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[forabetterlifethanthis]

Sorrowering Myself

What’s new in the life of the venerable lord of misery? Well, it turns out I’m terrible at being a loner. I’ve already had the urge to talk to people. Can you blame me?  I’m only human.  Just with a few unfortunate gene variants. I promise, you wouldn’t want my babies.  For so many reasons.  For one, they might look like me. The world is an ugly enough place at is it is, I am sure you would concur.

 So, my self-imposed hermit life hasn’t begun so well.  Feels like 99% of people think it is the right move.  How stupid I am.  I don’t want anyone to talk to me then I am disappointed when barely anyone tries to talk to me. What the fuck does my factious brain want.  Sums up my quiddity rather well.  I’ve been wanting to use that word for a ages. And I bet you were thinking that.

 At least for now, I have resisted the incendiary temptations to talk to the people I want to talk to.  I feel this is rather revealing my mental weaknesses and this probably won’t last that long and I’ll come crawling back to you. I do fear, however, many have just had enough of me.  “Let them do with himself what he will!”, I hear them cry in raptured unison in my head. I think someone mentions a rather lovely cliff in East Sussex.  Like so many times before, the damage has already been done.  Destroying friendships and relationship since 2015. Whoops.

 But I am in a state of great felicity.  For I now see an escape from this torture dungeon and I can see a dappling of light. So, let’s embrace the beloved aphorisms and let life be fun. Let it be full of love.  And let it be short.  I am happy that there is a crack in the ceiling to allow for my beatific ascension above the arid Earth.  I laugh with jollity. I am high on the prospect of no more pain. Delirium, madness, insanity.  I am them all.  And they are fabtastic feelings to have.  

 Let’s just hope reincarnation isn’t real.

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Detaching

Today, I conscientiously decided to begin doing something selfless. Shock.  I also decided to do something petulant and selfish.  Less of a shock.  I’ll begin with the latter.

 Another attempt to extirpate all my plans. And just a scintilla of curiosity to see if anyone did care. Well, the outcome is a definitive no. They don’t. And why should they?

 But that was the last of it.  My final promulgation to my little world. The last of my searches for any sequestered pings of validation.  This shall be my only link to the outside world as I languish my way through the process.

 And the process has begun.  And this is the reason for the selfless decision.  And that is to detach myself from everyone and everything.  I have spoken so many times about how much of a negative, toxic, poisonous, acergbic, caustic, churlish, truculent, cantankerous, whitithering, benighted, blinkered, self-obsessed shit I am.  But this is beyond that.  I am a volcano.  A steaming volcano with only one inevitable outcome.  And I don’t want the people that I love to be close to me when I erupt. And I know how difficult this will be for me to do this.  I have spent the last few weeks speaking to as many people as I could in a fruitless attempt to find distraction from my pains and feelings of the lugubrious.  But I know now that this is something that I have to lose to alone.  I regret becoming closer with people because it simply means they will get hurt more.  Better letting go now than never though.  I cannot even say final placating words of solace, because that would just make things harder as well.    

 So, there it is, and that is it. I am really going to make the effort to do this for my own gratification and not as a means of external simpering.

 I will effuse, smoke and quake alone. I will erupt alone. Always for betterment.

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Terriblific

I can’t stand people who use unnecessarily superfluous affectations in an attempt to sound like a linguistic erudite. All they do is come across as supercilious and self-enthralled. Thank the Almighty I have not the proclivity for this.

 The plan for this was to talk about how diametrically terrible and (what’s the difference between positivity and self-praise?) terrific I am. Unfortunately that plan has fallen foul to the fact that I feel absolutely shit today. Bottom of the sewers, beneath a giant fatberg level of shit. I could go into it, but who cares. I fear it may affect the rationality of my writing. Then I thought, I don’t really care either.

 So, I am terrible. That’s pretty obvious. I am incapable of gratitude, incapable of enjoyment, incapable of empathy, and incapable of acceptance. My thoughts consist of “how long until I can die” and “I’m really hungry”. I exude miasmic misery into the lives of the people I love and care about. Then they feel sad. Then I feel sad because they feel sad. I have an unmovable mentality that the world is awful and everyone is awful.  I think that even if I were to be healthy, why would I want to breathe in a world like this. We all know the problems. I don’t need to list them. I have my suffering and I have my pain but instead of trying to overcome them, I let them bring me down and self-flagellate myself with every pejorative I can express. I allow feelings of helplessness and hopelessness to dominate me with no resistance. My motivation lies in tatters and the only things I enjoy are food and pills. Instead of getting on with my life, I am obsessed with making sure everyone knows just how miserable I am. There must be a word for this. Alas,not one that I know of. I have delusions of grandeur and dreams of lives that I will never have and probably wouldn’t even want. I am a hypocrite. I denigrate my generation for being so self-enraptured and yet I am the exact same. At least I am trying to change. Finding it rather impossible right now though. I want to be the people that I hold in such vitriolic distain. Because I am fooled by the fluff and think being materialistically prosperous and desirable will make me happy. It won’t. But try telling my thick brain that. I feel the need to be liked and respected, but I don’t want to want this. I want to be able to smile and let everything go. I wish I could.

 Despite this, I have done some markedly impressive things, by my own low expectations, in my life.  I’ve never travelled the world; I’ve never ran an ironman marathon; I’ve never volunteered to save the rainforests.  In all fairness, I would be hopeless at all these things.  If I were asked now “what is your greatest achievement?”, my answer would be “that I’m still alive”.  Like I have recounted many times, I have had 57 surgeries in my lifetime.  I have endured a lot of needles, a lot of feeling terrified, and a lot of pain.  I have been rejected, derided, excluded and abandoned.  By so many people, and so many times.  I have suffered from varying levels of depression for eight years, with a crescendo from now to the next two months.  Again, despite this, I have had some personal achievements that I am proud of. I got offered a scholarship to an (at the time) top 20 university. Where I managed to scrape a 2:1 while having missed half of my final year. I’ve been offered three full-time jobs since then, and only got kicked out of one.  Unfortunately needing sporadic surgery isn’t acceptable in the cunting corporate city world. But thank fuck for that because I now have a mostly stable job where I have met some people in my short life. Well, maybe not quite so. Might come to that. Anyway, they did leave me on full-pay during my five 19 months off. So, take comfort in your hard-earned taxpayer money being used to fund my salary while I lie in bed feeling sorry for myself. Rule Britannia!

