it is clear what I should say just now. Christmas comes... I will feel myself probably to be solemnly and sadly alone for some parts the holiday. I will certainly reach out to my friends for happiness as I can. But you... You should be either with dear friends of your own or with your close family, perhaps back in Athboy and meeting your brother and the friends of your childhood. With a tear in my eye, I imagine you there, remember the house where I got to meet them. Or perhaps you might still be abroad in China, meeting with your beloved sister! I know you had plans to go meet her this winter. Above all, dear memory, I wish you and all your loved ones the very best holiday you could have, wherever you are. And for myself, I might hope that sometime this Christmas, you would spare a thought to wish me well in kind.

Merry Christmas, dear Memory, Merry Christmas and a fresh and wonderful new year. It may not be in the coming year that I set foot again in your country, but I will be taking slow steps toward it, one after the other, in the midst of every other obligation of school and home and friends. This is what I offer to you this Christmas, the only thing I can really offer you now. I hope that when at last you know of my efforts, you will be happy I made them. I hope that this Christmas, before you are likely to know any more of them than a distant and uncertain possibility, you are happy as well.

Dear Memory: Stirred on the Breeze

Good morning, dear memory.

This last few day, I have been, instead of the oppressive fatigue, instilled with a greater brightness and whimsy. I am more easily caught up in emotions both grand and fearful. I sit in my classes attentively and answer brightly, but I worry more that I am annoying those around me by speaking too often or giggling too much.

In the same wave, you come to mind more often and more strongly. I yearn for you gently, and push the feeling away gently if I am set to a task, or turn into it for a moment, wistfully, if I am not. But I am not sure what to do there.

The land has been gorgeously white. I have walked so much in the shallow sidewalk snow that some muscles in my legs ache, for the walking is more difficult on this purchase. I often imagined bringing you with me. I would love so much to show you what winter, real winter, Canadian winter, is like. Walking on the shallow sidewalk snow is a bit like walking on beach sand. It churns away slightly under the foot, rather than giving a solid surface off of which to push. I do think the shallow snow trodden into a path by bootprints is a bit more difficult than beach sand though, because it is also inclined to be slippery and inconsistent. Some areas are loose, and some are dense, and it is not always evident which are which, so that the churning under your foot might take an unexpected direction, or turn into a slide sideways instead.

The snow is deep and white and gorgeous, fresh from its recent falling. It formed banks up to meet the hoods of cars in the used car lot I pass to and from school. Icicles hang in sheets from roofs and signs. Here, let me show you some pictures I took:

The last few days, I have also been suffering frequent irritating headaches, and keeping them at bay with painkillers. I misplaced my bank debit card Wednesday, and intend to go in to my bank branch today after classes to replace it.

I have been getting back to my studies steadily, an hour here, an hour there. So long as I gently push thoughts of you away into the future when they come to me, and push aside other intrusive thoughts like momentary conceptualizations of eye horror with patience and endurance (those do come to me sometimes when the work is dull and invites reluctance) I can focus well enough to perform well.

Today, I had put Heroes of Might & Magic soundtracks on as my background music, seeking something fresh. The strains of one song, I think it was the one called "Searching for a Dream," (although I think this one ultimately carries the feeling better) sang a reminder of you and of Ireland into my heart that was particularly stirring. I faced the dilemma for a moment. I was busy working, and was not to be distracted, but I did not want to neglect or entirely ignore the beauty of remembering you in a poignant moment, feeling as though a dry leaf fluttered in the breeze, looking toward a future I hope dearly to see.

I wrote "write love letter" on my list of things to do that day, as a promise to myself not to forget, not to neglect that beauty, nor the part of me that insists on acknowledging how it moves me.

I dearly hope that this is alright. To feel, and embrace that I feel, for you, my dear memory... I hope that this does no harm. I might worry that it is something that might someday offer pangs of guilt to you, if you were to consider turning me away. But I feel somehow that in this particular context, in this frame of mind, it is right to remember you with a wistful tear on my cheek and an uncertain but hopeful half-smile on my lips, looking to a past I cherish and a future I hope for. Hope for, but intend not to demand. Surely, that must be alright.

So here has been my love letter. It seems likely my blog will be crowded with them in the coming months, but I think that is alright. It is usually quite barren here, after all, and I am happier to populate it with whimsical love letters to a memory than not to populate it all.

