tales of woe

It is an interesting process, after you have been blogging for exactly a year, to move every post, one by one, to a new server. It's a little like being forced to relive the entire previous annum over again, in reverse, over the course of a few days. I feel like I have flown in a cosmic helicopter and looked down on the most recent slice of my own life from above. The view was a bit of a mess. Sifting backwards through your thoughts and whinges from months gone by, you encounter the closure before the trauma, the acceptance before the shock, the disappointment before the anticipation. From this perspective, the break-up is followed by the uncertainty, before an extended period of pleasant romance, hot on the heels of which is the brief excited flurry of the getting-to-know-you. And then it's gone. *poof* You have never even met.

This morning I received an email from an old (read: former) friend. This friend is a young teenager, who I tried to help through a very fucked-up time. The time got more-fucked up, through my friend's own doing, and I got out of the friendship. You know those people who thrive on being a mess, so that when you try and help them, they manage to find a fiendishly demented way to become even more of a mess, and drag you in with them? You get the picture. The email this morning was yet another thinly-disguised cry for help to all "my friends that r 4ever". This is about the fourth of these emails I have received in the last year. I deleted it without replying. People who know the whole sorry saga will know that this is not as callous as it may seem.

Last night I received a pep-talk which kind of missed its target. This was the target's fault, not the pep-talk's. I was told that I had limitless potential and wonderful talent, and that a dear friend wanted to encourage me to use it. That should have been uplifting. But what the insecure part of my brain heard was: you are fat and a loser in love, who's making nothing of his life. All of which is kind of true. But also kind of not. I've decided not to dwell on the downer-feelings, but rather to take this pep-talk in the spirit it was intended: as a positive force. Or at least that's what I'm in the process of deciding.

Tomorrow is another day. Here's hoping the weekend brings better things.