How do I really feel? Curiously sustainable, it would appear...

Earlier this week, I was asked how I was really feeling.  I knew the question was in earnest – the really had been typed in italics – and so I gave some consideration to the answer I gave.   I have been reading a book about Greek mythology.  The story of Pandora’s Box sprang to mind, and so – as means of metaphor (albeit a smashing together of two) – I compared myself to a man of clay awaiting the new set of instructions to be put inside me; but that I knew there would be no new instructions because I had sealed myself shut.

It’s a sort of inverse meaning to that tale, I suppose.  In opening the box, Pandora unleashes woe upon the earth.  In placing instructions inside me, woe occurs for the placer.  By instructions, I mean places their-self in me; becomes involved with me; trusts me; takes me on.  I find myself a corrupting material.  This last few years has confirmed that for me, and life has become much more simple having realised that and having sealed myself shut.

What a martyr, eh?  I know, I know.  It is self evident, though.  I am deleterious and cause people who get close to fester and degrade.  This is, however, by the by and not entirely what’s been playing on my mind since I was asked how I was really feeling.

Having given my answer I waited for a response.  Given the nature of the tone of the question I was expecting a swift answer – some form of contradiction, some form of reassurance, some further questions, something.  I waited a day or two and I had not received a reply.  The days dragged on, and the fact that I had not received a reply began to play on my mind.  It began to negatively affect me because I believed I had answered a sincerely asked question with a sincere reply - and honesty, my openness, had been met by silence.

Naturally, once that doubt sets in, further demons begin to surface in the mind.  Was I not being answered because the person who had received my response perceived me to be acting melodramatically and had not managed to stop their eyeballs from rolling enough to refocus on their screen to type accurately?  Was my reaction being judged to be inauthentic, to be attention seeking, to be artificially creating dialogue?  And then, of course, you start to second-guess yourself: perhaps I simply was after the attention an answer so OTT could generate.   It starts to gnaw at your sensibility.

Six days went by.  I appreciate that people are busy.  I know that what’s in front of you takes priority and online conversations slip down the to do list.  I did not received a reply.

So, there’s another reason to clam up.  When asked now about how I am really feeling, I appreciate that it doesn’t actually matter how I reply.  I am able to continue working inside my little bubble, all smoke and mirrors, giving indications all is as it should be in the world.  Easy.

Curiously, this internalised thrashing has occurred at a time when rough edges feel as if they’re smoothing.  Two years ago, I was in free-fall.  Now, acknowledging that I need to keep my corrosive self away from people, is beginning to see the seal blend and lost in the surface.  The seam is disappearing.  I look like a solid.  This is good, I think.  It feels to me like patterns are evolving in my existence that can be repeated and can appear to be something akin to a life.  Enough to throw people off the scent.  Enough, eventually, hopefully, for people to not have to ask how I am really feeling with italics.

It has been a contrasting set of emotions; both joyous and pitiful simultaneously but bearable, and actually bearing to live the life I have now is a feeling quite alien to me.  If this is bearable, it is sustainable.  That is something to cling on to and to use as a battery to ensure the pattern repeats whilst I am necessary.  It feels like I might be starting to function, and that is a most unusual sensation.

Draught, delete, draught, delete, draught...oh, woe is me...

So – I’ve tried to write something about how I’m doing mentally at the moment.  I have scrapped two draughts because they were edging close to maudlin woe is me…this is heading that way too but I think I’m going to stick with this one because it is capturing how my head is not working at the moment…please be patient, I appreciate it’s a bit shit but it’s also a bit honest too.

*

I walked out of my house, today, with book in hand and a destination in mind where I could sit and eat and read for a while.  I didn’t quite know where I was going; I just knew that I was going somewhere.

I walked into town.  I walked around town.  I walked passed all the cafés, restaurants and bars.  I walked home and sat on the sofa, book by my side, and did not read a single word all afternoon.

I surfed.  Mindless absorption: videos, articles, social feeds, videos, podcasts, the sofa warming underneath me.  My back out of shape, slumped down on the seat and sliding further and further.  My shoulders are cramped and feel tender.  My eyes hurt.  The white light pouring into them is doing them no good.  I have mildly chastised myself, though entirely subconsciously, and have done nothing as a result of this chastisement.

