Happy stressmuch!

Reluctant Christmas Tree in Scrooged (1988)

Its here again already. Another Christmas day and the endless round of overeating, gifts and snow-based films on the television. As the song tells us “its the most wonderful time of the year”. But is it?

I quite like Christmas. I love the lights, and the colour that fills the otherwise grey streets of winter – when those disappear in January everything will seem so dull by comparison. I’m partial to a mulled wine or two. And I enjoy the excuse to see loved ones. But if that was all it was (plus you know the bit about the birth of the Christ child, but let’s keep this post non-denominational), it would indeed be a wonderful time. But its not. And increasingly I find Christmas itself a bit of a strain, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

For me, I think a lot of it has to be with the fact that I’m now rapidly creeping up on 40 and am still alone. Essentially its 6 years since my last long-term relationship ended, and I don’t recall the last time I actually had a girlfriend to see me through the winter months. When we get together as a family now, the numbers are increasing. My siblings join my parents and grandparents, and with them come their partners and offspring. I love them all – I’m blessed with adorable nieces and nephews – but seeing them all together, I feel like I’m looking in on a snowglobe of activity with me connected but on the outside.

I’m okay not having a family. I’d rather be alone than have kids with someone I don’t gel with. But being up close and personal to other families is hard.  At current count, I have two nephews, three nieces, and two godchildren. Adorable the lot of them. But for someone who thought he’d have a family young, who was the first to marry (and divorce) out of the lot of us, something is amiss. One of those silly things that isn’t really an issue, until it is. Occasionally the parents will talk about their kids and what they get up to, but as soon as more than one parenting couple gets together I’m sort of ignored in the conversation. A lot of adult conversation takes second place to talk of schools, nappies, first words and temper tantrums. Don’t misinterpret me – I’m not complaining about them at all, I’m just aware. Self-aware. Conscious of not quite fitting in. A hint of being left behind.

Last year my solution was to go away, something I fully intended to do again this year. On Christmas Eve I made the trek to Dublin and stayed with a friend for a week, who was also on her own. It wasn’t my conventional Christmas, the routine and setting was utterly different, but I also felt completely free of stress. No bickering, no fall outs, no pressure. Maybe a little stress when I dropped some of the edible goodies in Tesco, but that was soon rectified. I’m trying something closer to our traditional Christmas this year, but simply not feeling it at all. I think that’s me done with them and I’ll hit the road again next year.

So much of Christmas is focused on gifts, on presents, that it becomes a huge mental strain for many of us.

For all the talk about how Christmas is for the kids, the present-buying seems to encompass everyone. When I’m financially affluent, I like to indulge, but there are years when things are tighter – when I haven’t had the work, or am facing imminent expenditure where it isn’t possible. Even being told that one should just purchase something little for someone else “because” isn’t helpful. The guilt one feels when one isn’t able, or when you have to choose between buying for one person or another because that’s all you can afford to do is tough. I don’t subscribe to this notion that you should just get a little token gift, because people don’t always want or need such trinkets. Whether I’ve bought you anything doesn’t change how I feel emotionally about you.

There’s an awful tendency on social media for people to post endlessly about the gifts they’ve received or given, the stuff their children have. Don’t you realise how damaging this can be? Its like showing off. Bragging about one’s wealth. A sort of one-upmanship. And you have no idea what your friends are going through to try and match this.

Last week I was responding to letters to Santa (Santa needs help with this – I’ve been helping him out for years) and everyone should have to do this once in their life. You really get to see the variance in expectation from kids. Those who would be happy with a book, some sweeties, a doll, or just for their parents to be happy (yup…), and those who want everything they can find in the Argos catalogue. We don’t have a standard agreement when it comes to things like Santa, and its bringing up a generation of spoiled little children who want everything and care for nothing.

I always remember watching Santa Claus the Movie, and the simple wooden toys that were being offered. A sort of “here’s your one present” attitude that leaves other things open. As kids, there was always one thing we would emphasise on our lists to Santa, and anything else was a bonus. Lists indeed!

What social media doesn’t teach us, is that its okay if we can’t afford much. Less is more. And you know, if you can’t afford anything, that’s okay too. It doesn’t make you any less of a person.

There was a post on Twitter I saw earlier that suggested its good to give to charities or the homeless at Christmas, but if you film yourself doing so, you aren’t being charitable at all, you’re self-serving. And that I think is at the heart of all these damn facebook and instagram posts of gift giving. Has nobody come across A Christmas Carol? Kindness and compassion are more important than all the gifts in the world.

Give me the company of friends and family. Some decent conversation. A damn good cuddle. That’s all I want. The rest of it is unimportant commercial window dressing designed to guilt us into financial destitution as we throw our every penny at pointless gifts and toys and objects dressed up as proof of affection. An affectation that masks real interactions. A pathway that prompts us to panic that we haven’t done enough. Forget it all. Pick up the phone, send that text, hug that friend. You are enough.

