Apologies in advance for the aimless disorder to be found in the following post. It is a collection of thoughts over the past few days sitting out under the sun in the garden with nothing to occupy this little head of mine. Usually a couple of these inner beasts may form the basis for a post in its own right but giving my mind free reign for a few days has had it whizzing with an assortment from the sublime to the absurd too large in number. Now like I have rolled up to the local tip I tilt my head back and dump the useless and abandoned into the heap to make space. There is a lot to get out and as I don't want this post to be too long I will split it up in parts.
Why does an agoraphobic need a mobile phone? At Christmas I received one as a present on request and as I was sitting in the garden looking at it I posed this question to myself. I have never made a call on it and only sent one text to test that it works- in fact my wife has used it more when her own phone's battery is dead. The purpose I discovered was so I could take photos with it. So why not buy a camera then? I guess as a self conscious person I wanted to look less conspicuous and the irony is that as I posed this question I was about to snap the damn thing in two as lately it has become temperamental. As a camera it doesn't work that often which makes it really a phone I don't actually need.
After posing this question I looked along the grass to my left. There sitting on a door step 3 doors along was a guy taking in some sun and reading a book. Here starts the stupid irrational and obsessional thought process. What was he reading? That was the question in my head. If only I had followed it up with asking myself why it would matter but I did not. Instead I just kept asking myself the same question over and over until it got to the point where I was making a plan of attack. I could just ask him. I could try zooming in with the camera on my phone, if it worked, and check out the image later to see if I could glean a title from it. I could walk by innocently and try to snatch a glance. But what would it matter? If I did learn what he was reading it would mean nothing to me.
And that leads me to obsessional purchases. Still my camera has not come. In my head I see a van pulling up and a man getting out with a box for me to sign for. But no, not yet. Why though do I have such impatience for its arrival? When it arrives what am I going to do with it? I'll get it out and look at it. Take a photo of something irrelevant that will never get looked at again and most likely get deleted. Then I'll put it away. But it won't end there. More questions. Did I really need to spend that much on a camera. If I bought one at half the price I could have used the rest for my daughter's impending birthday and more. I have always been like this. I get a thought in my head to buy something, then obsess over it to the point where I have to buy it to get some peace and finally when it is in my hands I realise I didn't need it as bad as I thought with a feeling of deflation.
I can see these things in myself when I reflect but not at the time. Last night the boy started to walk his first steps. My joy was tempered by frustration. Mostly he would take a couple of steps and sit down. Lack of confidence more than inability. And annoyed I'd lift him up again telling him he could do it which of course he doesn't understand. The little soul would then have another go and sit down again. Why the frustration? I look at myself with my anxious problems and all that I have read lately on acceptance yet cannot see he is no different from me trying to walk while lacking the belief that it is possible.
More and more I relate things to my own anxiety problems as if I am searching for an answer that may be found where least expected. I see it in so many things but I suppose if you look hard enough and think long enough you can apply most things to another. I watched a documentary on Tourettes and one sufferer described their tic as like trying to suppress a sneeze. Yes I can see that. That is me trying to accept rather than fight. The satisfied urge is hard to stifle. Another documentary I watched was Armando Ianuuci's hour on Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. Even in there I was starting to draw parallels but one in particular has resonated even till now. John Milton was blind when he dictated his classic work which I did not know and to get inside his head a little Ianucci talked about blindness to a blind man. It was very poignant to hear him say that he awoke every morning to find that he was blind again. He explained this by saying that in blindness there are no faces and no places but there are in dreams so waking in the morning that realisation of blindness returns. I can relate to that. It takes some time in the morning for me to be reminded of that anxiety is holding me back and that returning daily knowledge is delivered in a dark cloud.
