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[its-my-life-in-my-words]

Birthdays....

I wanna talk about birthdays....It might not seem like a subject a blog this like would, or maybe should, cover but it's my blog so im going to...

How many birthdays can you recall with any clarity? Just for some perspective I'm 42 now and I can only look back and recall 3 specific birthdays with any sense of wonder, or even remembrance...

As a child, say to the age of 16, the only birthday I remember was my 9th. We were living in Germany at the time and I had a fancy dress party. I went as a Red Indian, I was 9 and didn't know any better about the term Native American, in awesome costume and full body make up. I know some people now will yell "Cultural Appropriation!" but it was far from it. It was a young child showing his wonder of an incredible people he'd read about in dozens of books and stories.

That birthday was memorable for a few other things. A girl that lived nearby, no names, told me we could go to my party as a prince and princess. I told her that i was going as red indian and she wasn't coming anyway. Looking back as an adult i realise that i could have still invited her, she wasnt a well liked girl, even if we didn't go as a pair, but as a child it seemed like a perfectly legitimate response...

The other thing that was quite funny and memorable was when i answered the door in partial costume without my glasses and one of my friends thought he'd come.to.the wrong place...and that's the only birthday I remember from my childhood and i still don't know if that's a good thing or not....

The next one I remember is my 18th. I was at boarding school in Surrey, attending college for my a-levels, about 60 - 70 miles from home. My mum and dad came up for the day and took me to the pub for my first 'official' drink, though I'd never had a drink outside the house anyway. I went to the bar, ordered drinks, it was great. The presents they got me were great and followed a pattern established when my brother turned 18. I got a very cool leather Jacket and a signet ring with Onyx and a gold eagle set into it. I dont recall anything else about that day. When my son turns 18 I'm going to do the same sort of thing for him, hopefully.....

I don't recall what I did on my 21st, which was my penultimate birthday living at home, or any birthday from then i was in my late 30s.

I dont recall the specific age but on one of my birthdays in my late 30s I woke up to nothing....no cards, presents etc.....bear in mind i was in a steady, married, relationship at that point. I got so frustrated i picked up an Argos catalogue and threw it reallly hard at a wall. It hit spine corner onto the wall and made a pretty big hole. That sounds petty i know but it was a shitty start to a birthday combined with a period of struggling with sever depression. (As an aside I think there may have been a card from my wife but I honestly can't recall that there was.)

The next birthday, and last, that I recall with clarity was my 40th. By this point my marriage had ended but I was, and am, still on good terms with my ex. I had been away at my mum's for a few days and my ex knew when I was due home. She had a key to my flat and let herself in with my son. As I walked through the door I saw my son first then her and then the presents on the couch, nicely arranged with balloons and that felt fantastic. It was a good birthday surprise to come home too.

Overall I can look back and say that birthdays have not played a massive part in my life and certainly not had that much of an impact on me emotionally, other than 4 occasions in 42 years. I doubt that will change going forward.

I know that some will read this and probably consider it a whinging blog that seems to focus on a poor me attitude and if you do then fair enough, but as the blog is call "its my life in my words" then that is all that matters. It is My Life and it is In My Words. If you enjoy it then brilliant. If you don't and you got this far thank you for your time.

[its-my-life-in-my-words]

My Current Journey

Mao Tse Tung was credited with saying "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!"

8 weeks ago I began a journey with a step through a door, into a world I'd never before considered joining, a world of intense fitness.

Facebook.com/whitecollarfighter has changed my life. I am fitter than I have been for a long time. I have friends, bonded by pain and joined by ambition, and i feel like i have an extended family.

My weight had ballooned and now it is heading down again, quickly and that is something i am so proud of.

When i began this journey my sole goal was to 'survive' to the end, and by fuck did I struggle. But there was a fire that had been lit inside me, a fire thst gave me the motto "It might kill me but it won't beat me!"

And so many times it nearly did kill me. On a few occasions i nearly blacked out and nearly had to crawl out of the training room. I used to get out of breathe just walking from the train station to the gym, which is about a 10 minute walk. Now i can walk 40 minutes and hardly feel like I've done anything. I call that progress.

I weighed in on day 1 at 146.6kg or 23 stone 1lb 3.5oz. Looking at pictures it's easy to see that ive lost weight and in two days im going to find out just how much.

I didnt come into this to motivate or inspire people. I came into it to become healthier and fitter and live a lifelong dream of having a boxing match. If anything I've done does inspire others, or does provide motivation, then that is a massive, massive bonus. I will try to help anyone I can in anyway I can.

The only thing left now is fight night. When I fave my opponent in the ring I will win or I will lose, but making it to the end of the fight will be a victory for me.

