DAYLIGHT FADING

seven | you were an island and i passed you by

“A warning sign, it came back to haunt me and I realised, that you were an island and I passed you by, you were an island to discover

Come on in, I’ve gotta tell you what a state I’m in, I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones, that I started looking for a warning sign”

This is for my closest friend, not a lover. Someone who didn’t mind if I wandered as long as I came back and didn’t laugh at me if I got hurt. Someone who would’ve been here if I had perhaps been braver, a little more ready to damn the consequences.

“When the truth is, I miss you, yeah the truth is, I miss you so, and I’m tired, I should not have let you go

So I crawl back into your open arms, yes I crawl back into your open arms, and I crawl back into your open arms, yes I crawl back into your open arms”

Everyone will take those last four lines as something romantic when they’re not, but I don’t really care. I didn’t play it for them. I didn’t even play it for Adam. This is mine.

I set my guitar back onto its stand and turn off the camera. Taking the USB cable from the little bag that my camera goes in, I connect it up to my computer and open up Windows Movie Maker, just to trim the start and end bits off where I’m turning on the camera.

I log onto the YouTube account I used to use before I was Angel and upload the video. I don’t add an explanation or a description. I am who I am and if people can’t hear what they’re listening to, then they can fuck off.

I go back onto that old Twitter account and just link to the YouTube video. People will see the old account and be curious. They can watch it if they want. They can fucking hate it if they want. But thank god, I’m not Angel anymore.

I switch off my computer, not really remembering if I had any actual reason to go on it in the first place. I simply stare at my wall, taking in the photos. Perhaps we all miss our chances to have the things that would make life a little more bearable through our fear.

The idea of lying in the bed I’ve made for myself brings a bitter taste to my mouth. I’ve spent the last two years getting torn and scratched by all of the nails in that metaphorical mattress and those damned photos just increase the heavy pang of longing for a time when the bed I had was remarkably soft.

There’s a catch with the metaphorical mattress though – every time you think you’ve finally made it soft, you roll over and you find a nail in the place you least expected to find it.

Seb warned me that I shouldn’t go anywhere Adam could find me but there’s only one place for me to go to. It seems to make sense that I go full circle – the place I left behind is the place I begin again: Eastfields, a small seaside village on the Norfolk coast, a 10 minute drive from Great Yarmouth.

Perhaps I will end up regretting it, maybe the happy memories I have will become ghosts and haunt me with what could have been, but I have to try to make sense of who I want to be now. I’ve got the open road in front of me but now that I’m here I’m not really sure what to do with it.

Of course I thought about what I’d do after I wasn’t Angel but I never put anything down in concrete. I never considered actual logistics. I just wanted to play music I believed in again. I acted more like an eager puppy than an adult – I thought I could jump straight back in, but things need to die down. I need to give Angel a bit of time to go away before I become me again.

I grin at the thought of another tattoo idea, before reprimanding myself as I already have too many. I may have been a tattoo virgin up until three days ago but if I got every tattoo I wanted I think I’d need three bodies.