I hate the real world sometimes . . .

Yes, I hate the real world sometimes.

The past few months have been a disaster for my life and state of mind. Sequences of events have left me drained, confused and struggling to keep up with the real world. My own world has just about disintegrated and all I can do now is try to pick up the pieces and keep going. Exactly where I am going is uncertain: I can only head in the general direction of where I want to be.

Two years ago I rented a four-bed-room house, with all the trimmings of a small, single-parent family. I had my own sound studio, that I was turning into a video studio. I was producing music and video clips and enjoying my life. One day I found myself at the end of a lease – broke and with nowhere to go, and nowhere to store a truckload of furniture. I managed to stay at my sister’s for a while, in comparative luxury; but this was only short term. A friend offered me a room at his house, and life looked to be back on track. I barely realised what a feral house I had moved into, but settled down and tried to get on with day-to-day-life. I began a course in media at university, which I found stimulating and relevant to my music, and video work on the internet.

I don’t know when things started to go wrong, but gradually I was overwhelmed by one thing after another. My mother died, my son needed somewhere to live, (several times); I was constantly poor and hungry. My car wouldn’t go. I argued with my housemate and had to find somewhere else to live; find storage for my funiture. Work fell through or got cancelled at short notice. I started to get behind at uni.

Then something happened that completely devastated me: the last thing that I ever thought would happen – I lost a friend. Not just any friend, but a girl who I considered to be a special friend, almost my best friend, who had been part of my life for six years. We had once been lovers, but now we were just friends, good friends.

Probably I was far more in love with my friend than I ever realised. She found herself a boyfriend and just cut me off. I was shattered. But she had actually done nothing to me, everything that resulted was due to my own emotions and imagination. For a few weeks I ran around in a confused state waiting for a phone call. I managed to make some sort of contact, but only through sms. Half a dozen conversations resulted over a period of about two months. I felt abandoned. But I had to deal with it, and do so without blame, or anger, or bitterness – I just had to get on with it and get on with my own life.

I found myself neglecting my studies, neglecting my websites – I didn’t care about anything else; nothing else was important. I could barely function. Suddenly nothing mattered to me except trying to re-establish our friendship, on whatever basis I could salvage. I jammed a finger into a stapling machine, I nearly walked in front of a truck, nearly sideswiped my car. I was a distracted mess.

Christmas was a disaster; the worst one I had ever had. Apart from an hour I spent with my daughter, there was nothing else. I have never spent Christmas day and had nothing to eat. I missed my mother, and I missed my friend. The next day I was much relieved by a half hour conversation – by phone for a change. Since then I’ve basically been told to “go away”. Three weeks after Christmas there is still no resolution in sight. It will take time and I must be patient.

Existence for me had degenerated into a cycle of Twitter, FriendFeed and gMail, with occasional forays into FaceBook, MySpace, MacJams and a few other places that I ‘haunt’. I would wake at six each day, turn on my computer and spend days and days scanning Titter and FriendFeed. I needed a life I still was not keeping up with my websites and had barely kept up with my obligations at uni. Gradually I have worked my way back to a level of sanity that is not driving me crazy. For the whole of December I put myself into some hellish place that I could not escape from.

I am setting myself tasks, and goals, and trying to keep myself busy and occupied. Now I can at least laugh at myself, and smile. What a silly fool I have been – acting like a lovesick schoolboy – at my age.

Fortunately, I have a good network of friends, who tried to support me, distract me and do the sort of things that friends do. These real-life friends probably saved my life and my sanity – I am sure that I could easily have destroyed myself. I have also been helped by some of my online friends, both locally here in Adelaide, or from places around the world through the internet. I made contact with a group of people that I ‘knew’ online, mainly through FaceBook and Plurk, and met some of them on New Year’s Eve. It is a good feeling to be made welcome by ‘friends’ that you have never met.

adioso
Chris Loft (friend of a friend)