Confused I guess

I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with this girl. Even though when I see her around I know I find her attractive, her personality is like a massive pendulum swinging between what I absolutely crave and then back to this tough, mysterious facade which frankly scares me. She’s also an incredibly attractive girl physically and she likes to flaunt it in the way she talks about getting with guys and a generally ‘hoe’-ish attitude (her words not mine). Although there’s this side which would normally put me off, it seems all bark and no bite as she hasn’t gotten with anybody all year and it’s very weird. I think I’m in the talons of an unbearable crush. One in which I know I’d be destroyed emotionally and she’d never like me whilst also having this tiny inkling of an attraction between us which won’t let me forget her. The thing is we have this kind of playful flirting thing going on which I like but I think she sees it as entirely on the joking side whereas I am less sure.

I just want to have something with a girl. For some reason I’ve been stuck on this one for months and just can’t seem to get over her no matter what I do. Am I tearing up because of her or because of my never-ending predicament with girls?

Things making me sad

Feelings of body inadequacy (too skinny)

Feelings of disgustingness (ACNE, dry skin, rashes, body hair)

Stress and boredom due to exam revision

Haven’t felt a connection with a girl in a long time (i’m a tad desperate)

Don’t feel attractive to girls 

Can’t even imagine getting affection from girls

Can’t even imagine anyone caring enough to listen unless paid

No time to be sad

Constant hunger

Think am terrible at singing

Think am terrible at guitar

Don’t enjoy academic success 

Feeling low

My best friend visited me at uni last weekend, coming for 16 hours overnight to go clubbing and see me. He literally had 2x 5-hour coach journeys the mad bastard. I told all my uni friends about this two weeks in advance and asked them to be there and to hang out and go out with us. On the night only 2 out of the 10 were really there. The others all fucked off with various excuses. I can’t put into words just how at home and happy I felt having my mum visit me last week and then my bestfriend too. There was no drama, easy conversation and just relaxation in general.

When I talk to my uni friend AS he is unbelievably insecure. Every thing he brings up in conversation is some kind of masculinity competition I swear to god. I eat my dinners with him as we are both catered and every night he talks about how many push ups, pull ups and sit ups he’s done, how many fucking nuts he’s eaten and why they are such great food, complains about the same fucking girl who he’s already been rejected by but continues to be her best friend all day. When he went on this stupid camping trip over the weekend he walked 90km in 3 days. He talks about how it was an ‘adventure’ and how the ‘danger’ made him feel revived and alive. He talked as if he’d done something amazing I should be in awe of. Seriously though? I wouldn’t give a flying fuck if he’d climbed Snowdonia. The danger he was in? It was just him being a fucking idiot e.g. walking down a marshy hillside AT NIGHT or being subjected to only eating beans all weekend WHEN HE COULD HAVE JUST BROUGHT SOMETHING ELSE. There’s a weird pretentiousness that some people have about the outdoors and he most definitely has it. I love camping and hiking myself don’t get me wrong, but in my opinion it should be a relaxing experience focused on talking to people and campfires and NOT walking all day long from dawn until after dusk when it’s too dark to make a fire and focusing on photography all day to the point that you don’t fully experience it. He just won’t shut up about it either but he clearly can’t take a fucking hint that I actually respect him less for this stupid excursion rather than more.

The next issue on my mind has to be my girl failures. I consider myself to be pretty optimistic about the future in general. Not until recently had I considered that I might not even have a successful romantic/sexual interaction with a girl before the end of uni. This situation is dire though. I’m not meeting many girls at the moment but even at times when I AM meeting many, I don’t get anywhere. I don’t know why either. I’m no longer either too forward or too shy, I try to flirt (though I suck at it I guess), about half the girls I’m into are quite rude to me etc. They say that you need confidence to be successful romantically but how can I have that kind of confidence when I have only failed and failed and failed my entire life? I kissed a girl on a summer camp type of thing when I was 15 but that’s it. I’m 20 at the end of the year and I’ve made no progress since then. It hurts me internally so badly because my girl failures have always been at the forefront of my mind. I’ve never been able to get fully engrossed in a hobby or subject that I’d forget girls and so it’s always been a painful hindrance to my existance. What’s more, nobody seems to give a shit that I don’t get with anyone. My friends don’t give me advice because they’re too self-centred for that shit and often it feels like they think they’re in competition with me over everything rather than being up for helping me. I’ve been feeling very low for the whole last week except when my mum and friend came to visit. Literally both days they were coming I was hoping they wouldn’t come because I wanted to be alone but then the moment they arrived I felt so happy. 

