Where do we go from here?

 Thinking back to who I was in my mid twenties to mid thirties I loved who I was. As I’ve described in the past, we were wild, carefree and happy. We had good jobs, a great social life and we were always going out to clubs and parties. I’d stand on pub tables and sing to our group of friends and they’d all join in. I loved it. I loved the attention, I loved having the confidence to do all of the things, and we were so happy. Of course there were clouds, but they just made the sky look even more blue. I enjoyed smoking weed and getting high. Oh, I do wish we had had MDMA in those days, I would have loved to take it with Jill keeping me company and keeping me safe. Those days, in hindsight, were the happiest we ever had, and of course we didn’t know it. The irony is the chosen never know they are the chosen. 

But over the course of time other things took precedence and we got involved more in jobs, careers, earning money, thinking about moving to a house and doing all the adult things. We lost the carefree happy days and didn’t even realise they were gone. There must have been a last party, a last joint, a last carefree day, but we would only have realised that afterwards, if indeed we ever did. We stopped living in the moment, and started planning for futures. I stopped wearing bright colours and settled down. 

I miss the person that I was. I was in the now. We were fearless. We did things that I’m not going to mention, even in here, where it’s quiet, and it’s just me and you my friend. Mourning a past that’s gone. Realising it can never come back as it once was. Because she’s not here. I can’t recapture it, nor would I want to, without her. But I still want it. I want to be carefree again, and the sad truth is that I can be, except that I don’t let myself be. Because I’m not that person. I’m older and have been battered. 

I got scared. I think that started when Jill got her terminal diagnosis. The most wonderful person in the world was going to die, and I couldn’t stop it. The one thing that I promised her was to look after her, and keep her safe, and I couldn’t. But I tried. We tried our hardest, but cancer stole that from us. My life, built on strong pillars that raised us up, was built on sand. So I became hyper vigilant. We got rid of tea towels and got kitchen paper to dry the dishes, because there was less chance she’d catch anything. We had to make sure that visitors were perfectly fit and well, because we couldn’t afford her catching even a cold. I had to do everything, driving her to appointment after appointment, flush her chemo line, inject her, do the shopping, keep her company, lie to her, and stay strong for her. But I was so scared. With a dread that I could never shift. A spectre sitting on my shoulder, even in my sleep. At the time I almost welcomed it, because that hyper vigilance was driven by the spectre, and that helped keep her safe and as well as possible. Protect Jill as much as possible, and safe from as many things as I could. I had to keep the emotions and fear at bay. Life isn’t life when all you can see is death coming closer day by day. And you’re a rat in a trap going around and around in a maze, looking desperately for an escape route that I knew didn’t exist. Safety became a way of life. It was the only way of life. Shut everything down and just try and get through each day. So it’s no real surprise that I was scared really. And I still believe it was the right thing to do, even though I knew it was destroying me. But it was the only option available. When people tell you that there are always options, I’m here to tell you that there aren’t. It was keep her safe, or risk her dying earlier. 

And afterwards? I was totally lost. I had no idea if I had any money, at all. So I had to stay safe. Oddly enough, I’d lost everything that mattered to me, but by this time, safety was ingrained in me, and I didn’t even realise. It’s astonishing how you can change in two years and a lot of battering. It takes a toll, y’know. And along with the fear, and the grief came the anxiety. I am anxious about things I can’t control, because when she was dying, I had to try and control everything. I had to consider every possibility, and plan for it. When you start down that road, it’s very difficult to walk it back. The default mode network becomes over active, thinking and planning and catastrophising. Because I had to do that. I didn’t have an option, because that was all I knew. I had no-one to rely on, or that I could call on to help. Sure, there were plenty of people that would have willingly helped. But childhood experience kicked in. The only person I could rely on as a child was me. My parents were emotionally unavailable. I was left to deal with things entirely on my own, even to dealing with the death of my grandmother. I couldn’t trust anyone, just me. Even to going down on Christmas morning, opening presents by myself. Learning to play games by myself. Knowing that no-one had my back. Quite the opposite in fact. My mother made that very, very clear. Her love was predicated on me being “a good boy”, and she had her own demons. Emotions were bad. I wasn’t allowed to cry, and even now I can hear the disgust in her voice as she would snap at me “don’t be such a jessy”. I was told if I ever came home with a black girlfriend I could turn around and leave again. God help me if I turned out gay - it was made very clear that I’d be out on my ear. 

When you have years of that, you learn to shut the fuck up, hide your emotions, do as you were told, be good at school or I’d get it when I got home. Self reliance became a way of life and anxiety helped keep me safe, because no-one else was going to. I had to be good, and quiet and “be a credit” to my mother. And nothing I did was ever good enough. However hard I worked at school I could have done better. My mother projected her hatred of her father onto me, in that she was terrified I was going to turn into him. If I was interested in a girl at school it was “are you pestering her?” It was made clear that I was ugly. “Well that’s an impressive crop of spots you’ve got here”. “Why would she want to go out with you?” Ugly ugly ugly. No-one would ever love me. No-one would ever want to be with me. My accomplishments were met with disinterest. I was never encouraged. “I’ll make that Airfix kit for you because you won’t be able to do it”. “No, you can’t go out and do penny for the guy, I’m not having a child of mine begging on the streets”. I was never protected. I had a constant fear of abandonment. I had a litany as a kid at bedtime. “Leave the door open. Leave the door wide open. Call out. Call out regularly. Don’t go in the garden. If you do go in the garden, tell me.” 7 fucking years old. And my parents just left me to it. I had to sort it out by myself. I had to overcome my terrors myself. And how did I do it? Why, by stuffing the terror down so deep I could ignore it. 

