Part 1; Part 2; Parted ways.

This blog is going to be the longest I’ve ever written. I finished writing part 1 on October 6th at 01:13. Sobbing, I clicked save, added a password, and decided this one wasn’t for the world to see. This one was for me, and a chosen 2 close friends who I let read it before I went to sleep that night. Part 2 I am about to start writing now, November 4th, 00:19 (Finished November 5th, 20:54) In the interest of being fair, any names mentioned will be replaced with numbers, or You. I’ll always share my business, but it’s for other people to choose to share theirs.

Part 1: Remains Undefined.

Before you read this, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. You – who will inevitably come to realise this is about you, and you who has no idea who or what I’m writing about. This isn’t for either of you. This is solely for me. This is therapy. This isn’t a conversation starter. This isn’t for you to message me after and ask how I am. You won’t need to ask, and placate me. This will tell you how I am. This isn’t a cry for help . This is just a cry.

Yesterday afternoon I looked at my reflection dead in the eye, and it broke me. I couldn’t hold my own gaze. My eyes lowered, I burst into tears and sank to my bedroom floor. Has anyone in the history of man ever broken down while listening to Pusha T wax lyrical about selling cocaine. I doubt it. 4 days ago I started leaking fluid in front of a quikfit garage. Not my car for once, me. Today the floodgates seeped open outside of what used to be Byrne Avenue swimming baths, I managed to hold them shut just long enough for my Nan to not have to see me cry. Emotionally I’m all over the fucking place, though physically I’ve never felt more rooted to floor.

A few days ago, my friend joked “Hey at least you’ll start writing good content again!” She’s not wrong. I don’t write anything worth a damn when I’m happy. I’ve never been good with positive emotions, I’ve never trust them. My own or other peoples. I’m sceptical of the social butterfly, the extreme extrovert. I don’t trust someone who’s always smiling, they’re up to something or they’re covering something up. But then there’s you. I don’t talk to people, I don’t choose who I’m friends with, they seem to just end up with me, the introvert attached to an extrovert. Not you. I remember the first day I saw you. I hate the cliche that “They had a smile that lit up the room.” – people aren’t lighting installations. This was different. You maybe don’t know this. But I knew from the first glance I wanted to be at the very least friends with you. I can’t explain it, but something about you felt familiar. I can’t smile and show my teeth, it looks forced, it’s like someones holding a gun to my back. My natural facial expression is the visual recreation of the word “ugh.” indifferent, if not slightly underwhelmed. That first day and everyday thereafter that smile screamed genuine. There was no pretence, no alter ego, no ulterior motive. Just “This is me. Hi, I’m about to chat your ear off.”

12 months ago I would’ve told you don’t get too close to me, I’ll let you down one way or another. You or anyone else. In fact, I think I literally did tell you that. Unfortunately I was true to my word. I’m flakey at best, irresponsible at worst. Don’t count on me for longevity, I’ll disappear at the first sight of positive. Misery loves company, and him and I have always been joined at the hip. I’ll wallow in obscurity, completely off the grid. Alone; like I’ve always been. I guess it was a defence mechanism. was. was. was. For the first time in my life I don’t believe any of that anymore. I’ve flaked on a lot of things lately… The Liverpool game, extra shifts, time with friends, group zooms. But not once on you. I have no desire to be miserable anymore, I don’t want to disappear. I want the polar opposite. I want to show you to the world and be like “LOOK. I FOUND A HUMAN I ACTUALLY ENJOY BEING AROUND.” The same friend mentioned above, spoke to me about her relationships. About being able to imagine a life with someone. Imagining a future. A house. The white picket fence. Kids. The lot. I’d never done that with anyone in mind. It was never part of my plan. Plans change. I started thinking, and then I thought some more. Was I against it? Or was I against it with just anyone? For the first time ever it didn’t seem scary. It didn’t seem abstract or unrealistic. It seemed… possible? More than possible, it felt desirable?

Thursday 24th of September was the highlight of 2020. Thursday 24th of September 2020 was the highlight of 2020, and 2019. Life isn’t about the big events. Life’s about the little moments that make feel alive. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more content in a moment? If I have one doesn’t immediately come to mind. Safer – ironically at the hands of the least safe driver I know. We drove for maybe an hour and a half total that day. I smiled the entire way. I kept making this noise, like that laugh you do when you look at memes by yourself? The nose breath thing? That one. I couldn’t stop myself. Like a pig in shit. A kid on Christmas. It wasn’t even a big deal, but it meant the world to me. It was a milestone I’ve never reached with anyone else. I didn’t run for once, I didn’t hide me or you, and it felt fucking marvellous.

