Butterfly

Storm Dennis was in town and I was in hiding. That was pretty much the sum of it all now that the demons of the night had had their spiteful way with me, and now I was sat staring at the blood red curtains I’d closed against the bright and hopeful world.  

I had made a failure out of my life, and a spectacle of that failure. People only saw the intoxicated clown, the irresponsible fool. I kept the things I wanted the world to see to myself and left my soul out for the rubbernecking vultures that I imagined waited outside. 

One day soon I was going to have to make the necessary changes to survive and I didn’t know if I was capable, or even wanted to do that. Oblivion had lost its adolescent allure but not its steely grip. Why did I drink so much? My mother once told me I was a thirsty child, always wanting more to drink. Must be more to this than a perpetually dry throat.  

In the drunk and dark, I am a clown and a poet.   

Always this hell of the next day though, the sheer awkwardness of being who I am, what I am. I am not a normal person. I don’t think that was the plan anyway. I was a lonely, awkward child with a gift for mimicry. I was a desperately scared teenager with an ugly face and flawless skin. As an adult I had invented a shell. I climbed inside it on a bus one Monday lunchtime and had never got out. It was the easiest manoeuvre. I called it the grown up.  

The grown up was possessed of a staggering self-confidence. He was the first at the bar, the first on the dancefloor, the last at the bar. He could do things that the boy could never have done. He got up on stages, made people laugh. He talked to women.   

As he got older, he sometimes forgot that he was in a shell. But the boy inside was trying to be heard. Sometimes he would keep the grown up awake with prods to the soul, nudges to his memory, his little voice growing louder in the endless night. 

“I am still here.” 

People did not like me when I was anything but the grown up. But I wanted him to go away, take a break, and let the little boy take a turn in the spotlight. Not that the spotlight was any good for the little boy, it only made him clamber back behind the shell. And so I had to make a choice, I had to let one of them win, one must kill the other, because I needed some sleep.  

The little boy could not swim, so I would attempt to drown him in a sea of booze. But he would always wash up on the beach of mornings, coughing the water out of his exhausted lungs and feeling for the land between mermaid fingers. 

I wondered if the grown up was a creature of the sea, or the night. Perhaps he was a vampire and needed me to keep the curtains closed. Maybe he was a shark. Oh, shark, I will stay with you until I’m dead. I used to say that to him in the night. But I wanted him to go and not me. 

In my room, I play sad songs. The little boy loves these best. He remembers crying at Puff the Magic Dragon as a child and the other children mocking him. It was okay though, that was part of the deal. When people laugh at you, it is because they are scared of themselves. He had worked that out at a very young age. He was a bright boy but he didn’t know how to be clever. 

Now he was a lot older and still didn’t know how to be the person that people wanted him to be. He did not want things, he wanted purpose. He did not seek money, just time. And he was always wasting both because he didn’t have enough of either to be of use.  

Some people say we are all the lead actor in the drama of our lives. I feel like this film I’m starring in is continually changing directors, genres, endings. I wake up in kitchen-sink drama and fall asleep in thrillers. I have been a cowboy, a serial killer, a detective and a cartoon all in the same weekend. In the background, dramatic music plays, credits roll. 

 

I never wanted to be on a straight path, I prefer to never know where I am going. Each day is drearily predictable, except for the secret life. The boy and the grown up fight over what version of me gets to be seen. They tell me they know what’s best and I follow blindly. In the office, in the shower, in the bed, in the endless afternoons they tell me they love me and then tell me I am not worthy of love.  

In the night, they sing me to sleep and then scream their dreams at me. 

I do not know what is to become of me and I am too afraid to ask. Perhaps, this time, I’ll keep the curtains closed a little longer and wait to see if the boy and the grown up will finally slug it out. Perhaps I will transform, and my soul will burst from my ribcage and a thousand butterflies will emerge and all my anxieties will be free. I will rush to the curtains and to the window and I will open them and the butterflies will leave me, falling and rising in the summer air. People will look and wonder how they were trapped in my room and I will be at a loss to explain but I won’t care. For once, at last, I will not care. 

