I need to be

I need to be in another place, with another face,

My thought so confused, so mixed and totally abused,

Wrong word, but all rhyme and fit, and says what I feel,

My world around me in words, totally unreal….sometimes.

Why on earth do I feel this way, as if being played,

By someone else’s feelings , so different, so strange,

words, that when I say them never match my thoughts,

My world changed to some other place, totally different……..strange.

And then it’s all explained, in words I didn’t say,

By other people’s understandings , so different, so wrong,

Wrong words, that seem to say it all, in their words,

My world, misconstrued, totally wrong………..so wrong.

My thoughts never quite understood, as if wastingly changed,

To suit others ideas , perfect for their needs, totally absurd,

I give up, a mind misunderstood, Explained in their heads only.

My world, still mine, misinterpreted………alone.

What it feels like to be me.

It’s all around you, but you just can’t see it,

It makes you sweat, but there is no heat,

It’s all consuming, but hidden from view,

Manifesting shaking hands and quaking feet,

It fills your mind, and surges through,

Each bone, fibre ,muscle, each corpuscle,

As it stops your normal functions, dead in their tracks,

A normal day halted, no progress, just stasis.

You try to see what’s really happening,

But the grey mist convolutes, obscures and changes,

Small to huge, inane to important, null to full,

Insignificant to deadly, inane to insane.

And then it’s got you, your senses real,

The lie becomes the truth, the world now changed,

You are in its grasp, Driving you insane,

Changed perspectives will never look the same.

Those around you look in suspended horror,

As you dance around, your hidden master,

Calling the tune , now twisting your mind,

First one way then the other, in total control.

For you are no longer powered by reason,

Logic has been totally removed from your conscious,

Replaced with a rabid master, all consuming,

That cares not a jot about your weird performance.

No it only wants to see your humiliation,

Complete with comedic remonstrations,

Performed by this human individual,

Paralysed, and lost in…….FEAR.

Is there a change in the air?

As many of you will be aware, I suffer from PTSD which affects my memory. My memory problems have directly and indirectly been the cause of problems in my working life and in my normal day to day life for nearly 50 years now. My work performance has decreased markedly over the last ten years, but my performance in nearly every job I have undertaken has been directly affected by my poor memory. My wife and I attended a meeting/consultation yesterday at a Government Health agency whose job it is to screen potential applicants for PiP (Personal independence Payments). After a lengthy question and answer session the guy who was examining me looked at the evidence from Health care professionals gathered over the last 3 or so years and said that he could not see a reason why I should not start receiving this payment. The final decision, sadly, is not his. Some bureaucrat in the Dept of Work and Pensions, or some other Government department will have the final say, so watch this space. Meanwhile my family and I will remain on tenterhooks awaiting the outcome, and inevitably the fate of our future.

Watch this space…..

Last day.

I have decided to close down this blog. Gladly it’s because I have moved into a better place in my head, a place that I would never have reached if it wasn’t, firstly, because you read it, and secondly because I actually wrote it.

Thank you for being there for me. I hope all of your life takes you to a place you really want to be, and that upon reaching it you truly feel at peace. For me, I am sad to say, that will never truly happen, but with luck, and hopefully a lot of divine intervention, I may reach a place where I will feel totally complete. It’s not far, probably just around the next week or so, who knows.

And so I leave you with heartfelt thanks and with a feeling completeness which, if only 90%, is as good as it gets for me.

Take care friend and again thank you.

JR

Peaceful but not in my mind.

The problem with today is that its raining, so that put the mockers on it from the start, but nobody is in the house. Everybody was here over Easter, oh and by the way I know I haven’t said much lately we can get around to that later, and so the house was really quite busy. Its funny my wife and I can be screaming lumps out of each other , but I would rather be doing that with her than having a laugh with anyone else… no it’s true honestly. We didnt do.much to commemorate the death of our Lord and Saviour to be honest, but we were together and thats a lot more than can be said for others.

