When I was in my early twenties, I expected the universe of myself and wouldn’t be happy unless I met those expectations. I was going to be a world renowned author, one who would innovate on storytelling in a manner which would heighten people’s ability to understand other perspectives and potentially lead to world peace!
I wish I was kidding.
I would also only be happy if I was in a loving relationship with another human being, who would of course provide validation for my existence and solve me. One needs only a swift glance at my track record to see that I have inevitably had to make do. Oh, that old life lesson about needing to love yourself before you can love another? Entirely true. I took the long road to that little realisation.
These last few years, I’ve come to realise that success and happiness aren’t mutually exclusive. I’ve probably even talked about it a few times. Writing about life like some learned hermit is something of a habit of mine, I’m sure you’ve noticed. Today, I’d like to just lay out a few of the things which bring happiness to my quiant little life.
Hyperfixations! Usually geeky. Say, Spider-Man has sixty years worth of comics, what does that even look like from beginning to end? What MMO have I not tried yet? I never cared about Star Trek, shall I binge the entire franchise? Hey, how did England start, anyway? The Wheel of Time is an insanely long read, that’d take me years – better get started! What were the Romans like? Ooh, this one YouTuber decided to play OldSchool RuneScape without leaving a single path in the game, I’m going to binge that entire series. Wait, every Final Fantasy is its own universe? What are ALL of them like?
And so on and so forth. On and on it goes. The endless cycle of curiosity, discovery, and distraction repeats ad infinitum. And you know what? It’s bloody brilliant. It’s also likely a product of some neurodivergent trait or another, what with the single-minded obsession with which I dive down these rabbitholes, but if that ain’t normal I’m happy to be weird. If this is the trade-off for being unable to form meaningful human relationships (capital R), I’ll just find happiness in my fourth rewatch of Doctor Who and the subsequent rewatch podcast I make alongside it, thanks.
(Yes okay I’ll also try the human relationships thing, I’m WORKING ON THAT.)
Speaking of creating – CREATING! Christ. For a time after uni, I stopped pretty much all creative endeavours in what can only be described as a loss of meaning in life. No, not in a dangerous mental health kind of a way, but in a… forgetting who I am kind of a way. It wasn’t until my Nan passed, and I was inspired when hearing about her life that I took up the crafts once again. And blimey, I haven’t stopped since. Let me tell you, nothing quite hits like pouring your being into a creative endeavour and seeing it resonate with someone. I mean, I have a little trouble accepting praise for my written works, we have some stuff to work through there, but when my YouTube videos get big views or lovely comments, that’s a metric my brain can apparently convert into tingly sensations.
Speaking of my YouTube content, with yet another smooth-as-butter transition, making people laugh! I grew up with a severe lack of confidence, but even then I loved making my friends laugh. As I’ve grown and gained more self confidence, humour has become my foot-in-the-door for making new connections. And it’s not like I stand in front of a mirror and practice making jokes. It’s more of a subconscious effort of establishing shared ground with someone and knowing what makes them laugh. Is it weird to analyse that as a skill? Everyone does it. I’m just chuffed that I can do it too. I made an entire Discord server laugh the other day and it made me feel like a proper capable and loveable human being.
Obviously, family and friends. I say obviously, but I am extremely lucky in this department. I won’t go on about it for too long because they’ll all just get big heads and everyone else will skip this section. Love makes people happy? WOW HE’S SOLVED THE HUMAN CONDITION!
And, not to beat on this drum at every opportunity, but being bisexual and being out about it and just knowing that part of my identity. Before I fully realised I was bi I assumed being queer would be difficult, would make me somehow “other”, would make me unlike myself etc etc. Turns out that accepting who you are is a pretty euphoric process, and helps the self confidence thing too. Hurrah!
You know, now that we’re approaching the end of this blog post I realise it’s been a pretty shit guide on how to be happy. All I’ve done is tell you what makes me happy. That might not make you happy at all! But to recap, I’ve found happiness in unabashedly pursuing my passions, being creative without requiring success from myself, developing the confidence to make people laugh and form connections with them in doing so, and… you know what? Sometimes it’s just spending your day off doing absolutely nothing but eating comfort food and doing comfort things.
Does this mean Kristian is super happy and all his problems are solved forever? NO! I call into question whether anyone has ever just been completely happy and fulfilled. There’s always some unsolved problem. For me, there’s quite a few of them. But I wanted to write this blog post in response to a younger Kristian’s demands from life. I had impossible expectations from myself and was incredibly hard on myself for falling short of them. But had I demanded what I wanted for myself from anyone else I’d have been considered cruel and outright insane.