 Writing this truly did mollify some of my more intensely negative emotions. If you didn’t enjoy it, please take some solace in that I did. Here’s a quick update on my current circs: If you do not care, I will not know or be offended or care if you skipped this. As expected, I still have no vision in the eye with potential vision . However, it has been flashing as bad as ever, but I really don’t think I have anything more to say on that.  Sometimes I feel I am getting used to it, other times I want to put my face in my pillow, my fingers in my ears, and scream. I have some tunnel vision in my shit eye, but given the precurser of it being labelled as shit, it remains pretty shit. In terms of my pain, I have had a slight improvement.  It is obdurately and undeniably still there, but it’s as if I am not taking as much notice of it.  Whether that be one of the  cocktails of Valium, anti-inflammatories, nerve blockers or the morphine-family drug, or me being distracted by the flashing,  I cannot tell.  It doesn’t feel like it is a long-term fix.  There is positivity when it comes to my mood.  Instead of wanting to be 1000 miles beneath the earth or eviscerated in the depths of space every day, I now only feel like this around three in four days. That is undeniable progress.  But whether I see myself wanting to be around in 66 days, I am afraid that right now it is an answer that you don’t want to hear. Or perhaps you do. I know I get on peoples’ tits.  

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Twat

Everyone loves a port manteaux.  Especially around 52% of aged people in the UK, I would assume.  I also love a chiasmus.  My favourite being: Will you fuck off, please? Please, will you fuck off?  Since I have been involuntarily forced to stop watching crap on Netflix and Youtube and meaningless sport I have been listening to many books and taken an unexpected interest in the pleasantly ensconcing world of literature and language. This is having given up English after GCSE, doing an entirely quantitative degree, and working as an auditor where written creativity is as prevalent as waterparks in the Sahara.  I have never been on a writing course or written (semi)seriously before for that matter.  It’s all comes naturally from my enormous brain. The same brain that can’t remember which pills it has taken or what happened the day before.  I think back and I just cannot remember any specifics; if someone was to tell me, then I would remember instantly. But it’s like feeling around in a fog (do I even need this metaphor anymore) and I need someone to guide me to the memories.  This is the battle between pain management and brain management. Personally, I would rather be in a state of senility than debilitating pain. It’s not like I am living an enviable extraordinary adventure of a life and creating unforgettable memories.  Or maybe I am.  I know how you all yearn for my life.

 My ones of readers may have noticed a toning down of my language in recent posts.  This was as a consequence of being told that using words no one has never heard of doesn’t make you sound clever, it just makes you sound like a twat. Well, I thought, there are worse things in the world to be. So, twat I shall be and no longer shackle myself with chains of the vernacular.  All it is really is me showing off. Showing off my newly acquired HUGE lexicon.  I would compare it to someone showing off their HUGE newly acquired petrol guzzling Four-By-Four to all the other mums (and dads) at school pick-up time.  The only difference is while they are demonstrating their material ascension to the apex of life affirmation, mine is decorating a descension into decadence.

 But we all like to show off.  Instagram and TikTop (ew) are splattered with girls showing off their larger than average breasts or bottoms and men displaying their virility and their man-defining qualities of chiselled, chiselled abdominals and chisaleled,chiselled cheeks  With a backdrop redolent of having an amaze time and adorned with clothes that have “I am living a great life” stencilled across the Vietnam sweatshop produced fabric. And aside from the fact that fast fashion contributes more in carbon emissions than the production of coal (we like to ignore the things that are bad), I don’t have a problem with any of it. Let people do what they want to do, without judgement.  Is judging is exactly what I’ve been doing the last paragraph? Don’t judge me on that.

 My maea culpa is that I was simply delineating the situation, just maybe with a Lilliputian of bias.  Anyway, I’ve done it before and would probably be doing it now if I could.  But I can’t.  So let me be sour and acerbic to those with better lives than I and allow me to innocuously tie my words together with little bows of flamboyancy   At least I’m not trying to promulgate how good my life is.  It’s pretty antithetical to social media now that I consider it. I am telling the few that care about how not great my life currently is. And who wants to see that.  They would much rather scroll through posts of big tits and the people we all want to be or be with, but know we never will. Jokes on you.  I can no longer see them

 P.s I was going somewhere with the port manteaux overture. Then I got way waylaid. Be excited for the next garrulous thought-splattering.

[forabetterlifethanthis]

How to Slow Down Time

Think of a clock. Not a digital one.  One with a second hand.  Not a second hand as in the second of two hands. A second hand to delineate the passing of seconds.  Maybe known by some as a third hand?

 Let me restart. Think of a clock but without the minute or hour hands. Just the second (as in the denoting of time) hand. Now you have your clock.  Adorn it with pretty ideograms for numbers.  Now, can you count to sixty and imagine for every second that you count, the second hand moves approximately one-sixtieth degrees around your clock.

 You probably didn’t do this. If you did, you probably would have noticed that it felt like longer than a minute.

 I’ll set this out another way.  If you were anything like me, during your school days you must remember taking furtive glances at the clock on the wall.  Do you remember thinking half an hour must have gone and then feeling dismayed when you see only ten minutes had gone?

 Conversely, doing your exams.  You think you have ages left and then, much to your chi grin, see that you have only five minutes left, and you still haven’t even started the long-form question inAlbert Camus’ L’Etranger in your French A-level exam.  While that may not have been your exact situation , I shall assume you get my drift. And that is that time passes slowly when you wish that it passed quickly.  And time passes quickly when you want it to pass slowly. Except it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. We all know it is entirely psychological.

