Correspondence From Limbo

This is the first diary post I ever wrote.

I wrote it almost two years ago, after going through a strange break-up with a person I had been seeing for a few months. The ending of that relationship affected the piece, causing it to take on a bizarre, fatalist tone. I’m not overly worried about the tone of this piece: I often feel that my best work is usually at least a little bit melancholic in some way.

Before I share the piece with you, allow me to talk about style.

Something I’ve noticed over the past few months that I’ve been working on this blog, is that I am yet to develop a set style. In fact, I’ve realized that within my diaries, and to a lesser extent some of my reviews, I tend to ape other people’s styles, mostly whoever it is that I last read. Take my diary on Paris, which I wrote while re-reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in The Woods, or my as-of-yet unpublished review of Doom: Eternal which was heavily influenced in both style and tone by the video essays of Noah Caldwell-Gervais.

It feels like I assume other people’s styles like gloves, wearing and later discarding them when I no longer need them or find that they don’t quite fit, only to replace them with something new. I don’t know if this constant borrowing of other’s style is necessarily a bad thing; it has allowed me to experiment and try new things (my Paris diary was essentially my attempt to write a travelogue), but at the same time I fear it will stop me from developing my own unique style. One day I hope to feel confident to write something of my own without the need to have examined and consumed someone else’s work first. But, alas, today does not seem to be that day.

Within this piece, the influence of another writer can be seen. I wrote this with the explicit intention of seeing if I could copy the style of one of my inspirations, Paul Dean. I wanted to see if I could capture the same sort of magic that he put into his own work, if I could write something as powerful as his piece on “On Immigration” (the themes of which he would later revisit and expand upon in a series of free-to-read posts on his Patreon). I don’t think I quite reached the heights of Deans work, but I do know that I gave it a go.

I’m going to finish my ramble and let you read this diary entry. It’s largely the same from when I originally wrote it two years ago, although I have made some edits to make it more readable, as well as some other miscellaneous changes such as the title (the piece was originally called January 15th).

I hope you enjoy.

–

I want to recount a story, simply because I want to see if I can. I want to see if I can write an essay about something that happened to me from memory alone, to see if I can capture the emotions I felt in words, if I can pass them on to other people. I am aware that this feels like I am oversharing, something that I often worry that I do, but I feel that this, as an exercise, is an important thing to do, to train and develop my ability as a writer. If you will join me, I will now recount what I feel might be the loneliest night of my existence, how I ended up drinking in a bar alone, and the realisation that I came to.

This happened on a day which should have been like any other, which started well but somehow ended with me stumbling through the streets of Canterbury alone, lost in a depressive haze so thick that paths I’d walked a thousand times before were strange and unfamiliar to me. I remember certain parts vividly, They flash before my eyes like fireworks, each one another regret that has the potential to stay with me for the rest of my days. I remember walking through twisting streets and down back alley’s, searching for something, anything, to distract myself from the loneliness I felt.

–

 On my lengthy expedition, coat drawn up against the cold, I walked past a café, transformed for the night into a dancing school. Tables and chairs where piled up at the side of the room to create an empty space. Couples glided across the vacant floor, turning this way and that, flashing eyes and smiles at each other, locked in a feeling of bliss that belonged to the two of them, and just them, which no one could intrude upon. The door of the café was open, and music tumbled out onto the street. I can still hear it faintly when I close my eyes. I thought about stopping for a moment, of watching and maybe even entering, dancing among them, laughing and smiling with these people who I didn’t know. But plans made in the pitch of night don’t often succeed. A man, leaning against the open door, smoking a cigarette with an angry look on his face, glaring at me, dispelled any plans that I might have. It was in that moment that I realized how ridiculous I was, wishing to enter a place that I didn’t know and fraternize with unfamiliar faces. To interrupt a moment of bliss that belonged to other people. I averted my eyes and hurried on, away from the music, away from the dancing.

Away from the warmth.

–

The next place I saw was a Premier Inn, standing on the side of the road. It looked both out of place and perfectly appropriate to be there, a strange conundrum in the form of a building. I had only ever seen chain hotels by roadsides in the middle of nowhere or in sub-urban areas, and I remember finding it’s presence close to a city center strange, almost alien. As soon as I saw it thoughts sprang to my mind: of locking myself away where nobody knew me, of seeing what would happen if I simply were to disappear. But in the end I turned my back on those thoughts, and the hotel, and headed into the town center instead.

–

I came to the Seven Stars near the end of my travels, feeling empty and alone. It was relatively warm in the pub, and after shedding my coat I ordered an overly expensive rum and coke, which I sat and drank by myself. I sat in a corner far enough away to be alone, but close enough that I felt like people were around me. I scanned the pub, hoping to recognise some one who I could talk to, someone who could help me keep the darkness at bay. I thought I recognised someone, an almost-friend who I hadn’t spoken to for at least six months. I didn’t approach him, however, anxiety and depression and dark, twisted thoughts keeping chained to my seat away from everyone else. Instead, I decided to read an essay by one of my favourite writers, a man who had inspired me to start writing myself. It detailed how upset he was that he couldn’t write at this moment in time, due to being struck down by migraines and illnesses and other defaults in these horribly inefficient bodies of ours. Instead of doing the planned writing, he instead recounted a nightmare that he had had a few days prior. A nightmare of being lost underground with an unpleasant, manipulative person, of finding the surface, of it being an apocalyptic hellscape, and of waking up. And it affected me, like all his writing does. I sat in the bar, alone, reading this piece and drinking a rum and coke alone, and hoping that this do was a dream and that I’d wake up.

–

I left after I had finished my drink. I didn’t have another one, concluding that both myself and my wallet would be better off without it. My head was full of ideas and plans and thoughts, some dark, some not. I stumbled through shadowy streets, past closed shops and open bars, past people lying in gutters with nowhere to go and people having left the theater wondering where they would go. They all ignored me as I staggered past.

And headed home.