Letters from a Green Below

The first step towards not being a victim is to stop being a victim. The best way to push away everyone and everything you love is to accept that you’re going to push away everyone and everything you love.

I sit there, swaddled in self-pity.  I quietly finish my food, and I sit there. I speak quietly, and with little effort. I don’t waste energy on embellishments of cadence, tone, volume or, heaven forfend, the gesticulatory persuasion. Why?

Jealousy.

So, here’s the usual pattern. I tell myself it’s all in my head, then I analyse her body language and instantly conclude that it would be all well and good if it was all in my head but it isn’t. I decide that it might not be this time, and it might not be next time, but at some point, somehow, I’m definitely going to end up alone.

And as ever, it won’t be a decision I take lightly.

In fact, it won’t be a decision I take at all.

As ever.

I eat my food and leave without a word. I don’t say bye, are you coming, how’s things, I’ve got work to do – none of that. I just leave. I leave a nothing behind – nobody’s sad I’m gone because I’m embarrassing everyone with my chronic lack of effort. And then I hate myself for doing nothing, safe in the knowledge that I’ll continue to do nothing right through this lovely layer of hate.

The stupid thing is, while this is going on I’m fully conscious that the act of not making an effort is making it ten times worse. Yet I allow it to continue. It continues.

This, now, is it continuing.

I can hear their voices, familiar enough that each muffled vowel sound, slipping under the doors and round the walls, brings with it the mental picture of its owner. Caroline’s gravelly black tones. Will’s knowing sarcasm.

With S, it feels like it’s always laughter. Always the light, lovely mood that escapes her whenever we’re together. The playfulness, the giggling and the challenging. To be honest, with S it genuinely is often laughter – partly because she’s an amazing girl who likes to laugh (though mostly when not in my own company), and partly because she has a beautiful, delicate and high pitched tone that doesn’t carry very well through walls.

Unlike Caroline’s voice, leaden and hoarse with tears, singing, drinking and drama. So tiring.

Today, I’m ignoring whether or not it’s in my head – at least for now. I’m going back. I’ll ignore the fact her body faces him, her genuine smile is his and her social smile is all I’m left with, I’ll ignore the awkward and stony silence that seems to gobble up everything I say with an appetite so ravenous. I’ll ignore it because it’s probably all in my head.

Even if I don’t believe it’s all in my head, I know, logically, that it is.

And through all this, I have to contend with the fact that deep down I know she regrets this. I know this isn’t what she wanted – not now it’s real. Not now she’s staring a life sentence with me down the barrel. Now I’m that grim inevitability, not that happy sunny day. Now I’m the Monday morning instead of the Saturday night.

And now I’ll stop this stupid, self-centred, self-pitying, piteous disgusting claptrap and go and be my happy jolly self.

Except that isn’t me. I’m angry, apparently.

That’s another story.

Responsibility, not Blame.

Discussing the Dog

Two days ago I wrote something about how I was feeling. Then, it was a rainy Saturday evening. Now it is a cold, clear Monday night.

I feel far better than I have been doing, and I’m not 100% sure on why that should be. I’ve done some exercise tonight (I went for a swim with Sonia, which thoroughly depressed me in a superficial kind of way as I now can’t hear from one ear and my eyes are a burning, stinging red!), though I’d done some exercise when I was feeling awful. I also went to a business seminar, so it felt like I was doing something with my business – but then I went to a networking event on Thursday last week, and still felt horrible for the succeeding two days.

I cried in front of Sonia and told her that I thought she’d be better with someone else – that there were many better men out there, that the baby would be better off with someone else and that I was afraid I’d make a bad father. I think part of me is afraid of the loss of freedom that will entail too, but as I have pointed out to myself before – I’m twenty five years old and I don’t think I deserve any more of this ‘freedom’.

What have I done with it?

Twenty five years and I’ve not managed to scrimp together enough for a holiday abroad. I’ve never volunteered for a charity, nor anything else. I’ve never done ANYTHING for charity, not since school. I’ve not gone hiking across Europe. I’ve not done a TEFL, a CELTA or even a cheaper, low grade option. I’ve committed one of the mortal sins of that hideously underachieving class that encompasses the majority of us – I’ve tried to wait until the time is right, and I’ve subsequently achieved nothing.

