Goodbye, goodbye.

Have you ever noticed that it’s the people on the periphery of your life that are the ones unlikely to cause you hurt? Nothing wholly unexpected, let’s face it, you can’t let everyone in, it’s impossible to keep everybody close. That said, are there ever any right people in your life to get hurt by? Perhaps the thing with emotions like being disappointed, letdown or being betrayed is that it’s always the people you love the most who’ll be behind any pain you experience.

Take relationships, if you’re unhappy to a point where you want to stray, you just end things, don’t you? If you feel like you have the desire or need to try something with someone new whether on an emotional or physical level, then by all means, have at it. When things end between two people, one will always experience more hurt than the other, that’s just life, but it’s better not to be living a lie rather than misleading or being misled by someone. No one wants to be a pity project, to be a boy or girl that someone stays with just because it’s convenient. Some of us will happily settle for being safe in a relationship but only if you’re both on the same page, it’s a wonderful thing to be someone’s everything.

Life happens though, things change and you can begin to question everything you thought you once knew. It’s easy to think that nobody should be trusted but that’s no way to spend your waking hours. Why shy shouldn’t you hate someone if they’ve done the worst thing to you that anyone can do to anyone else? Let someone think that they’re appreciated and loved and then show them unintentionally that it’s all fake? What do you do, how long does it take for you to catch someone in an untruth?

We play, we pretend.

The ping of a notification signals an incoming text message just as the moon turns blue. A phenomenon that happens once nearly every three years. The moon thing, not the texts, although the regularity would be about the same. The ghost of a girlfriend past, she’s probably drunk as per. ‘Can we meet?’ You have to marvel at the stones on her, you couldn’t mark her neck with a blowtorch. Two people in the world know how much she messed up previously but that number is only so low because one person wasn’t interested in a battle of ‘he said, she said’. It must feel pretty good on some level to invent a story that’ll satisfy you, to placate as many people as you can peddle bullshit to and pretend that it actually happened. Doesn’t there come a point where you don’t even care enough about someone to set the record straight? What annoys most is the fact that there was no anger or humiliation, betrayal was the order of the day, feelings crushed by a girl who was supposed to a be a best friend and someone to grow old with. She’s not the woman most people thought she was. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I fucking deserve it.

When the walls of denial are finally broken down and you get the other person to finally admit to themselves that we’ve been lied to, we can go one of two ways. Try and find some sort of messed up path in your mind that you’ll be able to justify their lying and get past the infidelity and/or emotional turmoil or realise that you’re worth more and that it’s better to cut ties altogether. Nobody needs to keep pulling on a particular thread, to continue with something that isn’t ever going to end well. Once the dust settles, you’ll know you were right to trust yourself.

So we catch up, curiousity often gets the better of us. In my experience, anything can be fixed she said. In my experience, she was full of shit. In the end, all that was offered that meant anything was a barely audible, ‘I’m sorry’. There’s so much that I should tell her about the way she made me feel but frankly, she deserves no more of my time. I was out of there faster than A-Train on Compound V, you can’t negotiate with a man who doesn’t need a particular person in their life, especially if it’s someone who messed you about. The more baffling thing is you now have someone who has the temerity to cheat on their current boyfriend. You think I didn’t know? I debated long and hard about turning around and saying something but I didn’t. It makes sense that if you waste a second of your life hoping that someone will suffer for what they did, then you’re allowing them to hurt you again. Fuck that feeling shit shit, there are millions of us that deserve better. Walking away, what should be an awful moment feels like anything but.

Kiss the way we were goodbye.

@TheSamMcLeod

These hands are meant to hold.

Different things motivate all of us. Achievement, advancement, personal or professional growth, maybe recognition or responsibility? It can be something simpler than any of those things. Eating healthier, getting fit, listening to your favourite music, playing or watching your favourite sports. Once you find something that makes you want to do it religiously, it becomes second nature, you’re motivating yourself every day, although you perhaps don’t grasp that fact in every single moment.

We’re all different people, so all of our motivations are different. When you witness the success of others, it’s easy to not even contemplate the setbacks and struggles that they’ve had to overcome to get to where they are now. Sure, the road to get to a place that you need to be is often paved with failure and a shit ton of pain. There’s going to be hard lessons that you’ll need to learn along the way, you’ll need to have difficult conversations with yourself now and again. Humility and understanding is key, don’t we all need to harness those moments of adversity to help us move forward?

