What is left? Sitting in the West End coffee shop — normally a pleasureable experience — but your mind cannot see anything you have to enjoy in the world?
You feel like doing something but there is no focus, no energy really, no care in what comes your way. You know, rationally, this is not you but it seems like someone else is writing your story and they have gone on a break and forgotten that you only exist because they write. So I guess I have to pick up the pen — it is the only thing I can be arsed doing — and see what comes out. Maybe my fingers have a short circuit to a place in my mind to where creativity, energy and a sense of “me” resides.
“They” or “me” in this instance is the caricature I created, yes me, from the plethora of coping reactions to childhood where love was not really present. I still find that hard to say or to accept. Not yet convinced it is the real experience — but therapist after therapist repeats that I need to accept rather than project.
Therapy can be an avenua you turn down I think and never get out. Every turning on that avenue leads to a cul-de-sac of some other form of treatment, and hope, but they all look pretty from the outside and inside you find the need to do a three point turn or back out back onto the main therapy avenue. You wish for a time when you did not know this street existed and you could go back out onto the main road of your life. Is there a way?
So driving back from the West End of Glasgow, my morning coffee completed after dropping off my wife, I arrive in my little bubble of existence perched on the hills above Port Glasgow. The bubble I wanted to create for my kids perfectly encapsulated by the sand-stone houses, the pleasant parks and walks — the NAP is lovely, my god even public well tended rugby parks. Fuck — this bubble is the West of Scotland equivalent of a hospital isolation ward.
I ended up here to create a life for my kids — running home from the wealth of South East England after a failed business, failing marriage and several family bereavements. Those bereavements helped me see that I did not want my kids to grow without knowing their family so pack up and home we came — well not all the way home but to a bubble. That bubble meant that I did not see my kids as I worked away from home in perpetuity.
There is a point to this writing — I hope — but in truth if you have made it this far you may find that there is no point and no great learnings to be had. All you are doing is following a stranger down a road, he has no compass or map, indeed is not sure why he continues to walk at all and perhaps he should just find a quiet country pub (something the English do very well — but the ability to disappear inside your drink sitting in a blokes pub is a thing we Scots also do very well).
As an aside — perhaps the best pub would be to transport one from a small Somerset village, to the West Coast of Scotland, then offer coffee and papers as well as whisky, chat and silence in equal measures to one person from each country on earth. I think I could find a lot of comfort in the colour of strangers with the distance of alchol, the warmth of an english pub and the presenteeism of Scottish banter. Yip — that sounds like a place I could spend my days — I wonder if they will do rooms.
With me?
So a quick walk back through the highlights of this walk so far. Just to see if we can find a thread to pick up and write a new story — after all the fucking author has definitely taken a break.
- I developed a caricature of effort, hard work, provider, success, confidence in my own abilities (perhaps above the quality of those actual abilities — or maybe not how can you ever make a score and trust the referee of yourself).
- That caricature came with the ability to fool myself into thinking I did not need love. No. That is wrong. There was no thought here — this was from the shadow. Love meant pain and meant my authentic self would much rather hide and let the caricature front up my life. A film “Click” brought me to tears because it so hit the spot — a magical remote control clicking passed the difficult bits of life so that you end up old and not having lived your own life.
- The trouble with sport, I did love my sport and my abilities, excessive socilising, one night stands of your late teens and early twenties is that they give the impression of living life large. My caricature is no fool he knows he does not want anyone looking too close — so live large we do.
- I latched onto my wife to be. I decided before I met her that the next “one night stand” I would try and form a relationship and see how it went. It went well — it gave me a new purpose a new layer of clothes to hang onto myself a purpose. Marriage, kids, freelance, shot at professional success, almost 30 years without a home base — 14 years in the Navy and now just short of 15 years freelance…. where have I lived in that time? Quick come with me down another side street of reminiscing — if you see any answers or wrong turns I can unpick then do shout out. OK so the list start at 16 when I left school and started to flit between two houses — neither feeling like home as the warring, emotional blackmail of one parent and the selflessness of the other ensuring I had no real clue as to where I should be and a mix of guilt, seeking comfort, or plain fecklessness meant that I started my life of locations in two places. This continued from the age of 16… until at aged 48 (soon) I have worked/lived in 28 places. In a space of 32 years I have lived in 28 places- I am sure that tells me something but I am not sure what…
- As a Dad…. which was the point of so much of every action I have taken since 2000… I thought (again not thought — but primal driver not considered/challenged) my role was financial security. But — as time as gone on as a freelance individual I have realised that I needed emotional stability to consistently perform. At times hugely successful and more recently in survival mode as no real enthusiam remains… I now realise I have failed to provide financial safety, emotional safety or community for my kids. That is rather bleak and deserves a writing to answer that ascertion — and only time will genuinely tell if I have managed to provide an environment for my kids.
- My marriage — it turns out is/was two quite badly damaged, but driven, individuals trying not to repeat the mistakes of their parents. We have continued to harm each other in very similar way to the way we were harmed as children.
- There are strengths in the mix here — just for the record… top technical apprentice on my four year course, self-study degree (electronics/networks), post grads in project management and positive psychology. Some professional qualifications…
- Therapy off and on since 2007 — with consisent weekly (or more) since 2014 (now 5 years).
At some point this story also needs to reflect the anger that drove. A powerful force of fight against fear and the main driven to provide my kids with an environment I did not have.
If you are still here I hope you can feel the caricature with no author, the man with no compass. I can for sure.
So how the fuck do you look up, grab your coat-tails and start again, so many people do and they have all great stories to tell — I have read enough. The key thing I find is that most people find something to latch onto and keep doing it until it functions as the rope to pull them back to the thoroughfair of life.
So I need a rope, or map, or compass, I need food (for the soul) and energy (for life) and a purpose. I cannot function purposelessly — it seems that is a very destructive and anxious place for me to be. I long for the days my caricature was in charge — no such problems harmed his energy driven productive days (a busy fool perhaps).
OK OK.
Take a breath. Now try and feel (thinking is overrated I now see)my way to energy, to agency, to action.
Debts many and varied. Bills mounting up. So financial health getting close to terminal.
Mental health questionable at best, severely fucked perhaps, as I am unable to set and perform any tasks that I set my mind to. I hide from life.
Physical health — remains robut although overweight and not trained for a few weeks.
Professional health — no work for four months and not a lot of calls.
Relationships — marriage weak or terminal — we laugh and joke but we run scared from the reality of our current situation. Friendships distant but still intermittent contact with some positive connections (work, parties, marriages) all happening. Wider family — feeling more estranged by the day.
Kids — remain the high spot with both enjoing the chill time and getting through past papers for their exams.
OK — so you had the highlights through a bleak lense admittedly, you have had a current assessment — as objective as I can make it.
Now where the fuck is that map. I need to find who I am. The purpose of my existence here on earth and how I continue to offer some measure of protection to those I love.
I need to stop my addictive use of online connections. I do dont I?
Is that the first thing?
Or can I replace one addiction with another?
Which way? What value to I have and where can I find that value? The streets — homeless, creation — new company and new start, plain old boring failure — not homeless but not far away.
….
Or can I find a new way — is there some clue out there.