 Back to my clock analogy. Imagine counting those sixty seconds. Do it again sixty times. Then again 1040 times.  Then imagine you had to do those sixty seconds 189,280 times. Seems like an awful lot of seconds.

 That was an ineloquent way of expressing how time passes for me. Slowly. Like a snail with no foot. A big fat bulbus slug making its way up a hot, oily pipe.

 Well, I have now mastered the power to slow down time on a perennial basis. I spend much of the day lying on my bed staring at nothing and thinking about nothing you want to hear about. Wishing for time to pass.  Any stimulation just pisses me off and most of the time I don’t even mind the wallow.

 It has been sixteen days since I had my surgery and it has felt I have been this way for months. I would pay good (all of my) money to be knocked unconscious for two months and be fed through tubes and have one of those machines that turn you over so you don’t get clots. How that sound like the life for me. I have enquired, but perhaps unsurprisingly it is not something offered by the NHS, or any private healthcare institution.

 On the note of private healthcare, I’d like to make a shout out to my private healthcare insurance provider, AXA PPP.  Thanks for refusing to pay for any CBT sessions and thanks for refusing to pay for anything related to my pain, because they don’t fund “chronic conditions”.  If this is litigious, do you really think I care? AXA: you’re shit.  And NHS?  Still waiting!  Our poor NHS. So little money and so many sick people. It’s doomed to becoming an emergency-only service in the coming decade or so. I am on the urgent list and still have to wait months for treatment.  Imagine if you were having to wait for elective treatment. Well actually five million people don’t have to imagine as they have been waiting over a year for treatment.  The saddest part is that if you can afford it, you can get treatment for, let’s say a hip replacement, the following week.  For the same treatment under the NHS, you’d be looking at waiting two or three years. Isn’t it great to see how fair society is becoming?!  Gone are the days that Etonians stroll the halls of power! Gone are the days that contracts are given out to the chums of ministers! Gone are the days that white classically educate men (hello) dominate the highest paid positions of the always egality-driven financial services industry. While there may be more ethnicities and regional representations in both financial and political spheres, it’s still the same.

 Turns out I didn’t apprise you on how to slow down time. I suppose I can summarise it to you in three simple steps:

 Think about things In the future that you want now

Think about how what you are doing right now is what you really don’t want to be doing

Think about the past and all the good memories and sour them with the knowledge that they will never happen again

 Based on my experience, doing these as concurrently as possible will ensure you psychologically a long and unhappy life. Which is what we all crave, in the end.

 You’re welcome.  

[forabetterlifethanthis]

There is a Light and it Never Goes Out

And it is in my head.

 I can’t stand it much longer.

 Please set me free

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Dreaming Through Reality

I want to talk to you about dreams. Collective yawn. I agree. There is nothing more boring than someone telling you about what happened in their dreams. I promise I will try not to do that.  Or at least I will keep it to a general level.  But my dreams are quite significant to me. Let me tell you why

 I spend a lot of time in a recumbent state.  By that, I mean I sleep a lot. I am on medication that makes me drowsy, forgetful, fat, itchy and constipated.  Most of those side-effects are not relevant here.  What they do do is make me sleep a lot. They also make me dream more, and more vividly. And I love them. The happy ones, the sad ones; the bad ones, the mad ones.  I love them all.  So let this loquacious sod pontificate to you a little bit about his dreams.

 Many people seem to have a strange fascination of what blind people see when they dream. Do I dream like I see in conscious life?  DO I see a giant green bubble blocking my vision? No, I don’t. I very much dream in full vision.  The best part is that the perennial flashing does not permeate into my dreams. Yet.  Even the nightmares are great.  Because often I get scared so shitless from them that when I awake,  feel a sense of reprieve and gratitude that it isn’t real.

 And the good dreams?  Well, I am agile and nimble.  Confident and not beset by a smearing of health issues.  I.e. myself three years ago.  Back in pre-fungus days.  When I could ride my bike, go to the gym, go running and meet my ‘friends’ without the fears I now bare which I wouldn’t have known even existed before. Love a little lament. But I can be that person again, in my dreams.  I meet people, real and proliferations of my unconscious imagination.  I dream stories that I don’t want to end.  I find love that would be impossible now, with my newly acquired state of decrepitude and undesirability.  Sad? Very sad.  A long-term viable solution to my problems? Sadly not.  But the prospect of some extrication from consciousness is a delicious one.

 So, to summarise, I use dreams as simple escapism and all they really are farts exuded from the brain. I do however believe  that you can learn to find solace in your dreams.  Towards the end of dreams, when consciousness begins to stur, I can cajole them into a favourable direction.  Lucid dreams?! Not quite. But maybe I’ll be able to some day.

 Some day, I forget the impertinence of phrases like that.  I think you will have gathered that it is not looking particularly rosie. Nevertheless, my machinations remain the same and I will predicate any decision I make at the end of my mental convalescence.  Until then, it is one dream at a time.

 I’ll slap myself on your behalf for that.

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Flash Finale

Hell. Hell in a body. Hell in a head. That’s what this flashing does to me. It makes my life into hell.  But why?  Why am I so very much desiccated by it?  Why do I let it dictate my mood and make me want to do anything just to find an escape from it?  The truth is, the more I resist, the more it constricts me.  Like Devil’s Snare (if you get the reference). The harder I kick out at it; the harder it kicks back.  The more attention I give it, the more it drags me down into the marsh of anxiety and helplessness.  The obvious solution would be not to give it the attention that translates into suffering.  And not treat it as a malicious demon in my head and for what it is, and that is simply my body not functioning as it should.  .  I would say that it would be more doable if it remained at a constant level.  But some days it is so much worse than others, and this makes it very hard to preclude as I will be thinking it’s getting better and then it suddenly is screaming at my poor head.  That’s the best way that I can describe it. It’s as if the brain is receiving emergency signals from the eye saying that there is something wrong. Do something about it.  Every flash is stimulation to the brain.  I would equate it to a stabbing pain everyone must have had at some point in their lives.  It is that stabbing pain that makes you switch your attention to what is causing those nasty pain signals to be fired up to the brain. 

