DAYLIGHT FADING

seven | you were an island and i passed you by

                       | seven: you were an island and i passed you by |

                                                                or

                                           | warning sign: coldplay |

I’ve only left my apartment once in the past three days, trying to figure out my next move. I know I need to wait a while, let Angel die down, but I can’t figure out where I’d go. As wonderful as London is, I can’t really be anonymous here and that’s what I need at the moment. A place not just to let Angel die down but to figure out who I am after everything that’s happened. I haven’t really had time to do that.

But, I do have one thing that I’m sure I can do. I peel the cling-film like stuff off my tattoo, which is less red that it was just after it had been done and rub a little bit of aloe vera over the tattoo as Gigi instructed me over the phone yesterday. I grin at those nine words again before stepping out of my bathroom into the white and purple of my bedroom.

The bedroom is by far the biggest room in my apartment. Whilst I didn’t want a huge apartment, I did want enough space for every instrument I wanted to buy. Even with the size of the room, the walls are still plastered in guitars hanging on wall hooks, with an old upright piano in the corner. There are a couple of basses on the walls, but I have to say that I personally prefer guitars which form the bulk of my collection.

I have two bookcases filled with vinyl and another half-filled with biographies. A couple of concert posters adorn the walls, along with a large wardrobe that is now mostly empty. My one trip was taking all of Angel’s clothes down to my local Oxfam and I spent the better part of my morning online buying clothes that I actually like. My propensity to be safe rather than sorry means that I somehow convinced myself that I needed 80 different band t-shirts, so I can safely say I’m sorted for life if I remain the same weight.

At the moment, I’m dressed in clothes I haven’t worn for two years, feeling very smug. The jeans are ripped to hell, the layer of black lace underneath peeking through and I’ve got a loose fitting vest with a massive print of Jimi Hendrix’s face on. I’ve decided to go hippy as I’m not going out and be barefoot. I’ve never understood people wearing socks even if they’re not going to go anywhere.

I check Angel’s twitter to amuse myself at the raging comments from teenage girls before signing onto an account that I haven’t in a long time. The profile photo is a very old one of me and Adam, sat on the beach in Eastfields, our home town – or village, if you’re going to be pedantic – with guitars and it immediately makes me remember something I hid away in my junk cupboard, trying to run away from my guilt.

I’ve never put anything else on that wall and the nails still remain there, waiting, so I decide they’ve waited long enough. Hopping off my bed, I leave my bedroom and find myself staring at a dark wood door on the other side of a little hallway. I pull the door open, step past my hoover and look sadly at the canvas prints that I’ve still dusted and kept meticulously clean, probably because I would’ve felt even more guilty if I just left them.

I pick up the smallest ones first, carrying them in a pile into my room and hanging them up on the nails, leaving only a massive space in the middle for a photo that is going to kill me. There are 14 small ones in total, depicting different scenes of a simplicity with the people I care about that I wish I could have back.

Each and every one contains me, always with another person. Me and Chris on the end of the pier, me and Seb sat at the side of Adam’s pool, me and Finn stood on his bass drum. My life at a fifteen year old with what would become Chaos Theory and the ease it held. There are ones that hurt more, the seven that contain me and Adam. One is just the five of us, stood in a line grinning but the other six photos make me wish for something I can never have.