A friendship taken.

This is gonna be a short one. Probably…

I’m sitting on the boat back from Scotland to Belfast as I type. It should have been a trip away full of joy and excitement at spending time with my brother and his family. Then a few days of work and providing all went to plan, a jaunt to Dublin to see one of my oldest and dearest friends again, to help him sort a bunch of stuff out.

As it happens I’m heading down now in the morning. But not under the circumstances I’d envisioned. For I got word over the weekend while I was away that he had died rather suddenly during the week.

I’m still processing this information. I don’t think I’ve taken it in yet. Since that phonecall I’ve been hit with waves of guilt, regret, disappointment. I can’t allow myself to grieve until the funeral. I won’t allow myself. Until then, it all seems so surreal, so abnormal. It isn’t unusual for us to go a month or two without contact, and then a flurry of communications. Our last text exchange was about film memorabilia and my upcoming visit, and me promising I’d be down. I have been trying to reason through things, work out what has happened, where his head was been at, and just whether or not I was as good a friend to him as he’d been to me for the last 18 years.

18 years. That’s half of my life I’ve known him. Since we met there’s barely a week has gone by where I haven’t talked about him to someone – sharing his wisdom, or tales of our friendship and occasional adventures. The last couple of years had been difficult, I hadn’t been to see him as much, and his work schedule meant that we didn’t get talking on the phone like we used to. We chatted at Christmas, when I hadn’t felt up to seeing him in person. I’d spent a few days with him last month, rearranging a trip to do so, because he’d called me in a bad way. By the time I left he seemed to have lifted, and when we spoke on the phone a few days later he seemed in very positive form.

I’ve had friends from school die while I knew them, or indeed after. And its been a shock. But without being harsh, they weren’t friends I knew well. I lost my grandfather a few years ago, and wrote about it in a couple of blog posts at the time. It was a traumatic experience, and my first real experience of loosing a loved one. But we’d know he was sick for two years, and I was there with him right through the night he passed. This one has come out of the blue, as a total shock, and to someone that seemed to be in good health and showing no signs of shuffling off anytime soon.

In the hierarchy of friendships I used to say I had a tier of best friends, and there were three vying for that status. Now there are two. My trinity were there for very different parts of my life, and while all had some overlap, had witnessed a multitude of mes over the last two decades. He’d been a tireless supporter of my researches, my enthusiasm for film, and in particular Hammer and horror cinema. He’d facilitated meetings, helped me acquire materials, and pointed me in new directions. When I fell out of love for the subject amid a period of personal difficulty, he was still there to gently nudge me back when the time was ready, and over the last few months as that love rekindled he was on hand – always admonishing me when he spotted another source I’d never pursued.

One of the hardest things now is that he wont be there when I do make a new discovery. When I’ve found a particularly fertile path to explore. We wont be urging each other further. No more jaunts across to England together to attend some random film screening or get together. No sharing stories as he busies himself cooking in the kitchen, or while I help him prop up some timber in the garden. When my relationships went wrong he was there as my friend to help encourage me back into the world. When his went wrong, I tried to do the same for him.

We met through a shared interest in fandom, and he took pride in nurturing another generation. I started out fascinated by his tales, his knowledge, and his professional life, and gradually we became proper friends – the conversations being less and less about the films, and more and more about each other. He was like an older brother or uncle, a mentor, a confidant. I remember him calling me the evening his mum died, simultaneously level headed and heartbroken. I stayed with him over the few days surrounding her funeral, and the day after she was buried, my nephew was born – I got the text as I lay on the blow up mattress in the front room. Life and death intertwined within our stories. But then isn’t that how it is for everyone?

Right now I’m struggling to work out how I should present myself. I am devastated for the loss of a dear friend, and I have many questions which remain unanswered, which I will be seeking out in the days and weeks to come. But I cannot stop for him. I don’t think its what he’d want. In private my emotions are up and down, but for now I’m trying to deflect and just keep on ploughing through. I’m pretending to be normal. To do normal things. But it hurts too – someone I loved dearly has left this world and our story is just about ended. The memories remain, and there’s an epilogue to follow, but for now I’m disappointed that our time together has ended.

Alone on Valentine’s Day

Source: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America on Flickr Commons

The post has been and gone. My message box is empty. The telephone remains silent. What else could it be but another typical Valentine’s Day, a manufactured marketing ploy by cake, card and confectionary companies to maximise profits. A day in which it seems that the entire world scrambles to find some smattering of affection and goes overboard with public displays of affection to prove just how ‘special’ their relationships are. And yet, in spite of my deep-rooted cynicism of the whole tawdry thing, I can’t help but take my outsider stance as proof of my own failure.

