Monday

11:29
By the end of today we're having a confessional. Fuck.

21:47
we were going to have Monday confessional but it's not that worth it. I got drunk. I did what people do when they're drunk.

Profess undying love to someone, kiss another person and make friends with a homeless person.

22:27
It's odd when you have the night at your parents home with nothing to do.

You start to go through old boxes of stuff. Stuff from so many years ago.

Fuck.

Memories are so painful. They're shit.

People who insist that they will have no regrets in life usually say it as some sort of verbal insurance policy because they know that later on they will come to regret whatever it is they said they wouldn't.

I know this because when I look back through old diaries and books, journals and notepads; regret just seems to fill every page.

I wish I'd studied harder at University.
I wish I'd not behaved the way I had in some circumstances.

I really wish I knew then what I know now.
I wish I'd listened.

But what can you do? Feeling regret at the past is so awful because you cannot change it and you cannot undo it.

You can just hope that you won't make the same mistakes again. But life is cruel which is why you do make the same mistakes again.

I wish I hadn't been such a shit to some people. I wish I hadn't let other people get to me like they did.

I wish that sometimes I'd followed my instinct. I wish that on other occasions I wasn't so impulsive.

The problem with life is that it gets in the way. I have spent too much time letting things get in the way.

You page through old diaries and read entries like "meet C for drink at 18.30".

"C" was my first boyfriend. But for my own sake he was called "C" incase my parents should page through my diary.

When "C" and I first met I didn't have loved ones to share the experience with because no-one knew.

Sure, friends would know but I would spend the day out with "C", get home and lie to my parents about what I had been doing when I was eager to tell them of this lovely guy I'd met.

Having my sister around was difficult too.

We haven't spoken since March.

Whereas I seem to saddle myself under the weight of regret, my sister has managed to lodge herself under the burden of years of resentment about me. She is three years younger.

Some of her greatest hits have included, at lunch the last time we spoke, she proclaimed, "I just want to say that my life was really great when Bobby wasn't around."

Or another gem one evening over dinner.

Me, my sister and my mum and dad. After a long pause in the conversation, where we were probably discussing the weather, she declared, "I mean it's pretty obvious that Bobby is gay so I dunno why you two are pretending to think otherwise."

To my dad, gay men are poofs so you can imagine how her remark was as welcome as a bucket of cold sick.

Everyone carried on eating as if nothing had happened. It was slightly ridiculous.

That was in the past and everyone knows now.

I mention my sister and what happened because it helps to understand why he was simply called "C".

So it's funny when you're sitting on your bedroom floor at home, going through old things and your mum pokes her head around the door and asks if eveything is okay.

"Yeah, it's funny to look through all this old stuff..."

And if you were to look you would see someone sitting on the floor paging through old books. Which is probably what my parents see.

What I experience is looking back over years old heartache and regret and difficulties, wonderful times, smiles and happiness.

And that seems to be so difficult. The two people who should have shared in a lot of what's happened in my life, don't have a clue.

22:47
Do you mind if I change the subject for a moment and extol the virtues of classical music?

I have found a CD boxset of Rachmaninov which I know is a little pretentious-sounding but screw it.

I think people who say it's pretentious to listen to classical music, haven't listened to any themselves.

You can either listen to it and appreciate the sound of it as it is - and that's fine - or you can delve a little deeper and read further about the context of the music and find different ways to enjoy it.

I love late romantic Russian stuff; like Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Shostakovich.

I think it's because it is what it is. It's music that is music onto which you project whatever you like.

So there, it's cultural corner over here. Get in...

23:31
I'm tired and going to bed.