Silent letters

Something has changed in my attitude. For me yesterday's panic attack was devastating. The psychologist was on her way and I phoned to cancel. Just couldn't handle it. The apprehension had spilled over and I was a shaking wreck in no fit state to entertain a guest. I know that it appears I am dramatising things because in reality it was not but in my head it was the end of the world. A lifeline ignored at the last chance saloon. It was a black place.

Many was a time in the past when I would not crumble but shatter on impact and it would take me weeks to pull myself together. I would sit with only self-pity to converse with in my dark little world mentally crying over how it wasn't fair. Immediately that is how I felt yesterday. Not only had I let down myself but others too. I swung in the living room for a while hung by a rope of guilt while all others carried on regardless.

And that is how I feel sometimes- like I am not there. Like Gregor Samsa locked away in a room to be forgotten about. Like my world is the word "knight" and i am the letter "K". Or "Gnome" and I am the letter "G". There are of course lots of other words but you get the picture so I won't list them all. That is how I feel. The whole is significant but that letter is not and is really not required. Not only that but it is a hindrance. It does not need to be placed there so why is it there? People just accept it but, god this has been ripping a mental hole thinking about it, what is the point? Someone must have sat down and created that. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Maybe we should all go adding silent letters on to words that are dead in the spoken form. And why stop at two when we could add as many as we wanted. I personally like the number qxzthree, with a silent qxz (Let us see the spell checker tackle that!)

Or maybe even a string of silent letters. Letters that make up real words but are ignored. Like the old warning above hidden in grass while kids kick a ball about ignored yet there. The "no fouling" signs in view as an owner watched their dog take a dump on the pavement and walks off leaving it for people to stand in. 

A digression I know but you get down, feel unimportant and ask what is the point but like a silent letter while everyone just accepts your existence despite your presence being of no benefit or even an annoyance. It's just accepted. And this is how I would usually spend the next couple of weeks lost in these silly thoughts spiralling downwards into the abyss of my own dark mind.

Not this time though. I really needed to walk. As the panic started to subside I was left with high anxiety but also a rage bursting through my veins, an inner frustration. I really couldn't sit still and felt I needed to do something. OK I had been defeated once again but I decided that was just another lost battle and I must continue to wage the war on my own terms when possible. So a surprise attack was in order. Beware the wounded lion.

So I walked over and into my wife's work. The first time in there for about 4 months. It was a brief stop but still I proved after 4 months of being held back I could so something new. That felt empowering. Had it not been for the fact I needed to meet my wife again later I would have gone a longer walk there and then.

So that was one plus to cancel out the negative but I needed another positive. First off the obvious was another walk somewhere new but then I thought of something better- the car. I've not been in a car for 4 months never mind drive one so as luck would have it my wife came back from the shops and left the car outside for me to bring the bags in. After doing my duty I jumped in and drove around to the supermarket and back. Not a great distance but an achievement in my book.

So that was my day and what have I spend 95% of the day thinking about? You guessed right. I've been lingering in the panic attack from yesterday giving the two positives no thought at all until I typed them here.

My dry eye

Back in 1984 I was approaching my 13th birthday standing in the church and had been coping fairly well. It was the first time I'd encountered death but it had not been a shock. We'd had well over a year to get used to the fact my grandfather was going to die- not that it made it any easier. For that time we all had to watch this strong man wither away to under 6 stone losing his mind as well as his body as the brain tumour took over. In the end the doctor had to give him an injection and then to his amazement he came back the following day to find my grandfather still going strong. "I wouldn't let an animal suffer like that", he had said. The old boy didn't care. He'd come into the world kicking and screaming like the rest of us but unlike most if he was to go out then he was going the same way. The doctor gave him another shot. That was the end- the following day after a night of more fighting.

We all accepted it and in a little way we were relieved. His suffering was over. My gran and uncle who nursed him were extremely tired- shattered. No one really cried. All the tears had been shed before that were needed to be shed.

So there I was at the funeral. The first time anyone I knew had passed away and I've been very lucky in that regard as I have had very few since- just that shattered gran and uncle. It was all going OK when suddenly I focused on the coffin while some stranger my grandfather never knew bleated on about what a great man he had been citing anecdotes he'd only heard an hour before like he was some old drinking buddy. In that moment I just burst into tears. I was the only one. My mum took my hand and I could see it upset her but I felt nothing. This was a foreign thing for my mum to do. It was more a reaction than a heartfelt attempt to reach out.

I felt ashamed. I was the only one crying. Not just crying but uncontrollably breaking down. At that age I'd cried many times and each time I was ashamed because I came from a strong family who showed little emotion. Born among men who didn't cry. But I couldn't stop and so I cried and cried. I can't remember when I stopped but to this day it was the last time I shed a tear. I sometimes wonder if this fact has ing some way fuelled an anxiety within. Without that release there must me a turmoil inside and when I feel my lip quiver I have to hold back.

