SELF HELP

Just over fifteen years ago, the person whom I considered to be my “closest” if not necessarily my “best” friend at that time took their own life. That they chose to do so upon the very day that I, in my infinite wisdom, finally moved out of the room I rented in their house for the very last time is a coincidence that I like to think I’ve come to terms with, although the fact that this sudden emptiness of that home provided one more window of opportunity for the deed to be done does still trouble me.

I don’t mention this today for any other reason other to provide a bit of background information, some “context” if you prefer, for my latest thoughts upon the dark demons that I can so often share within these pages even though I would never ever discuss them with you “face-to-face” as it were.

I have been getting unbearably sad in recent months over things that I can do nothing about. Any sudden brutal death, whether it be in a mass demonstration in a foreign city or closer to home has left me feeling almost ridiculously sad (if that isn’t an oxymoron) in a way that it seldom used to, and even seeing someone handling a human skull in a crime drama can lead to me pondering upon what thoughts and hopes and dreams once occurred to the brain that it once contained. This could be just a symptom of getting older, of course, as I try to come to terms with my own inevitable step into the darkest of abysses, but I am starting to think that some of the darker corners of my past are starting to rear up and haunt me all over again. Nevertheless, the sudden taking away of everything that a person is, and anything they planned to be, when all they did was get up in the morning to get on with an ordinary day, is now starting to regularly strike me as being the worst kind of tragedy, and one which I struggle to come to terms with, and I’ve been beginning to wonder quite why this should be, having once been the most cynical of people.

I think that the greatest mistake that I made after that mind-shattering incident all those years ago was deciding that I knew how best to cope with it, and I shut myself away from it in order to come to terms with that small tragedy instead of  dealing with it in amongst the group of people it most affected. Instead, I chose to hide my own grief away and, because I had been in the process of making that move of about ten miles (although, in real and emotional terms, it really might as well have been a million), I was able to shut myself away and brood over those events and perhaps give them a significance and resonance that otherwise might very well have blown over in time.

Suffice it to say that was pretty much the last time I spent any significant amount of time amongst the particular group of acquaintances that I had grown to know during my years living on the outskirts of the inner city. Oh, I did indeed see some of them again from time to time, but never at any great length and seldom with any real intimacy. Over time I convinced myself that I wasn’t really all that important to any of them and that my only real connection to any of them was through my late, lamented friend, and, without that point of contact, I was no longer part of that crowd and so was very easily allowed to be set adrift with no one to notice my disappearance.

Of course the process of “self help”, that decision that the best person to know how to deal with such matters was myself, was probably not a wise one, but, without any other counsel to guide me, it was the path I chose and I now live with the consequences of that act. I do now think it is significant that since that time, I have found it increasingly difficult to form lasting and meaningful relationships with anyone new, and have also let many of my old acquaintanceships die on the vine as it were. This is mostly, I believe, due to a genuine feeling that it is “safer” to walk a lonely path, because the sense of loss and despair that you feel when one of those friendships is unexpectedly torn away from you is almost too much to bear.

I have become increasingly cautious when it comes to people but also much, much more difficult to get to know. I tend to view much of what the rest of the world regards as “friendship” with a great deal of cynicism and this has led to some very lonely and isolated years which, I will admit, have been mostly self inflicted. Somehow it just seemed easier to lock myself away rather than risking more disappointments and more losses. Whenever you gain something, I seemed to believe, you inevitably lose something as well. In my mind I felt that I’d rather cling on to what I already had rather than risking the chance of losing that, but, as time went on, I seemed to lose everyone anyway. Perhaps they thought that I preferred things that way, or that I had made a choice to avoid everybody, or that this was just my way of dealing with things, although it has become patently clear that my way of dealing with things was not to deal with things, and I’m beginning to suspect that this is about to come back and bite me. After all, once the emotional isolation started to become a habit and the shutters were firmly clamped down to protect me from further hurt, I found it increasingly difficult to get through those boundaries whenever I felt like trying and, because the world tends to move on whether you want it to or not, my “place” in the great scheme of things didn’t seem to exist any more and I had become “surplus to requirements” in the lives of many whom I once knew so very well.

Happily (and thankfully), during these dark years I did manage to successfully build one strong relationship and, perhaps because I did try to put all of my energies into holding on to that one person who has really saved me from my own descent into the abyss, I have neglected far too many others, but there’s no real point in having any regrets about that. What’s done is done and I can’t change any of it, but I am rather glad that I did, at least, make the effort with that one, otherwise, I really dread to think what might have become of me over these past few years.

I find myself writing this on a dark Monday morning in November, possibly not the brightest of moments and one that is almost designed for introspection and examinations of the darkness of the soul. If this was therapy, perhaps this would be seen as some kind of a breakthrough, but sadly, it’s merely yet another introspective blog looking back and wondering about what might have been.