wombat football

2010

This year has been a difficult one, perhaps my most difficult yet.

At the beginning of it, I spent my nights praying—to whoever might be listening—that someone would fall back in love with me. When that didn’t work, I prayed that I would fall out of love with her. All of my prayers went unanswered; I never really believed it would be otherwise.

I spent a lot of nights alone, drinking heavily to try and find some peace, to escape from all the images and fond memories racing around inside my head; just to be able to sleep. It didn’t work. I tried to pour it all out by writing songs, which is usually cathartic for me, but my state of mind just wasn’t conducive to any kind of creative output. My work suffered. I became depressed and increasingly hopeless. Each time I thought I might finally be moving on, my mind would suddenly throw up a scene from our time together and I would miss her like hell again.

More than a year on, I can’t say I’m no longer in love with her, but I think—I hope—it’s beginning to change into a different love; the kind you have for a close friend, which she still is, despite everything. I wish her all the happiness in the world, and always have.

For the most part I hid all of this from the people close to me, because I didn’t see that there was anything that they could do to help, other than to keep me company and make me laugh once in a while. And they did that anyway, despite having their own problems, without me even having to ask. They didn’t need the added burden of knowing that their friend was so deeply, deeply unhappy.

I don’t expect those people to ever read this, but if they do, they should know that they are the ones who kept me going. They are the ones who brought me back from the darkest of places.

This year, I am going to make them proud of me.