WORKING BACKWARDS

Hello……….. Hello dot……….well………..hmmmmm……….I say, hello there, anybody home?...... If you're reading me how come you `ain't talking to me……….dadedadedadedade….. Well……….say “hello” back……c'mon…..don't be rude…..cuuumon….say it……you don't have to say it aloud if you feel silly talking to a book or iPad………there's nobody looking is there?......well don't say it aloud then, just say “hello” back to me in your head…….c'mon dotty….pleeeeease……….thaaat's it……..oh……oh……that's it…….. Yeeeehar…..well done…….I knew you could do it………Hi, nice to meet you! Sorry if I embarrassed you dotty but, you see, I'm not one of these award winning writers (yet!) and I'm not really into one way communication. I just need to talk with someone, and that someone is you. You're the one holding this book! Oh, and I hope you don't mind but I like to call my friends by name and, if it's OK I'll call you dot or dotty. Don't worry it's my term of endearment. You will understand more when you read the Chapter about “Dots”. See, I like talking. And if I can't talk to you, and you don't talk to me, then obviously we can't communicate and so I might as well do what I was going to do in the first place and just write a journal of my journey for my own purposes. But then I'll get lonely. If I talk to you I don't want a one way conversation. I think it's damned rude and disrespectful to talk to someone and they don't even acknowledge you. Anyway I've got this idea. See I make a lot of stuff up because when I can't express what I want to say using other people's made up stuff I do my own. I have read sooooooo many books lately but they all just write and it's like they are talking AT me rather than TO me. So I reckon we can communicate with each other using EMPATHY BABBLE. That's where I write stuff as if I am talking to you. Now I know that the book thingie can't talk back to me and if it did I would surely pee ma pants, but while I am talking to you I use my (brilliant) empathy skills to FEEL what you are thinking and saying. Which means, in a lot of cases, I say things to you (in brackets like this) after I feel you may be responding to something I've said. OK?.....Got the drift?….. Cooooool bananas! Oh dear, you already think I'm mad don't you? I'm not mad. I'm just sorta different, a bit out there. I just think people should write like they talk. That's being honest. So this empathy babble will keep me in touch with your feelings and the way you are reacting to what I am saying, or, more to the point, the way I think you may react to what I am saying. That way I won't feel so lonely and depressed, and it'll be like I've got ma good buddy along with me for the ride. We can share our moments together, our feelings and help each other out, as good buddies do. We can even have a giggle together about lotza stuff. You see, I'm living this nightmare of homelessness. It really is the pits. I just wanna get outta here. Living in a tent. Broke. Debt up to my eyeballs. Divorced and single. Kids I love but never see. Reclusive. No car. No furniture except for the chair I got out of the rubbish bin. Eating off charity and support services. Seriously life sucks! But I've got something. I'm sick of living like this. There has to be a better life out there somewhere. And so I'm getting out and I know how to do it. I've been working on it for a long time now and I'm ready to start the exit trip. That something I've got, money can't buy. I've got newly acquired knowledge which I have used to prepare my journey to a town called Destin-ee, a smidge down the road from my nirvana, a joint called Happy-Me where I will spend the rest of my life. In the meantime I have toughened myself up with life survival skills to control the ee-vil obstacles that are continually causing negativity in my day to day battles while living in this hell hole called Miser-ee. I've done a lot of thinking about life, my life. And I've found Mister SomeOne Out-There, the person I talk about in the poem introducing this journal. He's so cooooool. I had no idea where to find the right help when I went searching but as it turns out he wasn't hard to find at all. I just had to look in the right place. You see, he lives in me, so I'm using the knowledge I have gained about life, and myself, and the new improved ME is about to be set free. This journal is to document the trip I am taking. But is this a work-in-progress, or maybe a journal, or even a book kinda thingie? Hmmmmmm, I'll have to have a think about it………