John Martin

John Martin
Great Day of his Wrath

Monday 5 October 2009

Change.

Revisiting the past can be a sketchy idea but occasionally digging back down again can be a fruitful exercise. So this is a little something based on some writing a while back now that I’ve redrafted a bit from the original.

Thinking about all the idiotic shit that happened, it’s absolutely nothing to me now. About as substantial as smoke in the wind. Originally it seemed like a thick mist wrapping itself around everything and suffocating the enjoyment out of anything that was previously life affirming.
Realising that the only way out is through perseverance, grinding and fighting against anything that tries to make you submit to being the persecuted. Also knowing there’s no point in wallowing in negativity, absolutely had to make an effort to improve the situation.

There’s always a trace of it all left behind though, but I’d rather deal with that than yours piled up around my neck as well. Analogies about piles of stinking fucking shite apply very well here but let’s not resort to base crudeness. To be honest, all the anger I had about everything was pointless because you didn’t deserve a single bit of it. Not that I shouldn’t’t have been angry for what happened because I had every right to be that way, just that continually wasting my efforts on you was like punching myself in the face over and over again.

Apparently everything had moved on but obviously not from the way things kept on repeating around in circles. Maybe all parties involved were deluding themselves to various degrees about everything but I know for a fact that I was trying to find some salvation elsewhere. An ocean between us all wouldn’t’t have been enough to make me feel like I’d put enough distance in. But I was well aware that going back around that circle of hate and screaming would do nothing good for me, I kept hearing how you were happier now but from what I saw you were still bitter about everything that went wrong. I was losing myself and my worries caused by all this by curing it with good company, good tunes and good times, maybe a little too much indulgence but a little hedonism never hurt too much. All that I saw in return was like watching someone never getting off the starting line in some aspects despite having run a mile as soon as the gun goes off. Even though I felt disgusted by it, I did feel genuinely sorry for some things that had happened and just craved a return to some sort of equilibrium for everyone. Even if all bonds were broken and all bridges burned by the process.

I didn’t need anyone anymore to make me feel like I was complete, I wasn’t like that anymore and I hoped to fucking christ that you had changed too but a lot of the time I very much doubted that being honest. The shadow of the past should not hold the future hostage; living for the here and now once again was like being reborn and casting away my ashes.

A new beginning born of fire.

Seemed like every time I got up from the floor I just got verbally and emotionally kicked back down again though, I wasn’t sure what the need for the aggression and hate was. I wasn’t aware I had done anything that bad. I’m definitely all too human and not an angelic figure of perfection but all I had attempted to be was a good man. To do the right thing for myself and people around me was what I attempted to do as much as possible. So now I was just having a good time feeling and enjoying life as an act of engaging in pleasure and self improvement whilst apparently other people were still static and grounded to previous misfortunes. Still wanting to drag other people down back with them. It reminded me of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain, watching it roll down again and repeating the same act ad infinitum & Ad nauseam. Except unlike Camus’s interpretation of the condemned Greek monarch there was no acceptance of the absurdness of the situation which might possibly lead to a tragic and conscious realisation of it all. This in turn could lead to some form of progress or subjective meaning. Just someone mindlessly pushing their boulder without any thought, machine like. I wanted to see that cycle end.


Living in the present would benefit everyone involved.

I’d used up all the pain as fuel to keep myself going as fast as possible out of there. Trying to remain stronger than what was happening inside and outside. Even embraced all the anger and hate to try making sense at all and squeeze something positive out of it, can’t pretend things were ideal. That would be an outright lie. This didn’t mean however that I couldn’t and still to a much diminished extent, snap. Because everyone gets what’s due to them in time and there’s no escaping that. Even if you think you got away without a scratch.

One day some people will wake up and regret all the negativity and wasted energy spent on nothing but destructive and non constructive anger, I know I did. Because when you realise that you’re slowly running out of sand in your timer and that cloaked figure is waiting tapping his foot to a beat you can’t hear or feel. There’s nothing you can do to go back and change how things happen or live as a better person. So the sooner you change the better life you‘ll lead.


It’s always easier to keep trudging downwards than travel up to somewhere better but the further down you dig the deeper the hole you have to climb out of. So keep on pushing and the road drops away back behind you faster than you realise. All of you that should be left there is your footprints. Leave nothing there and there is nothing to drag you back down there to collect it again. (I fully admit taking several trips back down to that place before I left it for the last time.) Then time will gradually erode away the evidence of you having been there before.

Conclusion? Maybe.

At the end of all this, this ridiculous act in the drama of life. Because that’s all it was, reflecting on who changed in what ways and was it for the better? All I can think is that now I’m possibly off the stage and I’m the playwright scripting my own lines for myself. You’re still acting like the hero of your own tragedy but don’t seem to realise that the curtains are closed and the lights have dimmed, there’s no one there to be the audience now so all this theatre and acting?

Purely for yourself. Lose your sense of grandeur for fucks sake.


So I sat down with my demons and we grabbed some beers, and then had ten more. Indulged in every possible route of pleasure and distraction until the break of dawn and then some. Whilst you all kept on sleeping with yours and not ever working it out. At the end of the night in the light of a new day we all split our separate ways and I know I’m better off now, whether you are or not is a different question but that’s your prerogative not mine anymore.

So let’s live life to make it the best and fullest it can be and not live with the past on anyone’s shoulders anymore.
Spin things out as much as you want but I’m living for me now.

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