When I see and talk to my real best friends I genuinely have a warm feeling in my heart. My best-friend/crush CF who lives on the other side of the world snapchats me still. I kid you not that girl is so pretty not only on the outside but she is such a kind soul with a beautiful creativity I can not resist. When She takes a good photo of herself I cry a little. My heart skips a beat and I can’t help but admire her face. Maybe that sounds weird but when I’m looking at her picture, even during a hectic pre-drinks, I’m in a warm bubble and it always makes me smile. With some people on snapchat you just delay opening their snaps because you can’t be fucked to reply yet or maybe you want to wait the appropriate time. With her, I either open it immediately or if I’m very busy I save it for when I need something to just calm me down. I do think I’m somehow in love with her which is silly but even my drunk self thinks so. Drunk-me has declared on multiple occasions that I’ll marry her.

On a totally different note I want to talk about national identity. I claim 5 which makes this very confusing. By heritage on one side of the family I’m Greek. I’m happy to be called Greek and I love Greece - the place, the language, the people, the food. The issue is that it’s my mother’s side so nobody thinks I’m Greek which means they’re always surprised when I defend it in arguments and talk about my love for the culture. I joined the Greek society at uni in the hopes that I might get more in tune with the culture here but unfortunately that went terribly. I just feel so alienated when I go to the society meetings because everyone just speaks in fluent Greek and ignores the ones like myself who are not fluent. On top of that like half of the people there are Cypriot so they have a weird fucking accent which makes understanding them even harder. There’s literally no point me being there and they make me feel like an outsider. Even though I’m on a Greek intramural football team, the other members just ignore the fact that I don’t speak it for the most part. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m 100% the worst player on the team though I’ve greatly improved and I know for sure that one of them is always mouthing me off in Greek behind my back. I just don’t belong. Similarly I joined Balkan society cos my Dad’s side of the family is Serbian. It’s such a small society and spread out over different ages that I can’t just blend in-it’s shitty af. I have two Bosnian friends at the uni and they joked about how I still can’t speak the language a couple weeks ago. They also understand Balkan culture so much better than I ever could and wear adidas trackies unironically. Again, I just don’t belong with this crowd. I’m just not even like the other Serbian members of the family because they are so aggressive and nationalistic and all that but there’s no way I could ever be that. I don’t have a passion for the motherland, I don’t enjoy plum brandy moonshine, I don’t speak the language, I haven’t been in protests against NATO and the UN bombing Serbia. Because of my surname, I get called a Serb a lot. Lots of annoying nicknames which I don’t enjoy if I’m honest, even if they are lighthearted. Things like being compared to Vidic (who’ll fucking murder ya) or Slobodan Milosevic, being called a vampire, serial killer, genocidal maniac, squatting slav etc. etc. It’s just not me and it made me feel like I was not really welcomed fully into being a Brit even though I was born in London and lived there my whole life. My accent and my surname prevent me from being seen as British by pretty much everyone. My accent is a totally fucked mixture of various English ones and then Canadian + American too. The North Americans give me strange uncomfortable looks when I try to say I’m one of them because I never really know their culture in detail enough to fully be one despite possessing citizenship. To sum up I don’t feel like I’m any one of my nationalities and I would gladly be seen as any of the 5 except Serbian - the only one I get labelled as thanks to my surname - as it is something I will never truly be.

This kind of leads me on to my fake exterior. I think I’ve been over-compensating with gimmicks and characteristics so I could distract people from who I really am. Things like making jokes about the peculiarities and eccentricities of my Serbian family, wearing cowboy boots/ slavic football kit/ sunglasses to the club, only drinking absolutely terrible novelty factor drinks such as Buckfast wine and WKD or the big one which I can’t help telling new people about: my gollum impression. I do all this random shit because I think it makes me seem exciting and fun to be around but when I run out of them, I realise I’ve made friends who don’t really know about my serious side. When I put away the gimmicks they still expect me to be overly-outgoing and excitable so when they see me in either a normal state or a low-one, they seem to leave me alone to the point that I get very lonely. I don’t feel like I can talk to anybody about any of my problems because I only hang out with these people when I’m being weird. I can’t live my life normally with my uni friends because I don’t live in their flat all together. I don’t get little interactions whilst making breakfast or doing some work. All i get is pre-drinks and clubbing. I do enjoy it when I get people on their own and we have proper conversations. I’m good at one on one chats whilst we do things together which is why my date with that girl a few months ago went so well despite us being diametrically opposed in every aspect of life. I just feel like something’s missing here. This loneliness enhances my desire to find a girl for once. I genuinely feel so sad all the time at the moment. At school I didn’t use gimmicks and an overly-outgoing side - I was only myself and serious around strangers and then friendly among friends. It resulted in me having very few friends and feeling very isolated but now me trying the other way around helped me make lots of friends initially but then has not led to as many deep meaningful connections as I would have liked.

