Curved Bowls and Medicine for Melancholy

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Stephen Hawking

I wrote a beautiful story for a challenge Vocal set up in June 2021, that was sad, honest and my favourite current word at the time, authentic. It was called, 'The Day I Did Not Go To Carnival'. It was about me at fourteen, my brother was gravely ill in hospital, this meant my mother was struggling in her job and my father for the first time in our lives was powerless; no longer a superhero. It had been a strange summer where they were both constantly breaking apart. I had just come out of a difficult two years where my best friend had fallen off the top of a carpark and died, I had also been recently arrested for robbing a shop at night.

I had with all the craziness in the world been looking forward to the day the whole town came out for carnival. The plan would be to go with all my school friends. With all the visits into London to St. Mark's Hospital I had barely seen them all summer. One by one I phoned them all; six of them. Individually they all said they could not make any arrangements, I should just go on my own. It did not take a genius to work out I had been cut out. We had done this every year since we were eleven.

I was crushed.

The original story was slightly more dramatic, it had a bit more flair.

I deleted the story.

I have never deleted a story before.

I have chosen not to publish it or even to not finish it, but I have never deleted a story before.

The truth was this story was really messing me up. It was radioactive. Thirty years of successes and failures. Mistakes, pain and self destruction. Betrayals by friends, lovers and family; betrayals by me. All in some strange way led back to the summer of 1992 and some really spiteful behaviour by a few teenage kids. It was only through writing this story I started to realise what a major stepping stone in my life this was.

I had not realised how powerful the implications and waves from that event had affected me. I was by no means an innocent teenage. I was a teenager that carried a lot of pain. I also developed a ruthless independent streak after this, which made me successful but also on occasion brought me shame when I now look back over certain events.

I also started to think about how the other six would have looked at that day none of them knowing how it altered things for me. I have decided two would not even remember it, three would feel slightly guilty especially as they did not know what else had been going on, one would smile in satisfaction. Or maybe not. The truth is the way we see the world is definitely subjective. We translate and rewrite all the significance of the narrative. We enlarge sections for relevance and lessen others to fit our message.

So I lost this last weekend in a funk of self depreciation and negativity. This was frustrating as Friday night for the first time in forever I had friends stay over. I cooked a lovely meal and it was a big success. Then trying to write the Carnival story and having it haunt my dreams; on Saturday the fog descended.

Feeling like a misfit, being totally self conscious and out-of-place, or just plain lost, is part of the human experience, right?

Vocal Social Shock Challenge June 2021

This is pretty much the story of my life. I currently live in Normandy on my own on a massive property. No one speaks English and my French is awful. I sat at a table with friends at a local market this morning. None of them speak English either, I just felt myself tune everything out and stop listening. I was still haunted by all that analysis of the day back when I was fourteen. Here I was sitting with a different six people and my social confusion had returned. Thirty years had passed and here I was lost and adrift again.

Who was to blame?

Vocal.

Now I am not a fan of trigger warnings. I find them scientifically unproven and potentially psychologically problematic.

I do believe in trauma triggers though. A trauma trigger can be brought on by anything. A smell, a piece of music or even a writing challenge. Now I don't blame Vocal. After eighteen months of COVID Lockdown's it has done some decent work in occupying people that could not go out. It helped them in their isolation.

Despite easier, less-expensive, and more accessible interaction with other people, contemporary humans may be the most isolated in history.

Conciliar Post - The Dangers of Isolation

Now this is a pre-COVID quote and I would like to say I do not have any blame to level at Vocal but when isolation is a problem in your life there are pitfalls you can fall down. One of the worse of these is isolated thinking.

Isolated thinking is when your internal narrative and the way you see the world becomes an unbreakable truth that overrides all external influence and logic.

In all these ways of thinking, isolation occurs when personal perspective overwhelms the possibility of finding value in other ways of thinking or learning from other viewpoints.

Conciliar Post - The Dangers of Isolation

So I want to share some of my journey down my very own private rabbit hole, all over the last weekend.

