Rejuvenation

Working in IT wasn't my most enjoyable experience. To begin with it was daunting because I hadn't a clue and towards the end it was tediously repetitive. For example one week I had to install a bit of software on 50 PCs which equated to identifying a person, phoning a person, locating a person,  visiting the person within the vast building, inserting a CD, pressing a few buttons and waiting. Times fifty.

But it was a good time because there were so many other benefits and not least of these was the money as I was making. No less than four figures every week which was a massive jump for someone used to earning much less in a month. It was also the point I left my home town and had my own place for the first time. I was single and enjoying it. The staff had changed around about me too. To begin with I was surrounded by older married types and over the course of a few years I found myself amid more and more people around my own age yet to marry. From living the life of a virtual hermit in a foreign town it was fast becoming my new home and I was out socialising nearly every night of the week and weekend. Good times.

At some point some bright spark decided it would be good to start playing five aside football once a week against other departments. This to me was great news. I played football from under ten level up to under fifteen until the local district leagues dissolved leaving us all footballless. I played for the schools right up until second year when the football was knocked on the head by teachers' strikes. I played all my life but at this time had not done so for about 5 years. So I was first in the queue to put my name down. For weeks until the first match was arranged I was telling anyone who would listen how good I was.

The day came for the first match and it was like riding a bike. Back in the saddle in no time. Or so I thought. At least that was how it played out in my head. My body for some reason didn't seem to work the way it always had done. This was bewildering. My body was failing me.

As I ran about for those first few minutes my legs started to feel like jelly. When I stopped moving they started to shake. As I started to run again they were stiff and like lead all in a matter of minutes. As I jogged about slowly coated in sweat and a little breathless it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't actually ran or jogged for a number of years. It never occurred to me as I never thought my body would ever react any differently from the way it always did. But as someone ran past me with the ball I started to chase. Then like someone who had just spun themself around 100 times before chasing I started to stumble and fell flat on my face as my legs gave way. It was the strangest feeling. Never before had I run and my legs given way. For a moment I just lay there not believing what had just happened.

A few minutes later after finally accepting I could not go on I lay outside the hall on the floor having let someone else take my place. I was flat out on my back soaked in sweat taking short sharp deep breaths. My heart was bursting through my chest going at a hundred miles an hour. My vision was all distorted with the bright lights shining down at me from the ceiling. The funny thing is typing this now it sounds alot like a panic attack but only in symptoms alone. I was perfectly fine and knew I just had to give myself a bit of time to get my breath back. And eventually I did. My body would hurt all over for the next few days but it was a good pain I remembered well from the years of football training and when I did Karate.

The following week we played our second game and to my amazement it was completely different. It was all back to the way I remembered it being. My body did what my mind wanted. Instead of bowing out after 5 minutes I played the whole hour without hardly breaking sweat. And every week after that I was fine. It appeared it was just that initial shock to the system of an out of condition body which didn't take long to get into its stride again.

I relate this to how I am now and my abstinence from exercise. Many times I have tried to exercise at home (press ups, sit ups, jogging on the spot, stretches, etc.) and found it hard. But remembering the time I just described I have pushed on regardless of the symptoms in the hope that the next time will be easier. That though has never happened. Each time I try again it is just as hard or harder. Never does there seem to be any progress. And it is the same with my walks. These never seem to get any easier, physically, either which bemuses me. It is the main reason for not going further.

Nowadays I am waiting to be rejuvenated like I was before by my actions but it never comes and so I still wait. Of course this leads me to question why this is so. Is there something physically wrong or is it because the symptoms of anxiety/panic are so close that it is hard to tell them apart? For now I don't know.

Bull

Today I am a bull. Inside these four red walls I know all too well I am found too often sitting or lying on same couch day after day contemplating or looking out of the window at the world passing me by. For distraction I will immerse myself in cyberspace or lose myself within the pages of a good book. The monotony of the same recurring days has me scurrying for anything which will take my mind away from all this. Sometimes though, like today, I feel a build up inside which consumes me and agitates me. It is like a pulsating ball of energy bouncing about inside me not letting me rest but instead propelling me into action.

