We don't see the world how it is, we see it how we are

It feels as though the world is so uncertain of itself these days. Like a celebrity who is famous for being famous the social planet feels lacking in introspection but burdened with a glut of self-confidence. Earth feels insecure. 

There has been so much violence reported in the media recently, mainstream and otherwise, that I could be mistaken for believing the world is increasing in aggressive tendencies every day. Rationally I know this not to be true (Steven Pinker's brilliant research on this exact topic, The Better Angels of our Nature, is well worth a read and explains the many ways the world is decreasing in violence) but there have been a number of spontaneous violent incidences recently, particularly in France but also USA where, even in 2016, attention still needs focusing onto racial equality. Amazingly, stupefyingly, in a day of 24 hour information, cameras on smartphones and immediate access to the international internet browsed by my five year old son and 100 year old granddads (moral arguments notwithstanding) many police remain oppressively authoritarian and disproportionally violent towards black people. 

And of course there is trouble elsewhere, where there is always trouble. Aleppo, where some of my refugee clients at work are from, is presently under siege from its dictator and under the international media radar. There is little food, clean water, sanitation and energy for the city and many people are expected to die from starvation, disease and violence in the next month or so in a country already traumatised from a brutal devil. 

Humans. These are humans, the ones suffering and the ones torturing. 

When I moved to Northern Ireland from London fifteen years ago I was shocked by the visceral openness with which acts of aggression were described- the tarring and feathering, the "punishment beatings", the "six-pack" shootings (The details are as horrific as you can imagine). There is a propensity to accept a level of violence as normal here that I am not inured to and don't want to be. Only this morning I discussed summer holidays with work colleagues who stabbed the conversation, freely and without irony, with stories of recent sexual assaults and limb dismemberment. They were unfazed, I was nauseous with the incongruity. I have no evidence that a tectonic societal shift towards discomfort with violence is happening but I hope and believe that it might be. 

There are more guns in America than  people. And it has a level of violent crime to match, without prejudice, that figure. Many other countries with large numbers of guns have very low levels of violent crime- Switzerland, all of Scandinavia, Iceland, etc. There is a disgusting ease with which America dismisses its self-harm and an equally disgusting ease it accepts violence as being stratified in its foundations. Every single day humans are shot and killed in America. Why is it so violent? Of course I have no real idea but I do know I am saddened about its violent cultural influences on the world and itself and I am worried for my sons future and the future of other young people if products like this are accepted as normal-

Holywoods' summer blockbuster this year, the movie of which it is demanded makes hundreds of millions of dollars, the movie which has been designed at the lowest common denominator and aimed at teenagers, the movie advertised on every bus passing through my home city for all to see is called "Suicide Squad". Its subject matter is diametrically opposed to suicide, most of the characters being comic book psychopaths whose primary thoughts are about self-preservation. The main character looks like a rock singer (cool) , the female character is, of course, sexy but child-like (cool) there are superpowers (fire from his hands? Cool). There appears to be no irony and no satire. It could have had a thousand alternative titles. 

We barely need not ask ourselves why young people regularly shoot other young people to death in a culture that beautifies conflict. 

I am not so ignorant or niaive that I believe there to be binary explanations for cruelty ("it's the media, it's the right-wingers, it's video games"). I have read research providing evidence that the world is getting more peaceful, that movies, games and heavy metal do not make people violent, that having guns does not necessarily mean more murders are committed. I know all these myths have been disproved again and again and still they persist. But I worry that a continuous feed of negative information can act as fuel, if not validation, for anti-social behaviour. 

I am making no grand statements, I am only sharing how I feel. It is the nature of depression, maybe it is the nature of grief, maybe it is just natural. I put so much psychic effort into maintaining a sense of wellness and trying to work through my grief that I tire at times. I then become too affected by perceived slights, injustice and cruelty. 

It doesn't last, it isn't my default. And then I return to the work of trying to be normal. 

"We don't see the world how it is, we see the world how we are" -Anais Nin

Recent thoughts

Father's Day 

It was recently Father' s Day. I was given a lie-in (we take turns at the weekend) and Tom made me the most perfect, beautiful card any son has ever given his father in the full history of ridiculous tradition. Maybe this wasn't the best card ever but the jolt in my heart from being given the card is an unexplainable joy understood by other loving and loved fathers. I received one card fewer than I wanted. 

