In Which TD Goes a Bit Soft in the Head

My previous post was, as you can easily imagine, written while heavily refreshed. Reading it, I see a lot I'd like to have changed and a lot I probably should not have put: but its message is essentially sound and it is this.

Brace yourselves for a post devoid of hatred or self pity. Yes, it's true.

I was at mass this morning, as usual, with a slight hangover, as is also usual, and some lingering regrets about blogging while tipsy. Then I realised that the idea of my post, and of many previous ones over the last few days or even weeks was simply to try and recognise the fact that, for want of a better turn of phrase, my heart is opening up and is reaching out to people as it has hardly ever done before: that I care about so many people, that I want them to be happy and safe and well, that they are in my thoughts, that thinking of them is wonderful: in short, that I love them. Perhaps not many. I don't know that many people. A few, then: far more than before.

This is quite difficult for an old raging soak like me to understand. It doesn't, after all, depend on what they think of or feel for me, it is wholly independent of requital or interest, devoid of expectation and is nothing to do with any kind of possession, just of a joy in another's existence.

It's also a difficult sensation to understand. Years of introspection and closing off, of hiding myself away, these have left me unprotected for such genuine feelings.

I should not really be writing this post any more than the previous ones: but it is true, and sober, and explains some of what has gone before it in the sense that it has been germinating here without my really understanding it until now.

You strip away the layers of protection and disguise, the masks you have built and you find that, after all, there might be something there, that really does exist and is positive.