It’s the invasive and unescapable nature of it that makes the flashing so hard to deal with.  When I close my eyes.  It’s still there.  When I put my hands over my eyes and scream. It’s still there.   Even when doing meditation to take myself out of the mind, it is there, flashing away. 

Here I am how ever many days later. It’s funny how I spoke about accepting and coming to terms with it, and then breaking down and going to A&E. It did give me some much needed assuring.  A diagnosis, or an  explanation, always help. I was scared that it would be this bad interminably and that it was a sign that the surgery had failed. I had many doctors look and scans done, and they think it is being caused by blood leftover from the surgery rubbing against the already highly-sensitive retina.  And thankfully they said that this should clear by itself and slowly get better. 

The relief was akin to a shot of heroine.  Not that I’ve ever known relief. I Mean taken heroine. Unfortunately. But just knowing it it’s anything inauspicious and that it is going in the right direction does make things a little easier.  Just a little.   They also affirmed to me that I can’t do any exercise while I have the bubble in, except walking.  That’s for another eight weeks.  Combine that with medication that makes me hungrier than a cow in Slough, fat Freddie is only getting bigger.  I ran 15km in January. How the great do fall.  Time is a shit.      

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Wishing it to be different

Before I begin, I will advise my reader that this may become one of the darkest and most harrowing of these unread posts that I have written. Your discretion is highly recommended. In fact, maybe it’s better not to read at all. I should also mention that I am writing this without vision, so it may come out rather messily.   

I wish that I could say it was different.  I wish that I could feed you the words that you want to hear. The facile words that would allow you to get along with your life.  But you are not here for platitudes and enforced optimism. Still I wish that I could tell you that my surgery met all of my expectations and I am on a rosie recovery with hope aplenty in my heart.  I wish that I could tell you that I have come to terms with my circumstances and accepted this new life.  I wish I could tell you that I had faith in my future. But that would be a lie. I wish I could tell you that I know that I can be happy even from inside the darkest of places and that I have found inner peace.  But that would be a lie as well.  I wish I could tell you that all my ailments have been remediated and I am a new and improved man.  But this too would be a lie. I wish I could tell you that my faith in men, and yes, specifically men, has been restored. But, that as well, would be a lie.I will write the truth.  For, if you care about me or not, this is my truth. I went into the surgery with low vision, very painful and invasive flashing and a defunct right eye. I sit here three days later with no vision, painful and invasive flashing and a defunct right eye. As you may have gathered, it didn’t quite meet my relatively high expectations.  I expected no vision in my left eye given they put in a big green bubble to save my retina.  But I did expect a bit more from my right eye.  Alas, so much damage had already been done, It looks unsalvageable. The optic nerve has been too fucked up.  I asked my consultant about when he foresaw optic nerve regeneration being clinically available.  He told me ten years, remarking that that wasn’t a long time. I said that my dog’s lifespan was just over ten years.  Perception of the passing of time is an odd thing. The last six months for me have felt longer than my three years at university. Maybe I will come back to this. 

That is it really.  Nothing much to report.  I do have the prospect of the bubble dissipating and t the flashing assuaging, but that would take a number of months.  And when every day feels like an endless repetitive cycle of hope, let-down, misery with perhaps the occasional spackle of joy dappled in, it’s a difficult life to lead.  For now, as I languish in my darkness, I fear for an inevitable fate, I continue to lollop and lope  towards that time, I promise myself that.  Time.  I promised myself I would hold strong and give me a chance.

Then it became too much. Then it became 2am on a Sunday morning. Then it was that time when the thoughts that no one cares flood through the mind.  Pain is indomitable and hope lies in a vial trickle on the ground.  And that simple question.  One that everyone must ask themselves at least once in their life: what is the point?  What is the point in living if you don’t enjoy living?  What is the point of hoping when there is no hope?  What is the point in giving a shit in things that you just don’t give a shit in? At 2am on this Sunday morning, I had no answers to these questions.   was so very scared of being forever trapped in the darkness of my head, tortured by incorrigible pain and stuck in a world that I despised

Now you are seeing where this is going, maybe it is the time you stop here.  For the sun is out, it’s getting warm, and you don’t need this in your life. 

But I was so scared. I can’t put into words just how scared I was.  How alone I felt. How I thought that I would be trapped for the rest of time in this head.  I took control in the only way that I thought I could.  To dress this up in some much needed frippery, it involved a deep bath, a bottle of raspberry gin and a cocktail of Valium, codeine and antipsychotics. 

And we all know what happened. What always happens.  At least with me.  I sat there.  I just sat there.  In my pyjamas, in my aqua tomb. Anyone who has the intense heart rate increase, the sharp pain in the shoulders.  And this is before even one pill swallowed.  I was intent, but then I wasn’t.  If that makes sense, then it makes sense. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. 

Once again, I was just so scared. I am not a brave ma,.  I wouldn’t be here if I were.  

Before that fear of the real darkness that is in forever, I really had lost all hope.  I even drafted a ‘note’ to ‘share’ to be seen after my ascension.  It’s ironic how I, ever the anti-capitalist, would have used a social media corporation giant to elucidate myself .  It really wasn’t a happy state of affairs.  I could have attempted to adorn with frippery.  But it really was just so bleak.

And here I am jumping back in time again. Ever the revisionist.  But I decided even I wouldn’t be so self-destructive.  It really amazes/ruins me when I look back at how obstreperous my mood can be.

This was the point when I did feel some hope, and maybe a dash of acceptance.  Even embracing a possible life of blindness and pain.  I thought I could distract myself with doing the things that I could still do and forget about the things that I couldn’t.  And then it erupted.  The flashing became worsE than ever. And it all fell apart.  

