Windswept Thumb

 

The saga as always seems to continue on, my mood seems to be sinking slowly into a deep morose state of affairs; I have been holed below the Plimsoll line and no matter how hard my bilge pump works the amount of water seeping in is taking me down to the depths of despair.  I keep thinking to how I used to deal with my issues back in the day, I would just stick my thumb out and fuck off; maybe it’s something I should have kept doing. But I have been trying to conform to the grand scheme of things for the sake of family maybe (maybe not) that has been the catalyst for my current woes.

I used to wake up and if the day didn’t feel right I wasn’t tied down, my heels carrying my body were soon out the door, heading to where ever I wanted to go, did this help all of the time? No of course not, I am more balanced (yes I laughed at that sentence as well) now than I have been in the last 32 years. Now when my issue raises its ugly head it’s like a concentrated burst, real ugly emotions that’s like a shotgun blast at my legs, it does indeed stop me dead in my tracks.

My relationship with my wife is quite restrictive at times I think she thinks she is helping me with my issues to some degree (and I don’t complain about it as much as I probably should because 99.9% of the time she is and I’m happy) it’s like she has a spy satellite following my every move (paranoid me .. hell yeah!) and when I’m not in a good head space it feels like a strait jacket, it’s not good at generating a good emotional response, you could say I get a tad prickly. Do I have anything to hide? Nothing at all and I have been more open with my wife than anybody else in my life, I have absolutely no secrets, she is my rock, can she be annoying? Hell yeah! Your damn right she can be, but without her the walls would have cracked and crumbled long before now.

But as the waves of bad emotions start to crash against my safe harbour I’m aware that I’m not a fun person to be around (have I ever been?) and the last people who I wish to affect are my family and friends, and so the thought starts to trickle like a dried river somewhere in Africa after a drought there appears to be small signs of life, and it’s now getting to waist level, should I fuck off and use the art of the windswept thumb? See how far I can get? when I was younger It didn’t appear to be too much of an issue and people would stop on a regular basis to pick up the young lad stood at the side of the road, you hear so many horror stories of sicko’s and pervs and all I ever got was nice people looking to help some person that they had never met before and were likely never to again.

How would I take to it after twenty years of easy living I can’t remember the last time I took off and lay out under the stars sleeping out in the open, my moods must have been summer based I don’t recall many times of hitching through bad weather, yes there was the occasional soaking but generally it was quite nice I always travelled light, clean underwear ( I was brought up right) and a change of clothes, t-shirt and jeans in a small knapsack, I had a pocket full of cash not lots but I did all right I knew where to stay, I knew where the youth hostels were in case of an emergency, nowadays I’m a crippled old man who hasn’t ventured very far, other than to work and back seems to be the order of the day, a bloody hamster on a sodding wheel, how does this play into the scheme of everything?

I feel when I’m like this that I’m letting everybody down (I don’t figure in the equation I have always put everybody else in front of me)family friends dammit strangers I don’t even know, I am letting them down by letting these stupid emotions rip through me like a bad case of the shakes, I should be a damn sight stronger than this I thought I was a good person, dependable and straight as a die not a knock kneed slack jawed idiot that is sat here typing away at my computer trying to figure out why I am like this, other people have far worse issues in their life and are not bleating on about (or trying to score points by writing a sodding book)  their issues.

What isn’t helping is the length of time it’s taking for this supposed treatment is to materialise, dammit I asked for help in May here we are the first week in September and I have had an initial assessment then eight weeks later a set of forms asking the same questions, informing me it will be another eight weeks before anything else happens Glaciers move faster than this bloody treatment, maybe I should have said that I was a danger to myself and the public! But I didn’t and to be honest I feel so weak that I have asked for assistance that has had a debilitating effect on my emotional state of mind, I was at such a low ebb that I thought (god knows why) I would see someone, they could wave a magic wand, but no I’m emotionally tongue tied waiting for something which to be quite truthful is probably going to piss me off and see me storm out at the first proper meeting! No it won’t positive thinking I need the help, without god knows where this path leads, not to a happy ending I would imagine, so I need buckle down and play along with the waiting game (tick tock tick tock tick tock)

