I Need Someone To Walk Me Home

I sit in front of my camera in 1000 pieces. I use tweezers to ever so carefully place the tenth and final aperture blade in place on top of the previous blade and underneath the first blades. They sit above another plate, which covers five more delicate shutter blades. It’s difficult to line up the blade to sit in the hole, so there usually requires some light prodding to lock it in. This final one is no different. It’s so close to dropping into the slot, but each push seems to narrowly miss.

Keeping my nerve I persist like with all the others. But this time it’s all pointless. The aperture and shutter blades are made to interconnect so that they move as one. So now that I’ve reached the final one, a small bump the wrong way, like I’ve done many times before, is much more crucial.

At that moment… all ten of them come out at once. I know after chipping away at it for so long, after having figured it all out without any reference or help, that if the first one moves, the second one prevents easily pushing it back in to place. And so on. Therefore with all of them out, I know it’s a redo.

I’ve always reacted calmly to these sorts of situations. I just swallow it down and press on. What good would dwelling on it do? Everyone always says I don’t have a care in the world; that I’m always stress-free. I’ll just take a deep breath, a quick break and start over. Well that all sounds logical, but as much as I hate to disappoint everyone, I have many cares in the world. I am far from stress-free. I react to disappointments with sadness and anger. It is simply that I prefer to keep my emotions in check rather than make a fool out of myself like almost every person who tells me that I’m stress-free. So how did I react? Let’s just say there’s a dent beside the existing hole in my wall.

Oh well this is just a particularly frustrating case. I can forget about it and do something else. That’s what one voice in my head tells me anyway. Unfortunately I don’t have much influence on ensuring the positive voices prevail in my head. As much as I’ve tried, I don’t believe myself. The most common advice people give is to “think positive”. To me that would be like believing everything in the Bible, or believing everything I hear during Parliament Question Time. How on earth am I meant to fool myself?

I try to base my beliefs on evidence and facts. It is certainly the most logical way. Sometimes I think maybe I need brainwashing to be happy, because day after day I present myself with evidence in the hope of looking forward to a brighter future. But evidence suggests every year is getting worse than the previous.

I begun writing this with the story about trying to fix my camera for two reasons: 1. It had only just happened and I wanted to get it out of my system…and hopefully find a way to deal with it. 2. It felt awfully familiar. I’m at a point in my life where it feels like I’ve climbed every ladder once again, but instead of being on the home stretch, that biggest snake at the top row of the board is looking more and more frightening, and it feels more and more possible that I”ll fall back down to the bottom. Not only that, it’s as if every time I play the game there are more snakes, and the ladders are even missing a few rungs.

Thankfully the year is almost over. But I have grave fears for the new one.

“I Need Someone To Walk Me Home” is a line from “Storms and Fevers” by The Grates. The song has helped me more than any one or thing this year.