quickfire

Back in Egham for the first time in a long time, I have about half an hour to write this before I go home again.

Home's a funny one, hey?

My bedroom at home, my bedroom for over a decade, has this big bunk bed type thing in it, except instead of a bottom bunk there's a miniature desk and wardrobe. Space saving in a room roughly the size of a double bed. Nobody gets to see my room, ever. I like it that way. This year, we're pulling it to pieces, hours spent with my father ripping posters off the walls, pulling wood and metal apart until what's left is (the requisite heap of junk on the floor) and countless slats and planks of wood. My bed, no more.

It's been therapeutic. I love it because it's my room but its claustrophobia, the sheer amount of mess is a testament to the state of mind I maintained in the years that I occupied it. Now I'm back, and pulling it apart has been the most healing thing. Bag after bag leaves the room, to charity, the tip, the dustbin. Papers, diaries, photos, clothes, schoolbags, jewellery, notes, paintings I did - my self-portrait.

From age 13, an A2 sheet of olive green construction paper, charcoal and chalk. No hair, no neck, just cheekbones, chin, an enormous pouting mouth and eyes. Charcoal eyes. My mum asks, what the fuck is that? I say, that's me, seven years ago. How I saw myself. More black than white, smudged and blended til the paper started to disintegrate beneath my fingers, those enormous scowling eyes.

This. This I'll keep, if only because it's important to remember how it looked like, if not how it felt.

*****

Almost twenty now, an official university dropout and full-time barstaff. Living back with my parents. Single.

That one hurts most. Single. My birthday's looming up on the horizon, soon it'll be a year since he came outside the pub where he worked to chat to some mates and saw this girl, drunk on champagne, playing with the flowery parasol someone bought her that day, and said hey, who's she?

A year on since sitting on the playground, reciting Shakespeare together.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Before you ask, our diplomatic conclusion is that it's both of our faults. I do, of course, blame myself.

*****

And the future?

Well that's a toughie. Last night, tucked up in my cousin's double bed, whispering like we did when we were 5, I tell her I'm terrified, secretly. Coming round, slowly, to the idea, she asks why?

Tells me this is good, that I have every imaginable opportunity in front of me so why on earth aren't I excited?

*****

Honestly, I am. Maybe I'll travel, find a charity to work for. Stay at the pub and cultivate that drum and bass habit I've always wanted. Write that book. Go to those festivals. Take night classes. Learn to drive. Learn to cook. Join a gym. Move to Spain. Buy a bicycle. Do an internship at Amnesty. Give fundraising another bash. Sit down at the computer and write that goddamn book.

Go back to Church. Try and find the compromise between who I am and what I believe. Play the guitar.

Be happy.

Maybe once the dust has settled, as it's finally starting to do, it'll become clearer to the rest of the world that this is exactly what I want to do, and the dawning realisation that I've actually done it has made me feel better, stronger, happier than I've been for a very very long time.

Maybe this is the right thing.