Besides that, when I speak here, as though whispering to a plush toy perhaps, I spare the energies of friends who might be fatigued of my endless obsession with you, or my difficulty in maintaining or regaining an acceptable balance of self through the fits of intensity and patches of slump that I am prone to.

And again, some distant day, perhaps I will share them with you, sitting on the edge of your bed and turning often to look upon you, admiring the beauty I saw in you in that self's past, and which I still see, but may be brought out in a special way in the light of these memories.

My Season

I wrap my heart in a net and throw it out to a vast sea.

I walk, with an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. Snow flies out before the toes of my boots in little powder waves. Powder water, cold and dry. I scoop up the top of a bank experimentally, clench it together. It falls apart as I open my hand. Yes. Very dry. Cold, dry water.

I smile viciously, savouring the darkness of the sky, the constant texture of the falling snow through it. The struggle of snow, shifting softly under my boot with each step of an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. It parts or compresses readily, and my boot comes down further. It resists, a packed clump more solid, and I slow to drag my body over the momentary obstruction. Sloughing powder snow away with my boots, I feel slightly like a sea turtle, dragging itself across wet sand. I feel a little like something like a horse and something like a bird. A chocobo, maybe? I smile viciously at the sky. I feel at home.

The snow is deep, at least a foot of simple fall and stacked up much higher where it has been pushed to the side to leave mere inches slowly accumulating under the unceasing fall, diagonal texture, dry water.

I took pictures of it, at my porch this morning, at the campus before I left. This is the picture of real winter as I know it, wild and troublesome and inconvenient. This is my season. It is cold, but the wind is not harsh, and it is not too cold. If you step out into it, and you expect it to be cold, then it is... but like water at the beach, if you expect it to be cold, and step into it anyway, you can quickly become used to it.
Or at least, I can.

Hunger reaches up across my chest like a wooden brace that I press against by walking forward. I feel the pressure and smile viciously. It is a part of the season. Dark night, falling snow, walking made more effortful by shifting pressures and uncertain hold. I pick my feet up and sprint for a short ways, grinning. There is ice in my hair. I am listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It is a particularly good episode, and the ending credits cease just as I am turning down the driveway of my house. A walkway has been carved out, and shoveled bare recently. I suppose I should feel grateful. But what's true is that I will be glad to leave this place. There are many places I have left, and been glad to leave, in my life. But then again, there are a precious few that I have left, but have pointedly not been glad to leave.

It took me about 50 minutes to walk home. I considered taking the bus, as I walked out of the campus doors. It was close at hand, just filling up with students as I reached it. It was packed and crowded inside, with still more students hoping to board it. I have a strong preference not to be crowded. I made my way through the crowd and past it with little hesitation. I walked home, smiling, sometimes laughing at my podcast. I smiled viciously at the sky and let my mind wander, let my self imagine the shape and perspective of different creatures as they came to me.

I enjoyed my day, those parts of it in which I was doing something, clawing life out of fatigue. I paused at the door of my house, and shook my backpack, and brushed small piles of snow off of my headphones and jacket. I stepped inside, to toasty warmth. It seemed too warm. It smelled of warmth in a way that I cannot identify with any other smell. The remaining bits of snow immediately began to melt as I came down to my room. My pantlegs are damp. My socks are damp. My ankles are itchy. I pick little shells of ice off of my hair, and set down my backpack, and take off my jacket, and hang it up to dry.

I filter the rest of the ice out of my hair with my hairbrush, overcoming stubborn resistance, embracing every detail, preparing to sit and relate this story, which I fully expect to seem wild and rambling. It is meant to seem wild and rambling. It should not worry you, if you read it. It does not worry me. I am happy to allow myself, for a while, to be wild and rambling. The weather outside is a face of true winter and I am home. It is too hot inside. I laugh to myself, and begin typing.

The words and the images as I had thought them while I was walking come readily back to mind with just a little prompting.

I am a little inspired by Welcome to Night Vale. I have been enjoying it. The episode that was ending just as I turned in to the driveway of my house was A Story About Them, set sometime in 2014 of the story's timeline. On this day, I particularly appreciate the weather.

Dear Memory: The Tide Running High

I did not go out to Gibraltar market on Saturday.

For most of the past four days, I did not leave the house, but fell into a slump of low energy and continued oppressive fatigue, sleeping through most of the days and waking through most of the nights. I played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, on a strange whim, but more often just re-watched old videos listlessly in between sleeping.