2020 has had a lot of truly horrendous days. A whole lot of them. But none of them hit me quite like yesterday. It had nothing to do with cancelled plans, it had nothing to do with the grim weather, it had nothing to do with what I ended up doing. It had nothing to do with Liverpool getting tonked 7-2, though that didn’t help. It had nothing to do with the wasp that stung me while I was in bed – bastard. It had nothing to do with my dog waking me up howling every 2 hours throughout the night. Yesterday my bubble burst. It’d been close in the days prior, but I’d kept it together relatively speaking. The reality I’d built up in my head came crumbling down. Most days I love silence, yesterday it nearly killed me. Yesterday felt like I was waiting for a parcel to be delivered, I was looking out of the window every 30 seconds, any squeak or vibration I thought I heard sent me scrambling back to that pane of glass. Nothing. No post on Sundays. Only to find out at the end of the day that it’d been returned to sender. You missed your chance. It was right there, and you weren’t present enough to take it.

Yesterday all of the yoga, meditation, Alchemist inspired, airy fairy, spiritual, positivity shit, I spew on a daily basis wouldn’t save me. “Control what you can control”,”be present”, “you are enough”, “speak it into the universe”… Suck my dick, I’m hurt, let me be hurt. Yesterday was the “it’s not your fault” scene from Good Will Hunting. Except I didn’t have a Robin Williams to grab onto, just the voice in my head telling me “it’s all your fault” and the paint stained sleeves of my jumper. You fucked this up, Flynn. Whether they’ll admit it or not, you fucked this up. You did what you always used to do, you ran. You ran because things can only be good for so long. You ran because nobody could possibly feel this way about you. You ran because you couldn’t possibly open up. You ran because you don’t recognise what’s good for you and what’s not. You ran because when one thing goes wrong you tear the whole building down. You needed help when things were going wrong. You didn’t need to be alone, you needed someone to get you out of your own head. But stubborn as ever, you declined all who were forthcoming.

I’ve cried more this week than anytime in my life. I won’t lie, some of it is related to you and your actions or lack of. But 95% of it is because of me and mine. It’s because of this reality I’ve built up in my head. This outlook I’ve chosen to take. That if I try, if I try really hard, harder than I’ve ever tried with anyone ever. If I show you me, the real me. I don’t want to be nonchalant about everything anymore. I don’t want to be indifferent. I don’t want the no plan-plan. If I show you that, it’ll overcome the first time around. That it’ll make everything better. That a box filled with some chocolate buttons and a mixtape, or a trip to Chester Zoo would erase it all. Knowing full well that’s not how life works.

Lately I feel like I’m in a labyrinth. Weird start but go with it. Like I’m completely in the dark, and every now and then a there’s a light at the end of one of the hallways. But every time I walk towards it it slams shut and another light behind me comes on. I change directions and walk towards it but once again it dims. Left, right, up, down. Over and over again. I don’t know whether I’m back where I started or somewhere completely new. Either way I’m still lost. Lost, but looking for a way out. Hoping that the right door stays open just long enough. This time, I’ll be present enough to run through it.

Love,
Flynn. x

End of part 1.

Part 2: Defined.

The part 2 I’ve written in my head multiple times over during the last few days is far more scathing, more scornful, and far more vitriol infused than what I’m about to write. For as much as it may be merited, I was raised better than that. There will be no specific tales of your actions; a scriptwriter would have a hard time accepting them as plausible plot lines. I’ll stick to me, and what I did and or didn’t do. How I felt or was made to feel. Standards are to be raised, not lowered to suit others. I’ve got nothing to hide. I found strength in vulnerability.

Wow.

I thought I cried back when I wrote part 1?! Monday afternoon. I’ll get to that. Reflect first. A lot of what I wrote in part 1 remains true. I felt those feelings. They were valid. Was I right to feel them? Was I right to second guess myself?