This has been an excercise in self-affirmation, but hopefully the message has gotten across to someone, somewhere, who needs it. You’ve heard it before, but try hearing it again: You are enough. Embrace the things which make you happy. Surround yourself with love. And laugh hard.
Musings
Words Once Unspoken
Content Warning: This post contains extensive discussion about grief, depression, and contains mentions of suicide.
So, as has been mentioned on this blog before, my mother died when I was ten years old. It’s a bit of an abrupt gut-punch of a start to this blog post, but as I’ve found many times throughout life, there’s never really a painless way to bring it up. But bring it up I shall, because today I want to talk about my journey from that moment onward, throughout my teenage years, and how that affected me going forward.
Why? Because I’m a chronic oversharer? Maybe. But I’ve found myself thinking about my early teenage years a lot over the past few weeks, and applying what I know now to my mental state back then. And maybe in sharing my journey here, someone may find some use out of it. Plus, looking back on the completed post now, I realise that I’m not sure many people understand what I went through as a teenager. I’m not sure I truly did!
So, I’m ten years old, and my mum has just died. Life changing stuff. But it’s not really information that’s possible to absorb right now. It’s something I’m dreadfully aware of, but I feel guilty for taking time out of school because for the most part, I feel strangely normal. It may sound brutal, but at the time I’m telling myself that the only change to my life is that I never get to see my mum ever again, right? That’s sad, that sucks, I loved my mum to pieces. But I’ve turned a complex four dimensional traumatic loss into a 2D problem. My most immediate concerns are the bleak atmosphere which now surrounds us as a family. Oh, and for a good year I’m on standby to give anyone who badmouths my mother a black eye. Nobody did, of course, but that defensive aggression was there.
I don’t have a lot of memories from that period (I’d say due to time but I remember this part of my life being a little hazy in the years immediately after.) I have vague memories of mum’s funeral, where I was too numb to cry. This’ll be important later on. My throat got real tight and my mouth got real dry, but I felt a deep disconnect between these physical reactions and my numb emotional state. If I were to take a guess at psychology I’d say this was either the cause or beginning of a lifelong (so far) problem. I’m still surprised by the physical emotional reactions my body has to this day. But for the next ten years at least, I very rarely cry, that’s the point here.
Something I don’t really talk about too much is the misfortune we had with pets in the immediate years afterwards. I cried when our dog Tiffany died, and my dad told me that was probably everything coming out then, but I wasn’t convinced, and to be honest, I’m still not. If anything, this caused me more concern over my inability to cry for my mum. I’d cry over the dog but not her? What did that say about me? Anyway, we also adopted rabbits and guinea pigs which didn’t last long for various health reasons or other misfortunes. We treated them perfectly well, but it began to feel like death had cursed our family.
Again, I really don’t remember too much about the immediate two or so years after my mum died, but I should probably add that it wouldn’t have been all doom and gloom. My numbness came paired with the ability to compartmentalise the grieving part of myself with the usual ten year old kid part of myself, and only when looking back now can I understand that this duality of self contributed to a lot of my developing worldview and mindstate going forwards. Hell, one of my mum’s friends later told me that at her very wake, I spent a lot of it enthusiastically telling her all about the Nintendo Wii, which must have just been announced. I was a kid who was getting by convincing himself that the world was still normal, and acting accordingly.
I remember having a lot of anxiety about starting secondary school. Probably the normal stuff, but as I suffer so much with anxiety now I do wonder. Those thoughts patterns feel awfully familiar. Catastrophising about change, fearing the unknown. What if nobody likes me, what if I’m bullied, what if I get lost between lessons? But hey, I survived. I remember being sapient enough about time and change that I tried to commit much of my first day to memory, as I knew it’d be something I looked back on and reminisced on later in life. I’d become highly aware of how time could erode memory and transform normality.
Anyway, new school, new friends. I spent a lot of time feeling like I had some sort of other knowledge. That mostly manifested as me feeling “wiser” than the other kids, which would be absurd to anyone who knew me at the time because I was outwardly very immature and hyperactive, like many other twelve year olds. I didn’t spend school moping; not yet, anyway. I spent it forming a group of friends who’d mostly go on to leave by the end of the school year.