And when I got a dog, Paddy, I loved him. He was MY dog. He loved me. We would play by the hour, and he would do whatever I wanted. He was a mad, happy Labrador. And one day, he snapped when I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened; I think he nipped my father. That was all the excuse necessary. She told me she was going to have him put to sleep because he was dangerous. I remember the morning I went to school, I really didn’t believe she would do it, but I came home at lunchtime and he was gone. She had him killed. She killed my fucking dog. If I live for millions of years, I will never forgive her for that. 

So I was never physically harmed or hit (much) or abused. I thought it was a normal childhood. I never even considered the idea of childhood trauma. But abuse comes in many, many forms, and mine was in the form of emotional neglect. I never knew what would make her mad, so I had to tread a thin line. I know people who have had much worse childhoods. Beaten, controlled, abused. And I’m desperately sorry for them, but life isn’t a game of abusive top trumps, and I’m not going to deny what happened to me because other people had it worse. It was only with Jill that I felt safe, cared for and loved unconditionally. And it’s not her fault she died. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave me, but it happened, and I couldn’t do anything about it. 

And I met someone. I don’t really talk about her, because it’s complicated. But my anxiety decided this was a perfect opportunity to come out and play. For the longest time I thought I was anxious about her. She’s probably the most resourceful, capable and powerful woman I have ever met, and yes, that does include Jill. It made no sense to me, because I was looking in the wrong place; I was looking at her, when I should have been looking at the anxiety for what it was; a defence mechanism to keep me safe. But what it did was to lock me in a cage. And oh, I fucked up so bad. I destroyed something amazing because I couldn’t break out, and I will never fully forgive myself for it. She was, and still is, one of the most influential people in my life. She doesn’t know it, she didn’t do it, she’s just her. But she was the catalyst that put me on this journey. I looked at her, and she reminded me of me. Of the me I was, not the me I am now. And I wanted that back. She has triumphed over adversity, and she’s taught me so much. She doesn’t know it, she didn’t mean to do it, but she has, and I will be forever grateful to her. And I suspect if she ever read this she would be very puzzled.  I took MDMA with her, and she kept me safe. I was envious, in many ways of her. I thought that, if I could be part of her life in some way, by meeting her friends for example, I could get that back. I was wrong, because I learned that by trying to do that all I was doing was invading her life. And she was quite right. I can’t find my happiness in someone else, I can only find it in me. It took a long while to discover that, but I did, eventually. I looked into a new world, and I realised that my head was such a mess. That in turn drove me to a point that I’d rather not visit again. So I’ve been taking drugs to explore my mind. To understand my anxiety, to revisit my past and face some demons. Because I can’t carry on into the future the way I’ve been in the past. 

I talked the other day about the retreat, and how, if it worked, I would come back different. It’s what I want, but it’s still a weird idea. And this evening, talking to another friend deep into the night, I reframed the situation. I don’t want to be a new and different person. I want to be the person I was back then. I want to be carefree. I want to go to clubs and listen to music, and to dance. I want to be ME again. I want to return to being the person I was when I was happy. So it’s not a new and different person that I don’t recognise, thinking new thoughts I’ve never had. I just want to be me again. 

So I have finally discovered my intention for the retreat. I want to thank the past for keeping me safe. And I want to tell it that it did a fantastic job for me, but it’s no longer needed. It can rest and put itself to bed. I want that sad scared little boy to achieve everything he wanted. I want to be happy again. I want the confidence that I had all those years ago. I want to live in the now, without the fear. I want to look at the anxiety, and be kind to it, but it’s no longer a help, but a hinderance. I want to sit with friends and laugh, take drugs, listen to music, to be free enough to dance. To meet strangers, to travel to different places, to stop worrying about tomorrow, to live in the now. I want to live in the moment and experience the now. So I want to live, to fly a spitfire, to kiss that girl, to walk out in confidence, be happy in my own company and enjoy being with others. I want to see the dawn on a summers day. I want to stay up into the small hours, chatting and laughing and smoking weed. I want to sit around a camp fire. I want to take risks, I want her to call me “hot” again. I want to be silly and foolish. I want to be able to say that I am enough and to believe it. I want to be able to look in a mirror without thinking I’m ugly. I want to be different. I want to help my friends. I want to do what I want, because that’s what I want to do. I don’t want to feel I need to ask someone for permission to enjoy myself. I want to sit and play a game without feeling guilty for wasting time when I should be being “productive”. I want to own my own truth, to say what I think. 

So it’s time. It’s the end of an era. It’s time to start being me again. It’s time to give myself permission to be happy. I want to look forwards and think “where do we go from here”. And it’s going to be ok. I want to smile at that girl again. I want to give her everything I can, not just to make her happy, but more importantly, to make me happy.  And there’s not much better in this life than me being happy helping to make other people happy. Not because I’m afraid they will go, but because I’m the kind of person who is fun to hang around with. I like the time I spend with her, because she’s fun, and clever and wise, but I doubt she would recognise herself entirely in that description. I was so scared of loosing her, partly because it’s her, but partly because of the world she showed me, and it was exciting; and I want that back. And I held on too tightly. I did totally the wrong thing. So now I’m learning to just be me. She’s very welcome to come along for the ride, but it’s her call. I don’t want to “change” her, because she is perfect as she is, with her flaws, and that’s the person I care about. My anxiety surrounding her is vanishing each day as I realise I’m not anxious about her at all. It was something else entirely. And one day I want to tell her that. And one day I’ll be able to.  

It’s time. I want to be me again.