Home is Where the Darkness is

Wake up this morning. A listless agitation. Aim to go on a walk. Despite the fact I really do not like being here, it seems to take an age to leave the house. Meet Jen at her house at 3:00pm. Bus to Rottingdean. Despite only having had two pints last night, feel strangely hungover. Insomnia echo perhaps. Jen a saviour. She has Nurofen. A pot of tea in The White Horse. Feel better. Rural men watching the football, beer bellies and middle age melting into old age. A couple at the bar; 'I love Rottingdean. I've never missed a place as much as this when I moved away', 'It's a shithole here. I can't stand it, everybody knowing each others business', 'Thats what I love about the place, -community'. Leave at sunset, to begin the walk along the Undercliff Walk back to Brighton. The tide is high, up to the rocks. The path is littered with cycling children, families and dogs. Telling Jen ghost stories about dead clowns rising from the sea. Sit on the wall near the Marina, smoke cigarettes, and watch the last of the light fade. Beautiful. Through the Marina, all boats and peace. Along the coast, past Dukes Mound and the nudist beach. Street lamps in bushes. Pools of streetlight. Joggers crunching by on the pebbles as they pass us. Sudden unexpected sound. At the pier drinking tea. Walk round the closed down rides. Pier serenity. Strange peace. Start thinking about springtime, electric warm evenings. Suffused with a melancholy. Can't rid myself of it, despite a good walk. Have to return here. Back to the bedsit. Joe meets us at the pier. Trouble finding him. Calls on mobile phones. Tea getting cold. Sick of these early January nights. Jen leaves for home. Joe and myself walk along the seafront. A growing sense of dread at being here. try to shake it off. Haunted by memories of Wilbury Crescent. Nicest place I lived in Brighton. Gone now.
I've got to get out of this place. not healthy to sleep and live in the same tiny room. Begin to dread having to return here. Walls closing in, claustrophobia. Feel guilty, not the fault of this room.
Need to get out.
So many backwards steps over the last 12 months. Seems I've come back to a place I wished to never see again. My flat on Buckingham Street. Hated that place more than anywhere else. Lived there three and a half years. This bedsit is Buckingham Street's ghost, a poison echo.
Home is where the darkness is.