The end - or the beginning?

This is how low I've sunk. Again I'm shaking uncontrollably with these damn seizures. The intervals in between the seizures had been getting longer and longer. At last I had hoped I had left them behind completely. But now they are back. Wracking my body like the curse they are. I had been out in my garden when this one came on. They always come down on me in the most inopportune moments. I will just have to wait this out. The rain and my mood … and the arrival of the next owl bringing me the cash of my last potions sale. I do work for a living. But only so I can get by, or just about get by. I don't need much. And I don't want for much either. In fact, what I want most is to be the last person on this planet. To be alone. Completely. Utterly. Alone.

The sound of this word alone fills me with hope. To find a place where I can be just the snarky, old bastard I am without having to mind anything or anyone. It's been 20 years and still not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of what I had to go through. Of what I had to do. Of the things I've lost and of the things I destroyed. Back then I ran, thinking if I got just far away from it all, I could let go. Pretend it never happened. I thought I could forget and in time find a new life for myself. But you cannot run away from yourself. Because wherever you go, you are already there when you get there.

I tried. After I barely escaped death and woke up alone I decided to make a run for it. I thought I would just quietly leave the country and find some place far away where nobody knew me and I could set up a little shop. I already saw myself in some small Romanian village where the people were superstitious enough to keep their distance and buy my potions for all their petty ailments. And there I could have stayed. In the quietness that comes with being a stranger in a strange land.

But it was not to be. I realised quickly that it would never come to this. I was suffering. The after effects of my injuries proved more severe than I could have anticipated. For days on end I was left lying in some ditch or some old barn shivering and cramping uncontrollably. I had nightmares to such extend that I did not want to go to sleep just to avoid being taken hostage by this terror which seemed to consist of an endless repetition of my worst moments and most terrible deeds. I ended up hallucinating for lack of sleep and thus still seeing the demons that were haunting me. In short, I was a wreck, physically and psychologically, and there was nothing I could do about it. I stayed on the streets and walked all over the British Isles. Back and forth and wherever else my feet carried me. I couldn't tell today what places I had been in my first or second or even third year. Everything seems shrouded in a hazy veil of denial and despair. My condition lasted for years. I could also not say now when I started to improve. It was gradual and excruciatingly slow, but on some days I managed to actually appreciate the sunshine or the sound of the waves as they crashed into the shore. And after years it seemed I could even accept that I had survived. Well, I existed.

My hopes for any kind of ordinary existence I had already given up long ago somewhere along the way on my travels. It wasn't even a painful thing to do. I accepted that I would never be anything more than a tramp on the streets. And it was OK for a while. Eventually when I got tired of freezing in the winter and being wet in spring and fall and too hot in the summer, I found myself this old ruin and did it up to meet my needs. I don't think I could deal with much more anyway. The thought of a structured life with all its rules and demands was a horror to me. I didn't think I could find my way back and I still don't. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be then. Maybe this is the just punishment I deserve. For all the wrong I committed, for all the hurt and pain I caused. For all the expectations I did never fulfil. And it's alright.