Ageing

I have jogged to and from work recently, 14k each way. I also cycle in and out when I can and when the weather is kind. I can't afford a sports car and was warned off motorbikes after a bone crunching crash 14 years ago so I ride bicycles. I don't wear Lycra, I don't ride bikes with drop handlebars and I only ride bakes that are customised or bespoke hand-built (by me). I am proud to actively avoid the MAMIL label (Middle Aged Man In Lycra). 

I recently got an unusually positioned body piercing (septum), my first since youth, and a prominently placed but delicate tattoo, my first since youth. 

I have taken a new young worker under my wing. She reminds me of myself at her age- hopeful, fiercely inclusive, idealistic, a constructive agitator- and is only a few years older than Ruby would be now. 

I avoid bread, rice, pasta and potatoes, I eat no meat, I try to include chia seeds in every meal. I refuse all but the best coffee and rate pink gin as the pinnacle of alcoholic sophistication. 

I buy jazz records and have restarted a love affair with my turntable. 

I wear a cap and shorts and trainers. This has been my uniform of choice for many years but now, at 42, I know how ridiculous I look. I realised that the over couloured trainers I collect- one of my few habits- are worn only by young women along with equally sporty clothing or by middle-aged men who fool themselves they get away with it because they are being lightly ironic. 

Silences

The silence of being together with someone I love- where noise is an unnecessary obstacle to connection. The silence can be still and deep like a dark sea when mutually agreed abatement provides a shared calmnes. Or it can be dynamic and clattering like a trout-filled stream, where a breath is slightly deeper than usual or an arm is resting upturned, taut not limp. The silence speaks to us, it is of itself, the third member of our group. 

The silence of the studious office, the necessary silence of concentration and where productivity is a result of obvious focus. Every hour or two my thoughts suddenly break free, very suddenly and without warning, to utterly unconnected ideas, often Ruby. The dissonance between the professional and the intensely private thoughts can be jarring but then I realise, of course, this is the regular unpredictability of grief. And it should come as no surprise, but always does, that such apparently opposite cognitive functions- the professional and the personal- can occur almost simultaneously. 

The discomforting silence of other people attempting to recognise my grief and empathise. At times when I am more fragile they are surely well meant but rarely sound platitudinous. 

The silence of being alone which is an unhurried but considered quiet. This silence is always welcome and, increasingly as I age, useful. 

Rediscovering photography

I have recently rediscovered my love of photography and bought a decent Canon digital SLR. A few photos here. 

Instagram.com/bigbendyben 

Prince

I doubt I will write much over the following few weeks. I am fatigued through simply coping with grief, it is the third anniversary of Ruby's death in two weeks. In addition I am very concerned about a friend who has cancer and is undergoing aggressive chemotherapy. 

I have also been affected by the death of Prince, my favourite musician throughout my life and the only celebrity I have cried about when he died a few days ago. He was the first musician I ever really loved, he was always playing on the stereo through my formative years, he was there through my first kiss, my first girlfriend (and every one since), when I was a spotty, fat, bullied teenager he was the one musician who let me know I was right. I was right even though I felt weird and sometimes disconnected and an outsider. He wasn't androgynous, he didn't have a brand of studied playfulness around gender and sexual stereotypes like many other musicians but instead he was introspective in his exploration and was encouraging others to do the same. I understood this. He gave me permission to appreciate boundaries as being arbitrary and showed that borders always need pressure for positive change. He sang about AIDS and safe-sex when I was starting relationships, he sang about hip-hop, the Internet, the destructive drugs of the day and the impotence of international politicians compared to the extraordinary energy and love between normal people, worldwide, irrespective of supposed differences. He sang about pure and simple fun. He stood for many things that I stand for- he wanted to be funky, to be silly, to be supportive and loving and to be kind to everyone, friends and strangers alike. Prince was there when I needed to feel seductive, when I had a broken heart, when I felt alone, when I was happy too. 

I have played Prince to help me through my grief as Ruby was also a fan. She and I would play "Raspberry Beret" driving the car, singing as loud as we could. We would dance in the kitchen to "Housequake" or "Kiss", perfectly funky pop classics. 