It's sewn into my DNA though or nurtured at least. As I said I come from a family of strong people on the male side. Strong might be the wrong word. For most letting their emotions go is a stronger act than repressing them. But that is the way it is. Hard habit to break. It was ironic that the last time I cried was over the death of a person who put up such an incredible fight without crying to hold onto the very last threads of his life. Such determination. Really I have little to cry about.

Since I have learned what went before and I realise how little I really have to cry about. I'd like to briefly summarise the life of my grandfather, named Robert.

Robert was the son of Edward and Ann. Edward came from a long line of Scots but was actually born in Liverpool when his family were resident down there for two decades. When Edward was born in 1889 he was the 4th child but only the second surviving one. Before his birth a sister had died after several months of life and a brother had died on his first birthday. Along with his elder sister Mary he would occupy the house near the Mersey with a younger brother Hugh born 4 years later.

Edward had the hardest of early days. Before he was 5 his mother died in her early thirties of heart disease and was buried in an unmarked public grace beside a neighbour and some local children. This left his father, who worked on the steam ships on the Mersey, alone with 3 young children in Liverpool. All his family some years before had packed up and returned to Scotland. There was no way he could cope so he did the same and headed with the children back to Glasgow where Edward and his siblings would live with their grandparents.

It would have been a horrible time. The loss of their mother and then uprooted from their home to a place that was foreign to them. Had fate not been unkind enough? No was the answer. Two years later at the new family home Edward's grandfather died and just 4 months after that his father also died, aged 38. So at 8 years old he found himself an orphan with his 3 year old little brother and 14 year old sister living with his grandmother. Various aunts and uncles did help out.

As the turn of the century approached the last blow was struck. By then his little brother Hugh died aged 5 years old. From a family of 7 in Liverpool just Edward and Mary remained. He was only 10 years old.

In 1917 Edward married a local girl from an Irish family named Anne. By this time Edward's grandmother had died and most of his aunts and uncles too. He was a coppersmith by trade still living in Glasgow. Why he was not at war is unknown but it could have been on health grounds. His wife already had a child, named Annie, who was born illegitimately. The child's father was reportedly a lord where her mother worked as housekeeper and the birth took place far away in Dundee to avoid scandal.

9 months into the marriage in March 1918 Edward and Annie had their own child, a boy they named Robert. This should have been the start of the new life. The war was coming to an end and the family were starting out. By the end of the year though Edward was dead, aged 29 years old. He died of TB in a poor house and was said to have been "buried by friends". For all the world little Robert would never know his father or any of his father's family. His father died when he was just 9 months old and all of his family were dead with the exception of his father's older sister Mary.

Robert's life was not an easy one. His mother remarried within two years of his father's death. His step father was cruel and preferred the 7 children he brought into the world with Robert's mother. As quickly as he could Robert got out. He joined the army to get away.

As war broke out in 1939 Robert married a woman named Margaret. The marriage lasted barely 2 years as Margaret died aged 23 years old. With this event Robert went AWOL to be with his dying wife and afterwards was threatened with imprisonment. In the end though he was given the opportunity to join the Merchant Navy in the continuing war effort which he did.

Shortly after he married Catherine to whom he had 4 children in total. During the war though 3 of the ships he was on were torpedoed. It is miraculous that he survived as he worked in the engine room. The last sinking left him bobbing in the Irish Sea which led to a couple of months in hospital with pneumonia before being discharged. After leaving hospital things were not much better. He was confined to bed in a small house with his wife and two children, two more came later. But this was not his own house but that of his mother-in-law. And sisters lived there with husbands and children in the confined space. Unable to work they had to get by on his wife's wage and handouts.

All this I learned later about my ancestors. But really I have always known. There is something strong inside me like them which makes this all the more frustrating to deal with. From me sitting at a computer afraid to go out and looking for comfort to my grandfather with all the tribulations in his life fighting to the bitter end.

Twenty four years without shedding a tear doesn't make me as strong as them. I am nowhere even close. I sometimes wonder if this mental detachment is something brought on by the age we live in. Maybe that's why none before I know have had to contend with this. All I do know is that I try as hard as I can and I will continue to fight. Someday I hope to get the better of this thing- then maybe I will cry again.

Absent Friends

Where did the time go? Counting up the years I can't believe it's almost a decade since we were trying to make plans. My friends and I were a group core of between 7-10 individuals. Good friends, ones that you never forget. Most years we would go abroad somewhere to the usual resorts. I wanted more than that though and so did a few others so a plan was hatched. We would abandon our life and go travelling in Europe. There we would get by and taste the fruits of foreign lands living life to it's maximum potential.

This dream never died but with time it was turned into reality I had gone. I had a job where I had have to move and without a car I saw less of my friends but still got on well enough with people in my new area through work. Many is the time we'd go for a pub lunch on a Sunday or just a few drinks after work. Good times. Then I met my wife and we planned to marry- which involved another move to an area where I knew no-one.

