The delight of the real

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Rather than mushrooms / psilocybin, I’m going to use LSD for my next therapy session.

LSD is cheaper and easier to obtain, but also more deeply affecting even at the equivalent dose, and much longer lasting (up to 12 hours, rather than 4-6) – which makes it a bit less tractable as a psychedelic of choice. I’ve a full day slated for it, rather than a few hours. We’ll see how it goes.

Having never taken LSD in my life, I thought it prudent to take a small sample dose when I first obtained it, to get a feel for the drug. I feel quite confident with psychedelics now (I have a rough idea of the terrain, as it were); using the internationally recognised alcohol inebriation equivalence scale, I’d say I took enough to get me ‘a bit tipsy’.

This is a slice of my experience of that small, 100ug dose. At this dose there was a slight degree of visual distortion (irridescence and ‘breathing’), but only noticable when I paid attention. It was a light, clear, and pleasant experience, albeit one which came with a bit of a headache.

The Delight of the Real

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’

 
It comes on unexpectedly, suddenly; subtly

Sat in the front room, an hour after dosing, wondering if I’m going to feel anything at all.

It comes on with a laugh; surprise, delight, escaping from my heart my throat my mouth, into the air into the room, bouncing briefly from the walls, the bookshelf, the houseplants the windows.

The world suddenly a delight. And nothing changed yet everything new, everything shining. Everything singing.

It had always shone. It had always been singing. But only now, only now with surprise and delight, I noticed; only now did I notice again.

conkers

I remember – I would have been 4 – being in a park with my family, autumn. I remember leaf mould, and yellow brown and red leaves on the ground, I remember conkers – conkers!, big and bold, opulent.

But no, no I don’t remember leaf mould and autumn leaves and conkers, these are words and ideas, all greased with ghosts and memories, but THIS, I remember THIS, the bold, beautiful THISNESS of the world, primary colours and rich textures and a world both open and endless and yet somehow also enfolding and intimate. In this memory, the world shines. It sings.

I laugh, brief; a burst of surprise, the shock of the new. Sunlight pours through the bay windows and sets the green and white of the spider plant alight; the warm wood floor calls out, lines and whorls, stretching luxurious across the room. The room… the room! Here all the time yet somehow never before met. Another laugh, another burst of wonder, the old white paint of the walls, the crack running across the ceiling, this tiny slice of the universe, shining and living and being, and me just another part of it, no more lost or precious than the spiderweb by the doorframe, the knot of cables by the television, the houseplant, on fire, by the window.

I am no longer the centre of my universe, and I have no way of telling you how blessed a feeling this is.

Eager, I lace up my trainers – trainers! Laces! Green and black and blue, playful fabric threads folded over and under, The THISNESS of them sparkles, not laces but fabric threads, rough-soft to touch, that can be woven this way and that and turned on themselves just so, to keep soft rubber bound to my feet. Trainers! Laces!

Eager, I lace up my trainers and head to the park, 30 seconds walk from my front door.

And the SKY…

The SKY

The wheeling of gulls in the unbounded SKY, the light playing, playing on the lake. The people, the trees, the ducks pattering about on the paving. I stand delighted, the horizon rising up into the distant hills, the city beyond, the clouds, the sun, the SKY, this gorgeous opulent world, and all of it singing, singing as it always is and has been.

The breeze – the joy of the wind, the way the air itself can dance, can pull you along too, calling let’s play, let’s play, lets dance for the joy of yet another gifted day! – the breeze whirls around me and, embraced by the endless open world, I am no longer the centre of my universe.

I have no way of telling you how blessed a feeling this is.

Because I no longer matter. Because the world is bold, and gorgeous, opulent and glorious and absurd, and has no need of me. This universe will carry on in glory long after I am gone, just as it did long before I or any other human soul was born.

For the first time in a very, very long time, I am meeting the world honestly, on it’s own terms, and far from my human world or words; far from the space where everything is turned however subtly into a story about myself.

The universe is the universe, on it’s own terms, and is infinitely complex and varied, from the laces on my trainers and the knot of cables by the television, to the flight of geese against the glory of the sky. I do not matter.

