Not today.

It’s quite a gloomy day today.

 

Waking up to the morning sun streaming through my window seems to be long gone, in its place are charcoal clouds, slowly tumbling down the mountains that surround my tiled, quite cold, temporary place of residence..

 

I am not going for a run.

 

No.

Today, I am grappling with the age old human dilemma of purpose.

My purpose.

I can, at least to make myself feel better/more connected, make somewhat of an educated guess and say that a notable proportion of people will, at some point in their life, feel this ominous question arise..

As I am laying foundations right now for my foreseeable future, it is proving quite the challenge.

Seven years ago, however, it didn't seem quite so important.

My mind was elsewhere..

You see..

After my compulsory forty-four month enclosure had come to its long-awaited expiration, it was, as is now, a time to regroup and rebuild. However, as I had been excluded from society (coupled with the forced insertion and detainment in another not so welcome one)I yearned to simply return to what I had lost.

The coping mechanism I had employed for the first few years inside, was mentally shutting myself off from everything exterior to my dwelling. From my point of view, what I saw in front of me was all there was. I didn't want to hear about what was happening beyond the concrete walls of the 9th floor of the Manhattan Correctional Center, as it didn't apply to me, I had no stake in it, so did not want to be tortured by stories of a world full of colours, sights, sounds and opportunities that I could not play a part in.

Yet once sentencing had finally commenced (after thirty bloody months I might add) and a light had in fact been lit at what could only be described as, until now,  a telescopic funhouse tunnel that seemed to stretch and skew depending on which clown-faced lawyer was sat opposite me on the fifth floor attorney conference section of the jail, I had a date..

Which changed everything.

I could now dream..

I could fantasise..

(not like that you dirty bastard)

I could actually start to paint a picture of what may lie for me, what my kind of future I was returning to and what I wanted from my upcoming return..

Unless you are in for some kind of heinous crime worthy of jailhouse retribution, it is unlikely you will spend whatever period of time you have been kindly sentenced to, alone, without company. Great hardship can be forged into unbreakable bonds between human beings, bringing us closer and allowing one another to share burden and alleviate each others suffering..

Once the dial on my personal prison time had hit zero and I was whisked back to the shores of the United Kingdom, physically, I had left and it was time to start again..

Besides the constant Sepia filtered scenes of my New York,  repetitiously showing up in my dreams like an unobtainable internal montage more than likely distorted and exaggerated greatest hits, I was focused on what I wanted to do.

It was time to move on..

 

This is what I wanted to do.

To move on..

And normality was my answer.

I yearned for the normality of the life that I assumed was waiting for me.. 

The life that I had spent thousands of hours mentally piecing together, like a patchwork quilt, made of memories, photos and highly likely upon reflection, fabricated (but well wished) assumptions of how I would feel upon my return.

After all..

I would be back.

Surely that would be enough.

Even if it wasn't, if I managed to get through the previous four years, how hard could it be. Plus everyone knows that in society, you can always find people who have shared life experiences similar to your own, enabling you to find a sense of normality and belonging..

--

As i sit here..

On this dark, damp, soggy morning, peering out the window onto a khaki green coastal hillside..

Speckled with white stones, nestled in-between a vast miss-matched assortment of weathered trees and potentially paintable half-built, abandoned houses, serenaded by the traditional Turkish guitar or "bağlama"..

I am looking for answers.