After the wedding Sam and I went on holiday to Whitstable in Kent. We were so happy. The sun shone every day. We ate the most incredible seafood.
We moved to London. We got jobs. A car. A joint bank account. A cat who peed on everything then ran away. We called her Margaret Scratcher. We settled into a routine. We saw less and less of each other. We were tired. We argued. We argued about money. We argued about whether we wanted to live in the city or the countryside. We argued about whether or not we should start a family.
We had one argument in particular.
Sam suggested that I talk to someone. Professionally.
That made me so angry. I knew what depression was and I knew I was fine.
I had a study at home and I’d sit in there, listening to records and reading the sleeve notes.
The lives of other people have always fascinated me. I always read the liner notes in record sleeves. The trials and traumas behind the music. Tortured geniuses.
Weldon Irvine. Albert Ayler. Ronnie Singer. Donny Hathaway. Amazing musicians. All took their own lives.
I’m so grateful to be ordinary.
Sam told me I was becoming morose. That I was isolating myself. Wallowing.
She encouraged me to carry on with the list, but I found it hard to notice new things.
826978
826978
826978
The list ended, just one hundred and seventy three thousand and twenty two short of a million. It was finished. So I boxed it up and threw it all away.
I sat in my study. Sam packed her things. I helped her carry boxes to her car. I stood in our doorway and she looked at me from the car.
That horrible feeling when something is broken and can’t ever be fixed. The trapdoor swinging open. Fight or flight or stay as still as you can.
I’d been feeling like that for a long time.
I watched her drive away.
She left me a note, written in an album sleeve. She knew that when I wanted to think of her I’d look for the Daniel Johnston song she sang at my parent’s house and, as always I’d sit and read through the record sleeve.
Sam’s note said that she loved me and that when I was ready we should try again. But I didn’t find the note for seven years.
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unknown author
author unknown
published here without permission.
I don’t know who the author is but I know it's greater than the sum of its parts.
I found this on a discarded folded piece of paper in the Chemistry department the other-other day. It reached out and got my attention somehow, got me to read these words. Now I’m sharing them with you. word.
If you know who wrote this let me know.
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ps:
thank you Alistair for pointing out that the folded discarded page I picked up was a just a slice of the story "Every Brilliant Thing" the book, the play, the movie of the play, the adaptation of the facebook group into the play into the movie
word
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