I've been wanting to write this for a very long time. I always
seem to get bogged down somehow - in disclaimers and excuses.
I've really struggled with my life. I know it's not been the sort
of terrible ordeal many go through, but it's been, I think, unnecessarily hard.
(I can already here people muttering 'stop whingeing. Just get on with it' but
I shall ignore them, for now.) As I heard someone say recently on the telly when asked
if he was ok - 'I have no good reason to feel bad.' The asker was reassured,
taking this to mean that he didn't feel bad, but of course he did. He just
didn't feel he had any good
reason to feel that way and
therefore shouldn't complain. It's what I've come to call 'giving myself a hard
time for having a hard time.' I guess it's what other people call 'depression'.
This morning I planned to deliver a plant to someone in Brighton . It's not something I normally do but a customer
rang up wanting to send someone a present for Easter and I thought why not? I
told them I'd be there for 11am on the Sunday, before going to the
nursery.
Anyway, I did what I usually do and got side-tracked looking
through a seed catalogue, which is, yes, for the nursery, but could have been
done some other time. It's a huge list and I started at about 8.30 I guess and
time was getting on and I knew I should be getting ready to go but somehow I
just didn't seem to be able to stop. Then I discovered that I'd left my bag
(with my card in it) at the nursery so I couldn't pay for my seed order. I was
completely furious with myself - called myself all sorts of stupid - crashing
about, looking for this sodding bag. Anyway I found I could order without
giving my card details (I'm not sure yet how that's going to work) and I
actually closed the PC down at about ten to eleven and got dressed (I was still
in my PJs) I had to wash up (there wasn't that much) and needed something to
eat. I didn't get to Brighton until 11.30 or
so and the recipient was overjoyed and hadn't been expecting it. I made a fuss
of her little dog (a really sweet wire-haired terrier) and went home and made
myself some 'breakfast'.
The point here is the way I beat myself up (almost literally) for
being late. Today was a middling sort of example. Other times, most mornings,
things go reasonably smoothly and I get out the door just feeling stressed.
Some times though something goes really wrong and I can end up hurting myself or
breaking something. At such times I simply hate myself and/or the world so much
that I just want to destroy something. I should say that to date I've not
damaged anything important, or anyone, and that it usually happens when no one
else is around, but my wife has seen enough of it for it to have upset our
marriage. As a result I've done a lot of work on it this last 18 months or so -
getting some CBT and taking anti-depressants and it now happens a lot less
often and generally less violently than it used to.
At one point I was having a bad day about one morning a week -
usually a Friday - my day off. Oddly, if I have an important appointment I can
generally get there on time as much as anyone else. It's when I know the
arrangement is somewhat flexible that I have trouble, or even when it is just
me that has set the date and nobody else gives a toss whether I turn up or not
- such as with getting down the nursery at weekends (which is when I do most of
my work there) Even when I have nobody to please but myself I have this nagging
in my head that I should be getting on. I should get down there earlier. That
nagging is laced with so much irritation, such impatience, such contempt - it's
why I come to hate myself so much at these times, and why I feel like hurting
myself - as a punishment.
So - why can't I just get organised and get up earlier and get
moving and be down there at a reasonable hour? Surely I'd be happier. This is
the problem. I don't want to give in to it. When I was very young I remember
very clearly not wanting to be like my parents, always bustling about, tutting,
worrying about the time, the money, what the boss would say. My mum trying to
think through everything in advance - everything that might go wrong, so she
could be prepared, trying to get me to get myself ready for school in the
morning, and my dad, after a long week at work down the power station, trying
to fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
forever telling me 'jaldi-jaldi', 'tout suite', and 'whistle and ride, whistle
and ride' because I was a preoccupied and dreamy boy always with something more
interesting going on in my head. Later on they and other relatives tried to get
me to take life more seriously - to be more disciplined, to think of the money,
to do as I was told and to put up with it. I was nagged over my homework and my
revision and then over my job-hunting and always at every opportunity I would
escape into my thoughts and imagination. I just couldn't face the
alternative.
If they'd been happy and fulfilled with the life they advocated
perhaps they might have got through to me but they weren't. They just weren't a
very encouraging example. I remember thinking from a very early age that if
that was what life was about then I couldn't see how it was worth living. I
knew that I had to do something different. I had no idea what - there were no
other role models available - no mentors of any kind. I couldn't imagine what
it would take to be different. I only knew what not to do.
So I've got this split in my thinking. When something needs doing
I have my parents going on and on at me, and my child somehow just blocking it
out, carrying on with what he's doing, even though he's feeling more and more
nagged and getting more and more stressed. He's not consciously refusing. I was
never actually naughty - in my family there would have been no point. My
'resistance' was passive, distracted, absent. I'm sure I drove them nuts. The
more they went on at me the more I just sort of zoned out. I was upset,
certainly, but it did not occur to me to change it. It didn't occur to me that
it could be changed. I just wanted to go back to being on my own and getting on
with what I was doing. And this is how I still am. Every morning, to a lesser
or greater degree. I do it to myself now.
Psychology gets short shrift, I know, from many right-minded
people. The two great ideologies (arguably) of the 20th Century - Marxism and
Freudianism tell us on the one hand that we can blame society for our woes, and
on the other that we can blame our parents. Modern science tells us we can
blame our genes. Christianity, Existentialism and Capitalism tell us we have no
one to blame but ourselves. We have free will. There is no excuse.