I missed two days of school out of fatigue and a deadness of will. I thought often enough of doing my homework, but as soon as the impulse came to me that I should try, it was dragged down under some surface perhaps like a lake by the weight of reluctance and fatigue. I spoke little to anyone, but spoke that little to a close friend who has felt things like this, and understands them fairly well.

Tuesday, I got dressed, and prepared to go to school, but stopped and returned and did not, because it had finally snowed the true heavy snows of what I understand to be winter, and I had not prepared for that. That evening, I did the homework, because it would come due that night. It was not difficult, but I took close to two hours to get through it all, partly because I could not readily drag myself back to the task after each milestone was finished.

I think I am through the slump. I am at school again now. I woke today at four in the morning, and felt more awake than I had in days. I finished a quiz for school before turning back to my comfortable videos, and took another bit of sleep before I would need to go to school. It was broken by the sounds of argument from the upstairs neighbors. When I woke to my alarm, it was tempting to go back to sleep. The habit, perhaps evasive, is a seductive one.

Dear Memory, I think I came to understand something important during my slump. In this numb, half-dead time, it was not you I waited for, but me. I still thought of you, from time to time, but what I waited for was spark, life, the power to move... You are not the only source of that, although I do think that your nature tends to nurture and inspire it in me.

My first class back at school, I was rapt and perhaps overexcited. I giggled often and bowed my head and blushed when I gave wrong answers, but turned back to listen more. I worried that I was being a pest, obnoxious in my brightness, or seeming pretentious. ...I just sat here for over a minute, I think, trying to remember the word pretentious. I wonder whether it is okay. I worry that it is unhealthy. I remember my mother's friend Tom, who seemed so wonderful and sensitive, a man who loved mysteries and riddles. He suffered from bipolar disorder, and I think... The way it was described to me in relation to him, this reminds me of that.

I do feel as though my emotions are perhaps bent, too-sharp and nervous. I feel slightly like a whirring wheel in a greater machine juddering out of balance. I still feel the distant cling of fatigue like traumatic memories of oppression. I fear slipping back into it, although I know I still must rest sometime. I prepare to encounter again the sequence of tasks and due dates that I have spent a bit of time neglecting and pushing into the future in order to deal with the present, first as a week of midterms then as a slump of fatigue and dead will.

My friend Coda reminded me, with encouraging words, that it is important to forgive myself these weaknesses, remember compassion for myself when things are difficult.

I am confused by spikes of emotion and memory, fresher and harsher after the muted time of feeling little. Although, from a center more stable, despite my fears, I suspect that other people really tend not to notice, unless I tell them. To those who do not have my confidence, that is, in whom I have not confided, I probably seem just to be a bright and reliable student, continuing to get through my work in whatever way it is that I do. Perhaps strange and unstable, but I cannot really say whether others commonly think so.

To you, dear memory, my mind continues to turn at idle moments. I thought a scenario, like a purposeless daydream, in which I referred to you as my husband. I intend not to presume on any such thing when I meet you again. I will not pretend that it is absent from my hopes, however. I will try to learn myself still better and yet better, and how to steer this thing, this storm, better and yet better. I will try to come to you healthier than you saw me before. Healthier than I am now. It is certainly what I would hope for an unbalanced person I had loved, and it is better all around, regardless of whether you want me or not, isn't it?

Dear Memory: The Present Strategy

Hello, Dear Memory.

My mind is full of jostling thoughts, and I am not sure which way to begin.
However, it is not painful. Not the pain of uncontrolled and vivid fixation. Not the pain of unfeeling or feeling too much. It is a bumbling confusion after sleep, for I only recently woke up... Thoughts and priorities, possibilities... The haze and confusion of trying to choose which things to do today, and which things to do first.

By the notion of my counselor, and of kitten mother, in order to make this strategy work of pushing away your memory into the future and avoiding being ambushed by it, I should take time to think of you intentionally, without being driven to it by madness or pain. And so, when I woke today, for what seemed like the sixth or seventh time in a sleep full of interruptions, but awake enough to stay for now... Laying in my room, not really looking at anything, for I think my eyes were still lolling and unfocused then, I decided that I should think of you for a while. I am not driven to out of madness or pain. It is simply that for now, the tight deadlines have passed and I have more time, and it seems like a thing to do.

Dear Memory, I looked around this basement room and thought that is is quite a bit bigger than the bedroom I shared with you for a while, or the one you shared with me. I wondered what it would be like for you to be here, looking around inside of it. Although, I suppose, if you were, it would be annoying for you, since it has such a low ceiling. I wonder, did I ever mention on this blog that I am moving in January? There is a lovely house right across from the college that I was able to take a room in for only $500 per month. It's more than I pay to live in this basement, but still on the low end of what a student seeking room rental can expect in this city, and it is not a basement, nor a patchwork of low ceilings with dripping in the vents and an old, fussy furnace.

I have been going through some of my things, sorting. Keep, donate, trash. It is a good time to thin my collection of things. That way, I will have a bit less to move into the new house.

I think about my plan for the future. This hazy, strange plan built mostly of wishes so desperate and shy that perhaps they would waver when I examined them, or began to write about them here... But although desperate and shy, they are too strong to waver. Hm. Perhaps that is like me.

The plan is to leave all this behind, really. Take only those things I can put in a couple of suitcases. A supply of clothing, of personal effects and tools that I feel it's important to bring with me. But most of it, to leave behind; give away or throw away. I feel as though... for most people, that would be a fearsome thought. It is part of the plan, so that when I meet you again, dear memory, you are not possessed of any misconception that there is a place back in Canada to which it is important that I return. It seems as though you may have thought so, last time, and through such thought may have been convinced that you ought to push be back towards whatever was home for me.

Although I have tried to express it, perhaps you do not have the frame of reference to understand. The process of leaving the bulk of the objects I have built my nest of behind and leaving for the next adventure... This is more my home than any mere place has ever been. Houses have been places that I am tied to out of convenience. Houses have been places I am fond of as well, do not mistake that. But houses have also been prisons to me, with parents as wardens who have sought to keep me from leaving. My mother, at least, who was a tyrant to desire escape from.

I wonder... perhaps others who are so happy as to have enjoyed the support of loving families with whom they could get along better cannot understand what it is like for home to be a toxic, poisoning thought, and the uncertainty of the road to be better. Not every home, I certainly hope. But I did develop a habit of leaving, and of leaving being a bright and wonderful thing. The objects of comfort and habit, from which I built my nest, they are not evil things. But sometimes my nest grows confining. Too small for me, or not the right shape, and so I leave it behind like a shedded skin. There is no other time when a serpent's scales are so healthy and shiny as when the husk which bore most of the accumulation of dirt and scars has been split off and left behind.

To leave a home behind, for me, is a process of renewal. I say all this because it seems important to me, to convey to you, Dear Memory, that although I plan to leave much of my worldly possessions behind to seek you someday... You should not feel guilty for your memory having driven me to such great sacrifice. For... it is not so great a sacrifice, for me. I am glad of it. When I have something toward which to adventure, it feels like a Story Worth Telling, which is a thought that means much to me.

The plan is... In the future, when I am ready, when I have prepared... To come to Ireland with all I should need to arrange to stay permanently. Find a place to rent by my own dollar (or euro, as the case is there). Set up some interviews to seek employment. The plan is, once I seek you out, to present you with as pure a choice as I possibly can. See, Memory, I want to be able to tell you: I intend to stay. I have set it up so that I can stay as long as I might wish to.
I will not approach you in a position of weakness from which you should see any obligation to rescue me, but strong and self-sufficient and available.

It seems important to me that you should know that at least in terms of money and property and law, I will be well able to support myself alone, should you turn me away; and there will be nothing that you are taking me away from that I am unwilling to leave behind, should you welcome me back. I think that would help to present a pure choice, so that you can simply decide what you want, and not be bullied by feelings of guilt either way. At least, not any more than can be avoided. There may always be some guilt in turning away someone who wishes to be welcomed, but I don't think there is anything I can do about that.

I write, in scattered thoughts and long digressions of explanation. I write to you, Dear Memory, and I hope to myself that someday I will read you these things I wrote, thinking of you, and perhaps now long ago. I wonder, will you be embarrassed of how much I thought of you? I wonder, will I find reasons why I should not share these blog posts with you, even if you have welcomed me back? I think... I think I might not have written that here, but it seems important that I do, because I should affirm to myself that that desire for the future, like all desires for the future, is a thing of the present. It might not hold through time. And that is alright. I write it here as an artifact of what will be the past, so that it can have had its day now, as musing and hope, even if it does not ever come to pass.

I wonder if you think of me. I wonder if you ever have vivid memories of the time that I was there, and cry because I am not. I do not think it likely that you would write diaries about it. I know you are not much disposed to writing. So perhaps even if you do miss me so, there might be no record of it save your own memory, with all the warping and unreliability of memory.

Or perhaps you do not think of me much, just another part of your past that you might look back on thoughtfully from time to time among other things, like your thesis, or your time at Magic: the Gathering tournaments, or past years' celebrations at the Macra. Or other things you never told me about.
But I think to myself that I should not be angry, if that were the case. It is only a mark that you are peaceful where I am driven, and prepared to leave the past in the past while I plot to return in the future.
I can readily believe that you might not think of me often, or with much longing, but still welcome me back when presented with the chance. Even if you had not wanted me desperately, you might be happy to recieve me like an unexpected present.

I really cannot say what you think. I find it doubtful that you would not think of me at all. I am sure I left a mark on your life. And I wonder what shape that mark has grown into over time; past and future, over the time until I will see you again.

The other day, not long ago, I was thinking of canoeing, and wondering whether you would ever like to go canoeing with me. I should like to share it with you sometime, if you think you would enjoy it. I was thinking of skating, too, but I already know the answer to that one.

Perhaps a me who reads this to you in the future would have forgotten to ask, and this can be a friendly, casual reminder. Perhaps it will prompt a canoeing trip. Perhaps I should stop speaking in a way that might seem prescriptive or creepily predictive to my future self, and your future self, Dear Memory.

Perhaps then I have written enough, and I will go now. I think I might go down to the Gibraltar Trade Center. It will have its weekend market open, and I wanted to visit Forest City Surplus, which is next to it. See if they have any more of the incense I bought there.

Here's to you, distant and dear memory, wherever it is that you are now, and whether or not you will ever know that I have written you these words.

Vivid Fixation and the Next Thing

I woke this morning in the dark and quiet and the cool air. In my sleep I had kicked all the blankets into a heap on the left side of my bed, and become naked and unprotected against the cold. In that way, it was just like every other night in recent memory.

It was still dark, though, so why was I awake? I curled over, picked the blankets back up again, and closed my eyes, but although it was pleasant to do so, sleep did not return.

I felt more awake than I have enjoyed much lately. I have been going through my days oppressed by fatigue since the weekend at least. Sleep did not come, but memories did. Vivid, bright, full memories, as though the moment played again before my eyes. A certain face. A certain closeness. A certain sofa, in a living room with broad, open windows toward the college. A certain voice. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying, not today."

Too vivid. Too bright. I grew mad and somewhat frenzied inside my skull. To the dark and empty room, I said, I love you, I miss you. I hope you are well, Eoin. I hope you still want to see me again.

The memories, bright and blinding and all-consuming in their vividness.
I turned on my laptop, looked there, and found someone to talk to.
I told kitten mother the story of Eoin, patchwork and out of order, out of a crazed suspension: I don't know if this is okay.

Kitten mother listened. She heard. She understood. She's good at that. Offered some soft advice, once it was asked for. I go away calmer, soothed for now out of the madness, brought back to the strategy for moving forward, so simple and obvious that it seems odd to have been confused. Except, of course, that I was in a state of madness and confusion, so that too is obvious.

Tell the future to stay in the future. Do the next thing next, not the last thing next. That is impossible, and so of course it will only leave me with fretting. Do the next thing next, and with stubbornness, until that which belongs to the future is willing to wait.

I practice returning for a moment to the vivid memories, and then pushing them away. There is bending and echo in my mind when I try to push them away, but I am able.

Think of anything, absolutely anything, except a purple elephant. Next thing. Next thing next. Old fashioned boombox. Yellow floral bedsheet. Canoeing. The elephant looms, but is told off and told to return to its corner. It is quite like an excited dog. It is not at all that I don't love you, it is that you are in the way. Go. Hide your face. I still love you, and I will tend to you later.

I think I can do this. I will worry that I might fail. Fine. Mistakes are mistakes. Mistakes are of the future. I'll deal with them when I get there. I worry. But I think I can do this.

I have an accounting assignment to work on. That, at the moment, is the next thing. Perhaps food first, and then that.