With the exception of a few years in the mid 2000s, my Valentine’s Days have been pretty miserable. I’m either a definite singleton, or I’ve been in an unhappy place with the person I’ve been seeing, and the whole thing becomes an overpowering chore. In the past I’ve sent cards to women that I’ve been harbouring crushes on, but the overwhelming silence and/or rejection that follows means I am no longer likely to do this. Its kind of creepy anyway, especially if one does it anonymously, and in our days of psycho stalkers one has to be mindful of respectful distances.

This year has been harder. I’ve been dreading it for months, and that hasn’t subsided. Mostly because I found myself falling for someone last year, and those feelings have refused to shift in spite of all attempts to do so. Unrequited love is a painful pleasure – the euphoria of intensity of feeling is at loggerheads with the excruciating agony of rejection and rebuttal. Its not as if I’ve had my affections spurned before, I have, but the way this has been handled and where it has ended up doesn’t make sense. It’s perfectly possible to remain friends with someone you’ve declared an unreciprocated interest in, or had a relationship with. And it isn’t like I haven’t made inroads into moving on from that relationship either, but you can’t help how you feel, and I’ve no desire to bury those feelings because they’ll just sit there stewing and eventually will erode anything else that comes along. Better to be honest, to embrace them, to see what happens.

I suppose I must have had a tiny hope that perhaps things would change. That this wonderful woman that I still have a bubbling chemistry with, might have taken a (second) chance on us, but instead its gone the other way and I’m deeply saddened by the extreme measures taken. Not because we don’t get on, not because we don’t like each other, not because we couldn’t actually be friends, but it strikes me because of all of those things. The positive attributes are exactly the reason why she isn’t talking to me. And that’s especially awkward because our circles are closing in on each other and eventually paths will cross in the flesh again. As long as she’s happy and doing what she wants, that’s all that really matters. My personal happiness isn’t dependant on her, but she definitely brought a great deal of happiness to my life. I just wish she was part of the 2017 me, a much improved take on the person she knew. Though every bit as sincere.

Damn regrets. I tried so hard to keep a safe distance only to find myself slipping deeper and deeper into a vat of affection until I was washed with love. I always seem to fall for the wrong person. People who live impractical distances away, or have unworkable schedules. Social and economic backgrounds and thinking that struggle to accept mine. People who are also damaged, kindred spirits, who are hell-bent on rejecting something with potential because it scares them – only to seek out the same sort of damaging relationships that have ruined their lives and selves in the past. I’m trying not to be that person anymore myself, trying not to repeat my mistakes.

So today I allow my mind to wander for a period through bittersweet sadness, heightened by an unnecessary silence. I distract myself with music and writing and memory. I’ve no friendly benefits to claim, no cuddle buddy to snuggle up to, no human touch. I don’t really know any better. So you can take your Valentine’s demonstrations and keep them to yourself. Unless that is, you want to share them with me…

You’re asking the wrong question

You know how it is, you have to weigh up the possibile outcomes of a given scenario and determine the risk and whether it’s worth it. “What’s the worst that can happen? ” you utter. 

I do it myself. I open the argument with a negative possibility and instil a fear of bad things. If it’s something I care about there’s a good chance I won’t risk it. 

But we’re asking the wrong question – especially if the risk is big. Stop. Think. Now ask yourself this instead…

“What’s the best that could happen? ”

The worst might be pretty crap, but if the best is infinitely better then maybe that’s where we should be looking. A positive outlook and goals to aim for. A radical rethink and something to get excited about. I think I’ll take my chances on the best outcome… 

Escape and Healing

I want to move on from some of the discussions of the last while on here. With a desire to regain some of my privacy and to move on in my own healing I intend this to be my last personal comment on my experiences of abuse for the foreseeable future. As Christmas is a time of high-stress, high alcohol consumption, and a spike in domestic abuse it seems like an appropriate time to bring this personal thread to a close.

Stepping forward and naming the abuse I experienced for what it is, is important. While it was happening I spoke about it,  I documented it,  I reached out for help – privately. But there was also an element of shame, a fear. I’m a man who was abused by a woman, we aren’t often believed, as a society we’ve been programmed to turn a blind eye to many telling signs that someone’s relationship is less than healthy; statistically men are more likely to be the abusers but not all men.

Fear is a powerful weapon. And so is shame. And many abusers use variations on gaslighting to make us question our sanity and reality. Psychological abuse is perhaps the deepest wound of all, prodding us for ages to come. If we doubt ourselves,  how will anybody else believe?  Add to that the shame of mental health issues and it becomes intensely unmanageable.

So for me, writing about the affects the situation has had on me, and on my mental health, this is my resistance. My way of saying ‘no,  this isn’t on’. It’s about being strong, standing up to the bullying and distortions, even though I live in constant fear of them intruding into my life again.

For now I am content that I have it on record that these things happened to me. Both in this heavily redacted form and in more detail through official channels. It has meant I am no longer hiding from it all. I am not living trapped by the unknown retaliations and ambiguous threats.

