Tag: Reflections

The names have been changed to protect the innocent

I was eleven when I had my first kiss. Eleven going on eight, as all boys are at that age, our childishness thrown into stark relief against the maturity of the girls in our class. Eleven going on sixteen as we faked our way to maturity.

There were a few of us who lived in the same area, played together in the streets and parks, visited parental homes on sunny holidays in a carefully coordinated route to get the most bang for our (invisible) buck. Some evenings we used to sneak into the local football ground through a gap in the fence. If you were careful, and avoided Dick the groundsman on his final rounds, you could get into the old stands. Long since bulldozed to the ground, even then it was a flaking concrete and rusted iron affair but we liked it cos you could swing or sit up on one of the bars. No seats were available back then (why do you think they called it a ‘stand’?) but it was a place to hang out.

Somewhere along the line, things started to change as we made invisible transistion from friends to boyfriends and girlfriends. Crushes were formed and lost, and getting off with someone was all part of the formative ritual soon captured in playground conversations.

“Have you got off with her yet?”
“Aye of course”, we all lied.

There was a hierarchy at play back then, an unspoken categorisation of the popular and not so popular and so it followed that the most popular boys and girls paired off, and the rest of us followed in their wake, frantically trying to catch up and ride the tailcoats of their burgeoning puberty.

And so it was that our little group found ourselves lined up at the back of that ramshackle old football stand, dusk slowly falling as we paired off. Alison and I stood facing each other. I can remember feeling nervous, feeling unsure, what if I did it wrong? And then she leaned towards me, eyes half-closed, and I followed her lead. Our lips met, our bodies touched as we moved closer. Weird butterflies in my stomach and some other stirrings further down kicked in.

The kissing style back then was a full on ‘this is how we saw it in a movie’ style, open mouthed affair. We had all heard tales of lockjaw, such was the longetivity and ferocity as we mouthed each other for what felt like hours on end. It was not romantic. Or subtle.

But ohhhh my god it was fun.

After that we were, kind of, tentatively, ‘going out’ purely because that way you always had someone to get off with when, inevitably, the sychronised moment arrived and we stopped talking and started kissing.

Playground conversations around that time veered between football, and teachers, and then snippets of conversation of ‘slipping the hand’ started to emerge. For the last few months of Primary School it seemed to descend into a free for all, almost as if we all realised that Secondary School was approaching and that was our last chance to claim innocence. Everyone was getting off with everyone else, especially when it came to birthday parties.

We didn’t have parties though, we had record nights. They were, literally, where you’d take your records (vinyl LPs and singles) to the party and take turns playing them. There would be the usual pre-teenage moments, those who were paired off could be easily spotted, with girls awkwardly sitting on boys laps, as we all waited for spin the bottle. Two circles were formed, two bottles spun and the chosen girl and boy pushed into a cupboard together with strict instructions that they had to get off with each other, no matter what.

These memories are blurry now, the crushes long gone and unrealised, but fond reminders of a happy time.

I’m not depressed. I’m not suicidal. I’m not unhappy. I just felt a bit stuck. So I’m getting some help and have been going to counselling the past few weeks.

I’m not going into much/any detail here, that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about me saying that I am receiving counselling, I am getting help. This post is about saying it publicly, making it less taboo for the next man, even if only slightly.

And for those concerned about my own well being. I am well. I am good. The counselling is helping already, and I’m glad I’m doing it.

If anyone reading this wants to discuss, or ask, me anything further. Or even just shout into the void at me to get something off your chest, please do (there is a contact link up top).

Or better still, get help if you need it. There are many organisations and private practices, all of which are there for you, all of which have trained people who will listen and help you. It’s not easy taking the first step, but once you do the second step is easier.

Useful links

• http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/men-and-mental-health-stats.html
• http://www.samaritans.org
• http://www.mind.org.uk
• http://www.crisiscounselling.co.uk

Tick tock

I have a clock in every room.

Apparently this is a bit weird, at least according to my colleagues at work. I’m not sure exactly when it became weird though; I don’t think it was mentioning the fact I have a clock in the living room, or the one in the bedroom, but when I said there was a clock in the bathroom, that’s when the puzzled looks appeared and the questions started.