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Make it good and make it painless

Isn’t it always the case that when you need sleep for that one night, more so than any normal night, you inevitably get no sleep. Just another of the ways our bodies aren’t the brightest sometimes. It’s like when people died of Covid; rather than the virus being what kills you, it is your own immune system going nuclear war in response and destroying your lungs in the process. Similar case with cancer. Or when you are thinking of a word, but the fact that you can’t think of the word is itself what causes you not to be able to think of that word.  Why can’t you just work how we want you to work? Stupid bodies. 

Anyway, I can’t sleep. So, I thought what better idea to sneak in one last little post.  And I thought I would actually include a nice thing. Waking up at 4am is normally a bit of a nightmare (especially if you have just woken up from one). This morning, with my dog’s head on my chest and the birds chirruping away happily outside with a pleasant cool breeze drifting in, I found myself in a strange state of cerebral serenity. Was I inadvertently practicing gratitude for the better parts of life? 

I am slowly allowing my view on positivity and having a positive mindset to shift slightly. I accept that it is a viable means by which many cope and overcome the more difficult parts of life. What I get really naffed off about is people who consciously externally show themselves having amazing, enlightening, incredible lives, preaching positivity to everyone else. It’s this idea of enforced positivity.  I have tried thinking positively many times, and the problem I have had is it feeling like all the negative thoughts are being quashed and crushed, but never quelled. More and more are stuffed down into the back of the mind.  Every time a bad thing happens or a bad thought appears, it is added to the already overbearing maras of negative and toxic thoughts, interpretations and emotions.  And this works well.  Until it doesn’t. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I love volcanoes.  Them, waterfalls and dogs are my three favourite things. And maybe add gin in there too.  But in the above analogy, the bad thoughts and feelings and all the pain stowed away; it gets to a point where the pressure is too much. And just like a volcano:

BOOM. The top flies off. I go off the wagon.  Probably ending up shouting at the people that love me as I let every bad thought come out. I think people in society have conflated positive mindsets with ignoring anything that isn’t deemed sociably ‘correct’, i.e. negativity. 

And again, there’s nothing more annoying when people who seem to have it all going for them tell you to be positive and that things aren’t that bad.  Because often they are shit.  And you acknowledging they are shit gives me/people a release in that they are allowed to just say how shit things are without being made a pariah for it and have people distance themselves from you. 

I think being grateful for the things you have in your life is really important in being happy.  The problem is when you start forcing this upon yourself.  Extolling to yourself “EVERYTHING IS AWESOME, EVERYTHING IS COOL”.  When that simply is often not the case.  As always, finding a balance is key. Being phlegmatic about things without leaning towards a hubris attitude may be a decent compromise. My issue is that I have a mood more volatile than potassium.  Some days (especially recently) I have known nothing but darkness, dismay and despair.  Other days I can accept my faults and my flaws; my ailments and my addled mind.  Anyway, if anything can be learnt from my case, it is that one sure way to deflate someone’s ego is to take their independenceaway from them and the control they have over their future. Will definitely do the trick. 

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Blob?

Blob blob blob blob blob blob blob blob blob. Looking for something insightful? Blob blob blob blob blob blob. Just to clarify: blob blob blob. That is as much wisdom as you shall find.

Replace every word I write with blob and you shall find the same level of enlightenment. Why do I say this? Because it’s true? Why is it true? Because it is.  I spout the absolute worst garbage that syrups its way from the back of my brain to the front of my mind.  Then why read this? For a glimpse of honesty perhaps.  In a world that denounces such a thing.  I can’t offer any original ideas or instant enlightenment.  All I can offer is my honesty.  Is that worth your time? It depends on you. Who you are, and how you see me. 

I really didn’t want to do this today, but here I am doing it nonetheless. How I wish I had something to say. But, like an awkward first date, I just have nothing to say. It’s all the same. It’s always the same. Some brief turn towards a possible happy future with friends and love and hope.  And then a return to the me that only reveals itself when me is alone. The me that is full of distrust, distaste and dissatisfaction with all people and all things. The me that writes this now.  Hello. 

I am the inside evil. The thing that thinks but never speaks. The one that places doubts and removes trust. I am the malice that creeps into your head at night and whispers how you are not good enough and never will be. How everyone will be better off without your infectious negativity.  The thing that tries to bring you down to my level, because there is no hope of raising me to yours’.  It hides away when I am around people.  But as soon as they are gone, it rears its ugly head and exudes its poison. It takes control of me and makes me spit hatred into the world.  Hatred in words; hatred in actions. It is the insidious being that strangles my hopes and punctures my dreams.  It wraps itself within the chords of my brain and tugs and pulls it into shapes that represent the worst of me. 

But it is me. I am it.  It is my foundation and it will probably be my downfall.  I can feel it now.  I can hear it. Pulsing through my head with the pain.  Am I going mad? No.  I’ve always been mad. It is only now that I am allowing the madness to pervade my consciousness.  I hate it. I attach every pejorative that I know to it, but know I am cursing only myself. 

People talk of ‘toxic’ people.  People that bring nothing good to their lives. Well, that I fear is I.  Someone has to be it, else it wouldn’t be a thing.  I feel so much hate towards this thing inside of me.  This thing that is me.  I can’t get away from it.  I can drown it in pills and cover it in positivity, but it is always there and it always comes out on top.  The more effort I put in to quelling it, the more obstreperous it becomes.  It eats me from the inside out.

I raise the question for the x-illionth time.  Is there still hope? When there is time, there is hope.  And I do have time. Time is slow and drags and drags and drags. The idea of endless pontifications is a daunting one.   was told yesterday that I need to make the effort to find reasons to live and to be happy. The honest response was not so savory. There are reasons for hope and reasons for happiness.  Reasons to be able to live a high-quality and high-quantity life despite impending blindness and impervious pain.  However, there are reasons to be sad and reasons to want an end.