Of course, debt has had something to do with that. Not having the means to actually go out and do things is a kind of reason, but a reason is an intelligent way of saying ‘excuse’, and the truth is that if I had been truly committed to any of the things that I dream of doing, I would have gotten started by now. So maybe this is it. Maybe with each growing day of my little embryo, now foetus, another nail is driven down into that that coffin that encloses my wasted freedom.

“Here lieth the freedom of Mr JED Pierce, forever cherished and never once used.”

So my thinking is thus. If I’m going to go out and explore this planet, taste those fruits that lie further afield than Tesco (or even the ethnic shops in Cheetham Hill and Rusholme), then with a family en tow it shall be. Either I’m destined to explore in some less superficial manner than two week jaunts to sunny islands, with forlorn glances at museums and with plane journeys filled with the longing of an unfulfilled artist, writer, whatever – or I’m to be enthused and enriched by the journey of fatherhood and teaching, of responsibility and family life.

Maybe it will be delving into the depths of lunches both packed and Sunday, neither of which I have a great deal of experience in. Maybe it will be rounding the forbidden cape to discover driving, with all its bills and bitter disappointments, its dreams of supercars unachievable. My mother just bought a Mercedes – she set up her own business in a recession after years bobbing around the nursing circuit. It’s still a recession now, and she just bought a Mercedes.

Maybe my adventure will be the consultancy I’ve set up – maybe those seedlings and sapling of plans that lie dormant, now hatching, slowly and so delicately in the nooks and crannies of my mind will grow into an oak of adventure and ascendance. From the mission statement I’ve less imagined, less made up, and more unearthed from deep inside my own intimate psyche – to free, grow and empower – will spring buds of promise that attract similar minded souls, similar souled minds and some poor customers willing to pay the bills.

Or perhaps this mad gallivanting for gold will all pay off after all – this albatross dangling down between my britches, once flying high and mighty on winds of optimism and ignorance, now dashed against the icy, slate concrete of that roaring sea of reality. Maybe the capital will make itself available, maybe Bruno’s mad and immutable efforts to haul this beast from the ground will find some success and we’ll set off to Africa once more, and make money enough for the both of us.

Perhaps I’ll fall as low as depression threatens to hurl me. Perhaps I’ll wake up at sixty five, succumbed to alcoholism and other sicknesses of the mind, estranged from children and loved ones, friends and colleagues all now former. Perhaps the weight of my dreams and desires will drag me down, my wings tangled in unrealistic goals and delusion. Perhaps I’ll die alone, as I suppose we all do, in a way.

When I was eighteen years old I tried to start I diary. I had been at university for all of a few days, so it must have been late September back in 2005. I remember skipping forward to my birthday, to the 23^rd of December in 2005, and writing a little question to myself – ‘where are you now?’. I didn’t even dare dream.

I think I was thinking of the friends I would make; of the new, boundless knowledge on which I could feast myself; of my new political friends, clubs and bands, of the girls and the drinks and the clubs, both intellectual and drinkullectual. I dreamt of a whole new world, only months away, though it felt like years. Now I look back on everything that I could have done with my time at university and I feel the only real, hard, strong pangs of regret that I can remember.

Never have I pissed away such an enormous opportunity as in those few months.

Drinks and drinks and spliffs and drinks. The same old circle of friends, and drinks, and drinks, and spliffs and drinks. And the same old circle of friends. And missing university, and making that horrible, horrible mistake of ‘I know’ – of thinking I was somehow better than everyone else there, more streetwise, better able to cope. I was a loner in university until the end, something that tears at my insides and I desperately want to make amends for.

I love studying, I love writing and I love language. I love expression.

I look back and I wonder – why? Why, why, why did I throw all that away?

And yes, those years were mottled with the same dismal marks of depression as all of my years, and yes, in some respects those years were worse – but at whose feet does that responsibility fall, at whose door does that responsibility fall, if not my own? For now I am trying to move away from blame, to move ‘above the fold’ as they say, to responsibility.

And it feels good.

Just writing those words feels like some sort of release – I don’t have to blame myself for those opportunities lost, those opportunities thrown away – if I can only take responsibility for those.

So where does this leave me?

I have been writing now for twenty seven minutes without any real pause. I fear any direction has been lost, though I feel somehow clearer.

I would like so very much if taking responsibility for those opportunities lost meant finding some way to return to university and apply myself fully – to see how far I can take this, to see if I have the mental mettle and application, and most of all the openness of mind to accept that yes, other people may be better equipped mentally than me, but yes that is fine.