400 Steps - Update Three - Go Fuck A Sausage

Diet starts today. I weigh a disgusting 17 stone 4lbs.  If I was ripped like some sort of rugby player, this weight would be acceptable for a 6 foot lad but I’m not. I’m off the booze nearly a fortnight now but it’s time to shift the heavy furniture. I’m not going to go all Men’s Health and all that GQ body image bollocks. Fuck that noise. All these London based 50k trust fund cunts giving it the large because Daddy paid for their membership and diet pills. I’m nearly 50, I’d need steroids and extensive surgery to look like that. Take a day off lads. Eat a Twix. Go fuck a sausage.

You’ve got a choice when you’re young. Rock and roll or gym and salad. Well, you did 30 years ago and clearly I chose the insensible thing. I chose the wrong thing every time and now my body stands before me, like Miss Lydia at the start of Fame, telling me it’s time to start paying.

Anyway, enough of that bullshit. Eat less, eat better, do more exercise. That’ll do. Let’s see where I’m at with this in a week.

Can you lose weight by crying? Things I’ve cried at this weekend. That Rugby League player who’s just been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease – when he came on the pitch for the last time this weekend. Cried at that. Cried at that video of that all star band at a tribute to George Harrison with Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Prince showing the world what it’s about to miss too. George’s boy is in the background playing an acoustic and for a moment or too he’s lost in Prince’s genius, gawping like a fan again, like a kid again and all that sadness and pain is for a moment lost, or appears to be. I guess that’s all pop music can or should be, respite from all the shit, just for a moment. Cried at my daughter telling me she loves me too. Fucking hell. It’s all too much this life at times but I crave more. Much more.

Read COKETOWN. Just fucking buy it and read it. And then buy and read DRUNKEN BAKERS too.

Days of self-improvement left: 374.

400 Steps - Update Two - Control

I have very poor impulse control. Actually, that's overstating it. I have some control, but not as much as I'd like.

I don't know why. Something to do with growing up poor probably. Apparently you don't learn how to envisage potential potholes ahead properly. That's a lot of P words there sorry. Anyway, this control thing is at the heart of a lot of mistakes that I've made in all areas of my life. And it's absolutely at the heart of all the reasons I want to stop drinking for a while so I can recalibrate the old noodle, fucking work out what's at the dark heart of me. I keep saying heart, fuck knows why, I hate that station.

Anyway, Christmas is something I find stressful. Nothing bad has ever happened to me at that time of year but I don't like the pressure of it, the forced closeness of people. I like people all year round but for a few days each year I've got to somehow pretend that this is how I like it, got to join in with everybody else's sudden gregariousness. Then there's the money. I don't earn a great deal of money but even I feel pressured to spend what I don't have to feel like I've demonstrated a suitable amount of love on people who know how much I love them already. So many Christmas shopping trips have ended up with me, hammered, gift-free in a pub. I don't like crowds, I don't like panicking, I'll spot a fireside glow and a row of beer pumps and the consumerist hell is delayed.

I like to walk at Christmas, spend a bit of me time lost in a stroll somewhere. No music on the headphones, just a bit of quiet. I didn't get the time for that this year or rather I failed to make the time. I just spent time watching telly and getting fat instead and that didn't help me. I even failed at abstaining all of December but it was okay because I rationalised the choices ahead of me when a stranger offered me a glass of wine at a party on New Year's Eve.

I can a) say Yes. b) say No. b) means I might end up in a discussion with people who know addicts and want to tell you their story which is fine because my exercise in abstinence is just a tiny part of a wider conversation that people need to have with themselves and their loved ones and their colleagues about their own substance issues. All conversations have a context.