My swimming has become non existent of late, purely because of my lack of fuel to go to the pool ,secondly because of a creeping malaise that seems to go arm and arm with bad weather, dull days and rain, I hate the rain. And so I am just sitting down everyday doing nothing, and thats why I havent written because I just cant be bothered. Someday soon I will get the bug to do things again, probably when the sun is back again, but until then its just sit here and watch the rain, the gray skys and the telly.

Silence is golden.

Yeah sorry I have not posted for a few days now, it’s the Olympics you see. The Winter Olympics are one of the best events on the TV, so much so I have renewed my subs to Eurosport, just so that I can watch everything over and over again. Seriously though I do love the Winter Olympics I love all sport to be brutally honest, I would watch competitive paint drying if it was on the TV. It’s strange really because I have never been the sporty type, never was good at Rugby or Football, was quite good at cricket , but try getting anywhere with that in late 60’s Scotland. So by the time I was about 16 or 17 I realised that my addiction to sport was going to have to be met from an arm-chair, and the rest is history really.

The one thing that the Olympics teaches us is that success is there if you try hard, that you can achieve much more than you ever thought possible just by working at something. Again this sounds like I am going all positive, but actually ……….eh no. You see as I have said before, I was once the most positive person you will ever meet. But continually failing caused me to loose even the faintest feelings of positivity.

You can probably tell, but I am really down today, I don’t want to share the reason because it is far to personal, and would hurt people I love, it’s also very stupid, but I can’t really do anything about it. Part of the reason I can share with you, it’s the memory of what life was meant to hold for me. This is a returning thought, one I can’t rid myself of. The fact that I have not achieved any of my main goals in life, (bar one which is Marriage and Children, for which I am eternally grateful for). For years all I was told was that I would go to a top School (which I did), that I had a very good brain (which again I did have) and that I would succeed in life (which I didn’t).

When I contracted Meningitis at the age of 9, I had no idea of what was about to happen to me, nor that it would affect my life in so many detrimental ways. The Meningitis I had was a strain that affected my brain. It affected areas of my brain where we lay down new memories. I don’t think ,nor did my parents realise how much this was going to change my future. At school, where I had been doing well, suddenly I wasn’t. I was in the bottom 10% of my year group from that day onwards. I struggled everyday to assimilate knowledge as quickly as others, I just lagged further and further behind. And to make things worse my Mother and Aunt who were previously singing my praises everywhere, were no asking me all the time why was a lad as lucky as I was, who was in a great school, with some of the best teachers around not getting better results, didn’t I realise how lucky I was, that some children would have done anything to be going to a fee-paying school, didn’t I realise the sacrifices people had made to put me in this gifted position.

I am sorry but I have found this blood letting session a bit of a strain, and I think I will end here. I don’t feel any better for spilling it all out really because I know that nothing will ever change the way I feel, and I think that may in itself be the real problem, I can’t find a way of sorting it all out once and for all.

RHS, NHS, RN and PiP

These are abbreviations that have and continue to shape my life.

RHS stands for Royal High School. It’s my alma mater and not only prepared me for life, taught me everything that was needed to get me into the work place. Introduced me to the wonders of History, the written word, Geography, Physics, Mathematics, the Arts , and I do mean the Arts from classical Music, classical Art and the works of the Greek philosophers, I learned basic Latin (Amo , amas ,amat , ammamus, amatis, amat, hope I got that right), I read the poetry of George Mackay Brown (who I hear you ask, just google him) and the works of Shakespeare, I learned how to sing in four part harmony the works of Palestrina while visiting the glorious beauties of Florence. All of these , and so many more were experienced while at this “College of Knowledge”. It was also the place where I met my first met first love, attended the typical School dances of the time (full of Slade, Queen and Supertramp).

In so many ways the RHS was my firm and sound platform for the future, a future that should have been full of happiness and success.

