I love him. But I cannot hold onto him forever. It seems inevitable that this fine being, with his dash of blond curls and hazelnut eyes, that he will discover more. Or worse, he will discover that I am not quite as special as he once believed. I will no longer be the apple of his eye, if I am even now.

We were encased in a bubble of security; a bubble of limited social boundaries primarily dominated by male testosterone and with only a sprinkle of female authority. He was young, he was naive, and he was part of the ‘system.’

Now he is older.
Now he is breaking out of the forms of his once 'perfect' conformity.
He is going to London.
He is going into the heart of civilisation, life, music, art, emotions, fun, happiness, fashion, enjoyment, academia.
He is going to explore the unknown depths of a world that he has only seen through the glare of the Television, on some dated and silly programme that portrays a fantasy lifestyle that no one can afford.

This is because I am bitter.

He was concerned about my coming here. He fretted and worried and angst over who I might meet, who might dazzle me, lead me astray, up and beyond this so-called ‘teenage love’ that I have with him. I objected, and only now do I begin to understand and experience the same concerns that he had for me. I have met people; I have gone to the very edge of what would be deemed ‘allowed’ or ‘appropriate’ when one is in a relationship with someone else. I have been there, and I dislike myself for it. Yet, I am also appreciative of what these experiences helped me to discover.

I always come back to him. I have to. He is the core of my being, of my very soul.

He is not simply ‘who I am with.’ He is who I am. He knows me inside out and I do not resent him for this.

He is my first love.

You are talking to a person,
This person may be a friend,
it might be someone who you are simply standing next to in a queue.
The awkward proximity palpable,
the expression of indifference to life.
You bring up the weather.

Why is that?
The weather or how tired you are. Of work, of life.
Two topics that strike up a kind of mutual understanding between one another.
We do not even try and attempt to learn something of vague significance or interest. We squander our chances of a friendship.
These 'people' are simply a new acquaintance for those two minutes of silence in the queue.
They fulfil the social criteria while you stand, uncomfortably, waiting to escape.
You are not unkind. You do not seek escape, your mind does. Yet it seizes on these other lonesome, wandering raffles of people.
Who will you draw? What will you draw?

"Thunder?" "Rain?" "A spell of sun in February in the north of England?"
"Never! It cannot be." "Something must be shifting in the universe's core. It MUST be happening, I know it!"
Or perhaps you are inclined to broach the more self-interested turn of conversation.

"Finally, it's Friday. Oh look, you're buying ***** too." "Gonna be a big one!" "I am so ready for the weekend after this busy week." "Don't bother mentioning your problems because, quite frankly, I am simply using you as an external shell of a person, removed from my immediate life and therefore apt as an excuse for me to complain deeply about how much I have to do compared to every other mortal in this long and tiresome life."

Does thou sound bitter?
Ha.
Maybe because it is raining today but I wanted to talk about the Malaysian Airlines plane that went missing over Vietnam or the see-through trial of that ******* Oscar Pistorius or the fact that innocent people are being blown up about 5 miles from where I lay my head down to sleep at night but let's not stray too far from normal, everyday converse towards my sleeping habits. No, maybe I wanted to talk about whether or not there is a God in this universe who actually lives and breathes through our very experiences or whether or not Buddhism is a way of life that I really want to embrace and whether or not you have equally been changed by a class of meditation. I want to hear about your opinions and your thoughts and your ideas and something that you have picked up on in the last week.

I don't want to know about the things that I can observe through my very own eyes.
That is where perception comes in. I want perspective. If you are going to talk about the weather, tell me why condensation forms when it rains against my bird-**** stained glass windows. Tell me why the clouds gather in such menacing shades of noir above my towering filing cabinet of apartments, tell me how the weather patterns are tracked and occur.

For the love of God, tell me how that Kinder Bueno got to be sitting there in that plastic shelf just a millimetre from the tip of my right index finger.

I sip and wait for the drop of semi-congealed Nescafe to hit my shrunken bag of a stomach.
Cigarettes and caffeine. How typical.
How obvious - is that the right term? - that these have become my survival remedies.
I am weak, sometimes stumble absentmindedly on the pavement, the jagged teeth like slabs catching my feet out.
People glance at my paled face. An echo of before, a walking vision of someone exhausted, ill or plain oblivious to the own destruction of their body.
They think that I am drunk.
I awkwardly regain my pace, feeling that child like shyness creeping back into my demeanour.
Then I run one tired, bacteria ridden finger along my blunt jaw. Ah. It feels good.