I take absolute responsibility for everything relating to me disappearing when I did, absolutely. My choice of defence mechanism was then, and remains now, a pathetic one. Any pain caused then was entirely my fault. Was. Distant past. I owned that. I made every effort to overcome that. That’s not a rectifiable mistake, but a base from which to grow. Grow I did. I threw myself out there for the first time in years. I should’ve felt disgusted at my actions, , I did, I should still, and I do. But in my heart I know that moving forward I did everything possible to show I wasn’t that person anymore. I’m proud of me.

I was unequivocally right to second guess myself. Not because I was my sense of judgement was off, because that’s exactly what the world you’d concocted was built upon. For months I’ve doubted my every action, my every thought. I’ve wondered endlessly why the actions I knew to be positive were constantly met with negativity, with feigned smiles and empty platitudes. I refuse to blame myself for being open to trusting you. Everyone gets my trust until they show me otherwise, and boy did you conceal the truth well. I refuse to blame myself for wanting to believe in love; for the first time I actually felt it could be real. I wanted it to be real. I fucking believed it was.

I broke myself down in front of you. Time and time again. I laid my flaws bare for you to see, to try and make you understand why I thought running was an acceptable choice. How every situation I’ve ever been involved in which vaguely resembled a relationship has ended with one party being unfaithful. Every fucking time. How Person 1, slept with an ex 2 minutes after telling me they were tired and going to sleep. How Person 2, essentially used me as a stop gap until she saw her ex for the first time in months and threw me immediately by the way side. How Person 3 saw me as a way to get out a situation they no longer wished to be in but couldn’t escape. How Person 4 left me to stay in her house while she went across the country to visit another partner in waiting. How my parents have never been together for my entire life; and what it does to your idea of love when your only “successful” relationship reference point is your grandparents arguing and fighting about alcohol on a daily basis. Nobody else knew all of this. That was probably the first time I’ve ever been that vulnerable to myself, let alone to another person. My deepest insecurities; you used them against me.

Months ago I poured my heart out onto the pavement in front of you, in broad daylight as people walked by. How all I wanted was to feel like your actions reflected the words you spoke to me. You spoke about how you wanted commitment, and a future when at that very moment you were the furtherest thing from committed. I shared my soul with you, only to now realise I was sharing you.

Monday afternoon I finally plucked up the courage to confront my fears, I’d stared at my phone for 2 hours the night before. My thumb hovering over the send button. My entire body shaking like a dog out in the rain. Fucking terrified to have the truth confirmed. Much like the Titanic – made in Northern Ireland found home in Liverpool – my heart sunk hours after I’d discovered the cold hard truth. It took 2 hours for the Titanic to sink. It took me the same amount of time to pull my shellshocked corpse out of my car after that message came through. Unable to move, unable to string a sentence together, nothing but heaving and uncontrollable sobbing. As I sit here writing this (Now Thursday evening) my left eye is still twitching every 10-15 minutes, fortunately my tear ducts ran dry 2 days ago.

In part 1 I wrote “Yesterday all of the yoga, meditation, Alchemist inspired, airy fairy, spiritual, positivity shit, I spew on a daily basis wouldn’t save me.” Well, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they came to my rescue. You can’t cry more when a 40 degree studio has evaporated what little liquid hadn’t already found its way onto the sleeve of my hoody. Yoga kept me grounded – not on the ground, dead. Grounded in the knowledge that I am, and always have been, enough. Grounded in the complete understanding that everything I did was being met with hesitation for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Grounded in truth. You have no control over others, not even those you’re closest too, especially not those you loved.

I don’t know how to end this post. The last few months have been the happiest, saddest, most convoluted months of my life. It’d be completely inaccurate to say that I’m over it. There are moments where it takes every fibre of my being to keep the rage inside me trapped inside my sternum. There are moments when crying doesn’t suffice and the only emotion readily available is laughter. I’m not happy. But I’m also not sad. For the first time in months, I’m centred. My emotions aren’t being dictated by somebody else. I’m not second guessing my character. I’m not thinking “Is it because I’m a drop out? Is it because I’ve moved back home? Is it because I’m stuck in a job I hate? Am I just not good enough?” No Flynn. No. No. No. Not at all. It’s because you weren’t the only one.

You were played. Not for the first time. Probably not for the last. But that’s no reflection on who you are as a human being. You might be broke, you might be living at home, you might be feeling really fucking lost lately. But you’re a decent guy, you’re honest, you’re kind, your moral compass points north more so than ever before. But most importantly, after this fiasco, you’ll never doubt that again.

Love,
Flynn! x