A Hopeful Traveller

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,

I find myself, once again, travelling through life in confusing curiosity. If you remember me at all, you’ll know this isn’t exactly a new spectacle. The world often feels like strangely unfamiliar place, people moving through life doing what they do, thinking as they think, acting as they act and living as they live. I have often feel like such a spectator to this, feeling and seeing everything from a rather different perspective- as if i was sat at the side of the road watching the world go by. As if i have been disconnected from what i thought my world should be.

I’ve been gone a while. Far longer than i was gone before. I’ve been posing the question to myself of where i’ve been. Where have i been all this time? I’ve not felt myself for the best part of 18 months, the man you’ve got to know as DR over the 2 years or so preceding it. Its not about losing a throne, or regaining one- it was about losing myself.

I know that sounds like a horrible cliche, and i’m not one for cliches so bare with me. It all begins with DR.

I am DR, or at least i try to be. Everyday from the moment i wake up, to the moment i eventually fall to sleep i try to be who i choose to be, feel how i choose to feel and act, or at least i thought i did.

The thing is, i needed this to happen to me for me to understand that i had been missing something all this time. The key to why I couldn’t write, that i hated every idea i had, anything i did write felt steeped in motivational ideologies and cliches. I have never tried to motivate you to do anything, i wish to show you how i feel about certain things and can only hope it resonates with you and you might be able to learn something about yourself, maybe even feel good about yourself in a situation where you hadn’t before.

I thought i had found myself in DR. “This is who i am and should live to always be. This man, this idea, i will live everyday through the eyes of him then i will get to be happy, and maybe i will like him more than i like myself. What i didn’t account for is the effects of other people, of someone being able to have such a profound effect on me that it would make me question the very core of what i was becoming.

To then lose that person in a way i could have never imagined for the breakdown of something that had meant so much at the time to be there one second, and gone the next- the only result was to be sat on a bench in a park quoting the Matrix- ” I once had a dream, and now that dream has been taken from me.”

I didn’t know who i was supposed to be, for all the work i had done as DR that had led me to that situation and the pain and sadness that had resulted from it, seemed almost lost. Maybe lost is wrong, because it almost seemed broken- maybe because i was broken.

I have in the 18 months since that day tried to figure out who i am again, because honestly as i looked at myself in the mirror, i didn’t see the man i thought i knew looking back at me and whatever i did see i hated. Not good enough, you didn’t try hard enough and so on. I blamed myself for everything, i was broken because of me.

For 18 months, i have had no idea what to do. I’ve flirted with the idea of writing now and again, but not been able to fully commit to it as i did before. I am aware my style is far from perfect, but i’ve always tried to write from such a place that has soul and the passion coming through the words, for this means so much to me, doing what i do in this way. Doing this now, i didn’t realise quite how much i missed it.

The point im trying to make culminates in Britain’s Got Talent and the performer- “X.” Intertwined into every performance i’ve watched this man give has been a single word, a phenomenon that can be so hard to hold onto.

Hope.

I gave up on myself, i lost all hope. I didn’t know what to do, fairly sure that however i had felt as DR, through the development of any connection with another person or to anything i could write felt lost to me forever. This idea DR gave me, that it was OK to like myself was lost. Its taken so, so long to see how powerful hope is.

Hope gives us belief, be it in ourselves or the people around us. The people around me have hoped for me to make a comeback to someone i want to be, someone that i actually like being, something that had been lost for so long now. They have never given up on me, when they so easily could. I will always love them for that. Moreover its taken me this long to realise that its OK not to know exactly who you are and who you want to be.

I am DR and always will be and everything i have done, written or believed in has been a part of me. However, as for who DR will become, that is for time to tell. I live with hope now, more than ever, steadfast in the belief i will try ever harder to be honest with myself, to live in a way where i choose how i feel, less effected emotionally by things i can’t control. Things will go wrong and i will make mistakes, but thats ok, for i am always learning, always and forever i choose to have hope in my heart- I will choose to be myself, whoever that turns out to be.

I have been gone a while, and whoever left you all those months ago is never coming back. I am something new, something more. The future is complex and there are so many stories to be written. All i know from now on is that i choose to be myself, believe in myself, for together we shall learn about ourselves and who we will become as we truly experience life with all the connectivity and beauty it can offer.

I am DR, even if i’m not so sure who that is anymore. From now on i will try to travel hopefully through life, not needing to see all the angles and know all the patterns. For hope is sometimes the most important thing.

Thank you X, for something so beautifully simple has helped something i thought was gone forever.

Yours, with love and hope in my heart.

DR x