I couldn’t stand to look at the computer; it seemed to serve as a reminder of what I was trying so desperately to forget. I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to get out of my head. So I did. I grabbed my iPod Shuffle and went for a walk. These walks seem to be becoming more and more frequent. I walked down my street, precariously stuck between dogs barking at each other from a distance. One is leashed, one roams free. The one without leash – he is known to me, however informally. I suspect his bark is much worse than his bite. Our eyes have met on many such walks. He seems old and faithful, just sitting beside the road’s curb waiting for something. I can never figure out what exactly, but the familiarity is reassuring.

I disappear into the escarpment and leave the canine tension behind me. I fumble with my iPod, and find some Kate Bush. And So Is Love starts filling my ears. I realise the song touches an exposed nerve. My stroll becomes something else entirely. I keep walking faster and faster, as though I was fleeing from some invisible foe. But the only foe I fear is myself, is what I am feeling. How I wish to be feeling anything but what I am feeling. I hold the emotion with more contempt than the uncertainty and circumstances from which it was borne. I guess I thought with enough food and activity and mind numbing television I could suppress my emotions.

The truth is I’m confused. I reached out to someone and there was no response whatsoever. I reached out some more. Still nothing. I decided that perhaps the situation called for some space, so I stopped reaching out. I don’t know why this is happening. I’m notorious for letting my imagination get the better of me as I hallucinate untold horrors. I’m trying to be less reactive. I’m trying to be more understanding. I am trying to give people the benefit of the considerable doubt. I don’t have enough information to reach an informed conclusion, so I wait… But by the same time I don’t want to make my happiness dependant on a resolution.

I looked out from a lookout onto the curve of the Shoalhaven River. The final glimpses of daylight were poking through cloud and hitting the water. An army of trees were standing seemingly at attention to observe the end of the day. I was struck by the beauty of it. I didn’t want to see the beauty of it, actually. I was too involved in my own barely articulated sorrow. I was reminded of the Wendy Matthews song The Day You Went Away, and how the singer was surprised to see that the weather was oblivious to her own personal tragedy. And of course the weather, the bushland, all of it was also oblivious to mine as well. With Kate Bush filling my ears, I clutched the railing over the lookout and just tried to breathe. “Just being alive,” Bush sings, “it can really hurt. These moments given are a gift from time.”

That song ends and I continue on foot. This man made corridor between bush and fenced off cliff ledge, a corridor I know well. (I say this, but of course there’s always one protruding tree root that I seem to trip over. Often within view of other bushwalkers.) It is getting darker all the time and suddenly the bridge of The Song Of Solomon descends upon me. But it sounds slightly different, somehow more ominous and explosive and expressive. Of course it isn’t just the contents of my iPod that reach my ears but a cacophony of White Cockatoos screeching in sympathy. There’s no way they could hear the music and yet they seem to die down when the music does. They are little more than specks of white darting in and out of dark stately trees.

And then there’s Lily and The Red Shoes. The light is fading quickly, but I am determined to make it to the river. I bound down the steps fashioned out of large sandstone, though before The Red Shoes is over the red light on my iPod starts flashing. It’s out of charge. I throw it into my pocket and continue towards the water. Now my only company on this walk are my thoughts and my surrounds. I’m not sure what I feel. I’m not sure how I want to feel, indeed how much I want to allow myself to feel. I want to honour what I’m feeling but not let how I’m feeling dictate how my life should be or inform my own personal sense of identity. There was a time I would’ve taken any ‘snub’ – real or imagined – and used it as a starting point to beat myself up. Clearly I am a horrible, hopeless, fundamentally unlovable person. But frankly I could no longer see the point. Whatever my features and failings, vices and virtues, I am stuck with myself for the duration. All beating myself up results in is me feeling horrible. And I haven’t done anything wrong, if anything I’ve been earnest and accommodating. But I am lonely and I am confused, and a little sad.

As I sit here reflecting on this walk, I continue to listen to that same Kate Bush album, picking up from where my iPod left off when it ran out of charge. I take some comfort actually in the opening lines of Why Should I Love You:

This chapter says put it out of your mind
And give it time

So that’s what I shall attempt to do now. Thanks for indulging me.