it has been over 2 weeks since I last blogged. Yes it is in the Oxford English Dictionary, the source of all things etymological in my coloUrful language:
“…
Blog, v.
Computing.
intr. To write or maintain a weblog. Also: to read or browse through weblogs, esp. habitually
year of entry – 2000: Whole Earth Winter 54/1 To blog is to be part of a community of smart, tech-savvy people who want to be on the forefront of a new literary undertaking
…“
not sure about the habitually any longer, but I guess that I last wrote on the 25 October, 17 days ago, so that is not so bad
I have gotten (terrible word choice Boris, it is actually an adjective & not a verb but stet.) very busy in the interim. This is very good. Very good indeed
today I awoke to this:
this blog was a real lifeline for me. it quite literally & in all actuality saved my life. I became obsessed by this blog, so part of the reason that I pulled back was to do with that fact, as well as the password thing, which as an IT pro actually took me less than 10 minutes to solve once I had put my mind to it (I had to change 3 password on 3 accounts etc etc etc)
this week I have also gone through the UK government’s hateful ATOS Healthcare Ltd process. Bastards. A disgusting & disturbing political attempt to destroy the Social Security system for the sick & disabled in the UK. The Tories stated aim is to reduce the budget by 20% regardless of need. Regardless of need. What a bunch of cynical heartless millionaires, removed from the reality of what it is actually like to exist on the streets of Britain. The weirdest thing is that by making these sweeping draconian cuts, the budget will swell because people will have to pack in low-paid jobs that the State funds because greedy corporates will not pay proper living wages & folks will end up homeless & have to stay in expensive bed & breakfast accommodation
now who’s mad Iain Duncan Smith – shame on you – you are a disgrace for a Scotsman, you neo-Victorian anachronism, throwback, lickspittle, Cameron’s lapdog lackey, boot-licker, arse-licker more like
still your mind Boris, bollocks to all that for now, that’s another story, for another place
52 days ago I was considering killing myself. I hadn’t gotten [sic] as far as thinking about where I’d get the rope from, which bridge, which train or omnibus to jump underneath etc etc etc. I had gotten however to the point of not wanting to be on Gaia, not wanting to exist on this planet, or anywhere else for that matter. I didn’t want to be here. I was sick to death, literally, of what went on inside my mind, how I felt, the way that I thought, how I reacted, how I felt that I was being treated by the world & everything & everyone in it
I felt that I added nothing to the sum of the parts of Humanity
I felt that I indeed subtracted. I was less than useless
& I was useless to myself & to my mother who was dying inside as she saw her only son killing himself slowly & painfully with alcohol & she could do nothing about it for everytime that she tried then he spat it all back biliously in her face
low self-esteem: I had no self-esteem
I hated myself so therefore I had no option but to hate everything else
& I look at the Sunrise & I am filled with hope, like the last little being that came out of Pandora’s Jar
Hope
today I have Hope
& here is my desk as I write right now
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
nothing has really changed
I have simply:
- not taken a drink of ethanolic spirit on a daily basis
- taken my medications at regular times which I now take from a simple daily dispenser (simple things for the complicated) (okay I have missed 2 doses due to genuine errors (& I felt higher that normal during those periods D’oh – I tend to the higher end of the spectrum in any case))
- I have regularised my eating habits
- I have tried to sleep although I still have insomnia (I was tempted to write suffered just now, but it is not suffering, I simply have insomnia at the moment, so I sleep when I am tired & I am getting 5-8 hours daily in 2 shorter bursts which is fine). My bedroom is now only for sleeping & changing my clothes in, nothing else (I am a single man)
- I socialise regularly & have gotten (hahaha) into habit forming external activity patterns
I have found that the only thoughts of alcohol that I have been having are to think that I have not been thinking about drinking alcohol.
previous attempts to stop have involved Alcoholics Anonymous. Well good luck to them, but not for me. I do not believe in any gods, particularly a white Anglo-Saxon Evangelical 1930s-based Christian one, there is no fixed Big Book for me, written effectively in stone, ineluctable, worshiped, false idol. Most of it is plagiarise common sense taken from elsewhere anyway & there is no greater statistical chance of sobering up within AA than without. Show me the stats please
oh, you can’t – thought not. Don’t even publish them anymore
for me, I believe that AA set me back somewhat. But I don’t feel bitter now. I did. I have met many folks in AA who are role models to younger, lees experienced & desperate newcomers as they call them. I have seen these ‘old-timers’ abuse their priviledges & social status within the groups. I personally have been physically threatened by paranoid men who have been trying to bed women members & thought that I was a threat to their palns & schemes. I was not. They were simply ill
I knew a man very well for over 10 years who was 27 years sober when we last met. He chaired AA meetings, sponsored newcomers. He also beat his own kids who lived in fear of him (when he eventually managed to adopt from Social Services), he was constantly angry, he stole in kleptomaniacal fashion from all & sundry including his friends & what got me most is that when we played squash together (not only me by the way), he would occasionally let the ball bounce 3, yes 3, times, then claim the point. Eventually nobody would play him
but he was never wrong
he was a primary school headmaster. He may well still be
alcohol
what a state of affairs
I know that this is not representative. But it is my experience
there are many words of wisdom. I shall take them where I find them & leave indoctrination where I find that too. I’m not getting on my knees for anyone anymore. That’s very unhealthy
well I might do if Nataraja, the Lord Ganesha or the Artemisian Zeus were there in front of me, but, that’s a wee bit unlikely or as Conan Doyle would have put it via Sherlock Holmes:
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”
gods are an impossibility & I will leave that there. Sort yourself out. No-one else is going to do it for you. In my experience
I have an essay to get in for Monday. I have technically until midnight, so I will, of course, get the essay in at 2356hrs. WTF not. This is how I am
I am trying to change the way that I think & operate. but this will take time. In the past, in my previous attempts to get sober & to build a new foundation within which to work out how to live with Bipolar I Disorder (UK NICE guidelines for the management & care of Bipolar Disorder in adults, children & adolescents), I have run at a thousand miles an hour & the consequences have always been to crash headlong into the brick walls of my own self-delusional ego-driven universe
I am taking it a lot more slowly now
as we Greeks say:
σιγά-σιγά
slowly slowly
what’s the hurry, I have pissed most of my adult life away already. What’s a few more months & years, if I have them, in building up a good base
all I have is today in any case
& today I have the feeling that I will not drink alcohol
so that is a successful day
right then. I am off to take some photographs in the what-is-now Winter sunshine. It is coming up to 0947hrs here
It is cold, -2 Celcius, still – not even a breeze, azure sky, The Sun now at 25 degrees above the horizon, a smattering of wispy, elusive jet-stream cirrus to my south west. It’s frosty
I can feel it
I can feel the cold
I can feel the still
I feel still
I feel calm
I am as close to the the Boris that I want to be as I can ever remember
I am alive
again
I always have been, but in some kind of waking, living stupor
that’s no way of being for a human
I’m going to think about George Harrison now, Here Comes The Sun
if you have read this far then I thank you
I wish you as good a day as you can have
Boris
boris the blog 