harrison-abbott

[harrison-abbott]

There are some things that you have to deal with on your own. Because they happened to you – and nobody else can really understand how they felt. Even if other people witnessed the event: they can’t fathom what that felt like. It didn’t happen to them. And you might try to express how awful the scene was. But they’ll never get it. And so, ultimately, you’re on your own with it. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t still write about what bothers you. Nobody can stop you doing that.

[harrison-abbott]

You walked down the motorway in the wincing winter sun and the wind crushed your face and you huddled into the five layers you wore around your torso and though it was cold it didn’t matter because you were headed down to the mall to meet your Dad and you had your headphones in and the sun was still buoyant.

[harrison-abbott]

You were trying to joke with them and they scowled at you and when you touched them they simply flinched with repugnance, and you were realising they didn’t love you anymore … only you were naively trying to reckon that they still did. It was as if hanging on to a plummeting boulder, for no reason at all. A useless hormonal ordeal. She used to love you but she didn’t anymore. So why were you still trying?

[harrison-abbott]

You remembered when you asked that girl out over two years back and she already had a boyfriend and it still makes you cringe and you facepalm that you didn’t just think to look up her social media thing to see if she was single or simply ask a friend to ask her if she was with somebody and the embarrassment is sure rife but it also taught you never ever to be an idiot like that again.

[harrison-abbott]

She was angry with you and ran after you, shouting. So, you hugged her. She was surprised that you’d embraced her. And then she hugged you back … and her wrath evaporated.

[harrison-abbott]

You went to the bookstore and bought a Russian book and a German book. Totally different countries, with histories entwined. That’s what literature did. It wound opposite things together, and blended creation out of contrast.

[harrison-abbott]

There was a simple joy in just staying up for a while longer. Consciousness could be exhausting. Often it was. But it could also be sublime. And so there was the option to go to sleep. But you thought you may as well just stay up. There was time to do things, learn things; and you didn’t need to be anywhere tomorrow. So, simply stay awake and keep your mind going for a little longer.

[harrison-abbott]

In the daytime you were often smothered with dread and insecurity; by the night you were often in clouds with elation and felt confident you could deal with existence. There was such a contrast between the two. And you often wished you weren’t so polarised. In the dark night, when all was hushed outside, you felt proper and that you could manage the future. But when the morning came, you shivered when you saw the daylight outside, and it took you a long while to face reality. If only there was some middle ground for you to tread on. It was not as simple as that. You would have to deal with the complexities of mood … somehow.

[harrison-abbott]

[harrison-abbott]

As a Scotsman myself, I must say this is spot on

[harrison-abbott]

A little spider lived in the corner of the ceiling and he’d been there for weeks and you wondered whether spiders thought about anything at all, save when something shuddered their webs.

[harrison-abbott]

The phrase ‘world war three’ had been churned around ever since you were a boy and you never, when you were a child, ever thought it would happen. Just like you reckoned that nuclear bombs were things of the past, that they could never be launched again. And, these days, well, umm … When you were a child, they also taught you about the rainforest in South America and about all of these men who were cutting it down. And they also taught you about the genocide in World War II. Both of these projects designed to teach us in the hope that such things would never happen again. And that was 20 years ago.

[harrison-abbott]

You called up your friend who lived in a city over one and half thousand miles away and you watched a film with him, both watching it on either end … and though he lived so far away, and on mainland Europe, it was still the same time zone. So it was quite like being in the same room. And that was the marvel of technology. That you could call up one of your closest buddies and chill out, even though he lived in Lisbon and you in Edinburgh. Fine stuff. You barely had many mates in Edinburgh. Just didn’t go out much these days, meh. Would rather be staying inside and reading. But, you did have an old mate who you could call up in Portugal, as a way of hanging out.

[harrison-abbott]

You walked up to the library at night (the library being open until 8 p.m.) in the gaudy cold, the minus two degree cold that clung to your face as you walked up the hill, and this was on the motorway where the cars zoomed by, almost as if they were chilly too … and you passed the Iceland and the Lidl that’d been closed up, for some reason, and it was odd to see their windows all boarded up, and the doors shuttered, and this was in the crossroads of a community – so you wondered where else the locals would now go for their food; but there was still the Superbowl fish and chip shop, that had mightily stayed there, glowing in orange, ever since you were a kid: it had never changed or gone bust – and nor had the betting shop next door to it – and you turned right at the crossroads and went up the steps to the library … where there were middle aged women working behind the counters (who you were envious of because they had good jobs, working in a library, and it made you wish you had a good job too) and they recognised you because you often came in here for reserved books, and they scanned you out your reservations, and it was like getting some new presents: and that’s why libraries were a marvellous thing: and you thanked them and said bye and you were walking back down the hill again, homeward, and at this point in the city, it was very high up and you could see out for miles across the town: the castle, lit up in red, on the horizon, and beside it the neon of the Christmas market, with the wheel and the swing games … and in the foreground the spires and domes of the older town, and you reckoned that this wasn’t a bad city to live in at all.

[harrison-abbott]

You know when you wake up and your body hasn’t yet adjusted to the new day – and your mind is still congested and confused? Well, you can awake in that mode, and suddenly have a great fear for the future. Yesterday it was about money. And wondering what to do about getting some proper work later in life. You’re fine for money, at the moment. But, will you ever figure out a way to earn a decent amount? It’s okay right now – but that won’t last forever. And at the same time, you’ve just come out of sleep and you really need a pee. So you head along to the toilet, feeling monstrous. And you sit on the toilet and piss, and look in the mirror next to you: and you look like total crap. Heavy eyelids, grey hair, rough beard. You used to be semi comfortable with your looks, but, not so much these days. So you get up and head back to your bedroom and get into the bed again. Knowing that you won’t be able to sleep again. Because when your brain turns on in the morning, you can never switch it off again quickly. But what you can do is go back to that childish comfort of the warm bed. Just to stay there for a while. In the warmth of your covers. Especially with the one degree temperature beyond the window. Just reside in the heat for twenty minutes or so, so that you can regain a little physical power. After that, you can get up and put the clothes on and start the day for proper. And try and not be so afraid any more. Even if that’s often impossible to do.

[harrison-abbott]

A gull wailed in a ghostly cameo in some spot in the sky you couldn’t see beyond the window frame and then the audio vanished and you were left with nothing save the silence of your room and the final yellow colours of the winter afternoon.

[harrison-abbott]

You wished you could just switch off your addictive issues. That there was a big red shining button, that, if you simply thumbed it onto OFF, you wouldn’t have to fret about how you would feel when you woke up later on. Better yet, you wished you could go back to when you were in your teens, and simply not get into anything. But neither of these things were possible. And who knew what would happen to you the next few years – if even you lasted that long. Maybe you were on some crazy bus to suicide. Or perhaps there was hope for you yet. That’s what addiction often felt like … if even you could label the whole ordeal with one word.