(no subject)

[jholloway.livejournal.com]

And so here I am, back in my mother’s house. She died in January 2008. I miss her. I’m glad, in a way. She suffered a lot, although she tried not to complain.

I pay the bills for this place and keep the power on and so forth, and I crash in it whenever I’m in Essex, and every time I have to face this decision: do I sleep in my mother’s room, which would be weird, or do I sleep in my childhood room, which would be weird?

I always sleep in my childhood room. It’s weird. I took down all the band posters and things the last time I was back, but I can still close my eyes and see them all exactly where they were. I sort of congratulate myself for having had not-bad taste in music when I was a kid. I mean, OK, mopey and self-pitying, but not actually bad.

About a year ago, I bought all this stuff again on iTunes as part of a piece of tedious nostalgia, inspired by approaching middle age. Or something. And as I stretch out on the bed I had when I was a teenager – the bed I had my first kiss on, twenty years ago, Raphael Knight lurking in the garden outside with a homemade periscope for reasons best known only to him – I put in the earphones and close my eyes and try to remember.

The dance floor’s nearly empty now
Everyone’s gone home
And we’re fragmented and broken up
Like love affairs

And, you know, the trick isn’t remembering, it’s not remembering.

I wanted to say: fall in love
I wanted to say fall in love with me
I wanted to say fall in love

And here, at least, I allow myself the nostalgia that I’ve been protecting myself against. Because Iz is right and how I feel is hurting what we do, but here in this room I can’t turn my head without seeing sunlight slanting in and the way I watched her reflection in the picture frame sitting at my desk with my pencil case.

I don’t even want this, not with more than, oh, say, five or ten percent of my mind, but I let myself sink into it for a bit and wallow. If I can’t be a nostalgic hippopotamus at this late hour, when can I?

And somehow it all gets mixed in with Kay: the relief she felt coming back, that hunger for life, her arms around me in the hallway, knowing how much she needed me then and how ashamed she was of feeling that way. And that dangerous word I haven’t said. I don’t think she even realizes she has. But I treasure it, this gift I don’t deserve. And I know, with the remaining ninety to ninety-five percent of me, that I would never do anything to hurt it.

All fragmented and broken up
Oh well, I guess it’s time to go.

And the song ends and I roll over and go to sleep.

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

*sighs mournfully*

This is sweet, but makes me full of sorrow and IC nostalgia.