I got an e-mail from YouTube today, telling me that I needed to check on this video as there were some issues with videos uploaded before March 2020.

I made this video in early 2013 when was recovering from surgery and also reflecting on my then religious views. I watch this video now and I wonder just who I was a decade ago.

All the pictures in the video I took myself, I think during 2011 – 2012. It was during the time I was single and quite lonely. Bone crushingly and soul-crushingly lonely. I would spend my weekends and annual leave travelling, out and about in London or other cities of the world (Europe) taking pictures of anything that caught my eye. I would later then spend hours in the evening in my little flat on my computer editing the pictures. I think at the time, I probably did enjoy myself. It’s certainly something I wish I had the time and energy to do now. Then at least I would take the time to stop and stare. Maybe I was a little more mindful then, in a way I wish I would do more of now.

However the overwhelming emotion that washes over me, when I watch his video again is the sense of immense emptiness that I was feeling at the time. It is amazing just how powerful that response it to seeing those images again and hearing that song. I think it reflected the absolute sadness and sorrow I always felt when I went to Church. I wonder now if I went to Church because I felt sad, sorrowful and lonely or whether it just made me feel that way. Certainly I have had my share of those feelings since I stopped going.

But perhaps I have felt less hopeless. Perhaps I have been learning to take responsibility for my actions and understand the painful realities of life. Listening to this tune reminds me that I used to cry all the time in those days and feel like there was a cloud permenantly over my head. I felt like there was a hole in my chest. Everyday seemed a battle. The battles are different today.

Interesting that this song and memories have surfaced now. I was thinking the other day that I wanted to explore what faith, if any that I had. I see the world with quite different eyes to the woman that got baptised 17 years ago. I know, then I took a great deal of comfort in some of the tenets of my faith, which later turned into a deep deep cynacism. And now of course in these dark days there is nothing to overturn this.