The truth was I got super pissed off trying to make the Carnival story work. It also started a downward spiral for me mentally. There is a word they use in France called morale, How's your morale? How's your spirit? Mine was broken. It was then I hit delete.

With it being Father's Day the next day. I wanted to write a letter to my father who passed away just over three years ago.

I talk about my grief for him here.

I talk about my love for him here.

I started to craft a personal piece based around a wonderful poem by Georgia Harkness.

To My Father

A giant pine, magnificent and old

Stood staunch against the sky and all around

Shed beauty, grace and power.

Within its fold birds safely reared their young.

The velvet ground beneath was gentle,

and the cooling shade gave cheer to passers by.

Its towering arms a landmark stood,

erect and unafraid, as if to say,

“Fear naught from life’s alarms”

It fell one day.

Where it had dauntless stood

was loneliness and void.

But men who passed paid tribute – and said,

“To know this life was good,

It left it’s mark on me. Its work stands fast”.

And so it lives.

Such life no bonds can hold –

This giant pine, magnificent and old.

Georgia Harkness

Just as it was getting going, that isolating voice was back.

"You are stupid, no one cares, no ones listening. Don't you think if they wanted a third story about your father they might have proposed that as a challenge?"

It was true. Vocal was championing 'Boss Mum's' last month. If they wanted to hear about 'Boss Dad's' they would have said. Where on earth did I gain the knowledge that Vocal were counting how many stories I had wrote about my father? But if the voice was talking and you were choosing to listen it must be true.

In twenty four hours after never deleting one story I deleted my second.

That isolating voice, we all have it; It is just about how much we listen to it. This weekend I listened. That voice if you give it power will break you. It is your fear. I had a great story for the 'Boss Mum' Challenge. My mum was amazing. I worshipped her and have no stories currently published to share about her, She has now been gone for twelve years. I never wrote my story because I thought Vocal wanted to hear a women's voice. My personal self doubt dictated what I should or not say about my mother. That made me mad this last weekend.

The problem when you feed monsters is they get fatter. They get fatter and angrier.

I spent a lot of the weekend looking at how important labels are in the world. I tried to work out what my labels were. But first I went through all them labels I had as a kid. We did not have a television in the house until I was seven. I grew up when trainers, shoes were important. I never ever had the right ones. The truth is I was bullied; horrendously. So imagine the worst things that can be said, they were my labels. I learnt to fight back, you can only get punched in the face so often before you think, I can hit back harder than that. I started to beat the bullies. Now there was no 'Back to the Future' film narrative in my life where everyone starts high fiving me at the prom like George McFly. No the words said to my face were then said behind my back. So my imagination and paranoia created worse labels. My teenage isolated voice created the worst labels you could possibly imagine. These labels did not live in my ears but loudly inside my head. An unforgiving repeating mantra.

So I looked at my labels in today's modern changing world I am single, white, Catholic and male.

Mid blip this weekend they all formed into the single label of 'irrelevant', I was fourteen again.

Now you have to remember, I am crashing. I have been there before. It is a symptom of depression. It is a symptom of mental illness. When you are in the centre of the maelstrom you can't see it. The first two labels, have very little meaning to me. I am single through choice. It is a trust thing and another self indulgent Vocal piece way in the future. Also being white has only been important on two occasions in my life, one when I lived in a majority Asian hall of residence at university where I experienced the negative side of racism but was totally worth it for my flatmate Faz, and the other time when I was in a scary situation in The Gambia. Truthfully being white has never been a privilege but has helped on occasion and I still insist all identities have an underclass. Living in the Irish community in 1980s Britain was not pleasant and my father's family is born out of Victorian workhouses. I am proud of both branches.

Being Catholic is for me cultural. My father was a Northern English Protestant my mother a Southern Irish Catholic. This was at the time when bombs were exploding over these differences in distinction in the United Kingdom. They took a lot of flak from within their communities and deserve the pride I have for them.