But it's not about blame. It's about explaining. Whatever problems
I've had, for some reason (and I've no idea where I get this) I have always
tried to think it out - 'Why am I like this?' 'Where do I get that?' 'How does
it work?' But the point of course is not just to describe the world, but to
change it. Many seem to presume that it is futile but that doesn't seem likely
to me. To use the kind of metaphor my dad would have liked - if there are smoke
and grinding noises coming from under the bonnet it makes sense to stop and
have a look - not just drive on and hope it goes away. But it's a devious
contraption - the mind.
I've tried asking other people - because they seem to get on with
life better somehow - maybe they know something I don't, but most people seem
very wary of the idea of talking about these things - as if that might make it
worse - as if it's the thinking about it that causes the trouble in the first
place, but trust me - it's the feeling that comes first. The thoughts are an
attempt to deal with the feeling, and the feeling is there whether I think
about it or not.
Some might accuse me of 'dwelling' - thinking that perhaps deep
down I like being this way but I can tell you here and now that when I do have
good spells - and I do - I love them so much. I get so much done. My mind is
clear and creative. I am confident and positive and when it passes and I can
feel myself going back, it's the most miserable thing. No - I really don't
'dwell' on my misery for pleasure.
I think the people who say these things (that I should just stop
complaining and pull myself together, that thinking about it will only make
matters worse, and that, in fact I actually really like being unhappy) really
don't know what it's like. Of course it's subjective but it seems to me that if
you can solve your problems simply by pulling yourself together then you really
haven't had much of a problem. Real physical problems, that you can do
something practical about are a different sort of problem anyway, and I'm
actually quite good in a crisis because there's usually only so many things you
can do. A genuine and well defined trauma is different too. I don't wish
bereavement, crime, sickness or war on anyone, but I suspect the resulting
trauma is a different thing to this depression/anxiety I'm talking about, not least
because people can relate and they take it seriously. In this part of the world
at least, the kinds of oppression and shame suffered by homosexuals and other
minorities at least have support from other members of their group although
that is a relatively new thing.
But no. This is different. It's this 'no good reason to feel bad'
that is the thing and so perplexing. And no, it's not just a First
World problem - not just a matter of us having too much time on
our hands - the 'worried well'. Certainly if I was starving I'd not have much
time to think about my mind but it's also true that if I'd just had my legs
blown off my allergies might seem like a low priority. That doesn't mean we
shouldn't treat people for allergies.
Blame is an issue of course. I don't think we should necessarily
not blame parents or society (or even the genes) if they are genuinely at
fault. There's a weird paradox. I hear pundits say we live in a society that
blames the parents for everything, taking no responsibility for ourselves, but
then I hear mothers in particular say 'well of course you can't just blame the
parents'.
Parenting is hard - I'm well aware. It's why I chose not to be
one. Among the many things my parents and their friends worried about were
their kids. They all had them but none of them seemed to be getting anything
much out of it. The kids screamed and sulked and the parents were exasperated
and impatient and seemed to want to get away from them as early in the evening
as possible. Again I asked myself 'what's the point?' On top of everything it
was to support them that all these adults had to hold down the dreary jobs and
do those long hours - that and the mortgage and the marriage that went with it.
I didn't want any of it and I can remember arguing this - to everybody's
irritation, when I was 12. It just seemed obvious. Of course now I know this
was the late 60s and early 70s and dropping-out of the rat-race was in the air. I suppose I
picked up on it, but it seems to have stuck with me in a way it didn't with
most of my peers who kowtowed pretty well when it came down to it and they got
a wife and a mortgage and some sproggs of their own. I just couldn't bear to go
along with it. I couldn't bear to be so weak, so submissive, so mediocre. I
guess I must have held my dad in some regard because I was so disgusted by the
way he scurried about and did as he was told. I just sort of wouldn't. Without
making a deliberate, overt, or even conscious stand, I just wouldn't, or
couldn't. I'm not sure which. Probably both. They seem inextricable.
Somehow all that bustling about - worrying about time and money
and sticking to a routine and doing things in a set way, seemed degrading, like
I was being colonised by a foreign power. I know now also that that was the end
of an era, as well as the beginning of one, and my parents were of the previous
generation. I can't blame them for that, obviously. It's hard to put ourselves
back there now but I was right on the cusp and I wonder if any generation since
has felt the power of Parental Disappointment the way we did. The rift is quite
unimaginable now. Adults I meet now are much more like their kids than like
their parents. They just don't have that deference - that sense of their place
in the world. Perhaps that's a shame. I wish some people were better at putting
up with things now - instead of this waste and impatience we see today. In the
face of environmental cataclysm, it would be good if we learned some humility
and self-control. But I wouldn't want to go back to the 50s.
So much judgement and disapproval, and not just imposed from on
high - we did it to ourselves, we working class - sneering and tutting at
anything that indicated that a person might not be pulling their weight or be
getting above themselves. Simply doing something differently was taken to mean
they thought they knew better than everyone else and needed to be taken down a
peg or two. The fact that I spent my childhood, for preference, in my room,
drawing and reading and writing and collecting things was a cause for suspicion
where now I suspect a parent would tell everyone I was 'gifted' and going to be
an artist or a writer, or an ecologist. Back then the options were far fewer
and our place was to fit into the opportunities available - factory or shop,
office if you were lucky, manual labour if you were not. Policeman, fireman or
nurse. The forces. That was about it. I didn't want to do any of those things
but I had no idea what else a person might do. Artists and writers and
ecologists might as well have been mythical beings for all I knew.
But they were scared - of course they were, my parents and their
generation. I've written about this before. (Sorry if I repeat myself.) They'd
lived through the war and the aftermath and life was all about security and
safety and you couldn't afford to take chances. I know that and I don't blame
them - of course I don't.
to be continued...
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