The music or the misery

High Fidelity is one of my favourite books ever, in fact it's probably the book I've read more then any other. I even have the pages with my favourite bits on them folded at the corners.
Obviously it's a favourite because its about music and people who love music and who let it have a huge role in their life's.
But my favourite parts in the book are the parts where the main character talks about which came first the music or the misery, and every time I read it it makes me think.

" Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship."

What if this is true? Does that mean I have to give up listening to music and reading books and watching films in order to have a healthy attitude to love?
Do I have unrealistic ideas about what love is because of the songs I listen to?
Or I am just endlessly hopeful that the feelings expressed in these songs can be real, because they must be because someone felt them and made a song out of them.

I don't wanna give up the music but I also don't want to give up on the idea that I can find the kind of love that has inspired those songs.

Maybe it truly is unrealistic, I hope its not but really I have no idea.

Sing the Sorrow

Last night I went to my first proper gig since July last year and it was without a doubt an awesome experience. I had forgotten just how good the whole live music experience is. I went to see AFI in Glasgow with Sick of it all as support. Neither of those bands are my absolute favourites but I'd seen SOIA before and knew they were good live and had never seen AFI and always wanted to.
It felt so good to be back at a proper live show. For quite a long time life got in the way of my love of music and when I finally got out of the bad situation I was in, music was what brought me back to life. I was living back with my parents over the summer and was sitting up for hours at night rediscovering everything on my itunes and it felt so good to do that. To really listen to music and take it all in. I remember sitting up listening to Sticks and Stones by New Found Glory and smiling properly for the first time in a while.
I kind of get lost for words when trying to describe what music means to me because its just a feeling, kind of like falling in love I guess. Its just a feeling inside of you. I know that not everyone feels that way about music and I'm just so glad that I do, that it means that much to me that I know I can turn to it to get me through anything.
I know exactly what to listen to when I need to feel sad and cry and get it out of my system, I know what to listen to to make me feel strong and determined, what music will calm me down and what music will make me smile and bounce around and I'm so thankful I have that.

In My Eyes

Today I have decided to stop drinking. Last night I drank to feel better and to forget, even though I'm not stupid and I know that alcohol is a depressant and that it would make me feel worse. I was totally right of course, I ended up pissing off a friend, overreacting to stuff and feeling awful. I was not myself and I was not proud of how I behaved. This afternoon I sat here and thought hard about drinking and what it is and what it does.

I am very anti-drugs and always have been, I just don't believe in putting all that nasty stuff into your system, but yet I would go out and drink. I have never really heavily drank, never passed out or puked or forgotten where I live but there have been nights like last night. Also I have watched what alcohol does to other people. I have been treated badly by people when they've been drunk, I've seen absolutely everything that alcohol can do to people but I always knew that I could control the amount of alcohol that I consumed.

I still can and could, I can easily go out for a pub lunch and have a beer and just have one. But I have really started to hate how it makes me feel and what it does to people. The main reason I have drank is because everyone else does. If you say your not going to drink then people don't understand, they want you to go out and join in and have fun and to do that they think you have to drink in order to do that, but in all honesty the best times in my life have occured when sober. I don't enjoy feeling the way I did last night, I don't enjoy feeling awful when I have a hangover. I like to be in control of my life and the minute I drink I stop feeling in control. I think most people drink for all the wrong reasons and I know for certain that I drink for the wrong reasons.

There are so many things that in my life that I have stopped doing because I know its harmful to me, things I have walked away from because I know its wrong but yet I have continued to drink. If I think long and hard about why I drank its because everyone around me did it and because I felt it was expected of me as part of the social world I was in at the time. I've gone through long periods of not drinking because I haven't been around it but in the last couple of months I've drank quite a lot and really hated how it makes me feel. So I'm done.

I need to keep a clear head and face my problems head on, I need to not rely on a drug to help me deal. If I have a bad day then I shouldn't reach for a bottle of beer, I should deal with how I'm feeling and sort out the problem in another way and that's what I want. I want a clear head and I don't want to find myself drunk, crying on the floor of a club toilet ever again.