I can breathe easy. I do not matter.

clouds-country-countryside-414308.jpg

At the boiling edge of the Big Bang (psychedelic session II)

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After my November psychedelics session led to such a rapid and profound positive change in me, I resolved to take a session once every 2-3 months for a year. I did this because I’m aware the research indicates that relapses sometimes occur 3-6 months in, and indeed, after failing to follow through on my plan, I relapsed about 6 months later.

Fortunately, while it was a vicious and dangerous fall, after 6 weeks it resolved as quickly as it had arrived. While being able to climb out of the hole myself (somehow?) was an excellent lesson in how far I’ve come, the experience did drive home to me that I’d possibly become a little negligent in looking after my psyche. I re-committed to sourcing some psychedelic mushrooms and having another session.

Brilliantly, this time I found a friend willing to sit with me for the experience. Having a sitter meant I was much more comfortable completely letting myself go. While ultimately I don’t think the dose was as high as I’d hoped (consistency is always going to be a problem with organics), it was still a very moving experience, and worthwhile. I won’t be leaving it so long next time and hopefully relapses are now something in the past.

Here is the trip…

At the boiling edge of the Big Bang

At first, the garden. Unfurling and unfolding, up and out and embracing, green and purple and the gold of dawn. At first the garden, embracing. It’s beautiful, and sacred.

At first, the garden. At first the dawn, singing, and the light is gold – oh, oh the light! The light is gold, can you see? Can you see the joy the splendour, the wonder, can you…

into the roots, into the earth, into the aching unspeaking earth; into the cool and the dark and the secret spaces inbetween, the well of all our sorrows, the source of all

this

heartache and

a g o n y and

then

Oh can you see the first light of dawn! The pale horizon, the dark and the joy and the water earth and sky, and these deep roots and sorrow, the heartache, and

Oh, the dawn! Oh the clear gold dawn, the joy of dawn, sacred gift of dawn, and the garden, at first, at first the garden.

After the garden, the ocean, the beauty, oh the infinite swell of beauty, of sorrow and pain and love, oh the fall and rise, drowning in the embrace and release of agonising beauty. Fathomless and silent, heartbreaking and healing, incomprehensible, I let go, I let go, let go and fall into grace, into agony, into grace.

And I am stars spread out across the galaxy, I am galaxies spread out across the universe, like grains of sand in the fathomless deep, I am, am no more, Sprawled on this bed this body, us all of us, all us bodies and stars and sand, dancing slow and furious at the boiling edge of the Big Bang, all, everything, oh oh oh everything, can you see, oh can you see the stardust, the all, the love the goddamn furious LOVE of it all, burning into sorrow and grief and the goddamn LOVE of it all, oh tell me can you see, can you see what this Universe is, what we are, the howling glory of the real?

The goddamn furious LOVE of it all, powerful as root through rock as ice breaking stone, relentless, the tree of life cracking open the deep earth ascending unstoppable to the endless sky, surging, the goddamn furious LOVE of it all, holding me, mum holding me, a young woman, long hair, fresh faced, I curl up on the bed and curl up in her arms and relentless, furious LOVE surges forth, upward forever upward and and oh no, no no and oh no, mum falling away, time takes all from us in the end, mum falling away into the fathomless black below and I am dragged relentlessly on and

I

H O W L, I

claw at my eyes, clutch my chest, rock, no no no, not this not this relentless, unstoppable force, the boiling edge of the Big Bang taking me forever further from her, from the people I love, lost to the dark and the fathomless deep and me dragged on up and onward into the endless sky, this sheer fury of love and heartache, the agony of grace, the sheer unstoppable beauty of it all,

Nothing is ever lost.

All we have is this moment, all we are is this moment, this boiling fury at the edge of the Big Bang, nothing is ever created or destroyed, but all is in constant transformation; and underlying it all is this love, this torrential ecstasy of love, no thing is ever lost

I

H O W L

in agony and understanding, stripped of my skin and my breath and everything I thought was my soul, I fall away, into the fathomless black, and eternity surges on, relentless, at the boiling edge of the Big Bang.

And it’s so simple, so bright and starry-eyed simple, I laugh, and the laughter is rain on water.