Escaping Abuse

My advice to anyone living with abuse is to talk. Get your safety net around you. Friends, family, professionals will all be able to help monitor you,  and can assist when you decide to escape. You’ll almost certainly need them. Even if you’re holding back on details, they’ll be better prepared for the revelations to follow. It may be that some of them are victims or ex-victims too.

Speak to organisations who help abuse victims. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone to the police. They’ll advise and when appropriate they will investigate and arrest. Things may get worse before they get better,  but don’t back down. Once you start to wrestle back control of your life abusers will intensify their rage but you’ll have started the clock on your freedom. Going through legal channels can be challenging and time-consuming but you’ll be adding to your safety net.

Talk to your GP. It’s a private situation and you can hide your purpose in visiting easily. If you’re being physically hurt, a GP can see the evidence for themselves and record it. Similarly any psychological matters.

Record incidents. Write down the details, store it in a book, in a private google doc, whatever means is safest. Details of what happened, when, how its affecting you. It may be that you aren’t prepared to admit a relationship is abusive until you actually can see the pattern of behaviour for yourself. Its also really useful to have a diary to refer to when someone is making false accusations about your whereabouts. Most people have an audio recorder on their mobile telephone these days – you can always secretly record rows and conversations for evidence. And where possible save and record any abusive voice messages you receive. One of the scariest thing about many abusers is that they flip all your criticisms, all your allegations back on you in a bid to discredit you and make you ponder reality. It disarms you. But its like a child simply parroting your language, fingers in ears, and saying “I know you are but what am I?”

It takes most people a long time to get out of an abusive situation, and you’ll need help after too, but it is there. It might sometimes feel like a ‘he said she said’ situation, but honesty will see you right in the end.

Healing

I’ve heard enough people trying to tell me that friends believe my version of events, but that isn’t enough. In order to put a stop to these behaviours it isn’t your friends you need to convince. I’ve been manipulated so many times that I have wondered if things were really as bad as I say. Time will do that to you, it can numb your memories, as you try and put the bad stuff behind you. I’ve gone back through my notes, emails, texts, recordings and legal documents. Every time I do my head is taken right back into that particular quarter of hell. Doing it over the summer helped push me into the worst breakdown I’ve experienced in years – reliving experiences while not being monitored was risky. My therapist asked me why I did it, when it was more than clear I’ve been telling the truth. But I’d received messages that suggested I was making everything up, that none of the things I alleged ever happened. More gaslighting. But its there, in black and white. And the evidence is backed up, and supported by numerous individuals and experts.

To heal, I cannot keep getting dragged into this. I can’t have my abuser hanging over me like some spectre from the past, a shadowy cancer on my sanity and sense of self. No amount of trolling is going to silence me. No threats will have me pretend these things didn’t happen.  Readers of this blog don’t have a clue regarding the full details, the context, or the individual (verifiable) incidents in a lengthy campaign of abusive behaviour.

I know that I am angry that I have not and will not receive any kind of justice for these wrongs. I will never get so much as an admission of wrong-doing, let alone a prosecution or peace of mind. Instead I have witnessed bursts of intimidating behaviour, my sanity has been continuously questioned, and I continue to be on my guard. I accept the failings of a system that has allowed this to go undealt with. I have long recognised the relationship with my abuser as being particularly poisonous. I accept that my abuser either cannot see the wrong in their actions towards me, or can but daren’t risk admitting any accountability.

If it comes to it, I am prepared to elaborate my claims with supporting evidence in court. Not that I want to embarrass myself on network tv either, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve considered a polygraph test and the Jeremy Kyle show either. I know that my abuser has spun a different story about what happened – I’m sure it has elements of truth, but lacking context, alongside fabrications and slanders, and like good friends and relatives I am sure she has her own network of people who believe every word uttered. I have no reason to lie about what happened to me, but I suspect that strangers are less likely to believe the word of a man than a woman in these matters. Until the Northern Irish government catches up with the rest of the UK and introduces legislation on coercive control, thousands of men and women like me will continue to suffer.

Being an incredibly self-aware person, much time has been spent working through my experiences, sometimes too openly and honestly, but always sincerely. I take ownership of my failings, my errors in judgement, my poor handling of personal and professional situations. I’ve taken ownership of my mental health issues, I’ve got support in place now for any time they should ever spiral out of control again, and I’m working round the other issues that I can. Me now is not me six months ago even. I’ve come to recognise my negatives and my plusses. I’m still incredibly anxious about relationships, but I’ve learned that I can manage them, I can be a normal human being and not feel guilt or fear. I’ve learned to trust people again. And I’ve also learned to feel love for another human being. That didn’t seem possible a year ago. I am sorry for bringing so much of this into other relationships, friendships etc., it puts a pressure on people I hadn’t realised. That’s why healing is important – it takes the burden from others to pick up the pieces.