An ending.  Dying. Death. Dead.  Something that you will be one day. Everyone will be. So why is it such a delicate topic?  There is an answer somewhere there, but not one that I have yet to extricate.  I am so bemused to why the idea of someone dying by means other than what was ascribed to them by fate is so silenced.  Everyone dies.  Get over it. Get used to hearing it.  Talk about it, because believe it or not life is not a brilliant experience for everyone. Here is my suppository for saying what I really want to say.  No matter how pernicious it may be. Maybe if I turn enough people against me, it will make it easier.  Vindicate me.  Prove to me that I am right and that I am the worst of humanity.  Because of the words I say. The words that you aren’t supposed to say.   

This is where I now have read back what I have written.  I see how poisonous it gets and I am about to apportion a good chunk of it to the never-was-sphere of the backspace button. 

Five hours on, and I have enjoyed a lovely meal out for my mum’s birthday.  A lot can change in a few hours. Now I can focus on staying calm about tomorrow. The day of my last resort surgery.  Probably the most significant day of my life so far.  Being hubristic, I would say that I have nothing to lose and there is a good chance I’ll be in a better situation after than I am now. Following my far more natural negative tendency, I would say that I have everything to lose. My future rests on this outcome. 

So, I approach this night that I know sleep will not find me easily. Uncertainty, anticipation, trepidation: all feelings that will keep my mind a-turning.  I would like to thank the people who have read this so far. Writing has helped me so much, knowing that I may need not suffer alone, and not all people will reject me for my honesty in the darkest time of my life. 

Just to remind anyone who somehow found themselves here: I am having surgery on both my eyes tomorrow that will pretty much dictate whether I will have vision in the future. So pretty significant for me. I know the next week will most likely be very difficult for me. I will be back, for better or for worse. Probably for the worse.  

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Stuck on the Floor

Stuck on the Floor

The mind.  The soul.  The spirit.  Consciousness.  Being.  The head, the heart, the brain.  Different words to describe two diametric parts of our existence.  The first is the one we all know; that little light behind our eyes.  The second one is the deeper, more opaque one.  The thing that makes us who and what we truly are.  That which there is no evidence of.  So it probably doesn’t even exist.   Do I believe in a soul? No.  So why begin with a monologue of existence?  Not quire sure, seemed to be a grabby overture at the time.  But if life and existence is meaningless, then discussion of life and existence is meaningless.  Should I go into meaningfulness?  No, because that would be meaningless.  I’ve really gone down a rabbit hole here.  My point was going to be that there is no point, but I have bedazzled myself with my own confuddling words.  My mind is a maelstrom of madness, and occasionally some unedifying wisdom is thrown out, but today doesn’t seem to be one of those days. 

The last few days haven’t been those kind of days.  There I am constantly telling myself that things can and will get better.  And surprise of surprises, they don’t.  I think I’m on the floor, and I am very much on the floor.  But the floor keeps getting lower and lower.  And I am stuck to it.  I talk of the triumvirate forces that dictate my future being my vision, my pain and the world in general.   But I think there is a more sinister power, with hegemony over the three.  My mood.  It is my mood that actually affects my quality of life.  If I could be blind and in pain but not be chronically depressed about it, then it wouldn’t even be an issue.  It’s the pain in the mind that it causes that makes me long for an absence of existence.  If only there were a way to pick my mind off the floor and start enjoying life again. 

This is what brought me to writing these posts.  Because I have tried everything.  From all types of medication to all forms of meditation, from exercising to extra-sizing.  Freezing cold showers and boiling hot baths.  Talking to family but never about ends, screaming at my pillows and at all of my friends.  Positive thinking, gratitude, and acceptance.  Releasing tension, anger and frustration.  From walking my dog, to writing this blog.  Finding purpose, meaning and more.  To avoid being forever stuck to the floor. 

I have become so used to feeling hopeless and lost that when I do manage to get a sweaty hold on happiness, my thoughts inevitably turn to how it will not last and my heart rate rises, anticipating the depressional reset.  I speak of a floor.  The lowest the mind can go.  Where gravity crushes all hope and the nothingness beneath swallows it up.  But there is also a ceiling.  Where you feel great.  And great about yourself.  You congratulate yourself on your charmed existence and feel you have really aced that thing called life.  But in Newton’s glorious Earth, what goes up must come down.  And this is particularly true of the mood.  And the higher you soar, the harder the thud when you hit that floor. 

But for me, for the last few weeks, the floor has very much been a place of permanent residence.  I have been in more pain in the last week than ever before in my life.  Even writing this brings so much pain, sometimes I question whether the cathartic relief is even worth it.  I spent the weekend crushing it with drugs, but that very much is short-term gain for longer-term pain.  And today I tried.  I really did try.  I did all the things I could to take my mind off the pain.   I exercised and played my guitar, both bringing pain.  I walked Branston (my guide/therapy dog) and wrote this.  I used to find I could distract myself enough through work and the prospect of getting drunk, but now my time is only free time and I am stuck with my pain and with my thoughts.  There’s nothing anatomically that has shifted within me that has made the pain worse, so it must be all psychological.  I had the same body now as I did six months ago, but that body could run ten miles and go to the gym at 6am.  Now I can barely sit upright for more than a minute. 

It staggers me how much I have fallen.  How hard I have hit the floor.  And I feel so bruised and battered that I’ll never be able to get back up.  If you could see my face, the physical trauma that I have had is obvious.  But I feel like my mind has been more brutally excoriated and bludgeoned.  Not only have I lost the physical strength to do things, I have lost the mental strength as well.  I cannot find enjoyment in anything, or from anyone.  Even the doleful eyes of Branston fails to penetrate the love within me.  All I feel is loss and pain.  I know that it almost definitely would get better if I gave it enough time.  But I don’t know how much more time I can give.  It is really hard, and I know I am not alone and there are those of you out there who understand just how hard it is.  And I send all my best to you.  I really want to try to get off the floor.  Right now, however, I am very much face-down stuck to it, and I feel like I will need something special to lift me up.            

