From The Threshold

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come / Whispering ‘It will be happier.’” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I don't thrive at New Year. The rigidly enforced bonhomie, overheated crowds excited by the calendar, the couples at midnight. Reflection. Infact, sometimes my dislike tips over in to something altogether less comfortable.

I saw 2014 in, anonymous and unnoticed on a stage (a phenomenon perhaps unique to middle-aged banjo players) in front of 200 revellers. Strangers ... Ten! Nine! Eight! ... Midnight struck, cheering, handshakes, kissing. K.I.S.S.I.N.G. ... The playing was hard work.  I sipped my Guinness, looked at my lifeless phone and waited in the corner by the fire exit to get home. "Having a fag" I told them. Get me out.

What a difference a year makes. At New Year 2013 the way ahead looked different. I saw it in with my girlfriend. I was positive, happy and untroubled. Soon enough the year took to twisting. My romantic involvement ended in a confusing flurry a couple of months later. In my inimitable style I have seen that catastrophise in to evaporated confidence and persistent regret. My home of fifteen years, jointly owned with my son's mother and where he was born, sold at around the same time. I found a flat for me and my son, an enforced move, really. I had loved living there. We had barely got moved when serious illness raised it's head in the family. Christmas was marked by trips for bloods at the hospital, the big day itself saw dinner delivered to the housebound. And me, confronted by mortality, exuding adult calm. A time of deeply unwelcome reminders. Emotional batteries discharging at a rate of knots. 

Now, I don't write these blogs to provide entertainment, I really can see how self-pitying my wittering is. There was much to take and shine-up last year. It's a question of perception. I write as honestly as I can to try to make sense of my feelings most days. Sometimes I publish to test myself. 

Right now, my feelings make little sense to me. I feel alone without a map. I feel as though easy negotiation has abandoned me. Awash with unfocussed sadness over unexplained and unspoken details, anxious. Most of all I feel alone. Not 'lonely', I have friends, but alone. The Universe, sensing emptiness, has obliged by pushing it's own plans on me. 

Perhaps that's what it is. Like billions of others, I had no control over the major events in my life last year, only my reaction to them. I find that a cold comfort when I'm in this frame of mind. Trying to maintain a positive, or rather a 'measured' response to this stuff takes a lot of mental energy. I am obliged by circumstance to maintain, yet seem to lack the means to recharge myself. For now, I feel I'm casting around for a missing piece. Something that will fix all this. That piece, of course, is me. 

There's plenty of advice out there for when you are afloat, but not swimming. Exercise, sensible diet, everything the mind turns to at the hated New Year. As ever, I find myself returning to 'acceptance'. I don't have the wherewithall to move any of this. Life with all it's complications has to happen at it's own pace. I can no more change it than hold back the sea.

Sure enough, coincidence becomes serendipity. Taking a break from writing, a friend has posted an article on Facebook: "14 Fucks I Refuse to Give in 2014" ... There, nestling at number twelve: "The fastest way to lose yourself? Focus all of your energy on something or someone that was never really there. Eventually you’ll wake up alone. Worse, you’ll wake up a stranger." ... I will be trying very hard to avoid just that. There's my resolution. Not to be chastened by the idea (I have never reacted well to a telling off, even from myself), but to carry it and act on it ... The search for that missing piece continues.