I will never completely heal. Abuse victims don’t. We carry our scars like barely healed wounds. The right scratch and they open up again. But we can monitor them, we can ensure we have the right medicine and aftercare in place. The right friend on the end of a phone, or a needed hug. A counsellor, medication, the authorities, a blog. All have their place and are part of our arsenal.

For now I have said about all I can on my matter. All I want to say. I don’t intend to dwell on this unfortunate past any further. Because it is my past. It is not my present and will not be my future. It happened, but it does not define me. I define me. I am bruised, not beaten; damaged but not broken; flawed, but a gem, precious if you would but look.

 

NOTE: The images here are from various campaigns across the UK to address various kinds of abuse. If you recognise any of these from your own or a friend’s experiences, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call. The Police service across the UK will give advice on the free non-emergency 101 number. Or in the case of emergency, call 999.

The thing about the movies…

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)

The thing about the movies is they perpetuate an impossible promise about people. They suggest that hope doesn’t die,  that redemption is always possible and reconciliation is only a meaningful glance away.

They tell us it’s OK to bombard and harass our exes to get their attention. They teach us that we should never take no for an answer. They delude us into a belief that there is one magical moment in which our futures are clinched.

Loneliness is a temporary state and secret admirers are waiting for us to see they exist. Friends are waiting to bed us if we’d only look up. Mistakes happen and are admitted. Lessons are learned. Changes are made. And everyone gets a happy ever after.

They don’t teach us the real pain of rejection. The crippling agony of feeling for someone until it hurts and them feeling nothing back. The way a photograph,  a sound,  a scent sends us into a spiral of pain.

All those happy endings tell us pain is an illusion, worth it,  that we’ll find release and understanding. But that’s not always life.

Films may give us a warm sensation of acceptance, and optimism,  but they don’t warm our beds or our bodies. They don’t satisfy the craving for mental and physical stimulation. When they end, we can hit replay and experience it all over again. When our relationships end we can’t do that – we can spot the things we did wrong,  what should change,  but we don’t get a second shot,  no matter how strongly we feel about it.

So much of actual life involves the absence of hope. We’re programmed to think we’ll get what we want,  a perfect partner, one who accepts us and who we can feel for completely. Life is about compromise and imperfect people and chance. Chances are you won’t find a happy ever after,  you’ll be let down by those you focus on.

I’ve stopped hoping. I’m still feeling. I ache. But it doesn’t matter. No words from well-meaning friends and observers can mend me. Time doesn’t heal – it just lets you remember differently: perhaps you’ll forget, maybe you’ll remember. For a while I was alive – more intensely, more fully than ever before. Now I am as Cesare, sleeping through my existence. I want to feel again. I try to feel. But no conversation, no interaction, no thought hits me in the same way. I have loved before, but it was not this.

I heard a voice in the darkness and my brain fired up, every spot on my skull spluttering into life, a cacophony of sound and sensation. A Vertov stimulus. A euphoric beginning that builds but gets no release. A nitrate fire fills my head, and nobody can prevent the combustion.

Being gaslit was easier than this pain. This pain that will not end. That I cannot control. That leaves me spent.

Cinema teaches us to be voyeurs, to watch complicit other people’s relationships, to engage vicariously with their worlds. But that is not this one, a world in which we have ceased communications, in which my name is no longer on your lips, in which our time isn’t even a memory. I am the spectator, unable to view, forced to replay the memory of a past, seeking a conclusion denied, a sequel impossible. These remakes and reboots are pale imitations, the casting feels wrong. There’s no chemistry on the screen. The characters lack conviction.

I don’t want to be a script doctor, helping other people’s stories flow. I want my own story, my own happy ending. I’d take the grief if I thought that was next. From childhood the screen says: boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy gets girl back again. This act 2 has fallen flat, I thought you needed space to make your own film, but we should have stopped sizing each other up and just collaborated. I know there will be no act 3 for me, and I sit in the theatre, watching a darkened screen with tears cascading down my cheeks. I accept everything about you, I love it all, I see your potential and I’m proud. I wish you could see and accept mine; I’m worth the investment – the hard work has been done already. No cinematic edits to colour the narrative needed – I relish every frame of the rushes, the raw material from which something magical is constructed.

No blue pages to take account of my changes, no pink to rework the ending, no yellow to line up the next installment. Oh for a romantic comedy to accompany our heartfelt drama. But its all dreams, fantasy and wishful thinking and no amount of rewriting can change your mind…

 

Trigger me this Facebook

A LIFE magazine still for Hans Richter’s film Dreams That Money Can Buy (1946)

Trauma and depression are difficult enough to live with, the scars left by episodes remain raw no matter how long the healing has been. The tiniest scratch and the wound starts weeping. Before you know it, you’ve been transported back to another place and another episode is in full flow. At least that’s my experience.