“You have a clock in the bathroom? Are you timing how long it takes to pee?”
“…. you have a clock in … what?”
“Is it for a time and motion study of your bathroom habits?”
“That’s just weird”

For the record, the reason I have a clock in the bathroom is so I know what time it is (obvs).

No, I don’t spend hours in the bathroom, but if I’m running a bit late I find it handy to know the time. Admittedly this is usually first thing in the morning, and is mostly to counter my inability to get out of bed when my alarm first goes off, coupled with my desire to leave the house at 7:15am (because any later and the buses start to get full of people, ugh), but … yeah, ok, aside from that pretty specific reason I don’t really have any good justification as to why there is a clock in my bathroom.

My obsession with checking the time has been with me as long as I can remember. I’d need to ask, but I’m pretty sure there was a clock in my parents bathroom too (hence why I didn’t think it was weird), I’ve worn a watch as long as I can remember (my Dad always wears a watch … apple doesn’t fall far and all that), and like most people who work in an office, my day is governed by the ticking of the clock both to make sure I go to meetings and to countdown to the end of the day.

Outside of work, I’m the person who is always early, sometimes 30 mins or more, because god forbid I’m late, right? (more on this later).

There is no doubt time is a big part of my day, it drives most of my tasks and actions, even the mundane things – like getting ready to go to work in the morning – are governed by a clock. It’s just the way it always seems to have been.

Clearly this obsession is unhealthy, hell, re-reading some of this and it’s positively batty, and logically I know that it adds to my stress levels and blood pressure. It also locks in a set of behaviours which can trigger some not good outcomes (what happens if I’m late? will people think less of me? will I be seen as a failure for not turning up on time? etc etc), including anxiety and stress which in turn drives bad behaviours which in turn … you get the picture.

Spirally spirally spirally EAT ALL THE FOOD!

However over the past month or so it’s been something that, with the help of a trained professional, has been identified and I’m now actively tackling. Turns out that this specific time checking obsession I have is driven by perfectionism, a realisation that has also opened up a whole raft of other behaviours that I need to tackle.

Phrases like constant checking, unrelenting standards, good enough, neural pathways, fortune telling, cognition… and many more. There is a lot to think about, some of it good, some of it bad, and it’ll be a steady path to a different me, one that I am happier with, one that gives himself a break and allows himself to fail. It’ll take time.

Speaking of which, I think step one might be to get rid of the clock in the bathroom?

I am not my job. I am not how much money I have in the bank. I am not the car I drive. I am not the contents of my wallet. I am not my fucking khakis. I am not the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

(paraphrased from a movie we don’t talk about)

Three boxes of books and five bags of clothes given to charity, four bags of  assorted rubbish taken to the dump, one bookcase, one box of assorted drinking glasses, and a few lamps gone, and soon to be added to the list of outgoing items are two chests of drawers and a chair bed (sale pending).

It’s embarrassing. Not just the volume but how easily discarded. Shameful.

It’s also harder than I had considered when I set out; clearing through drawers and long closed boxes, finding letters and notes from the past, memories ripped anew. Fresh wounds lightly salted.

It’s also false picture of reality. I am not defined by my possessions, even if it seems that way at the moment, but I feel overwhelmed and confounded by how little so many of these things mean to me. Yet the more I clear, the more determined I become. The things I have will not own me. I am not Jack’s wasted life.

I reckon I’m about a third of the way through this process so there is still a way to go before I’ll be ‘finished’. At least finished enough for the upcoming move, if not finished enough to fully move on it seems.

It’s not just about ‘getting rid’ and I find I’m as horrified by the quantity of things I possess as I am fascinated by what they seem to represent. There is a delight at re-discovering items that have lain dormant in a drawer or on a shelf for too many years, and at times a deep melancholy for those who are no longer part of my life.

I know this is all down to the choices I’ve made, the way I live my life, and all the consequences I have wrought. I am not special in this respect (or in any respect) but it turns out that decluttering your possessions also means decluttering your emotions and finding what you truly value, what you truly need in your life. Yes, I know. There are books about this stuff but I’m finding the doing more effective than the reading.

