(I'm taking the opportunity while people are away for the weekend to get some stuff off my chest here)
I quoted (and customised for gender) the lyrics below because a) its currently a favourite track and b) I've been dreaming about loss again. I have things pretty much under control now but sometimes the chasm presents itself undeniably and horrifically close to where I am standing. One false step and that black hole is hungry.
I walked so long and so deep on the wild side that leads inexorably to addiction, that when I finally climbed back onto the straight road I looked around to find nothing left...my parents dead, my family home gone, sold up, and as no-one took it over, the family business of six generations gone too and all of it divided up between my siblings. My partner gone, impossible to return and all my friends scattered who knows where.
I have nothing left to tie me to the land I grew up on. I'd be a tourist in my own country, a stranger passing the gateway of my own house, driving over the stone bridges my family built throughout the central highlands.
This year I am on uneasy speaking terms again with my older sister, but my brother hasn't spoken since the death of my mother from brain cancer. I didn't get to attend my beloved Dad's funeral.
Luckily my best friend from school has remained a firm friend and we just picked up where we left off a few years back. Her's is also the one door in Scotland that's open and welcoming.
I don't think I can explain how it feels to lose the land that you love...and of all the family I was the one who trekked miles of it every week with the dog, wandering for hours in the hills, sometimes walking entirely around Loch Leven at their foot.
Sometimes I even imagine that I can scent the snow on the mountains: it tears me apart.
Much as I LOVE inner London, it is daunting, at times, to find myself an exile here.
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