Fear and (self-)loathing

Oh dear. That time is coming again. Rogers seems all excited about the impending resumption of normality, the potential for achieving a new normality, keen to carpe the diem, champing at the bit of the new year. ITHOM seems weary at the prospect.

I come to this point in the year with dread, a sense of impending doom, physically queasy at the prospect. I want to make something new and brilliant in my work, in my teaching especially, but suspect that (as in most of my endeavours - of our endeavours?), that I will fall short of the mark. It is like standing on the edge of a terribly high cliff... not sure when you will fall, not sure if the fall will be chaotic and panicked, and cease with your rag-doll body smashing on the dark grey rocks below... or if it will turn out that you can fly, and land slowly and gracefully with a perfectly round ripple in the warm, welcoming waters below.

It is something about the change of season. Not S.A.D. like my friend Blow, but more of a fear. A physical sense that something is awry. It is like an evil déjà vu, a horribly warped and malformed nostalgia. Something in the smell of autumn, in the feel of the September breeze on y cheeks, and regardless of whether that breeze is warm or crisp, something in the way the sun sits in the sky...something takes me back to a place I don't want to be. I'm not even sure what place that is. It has to do with people, though. People I haven't met and am afraid of, in a RainMan kind of way. People I know and will find comforting - this is the bit that stops me just jumping off that cliff and screaming, and hoping my heart stops from fear before I find out whether I can fly. But most of all, the recurring theme in my life, the villain that lurks in the dark corners of my mind... people I want to know more than I do, who I want to see more than I should, whose presence and absence both will always be sources of tension and disappointment.

Resolve to try harder. Could do better. Concentrate. Don't think. Work really hard at not paying attention and maybe it'll go away. Maybe this time I can make it go away, and maybe next autumn won't be so dark.