Sit up, pull off the eye mask and headphones. My sitter looks up, smiles

‘I think… lets go look at the stars’

‘OK’

I don’t move. Sit on the edge of the bed, staring into infinitely colliding space.

‘It’s… I wish…’

I want to tell him I wish he could feel how I feel, wish he could know, know at a fundamental and wordless level how much relentless love infuses the structure of reality, but I know the words will be hopeless, meaningless, overblown and cheap. My hands dance in front of me, trying to grasp the meaning which infuses the world. I wish you knew what a glory it is to be alive.

‘You… me… all of it, everything… we live thinking we exist, we’re seperate… we need to, to survive as animals, to make this delusion that there’s this me, and once there’s a me there’s a mine, there’s grasping, there’s fear, gain and loss, we put up walls, but none of it… it’s a delusion, we’re all part of the same… there’s no me and you and this and that it’s all, we’re all… but it’s not right to say part of the same thing, there’s no parts, there’s no thing… it just is… it just…’ my hands flap, fail to grasp the meaning infusing all creation. I sigh, stare into infinitely colliding space.

‘You can’t pour the Universe into words’

We leave the room to go outside, lie in the dewy grass and gaze up at the soft velvet midsummer sky; the Universe gazes back.

‘Hello you. Hello me’

The air hangs heavy with the night flowers of the garden, green and purple and gold; out here at the boiling edge of the Big Bang.

Notes on music:

Because I arranged the playlist myself, I can point to the peices of music which induced the component parts of this trip. They are:

…at first, the garden: Henryk Górecki – Symphony number 3

…the ocean: Greg Haines – 183 Times

…and I am stars: Moby – God Moving on the Face of the Waters

…the goddamn furious LOVE of it all: Greg Haines – So it Goes

Holding on to breath

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It’s a strange place, inside my soul right now.

Every recently day I’ve had moments – hours – where I’ve been so blue I’m black. Mostly, I try to sleep. Sometimes, I do things that are a clear danger sign. But I’ve people visiting from today until next week, so I’m safe now.

There’s nothing new in that. I’ve made attempts before, landed in hospital before. This time there’s a brutal grinding quality to it – I think born from exhaustion, the way this wears to you down after so many years. I’m just tired of it now. So this is far from new; it’s old, and worn; begging to be broken.

But there’s something else, this time.

I broke through it before. I know I broke through it. I remember how it’s shaped, I remember the words I used to describe it and while I knew they were imperfect they were also the best words I had to contain it.

I spoke with one of the ordained Buddhists at the centre a few weeks ago. I told her that in all my depression and grief I was so scared because I was falling apart and my life was falling apart and then… then I realised it was always, forever falling apart; there’s nothing to hold on to; all the suffering comes from trying to put together the pieces of a perfect life, in ignorance thinking that life is something you could ever grasp. That we could ever hold on to breath.

I told her I realised I was standing firm on ever-changing chaos. Everyone is. And there was joy in the peace of it, the realisation of it.

And now in this black and crushing space I still have all those words but they’re broken containers, most of the meaning spilled out and sunk to the earth.

It’s a strange place inside my soul right now. Like being kicked out of the garden.

Although it is bright, there are no objects of illumination

– The Discourse Record of Chan Master Hongzhi

It came after the psychedelics. Buddhism prepared the soil and nurtured it afterwards, but the revelation came from psychedelics.

Psychedelics provide something of an afterglow effect for 4-6 weeks after the dose, but this breakthrough rolled on long after that, and if anything it grew deeper, more textured, richer. I guess I just have deep wounds, still prone to opening up and swallowing me.

I can’t afford any more shrooms right now. Anyway, I can’t take any while I’m this deep black, and I’d prefer to have someone with me when I do… all these things mean it’s a tricky solution for me and not something I can reach for immediately.

So I’m caught in this strange dark space, remembering only vaguely the shape of something so much greater, so open, something as invisible and bright as light in a void. Often – when I’m at my deepest – it all seems like a lie I’m telling myself to comfort my blistering sense of failure and shame, regret and loss. Why would I want to return to a lie? My life is, materially, a fucking mess; and it’s getting worse. Have you any idea how strong that siren song is that draws me to jagged rocks? I could finally leave behind all this failure and shame, regret and loss. My life is, materially, a fucking mess; and it’s getting worse.