You will no doubt be familiar with the idea that certain smells in particular can transport you back into your memory banks – that waft of perfume as you walk along the street, an odour in a restaurant – but it isn’t unique to scent. Images and sounds can do the same thing. I’ve written before about the importance of memory and images, and there are songs that take me back to very specific moments in my youth and revitalise long-forgotten feelings. While this can be a therapeutic and pleasant experience for those of us who have lived with abuse, or suffered mental breakdowns, memory is a tricky terrain to negotiate.

Social media is rich with trigger potential. Many of us share the sort of insights into our private lives that a decade ago would have been deemed inappropriate. We detail our travels, our partners, our dinners, our very bowel movements. Go far enough back into our public profiles and we’ll find traces of a life we’ve moved on from – our younger selves, warts and all.

Facebook in particular provides a daily digest of memories without any sort of filtration system at all. Their ‘On This Day‘ brings up posts you made or were tagged in on/around today’s date in years gone past. Among the cute pictures of animals and family and work outings are things I don’t wish to recall, let alone reshare with those around me. This time of year it turns out is packed full of them, and those Facebook memories are at least partly responsible for triggering my last break down.

I like to recall nice memories, but I’ve been on social media long enough now that there are also memories of previous partners and my lives with them, which played out at least partly in a public/semi-public sphere. Friends/spectators will recall at least some of the drama, but generally have the good decency not to bring it up when we meet. Unlike Facebook, which deems it appropriate to regale me with anecdotes from not only the partners I remain fond of, but also those I am not.

Today’s memories include jaunts to London (no change there then), moving house, publicity on the magazine I edited that I later learned was being published by two con-artists, photos of my abusive partner and examples of comments that might have come across to some as wit, but which read now like mild examples of the abusive treatment I lived with for too long.

I cannot completely avoid this. I’ve untagged myself from various things, made other images and posts private. But I also have issues with denying the past ever happened. Much of it is a matter of public record anyway, so editing seems somehow disrespectful and false. And unhelpful to my healing. Being reminded of the shit that was foisted upon me simply serves to strengthen my resolve, but there is a cost. Some of the memories trigger further memories and its frightening. I don’t want to delete my profile and start again because within the memories of abuse there are also stories of friendships past, loved ones lost and much positivity – how to balance that? A friend of mine with very similar experiences simply deleted their profile completely – too overwhelming was the triggers from the past, the negative memories. For me doing that would remove what little good I had from my own period of abuse and would run counter to my policy of being open as a coping mechanism.

If I’m completely frank, I fucking hate this. I never know which memories are going to be revived on which days. I don’t know which will trigger a period of negative association. Sometimes I can see a photo from then and its fine. Other days, I’ve encountered other triggers and the cumulative effect becomes too much to handle. My abuser has always denied any form of abuse took place (a common practice with abusers it seems). But images provoke strong memories from me. And sometimes the words, photos, video, audio files support my memory of events which causes even more triggers.

Immediately before I had my most recent breakdown I had been going through old files. A bunch of Facebook memories had started the process, then I came across a set of old photographs – images in that tricky area of not being enough to set off a trigger by themselves, but in association with other data they do. And then there were the recordings – listening to my own voice filled with terror and anxiety, voice mails left by my abuser – I daren’t even contemplate it deeply because of how they set me off last time. That narrative I have repeatedly been told (by my abuser) that suggests I am a fabricator of facts, quickly vanishes and accompanied by solid proof I recall exactly how things were. How alone and fragile and scared I was. How vulnerable it has made me today.

Our social media accounts are usually rife with false positivity. We cultivate an online image that presents ourself in our best light. We admit to our successes and over-egg minor achievements and ignore our failings, our stresses, our depressions. Consequently when the shit hits the fan, those around us sit bewildered by the sudden change. The late Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner used to remind audiences that ‘the memory cheats’, and the same can be true of Facebook memories. The false positivity can ignore much of the problems, and the casual observer might be lulled back into a false sense of nostalgia and lost hope. In an instance of an abusive partner they might forget the problems with drink or drugs, they might overlook the coercive controlling behaviour, and almost certainly will never find a trace of the physical abuses suffered. We forget the warning signs and we end up repeating our mistakes, and push away those who offer an alternative. Certainly I’m scared of those in whom I recognise myself – but they’re the only people who really get it, because they’ve lived it and neither they nor I wish to suffer like that again. Others can be sympathetic, but they lack the true empathy needed to keep us strong.

My own social media history fluctuates between the brave face of positivity – and I can usually tell when I’ve been coerced into posting something vaguely positive – and out and out cries for help. I’ve seen them come up in my feed before – moments where I’ve been threatened, where I’m struggling to make sense of a relationship spiraling downwards. Times where I’ve outed myself before some dark aspect of myself is utilised as a weapon against me. It still happens. I’m free of my abuser, but not their impact on my life. So afraid have I been that I’ve been overprotective of myself, family and potential partners. Just when I think I’m okay again, Facebook reminds me of what I went through at their hands and why I remain on my guard.