What really doesn’t help any of this shit is the fact that I am a catered uni student. Unfortunately this means I don’t fucking get lunch served to me BUT I ALSO DON’T GET ANY FUCKING KITCHEN APPLIANCES APART FROM A MICROWAVE WITH WHICH I CAN COOK. This means I’m fucking starving most of the time and when I get hungry I get emotional - especially angry or sad. What am I supposed to do? Pot noodle is so unhealthy and I don’t like eating pre-made meals out of a microwave very much. I really miss having the opportunity to make my own food I can’t tell you. I eat so much junk food just because of the lunch situation. Luckily I have a fucking steam engine of a metabolism so I don’t gain weight from it but imagine how healthy I could be if I was able to prepare fresh food. Oh my. So sad.

My Achilles Heel

So the girl I went on a first date with told me she doesn’t want to go out with anyone from our uni accommodation so it’s over. I mean fair enough, I’ve already been doing that for people in my specific block but not to this extent. It seems that this one guy I’d heard about had been a bit of a cunt to her and there’s some weird tension there. I think she’s trying to be careful. Fair enough to her and we are still gonna be friends cos I hadn’t got to that level of attraction yet where it’d be weird. Doesn’t change the fact that I still hurt though.

After 6 straight attempts at asking a girl out, she was the lucky 7th who said yes and it just so happened she was arguably the most attractive and mysterious so I was shocked to the core. Genuinely I don’t feel angry at her but it’s just that either God/Fate (i don’t distinguish cos i don’t claim to know) is messing with me. I finally got to go out on my first ever date and just my luck she shut it down because we live too close together?! I mean it IS a fair reason but it seems such a petty reason compared to being friend-zoned or straight up rejected. Legit last year I asked a girl out over messenger and she said yes, but then she kept telling me she was busy for a solid month and eventually she just said ‘you mean as friends right?’ and ofc i died right there and then. A full fucking month of believing I’d gotten somewhere. You can only imagine then what it was like today to receive this new girl’s message ‘Is it supposed to be a date?’ while I’m attempting to do essay research for a deadline tomorrow. I’m stressed with this immense amount of work but then I get minor PTSD shaking through my body because here I am getting friend-zoned via messenger again. 

I don’t see how she could be ok with ending it like this unless she wasn’t properly into me and so surely this must be the case. On the other hand we she confirmed this thing 3 times in the last few days so clearly it’s not as if she never liked me. Could she have thought of it as friends going out? I doubt it because she definitely told her girlfriends about it and there’s no way all 3 of them could have all come to that same conclusion. I dunno. I good that we are friends but at the same time it’s just a sign of my unending girl failures.

On Friday as I asked this girl out, my friend who I asked out last month and I had a convo about that. She said outright that I tick all her boxes but she sees me as a friend so it just wouldn’t work. An ounce of me felt like she was saying all this because she wanted to seem confident and happy for me in the knowledge that I was already with this girl who just rejected me. It’ll be... interesting(?) to see what happens when this rejection gets out even though I know I shouldn’t be going for her and vice versa.

Who is She?

I went on my first date ever yesterday. Didn’t know what to expect really. I went in with the full faith that I couldn’t possibly fuck up because either it would go well and we’d both be into each other or it’d be bad and we’d both no be into each other. Helped me with confidence. Basically though, this is a very difficult person for me to read. On one hand we were talking for 5 hours straight with an astonishingly small amount of awkward silence imo, but on the other hand we have very different music and film tastes, she seemed a bit tense over my Serbian-ness and she kept scrolling through her phone.

