Wired, but the world still dark asleep, except the odd squeal of DLR trains on their way to start service. Choo Choo.
After much deliberation, and it is quite the conversation with myself, given that I’ve missed a dose of Quetiapine, I drop the camera in my rucksack.
Grab my hat. Scarf. And, reluctantly, gloves.
I hate gloves. They feel so restricted.
But I knew that, on this sub-zero wintry morning, my fingers would blacken slowly and then drop off if I stood still for three hours.
I stomped all of ten minutes along the river to a playground. Which I grant you sounds slightly problematic, particularly when you remember the camera.
But the sky is pitch black. Well, slightly navy blue.
(This was the best of the very early batch. The others looked like CCTV screenshots taken by a drunk penguin.)
So it’s fine.
I have not helped myself at all there, have I?
Anyway, the sun, as it does, would take its sweet time appearing in an otherwise bland and bitterly disappointing sky.
No reward for a night without medication.
Yet a single cloud seemed to appear from nowhere. Then a whole sheet of cloud. But it soon wandered away.
There was at least the tease of something spectacular in a sea of mediocre snaps.
I wanted the river to carry me away. Closer to something more riveting.
Because the same sunrise can appear completely different only a few miles away.
Isn’t that incredible?
Barely any distance at all can make such a difference.
Mind you, what would we know?
We groan about having to travel an hour to get somewhere in this country, when you can travel for six hours and still be in the same state in some countries.
Countries, of course, that I may never get to see because I was a stupid mental idiot. Who couldn’t control himself, let alone the trajectory of his own life.
Strangely, the buildings on the other side of the river seemed to lighten and then darken again.
Before finally, the sun began to emerge.
The day would begin.
And I would be able to take my medication and stop my brain dead on whatever internal doom scroll it had decided to endure.
The trouble is, I quite like my mind when it’s free.
The promise of a new day. Another reinvention. That metaphorical ‘fuck it’ button within easy reach.
I could blow it all apart.
Finally write that play. Send the degree on a hike. Fall madly in love with a man who will rescue me and go to one of those jazz nights at Sky Garden miles above the people who look up to the flashing lights above.
I assume there are flashing lights.
I’d be clutching some £700 cocktail instead of the desperate pint of Peroni I flexed the last time I was able to secure a free ticket.
Pretending I was someone else in a moment of unadulterated freedom.
But if I do take my medication, then maybe, just maybe, something might click.
I might finally be able to hold my own.
Find stability in this crazy, depraved city.
And one day find myself in a room with people who matter. Writing something that might, maybe, make a difference.
The sun climbs into the sky, to the point where it’s no longer something worth staring at.
And I potter off home.
At 23:39, I couldn’t tell you what I’ve done.
But it’s been perfectly marvelous prattling away to ChatGPT about theatre, and watching theatre, at home.
Don’t worry. I’m not completely manic.
And, amazingly, I have only consumed food and drink in my own room. Nothing alcoholic.
At this point in the night, I’m genuinely surprised I didn’t toddle off to the Ritz for an altogether different flavour of escapism. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to afford anything, but I could’ve stayed for the bread and then done a runner.
It’s funny.
At university, I teeter on the edge of something.
Something firm. Something truly transformational. Something so utterly life changing that I will read this post in months to come and laugh so hard at myself.
But what if… no, that’s unbearable.
A midnight omelette, perhaps, and then I will take my medication.
Nah. The time has come.
The jolly is over.
Reality…
Colin Cushion 
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