It’s also tiring. The ‘what ifs’ are writ large in every lost note recovered, every photo found hidden in the crease of a book, every decision to keep an item, or to throw it away. It is cathartic and exhausting. It feels like it has worth, that what I am doing is more valuable to me than any monetary value I could place on the items I am considering, that the act of consideration is a better investment than the physical object itself.

Ultimately, factually, this is all about moving to a smaller/cheaper place. What I’m realising is that it’s a larger change of self than I had anticipated. A change that is wholly welcomed, warts and all. Perhaps I am giving the process too much weight but it’s hard not to when the entire lesson seems to circle back to me and my sense of self.

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

Mental health issues can be violent, invasive and debilitating illnesses, chasing you around and demanding your full attention to the detriment of others. They can also be a gentle inhibitor, a subtle manipulator that sits quietly in the background influencing everything, all day, every day, even if we aren’t fully aware of it because it hides from view, somewhere just out of reach. The black dog versus the dark cloud.

The black dog hasn’t been around me for a long time, but the dark cloud is never really that far away, floating around in the dark corners of my brain, dust particles captured in sunlight.

One of the reasons I keep busy and push push push to do better do more keep my brain active is that to stop.

… and pause

… is to let that dust settle, to let the fine black residue taint the things I’ve nurtured and created.

What I’m also doing is storing up a protective layer, a buffer, for the days when it’s a wee bit too hard to fight, a wee bit too hard to push myself. Those days are few and far between, and the reality is that they are rarely days at all, much more likely to be a few hours of melancholy, a dose of the sads, which passes by once it’s been acknowledged.

I’m lucky, I know that, but sometimes the world seems to be transpiring to pull me down, everywhere you turn there is terror, pain, horrible acts committed by people I don’t fully understand. I know that, despite the noise the media makes, the world is largely full of kind people, or at least people who aren’t too threatening. I know that the skewed view of the world that is painted large in newspaper headlines, or captioned and bannered in hi-def on my TV is not wholly representative.

But when it comes at me from all angles, mainstream and social streams bombarding me, at those times I feel small and weak, a pointless dot on the face of a spinning mass, a nothing in the spec of human history. Pointless.

It can be overwhelming, the scale of it, and it’s all I can do to ‘switch off’ and lose myself in music, or a book, or just an aimless wander in the fresh air.

And then it passes, I’ve made it through to the other side again.

I know it will continue in this vein, in this cycle. I will extend the timescales by learning how to better control my reactions, better monitor my emotions and awarenesses, but it will return, just as it will pass once more. I will take comfort from the love I have in my life, I will reach out if I need to, but above all I know it will pass. It always does.

In the early days I didn’t believe that and when the fog of distance remained for days, then weeks, then months, it became the norm, it became who I was, it defined me, it owned me. Ohhh if only I’d known then what I know now.

It will pass.

You don’t need to stay strong, you can lie down, hide if you must, but it will always pass. That is why you have to keep on keeping on, even if that’s the only thing you do, the only thing you can manage. Don’t give up. Don’t let it win. Don’t let it define you. Acknowledge it, look at it, turn it over in your hands and contemplate it but know it is not you. You are not it.

Depression is not who you are, it’s what you have.

Fight when you can, every battle helps in the long run, even the ones you lose.

And at some point, it will start to fade away. The black dog will run off to fetch something else to drop at your feet to remind you why you are worthless, as it has countless times before, but next time it will take a little longer to come back. Then a little longer again. It goes on and on until one day you realise you’ve stopped watching the horizon for its return.

Know that it will come lolloping back from time to time. Sometimes it will bring something familiar, but you’ve faced that before. Sometimes it will bring something new, or something unexpected, and you will face that too.

And slowly it starts to pass. The clouds overhead lighten and rays of light filter down from the sky. You will marvel in those at first, amazed they exist, amazed you can see them, touch them, feel them. And, over time, you will realise that, some days, there is more light than dark.

At least I hope it is that way. That’s how it is for me.

It always passes. Even the worst of it.

It always passes.