Today I am a bull. A bull who is now ready to charge. All morning I have been trotting around in circles shaking my head looking for something to dig my horns into. The trot gathers speed. Frustration mounts as cabin fever digs in it's claws a little deeper and I start to snort gruffly in a rage. Finally I trot no more and instead take up the stance. There I stand panting heavily with hands in tight balls turning my knuckles white. The hooves scrape on the floor as I kick them back in turn and ready myself to rush headlong into the red before my eyes. With head bowed faster and faster scrape the hooves. Quicker and quicker pumps the heart. The breathing is so rapid that control is lost. In a fury I finally charge.

Outside I am no longer a bull. No longer confined all the pent up rage vanishes instantaneously. I am tiny and the world is as vast as it is empty. There are places I want to go which I can see but they are way off in the distance. When I walk towards them they seem to get further away and as I don't to be left out in the wilderness I return back. The limbo is disorientating. At least indoors I can find stability where I can dream of the sea and rambles through the forest that are so vivid I can almost touch and smell them. And all the while like Theseus I must quell the urges of the bull I hear stirring within.

Planes falling

Aeroplanes falling from the sky and exploding on the ground. Terrifying. This didn't happen just once or in one time or one place but over and over in scenes that were always different. Always terrifying. I was never on any of the aircraft, always on the ground. On every occasion life was normal and then something would alert my attention to the heavens above and there I would see the bird falling- sometimes far away and sometimes right near me. It would always change. Sometimes there was just the one, sometimes multiple planes falling. Sometime small planes, sometimes a colossus.

When I was about 23-26 years old I was plagued with these nightmares continually. I would say they happened about 2-3 times a week over the course of about 3 years. At the time I was staying with my gran for company after my uncle died leaving his mother living alone. They ended shortly after I left to get my own place.

But I can see why they were happening. Most nights I would sit in the living room watching TV with my gran or reading. I always sat directly opposite the main big window which looked out beyond the garden towards the capital. And it was situated on a flight path about 8 miles from the airport so I'd constantly see aeroplanes approaching gaining height or descending on the approach to land. Not that I took any notice but somewhere in my subconscious night worlds were being constructed to be later played out.

At that time I had only travelled by air 4 times, since I have travelled 6 times. I loved to fly. The take off was the best bit for me but coming into land was just as exhilarating. Even turbulance was not a problem, I enjoyed it. The cramp sardine tin you are wedged into never bothered me either. Nothing mattered except the thrill of excitement at the begining and the end. Then one day in my mind I say a metal container being catapulted from one end of the earth to another. That was the main thread of all those other thoughts- the ones about planes falling from the sky.

My enjoyment of flight only lasted those 4 times previously. Afterwards I hated it. It scared me to death. I felt claustrophobic and at the mercy of fate with no way to save myself should anything go wrong- like I believed I could in an emergency involving any other form of travel. Those nightmares I believe led to a fear of flying. Incidentally I believe the first panic attack I ever had was on an aeroplane.

Not Glaucus

Deep down in the murky depths, my friend, on the bed of this vast Loch is where you find your host of this rather dank dark blog. In truth it is where you will nearly always find me. And what, you may rightly ask, am I doing down there? Good question. Were I to take it literally I would say I am puffing on a pipe as I always do. Not a tobacco filled implement but a ribbed plastic hose which is attached to a large rusting machine sometime abandoned but still mostly functional. It pumps the air which in turn keeps my lungs alive. Not the perfect situation but the only one.

Alternatively I could take the question to be enquiring how I came to be down here. That sadly has been lost to me. I am where I am without much of a notion as to how I came to be here. That is not to say all that went before is darkness. Far from it. Constant memories roll past my mind in fleeting glances giving me hints as to the person I once was but I have spent so much time trapped down here that it is a foreign almost forgotten former existence. It is a past life lived once in the current one. I know though that it was on the other side of the water's surface to which I now find myself.

This situation I now find myself in with vague amnesia is a curse. I cannot let go of the feeling that I am being punished for some some past bad deed which I cannot recall. This existence is a sentence I must live out forever more until some unknown external source outwith my control decides otherwise. This fate reminds me of the drowning cells of 17th century Amsterdam. Back then in the house of correction young convicts were placed in a sealed cell which housed only a running tap and a hand pump. I puff where they pump so as not to drown in the water.