Music: She loves grime. Like literally only grime and one direction lmao. I on the other hand like pretty much all kinds of music but probably like grime the least. We at least bonded over her once being a fangirl with a failed emo phase and me being a failed All time low emo fanboy.

Film: She hardly watches any and doesn’t know any actor names or anything whereas I know a lot and watch a lot. Literally her favourite film, The Other Woman, is one of my all time least favourite films. I have very bad memories associated with that film.

I dunno though. Although she spoke over me a LOT and didn’t ask me that many questions I’m not entirely put off as I would’ve assumed I would be. I think she’s a very complicated person who I only began to understand by the end of the night. She comes across as very intimidating with a resting bitch face (her words not mine) but this means I had always assumed she was confident. I’m not sure though. The way in which she checked her phone, scrolling through not only chats but instagram and fb feeds too suggested that she was just feeling a bit awkward. Whenever I said much she’d put the phone down so she clearly wasn’t more interested in that than me. She also said that she prefers phone calls and facetime rather than using FB messenger though she made it explicitly clear that she messages me quite quickly. The only people I know who prefer that are generally more shy people who like to avoid social media. Considering she told me a lot about how she hated the shallow popular girls in her 6th form and the fact that she actually liked talking to the quiet library people, I think that she really is more naturally kinda and soft than she initially comes across.

Because she messages pretty slowly and poorly (probably cos she’s not used to doing a lot of it), it’s been quite hard to get a feel for how she felt the date went. What I do know is that she was talking about how she felt really unfit on the date but then told me the next day she’d done some exercise when she got back to her room. Nobody does fucking jumping jacks in their room except weirdos. I’m a weirdo and I’m fascinated by this lol. Also she stayed up all night just for the bants before going to her classes today which is extreme behaviour even for her. Could it be that the date affected her mentality? It’s probably wishful thinking on my part but when I first held a girl’s hand and kissed a girl, both nights I couldn’t sleep -- is this a situation where she might really like me? Or is she just that much of an insane party animal? Not sure but if she really is as soft as I suspect, I think it could be the former. 

Despite the complete and utter differences between the two of us we clearly have some kind of chemistry which allows us to get past all that. I really do think I found someone new in that girl. Going into the date I already knew she was a vehement feminist so I was aware I shouldn’t push masculine stuff so like I paid for her hotdog but only because she didn’t have enough change to do it herself. Also when she kept talking about her liking chickflicks which involve women embarassing men I just went along with it and agreed that most men are trash. Ngl all of us are cunts sometimes and others cunts all the time. Don’t get me wrong I think it would be wrong to abandon masculinity and men to move towards an entirely feminine world but I do acknowledge the pigheadedness and lack of logic which so many guys live their lives by. She also let on that her boyfriend cheated on her with her bestfriend in 6th form. That’s pretty brutal. She moved on quite fast after that but I can definitely see why she’d have a grudge against guys. Luckily I know I’m not a normal guy and am 100% sure she realised that I don’t do things in the typical man’s way.

Hopefully I’ll see her tomorrow and I can finally confirm that the date actually went well. The way we’d left it was quite an awkward goodbye by her hall’s door because I had friends like 15m away, probably watching. It was all good until that goodbye which really threw me. I knew I wouldn’t go up because 1. Idk what the fuck I’m doing and 2. All her flatmates are her friends.

Luckily cos nobody will ever read this I can ignore writing in a logical order. I forgot to mention that she kept talking ON AND ON about her flatmates and their beef. All these little disputes and insults they all had with each other just sounded like so much drama. Given that I don’t know any of her friends, her just throwing names at me and a million miles an hour was confusing af and even though I’m a good listener, it was a genuine struggle to keep up and concentrated after a while.

If anyone actually reads this shit could they heart this cos then I might actually try to make these things a bit more clear. Of course if you like the ranting just send me a msg

