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I'm writing this on 11th May.
The former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan once recalled the occasion in 2003 when he brought then manager Trevor Francis into his office to inform him that he had been relieved of his position. According to Jordan, there was a moment of silence in the room before Francis quietly said "But it's my birthday". I believe Francis was 49 at the time, which makes me feel marginally better about what I'm about to recount.
We all have birthdays and I'm not really precious about mine. There are years where I don't really acknowledge it at all. I want to use this blog to talk about the things happening in my life but I don't want to implicate other people. The short version of this story is, I was seeing someone for a little bit, thought it might be going somewhere and had reason to believe that it might be. She then informed me on my birthday that she wasn't interested.
This immediately sent me into an intense depression. I've had intense depressions before, but rarely ones with physical symptoms. I had an intense throbbing pain in my head for hours and literally couldn't lift my head off the pillow. I was being bombarded with negative thoughts at the time, the primary one being "You're a year older, nearly 30 and nothing has changed. You are a failure". In short, it ruined my birthday. There is another facet to this, which is that I would have thought that age might have brought some sense of maturity. Is it ok for someone who is this old to feel sad about this? To have such a violently negative reaction? I don't know.
I'm trying to find a way of talking about this without sounding self-pitying and I'm not certain that it's actually possible. I am aware that this sort of thing happens to other people all the time and part of life is handling rejection. Forgive me for using the unsatisfactory term of "romantic success" but I've never had any romantic success. I consistently feel its absence from my life and I find it very difficult to take.
I would like to give up on it. Which I'm also aware is one of those petulant things that perennial singletons say. I know of course that the noble thing to do is to say the precise opposite. That you'll keep going and going and going until you get to the place you want to be, irrespective of how much it hurts you and how much time and energy you waste. Regardless, I fear that this will always be in the background, mentally. This is the best I can articulate my feelings on the matter for now.
The former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan once recalled the occasion in 2003 when he brought then manager Trevor Francis into his office to inform him that he had been relieved of his position. According to Jordan, there was a moment of silence in the room before Francis quietly said "But it's my birthday". I believe Francis was 49 at the time, which makes me feel marginally better about what I'm about to recount.
We all have birthdays and I'm not really precious about mine. There are years where I don't really acknowledge it at all. I want to use this blog to talk about the things happening in my life but I don't want to implicate other people. The short version of this story is, I was seeing someone for a little bit, thought it might be going somewhere and had reason to believe that it might be. She then informed me on my birthday that she wasn't interested.
This immediately sent me into an intense depression. I've had intense depressions before, but rarely ones with physical symptoms. I had an intense throbbing pain in my head for hours and literally couldn't lift my head off the pillow. I was being bombarded with negative thoughts at the time, the primary one being "You're a year older, nearly 30 and nothing has changed. You are a failure". In short, it ruined my birthday. There is another facet to this, which is that I would have thought that age might have brought some sense of maturity. Is it ok for someone who is this old to feel sad about this? To have such a violently negative reaction? I don't know.
I'm trying to find a way of talking about this without sounding self-pitying and I'm not certain that it's actually possible. I am aware that this sort of thing happens to other people all the time and part of life is handling rejection. Forgive me for using the unsatisfactory term of "romantic success" but I've never had any romantic success. I consistently feel its absence from my life and I find it very difficult to take.
I would like to give up on it. Which I'm also aware is one of those petulant things that perennial singletons say. I know of course that the noble thing to do is to say the precise opposite. That you'll keep going and going and going until you get to the place you want to be, irrespective of how much it hurts you and how much time and energy you waste. Regardless, I fear that this will always be in the background, mentally. This is the best I can articulate my feelings on the matter for now.
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