At one time I spent long periods wondering who I was without ever finding an answer in those brief vague recollections that came and went. That question has since been superseded by another: what am I? I am not a merman or at the very least I cannot accept I am. I am human. Surely I am human. A cursed human. Experience has taught me so. They tell me otherwise but I know what I am. Or at least I did know what I was but for the insistence of others having me doubt what I would otherwise know to be true. Still I cannot accept what they tell me is the truth. Not while my own mind tells me otherwise.

This inky blue may be where I now reside but it is not my home. It does not feel at all natural to me. Once from afar it was beautiful to me, that much I can remember, but deep within its clutches that beauty has been lost. I feel all its weight and pressure crush me and desire nothing more than to get back to my own world. The curse though. I am somehow cursed to stay here forever. My own world shunned me and here I am exiled never to return.

No I am trapped on the bed of the Loch forever more puffing on this pipe. It is an existence I would not wish on anyone. That air I breathe is not strong and pure but instead weak and tainted. And the machine that pumps it it not perfect. Sometimes the air only comes to me in little wisps which send me into a panic. This though is nothing compared to when it stops completely and leaves my lungs collapsed fearing it will never work again. But it always does. Am I not testament to that? Still though I cannot help fearing one day it will stop forever and my heart with it.

Down here I am not alone however much I feel it. The merfolk come and they go. None of them can understand me. They may even loathe how pathetic I am. The strong ones in particular look on me with disdain. It is irrational to them that I cling to this artificial apparatus rather than freely swimming among the wonders of this aquatic heaven. While they live out their lives as they want to do I am stuck in the one place forever more where I know for sure I can breathe.

They tell me I am one of them. They ask me to accept that. Look how they breathe underwater without the need for false a respiratory device. I am one of them they tell me. Release the fear. Give myself to the water and she will look after me like everyone of her other children. That is what they say but I am not one of them- I am not. I want to believe them but I cannot so I cling to my iron lung at the bottom of the Loch forever in this state. The merfolk pass by less now than they did. The water dwellers have abandoned me like my former brothers and sisters of the land. I am both yet neither. I am a limbo creature physically in the deep and mentally walking on the earth.

Lost, lonely and in solitude I have one one friend who has never deserted me. She, Hope, is all I have left. My beautiful friend has been battered over time by doubt but nonetheless remains as important as the pipe to my survival. Without either I would surely die. Hope is what propels me on occasion towards the surface. Hope yanks the pipe from my mouth and like an underwater trebechet catapults me upwards at speed towards that other world. This is borne of frustration and fuelled by a sort of cabin fever in the deep.

The ride is exhilarating and frightening. Its a roller coaster of emotions as the bright orb above finally comes into view. I see a blue sky shimmering above me with my eyes. I see a pump at the bottom in my mind's eye. With hands outstretched I try to reach but I start to slow down until I come to a free floating stop. I see blurry images of people walking on the land getting on with their lives oblivious to my call. I scream, I shout and I wave my hands but no one sees me. Memories come flooding in and as air is pushed out. Its like a dream. I see my former world but although it looks familiar it also looks unreal from down here. Sometimes I even see faces that I know but cannot place. Ultimately though as I start to suffocate I get scared and have to quickly dart back down to the pump to breathe again. The world I love and want however now strangely unfamiliar disappears into the black behind me.

Here I am, dear reader, puffing on my pipe once more as I do day in day out. Forgotten by the world above as I reside on the bed of the loch. Dreaming dreams of a return without ever being able to touch the realisation of them. But it doesn't stop me dreaming. And where there are dreams there is Hope. Hope kisses me on the cheek and tells me it will be alright. Where it is cold in the night down here I hold on to Hope to keep me warm at night dreaming of a future life on the surface.

Glaucus was a man who swallowed the forbidden herb which gave him everlasting life but also forced him to the sea forever never to see the land again. In the beginning when I searched for my identity I thought I may be him but I am not. No I am not Glaucus. I will not live forever. Unlike him I cannot live and breathe beneath the water. But also unlike him I hope to return one day to dry land. No not Glaucus at all.