Inwardly, I’d dramatise my “duality”, though I wouldn’t think about it in quite that sense yet. I’d replay in my head ordinary conversations with a different tone. Phrases of happenstance could become moments of deep importance. And here’s the thing: I still have no idea how much of this behaviour was normal for a kid my age, and how much of it was influenced by my “unique” worldview. This is important, I realise now. I had no idea what normal was. I had no idea how much of me would have been me if my mum was still alive. I still don’t.
(I would eventually gain enough self awareness to realise that any other kid in school could be hiding just as much trauma as I was, but it took a bit.)
To add to my emotional plate, I’d developed quite a crush, one which would end up in us going out for two weeks before she moved away at the start of the summer holidays. We’re still friends, so there’s a chance she’s reading this, and if she is I’d like to say that whatever came next wasn’t your fault!
I mention it here because for the first time, I’m correlating these two very different types of loss under one word. My then-girlfriend moving away just as we finally got together did have a profound effect on my mental health. This type of loss was one I could digest, and so for the first time I fully felt the sting of missing someone. This wasn’t a pain I was too numb to recognise. It was a “normal” growing experience, perhaps twisted a little out of shape by my past experiences.
I fell into what I would now consider to be undiagnosed depression. I maintained that aforementioned “duality”, but for the first time my friends saw the cracks. Some days I’d be almost completely unresponsive, spending lessons with my head in my arms (when allowed), wandering off at lunch breaks. It wasn’t all about the girlfriend moving away, which I of course got over in time; I became obsessed with the intangibility of this generalised awful feeling I was having. I never became suicidal, thankfully, but I would dedicate many thoughts to what my funeral would look like, how I could die in an accident, what music would play at the service, that sort of thing.
I didn’t understand what was happening in my brain so as much as I dramatised my own life in my thoughts, I also beat myself up for being overly dramatic. I called myself an attention seeker for being hyperactive, and developed a very low opinion of myself. And, crucially, I didn’t tell anyone in my life how I was feeling at the time. I’d lose entire evenings to feeling depressed, not that I knew to even think of it that way at the time. And I spent the entire time thinking I was just being overly dramatic, punishing myself for feeling bad.
It’s not until I put those words down that I realise how bleak it sounds, so let me add this: Despite the pervasive depression in my life at the time, some pretty amazing stuff also happened. I met my step family, who I love dearly, and had many fantastic days even with this headspace I’d sink into. And I hid that shit, by the way. If anyone’s wondering, I was ashamed of it. If I was sulking sullenly in my room and somebody knocked, I’d perk up and pretend I was fine before they came in.
Importantly, it doesn’t make any of the joy or happiness I expressed false at all. The thing that confused me so much about how I was feeling is that the smiles weren’t fake, they were genuine. It was possible for me to have a really good day and a really bad night, and both halves of my day were as true as each other.
I hit another pretty rough patch when I was sixteen. An online friend of mine who I didn’t know too well chose to end his own life, and this cut through me in ways I didn’t understand. If I hadn’t known him so well, why did I feel so much grief over his passing? Compounding on this, some of my closest friends were going through their own mental health crises, and in my haste to help them I began obsessing over them following in my online friend’s footsteps. This was just about as much depression and anxiety as I’ve ever felt all at once; my grades slipped, my behaviour became extremely irrational, and after months of masking my pain I finally broke down in front of my parents.
I lay this all bare now because I finally start to see a pattern. Besides just understanding anxiety and depression a lot better now, I can also see how experiencing loss at such a young age formed my response to loss and pain going forwards.
This is all the distant past now. I’d like you to know that while I still deal with anxiety every day, I’m fairly confident in saying I haven’t felt depressed in a decent while. I’ve had amazing support from my family and friends, and I’m actually due for my first therapy session next week. I’m generally in a pretty good place for me! But I wanted to share my adolescent experiences, and how things which all felt so intangible and indefinable back then were actually always linked together and quantifiable.
And to give a clear shining message: I got better. In my darkest moments I convinced myself that I didn’t want to feel better because I didn’t know who I was without the pain. But it turns out that it wasn’t the pain that defined me. And as I learn how to deal with it now, I find that I’m still myself. I just spend less time paralysed by my own brain.
One last thing, although it’s a little personal. I mentioned my mum a lot and how I digested her passing by compartmentalising what it meant. But a few years ago I think I did finally confront the “4D version” of events by recontextualising things from an adult point of view. Instead of just considering my life without her in it, I considered her life and how it ended too early, and the world without her in it. And on the way home from work at 12am, I sat in a bus shelter and had a good cry.
If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. I hope it helped you in some way, but if not, that’s fine too. This was mostly for me.
A Fateful Discovery
Audio version coming soon (I wrote this late).