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Dripping Vitriol

I am toxic. I am poisonous. I am dripping vitriol. Every little thing that goes wrong is a vindication of my hatred.  Every stabbing of pain makes me caustic and acerbic to people trying to help me.  My loss of independence turns me to truculence and irritability.  I cannot take the positives in anything.  I constantly fear about the future.  I want to get out of my head.  But my head is a mirror-maze with fire exits leading towards ever deeper corners of anger and hopelessness.  I do the only thing that I know how to do now, and blast myself with pills.  The metaphor collapses in on itself and I hope for a better tomorrow, not realising that this is in my control alone. 

Get me out of this head.     

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Two Truths and a Lie

Covid was created by the Chinese as a means of biochemical warfare.  Joe Biden is being secretly controlled by radical socialists.  Beautiful people live the happiest lives. I thought that I may have been failing to engage the more inattentive of you, so I thought: what better way to reconcentrate peoples’ mercurial attention spans than some good old suppositional conjectures.  I could even give you some of my own baseless sophistry on any pithy maxim that is flavour of hoi polloi of today. But if my pretentious affectations won’t keep you engaged, to be honest, what will?

Onwards to talk about me. My favourite topic.  One I put much time and thought into.  Today, on the tenth day of my adventure to a better (quality of) life than this, was a very significant day for me. As you may not recall, today I saw a pain management specialist.  And my friends, that glistening panacea to assuage all my suffering, by god I may have just found it. 

While traversing through the bustling roads of Bond Street on this sultry Friday afternoon, I felt a real sense of change in the air. People emanated fresh starts and new beginnings; hope and purpose for a better and brighter future. As the warm air drifted past me in a pleasant breeze, I felt hope a new radiate from around me and into my skin. I heard people laugh, and that made me want to laugh.  People complemented Branston and I smile and thank them for their kind words.  The sun draped itself across the streets, and everyone shuffled in to bask in its blissful rays.  Chatting, joking, even jigging in their walks to the tune of happy days. I felt like I had all the strength in the world to take on the challenges set before me.  As I entered Harley Street’s finest, my heart fluttered with a new lease of impetus for life, prepared to handle whatever outcome; good or bad.  I met the doctor and explained to him the arduous surgeries and treatments that I have had.  After some patient deliberation, my doctor presented me with a plan that would almost guarantee that my pain levels be minimised, if not eliminated completely!  All would be available on my private insurance and we could start the treatment immediately.  I told myself that I was right to have just been patient.  That I was right to believe that things would turn for me, eventually. I smiled in my conviction, for I was right indeed.  Things will be better now.  I know it. My life will turn around and my newly fortified mind impervious to any doubts.  The new me begins here

.

Come on, did you really believe that?  I am much disrelished if you feel my writing has atrophied to that level of bovine bilge.  That, that is what you wanted to hear.  This, is reality. Honesty. Truth. And probably what you are now dreading hearing. 

While traversing through the wet roads of Bond Street on this dreary Friday afternoon, I felt a real sense of gloom in the air.  As the rain-sodden, people-dodging pavements cajoled me through the Oxford Street misery, I was reminded just why I didn’t leave my house when possible.  Vociferously effusive youths walk with entitlement in their stride and vulgar on their mouths.  The same mouths that you just know are unlikely to have had a facemask on them in the recent past.  They shouted their animal-like noises, with the intermittent fuck, pussy and wanker thrown in, demonstrating their virility and masculinity to their fellow animal. I mean man. 

The pungent rain hits my skin and doesn’t absolve me or clear my head; it plops and sinews its sticky way down my face.  It smells of fumes, smoke and foreboding. It smells of London. The irreproachable city that I have come to hate and am yet entirely beholden to.  The rain is my pain.  Incessant, head-bowering and relentless.   As I entered Harley Street’s finest, I felt a feeling of dudgeon that this was a place only people that could afford to would visit. If there is anyone in my situation who is reliant on the NHS, I am so very sorry.  The National Health Service – free at the point of use. Which will probably be after a three-year waiting time.  Hooray for our NHS.

Following such a denouncement of the sanctified NHS, you must expect that I got a much better experience from this private hospital.  Much to my chi grin, I got the answers that I should have been expecting.  But that fucking thing called hope raised my expectations so that invisible man in the rainy sky can laugh at me for my hapless naivety.  The answers to my questions of “is there anything different that can be done” and “are there surgical options that I could have” had obfuscating “not really” and an obdurate “no” as answers.  Fab.

The only suggestions were to increase my dosages of what I��m currently on to a level where I will be even more drowsy, fat, useless and constipated. Or to start me on morphine. Do I want to start taking morphine?  Oh yes.  But I feel like my grasp on reality is questionable enough already. Becoming gaga as well might mean I won’t finish this. How would the world ever recover. 

So, as the rain continues to splatter down, I will continue to splatter my words down here, all the way to the end and I am the one to be splattered. 

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Nothing Much Left

Nothing Much Left

Hope feels like it is abandoning me today. As the last of my remaining vision trickles away, day by day, my mind is left in a morose maras as everything is becoming darker and darker. Words are bending and bumbling into each other, and even the flashing now pulsates an ominous umbra, rather than the angrily tumultuous red. I haven’t quite lost hope, but it is being secreted from within me as every hour passes. Maybe I would once be angry. Raging, raging, against the dying of the light. I don’t feel nothing. I just feel very little. Numbed is the overused word to describe this phenomenon. As the iconic Ariana Grande says, there are “no tears left to cry”. See, I’m not completely out of touch. 

The saddest part is that I could do so much, and I could be so much. Even blind, even with chronic pain. There are more opportunities open to me than I could name, and plenty that would bring me satisfaction, purpose and a quality of life. I am inn the most felicitous state of living in a society that gives people like me the opportunities to live amazing lives and do amazing things. People with disabilities are doing jobs now and integrated into society in ways unfathomable in past decades.     

It's not quite good enough.