The thought of going into a café and sitting and being in a place with other people was too much.  The notion of spending time outside the house was too much.  Being back on the sofa and in front of the screen is the comfort blanket.  My study is suffering.  My writing is near non-existent.  Everything is a struggle.  A barrier sits before every action and today was a day I could not get over or around.  And it’s pathetic.  I feel pathetic.

I can’t function at the moment.  Yes, I can “routine” – all smoke and mirrors and just being present physically.  But I am not functioning.  I constantly look for the path of least resistance and I know that that is the wrong way to go about things.  I am failing in my work, my writing, my living.  It is easier to come and sit home.  This bubble is comforting.  It is controlled and solitary.  I don’t have to speak with people and I don’t have to answer for the absence of noise in the rooms, the absence of life.  I tread the path from seat to kettle and back again.  And then the day ticks over and another one is done.  I can sigh and sign off on it.

I read but I can’t remember what I’ve read.  I’ve ploughed through books all year and have a small bundle sat waiting for their turn to sit in front of my eyes.  I don’t think I could tell you what any of them were about.  I am trying to read a sequel to a book I only recently finished.  I have no idea how the stories link and there is mass exposition at the start of the second to try and fill in the picture.  It’s ridiculous.  It feels like my brain has tuned-in to the fact that I don’t care anymore and so it is not taking the time to register and store information.  I make tea and it sits, forgotten, on the side and goes cold.  I put washing in the machine and it sits in the drum and hours can go by with me lost to passivity and I get a jolt and remember and curse myself but it feels like my subconscious giving up because my conscious has.

Part of this, I think, is because of geography.  I am in the wrong place.  Around me sit unpacked boxes from the move from New Zealand.  They have sat there since they arrived last March.  Now, I know this is massively unhealthy and a contributing factor, I am sure.  But, I also know that in these boxes is a foreign life and one I don’t want corrupted by the one I have now.  What’s in the boxes does not belong to this place, this country.  I don’t think I do.  That isn’t the all of it, though.  I was running on automatic way before the move back to the UK.  I was busy though, positive; it was still smoke and mirrors but it was at least affirmative busyness, affecting busyness and bringing smiles busyness.  I feel locked out of being able to do that here.  Perhaps, a better way of saying that is: I haven’t found my way into that here, yet.  I hope I do.

"We are not our brokenness."

There are two pieces of graffiti in Stroud Library.  One says, “We are not our brokenness.”   The other reads, in one hand, “Your life is in God’s hands,” and in a second hand right below, “I wish he’d leave me alone, my life is horrible.” - I may have the wording of the second wrong.  I looked at the first again today, prompting this revisit to the Marmite moment.

I had plans for today.  I had plans for the whole week, actually.  Back in the saddle after Christmas, it was time to start work again and pick up where we left off in December.  I hadn’t banked on my head getting in the way.  It has chosen to do so.

Today: I had chores to complete; I then had a plan to go to the cinema and to go shopping – I have a birthday to buy for.  The day began on track: up and at the chores.  Chore number one, tick; chore number two, ticked as much as it could be.  Positive.  Chore three, a snag and immediately the mood lowered.  The cloud started to descend.  It was a travel snag, so I resolved to go and speak to a travel specialist and resolve it.

Approaching town I could hear music and the betraying tinkle of the Morris Dancer bell.  The Wassail Festival was in full flow.  Town was full.  That meant people, specifically, people enjoying themselves.  The mood sank further.  The travel agents was full. And so I found myself on a loop, walking around and around.  The cinema part of the day fell away, just completely evaporated from my thinking.  Robotically, I ended up at the train station paying for a day return and then realising I was forty-five minutes away from the train departing the station.  Back out into the loop.  Back around to the agents – fuller.  And, hence to the library and the graffiti and actually debating with myself that I am indeed my own brokenness.

I sat on the train.  I went on auto-pilot and found myself in the Cathedral and I sat and listened to the pipe-organ and swam in the embrace that the history of this building offers.  The religiosity is poppycock, the thousand-year steadiness of the structure is something to try and centre yourself in – certainly somewhere I find helpful to centre myself.  I could have sat there all afternoon.  The wistful whisper of conversation a susurrous balm to match the hive of noise inside my head.