I don’t want to swim forever – I don’t want to fight the tide

I don’t want to swim the ocean – when it’s cold I’d like to die

– Moby

Friends tell me that it won’t always be this way, that things will get better. They don’t get it; this isn’t a fight between pessimism and optimism, but a fight between reality and fantasy. The only winning move is acceptance.

Acceptance is a hard move. But ultimately it’s the only one open to us, other than quitting the game. And I know this. I have the shape of it in my mind but it’s far away, and murky, and unbelievable. From here it looks not just hard but impossible, and the rocks are so much nearer, so solid, so simple. The sirens are singing, and all I have to fight against them is love, and the shape of something forgotten.

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Weighing feathers

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CN: A whole load of suicide

I’ve sadly shifted from ‘mentally well, with occasional falls’ to ‘acutely unwell’, which is disheartening. And I’ve fallen swift, and far. I’m holding on to hope that it’s driven entirely by unemployment and money worries (missed a credit card payment last week, which fucks me over in so so many ways) – so when a job and income finally appears, I’ll regain my balance.

Anyway.

I just had a ‘sobbing at the laptop’ episode, followed by me scribbling down the pros and cons of suicide; which I’m sharing with all you strangers on the Internet, because I can’t afford therapy.

It ends well. Buddha came to the rescue, I think.

Reasons to kill myself

– No future, probably poverty, homelessness, joblessness
– All my ambitions have been pulverised
– All the promise I ever held has been utterly wasted by my own incompetence and stupidity
– No reason to suppose this will get any better
– My life is a wreak and isn’t going to get any better
– IT HURTS. MY SOUL HURTS

Reasons to stay alive

– The kids
– Killing myself would probably kill mum and dad from heartbreak
– Would forever stain many people’s lives
– While you alive you can do good. You can be kind. You can live with compassion and work to improve the world, to enrich the lives of other people and other beings. If you’re removed from the world you can’t do ANY of these things, and killing yourself would cause profound pain.
– Look at it. All your reasons for killing yourself are centred on yourself; your reasons for staying alive centred on other people. Life holds no meaning only so long as we seek only to find meaning in our own small selves. Meaning and purpose arise from connection with others, with the world. We become fully human and fully alive only when we let go of ourselves.
– You have been through SHIT. It has been FUCKING HORRIBLE. And it might only keep on getting worse. GROW FROM THIS. Have you any idea how strong you have to be to weather these storms? YOU ARE STILL LIVING. It’s EASY to be content when life is fine, there’s no wisdom or skill in it. The challenge – YOUR challenge – is to be content after your aspirations have been pulverised, your hopes dashed, your life turned upside down and everything you ever worked for, lost. FIND PEACE AS YOUR WORLD FALLS. If you can do that – learn to do that, work towards doing that – you will grow wiser and stronger than you can possibly now imagine, and in doing so will be able to live and kind life so full of compassion that you help innumerable people, and relieve so much suffering in this world.

On recovery

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Just because you sometimes fall, doesn’t mean you can’t run.

And I can still run, if I want. And walk and saunter and stand, and sit and talk and watch the wild world go by. But there’s a break in my soul which imperfectly healed. It’s this spot – this spot right here – and if it gets knocked or pulled, or sometimes I guess just when the weather is wrong, the break opens up to a gash, to a wound, to a mouth twisted and contorted and I fall in and fall and am swallowed.

It’s just a break, imperfectly healed. I can still run, if I want.

Despite the meltdown the other week, or the few days I’ve had recently where my world has turned thick black, I still don’t think I’m ill, or getting ill again.

Recovery for me has meant an expansion of the world – inner and outer. While I’m episodic the world is extremes; pointless, despairing and hateful. My life is ruined, I am broken, a failure, useless. Eventually there is only this one cruel nameless, formless thing, incalculably huge and incoherent, and inside it I thrash and howl and claw – or exhausted simply lie, and stare, and breathe ghostly shallow breaths.