It has though been good to get out because this realisation in the morning that I an indeed a person trapped at home with anxiety cannot be lost for long in the little spells I leave the home. So although I am basically just down a staircase and sitting outside a door it is a big break for me because I spend too few moments outside. It is a change of scene and a break from the monotonous routine. Fresh air and sunshine are just some of the benefits but being taken away from the distraction of books and computers to be dropped right into the here and now is very beneficial to the state of mind. Believe it or not for the first half hour or so sitting outside I am restless. Being out of my natural surroundings takes some adjusting and I have constant thoughts about going back upstairs. Eventually though those thoughts recede.
Still I am prone to bouts of staring into the beyond and times where I am aware someone is talking while hearing the sound of their words but listening instead to my own voice. Interaction comes with getting out. Sometimes welcome and sometimes not. Being trapped by a neighbour who wants to spend a couple of hours in a one way conversation about every little irritatingly grating moment of their tedious existence from what they had for breakfast to what they seen someone do out of their window is not welcome. Nor for me are the jovial strangers who walk by and despite being foreign trespassers in my kingdom want to exchange pleasantries- usually about how hot it is or other statements of the obvious. With kids though other kids are attracted and I don't mind them so much as they pretty much do their own thing and bother little. Just yesterday we had a guinea pig running around our garden with the little girl next door and an entourage of others following the hairy little pied piper around. These things bring a diversity to my day and a nostalgic remembrance of summers past in what I knew then as normality.
The mood alters too. Despite still being caught in long periods of introspection I don't feel as down as I do in the house because their are people mulling, music playing, chatter in the background, incidents and accidents to be had. It allows me to smile more and even laugh sometimes which can be so good for the soul. Strangely one of the things that made me laugh most was remembering something I saw about one man trying to kill another man. My macabre sense of humour came to the fore in the garden when I remembered watching 'Have I got news for you'. One of the items discussed was a man trying to commit suicide in China by threatening to jump of a road bridge which led to a large traffic jam. One driver got so disgruntled that he got out his car, broke through the police cordon, climbed the bridge, shook the suicide candidate's hand and then pushed him off. Sorry but that kind of thing makes me laugh. Its not so much the act of violence or the intent to injure someone else but those feelings of rage in a situation we can relate to and have experienced- something I am sure we have all thought about doing in some way to spend out anger.
That is probably enough bizarre musings for one reading so I will wrap up there.
Why does an agoraphobic need a mobile phone? At Christmas I received one as a present on request and as I was sitting in the garden looking at it I posed this question to myself. I have never made a call on it and only sent one text to test that it works- in fact my wife has used it more when her own phone's battery is dead. The purpose I discovered was so I could take photos with it. So why not buy a camera then? I guess as a self conscious person I wanted to look less conspicuous and the irony is that as I posed this question I was about to snap the damn thing in two as lately it has become temperamental. As a camera it doesn't work that often which makes it really a phone I don't actually need.
After posing this question I looked along the grass to my left. There sitting on a door step 3 doors along was a guy taking in some sun and reading a book. Here starts the stupid irrational and obsessional thought process. What was he reading? That was the question in my head. If only I had followed it up with asking myself why it would matter but I did not. Instead I just kept asking myself the same question over and over until it got to the point where I was making a plan of attack. I could just ask him. I could try zooming in with the camera on my phone, if it worked, and check out the image later to see if I could glean a title from it. I could walk by innocently and try to snatch a glance. But what would it matter? If I did learn what he was reading it would mean nothing to me.
And that leads me to obsessional purchases. Still my camera has not come. In my head I see a van pulling up and a man getting out with a box for me to sign for. But no, not yet. Why though do I have such impatience for its arrival? When it arrives what am I going to do with it? I'll get it out and look at it. Take a photo of something irrelevant that will never get looked at again and most likely get deleted. Then I'll put it away. But it won't end there. More questions. Did I really need to spend that much on a camera. If I bought one at half the price I could have used the rest for my daughter's impending birthday and more. I have always been like this. I get a thought in my head to buy something, then obsess over it to the point where I have to buy it to get some peace and finally when it is in my hands I realise I didn't need it as bad as I thought with a feeling of deflation.
