The Accident

The following was written not long after the accident. It was adapted for something else, but it was based entirely upon my memories. In it Jon is removed and Roby is changed to be a young woman called Ann. My part is played by a young man called Matt. It wasn't raining.

It's the closest I have to a written transcript of what happened from the time.

One second can change your life.

For an instant Ann was perfect. Her back was ram-rod straight, her body a flow of smooth lines and blurred action. The water in her hair glistened in the light, like a sprinkling of jewels and the rain fell in a halo around her. She positively glowed with movement and energy. Her sharp blue eyes were boring into him, her face was a mask of fury.

She suddenly seemed to notice the car beside her and in mid motion she snapped her head around to stare at it. The bumper hit her across the knees, sending her sprawling forward in a wave. Her thighs touched the front of the radiator. Her belly touched the bonnet. Her head landed just short of the windscreen. Her left hand continued it’s lazy swing to casually graze the glass, sending jagged lines shooting across its surface.

One second and your life is changed. It has happened so suddenly that you don’t even realise until it’s over.

The car’s brakes squealed, slowing it almost to a stand still. Just as quickly as she’d touched it, Ann left the car’s surface. She cart-wheeled through the air, her body turning in the rain. A foot caught the ground. Only one, but it was enough to send her crashing to the tarmac in a sickening crunch. She bounced. Her body spun in the air until she was facing the car, her legs away from Matt. That was about all he had a chance to see before she bounced again. Her body flipped in the air in the long instant before she hit for the third and final time. She slid. Her hair was dragged away from her face to lie in a fan behind her.

Two seconds and now finally your brain can start to catch up with the images that were, and still are, assaulting it.

Everything came to a stand still. The car stood stock still in the rain, two faces starring out from the front seat in the dim lamplight, rain bouncing off it in a steady patter. Ann lay nearly ten feet from where she’d started. A small pool of water, possibly blood, grew around her.

Nothing moved. Nothing at all, and for that instant it was as if the world had paused to consider what had just happened. Matt considered with it, his mind running back and forth across the memory a thousand times in the blink of an eye until he could comprehend what it actually meant.

Three seconds and now your brain is fully up to date with reality but, unable to cope with the completeness of the change, it immediately tries to discard it.

‘That must have hurt,’ thought Matt. ‘Thank God it didn’t happen.’

The rain ran through his short blond hair and continued down into the space between his upturned collar and the back of his neck, drenching his already wet back. He continued to stare at the scene before him but something seemed wrong somehow. The calm in his head seemed to have been defined by something and it was slowly starting to crumple up into him.

Four seconds and you suddenly realise that your life has changed and that you need to be able to function within its change. Given no other option you force yourself to accept something it can’t even comprehend through sheer force of will alone.

“Oh shit,” he heard himself say. As if that was the catalyst the remains of his denial vanished from beneath him and an overwhelming panic threatened to engulf him. A thousand options and thoughts flashed through his mind and disappeared before he could firmly grasp on to any of them. He didn’t know what to do, or even how to do it. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breath.

Five seconds and your life has been changed. Maybe it has even been destroyed.

Deal with it.

This Story Starts...

This story starts over 11 years ago in a night of blood and tears in a far away land. It starts with a screech of brakes and two unconscious bodies bouncing down a road.

This story starts with a young man called Cameron who was left to cope with two hospitalised friends in up state New York, when it was all he could do to cross a road, or get in a car. The simple truth of the matter is that he couldn't, and didn't, cope. He was having trouble processing the events and his involvement (or lack there of) in them.

This story starts with him referring to the parents of a friend as 'Mama and Papa' because he needed to cede responsibility to them and it was the only way to trust them. It starts with him playing Spyro endlessly (helped by the lack of a memory card, so he had to start from scratch every single night) because it meant he could leave the world behind and be something else for a while.

This story starts with a bargain, because denial only lasted for the length of a thought. Because you do what you have to to survive and then you pay the price.

This story starts at University, where we get the chance to reinvent ourselves. We arrive as blank slates and have the best chance we'll ever get to stretch our wings in as many new directions as we want, and he was the perfect student in that regard. He used the opportunity to overhaul his personality, to fix the 'mistakes' he made in America.

This story starts with him deciding to be the perfect friend. He would always be approachable, always be friendly. He would re-brand myself as 'Cam' because it sounded friendlier. He took a piece of bargaining and created a whole new personality around it, and then He tried to be that person and bury himself beneath it.

I believe the technical term for it is dis-associative personality disorder, but it's more commonly known as having multiple personalities.

Cameron and Cam. They're similar, so similar I doubt anyone else will notice the change, but I can draw a distinct line between them in my head. As Cameron I feel relaxed, I am me. I'm happy and I can look forward in my life. I take up space in the world, and I can look at my life and change what comes next. As Cam I feel tight, worried. I feel very little, but when I do it's generally unhappy. I'm stuck here and now just coping with the world around me. I'm just trying not to hurt too many people on the way through.