I am thinking about Prince for hours each day, I am revisiting his music, I have been watching his films and documentaries on TV, I have been talking and talking about him to my wife, my friends, my work colleagues. I am, in truth, grieving for him. Slightly. But genuinely. 

The deepest reason I am sad though is that his death has made me aware that there will never be another musician in my life who will mean as much as him. No other musician will ever be able to say the things he said at the times he said it.

Musically, my life is only travelling downhill from here and any pleasure I get from music from now on will be for reasons other than a deep personal connection. 

This is my Elvis or Lennon moment, the events that hugely affect the generation above me (although I was only four years old when Elvis died I remember my mum being very upset- she still talks affectionately about him and always will). But at least I can say I was alive at a time when Prince was on Earth with the same pride as when Mozart was here or Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davis. 

And I have the music and the memories. 

Anhedonia

In three weeks it will be the three year anniversary of Rubys death. 

I had planned to write an entry about Aniais Nin's expectation of writers to express things that non-writers cannot. She wrote about the duty of a writer to say the unsayable or the unsaid and I was initially hoping to expand on this idea with relation to my own experiences- navigating my way through a fortunately rare type of grief and hoping to express some of how I feel and think and what I have become. Then I realised I wouldn't be able to write about this hideous capability because I am struggling to keep upright and to keep moving forward. In fact I am struggling just to be normal these days. 

Then the final realisation revealed itself to me tonight- of course I can write about things other people don't know about including those struggles and the sheer psychic effort necessary to stay afloat. If I am struggling at the moment I should make an effort to communicate this struggle. 

I have finite cognitive capabilities. Maybe this is normal, maybe I am particularly witless or limited by poor genes or I ignored my fancy education due to bullying. Whatever the reason I am often torn by the dissonance of knowing that my intense curiosity is only matched by an awareness of the limits of my understanding. 

Recently I have been unable to enjoy anything. This lack of pleasure ("anhedonia" to psychiatrists) is primarily indicative of clinical depression but also, of course, grief. It isn't persistent or even consistent and it takes hold of me only at times I have to put particular work into maintaining an even keel when I have to labour towards normality. And, my god, the effort. At times like these it takes all my reasoning to appear acceptable to others around me who rely on me and look to me. I have to be conciously aware of each sentence I say, my body language, the nuances of my communication to my colleagues, my friends, my family, my patients.  I have to prioritise my energy focusing on my external life to the detriment of own joys and pleasures. There is nothing altruistic about this, I do not do this purposely for the good of others but it is simple self-preservation. As long as my shells' integrity is maintained the internal mess can reorganise, recover. 

Last weekend I received a book and a record I had waited weeks to arrive from USA. I also bought a fancy new digital SLR camera as I had been suspecting for a few years that my teenage passion for photography had been reignited. Claire and I were also looking at each other in a way we hadn't for a long time, as if we were young again, and my son Tom was regularly calling my name. All was well. I should have been comfortable, maybe content, maybe even happy at times. Instead my mood was flat and I found it a great effort to become interested in anything. Anhedonia. 

I am lucky in many ways, I know that I am. I do know this and regularly appreciate it. One of the many ways I am lucky is that I have an awareness that most shaded areas of my life will have light again. I know my shadows will lift and the breeze will blow away the clouds covering the sun. I will experience pleasure again. 

I will read my book, the one I waited weeks for. I will have hours and hours of pleasure listening to my greatly desired Count Basie record imported from USA under strong recommendation from Jazzy John, a friend who has forgotten more about jazz than I'll ever know. I will get pleasure concentrating on technical aspects of shutter speeds and lens apertures and ISO film sensitivity of my new camera and, of course, the almost spiritual bliss I get from photographic beauty. I will look at Claire again that way. And I will get get that innate paternal thrill from hearing my son say "daddy". 

So what do I do? As always with my grief I have to put the hours in. I have to navigate. So I work work work. I consider, I talk, I run, I look after myself. I put effort into enjoying my own company. I have a little bit of good gin, good coffee, good food. I prioritise strictly, I say no. I wait. I am formulaic when necessary, I improvise when necessary.

