Canterbury

I was away for a week. Well, my mind has been away that long. In truth I was only gone from my meager flat for three days. Three days. I felt at times that I was still a child, running through fields with unwashed hair, getting sunburned, older friends lending my assistance and advice. Or perhaps what I would have felt like as a child, my childhood was spent much the same way as my adult life; indoors, lonely and nervous. During the other times I felt at the brink of sanity, like tremors before the impending quake. I was bogged down by my foriegn background, and more mature than I wanted to be.

And also I had felt like they were some of the longest days of my life, as if every minute dragged as it had when I was very young and the world was fresh with importance and things to do. Patience is never easy, you only grow more resistance towards needing to feel patient by creating reasons for your waiting. But I had no reasons, I only had time and friends and drugs. And I can't tell how much time I drifted in the clouds of marijuana or swam in the basins of alcohol, but it was only three days.

Perhaps nothing happened in the past three days, yet everything that did happen seems to have a much more real impact on me than any other force in my life. Normally everything is so drab and safe and clean, monotone and so unclear that my dreams feel more real than my life. I always struggle to attach myself to the here and the now, not to let go and watch the world drift away below me as I move toward the sun. Yet I know something happened because I'm washing off the dirt and sweat of the time and I actually feel refreshed and new. I feel real, my surroundings are more solid than they've been for months. Perhaps all I needed was to escape this city.

But I was sick with worry during those whole three days. I barely ate, time whispered by slowly and I woke from any sounds. I was terrified I'd do something wrong, say something wrong, be wrong. And I feel a little better now. Still sick, but now there is only me, no worries about the others finding me with my guard down.

In the mirror my face looks like a bloody rorschach. I feel normal and I feel crazy. I feel my head isn't where it should be. And here I am with a face looking like the fantasies of some psychiatrist. I don't know if those three days have really helped me or only made me worse. Well I see the doctors tomorrow, they'll probably know. They always do.