But the world isn’t this one thing; the world is countless fleeting forms, blossoming and burning and falling to ash. In its entirety it beats and breathes and pulses and sleeps, and roars, and weeps. Now, the regrets I hold are held gently in my heart; along with compassion, gratitude, sorrow and hope and grief and love and all the other colours of the soul. This is recovery for me – this being able to feel the bruises inside me without being brought down by the pain, being able to reach out and touch the world and hold its countless imperfections and understand that this is enough.

The scar is still there – the monster, the devil of depression, the endless empty space inside into which I still can fall. And though it’s only a sliver of space inside my soul, when I’m in there it’s once again this huge wordless thing, impossible and furious, and I’m lost for moments, for days, for my own forever.

But it is only a sliver of space inside my soul, an imperfectly healed break. Around it there’s a vastness matched only by the wide wild world outside. Some days, I fall; but I can now run, out into that vastness. This for me is recovery. This for me is health.

 

How?

 

What happened?

I think there’s three potential reasons, and they probably all interlock a little.

The first is that I’d been more or less ill a long time, and had got very ill through a series of stumbling steps into the dark. While I knew I was ill, I didn’t know quite how seriously ill I was (a lot of psychiatric patients have the same problem). It’s one thing to know you’re lost, it’s a very different thing to know exactly how lost you are. However, I had been blundering around in the psychic dark for a long time and there’s a chance I was making some kind of stumbling progress on my own, back toward the entrance of the cave; the crack in my world where the light still came in.

The second, obviously, is the psychedelics. Although I started ‘seriously toying’ with them in late 2015 and have taken three large doses, it was only in the latest dose that I had ironed out all the environmental quirks which distracted me from becoming truly absorbed in the state. That was the dose I took in November 2017.

Psychedelics literally break open the brain’s habitual activation patterns – patterns which in depression have become so powerful and consuming they prevent the exploration of new possibilities. This creative chaos floods the mind and restructures the internal landscape so that hitherto unseen emotional, behavioural and cognitive vistas open up.

The third is Buddhism – which I started working with a lot more after the November 2017 trip. When people talk about Buddhism in a therapeutic context it’s often with a nod to mindfulness, and while mindfulness is a very important foundation (for reasons I might go into in a later post), the most surprisingly important aspect – for me – has been the emphasis on wise speech. This includes a warning against cruel speech, an emphasis on compassionate speech and – crucially – a commitment to accuracy.

That latter might sound irrelevant but it’s not; in working toward it I’ve noticed it actually gels with parts of CBT (the therapy kind, not the Vauxhall kind [NSFW link]). I caught myself saying I hate living in Sheffield. I have to move in two years or I’ll go completely fucking mad. Which is just… not true. Living here isn’t ideal, and wouldn’t be my first choice. But there’s some real benefits to it as well as the real pains. The world isn’t ideal, but it also isn’t ghastly. Catching my catastrophic framing of it and working it into a more nuanced perspective has been important in stretching my horizons, opening up calmer spaces inside.

Witold Pruszkowski - Falling Star

Witold Pruszkowski – Falling Star

I’ll fall again, probably. I’m currently unemployed and skint, and scared for my future; it’s a tough course, right now. When I fall it will feel – to me – that I’ve never been able to run, that I’ve always been in the dark; it will be dangerous, and I will need to be kept safe from harm.

But I genuinely don’t think I’m ‘ill’ right now. I think falling is just what happens sometimes to people like me, us with imperfectly healed breaks. Just like sometimes you stop and gasp, caught on the memory of someone loved and long gone, and sob, and sob. Life hurts sometimes. That doesn’t means it’s not also still beautiful.

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Surviving until the moment we don’t

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I’d thought I was past the deep depression.

I didn’t think I was better, in the way people usually mean better – back to normal, back to before. After all that’s passed I’m not sure people get better from severe psychiatric episodes; I think they change. Maybe more things are like that than we tend to think; our whole lives are movements from one body to another, each moment to the next, and the belief that we can return to some ideal state is the impossible desire of medicine and lie of cosmetics. We never were fixed in plaster, our ideal body and mind something we can return to after a fall or a break or a cut. Time stitches us back together, but in even the smallest wounds you can see the join if you look close enough. We live through life, ever more scarred, surviving it until the moment we don’t.