If you are struggling, physically or mentally, then this journey could be the one for you. I know it has helped me in both aspects and I know that the welcoming environment, and amazing people, have helped many of my compatriots. Facebook.com/whitecollarfighter is the place to go for more information.

[its-my-life-in-my-words]

The Next Chapter

(A while ago i started trying to write down my story. I didn't know exactly how it was going to go, or even what each chapter would be about. But write i did......and the piece below is what would have been the first proper chapter. It relates primarily to a very emotionally traumatic period in my life that led tp a diagnosis I should have had many years previously.)

Let me make one thing clear up front. I’m not writing this for an audience. I’m writing this for me, for catharsis, to clear out the demons in my head and I’d be really surprised if anybody read, let alone enjoyed, this book. If you are reading it then welcome to my journey.

This is not a book that is going to be in any sort of order. The stories about my life will be written down in the order I remember them and, given the way my mind works, I think this is probably the most appropriate format and that is why the chapter title is what it is. My mind is disordered, my life is disorganised and my writing style should, and will, reflect this.

……………………………….

I don’t really know where to start……

I suppose a beginning is a good place, even if it was the beginning of a mostly unpleasant period of my life. I say mostly because through it there was, and is, a brightness that makes my life better every day and draws the curtains back so the darkness isn’t all pervading.

A few years ago my wife, to our total delight after a period of trying for a child, became pregnant. I was over the moon, genuinely having never been happier in my life. We told parents and we made plans. I should have known it wasn’t going to last. It very rarely does…..

I did something very stupid. Even though we had only just found out about the pregnancy I decided that it was going to be a girl….Not such a bad thing, you might think, surely a lot of people do that…They might and in most cases it’s probably not an issue. I also gave her a name, which I will not divulge at any point within these pages, and it was this that fixed in my mind how her life was going to go. I was making plans for her and imagining decorating her room. I was looking forward to hearing her laugh, drying her tears and listening to her talking about all the girly stuff that she didn’t think I’d understand…..

To say disaster struck is probably overly dramatic but for me it felt like the end of the world…..I have to think hard about how to word what happened because no-one was at fault for what occurred and to use a phrase like “We lost….” or “She had…” would be profoundly unfair on everyone involved. I guess the easiest way to put it is that the baby wasn’t ready for this world. Nine weeks old and she was taken away from us before we’d even got the chance to meet her…..

It changed me.

It tore a hole in, for want of a better word, my soul. I know, physically, how hard it was for my wife and I am aware that she would have been suffering emotionally as well but she hid it so well because she was scared for me, she was worried about how much it had affected me. To give you an example of what I was going through; I was having a bath and for no specific reason burst into tears….I washed my face, got out of the bath and thought I looked ok. I went downstairs and immediately my wife asked me what was wrong. I tried to say there was nothing wrong but couldn’t….My body started shaking, the tears started flowing and I collapsed into her lap in the foetal position.

I still remember, to this day, the look in her eyes when I said what I said. I started hyperventilating and couldn’t catch my breath. I was finding it almost impossible to breathe properly. She started to look worried and then said,

“Breathe, please!”

I looked at her, and as I write this I start to feel sick about how much this must have terrified her at the time, and said,

“I don’t want to…..”

I will never forgive myself for the way that must have made her feel at the time. It was a terrible time for both of us that we eventually managed, mostly though never fully, to recover from but, and this is important, it does highlight an otherwise ignored issue. Loss of a child, whether pre- or post-natal, affects the father as well as the mother though it may not always be in the same way.

I will never forget the little girl that I never got the chance to meet. It was this tragic situation in my life that led to a diagnosis from which I will never recover.

[its-my-life-in-my-words]

Introduction

I’m weird.

There’s no two ways about it. I am very strange.

I don’t think like anybody else, I make connections that no-one else understands and my mind does not work in a normal ordered way. I don’t know if I understand how it works properly myself and, over the years, people have often asked me what it’s like inside my head.

It wasn’t until recently that I found the perfect analogy…….

The inside of my head is like the biggest library you can imagine, but a library where not a single book is in the right place. The librarian doesn’t have the time to sort it out because new sections are constantly being added with nothing in them correctly. The librarian spends most of their time with their head in their hands, unable to fully comprehend the magnitude of the problem.

Imagine walking into your local library, looking for a book on molecular biology and finding “Winnie-The-Pooh” by A.A. Milne where you’d expect to find “Molecular Biology : Understanding the Genetic Revolution” by Clark and Pazdernik. In a normal book depository you would speak to one of the staff, they’d apologise for the error, find your book and put the wrong one in the right place.

That doesn’t happen in mine.

I don’t know if it ever will. I’m not entirely sure I want it to be sorted. By this point in my life It’s made me who I am and I don’t think I could handle such a massive change, that I could manage being the person such a change would make me become. But would I be a better person if my mind was not such a screwed up maze of misinformation and misdirection?