It doesn’t matter who any of us are, we’ve all experienced hard times in our lives. We all have different tools that we need to not only think about what’s happened to us before, but also to try and help us shape what’s going to become part of our future. Aren’t we all resilient on some level? A bad place can become a good place if you’re motivated to get there. Take music. Listen to any song with an open mind and you might realise that some of the words apply to something that you have going on.

It’s not always that easy though, is it? Some days are more difficult than others, it’s tough to see how any of what you have to deal with right now is going to get any better, to make you better.

Another day and you’ve had your fill of sinking.

It’s late on a weekend afternoon and I’ve been in the new place for a few days. The broadband engineer is finally here, first world problems are about to be solved. He ladders down over a high wall into the garden next door where the pole is to connect the street to the telephone and internet lines. I leave him to it, what the fuck do I know about installing wifi? Anything to do with the brain, I’ve mostly got you covered. Anything practical? Forget it, I’m the equivalent of a three legged cat trying to bury a shit on an ice rink.

He shouts over for my assistance, probably not standard protocol, isn’t that what they’re paid for, but part of you always wants to help. Grease on the top of the wall from his boots is there but I don’t see it, I slip, and I tumble over 20 feet to the ground landing straight on my back. I black out briefly, but when my eyes reopen, it’s easily the worst pain I’ve ever experienced that envelops me. He helps me back into my apartment and an ambulance is called. He leaves, apologising profusely.

The ambulance arrives, air and gas is given and a paramedic attempts to take a blood sample. Bless, they’re obviously new at this, and blood goes everywhere, it’s like a crime scene in my apartment, but finally we get sorted and I’m on my way to the local hospital.

I can’t feel my legs and the pain is excruciating. Every bump on the road hurts but I know that I’m headed to where I need to be. Being the weekend, it’s busy, hours pass with me being told to lie on my back and not move. Morphine is overrated, the pain doesn’t lessen. The staff are fantastic though, always checking in until I can go for x-rays and then a CT scan. That’s one thing that was never on the bucket list.

A doctor finally comes round with the results and it’s not good, there are severe spinal vertebrae fractures. Surgery is ruled out because it might make things worse. I’m scared to ask the question that I need an answer to. A day when you’ve lost yourself completely could be a night when your life ends. Painkillers for the rest of my days and intense physiotherapy will mean that I’ll be able to walk again. Hopefully.

No lies, there are a lot of tears and a lot of self pity. I get moved to a ward with three other guys and their prognosis and stories are equally as bad as mine, if not worse.

The night passes and I can’t sleep. Sure, the pain is part of it but I need to figure out how to beat this. I need to be motivated. I listen to music, hit the shuffle button and let the songs take me where they need to.

It’s approaching 5am, no sleep has been had and a junior doctor pops her head around the curtain to check on me. Questions are asked, blood pressure is taken and the first thing she does is to ask me to take her hands and push them away from her. I tell her that I doubt I have the strength but then she says six words. ‘These hands are meant to hold.’ Those 24 letters resonate, I’ve heard those words somewhere before and I push as hard as I can. She smiles, does some more tests and leaves telling me to stay strong.

I realise where I heard them and what the song is. It’s my iPhone so I click on it. There’s my motivation right there. Six words from someone I’ve never met before will get me through this. Will it be tough? Sure as shit, but what’s the alternative, you have to keep moving and be positive when life kicks you in the stones. Time to man up, we can’t keep regretting things that didn’t go the way that we wanted, they’re not going to change the past. Go ahead as you waste your days with thinking? Zero point.

Friends ask if I’m alright. Stupid fucking question, but it’s okay to tell a tiny white lie and say yes, isn’t it? Sometimes you need to do things on your own, just keep on going no matter how hard things are. The answers won’t come straight away but if I’m motivated, they will in time.

The old guy in the next bed says to me, cliche as it sounds, ‘Your life is how you make it now, it’s up to you.’ He’s right. No matter how hard it seems just to keep on going, don’t you have to believe in yourself? We won’t all have the same problems but we need to find out what motivates us. Life can deal you a shit hand but don’t you want to beat the dealer?

It might seem like the world is against you, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, but you have to keep going. I’ve got this, I will walk again, I will run again. Whatever you have going on, you’ve got it too.

Even when your hope is gone, move along.

@TheSamMcLeod
@YouMeMusicLife