But I understand it now. I see what was wrong with me, and how to fix it. It'll take some time, and there's some unexpected surprises - Cam's got over the accident, Cameron not so much - but the surprises are worth the problems. It's interesting to poke the pieces of my brain to see how it reacts now. To see what happens next.

This story starts over 9 months ago in a fortnight of new beginnings. It starts with the folding of two separate lives into one space, and the closure of the bits that no longer fitted.

This story starts with a man called Cam, a nice guy by all accounts but not necessarily a real one, who made a resolution to improve his life a little bit each day, never knowing that the the resolution wasn't his and the improvements would lead to his own self-destruction.

This story starts with an opportunity, maybe not the best one but certainly not the worst, to leave reality behind for a weekend and come back as someone new. It starts with the right word by the right person at the right time in the right place to knock everything for six.

This story starts right now. What's next?

Stall

At this point you've probably noticed that despite all my optimism to begin with, the re-invention of the blog has, well, stopped. Straight out the gate.

The problem I'm having is that I'm not entirely sure what to write about. I mean I still have a historical stock of entries to add in - if I could find the journal. Even if I could find it, I don't really want to go backwards before I understand exactly how I can go forwards. Before I understand what I need to do to go forwards.

I've thought about a couple of ways it could go. I was seriously considering writing about perspective, and how moving away from something gives you a better look at it. My basic point was that going to London allowed me to look at my life with the perspective of being removed from it.

The truth of the matter is that really I needed perspective on the blog first. I don't plan to update this every day, for a start I don't really have time, and I don't want to set myself to some arbitrary timetable.

In other words I need this/these blogs to fit into my life, rather than the other way around. It's possible, but for now it needs some more work in my head. I need some way of moulding it towards the quasi-formed catharsis I want it to be.

So I finally decided the best thing to do would be to write that and explain exactly why I wasn't updating. It's just that as soon as I started this occured. Complete, argued and self-contradictory.

Because as much as I needed perspective to try and work out what I was trying to do, it turns out the best way to use this blog is just to sit down and start writing.

A marvellous beginning and a magical ending.

13/08/07

Today I discovered that I'll be in London for over a year now. It feels like I should chart this journey, and journey it is, hence the creation of this blog. But I should explain first.

I have a great life in Southampton which I enjoy. But that's always been about the people and not the place. Southampton doesn't fit me. It honestly never has. I enjoy my time there, I like the place, but it's not me.

My time is spent seeing friends and using my computer. The gym took up time for a while, but there are gyms everywhere. I have nothing that really ties me to Southampton. To the south coast in fact. Not since my parents moved to Scotland a year ago anyway. Just a job and some friends. The majority of my time is spent on the computer and two months ago I wiped the entire thing. Everything gone in a second. Well, a Microsoft second so really it was about an hour or so. But whatever.

I saw Sam on saturday and she suggested it was fate, or a subconscious desire. I'm happy to accept either. All I know is that it probably needed to be done. Otherwise I'd never really be free of the the machine.

But now I find myself far from home, with not just one but two mobile phones and a laptop. I have no internet connection and I have no one to call. I am free of the modern world.
For five days a week anyway.

*****

I've started to suspect that there is something wrong with me. Some flaw buried deep in my psyche. Not too long ago I was forced to accept that there is no such thing as magic. Obvious I know, but it was still something that I hadn't really accepted before. Even now I catch myself pretending and hoping that it's not true. It's a realisation that both depresses and enlivens me.

Because there are some truths that are buried so deep, and are so obvious to us, that we never really question them. We don't even really think about them. They are such a part of us that an entire section of our self, our inner being, is based upon them. So we can't refute them because to do so would be to refute ourselves.

But sometimes something happens. It may be huge and spectacular - a raging shower of fire and blood - or it might just be a tiny moment of introspection. It could be anywhere in between. But when it does happen it forces us to pull out one of those buried truths and take a long hard look.

If we're lucky that truth is still true. If we're less lucky it's nearly true, it just requires a bit of tweaking. If we're unlucky it's plain wrong, and a piece of our personality breaks free.

There's no such thing as magic. Such a simple lie, and yet so profound to me. So much of who I am was based upon it and I didn't even realise I fundamentally believed that magic existed. All around me if I could only see it.

At first I thought that was it, I just had to accept that and let me mind settle back into a new (hopefully better) place. Unfortunately it appears that it's worse than that. You see that's not the problem. It was a problem certainly, but not the problem.

I'm not the person that I want to be. Not yet anyway. I like the person I am, but it feels transitionary. A stepping stone between here and there. I just need to get there. I want to get there, I just don't know how. Or even where there is. I still don't. And that's the journey. That's what this year is going to be about. Getting there. Or somewhere close to it. Or even just on the way to it would do.

So here I am, cut lose from my life for long chunks of time, but still tied to it. Lost in my own mind and all the many personas I've created there (more on that another time) and yet grounded in reality by the very mundanity of my job. Alone in London and yet surrounded by people - friends, family and the faceless millions. No clear goals and no way to achieve them, but a thousand possibilities if I'm willing to risk it.

The Past is Prologue, let the play begin!