;l

I ain’t got no clue what I am about to write as there is nothing prodding my brain to be made. I feel like it’s a really good thing just to write and see where my trail of thought goes. My mind moves far too fast as it is and by forcing me to use a keyboard to think, I am restricted to only 60-70 wpm at fastest pace. blegrhhhh Yah I can only write that fast when I am super angry/determined. Do other people find that they can use their anger to turn on a determination to not fail? I find it activates in me when I’m fighting to win a ball in a football game which we are losing, when I’m typing out an essay which I either hate or massively enjoy writing, playing catch up in badminton, and asking girls out. Hahaahahaha we are back yet again to girls. Genuinely all I really think about so it seems. What I mean in this case is that I can get too frustrated with myself and a lack of contact with a girl causing no progress to be made. It’s this anger at myself which can allow me to brave going up to her and asking her out. I get rejected every time whether I’m angry or not so I can’t say for sure whether it ruins my chances. There are two girls I like right now. Girl 1. is super nice, has crazy curly hair like you wouldn’t belive, has an excellent sense of humour, is sensitive, has a beautiful voice and the list goes on. The problem is she lives in halls so close to me that I was scared off when I could have asked her out but now I have somehow been separated from her and the friendgroup around her. I can’t feel comfortable around certain members of that group but I do start and engage conversations when I’m with them, only they don’t reciprocate as they only talk about in-jokes and experiences. This means it’s very tiring and difficult to connect with her in public and to flirt. I learnt from the last few girls I asked out that I have to do some kind of ground work in terms of flirting before asking a girl who I already know out as the worst thing you can do is ask them out of the blue and get rejected through a tone of utter surprise. I’m already friends with this girl already but I’m getting to the stage where I’m no longer completely comfortable around her because I begin to overthink every little thing. Girl 2. Very attractive and turns out she’s from my neighbourhood both back home and ethnically speaking (can’t help it welp). I’ve spoken to her in person about 3/4 times and every time we seem to get on and not have awkward silences but then she always gets dragged away by her friends before we get past the 2 minute conversation mark. The thing is with this girl I’ve been trying to only listen to my friends with successful experience for advice but that involves a lot of not messaging her. I mean it DID lead to her messaging me first the other night when we were both supposed to be at the same club. I saw her in person that night and danced in her group for a few seconds at one point. She acknowledged me but she avoided my gaze. I do think she must be in to me at least a bit but I haven’t got much idea as to how to initiate without being weird. I always come across very poorly and I don’t want it to happen again. She’s just such a stereotypical hot girl with that attitude vibe which is super intimidating. If I got a proper conversation and it went really well then I might consider asking her out though. I’ve heard she’s already gone out on a date with somebody but they weren’t into each other in the end. That means that she’s at least OPEN to the concept of going out which is all I need at this point.

Shit with Girls

Yep.  I haven’t got a damn clue what I’m doing when I try to talk to girls. At this point I’m considering the possibility that I don’t have the slightest idea as to what flirting actually is because girls never seem to react to it when I try, but people always think I’m in a thing with my friends who are girls. I clearly fuck this shit up somehow. My theory is that when I like a girl I become too nervous to flirt with them in a natural way, so anything I say just ends up being withdrawn and not at all what I want to be saying. With girls who I am confident are my friends on the other hand, I am more than happy to tease and compliment them as I can do it without complication and the thought of being slimy, corny, desperate etc. etc. There are so many ways in which a guy can seriously come off badly from flirting, this shit is what terrifies me. Every time I get a compliment as to my height, looks, style, jokes etc., I just deflect it because I find they make me more unhappy. If I truly were perfect in all these respects but still incapable of hooking up/getting a girl on a date, then that would suggest that the one thing dragging me down is my intentional flirting. I feel hopeless in this respect. 

It’s hard to bring me down and stop me from being hopeful with girls but every time I get rejected I get more stressed because I am 19 now and the only time I’ve done anything with a girl was at a summer camp when I was 15. Girls want guys to be confident right? How can I be confident around girls when I’ve had effectively no advice on the subject, always get rejected, none of my friends seem to be role models because they’re as unsuccessful as I am, and the colossal amount of stress of it all now plays on my emotions and thoughts. I can no longer distinguish clearly as to whether I like a girl as a friend or romantically and genuinely don’t know what a crush feels like anymore. It’s as if my body has set up a defence mechanism because it won’t let me be properly into individual girls because I’ve been rejected so many times.