So I didn’t think I was better. But I did think I was past the deep depression, at least for now. Sure, I’ve not been feeling great for a few weeks – but I’ve been unemployed for over a month, I am critically indebted thanks to the gambling, my future options are substantially hobbled and it remains – it will always remain – that the life I’d been building and dreams I’d been working toward for most of my adult life are now pulverised. I think I’m allowed the occasional blue day, or week. Depression is part of living any human life. And sure, some get more sorrow than others; but that’s life, kiddo, and these are your cards.

Even when I collapsed sobbing a couple of weeks ago I wasn’t too worried. At mum and dad’s, talking about bills, I felt myself slipping down, down, down. Took myself quietly to the spare room and lay on the bed, mood collapsing until my body clenched itself into a ball and I clawed my face, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing over all my mistakes and regrets, failures and fuckups over my stupid nowhere life that once promised so much, all the broken promises I’d made to myself, all the empty empty space where I used to hold hope. Even then, after the tears had flooded out and I’d ugly-cried myself dry, I came up gasping for air, back in the world the springtime and birdsong, and gulped, and gulped, and was OK. Sad still, but OK. I think sometimes you just need to lose your shit with grief. I do, anyway.

I think that’s healthy, sometimes.

I wasn’t expecting the gut punch. More than a gut punch. An iron bar to the face, knocking me flat, bleeding and broken.

Full bodied depression really is full bodied. Limbs like lead and head full of thick smoke, voice vanished. I could barely walk. Three days out of the past ten I’ve been so severely floored I could barely sustain consciousness, just slept and slept and knew with brutal certainty that I needed to end myself. Knew with cool reason that one day the day would come. Yesterday, thinking it sad I’d never see another spring, trying to fine tune my plan so that my loved ones wouldn’t be the ones to find the body.

Friends telling me ‘you know you don’t always feel this way’. And the truth of it strange, something I’m aware of in an alien abstract plane at the edge of space, far from the solid stone at the heart of me, dragging me dragging me down. ‘You don’t always feel this way’, as if you were told that sometimes you have wings and fly, and on Tuesdays we go see the velociraptors in the zoo, and you have to agree it’s true because far out on the edge of your soul you remember it once being true, remember even saying the same to other people, even though now it’s patently absurd. ‘You don’t always feel this way’, yes yes, I know, and usually there are mountains in the sky, and our drinks are served by parakeets. But not today, today there have only ever been storm clouds, and old coffee staining ash-flecked sheets.

The reality of deep depression is iron.

And then today! A night full of dreams ends with a morning bright and cool, and I sit up, and I’m fine. Just fine. I’ll head to the gym, do some laundry, fill in some job applications. Mum and dad left behind tortillas, I can make quesadillas for lunch, veggie fajitas for tea. I’m in crippling debt, my aspirations all rotten and mud, I have no job and no income and I’m far, far from my friends. But I can go to the gym, and make fajitas for tea. In the woods today, there are bluebells.

The reality of the world is iron, and snow, cold rain and laughter and sorrow, and bluebells and bruises and the vast open sky, stars, piss on concrete and blood on the sheets, and wounds and life, and surviving until the moment we don’t.

Hey you! Yes, you! If you liked this or any other of my writing, you can always send me a tip. It’s OK if you don’t tho. I still love you, and I’m sure you’re awesome

Porcelain

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This world of things and junk and words and the empty air we leave in the spaces we used to be.

All this junk. All this complete fucking junk, plastic glass and aluminium, silicon and porcelain. This collapsing empire of junk, useless fucking junk. And the howling space we leave behind us when we go.

I don’t know what life is any more, I don’t know what life means, or the why and reason to all the sorrow and grief and regret, and all the effort for nothing, for nothing but the howling empty space we leave when we go. And well meaning friends and kind strangers with no fear for the future and a million distractions in junk say the real treasures are the friends we make along the way without a fucking clue how it looks from the bottom of the pile, of all this junk and broken porcelain and glass.

