I wrote recently about my read for affirmation, for recognition, which does, of course, sound like the worst kind of vanity, but I like to think (and who am I trying to kid?) that it’s not really. Well, perhaps it is. After all, on the surface, it certainly might appear so, if you’ve not been paying attention, but we’re not talking about the surface here, we are beginning to dig deeper, peel away the layers and plunge ourselves up to the armpits into the tarpit of my inner being after my recent confession of depression, and sometimes, whilst it’s bound to get messy, it’s better to get these things straightened out before we get too involved. After all, if we plunge in blindly, armed with all these preconceptions, we are never going to get any closer to the more fundamental truths, are we?
It’s a symptom, yet another symptom, of the growing madness and strangeness that too many years spent too much in your own company can lead to if you don’t have the mental strength and inbuilt self-confidence to handle it properly. The paranoia and distrust and the doubt can seep into your mind and convince you that you can’t, you really can’t, get a handle on how anyone or anything else actually works any more. You persuade yourself that you once used to be likeable enough for people to notice you were there and for them to care enough to listen to you, but now, no matter how much shouting you do, nobody seems to be paying attention and you are simply not making yourself heard, and, by the way, this is not yet another essay on the pointlessness of writing these essays, but I
Sometimes you feel as if you’re screaming soundlessly and life’s juggernaut just keeps on flying by, splashing you with mud as you wallow helplessly in the gutter. This tends to manifest itself in the most disturbing of ways. You put out your tiny little beacons of hope but they are obscured by the densest of fog. You make tentative attempts at talking to the people who have become strangers to you, but the bonhomie seems somehow inappropriate or misplaced and you scuttle away, chastened and brooding on the self-analysis of what went wrong again that time.
You try, instead, to engage with a broader church, to take the time to gather your thoughts and explain yourself at greater length, but it transpires that nobody is truly all that bothered with what you have to say because they don’t know or care who you are, but the lack of affirmation or recognition or understanding of whatever it is that you are trying to explain burns away at your very being, convinces you of your worthlessness and you slink away once more, lick your wounds and try very hard to persuade yourself that it really doesn’t matter, that you’re not trying to explain yourself to others, you’re really only trying to explain yourself to yourself, but, if you’re lucky, someone else might drift by from time-to-time and notice you and your pain and might just hold out a friendly hand and offer you a moment of support and just the tiniest glimmer of hope.
Sometimes they do, and the confidence grows, but then gets snatched cruelly away as the brave new dawn proves to be just as gloomy and dismal as the previous one turned out to be.
Once upon a time I lived in a tiny flat on the outer rim of the inner city. For various complicated reasons that I’ve probably yet to explain fully in this forum (although I’m sure that dark day will come) I was living there alone for quite a number of years. This didn’t bother me too much as I went out on most weekdays and saw something of the world around me, and there were good people living within a relatively walkable distance with whom I could spend some of my free time if the mood took me.
The power and the choice about what to do and who to see in those dark days was mine to control and life rattled along happily enough for a while. However, things started to change. Priorities altered and suddenly the control centre shifted too. Suddenly I was in a situation where my presence was no longer required, or became inconvenient, where the only time the phone ever rang it made sense to answer “Hello Mum!” because nobody else ever called. Or, when they did call, it was at the worst possible moment in my emotional cycle and I would treat them with contempt and they would drift away, eventually and inevitably giving up with their efforts to bother.
I’m not really sure quite what it is that I’m trying to say here today. It’s just another instalment of my new-found attempts at self-analysis in order to try and scrape away at the surface and find another fundamental (and possibly self-indulgent) truth. From time-to-time we all need to feel as if someone gives a damn, but sometimes we also need to spend some time alone. Somehow, over the years, I have been extraordinarily bad at managing that balance and have probably been quite unutterably rude to people who only wanted to extend the hand of friendship, and, whilst I am truly sorry about that, I do genuinely feel that I’m more than paying for it now.
And I still feel as if I fully deserve to.
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