Home and then just sitting, after wandering and buying stuff, just because some stuff was there to buy.  Browsing in shops, heading into places for no reason other than to eat up time.  And then home.  Annoyed at the empty carriage being filled immediately around me by people speaking and having conversation whilst the remainder of the carriage remained empty and quiet and inviting their noise to go there instead.  Different to the whispered hum of the Cathedral. Sharp consonants.

And just sitting.  Time moving past me.  All plans gone.  Brain not engaged.  All passive consumption.  Until, of course, I decide to do this.

I have a very difficult relationship with my own mental health.  For a time, my doctor considered me to be depressed – not to the point where she prescribed anything except counselling, but on the way there.  I don’t know.  Counselling did not work.  I could not engage – perhaps then was a time and place thing and perhaps now might be different.  See, I know that I have done this to myself.  I am entirely responsible for the situation I am in and so my increasing isolation and trepidation at being around or being with people, at even trying to form friendships, has its roots in the worthlessness that is me.  I am negative impact: selfish but now self-aware enough to realise this and absent myself from social.  It is, though, still a massive struggle to then face a day.

Today dissolved.  Tomorrow is another day that sees fine intent at its start.  Only history will tell if I can deliver on intention.  I’ve known for a while that I am my brokenness.  The graffiti today cemented that thought for me nicely.

One Year, Minus 20 Days...and the Marmite is still a mess...

This time last year, I was preparing for the end of my time in New Zealand and getting ready for the journey back to the UK.  This year minus twenty days back in the UK has changed me both physically and psychologically.

I caught my reflection about a week ago.  Cheekbones bulged, and below the skin hung concave; gaunt.  A few weeks further back than that, I had chance to see my reflection and found my father looking back at me.  I never wanted to look like my father; especially my father in his later years.  That’s who I could see.  This morning I had a face scan at the opticians, and when it came time to map glasses on to my face – to see which style made me look less oil rig – the face sag in the image they had captured gave the appearance of a man having a stroke.  It was quite a shock.

As I have withered away physically, so I have withered psychologically, too.  I had opportunity to go to a pretend German Xmas market, last week.  There were simply too many people there.  It was impossible to feel comfortable.  I know that many feel hatred of the crowd so: today I was at a drama performance, sat in the audience, and could feel myself physically shrinking into my seat; tears welling up at the simplest emotive heartstring pluck of the sentimental songs.  That is not normal.  I’ve walked home on a Friday on a few occasions now feeling crestfallen at the fact that the shit week I’ve had won’t have someone it can be related to when I get home…and then brain kicks in and flashes reruns of all the reasons why there will be no one at home to hear me moan and I completely understand and remember why there will be no one there.

It feels appropriate, somehow, that I have come back to the UK to wither, when the country – this tired, worn out, old country – has chosen the same time to wither too.  This is not going to segue into a Brexit piece – I’m far too self-centre for this to shift away from being about me, don’tchaknow – but this political decision has highlighted just how tired, worn out and old this country actually is.  Sorry, excuse me, not country: collection of countries.  The complex nature of the make up of the United (ha!) Kingdom continually appears to slip the mind – especially of those who are supposed to be leading it.

The fractious nature of the manner in which we are approaching the end of membership with the European Union is appalling to see, and far too appalling to be this close to and actually have affecting my life and the life of those who I hold dear.  That the country voted across party, geographic, class and gender lines should have meant that the political system put aside their petulant differences and childish goal-scoring to work together to form a united front to our European partners and negotiate as strong an exit deal as they possibly could have done so.  How does Olivier’s Doctor put it in A Bridge Too Far as he tries to negotiate a halt to the fighting to bring assistance to the wounded and dying? “Winning and losing is not our concern.  Living or dying is.  Cease fire… one hour… two… just to evacuate our wounded.  Afterwards you can kill us as much as you want to.”  Once we get out of Europe, they could go back to being dicks to each other, just like normal.  For now, they should be stood shoulder to shoulder to ensure they are representing and working on behalf of every UK citizen.  But, like me, they’re too worried about their reflection in the mirror.  Too worried about judgement and taking the risk to put other people first.

I bit the bullet, the other week.  I bought Marmite again – seems Vegemite has gone to stay.  It is still the oxtail crisp, honey textured, HP sauce mess it was just under a year ago.  It does not taste like it should do.  It is a marker for how bad a year this had been.