 

I’m being very childish and stubborn in my personal life, stomping my feet and finding it so hard to converse on a one on one basis it’s so much easier just to be stubborn and wave away the argument, my wife says at times it’s like dealing with a five year old, is she nuts? You can reason with a five year old! You can’t reason with me! I get totally irrational and it doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong, I just shut down and get stubborn (allegedly). It appears I’m getting very good at being childish (me with my reputation) and I hate having that reputation, I used to be very good at sorting stuff out, dealing with all manner of things, but now I don’t even have a three second fuse I just fly off the handle and steadfastly choose to ignore the world and its uncle.

I have come back to work after a week off and my holiday was a farce I had a list of things (nothing massive just some simple tasks) that I wanted to complete but nope I turned into a bargain basement Howard Hughes! Having said that I didn’t store my pee in glass jars I was able to go off to the toilet all by myself. It was like I was allergic to bright sunlight, I had a great Sunday with friends who lifted my spirits like they wouldn’t believe, but the Monday came with the rising sun and the emotional cripple that is me got up with it, and although I did some of the tasks that I had intended to do, I probably did about 15% of what I had intended to do, this chapter itself was meant to be completed while I was off, but my mood darkened so badly I didn’t dare to put pen to paper  (yes I still write everything out long hand and then polish it until it’s something more than just a stream of consciousness)I blogged at the end of the holiday explaining my predicament and then set myself the task of trying to do something humorous and I had three pretty good ideas for blogs which I have worked on and will publish in quick succession to prove that all is not lost in a sea of morbid  moods!

The fact that I can still do that kind of writing and I do believe it’s some of the best stuff I have attempted (Hell’s bells one of them is my application to be the next Pope, hopefully if you read the blog  you may have chuckled at it at some point) yes my moods are dark more often than  not but there are brief glimpses of good times, I have said many times before I don’t need much, I just want to be happy and to make the people of my acquaintance happy, that I can enrich their life in some little way. I want to get away from anger alternating with misery it really is a crap combination, I don’t like it and I really don’t see why I should have to put up with it!

The thread that runs through my life is my moods, my family, friends and acquaintances! Music has always been a great leveller and I praise anybody who can bring some relief to the world over a good song is a great leveller, a good song be it the Spice Girls through to Frank Zappa is a good song, it does different things to different people if we were all the same in taste the world would be a bland place, music has lifted me and moods on many an occasion, but sometimes to quote a lyric I feel as though “I’m in the lap of the gods” I just want a level playing field for my emotions, I’m sick of being the misery demon sat in the corner I don’t want to be the freak with the grin and the fancy jacket that ties behind either, just a level playing field I don’t want an emotional rollercoaster all of my life!

Because of the length of time treatment is taking I feel so abandoned just left out there, now before I would take on the world by myself, nowadays I just want to be a hermit and hide away emotionally, why should I be like that? I didn’t cause this I just have to live with the aftermath, sometimes it feels like another person’s life in another world, not mine, I feel detached it feels like I’m outside the circle of what’s going on, I’m sat there with people but I can’t here what’s been said, it’s a disturbing new thing that is worrying me more and more.

Another week slides by and I wonder about strange things that wouldn’t normally bother me, but I’m anxious, I’m nervous when I shouldn’t have to be, but I am and I don’t like it, I’m glad I’m recording the emotional journey hopefully it will give the normal person an insight into what can set of or trigger a nightmare scenario for a person who could be sat next to you going through hell and you wouldn’t even know it! Even though I’m recording my thoughts during the waiting process, I know I will have to focus my efforts and reduce some of the ramblings of this jumbled up mind, because some of them just don’t make any sense………..a bit like me then.