NoT suRE

Who knows what the fuck is going on at any point. What should one be doing@? Sometimes I want nothing more than to do my studying and assignments before chilling out with friends with no pre-conceived ideas of how I should and act and behave around them -- just calming and relaxing. Other times though I seriously don’t care about any work I’m supposed to do and just feel a nip of anger towards them. It’s in this type of mood where I become prone to JUST DOING THINGS. I’ll jump in a bush for no reason more than to get a rush out of it, start dancing in public to a song stuck in my head, start speaking in an Irish or Scottish accent, message old friends on Facebook, seriously flirt with girls and generally GET SHIT DONE. Drawback to this is that I’m unhinged and I later feel very nervous. I’ll suddenly remember my work, I’ll feel ashamed for my anger and lack of caution and just want to hide away from everyone. I shouldn’t be feeling like that though. Society has come and said that masculinity is a bad thing and anger is never beneficial. Doing stupid things like jumping in bushes is just that: stupid. Dancing in public without music makes you look deranged, doing another accent makes you seem like an attention-seeker,  messaging old friends never makes a difference because friendships require reciprocation, and hardcore flirting makes me feel extremely awkward because it isn’t what I would classify as NATURAL eventhough it was since it was a spur of the moment thing. I want to feel that buzzing angry masculinity mode just enough to get out there and do shit without feeling shit myself. Sigh.

Mind-fuck Splurge

Absolute chaos consumed him as his eyes turned to flame. Nothing could make him realise the true extent to what he had done. What he had to do he had known forever but he just couldn’t prove it to himself. Things don’t make sense until one can properly convince the entirety of themselves that it’s the truth. Just a slight inkling of negativity or doubt can set off a chain reaction which can prevent someone from doing something. Is it bad that the one thing that comes to mind at the moment when I do a splurge is my inability to ask out girls? It does seem quite shallow I’m not going to lie but then again it’s in our biology to be thinking about such things, especially if you feel like you’re being denied access to a drug you need. Since age 13 life has basically been a constant withdrawal symptom from being held back from relationships and sex. What hurts most is that I don’t even know why I am so bad at this stuff. Every time I feel like I’m getting close to a girl I have a sudden urge to give up. Ever since a series of rejections at school which resulted in extreme awkwardness and lost friendships, I’ve just been completely petrified of asking anybody out. Although I’ve acted to my close friends like I don’t actually fear asking people out and that I only don’t do it out of huge risks involved, I know in my heart that it’s really down to my inner fears. It’s about time I get over it though isn’t it? Yes it fucking is. I’ve liked this girl for almost a month. A full month without doing anything. Perhaps I’ve waited too long, perhaps I haven’t. Maybe she liked/likes/never liked me. Fuck knows. Fuck cares. Fuck can go fuck itself.

It’s time to live. It’s time to create myself another story which I can keep in my heart, whether it’s going to be happy, awkward or shitty, at least I’ll have done something. I’m getting more excited now as I consider it all because I genuinely want to do it. I’m no longer dreaming, I want to be alive and do something proactive and get past fear and self-doubt.

Motivation

It does not matter what happens tomorrow. Today is now, today is relevant, today decides things. Not tomorrow. If you start thinking about doing something at a time other than today, stop. Life is all about taking risks, even high-risk low-reward things can be worth it just for the experience. You could not only get a good story to tell but you could actually learn something. So the next time you consider putting off asking someone out or applying for your dream job, just slap yourself in the face and yell at the top of your lungs ‘TODAY IS THE DAY’. Doing nothing achieves nothing, so if you keep going on wondering why the world is never going your way, you must ask yourself whether you’ve really been trying to solve your problems out there. Now, go and ask her out tonight and don’t give up. Be bold. Be brave and no matter what be confident. Even if she says no, try to figure out why so that you can pick yourself up and be more prepared for the next time.

James’s Tree

It wasn’t the only time James had seen a tree before. Of course he’d walked by them before on his way to school but he’d never truly SEEN one.

To inspect the grooves and the textures of its bark and to feel the aged aura which emanated from its branches was simply not something that people did. He couldn’t hear the sniggers behind him as he stood there, dwarfed by the giant that stood before him. Wind swept into the crevices in the trunk and rushed through the leaves, raising the hairs on James’s neck as he gazed up. How could a living being be so great and yet go so unnoticed forever? His eyes swirled as leaves fell around him in a whirlwind of red and yellow.

Then he took a step forward. Hand out, he edged closer. Feeling for something more.

An answer. The missing piece to his puzzle. Something which he knew and had always known but had never quite been able to grasp firmly.

but then the wind died.

James could hear the voices again and blood rushed to his cheeks as he turned his head back around sheepishly. He saw them in a crowd now. Watching from the path. James realised his hand was still outstretched towards the tree but not quite touching it. He let his arm fall to his side and he looked down, embarrassed. One foot after another he waded through the piles of leaves: away from his tree.