A rough diamond...

A book a friend lent me - not pretty, or beautiful, more harsh and shocking - I guess to a degree, although forewarned is forearmed, so I wasn't expecting anything less!
Real life for some people, an insight into the darker side of a life I have only ever guessed and sometimes patched up when they came my way through the doors of the accident department.

Based in Liverpool, this was written from Kelly's perspective towards the end of the book... in dialect ~

"We wanner stumble blindly and unthinkinly through ar days, strip them of authenticity an light an any real joy an it makes no fuckin sense, no fuckin sense. So fuckin terrified are we of death that we make arselves so ignoble an base an petty an vile an meaningless an shallow that when death finally comes for us, there's precious fuckin little for it to take. An in that way we think we've beaten it. But we haven't, an we don't; because we do nothing of worth, live in no fuckin glories whatsoever an when we're gone it's like we were never bleedin here. We've made no mark in the concrete to prove that we passed this way, that we existed. So we don't defeat death, an we never could; we defeat life. Turn it all colourless an tasteless, bland an insipid an bled dry. We settle for mediocrity an we're perfectly fuckin happy to do so, we can't even imagine anythin else, anythin more. Actions without consequence. Let others tell us what to do, do away with the enormity of thinkin for arselves"

"Can smell the sea now, the river. Salt in me nostrils.....why the fuck aren't we screaming? Standin with ar arms outstretched on the rooves of tall buildings... trying to do somethin, anything, to arrest the withering of ar hearts"

A cry that feels all too familiar from so many - a yearning for more than there is.. a freedom.
It took me back to people I knew and loved, who had nothing, who asked for very little, but who gave so very much...
and made me think about freedom
about how when all we have is time to give
and ourselves, perhaps we are closer to freedom than we think

and perhaps it is that, which is so very beautiful, that shines from them, and drew me close to them...

Ultimately it is what we yearn for, and search for.. and hold onto
life and living,
love,
acceptance,
freedom

a rough diamond of a book that has left me thinking