Names are funny things. You can grow so used to them that you stop hearing them for what they are and just associate them with who or what they represent.
For instance, my middle name, Tadhg, is representative of my Irish heritage. I’m a quarter Irish on my mother’s side, and until today, it’s only ever come up as an interesting tidbit, and a “guess how you spell it” party game. (It’s pronounced like “tiger” without the r, by the way.) But today, when discussing it with a friend, she said, “I wonder what that means?”
Well, according to my dad, they picked Tadhg because it was listed as an Irish version of Timothy, which as it turns out isn’t strictly true but Wikipedia was harder to come by in the nineties. Anyway, they liked Timothy, they wanted Irish heritage in my name, bish bash bosh there’s your birth ceritifcate.
Only… looking into it now, the deeper meaning behind the name Tadhg is actually “poet, philosopher, or story-teller.”
In other words, I’ve been a writer for my entire life, and I’m just now learning that story telling is my literal middle name. That’s some prophecy shit right there!
In all seriousness, this discovery does hold a fairly special meaning to me. I know that naming me my future profession was more of a cosmic coincidence than anything, but all the same, it makes me feel that bit closer to my mum. I started writing early enough in life that she got to see my spark for it, and given that Tadhg is an homage to her side of the family and that my love for her and my nan is what inspires me to keep creating, this all feels like a poetically inspired gift from fate.
How’s that for a hug from beyond?
Twitter’s Dead, And That Sucks
Elon Musk, in his infinite wealth I mean wisdom, has decided that non-paying Twitter users are only allowed to view 600 tweets per day. Hell, even paying Twitter users can only see 6000 tweets per day, which is also not nearly enough. This effectively kills Twitter.
We’re supposed to say, good riddance! That solves that! That’s one less distraction for my day! Or some variance of these words. Because that’s sticking it to the man. Good! I didn’t want your stupid website anyway, billionaire! And maybe some people legitimately feel this way. But I don’t. Well, apart from directing ire at the idiot billionaire, that is.
I joined Twitter nearly fifteen years ago, at the age of 13, which means I’ve been using the site for over half of my life. And as an introvert, it’s become my favourite way to keep up with my friends and people I admire. People often talk about what a toxic cesspit Twitter is, but it turns out that if you unfollow news sites and brands and toxic people, mute a bunch of depressing words, and block any assholes you come across, you can – could – make that site a far more pleasant experience. For me, Twitter is not this toxic cesspit which I’m finally free from being chained to. It’s a social media feed full of people I like talking to each other about things we all like. It’s been one of my primary ways of socialising for a good while now.
So for some idiot billionaire to come and take that away for idiot billionaire reasons is actually quite a blow. I’m not going to pretend to celebrate. It sucks! I already feel cut off from people who’s thoughts I enjoy reading on a daily basis. There’s other platforms but the vibe is different with every single one. YouTube and Twitch are less of an open two-way channel. Instagram is less immediate, or thought-focused. Facebook is… Facebook. And there’s no unified Twitter alternative that we’ve all decided to migrate to without incident. Twitter is a legitimate form of communication that an idiot billionaire has just stamped all over, and its absence is going to affect the way I perceive the world moving forwards.
Hopefully this post ages like milk and the change is reverted. But let’s be real, unless he’s even dumber than we all thought, he’s killing Twitter on purpose at this point.
My Late Twenties Confidence
In some aspects, I’ve quite often felt like an older man in a younger person’s body. Perhaps it comes from learning one of the harsher realities of life from an early age. Or maybe it comes from developing an introspective mind. Or perhaps I’m just an idiot who thinks too much. But the fact of the matter is, I often catch myself ruminating on life as if I’m a scant few years from the end of it, rather than a fistful of decades.
On my walk home from work tonight I was thinking about human personality as a spectrum from “thinker” to “doer”. Now, I’m not saying that thinkers don’t do or that doers don’t think. Maybe most people exist in a healthy middle ground of both. But I’m certainly a little too far along the thinker end of this spectrum that I’ve just made up. I think myself in circles until I’m too dizzy to do.
That being said, I came here today to write about self acceptance. My reason for having such an introspective evening is that I was thinking back on my twenties so far, and comparing them against the rest of my life. I’ve still two years to live of this decade, but so far it’s looking like the general theme of this chapter in my life has been self acceptance. I hear a lot about how you spend your twenties figuring yourself out, and I think that comes from leaving education and leaving the established social routine for the first time in life. Who are we outside of school, outside of teenage society, with its hierarchy of popularity established through pre-empathetic judgements?
