I wrote this about two years ago when my dad was sick and I was terrified and there was so much I wanted to do and change. It's odd to look back on now. In good ways and bad ways. Oh just read it. Please.

It’s 12:05 in the very early morning. I’m at work as I sometimes find myself at this time of day. There’s a dirty plate with the crumbs of a chicken curry pie (which gave me gas) on it and a mug with cold cringe-inducing coffee in it. The mug was given by a good friend who loves me more than I think I’m worth.

My father loves me more than I think I’m worth but apparently less than he thinks (well, less than he thinks in his drug-induced state of mind) he should. He made me cry so much last week what with him being as close as I can remember to dying. He really shouldn’t die just yet. And neither should I. It’s incidents such as the almost-death of one’s father that gives one, or is supposed to give one, a new perspective on life.

You begin to think (in my case again) about what it is you really want from life, what you think life wants from you (if it gives enough of a shit). You begin to think why you do the things that you and don’t do the other things that you think you should do and want to do. You begin to wonder (again) what it is that you want to do. Oh, I’m rambling.

I want to run away to find a new life or more life and in my case that probably means both. I realised (again and like so many millions of others have before and will after me) that life is a precarious balancing act and that it’s more than easy to fall off the cotton that is life and on which most of us walk and some of us are daring enough to run.

I watched my father at his weakest and most regrettable. Yes, it was drug-induced but a part of me believes that enough of certain drugs can sometimes cause one to say things and reveal things that in a ‘rational’ completely lucid state of mind, one would not say. He cried at his own weaknesses and faults and shortcomings and regrets. He didn’t (from what I saw and remember) cry at his mother’s funeral.

And it brought me back to wondering about me and my regrets. Will I find myself lying on a hospital bed at the age of 59 with a gall bladder freshly plucked from my body while lamenting my regrets? Will I cry over a youth in which I was mostly bored, envious, confused and only mildly contented with far-too-brief flashes of bliss shared mainly in the company of the ones I love?

My life and I are in limbo. I feel as if I’ve paused for breath and badly need to exhale and inhale and then possibly cough. Will this too pass? Will I simply be another speck on the cog in the wheel of the gravy train that is… middle-class mundane existence?

I, you, me, we, our, they, them, us. People.