Inhibitions forgotten, perseverance in check.
My system turns its volume to mute as I sip more of the gloopy energy.
Hush now, I whisper internally.
Drawl on that stick of cancerous paper. Now every 30 minutes or so it takes its place between my dry, starved lips.
I am often described as quite a quiet, wet person. In this case, my strength is inward. I find tears for rebuke. I inspire concern and questioning but I do not feel their love in these remarks.
I turn the beauty of their words into hatred. I am in control. This is my body.
This is my mind.
This is my soul.
Only I can speak to that spiritual beast that I keep locked away in the caged remains of my skill.
How dare you question my choices I scream!

My strength to 'outdo' them is renewed. The beast grows while I shrink. He feeds on my sense of self pity and self worth. More. More.
I shrink from my own invention. I hide from it. I can only go on so much longer before I cannot face him anymore.

Frontal. Temporal. Back. Whatever lobe you want, he now sinks his contrastingly fleshy claws into them.
This cage has four sides to it; all now useless to me. All now given over to this beast. They reflect into the whirlwind of my conscience. Conflicting. Opposing.

Nature versus man.
Natural versus the mind.

Theres is no key to the lock on my cage.
Recovery. Falter. Healing. Falter. Faith. Rejection.
Back and forth. Back and forth.

What is the point?

My main stream of thought to anyone who questions my diet of caffeine and nicotine, my withering appearance, my paranoia fuelled actions, my distinct inability to accept their concern is;

You liars.

This life is long
It can be lonely
It can be scary
It can be disappointing
Frustrating
Terrifying
Ludicrous
Unkind

It was an average day in May
I think that’s right, I hope that’s right.
For it was an important day, that day.

The sun beat down on my wearied shoulders
As I made the repetitive journey
Up and down that sloping hill
The one that we would later come to stumble up together
Do you remember that?
The mud clad ascent
‘Rock climbing’ by the river
Bent double in hysterics,
Hysteria that is now past recollection

How easy I am for you to draw in
when you laugh
Like that time I couldn’t contain myself
and snorted as a pig does when it finds itself excited
How I feared your reaction!
My innermost psyche cowering from you until I could not hide it anymore.
You thought I was frightened by the alien world of the cinema screen.

The next time that I feared for us was in your room.
How I adored and envied your
nerve as you kissed me
surrounded by all of your childhood dreams and fantasies
seconds away from a definite exclusion

I was yours and that was enough
I yearned, longed, wished for time to stand still, unmoving
As we whirled around among the gentle shards of grass
as it grazed our harmonious ankles.
Clasping each other, in that first summer,
young hearts
nervous of the power of this new emotion,
emotions.
Coursing through our arteries, catching on our breath,
seeping through our skin.
I guess this explains our hesitation at my house the first time that you stayed over.

Feelings I first discovered in that first month,
May 2012.
I was weak to your simple philosophy for life
Your extraordinary ability to shed new light
on every subject that passed our lips.
You unpeeled my exterior layer
Like an orange.
My core, penetrated only once before,
negative, unforgiving. Now harder than ever.
With complete and utter happiness
I let the walls fall down.

And now, how warm the coldest of nights are.
I would bare any amount of the cold to be besides you.
Even when I drool on your chest and you don’t mind.
The laughter that explodes when you impersonate people
Or say ‘boom’ in a funny context.
To feel the alluring taste of your breath on my neck
As you smile and tell me you that you love me.

Such simply things.

"How my stomach floods with waves of nostalgia and a taste
of everything that we have had to live without."
But I can wait.

Kindness is the soapy bubble that will not burst
The petal that remains glued to the emerald stalk
The ray of sunshine that peeps through the holes in the dust covered blinds
The last glucose induced jelly sweet in the crumpled packet
The man who moves side ways to allow you to walk around the unquestionably deep puddle

Wait.
Now I am talking about acts of kindness,
which is something rather different.
Something rather sparse in this age that we inhabit.

A wise man once told me not to focus on the negative aspects of life,
but rather to dwell on the good things.
'Easier said than done', I pessimistically replied.
'God what a miserable old cow', he must have thought.  
Since being in this place,
this new, vibrant, alive city
the one with the twelve different smiles,
where language is not a barrier between people
where they help each other for the sake of kindness.
For the sake of their religion, their god, their consciences.

Ultimately that is what conscience is, and where it comes from.
From within, from the conscience.
Kindness is an act of will. Of love through us. Put into action by our brains.
Irrespective of logic, rationale, or any other morality.
To be kind, is to respect another's wishes and position in society.

To see them as another human being with feeling and emotion.
With the ability to return your kindness or reject it.

Observation, not criticism