Now back to my mental collapse this weekend. Being Catholic is an identity. I lost my virginity to a Sikh girl. I have a lot of Muslim friends, Our identities and differences are what brings us together. Talking about how differently we interact in the world has never pulled us apart it has only ever pulled us closer together. Conversation and dialogue must always be encouraged. I had a momentous weekend crisis over not being able to explore religion and faith on Vocal. Vocal made me play Candy Crush for three hours. I hate you for that Vocal. Our identities are what makes us who we are. The root of our identities lie in our faith. That does not mean if I tell a story and mention god the world is going to end. I am Catholic by culture, I do not follow the doctrine but I am proud about everything involved in making up the identity. I should not be silenced in describing my history and culture. You do not create diversity with your left hand while creating censorship with your right hand. All identities must be valid. Changing the stream of flow so some identities are more important then another or some voices should become louder than another is not freedom. It is only more of the same. This for myself was a particularly spectacular meltdown this weekend. This is the isolating voice driving you and pushing your madness in isolation where even your passions and interactions can seem like your enemies. But Vocal you asked us to tell us when we feel lost. Well this was one of the low points this weekend when I felt I was on the outside looking in.

Wow that took longer than I thought. Who thought Catholicism would be valid today?

My final addressing of my meltdown this weekend; the hardest voice shouting at me while I crumbled was about my gender.

Now this is close to my heart. The world is about finger pointing, anger and identity. I truly feel you should be proud of your voice. Shout it from the rooftops, be heard be valid. Protect your labels.

But let me protect mine.

Let me shout my truth.

Statistics from the NHS reveal that "somewhere in the world, a man dies every minute by suicide".

And in the past year, 75 per cent of suicides in the UK were men

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/biggest-killer-men-under-50-2171988

I have personally lost three friends from suicide and know of numerous others. I even witnessed a suicide back in 2000 in Sydney Australia. There is no privilege here and although capable of listing the statistics I am not going to. This is a piece for a competition about social exclusion. This is a piece about my meltdown this weekend through being triggered about a memory from when I was fourteen. I blamed Vocal for my meltdown. My isolating voice told me to do it. That moment I told you about when I was sitting in a café this morning and refused to tune in my French ear and drifted away staring into space, truly snapped me back. I silenced the isolating voice. The voice that makes you doubt. The voice that makes you scared. The voice that makes you angry.

So I am back. This has nothing to do with the patriarchy. This has nothing to do with #metoo. This has to do with your father, your brother, your cousin and your friend. There is a pandemic in the world and it is linked to identity and isolation. The biggest killer of men between 18 and 45 is suicide. We can preach and talk about mental health but it is important to understand everything.

Vocal is in no way responsible for any of this. My finger pointing at Vocal came from my own fragility, my own self doubt.

Vocal does have a community for women.

And it is a fantastic community.

For June they launched another fantastic community I was proud to see.

A lifetime ago I ran a bar in Oxford and was proud to see this arrival.

They top storied this great piece.

Vocal is killing it on displaying diversity of voices and I am proud to be apart of Vocal. I am proud to write here.

But...

No one wants a but....

But June is Men's Mental Health Month. No one will broadcast this because it's label is not important enough and that seriously is the truth. When campaigning against an epidemic publishing platforms have a responsibility.

I wobbled but I am back. You know what? I am going to wobble again. Living on the outside feeling invalid, feeling unheard are things inside your control. Not easy fixes but time can be spent on them. The ugly truth is you have the control to step back. The ugly truth is you can take that moment to choose a different direction. So let me help you to do it.

You can also help.

Notice, listen ask questions, invite and include,

Also validate within context.

Writing this has taken forever but it has cleared my fog. Write about being socially excluded. I initially thought it would be a nightmare. To be honest, too close to home. But it has worked I feel better, genuinely.

Now here is the the real genuine bit.

Isolation and living in your own head can be fatal,

If you are in the UK please visit this phenomenal organisation for immediate help.

If you are in North America connect with these guys

There is help there please seek it. Wobbles and blips are okay but we need to treat our mental health as important as any other aspect of our health. Please never feel you are alone there are more organisations out there reach out and connect.

If you think this message is valid share it get it out there. Please it is so important.

Thank you for reading my story.