I remind myself that this is a natural long-term variation in my mood and that it will leave me soon. The occasional drudgery of simple existence can have a high psychic price of emotional exhaustion, relational distance and anhedonia. But it will pass. 

Inseparable love and grief

The unique and exquisite pain of grief for my daughter cannot be separated from the purity of my parental love for her. I think of Ruby and my body warms with the same deep satisfaction that a parent gets from feeding their offspring- a prehistoric, hard-wired, genetically embedded reminder of supporting the survival of my genes (after all, this is what Darwin really meant by "survival of the fittest"- survival of the fittest genes). I think of Ruby and I know the tightly coiled DNA double helix inside the nucleus of every cell in my body is unflinchingly and without fuss programmed to assist with performing the single most basic function any parents must do- to care for my children. 

There is no other reason, if there are any reasons, to exist. My heart, my soul, clarifies the bare facts- what else is life? What else am I for if not to protect my offspring? Why am I, if not for them? 

And assimilated into this learnt benevolence like foundational rock strata of alternating textures is my grief. Sometimes it is sharp and piercing like a glass shard, sometimes it grinds like a huge boulder slowly rolling over wet cement, sometimes it dully thuds like a vertical rock slab falling over onto mud. My grief is always there stratified with the sheer joy of remembrance. 

I can't recall any memory of Ruby without knowing she isn't there and I can't look into my grief without recalling memories of her. 

I will always carry her life in me. I will always be cut through by her death. I will always have her voice in my ears. I will always have her absence. Always I will know her hair against my cheek. Always I will know I won't feel her hair on my cheek. 

Always there will be abstract reminders- the scuff on a strangers' shoe, the curve of a colleagues' shoulder, the "daddy" shouted outside my office window, my sons' laugh-  that will never ever go away. I will always have to have awareness of my loss but also awareness that I once knew Ruby. 

Fleetingly, for only eleven beautiful and joyous years I was the luckiest father in the world- I was allowed the privilege of being Ruby' dad. I wasn't just allowed to know her-  a prize to be celebrated for life- I was actually related to her. This is a triumph over any loss. 

You don't know what wars are going on down there

I need to be constantly aware of my prejudices. Many years ago I used to look at strangers and make ill-informed decisions about their lives and their character and about how I should react to them. I guessed that they might be ignorant of the deeper explanations in life, that they did not consider what I thought were "important things", that they lived an easy and blissful life probably free from serious stress. 

In the last twenty years working in mental health and nursing I have had this ridiculous idea destroyed about the ease of others' existence. I can make absolutely no accurate judgement about anyone's experiences and character from how they look and how they hold themselves. 

I once met a man who was lined up with eighteen of his relatives and were sprayed with machine-gun fire until all of them were presumed dead. He was the only survivor and lost his father, two brothers and uncles and cousins. I once met a man who was forced to watch his parents being killed with machetes. They were then cooked and he was forced, along with his younger sister, to eat them. I once met a brother and sister who, as teenagers, were gathered in a room with more than thirty family members. Half the room were chosen at random and taken outside to die. The remaining half including the two I met were then forced, on pain of torture, to shoot and kill their relatives outside. 

I have met countless people- just normal humans like you and I- who have been dragged into extraordinary situations experiencing immense loss, forced complicity in trauma, psychic pain and monstrous degradation.

A commonality to almost all my patients is their, and immodestly therefore my, natural humanity. Most people are forthright, stand straight, are receptive and warm, have a flexibility in their potential for growth, have compassion and empathy. I believe these are universal human traits that can not be broken by any oppressive force, that we are hard-wired to make loving connections with others. There are many things I have learnt from those I have met and I aim to present myself with the integrity and grace that many of them naturally express. It is a goal I doubt I will ever fully achieve but I commit to the endeavour because many of my patients are role-models.

I once read a story about the relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein (a philosopher who lost three of his brothers to suicide) and his sister Hermine. Hermine asked him why he was often so sombre and uncommunicative. He replied that she reminded him of someone looking through a closed window at a man walking down the street bent over and seemingly frail. She doesn't realise the man is struggling to stay upright against a strong wind threatening to whisk his feet from under him. 

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. 

You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Miller Williams, poet