And now twenty nine minutes have passed and I feel it is time to leave these writing for today, and get onto those things that I’ve been ignoring – those soulless articles, for one.

00.33, 21/02/2012

 

Talking About the Dog

Its six minutes to five on a rainy Saturday in South London. This isn’t where I’m from and it isn’t where I’ll stay, but just for the now – this is where I am.

For twenty minutes over the next four days I’m going to write about upheaval in my life in as much depth as possible.

It will probably be a recurring theme, but just now I’m going to write about the Dog. As far as I know we’ve been lifelong acquaintances. When I was a child, my mother tells me that I used to have very black days, lashing out and for no apparent reason. I can’t remember exactly how the stories go (I’ll find out for a later writing session), but I do remember the impression I got – this isn’t something new. I remember cutting off my nose to spite my face, and then trying to cope with the anger and self loathing that goes with that kind of action – refusing something I wanted just because I was upset and wanted to punish myself. That kind of stupid thing.

I’m going to ignore the past for a minute now and talk about the last few days. Yesterday was a day of travelling and cogitation – the two are deeply linked, if you ask me. Kingston to Esher, Esher to Kingston, Kingston to Waterloo, Waterloo to Oxford Circus and Oxford Circus to Chancery Lane, Chancery Lane to Paddington, then Paddington to Waterloo and finally Waterloo to Kingston. That’s some heavy cogitation.

From Kingston to Kingston I had variations on a theme playing through my head – what’s wrong with me, why I’m a failure, everything I’m giving up, everything I’ve dreamed of and never achieved, how I’m unreliable, untrustable, unlikeable, how I’m clever and able to get things done but I have some secret flaw that I can work out but that always stops me from getting where I need to go. There are a few likely culprits – an inability to stick to anything for any period of time, an aptitude for dreaming not doing, a love of learning instead of grinding? I have a personal favourite – it plays to my vanity and my depression in equal measure – that I’m clever enough to realise that life is an exercise in futility and pain, but not clever enough to do anything about it.

I go from place to place going through the motions but with no memory of the destination. I feel like I’ve forgotten even the vehicle in which we’re travelling – or is that taking a metaphor one step too far? Has she tumbled quietly off the edge of the cliffs of linguistic ambition into the sea of meaningless indulgence? If she didn’t, then the following sentence definitely did.

Everything has always been incredibly personal for me. The tiniest bit of constructive criticism cuts right through my skin and sinew, slices deep into my muscles and glances off the bones of my soul. I have two and a half modes. The first mode is the ‘I’m destined for greatness’ mode, where I achieve more than most people can because I’m in control of my own emotions and can channel them effectively. This sometimes lasts for a few months (and there is a ‘this plus one’ mode that can last for ten minutes or an hour where I am truly in a state of flow). The second mode is one of abject mental poverty – I haven’t the wherewithal to get up and face anything. Yesterday I wrote the line “Every morning the world caved in on my head.” – it feels like that from minute to minute (I followed up with “great chunks of granite, spatters of emotion, a million problems, indecisions and requests.”).

The half mode is when I’m staving off the second mode. I’m not sure if this mode actually exists, or if I’m just swinging between milder versions of mode one and mode two.

As I said, I take criticism personally. In the first mode, I take it really well. I’ll work through walls of ivory, over torrents of glass, under a sword of Damacles the whole time to prove whatever criticism was unjust. This is the secret to the limited success I’ve achieved. In the second mode, I don’t. Any form of criticism, be it real, perceived or otherwise, is too much (what the hell is that banging outside? I have headphones on and I can actually feel it).

Example? I haven’t answered the phone to an 0800 number for the last three weeks because I’m quite sure it’s a bill and I have no money right now. I don’t open letters from the bank. If I shrink from or otherwise avoid all forms of confrontation, unless there is no other action possible. Face with a rock and a hard place, I simply crumble.

What kind of person does this make me, I wonder? Is this typical? My biggest fear is that yes, it is.

It has occurred to me more than once that having such an amazingly supportive family and upbringing is half to blame for this defect of mine. I’ve always felt as though I was going to end up doing well – as if it was mine by default. Or that I’d get there somehow – I’d achieve something worthwhile. I’m not typical. Even the slightest insinuation that I might be I meet with a great spurt of rage and bile.

I could carry on, but I’ll stop now.