Melancholia of a Burning Bucket of Water

A curious melancholia indeed has descended upon me tonight.  I will probably take to my journal and write about my feelings in more depth later on tonight, but for the moment this will do as a place of expression.  And besides, what is the use of having a blog if I cannot bare my soul at some stage in it?

I did indeed have a pleasant afternoon wandering around the surrealism exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art here in Brisbane.  Plenty of good pieces from the Surrealist era, although sadly not as much Dali as I would have liked to have seen.  Having said that though it was amazing to see some well known pieces of Rene Magritte's work.

There was however, a point where the psychic assault of the Surrealist imagery almost broke me.  Some of it is incredibly powerful imagery, deeply rooted in the unconscious and the expression of unseen imagery of the mind in a concrete visual form.  It's the language of dreams.  It all worked to make me feel slightly off-balance, and that was perhaps not what I needed after the rest of this week.  I have struggled a bit with a feeling of listlessness, with poor sleep, and irritability.  It probably isn't surprising for me to feel that way given a relationship has just ended.  It's early in the grieving process, and there is still a lot I have to come to terms with.

I definitely feel the burden of my own foolishness.  I think of all the things that could have been different, but I accept that things happened as they did and there is nothing within my power to change them.  Did Bono actually say something meaningful when he said 'a man will beg, a man will crawl, on the sheer face of love, like a fly on a wall?'  It feels that way some days, you try and try and then are shown bluntly that your best is not good enough, and there is nothing you can do to change things.  You make mistakes, you say the wrong thing, it all comes back to bite you on the bum, but you don't know when or where.  You start to think whether you were actually happy the last few months, or just maintaining a facade of delusion, afraid to admit to yourself that you can see the cracks growing, see love dying before your eyes.  Oh how you try to revive it, like someone trying to save a dying man, only to see all your efforts, no matter what their quality, of no effect.  It turns you to face yourself and question whether you are really cut out for partnership.  You know you can't survive in the world of the casual hook up, the pub, the night club.  No chance of competing with the noise and the alpha male swarms.

You were happy.  You had found someone who you could love and be loved by, and now it's all gone, and you find yourself cast adrift again on an ocean of loneliness and frustration.  You are devoid of the sacred connection you seek, of the simple joy of holding someone in the darkness and talking about things, about the day, about life.  Now you have none of that, just a cold empty bed and a world you had struggled so hard to move on from and transform yourself that threatens to press back in on you and consume your joy.

I am sure it's not all bad.  I keep saying I feel gratitude for so many aspects of the last 18 months, but I also know that I now have to grieve the loss of a lot of good things I had.  If I could do things differently, would I have?  If I had, would it have made a difference?

I don't know the answers to such things.