Guidance

It's only when you open up to the wrong person that you realise how multifaceted grief can be. You mourn for lost moments, lossy memories and an even lesser regard. You've lost out on the most valuable cultural exchange but they never seems to understand it. They think sadness comes from the memory of physical love, but it's often about a more simple desire to be present with another person: it's a longing for the warmth and the education to carry on, as promised.

It's an ineffectual desire in light of where I find myself now. I've been attempting to think of the future and address those plans I once had. It's uncomfortable to dream, now that I find that I have to develop some other life. I wake up each afternoon in a kind of panic. I feel less and less welcome in the hostel, having read horrible things that were intended for me and horrible things that weren't. I have uncovered a plot to replace me and someone else must work for free until I decide that it's time.

I labour on ancient memories after a year of silence, his suggestions that I leave the hostel (and London) as soon as possible. We frequently described this place as a kind of purgatory, as the events of each night managed to bleed into one another and everybody appeared to be wearing the same clothes constantly. I refer to those poetic reflections, those agreements that touched upon how we have all lived together knowing that it was the best and the worst way to live. We lived knowing that this was a stolen season and none of this was ever real.

I don't know where I could possibly go, but I hope I'll have my desk, my books, some air, some light and my guitar. There'll always be those persistent dreams of demos with fuzzy hooks and loaded lyrics, but I know that I will naturally gravitate towards essays about music, grief, love and hope. The wrong people may characterise it as a destructive habit to remember, reframe and honour how I've been mistreated, but for me, it's the only way I can learn and grow and find out what I want. I don't want to talk anymore, I just have to write...