Valentuesday

Ever have those mornings when you look at yourself in the mirror when you're brushing your teeth and wonder what on earth it is that people seem to see in you when they tell you they think you're hot, that you've got a great body, that you're funny, clever and witty and what you see is some haggered man getting older a little faster than he'd like not seeing the brilliant sparkle other people say they see in his eye, but a slightly lonely, slightly frightened, slightly hollow expression that can disappear in a flash when he feels other people want to see him smile?

I wish I could be flippant and say, "Me neither."

I guess today is the kind of day when this sort of thinking is inevitable. A day when we celebrate relationships and love and hey, you can't help but look at your own situation. So here I am once again struck how I always seek to go to extremes in life, how it's never good enough to be the same as the people around me, to have a normal, quiet life, how when I have that I deliberately disrupt it so I can have the stimulation I need to keep me going.

I recognise that life is about ups and downs, but my wheel of life seems to be a yo-yo and I wish I could be happier to have those quiet moments when nothing much is going on, rather than everthing being apex or nadir. Vertex or vortice. At the gym today, picking up and putting down heavy things for an hour just seemed like an utterly futile exercise in wasted time, so I ran for half an hour and then did some yoga, realising my stress levels were escalating. I started doing some breathing meditation, counting my breaths and sitting in the lotus position while people grunted and sweated around me, trying to lose myself in the flowing river of now, but probably looking like some gaunt twat sitting on the floor.

My weight's down again, seeing that I was below 87kg really sent my anxiety rocketing. I was 98 kg last Summer and I was much stronger than I am now. Now, I'm fitter, I do a lot more work at the gym, so the strength I have is useful. I eat better and my health is good, even if stress at the moment seems to make me crave cigarettes for that little tiny act of self-destruction that consumes five minutes each time.

You can't do anything about the past, and regret is the only sin that has meaning, but to look forward, perhaps I should accept that if you chase rainbows, you find thunder.

It's how I live, it's what I have become. A fugitive from history, burned by lightning, soaked by rain.