NHS stands for………..no real need to explain really. It’s where I really started my working life. I worked as a Porter, a Ward Orderly and a Care Assistant. These were the most enjoyable jobs in my life. I worked with young and old and really enjoyed every minute, even the bum washing et al. I actually joined the Navy to be a Medical Assistant because I didn’t have the qualifications to become a student Nurse. After 6 months in the Navy I was so scared of failing in my chosen branch, which was one of the hardest branches to succeed in. So I changed my path, and for some stupid reason I became a Radarman. Just one of my many fork in the road moments where I took the wrong turn.

This leads to the next part and main part of my life RN. The Royal Navy was a great place to see the world and experience life to the full, but it was also a place where I really just festered and wasted my time. I mean after 22 years service, where else would you leave one job without really any qualifications you could take into the “real world’. I was quite good at what I did, and it’s funny, where else in the world are you looked down on because you are good at what you do, that’s what happened to me here. I left the RN as an under achiever, and with a lot of baggage.

Finally PiP, Personal Independence Payment. And so here we are in the present day, and now there are no illusions in my life anymore. I am now no longer part of the working force , I am no longer able to help with the financial status of my family. Ok I get a pension from the Navy, and would you believe it because I get that, a pension by the way that I paid for, worked for totally, I am not allowed to claim any benefits, and PiP is my last hope, my last hope to make my family enjoy life , my last hope to feel good about myself again.

So there you have it, from Hero to Zero in 58 years, from “should be, will be” to “has been, nobody”, 58 years to a blink of the eye. Here and now……….to gone for good.

Beat the big C

Ok guys I know this is a bit of a nag but I need you to go to my web page

https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/beat-the-big-c-with-jr

and give generously, thank you.

The new toy.

I love new toys, and this week the new toy is my power washer, a Karcher if you will, don’t know how it’s pronounced but there you go. So armed with my new toy I attacked the patio yesterday, and who would have known there was a brand new sparkling patio underneath. It’s great fun, Power-Washing (is that an activity, if not it should be), the only down side I have found in my new pursuit is that your feet and lower legs become soaked. But, and this is a big but, the feeling of completion and satisfaction you get when you stand back and admire your work is very uplifting. Today I will take on the path in the front garden, I say path but as you can’t really see it says it’s not so much a path as a trail.

The sun is out here today, and what a welcome relief it is to the bleak weather of the last few months. The new year is starting well really, especially now I am back swimming. When you are swimming it’s not really like you are exercising it’s just the monotony that gets you down. As you may or may not no I am hoping to do a sponsored swim during March. I have a web page, well I say I have I don’t really know if it is up and working. https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/beat-the-big-c-with-jr is the site, so if you guys have a look and can’t access it or anything please can you let me know via this page or through Facebook, thanks.

Anyway it’s time to take the toy out into the front garden, let you know tomorrow how it goes. Wow I hear you gasp, look it’s better than my heart bleeding out over the keyboard.

Omg and it’s only midday.

What a bloody morning. Son sleeps in for college so ends up back at the house, the dog gets refused from the Groom room because she has fleas, the dog then throws up in the car on the way home (cleaned car but the smell remains). All in all a bad morning. One of the things I have noticed about bad days, they come along when you least expect them. Everything was actually going well, I was in the changing rooms of the pool after knocking out my daily lengths, I knew I had to take the dog to the Poodle Parlour , but would still have enough time for a coffee after my exertions. Huh , that was when it all started to unravel.

Days have a habit of being ok (most of the time) or downright disheartening, there never seems to be anything in the middle. Is that just how I see things, is it the true manifestation of my Bi-Polar problems, do days actually remain the same and we change them by our actions/reactions to given situations.

I have retired to the bedroom to allow my bad day to hopefully dissipate, and for normality to return to the proceedings. The dog and our new kitten have just joined me, Bonnie still entranced by the mercurial movements of the new kitten who is climbing all over me, licking my ears as she goes.

Oh well maybe a nap will do the trick. In the words of Mark Knopfler, “I like a nap, when it’s crap”, maybe things will be better on the other side of a snatched forty winks. My Mother used to call a small nap during the day ‘forty winks’, I don’t know why, her eyes never blinked/winked when she was asleep. Oh well never mind eh?