Home?

I've lived in my flat for just over four years, since I moved back to the city of my birth. It's the place where my family are and some of my friends. I came back to help care for sick parents. Sold a place I loved, in a place I loved and bought a flat here.


It's never felt like home. It's somewhere I've been living. Somewhere that I always hoped, thought, would be temporary. It was a choice I made, but not one that I sought out. A duty, conscience at play. But, here I am.

I spent some of the money I made on the old place making this cheaper one mine. New kitchen, bathroom, shower room. Apart from my spare bedroom, I haven't finished decorating a single room. Each needs something doing. Mostly it's small things.

The shower room door was sanded down ready for painting months ago, albeit three years after the tiling and everything else were finished. It would take me a just few hours to paint the damned ceiling and door. Still, I haven't done it.

I have only hung one picture. It's a map of Scotland. It used to hang in my office, then in my old bathroom. I'd gaze at it whilst I was on the bath and wonder where I'd travel to next.

However, in the past few months something has shifted. Maybe I've just accepted that this place is my fate for now. I've been using up some annual leave days this week. I've drunk coffee, lunched, seen friends and family, caught up with myself, slept.

I have also hung three pictures and painted my bathroom ceiling.

Maybe this place will be home soon.

Badly behaved.

On Friday night I did something that happens more often than I like. I got drunk. There, I said it.

I went to the pub. Tired, stressed, pissed off. The drinks flowed, and we were still there at closing. A friend owns the pub, so the doors were locked and on we sat. Talking nonsense.

I shared a cab home with two friends which somehow turned into a night cap in the one who is my neighbour's house.

Of the two of them, one I know well, the other not so well. The one I don't know so well, told me he 'fancies' me. This was a bolt from the blue. Particularly as, by that time, he'd been offered my spare room. I suspect it was beer talking, He came back to mine, played guitar, chatted. I remember him trying to kiss me, I remember saying it wasn't what I wanted, but he was ok to crash with me. I woke up yesterday morning with a very sore head and someone in my house.

My recollections of what happened are very hazy, at best. I feel ashamed and stressed by it.

I'm paranoid that I've let something slip that I shouldn't. Now, I don't know if I have or haven't. Maybe I am just being paranoid, It hate it that I drank that much, I hate that I behaved that way, I hate it that I'm not sure of the turn of events.

Either way, it makes me feel humiliated and worried.

Why do I do this to myself? I hate it. It's not healthy. Maybe I need to step away from these folk for a while. There's always someone who drinks too much.

I'm feeling paranoid whilst forgetting that all those in my company were behaving in the same way as me. Why we do always feel like we're the only one?

Nonetheless, how I'm feeling is compounded by the fact I haven't slept through a whole night for about two weeks now. Too much going on at work and in my head.

Anyway, I just need to off load some of my shame here in the hope that emptying my head of some it will help me sleep tonight. I have a huge day at work tomorrow and somehow I must find a way of switching off my brain and finding some rest.

I hate birthdays.

Tomorrow is my 36th birthday, and it's unwound me a bit. I'm in self pity mode and it's not pretty. I haven't slept properly for more than a week.


As much as I try to be pragmatic and positive about my life, I am lonely. I feel like i'm past my sell by date. Any notions I had about what I'd do with my life always and only extended to thinking about what I'd do before I got married and had kids.

Instead, I'm sitting here on Sunday morning with my laptop wondering what i'm going to do with my life.

My birthday always does this to me. It seems to serve as a marker of what I haven't done rather than what I have done. I'm embarrassed if ever there's fuss made. It brings out the very worst in me.