Soul Sleep

Whilst commuting home from work on the bus a song came on in my headphones and brought on the first real, soul-deep, heart-fired, smile in months. I almost cried. I had, perhaps a minute of pure, unadulterated, bliss. Something inside woke up, stretching and yawning, coming out of hibernation.

Since the fire, my life has just been six months of stress, work, hotels, stress, work, couch-surfing, stress, work, home, stress, work. An endless hamster wheel of drudgery. I've become the nightmare I've tried to avoid for most of adult my life... a minimum wage-slave for a soulless mega-corporation. I've forgotten who I am and all the things that make me really happy are so absolutely missing from my daily life that my soul has been asleep... dormant... dying. A simple, beautiful, song distracted me from all the... bullshit... made my spirit stir and made me realise why I've been feeling so cheerless and dejected recently.

I miss mountains, cuddles, sunshine on my face, kisses, wind in my hair, horizon-wide vistas, late night heart-talks, hill-top sunsets, butterflies (both real and stomach-churning), the sound of hiking boots on gravel, friends, impromptu road-trips, drunken conversations, holding hands, trees, pins in maps, cloud and star-gazing, ‘singing’ along in the car, sore thighs from the climb, heart-melting smiles. Freedom. Nature. Love.

My 'life' feels vaccuous, shallow, soulless and empty without those things.

My body is rebelling. Screaming at me to stop giving in to the windowless world where I work with it’s cheap distractions and temptations. It's growing and expanding at an alarming rate, stuffed full of sugary, addictive, poisons. An attempt to pad itself in protection from the unnatural world I've made it inhabit... for money. Artificial light and air, plastic plants, mass produced 'food'. Not a nourishing environment for the mind or the body. We become our mood. I am unhealthy. I want my me back. I miss her. I miss her humour and her gladness and I suspect my friends do too.

Old Pine by Ben Howard