The Dirty Dozen

david


1995 was probably one of the shittiest years of my life. David died, my uncle Alf died, one of my friends, Colin, was mugged and hospitalised, yet another friend discovered himself to be body positive, a friend who has been positive for some time became ill, my home was broken into and Stuart, who had been someone I trusted, abused that trust and became an ex-friend.

It's with a sense of relief that I turn my back on that year and look forward to another. Taking down the wall chart from my office wall and substituting new leaves for old in my filofax has never been such a pleasant chore.

I think that I've also finally laid to rest the ghost of my relationship with Keith. I love him dearly but I'm no longer in love with him. And I couldn't have a one-to-one relationship with him for love nor money.

So, it feels like a pretty clean slate. I've just celebrated my first Festive season in nine years without a long-term partner (although there have been four of them in that period) and, at, what, eight months now, this is the longest time that I've been out of a relationship in nearly a decade.

Normally, at this time of the year I do the resolutions bit and they are usually of the meretricious sort. Like

This year, I'm going to try something different Rather than try for all of the things that I think that I ought to do or must do, I'm going to affirm all of the things that I want to do.

So, here, in no specific order, are David Guy's Dirty Dozen Affirmations for 1996.