I'm torn. I've turned down several drinks over the last month because I wanted to. That is the crux of my problem. I've not listened often enough to what I needed. I've just wasted so much of my life getting drunk when I didn't really need to, when what I really could have done with is some quiet, sober time of self-reflection instead. And it's better to do that in the glow of not having drunk than in the existential aftermath of a hangover - the deep fug of post-poison gloom where you, already dealing with toxins wreaking havoc with your internal organs, now have to wrestle with the psychic defences having been breached.

So, my decision came down to all these other questions in my head. Did I feel like I could drink without getting drunk? Are people going to judge you whatever decision you make? Are you going to judge you? All of this stuff is bouncing around in the tired, end-of-year brain. And so I said Yes. And I had two small glasses in the space of four hours. And I went home. And the drink was nice. And I felt a little bit like I'd let myself down when I woke up. But I told myself this was the choice I'd made, and that I'd been restrained, and that I'd had a nice evening, and that no one had texted to ask if I was ok or chastise me for something I'd said or done the night before. And I can live with that.

I've reset the Days Since I've Drunk clock to zero again. And I will see how long I can go this time. Because I want to do this, I'm actually in control of it. And that's why you won't see me preaching about it because I have no idea how hard it is to give something up when you are addicted to it, properly snagged in it's nets. There won't be a 15 Tips to a Happier, Healthier You book. I'm no Puritan. This is purely about me saying I've got a lot of work to do on being happier and fitter and healthier in 400 odd days time. And if you read this and like it, fair play to you, thanks for the support. And if you don't read it, or don't like it, then that's good too.

To be honest, I'm more ashamed of having played fucking Charades.

Days of self-improvement left: 385

400 Steps - Update One - No Treasure But Hope

A few friends of mine have got in touch with me since my last blog post. They want to know what it is I’m doing to make these final 400 days of my forties happier, healthier ones.

I’m 23 days into abstaining from alcohol. This is the hardest time of the year to contemplate knocking booze on the head and the sobering blow of the General Election threatened to topple me early on but I’m glad I’ve done it. Do I feel happier? Ironically I feel sad that that part of my life is over for now. I was a heroic drinker at my peak but there were many troughs and no longer having to deal with the aftermath of those is better than any intoxication.

Things I’ve done in the first week.

I’ve tidied and Christmas decorated my flat. A tree, lights and cards everywhere. I cleaned my oven. I packed a box full of clothes to donate to the homeless. I’ve done my Christmas shopping.

I had to do this online as I had two panic attacks on the occasions I tried to go into town.  One of them was a proper full blown grip the walls bastard – the type I thought I’d left behind a while back.

Inadvertently I confessed the full extent of my anxiety problems to my mum. Something I didn’t think I could ever do. We spoke about the mental health issues my family have faced down the years. I felt like I knew and understood my parents better afterwards.

I spoke to my son for three hours. I don't see him very often. He lives hundreds of miles away and we do not see eye to eye on some things but we connected and we spoke about his own children and meeting up soon. I talked about the reasons I find it hard to see him sometimes and we seemed to be in a better place at the end of it.

I spoke to my three best friends, each of whom are seriously ill. You may draw your own conclusion as to whether or not I am the cause of these illnesses. Each of them, and many other people I’ve spoken to are struggling right now with facing the reality of what is to come. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is the closest this country has come to electing an openly fascist government. And by a landslide too. People who are dependent on the NHS and other public services are genuinely scared. Those of us who want a country that acts up to the values and standards it proclaims it already has are fearful of fresh depths being plumbed. How do I, how can any of us begin to try to claw our way back to happiness in times like these?

I guess that in the end all we have is each other. That’s our strength to draw on, our winter fuel. The nights already are shortening, eventually Spring will return us to the long days and the bird-filled skies. For now, there’s no treasure but hope. Hold on to that. Hold on to one another. As long as we have that strength, the ability to support each other, then we can be sure that, just like the leaves on the trees, the good times will one day return and love will win.

Merry Christmas.

Paul.

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...