The road to Shangri-La

It’s Pete Doherty’s diary I’m writing whenever I fall out of love with myself for a little while and start missing pieces of my past.

There’s a grand, heart-shaped hole in my soul where a boy used to be – its blackened edges are healing well now, or at least so much better than they were last year. I didn’t take the road most go down when something breaks – I didn’t get a new boo to distract me from past sorrows and indiscretions this time around. I said I did. I lied.

I kept me to myself, closed off and drew my barriers clearer in the sand. Torching all I had, all I was with him allowed me to start afresh. Tabula rasa. A new me – a newborn me. And just like a child, I learnt everything again. I walked, and talked, and thought, and felt, and learnt to love myself in ways I haven’t done so in a long time. And I got healthier, and I pursued my passions, made new friends, slept in the arms of platonic best friends without ever letting them have more of me than I was ready to give. And I still cried for him, every now and again. Every couple of months, I’d have this one night when I’d just cry and the tears wouldn’t stop for a while – weeks passed, a new year started. One night I realised that I didn’t know who or what I was crying for anymore.

I moved to Scotland and met a guy – a couple of them, actually. It’s been the most fun, just playing around and laughing at 2 am shadows, and then I moved on. I held myself tighter at night.

A few weeks passed before I let my first love hold me again and heal me, breath life into me in ways no one else ever could. For once, he gave all he had and gave it selflessly – he let me go without a word once I felt like moving on again.

I met long-forgotten loves and various shadows of the past along the way, and in a twist of fate they all seemed to gather around me in a circle of love. I don’t know why. I don’t know how they knew I needed it.

It’s a weird thing, realising that you’re loved. Truly loved, not for any reason at all, just for you. The pure you – your essence. I couldn’t love myself like that for a long time and so I didn’t think anyone else could, either. I was a wicked creature for a good couple of years.

I really miss Kieran. Fuck, he’s just about the best man I’ve ever known. And he was my best friend, truly, my best friend before we became anything else – his sharp wit was only ever rivalled by the purity of his heart. I’d give anything for his friendship now – and we still talk, sometimes, and I still care. There’s just a lot left unsaid, still, and I’ve hurt him in ways I’ll never be able to fully atone for. If I could change anything, any one thing… I’d keep his friendship forever. I’d keep him close to my heart.

That’s what I’m crying about, most days. Boys and girls there was never a shortage of – and yet only a precious few of them got more than a couple of laughs out of me before I fled. The vast majority of those who did I managed to keep close, even as we took different routes and said our goodbyes. Not him. Not Kieran. I was a stupid child chasing my tail in circles and singing along to Dustland fairytale in dingy karaoke bars – I did everything I could to push back the moment when it would all inevitably come crashing down, even if it was just by one day, one breath at a time.

I got caught up in a fantasy, a twisted forever-world of sorts, one where I kept getting sicker and sicker the more people wanted to bask in my pale, inebriating glory. I was suffering so much and people liked it – they helped maintain my circles of gloom, my twisted black flips of fate. They told me I was their muse while they watched me die.

And so I got sicker, I got thinner, I got more and more dizzy by the day. Everyone ignored it. I was barely 40 kgs by the time I got myself into therapy, the kind with the waiting lists and nutritionists telling you that it’s all about control. Maybe it is. Never knew I was anorexic until the day I got diagnosed and walked out of the hospital in what felt like the first sober moment I had for years.

Time finally felt real. And so did life – suddenly I was somewhere; embodied. I was made responsible for me and I decided to carry the burden instead of hiding away in another sickening love story of sorts. I told no one but my two best friends. I worked towards making it through every single day. One / day / at / a / time.

I learned to love again. I re-learned the art of shutting the fuck up and actually listening to people when they talk, of remembering names, and faces, and what happened to that haunted house that your grandpa used to live in. The army jacket. Life used to slip past me. I never really listened to anyone. I wasn’t really there.

And now I suddenly was, and there was just so much love around me. I never knew I had so many friends.

So I listened. Made time for them. Stopped lying. Learnt to be present. I became a better friend. I learnt to love people back.

And yet there are few that will never know or bother – there are the echoes that still haunt me through sleepless nights.

I can’t think of how life would have been different had I made the commitment to heal myself way before I actually have. I do have an idea, though – I just can’t torture myself with indulging in it for longer than a nanosecond at a time.

I hold my breath and count to ten as then clock strikes 5 and shadows flee every which way – an echo of a future memory makes my ears ring with loneliness. I’m fine now – I’ll just have to learn to live with the knowledge that some things cannot be fixed. That some friends are gone, that some mistakes cannot be undone.

There’s a couple of people I miss. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see them again. I’ll cry for them, still, just in case I do – just in case there’s still anything there to cry for.

5.26 AM.

I’m not sad anymore. I’m just learning to live with the echoes of my mistakes.

JBV