I want to walk, you know? Walk out of this shouting boorish world of money and praise and all the tat we owe each other, all the ladders we’re told to climb the ways we’re told to get ahead and you can tell me it’s not really important but if so then stop playing the fucking game and go walk, go walk from your job from your home from all the planet destroying junk you use to distract yourself from the howling empty space that’s left at the end of the world. You won’t. You won’t because you cling to this trash like flotsam at sea, kidding yourself that it can save you from the cold black forever below.

I want to walk. Walk away from my burning past and sinking future, just walk, out, and forget you all forget this all, this garish world I never asked for, this wreckage and wasteland, set fire at last to the whole junk pile and walk away, and become nothing more than the howling empty space at the end of the world, the silence in the cold black forever below.

This hurts, you know? Down in my soul where I used to keep my hopes and future self. I don’t think you appreciate just how much this just. fucking. hurts.

Here

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So.

Here we are.

I’ve started practising music again. Plugged my 20 year old keyboard in and got a beginners piano book and, well, here we are. Practising scales again after all these years.

Phil  – dear departed Phil – was a musician. Oh I never knew, I never knew until I sat down and started to play, but music reminds me of him and playing it, playing it makes my heart ache so slightly.

Here we are.

I’ve got so many friends who are in dark mental spaces right now. Birds of a feather and all that, although it’s unsettling to be standing in the brisk air of dawn but seeing people still in their personal night. It aches, to know that I can’t lead anyone else out, that it’s a blind crawl we each have to make on our own. God I wish I could help, I wish

if you’re in that space, lost inside yourself, then I’m sorry. I can’t offer you any more than the cold comfort that I’ve been somewhere similar, too, and somehow made it out, after so many years lost in the twilight and the night, and the blood red earth.

And here we are.

Between jobs right now – I still wake early, listen to any Buddhist talks which takes my fancy. Meditate. Practice German, practise music. Gym.

The language is a good thing. I’d been learning Spanish but stopped when my 2017 breakdown really hit – not much point trying to learn another language if you’re going to be dead soon and I was expecting very much to be dead, soon.

But here we are.

I cried just now. Grief crept up on me, then came invited; a wounded animal, untamed, seeking shelter. Small tears then big tears then that strange keening howl beyond pain or tears, at the edge of human sound, at the edge of human being. Cried and rocked and held myself tight, sobbed, gasped. Gasped. Softly wiped away the tears, carried on breathing.

Still.

Here we are.

And this snow will cleanse the sky

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Snow’s falling.

It’s strange, having your feet planted so firmly on the ground, then looking around to find the earth you stand on isn’t what you remember it to be. And I feel strange, unlike I’ve ever felt before. Both more solid and lighter than I can ever remember being.

I think

I think

I think we build up ideas of who we are and who we want to be, and it’s only a dream but we confuse it with the real. We build up a personality, a character, an ego out of our ideas about we are and who we want others to think we are. We form opinions and beliefs and ambitions, and clinging to the coat tails of these come regret, pride, hope. And this ego is only a dream but it’s a dream that explains away our world and our life; a storyline we cling to to make sense of the chaos of it all.

I think that when that self is threatened we feel pain, and we cling to it like a branch in a flood; and as it begins to break apart we grasp and lash and howl, believing we are in danger, believing we are disintegrating. But it’s only our selves, only our ego. It was only ever a dream; and in the dawn it’s less substantial than ash on the wind.

I wanted this life to be so different. It was never meant to be like this, it was meant to be PhD and research science and living in London with all my mates, it was meant to be material sucess because that’s what everyone else I  know from uni has got, in their £40k+ careers and winter breaks to Dubai and honeymoons in Thailand. I was meant to be one of those gays whos fallen in love with Iceland and goes every year, with a boyfriend and a dog and a pub quiz and maybe an ocassional well managed chemsex habit on every third weekend of the month.

Not this. Not late 30s and living in my mum and dad’s attic, no career, a mess of a CV, no savings and over £10,000 gambling debts from a brutal bipolar episode which nearly killed me. Twice. Not living so far from my friends, lonely, working as a temp and getting minimum wage. My trainers are scratty and need replacing and I only have one pair of jeans – I can only afford one pair of jeans! I’m 37 FFS.

