A year ago exactly, I said a final goodbye to somebody who had been a close friend. We’d shared many happy times, but that was before he decided to obliterate them all with a weird obsession and a determination that was really quite admirable in a sick kind of way.

Yes, Tom, a year on and I still can’t quite comprehend why you drove me to the edge of insanity. Because I was the ultimate prize in your eyes, I guess, and a narcissist must obtain and then destroy just to feel, just to be.

There were explosions of colours all over the streets when we parted for the last time, leaves scattered everywhere and my heart was heavy but I felt free at last from your manipulation and your sick games. October then was an end and a beginning, cliché as it seems.

Autumn has arrived again, my favourite season, always has been, which makes it strange that it should be without fail when self-loathing hits me like a tsunami. The same leaves are covering the pavements, the leaves I kick childishly as I’m walking, while wondering how I always get things wrong, how every time I think I’ve got this life thing sorted, it turns out I haven’t at all.

One can’t raise the bar when it’s already sky high, so I’m left stranded while the tide comes in, I stand still, breathing salty air, pushing aside all thoughts until I’m surrounded and I can no longer ignore this sad state of affairs. The ghosts will keep tugging if you let them – them with their fucking chains – but underneath the self loathing, buried deep but there all the same, is the certainty I will win this fight eventually.

Maybe I am doomed to keep making the same mistakes, even as I keep raising the stakes, maybe the fact I keep getting it wrong will be inscribed on my grave. In any case,
there is only one thing to do to survive, and it’s to get new feelings to replace the old ones.

Photo my own