I can’t. I just can’t. I have had too many surgeries. I have had hope ripped from me too many times. I have been hurt by too many people. I have no energy to overcome my challenges. That is for better women and men than I to do. I’m sorry that I feel like this. I am sorry because I know there are so many people who love and care about this shit, and have so much hope for it. I am sorry that I cannot meet their expectations of me. I am sorry that I can’t say what you want me to say. I wish there were words to placate you.  Simple, easy words that would make everything easy and convenient for you. Oh, but there are. I’m just too selfish to say them. 

  I now feel like I am condemned to an inevitable fate. Waiting for the inevitable, but hoping for the avoidable. Waiting for hope or hoping for time. I am uncertain which way round it is for me. But there is a dark cloud, and it’s headed right for me. 

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Life Entropy

Pain, pain, pain. Never the same, always the same.  Physical pain, mental pain; it’s all pain. We all feel pain, and we all seek an escape from our pain.  I want to hear about your pain.  I want to know what pain is to you. I’m not saying this nonchalantly, I would love if you told me how your pain manifests itself. Because everyone has pain.  I want to be able to put mine in some perspective.  So, if you are willing to indulge me in this coy extrospective, send me a message of your three most significant pains in your life. They can be whatever nature; physical or mental, temporary or permanent, banal or complex. If you really want to help the human equivalent of a sheep that has fallen on its back and has no one to help turn it the right way up, then also tell me what you do to overcome your pain. 

What/where am I? I’m doing fine.  That’s a lie.  I’m doing absolutely terribly, I am saddened to tell you.  My life seems to be curdling to a state of irreversible entropy.  My eyesight has worsened, the flashing remains stubbornly vexatious, and the pain has blossomed into a red ball of malevolence intent on bursting open my head. My joints feel like they’re being oven-cooked from the inside, with no fan setting.  Worst of all is that I have lost all desire to do anything.  I was able to pass the endless hours before writing songs, exercising, listening to books.  I did things that would promote my personal growth, like practicing singing, playing guitar or walking my dog (although that was perhaps more for his personal development). Now, aside from this blog, which I must dolefully tell you that I very much now force myself to do, just so as to keep myself sane, I spend my entire day in/on bed.  Just waiting for the next hospital appointment in the vane hope that they will find a panacea to all my woes.  I actually do not mind going to hospitals, because at least it engenders a feeling of purposefulness within me; like I am doing something about it. Stuck at home, unable to do so many of the things that I could five months ago just leaves me feeling apathetic and denude of all prospects of joy, lamenting for the life I will never have. 

I know there is still hope. I am yet to have my surgery and cannot give up before then.  I am also yet to see the pain management specialist. There is also the very realistic outcome that nothing will change and this is it.  But that is a decision for a different day. That’s the point of this: to commit myself to at least giving myself that time to find a charm for me. Just right now, I can’t see it.

So, while the wax of the little candle that represents my little life may have all but melted, hope still flickers.      

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Sun and Nihilism

Sometimes, it’s hard to be honest. It’s easy to show what we want to show and cover up what we don’t want others to see. It’s easier to say what is expedient and convenient than what is honest and probity. I so wish I could tell you that everything is wonderful, the world is at peace and no one suffers. I think that we like to shroud ourselves in positivity and pretend the bad things don’t exist. But, they exist. No matter how much silence is screamed at the things we don’t like to acknowledge, they continue to remain stubbornly in existence with no plans on going anywhere. It’s interesting how we often use the weather as a parabola to our collective happiness. Temperature up, sun’s out = everyone should be happy.  Cold and wet = permission to be miserable.  Even the words that we use to describe different weather is demonstrable of this. Lovely; glorious; beautiful; all words associated with good weather and are all positive words.  Bad, miserable, shit, dark and rotten are words used in describing when the weather is wet and cold.  You will definitely be unsurprised to hear that I much prefer the bad, miserable, shit, dark and rotten weather right now. I get a sense that others are suffering along with me, and because I feel like I am not missing out.  Anyway, I’m going to say it. Fuck the sun! Roll on a cold and wet summer!  

 I did do something today that I hadn’t done in many, many months.  And that is leaving my house for a non-medical related reason. I went to the pub. Like there’s only one in the world. “I knew it!” I hear you cry, “You were just an attention seeking hypochondriac after all!”. That I am.  But, after much cajoling from my parents, to the pub I went. Armoured with a double-glazing of sunglasses and my dog to try his best to guide me, I managed to sit for over two whole hours outside.  Admittedly, two cocktails and some rosé may have taken the edge off the pain at the time. I’d like to say that that was it and all was happy happy.  But alas no. I am home now and my body is screaming. You may have noticed the quality of my writing deteriorating, and that isn’t because I’ve stopped hiring a professional writer.  It’s because my head feels like it has 100 knives lacerating my skull, and I do not have the patience to ponder the most apposite words. It’s good enough if the words come out in the right order.  Away from the cold outside, my head feels hotter than a computer on full environmental-destruction-electricity-guzzling-bitcoin-generating mode. All I can do is take my pills, have a nice long cry, and hope that tomorrow changes. Tomorrow rarely does, but if there is no hope, then there is no hope.

 This is a poignant reminder to me to why I am doing this.  Because I made my decision that life in this state is not worth living. Would you say it is?  For now, hope pins me to this earth and only when it is truly gone may I be set free. Oh that idea of being free. To be light and to float, unencumbered away to the land where nothing matters and nothing hurts. Compare that to this boiling, stinking world. Lead by the rapacious and the cruel; the avarices and the brutal. The despots and the demagogs, and the men that would be kings. The sycophants and the dilettantes and the ones that sell their sins.  Those whom have it all, but always want more, so they pauperise the poor. And the rest of us are sheep, on a hedonistic conquest to live the perfect life. Crushing all empathy for the need to be always right. I’m sick of it. Because it’s sick. And I’m sick of being sick. So take your sloven world and all, and stick it where the sun don’t shine.