Last year I was howling. I was fucking howling as everything I’d worked for and tried for, all my hopes and everything I pinned any sense of pride or confidence or achievement to, it all crumbled around me and inside me and screaming I grasped for it, tears stinging my eyes as I clutched my face every morning, weeping, weeping in grief and shame and guilt at the ruin that I was becoming, this landscape all ash and grease, and hate.

I grasped and lashed and howled, believing my soul was in danger, believing my life was disintegrating. But it was only my ego, it was only ever a dream; only ash on the wind.

Snow’s falling, in the cold freshwater light of dawn.

I’m thinking of moving; I’d rather live in Manchester or London. I’ve been in Sheffield three years now – three years! Three years life on hold, three years psychiatric convalesece, three years not moving, just in limbo! Time to move on. Get on with life.

But it’s strange, having my feet planted so firmly on the ground, to look around and find the earth I stand on isn’t what I remember it to be.

I’m thinking of moving, because I’d rather live in Manchester or London. But I caught my breath the other day when I realised there’s nothing much between living here and living there.

I’ve got amazing friends who have seen me through so much and put up with so much, a family I love more than I can ever hope to say, and almost all the people I’ve ever loved are still living. I’m late 30s and living in my mum and dad’s attic, no career, a mess of a CV, no savings and over £10,000 gambling debts. And I think I’m one of the most contented people on this sad old earth.

Wherever I live, I’ll be standing on this earth with this life. And that’s fine. It has to be fine, because whatever will be will be, and the world doesn’t care for my desires; the world goes its own way.

I’ve had three major psychiatric incidents from my haywire brain and it’s nearly killed me, my god the last one sunk into a sickness deep in my soul and it so nearly killed me.

But it didn’t.

It only burned away all the illusions I held about who I am and what life is, what makes us who we are and what makes life worth living.

Snow’s falling.

The only thing real is this, see? Not tomorrow and not yesterday, not the career and not the retirement plan, not the holiday or the qualifications or the pride, or the guilt. Only this, not the regret, not the aspiration, not their opinions or our fears. We only have here, now, this; this breath, this heartbeat, this moment. And even then, the instant we have it, it’s gone. Because the world doesn’t belong to us; we’re only moments.

I wish

I wish I could explain this better.

Snow’s falling.

Cold light of dawn.

 

Better

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So I’m better.

Somehow solid again, more real. Somehow my feet planted firmly on the ground.

I don’t know how I got here. There was and is meditation, and psychedelics, but they all came as I was settling down anyway. Maybe they’ve kept me here, where better is. Maybe I would be fine without them.

I’m better.

I’m better and I look back on 2017, and it’s white noise, or a picture I can’t quite focus. A person I can’t quite remember being, tho I remember the things he thought and the things he did.

I’m better, and for the very first time I feel like I’m not just better, but wiser. More sure footed. I don’t know how I got here. Maybe it’s the meditation, maybe it’s the psychedelics.

I have regrets, you know? All these regrets, for how my life has turned out and the endless list of mistakes I’ve made. Frustration at not being where I’d hoped, the usual self recrimination and grief. Anger a how my mental health has disrupted and distorted my life, left me living far from friends and the city I loved and used to call home.

But so what? That’s life, and life is sad sometimes. That’s OK.

I have so many friends, and a loving family, and I’m healthy enough that I can go walk in the world, and feel the cold air on my skin, and breathe. And in that moment, there’s peace.

None of these things will last, and we have only a few heartbeats to call our own in this world. Life is sad sometimes, because life is loss. That’s OK. In this moment, there’s peace.

I’ve tried to kill myself. 3 times. I must have hurt so much, I must have been so lost and so afraid and felt so alone. Maybe I’ll try again, if I ever again get that lost and afraid and alone. I hope not. No one should ever feel that bad. I can’t imagine. I literally can’t imagine how it must feel.

The rain lashed down all night last night, hammering on my windows and keeping me awake. By morning, the exhausted sky was slate gray, and white water blue, ghostly. Starlings chattered in the park, gulls swept overhead.

The world is astonishing. I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave.