itchy memories

I went back last Friday and found somewhere new to live.  It certainly doesn’t have the wow factor of the ill-fated first attempt, but it should do fine for a while: clean, spacey, reasonable location, a probably civilised yet fairly anonymous local community.

Pending form-filling and references, the flat is mine.  Another deposit holding payment has been made, telephone discussions have been conducted and emails exchanged.  A prospective move date has been agreed.

I’m suddenly nervous, jittery and slightly afraid.  Of what, I’m not precisely sure, although I have suspicions.  I haven’t minded London as much this last month or so, but the good financial arguments still hold, as do the social ones – despite their vague hopefulness.

Added to this is that continued nagging doubt about moving backwards, also expressed before, and the irritation of old memories which that unavoidably brings.

Current reading, Obstacles To Young Love, by David Nobbs, has helpfully (or unhelpfully) illuminated this.  Its key characters have a brief teenage fling, their first, at the book’s opening, and it seems they periodically come back together – not unlike One Day, the most recent book by the similarly styled David Nicholls.  In these books, and probably in real life, people might take a year or two to get over their other, but they ostensibly do (even if they ‘deeply’ do not).  People move on.

The horrid truth is that I haven’t, not really.  And it’s been significantly longer than a year or two.  There's been nothing anywhere near as serious.  She still invades my dreams every month or so, accusing, teasing, sighing at how utterly pathetic I must be.

But I don’t seek reconciliation.  A few months ago I unfriended her on Facebook (she had originally found me and, after a short dither, I had accepted the friend request).  I didn’t want to see photos of her and her boyfriend but couldn’t resist my temptation to click when they did appear on my feed, the handsome bastard.  I WANT to move on, put clear water between me and those memories.  I simply can’t; they keep resurfacing like stubbornly floating shit.

Returning to the scene of the crime, the place where all that was set, it’s natural for that to breed nervousness, to fear how healthy or unhealthy it could be, the scabs you’re picking anew.  It’s this which is a large cause of my discomfort about moving back, as well as knowing she could be around the next corner.

Move dates refresh this nervousness.  They make it pungent, fresh and frightening.