For someone who has made his professional life based around the past and nostalgia I am at a loss for how to proceed with my own past – particularly one which social media has decreed I must recall when I really don’t want to. Deletion is denial. It absolves those who persecute our thoughts. Admission provokes anxiety, tension and further depression.

Self-worth

Stairway. © 2016 Robert JE Simpson

How we view ourselves very much affects the relationships we form. Our potential for eternal happiness is shaped by how we feel about ourselves more probably more than how we feel about our partners. Somebody suggested to me that as a nation we get the politicians we deserve. The same could be argued for out objects d’amour.

My self esteem isn’t great. For all the performance-based work that I do, I have a low sense of my own worth. I find it hard to sing my own praises, and tend to shy away in the corner. I find it difficult to take compliments. I love receiving them, but am overcome with a sense of embarrassment when someone tells me how gifted or pleasant I am.

It is I think ruining my chances of a relationship.

I find that I am overly cautious about setting into something with another person. Part of that is the hard-learned lessons of life experience, but most of the time I simply can’t believe that anybody would actually find me interesting enough to want to be with, attractive enough to want. And so I inadvertently make the whole damn thing more difficult than it needs to be. I struggle with PDAs, because I don’t think I deserve them. I put myself down. I find excuses for things not to work out. I place hypothetical obstacles in the way – not helped by being an over-thinker anyway. I give them all the space in the world to leave, to not have to commit to this fuck up of an individual. That becomes very difficult to take after a while.

Essentially I don’t think I’m good enough to warrant happiness. I don’t deserve to find the solace of a loving situation. I must feel pain and rejection and disappointment. For the bleakness confirms my darker thoughts about myself. It sustains my senseless solitude.

Constantly there is a battle within me to find a balance. Because while I do myself no favours, I do have a heart – I know deep down that I am a good person, capable of loving and deserving of someone else’s love. In the right nurturing environment I could be an excellent partner, lover, friend, father. But to get there, I need to feel comfortable. And to feel comfortable, I will probably test your patience, your views, your sincerity. I will test me, my interest, my trust, my willingness to compromise. I can live alone. I spent years in isolation. But I don’t want to live to my life end alone. I want to have someone to share it with, a companion, an intimate. That’s a normal human desire. I just don’t think anyone has quite enough patience to see us through the more testing days.

Dating as I’ve so often said, is a nightmare. I don’t make first moves as a rule. A lot of that is down to issues of consent and not wanting to be misunderstood, but it is also because I don’t believe people will think I’m worth it. I’m too much like hard work. I have little self-worth.

I suppose this is what manifested itself a fortnight ago when I had my breakdown. An overloading of self-doubt that had been building for several months. I loathe the ineffectual nature of my self-hatred, my insecurity. I talk about it to counter-act the affect it has on me, but still it wins. I drive the people I care about away. I worry that one day I’ll end up ageing and desperate and cling to a poisonous abusive partner because they will once again remind me of how useless I am, how worthless my existence has been and how nobody else would want me. Someone I am with because there is no choice left. Because the people I would have chosen rejected me because I am me.

A rose by any other name…

Rose in Winter. Image © Robert JE Simpson.

It’s a matter of public record that I am a divorced man. There’s little escaping that, and I will be reminded of it from time to time in legal matters. But I’m lucky. There’s nothing to tie me to that past, no messy alimony or children or shared property to deal with. And so, I don’t see why that former contract should define my existence.

I don’t get why (at least in my situation) I need to fill in forms or declare myself as ‘divorced’. I’ve had other relationships that lasted longer but they aren’t acknowledged in any way formally, and yet people can look at you a little different when they know you were married. Breaking apart from a long term stable relationship doesn’t carry the same taboos or connotations. Is it because with formerly married couples there is often a baggage of financial and domestic ties? I have friends who were never married but who carry similar experiences, so why this prejudice? 

If asked to define my status I would say ‘single’ because that’s what I am. I might be dating, seeing someone etc, at any given moment, but I’m not quite ready to say this is me in the throws of full-blown relationships. Unless I am, in which case I’d probably make that clear. The mental scars I carry from the past are hardly unique to ex-marrieds. 

One of the problems with relationships is that people do tend to view you purely within the context of that coupling and loose sight of you as an individual. Asserting independence is desperately important. You’re with someone (hopefully) because you like them, because you enjoy those shared experiences, but you have to keep a sense of self that exists outside that coupling. 

Marriage as a convention still places emphasis on the mingling of individuals – fusing them together in a display of patriarchal persistence. It remains the man’s family name that becomes adopted by spouses (in heterosexual marriages) and there is a sense of giving over to that. 

