I am on the way home and have been walking through a part of my life that I have not seen for a while.
Three or four "Bernie Worlds" collided tonight in a really good way.
Every time I am around the stretch of London that runs from Brick Lane to Mile End I get transported back in time. I forget for a few minutes that I have a home, a family and purpose and instead drift back to when I lived in this area and did not know where I was going the next day let alone five years time.
I still don't know where I'll be in five years time - other than somewhere with #Supercoolwife and #Babybernie - but this time round I know how to adapt and can see where the puck is going. Even better I know how to learn what to do if the puck changes direction suddenly. I just read that again and it occurs to me that I know the puck will change direction so no need to spend energy getting disappointed when it does.
This area is layer upon layer of chemical highs, emotional lows, learning and laughs. I do sometimes wish I'd drank and snorted a little bit less so I could have made use of all the amazing things around here. Back then the most important appointments of my week were Break for the Border on a Thursday night and making the lock in at the Oporto pub near West Ferry station.
We drank a lot of vodka, tequila and alka seltzer, usually in that order. If I have a sip of tequila nowadays I am instantly transported back to slamming glasses on the bar at Break for the Border and screaming Again! Again! Then handing over my already maxed out Barclaycard and hoping it would work. I think I am still paying the interest on those drinks twenty years later.....
I am glad to say that more than a handful of the people who were smashing down glasses with me are still around and probably reading this, although I think we drink more green tea than tequila these days.
And I look forward to waking up in the morning more in 2015 than I ever have done in my life. "back in the day" (is it me or is everyone suddenly saying that this week?) I had to make everything an "event" even little things could be "eventified" I could turn going to buy a loaf of bread into a pub crawl.
If we'd had Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in those days I would have been a nightmare, I think I used SMS like we use Twitter today! |
Now I feel like I have woken up, it is like I went for a big weekender and woke up with a beautiful wife and child instead of a throbbing hangover. I can't believe my luck and I have been working on connecting to the enormous amount of gratitude available here with Amelie, my therapist.
I was talking with Amelie about the level of euphoria I experience when cooking with #babybernie and #supercoolwife - it is a million more times rewarding and less frightening than the highs I experienced in the middle of dance floors totally off my face.
But I recognise the feeling in my brain. I never want it to end, and where I am now there is not that fear of it ending, there is no man on a moped with a satchel of drugs to hunt down to get back the feeling again.