The wedding was a small affair and not one of my friends came. Why? Becuase they were all in the Southern hemisphere. Finally they'd done it. They were all to a man travelling Australia, Thailand and the like. But they did try sending a telegram that never arrived. Ironic isn't it?

It's a long time since I've seen them and now I don't know if I will ever see them again. Night outs and weddinings have passed which I have been invited to but have always made an excuse not to go to so much so that they no longer ask. It has never bothered me though as time moves on.

Last night though I was sitting with the laptop listening to some music on the headphones and decided to look through old photographs. From anxiety to panic attacks and all the things after I have never felt truly depressed until last night. Images of better times and with the advent of Bebo I have pics of my friends on recent stag weekends with everyone there looking a good bit older than I remember and me absent. It left a very empty feeling inside.

Up until then I'd always had movies in my head of another night out. One I found out about but they were not expected me on a month of Sundays to ever attend. Then I'd come in and everything was back as it was. Not only would that time gap disappear but with this I would find another part of myself that has been lost along the way. But looking through those photographs it finally sunk in that I am never going to feel that way again.

That opened the floodgates of depression. It has dawned on me that i cannot even sit in the company of my parents or brother or sister. I cannot be myself. As cruel as it may sound I do not want to see them because of the anxiety it gives me. While they talk I nod and inside I am just fighting with this beast hoping they will go sometime soon. I realise I am no longer me and it's been so long that I doubt I can ever be me again. Hardest of all though I realise with my children I am begining to feel the same way. Not that I want them away but I find it hard to sit down and read them a book or interact with them because of this constant demon gnawing away at me. Even back in January when I was better it still was not right. Finally there is my wife and truly it's not as it was but if anything it is better with her than anyone else.

So it is no surprise that I woke this morning alone in bed in a very black mood indeed. There are times when this would have consumed me but I won't allow it. For some unknown reason it has had the opposite effect. It's like this unwanted guest has pushed a little too far this time and rather than snapping all that bending has finally sprung back in it's face. Now I feel a real strength within to get better and become "normal" again. I've always wanted it but that little episode appears to have triggered a real surge of power within me that is going to make me do everything in my power to get it back.

I actually feel quite invigorated today as a result. Earlier I went for a walk which was actually physically hard but later tonight I am going for another one as the strength is on me. I really need to get out and I really need to start working with myself to get better. Last night hope seemed to be deserting me but I cannot allow that to happen as without hope there is only the black pit of despair.

At this point in time I have a real dream that I can get back to where I was and that one day soon I will be the man I was. The children will spend more time with me and my wife will finally get taken to a resteraunt again for a much needed destraction. The life of my friends continues and one day they may no longer be absent.

Innocent child

When I look back to when I was a boy I had no fear. Nothing got in my way and this in later life became an inner strength. That strength is still in there somewhere but it's buried beneath the hundreds of layers of fear that I have spun over these past few years. When I was a boy panic couldn't touch me. Panic is fear of fear and if fear can't touch you then you can't suffer panic.

I wish I was that innocent little boy again or at least have the naive thinking of a child. Then I'd be fine. With age though supposedly comes wisdom. That is debatable. One thing that comes with age for sure though is inquisitveness. You question every thing. You ask why your heart is doing something it doesn't usually do, why you are tired or analyse any other ailment. That's fine, you get over it. But when it doesn't go away or when it keeps recurring you don't. That is what leads to panic attacks. That is the difference between me and the "normal" person- the person without anxiety and panic attacks.

So essentially the difference between the wreck I am now and the strong person I was before is a thinking pattern of fear. I think too much. I ponder constantly and feed the fear. A vicious circle that tires and agitates. Sometimes I think if I bang my head hard enough to forget then I will wake up free of this. If some head doctor put his hand in and stole my memories then with a clean sheet I'd write a different story.

Essentially though it is thinking. I can read how harmless panic attacks are in a relatively calm state and get annoyed at how I let them effect me. I see a woman dying of cancer cycling here, there and everywhere to raise money without complaint. I see old frail people walk miles. I see greatly obese people do the same. People with problems far greater than my own getting through. And in it all I wonder how I can be so weak. It frustrates me. That is until the moment sometime later when I am lying down unable to breathe with my heart bursting through my chest, my throat strangled, my limbs shaking and nothing but darkest despair in my mind. Did I really create this monster and keep feeding it the energy it needs to survive?

Responsibility plays its part. I worked through anxiety before being made redundant because I had no other choice- who would feed my family if I didn't go to work? When I had to look after my girls alone I did it because I had to. When I am so tired during the day that I can't keep my eyes open and can hardly stand for exhaustion I stay awake to watch the baby because I must. Responsibility makes us do things that show we can do them but at the same time isn't really helping our recovery.

I see the innocent child again in photographs. Free of anxiety, free of fear. Also though free of responsibility. Not a care in the world. I've come along way down and taking a wrong turn somewhere. Now I must find the way through this darkness back on to the road I once travelled before as boy to man.