This is one of those I finally got around to it blogs, frankly, I’ve been busy. First, there was a new job and its attendant very steep learning curve. The move back to Somerset living in a guest house, then there was eyestrain and mental fatigue and fear and uncertainty and learning new processes and, and, and habituating them and taking notes and fearing failure, and Christmas and returning to swimming and finding my feet and trying to find a flat (I still haven’t), getting back to a GP, trying to follow up the complaint I made to the DWP (they are shite), dealing with the Universal Credit people (they are also shite), doing laundry in a sink, or driving miles to my sons to do laundry … or taking a bag of laundry 200-miles to your brothers to use the washing machine, because you’re going that way for Christmas and you might as well kill two birds with one stone. Eating cold food out of packets, being miserable and alone (caveat, I’m not miserable for the most part, I just sit in the realm of uncertainty, looking for solutions through the opaque meniscus of uncertainty, and sometimes it “fucks you right off”), having another cough cold thing as I entered a new environment -that’s three in three months new people and environments will do that to a person, walking cold damp streets after dark and wishing I could turn back the arrow of time and fix whatever the fuck it is (was) that went wrong (be mindful of that road … monsters live there, however, it’s also worth saying I have never been so free to do whatever I like), trying to write (it’s difficult given all that needed to be learnt). Travelling back and forth to Wiltshire and Essex for various functions, which is both expensive and knackering.
Getting a Covid booster jab was a chore given the trials and
tribulations of the last month, and when I finally got it, it was like groundhog
day (or two). I had the Pfizer jab. On day one I had to nap twice immediately after having the jab, I didn’t even realise I’d nodded off, and
then slept through the night as well. Day two was OMFG!, the analogy would be,
being sealed in a barrel and being tossed over a waterfall. Let’s hope that Omicron
is the end and that our long-term T-cell immunity holds up and the CCP-Virus
(Covid-19), is finally settling to becoming another endemic cold-causing virus …
we can only live in hope.
So, where am I as I type? Sitting on a bed in a guesthouse,
where I have been rooming for the last month, eking out an existence. Is it a
life? Just about, albeit highly restricted and feeling somewhat tenuous.
The trick it seems is to focus on all the things that have
gone right, and don’t mistake the positive results of affirmative action for
the whims of karma or God.
I may have written elsewhere and earlier that in the
aftermath of my separation from Amanda that I felt for a long while that my
face was pressed so hard up against the opaque meniscus of reality; the unseen
future, the chaos of the present unfolding and passing into the dead past lost before
even being grasped that I just wanted to get off the bus (past-tense). It’s uncertainty and, the horror of being cut
loose to freefall forward in time flailing around trying to grab a handhold,
while blinded by the velocity of times passing and the sheet of the future
pulled so tight across the face of your consciousness like layers of
suffocating clingfilm, that ending it all actually looked like a way out, if
not by my hand then by incautious action leading to what would appear to be
death by misadventure… all very dramatic … but I can assure you that’s exactly
what it feels like and it’s terrifying. And especially in the rear-view. I read
a piece on Quora that suicide is a long-term solution to a short-term problem. Coupled
with reading Jordan Petersons Twelve Rules For Life … I’ve not finished it yet;
it needs headroom and this season doesn’t allow for it. I had a tiny scrappy mental toolkit to work with. I will write about the
book later.
To speak plainly of suicide in retrospect “Fuck that shit!”
There’s a saying: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Caveat,
be mindful of becoming arrogant hard and or rigid in the lea of a terrible
experience, lest you circle round and start a new loop of the “same shit …
different decade”, time and age will be your enemies if you do not make friends with
them as you stabilise going forward. The bit’s you lost in the fall are irretrievably gone,
and be thankful you have the hindsight to see them recede.
Upsides.
My return to the pool has been nothing short of fantastic. I
changed my days, I stopped wasting time and I increased everything. I dropped my
pool corner work, there is something fucked up in my lumbar, I think I’ve
isolated it to upper right L5/S1, but I do need to get back into the health
system, I think a pin is stripped or snapped … won’t that be a joy if I’ve been
right about that for the last eleven-and-three-quarter months. I swam a mile
for the first time in years on the 29th of December, I’ve walked
miles on the beach. If I’m careful I can reverse dip, incline press-up, squat,
lunge, toe press etc, and my fitness in spite of colds and coughs is good.
The real glory of returning to the pool, has more to do with
people than place or activity. Seven years of the same faces, friendships,
shared experience, the routine, the sense of normality. Being accepted back
into the fold of the familiar, the only thing that has changed in real terms is
that now I’m solo … and as above with that comes freedom; at first bitter and
nervous … the terror of the first day back at school, but in a few hours all
the bugaboos, wiverns and gribbly's of the mind have evaporated away like
tendrils of mist in the light of the sun.
The practical things that have worked for me, writing (I have, just not here … admin). I’ve kept my Kefir alive through thick and thin, though my diet has been shaky in the absence of proper food preparation facilities. However, I have been sensible in my spending and consumption and tried to low-carb, high protein mixed with plenty of fresh fruit, nuts and seeds (almost zero alcohol). I think I may have fallen foul of Keto-Flu and over-exercise one weekend, but I seem to have found the basic balance for going forward. Once a week I travel to a cafĂ© and have a full-English breakfast, it is my only cooked fresh meal of the week (writing that makes me feel a little sad and desperate, it’s a reality bump … imagine what it’s like if you don’t even have that to look forward to … but for the grace etc (but also be mindful of invoking Gods and karma as above). Exercise, thinking, breathing exercises, reading, making speculative spreadsheets and notes, doing research on how to navigate life alone in a new home at some point hence. Knowing it’s a matter of time, and having time measured in increments you can comprehend, NOT the blistering blinding second to second panic of falling. These are the things that will see you through the darkness, and in my very unique circumstance (because everyone’s is), being in the chapter, at the paragraph where reality transitions from Order to Chaos.
If for one second we are going to consider
fate and the intersection of my life (anyone’s life) with a moment of
pre-ordained serendipity, it is the moment when for the day I had closed my
Kindles cover on the Twelve Rules for Life, knowing in the days after the event
of September 2021, that when I re-opened that cover, that Jordan Peterson,
having described the myriad points where you transition from Order to Chaos,
how best you behave for yourself and for all your satellites, to navigate the
realm of Chaos back to Order, and the understanding that Order is as mutable as
Chaos.
There is a hard road ahead, not a tunnel with light at the
end. A road with hazy horizons and objects I can see, not mirages per se, but
those objects may be further along than they appear, or they may not be all
they appear to be … BUT, and this is the differentiator … it’s not dark
anymore.
