Life isn’t meant to feel like one long fin de siècle. But if you can’t quite expect joie de vivre, then there should be at least some moments of joy, light, relief, happiness. Months have gone by with the most energetic thing I did all day being getting out of bed, and sometimes I didn’t even do that. I’d been barely peeling open my eyes, hardly stretching and walking through life hunch backed.

It obviously couldn’t go on; but grey settles, grey is hard to shift. When life is grey, then everything is grey, food is for fuel, alcohol to forget and sex is a means to an end. Grey isn’t a new pair of shoes or a night out or a quick email with a friend. Grey means deep cleaning, scratching raw, picking scabs to find out if there is anything still fresh underneath.

Grey can’t be beaten with half baked promises to challenge yourself. Grey needs confidence, grey needs you to face the fears, break the routines that keep you in the dark and cold, even when the sun is shining.

Going on holiday, seeing real romance, having real fun, looking at things with fresh eyes, getting happy, putting a smile on my face, making more time for friends, making more time for me, cuddling my poor broken cat, moving back to my old house, starting my Msc degree at university; all of these things have been helping lift the gloom, restoring the light. The grey is still lurking but for now I am distracted by shiny new things.

You can see the flames of your wasted life
You should be ashamed
You don’t want to waste your life
I walk along these hillsides in the summer neath the sunshine
I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me
Change, change, change

Change is good

Kx

(Counting Crows – A Murder of One)