The 400 Steps

“I miss the comfort in being sad.” – KURT COBAIN.

So, I’ve got 400 days left of my forties.

This is the kind of shit my brain tortures me with when I can’t sleep. I work stuff out like that. I recall each of the 92 Football League clubs in alphabetical order. Then the US states in alphabetical order. Sometimes I set myself new challenges. A 26 word sentence where each word begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet.

Alan Brazil can drink eleven Fosters, go home in Jackie Kennedy’s lost minicab, nosh off pancakes, quails, radish sandwiches then urinate violently whilst x-raying young zebras.

That sort of thing.

Because if I think about that, I’m not thinking about any of the other stuff. The no money stuff. The health stuff. The alone stuff.

I wake up tired every morning.

So, the other night, I worked out how many days I have left of my wretched forties. And it’s 400 today. I’ve decided to try and do something each day to improve my life in some small way. A small step towards making sure my fifties are happy, healthy and productive. 400 steps.

It’s not been a great start. I had about five hours sleep and have just eaten a sausage bap. Brown sauce mind so it was lush.

The first thing I’m going to do is start challenging my mind-set. I had counselling for depression a few years back and I arrogantly told the counsellor – “I’m too self-conscious for CBT.” Is that arrogance? I don’t know, I was trying to say that I felt I was far too self-aware to be capable of listening to brave new core beliefs.  Like the voice in my head the whole day long is so confident, so loud, I can’t just pretend he isn’t there.

Because that’s the problem. I don’t believe I’m good enough for any of the things I know I’m capable of. And usually that’s something I manage to live with because I internalise it for the greater part. I try not to lash out at people, I think I’ve shouted in anger maybe three times in the last ten years.  I haven’t thrown a punch in over twenty years. But I still make mistakes and sometimes I say things online that I’m not proud of. Especially since Thursday.

The election result was more than a kick to the bollocks, it was like someone dragging your soul out of your eyes and kicking that in the bollocks and then stuffing it back down your throat. It wasn’t like that just for me of course, there’s millions of us feeling like it. I spoke to friends over the weekend who felt suicidal about it, people with serious health issues who rely on public services for a dignified existence.

We have all got to look out for one another, this will be a long, dark winter. Community still exists but we’ve got to show ourselves some love as individuals too. So that’s what I’m going to try. Every day I’m going to do something small for myself, even if it’s just something as simple as going for a walk for an hour to clear my thoughts and get some exercise in the bargain. I hope each day I’ll get fitter physically and mentally. I want to feel alive again and sleep without memory games or worries.

Anyway, I’ll be doing updates here with the hashtag #400steps. If it inspires you to make any positive changes in your life then wow fuck that’s great. If it doesn’t hey well then that’s cool also. I figure sharing it makes sense to me as a record of where I was and where I’m heading.

I don’t know why I put that Nirvana quote there but I was humming it on the bus. Which explains why I had the seat to myself. Unless I was humming in another way...