I can see these things in myself when I reflect but not at the time. Last night the boy started to walk his first steps. My joy was tempered by frustration. Mostly he would take a couple of steps and sit down. Lack of confidence more than inability. And annoyed I'd lift him up again telling him he could do it which of course he doesn't understand. The little soul would then have another go and sit down again. Why the frustration? I look at myself with my anxious problems and all that I have read lately on acceptance yet cannot see he is no different from me trying to walk while lacking the belief that it is possible.
More and more I relate things to my own anxiety problems as if I am searching for an answer that may be found where least expected. I see it in so many things but I suppose if you look hard enough and think long enough you can apply most things to another. I watched a documentary on Tourettes and one sufferer described their tic as like trying to suppress a sneeze. Yes I can see that. That is me trying to accept rather than fight. The satisfied urge is hard to stifle. Another documentary I watched was Armando Ianuuci's hour on Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. Even in there I was starting to draw parallels but one in particular has resonated even till now. John Milton was blind when he dictated his classic work which I did not know and to get inside his head a little Ianucci talked about blindness to a blind man. It was very poignant to hear him say that he awoke every morning to find that he was blind again. He explained this by saying that in blindness there are no faces and no places but there are in dreams so waking in the morning that realisation of blindness returns. I can relate to that. It takes some time in the morning for me to be reminded of that anxiety is holding me back and that returning daily knowledge is delivered in a dark cloud.
It has though been good to get out because this realisation in the morning that I an indeed a person trapped at home with anxiety cannot be lost for long in the little spells I leave the home. So although I am basically just down a staircase and sitting outside a door it is a big break for me because I spend too few moments outside. It is a change of scene and a break from the monotonous routine. Fresh air and sunshine are just some of the benefits but being taken away from the distraction of books and computers to be dropped right into the here and now is very beneficial to the state of mind. Believe it or not for the first half hour or so sitting outside I am restless. Being out of my natural surroundings takes some adjusting and I have constant thoughts about going back upstairs. Eventually though those thoughts recede.
Still I am prone to bouts of staring into the beyond and times where I am aware someone is talking while hearing the sound of their words but listening instead to my own voice. Interaction comes with getting out. Sometimes welcome and sometimes not. Being trapped by a neighbour who wants to spend a couple of hours in a one way conversation about every little irritatingly grating moment of their tedious existence from what they had for breakfast to what they seen someone do out of their window is not welcome. Nor for me are the jovial strangers who walk by and despite being foreign trespassers in my kingdom want to exchange pleasantries- usually about how hot it is or other statements of the obvious. With kids though other kids are attracted and I don't mind them so much as they pretty much do their own thing and bother little. Just yesterday we had a guinea pig running around our garden with the little girl next door and an entourage of others following the hairy little pied piper around. These things bring a diversity to my day and a nostalgic remembrance of summers past in what I knew then as normality.
The mood alters too. Despite still being caught in long periods of introspection I don't feel as down as I do in the house because their are people mulling, music playing, chatter in the background, incidents and accidents to be had. It allows me to smile more and even laugh sometimes which can be so good for the soul. Strangely one of the things that made me laugh most was remembering something I saw about one man trying to kill another man. My macabre sense of humour came to the fore in the garden when I remembered watching 'Have I got news for you'. One of the items discussed was a man trying to commit suicide in China by threatening to jump of a road bridge which led to a large traffic jam. One driver got so disgruntled that he got out his car, broke through the police cordon, climbed the bridge, shook the suicide candidate's hand and then pushed him off. Sorry but that kind of thing makes me laugh. Its not so much the act of violence or the intent to injure someone else but those feelings of rage in a situation we can relate to and have experienced- something I am sure we have all thought about doing in some way to spend out anger.
That is probably enough bizarre musings for one reading so I will wrap up there.