I’m still surprised by the number of strong feminist friends that have bought into this status quo. I wouldn’t want to change my name for a partner, so why should we men demand that our women should?

Regardless of my relationship or marital status I remain me. I carry the name I was given at birth and which identifies me. But for a woman it can be more complicated. Statistically nearly every other marriage ends in divorce. So adopting the name of your betrothed can lead to an association that lasts long after the decoupling, maintaining a psychological and perceived tie that is potentially harmful. 

I can just about understand why partners of some celebrities have kept their married names – it gives them a weird celebrity status by proxy and can ensure a career in the media (Angie Bowie for example – a woman from whom husband and son both have distanced themselves).

Beyond the marriage it might suggest a stability and dependability that is otherwise undermined by the embracing of a maiden name. Certainly flitting back and forth as relationships come and go could get complicated. It’s for these reason I wouldn’t ask a partner to take on my name. Kids might be different – and I might be more likely to suggest double-barelling and creating a new dynasty with a unique identity.

Names have meaning, and a change of name may indicate a different aspect of personality. Maybe a nom de plume for creative purposes? A way of avoiding unwanted intrusion into one’s private life, or to evade perceptions.

Being the third person in three generations to carry my given name it’s little wonder I cherish my middle names as my personal identity stamp, but to be subsumed into that of another, no thank you.

Ultimately does it matter? One can change one’s name or status as one might an outfit or hair colour but there’s no hiding the person inside. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

How do you know unless you’ve tried it?

​

A bound Bettie Page

“How do you know unless you’ve tried it?”

Ah words that haunt any argument wherein a preference is expressed where there’s an unwillingness to open oneself to new experiences. 

Words that haunted me from adolescence as I declared my ideals on all matter of subjects. We can all have a clear idea of what we think we will and won’t like, but it doesn’t really harm to be open to testing those preconceived notions on occasion. If I hadn’t done that I’d not know I like beetroot, or certain forms of hip-hop music. 

But does trying a new experience change who you are? 

Does attending a religious service suddenly make you a convert to that faith? Would a homoerotic encounter make you gay? 

The answer surely is no. One should be able to experience things without question. It can inform our world view. Reaffirm our own sense of identity. Stretch our ability to tolerate other lifestyles. But we live in a society that preaches democracy and tolerance and yet thrives on one-upmanship, a society that encourages public shaming, humiliation and oppression of ‘the other’.

The Pride festival isn’t that long past here in NI and it’s a good example of the polarising opinions that exist out there when it comes to diverse sexualities. Pride shouldn’t need to exist really – we shouldn’t need to set ourselves apart into divisions, all sexialities ought to be equally accepted without judgement. But it does because non-hetero people have struggled to be accepted and accorded the same rights and freedoms that heterosexuals have.

But then one doesn’t have to be out, or self-identity as LGBT/queer to be ostracised or oppressed. Relationships inevitably throw up kinks if they last long enough. And there’s as many types of those as there are people. I stand by the statement that as long as you aren’t into animals or children, anything else is fair game (providing there is consent). 

It doesn’t need to be sensationalist Channel 4 fodder either – I can near guarantee that those quiet respectable dinner companions of yours harbour their own deviances. And it’s OK. Maybe they dress up, have a dungeon, like it al fresco, or they swing once a month. Frankly, who cares?

Like everyone I have my own kinks. Quite a few to be fair. And I’m fairly open to possibilities. Part of that depends on who I’m with. I’ve had partners less interested and more interested in exploring with me and each of them had their own kinks too. For most of us, those realms of fantasy remain private, between us and whoever we are or aren’t doing them with. But should you let it slip that you’re really into midget porn for example (it’s a real thing) there will probably be some around you who judge you negatively, who because they don’t share the same kinks as you, deem you ‘perverted’.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla sex lives. One couple for life, engaging in heterosexual missionary position sex. Providing they are happy. It’s a problem if someone is breaking the trust of that relationship to explore – without keeping their significant other informed. 

I’ll try most things once. Providing I’m comfortable. That doesn’t make me a pervert. Doesn’t mean I should be humiliated. As I’ve got older I’ve grown bolder. I’m more willing to push my own limits. Given the right proposition.

Talk is key to a relationship, no matter how casual or new. Sometimes things are suggested and one is genuinely curious or interested, but says nothing for fear of being judged. I’m fascinated by the idea of polyamorous relationships for example, I can’t get my head around how friends of mine can survive in them. I’m pretty sure that’s not the lifestyle for me, but how do I know if I haven’t tried? Intuition and opportunity. 

One instinctively knows what one might or might not be able to do, what ticks the right boxes. But sometimes curiosity exists where instinct is vague and there one needs opportunity. Unless you have a serious opportunity to be spanked silly by a dominatrix, are you totally sure it’s not for you?

So here’s to exploration, inquisitiveness and open-mindedness. Now I just need some opportunities.