For me, I spent a lot of time in school being picked on and a lot of time afterwards telling myself I hadn’t had it that bad. But the more I age, the more I consider how I react to certain situations, the more I realise how damaging of an effect it is to be constantly told you’re not funny, not worth listening to, and being spun into the butt of every joke. As an adult, that has manifested in me as social anxiety, and paranoia that people are purposefully ignoring me if they don’t respond to messages. Even when my rational brain is able to assess my feelings as irrational and realise where they come from, it’s still a struggle to deal with.
The further away I get from school, though, the more confident I grow. There’s always that small, nagging part of me that worries about being the whelp of the social group, or gets irrationally defensive about “losing” a snark-off. But slowly over the years, I’ve come to realise that I’m quite universally liked at work. I’m not the weird outcast kid who makes jokes that need vetting from the popular kids before people are allowed to laugh anymore. And with that kind of power, the jerks who do come along hold less sway over me by being jerks. Suddenly, I’m not the weirdo for having my own hobbies and brand of humour, they’re the weirdo for taking exception to it.
Well… most of the time, at least. Turns out I’ve been cursed with a feeble human brain, and lessons learned aren’t always applied, depending on the day. Generally speaking, though, I feel like I’m changing as a person as I approach my thirties, becoming more myself than ever before. I have my limits, but those boundaries are moving and I’m feeling happier for the breathing room.
Before you head off, a quick note. Due to the creation of my writing blog, Excepts From A Multifarious Mind, I have also spun up a YouTube channel named Kritigri Writes. There, I post audio versions of my short stories. I’m now thinking of posting audio versions of these blogs posts there, too, so go subscribe if you haven’t already! There’s no audio version of this blog post at the time of publication as it’s currently 1am, but keep an eye out.
It Took Me 25 Years To Realise I’m Bi
For a quarter of a century, I was fairly convinced that I was squarely in the heterosexual camp. I mean, sure, I’d flirt with my male friends all the time, but that was just jokes. Sometimes I’d give the idea due consideration, but then I’d measure my personality against those of the sterotypically gay men I’d see in media and the like, and that shoe just didn’t fit for me. And whilst I’ve always been accepting of people from all walks of life, some awkward part of me always backed away from the notion of being queer because I was worried it would make me different.
There’s a reason I’ve kept my bisexuality largely to myself since I realised a few years ago. Firstly, I wanted to be certain. And while I’m still figuring out just where on the bisexuality spectrum I personally sit (heterosexual biromantic, heteroromantic bisexual, that kind of thing), I know enough to be comfortable calling myself bi without the risk of doubling back on myself a few years from now. Which is also totally fine. People can change their minds! I grew up in an era of sexuality being a binary absolute that defined your personality, which is a concept I’ve learned to be a societal falsity.
Ooh, societal falsity. We’re throwing out some fancy terms today.
The main thing I want to get across is the genuine euphoria I’ve felt since accepting myself as bi. And I’m talking from an identity standpoint. Once I accepted that I was bi, I felt this weight lifting from me that I didn’t know I was carrying before. I felt liberated from the burden of adhering to a personality I didn’t know I was trying to be. And the funny part is, I don’t think I’ve actually changed as a person since coming out to myself. I’m not suddenly flamboyant or effeminate; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being so, but that’s just not me. Society had taught me that this was the essence of being queer, but as many of us learn throughout life, the world is much more diverse and nuanced than any amount of portrayal within media would have us believe.
The other thing I didn’t realise about being bi is that it’s not a 50/50 split of attraction, if we’re talking fem and masc. (I mean, firstly, bisexuality is about attraction to all genders; the etymology of the word is a little outdated, and from my understanding pansexuality is a little different.) The best way I could phrase it is that I’m attracted to men in a different way to women, and I’m still kind of figuring out the shape of that. But also, since it took me 25 years to realise I was bi, you won’t be surprised to realise I still fall more on the side of being attracted to women. That’s not something I like to admit too often, because I feel like I’m trying to add some sort of heterosexual-appeasing qualifier to my sexuality, but since we’re talking about this in detail today, I don’t mind stating it. Similarly, I have bisexual friends who are more attracted to genders matching theirs. I’ve yet to meet anyone truly “50/50”.
The last thing I want to address is the people who may be reading this wondering, why should this matter? Hopefully you’ll have picked up on this reading some of what I’ve discussed above, but it’s mostly a personal thing. I want people to know who I am. Being bi isn’t just about who I’m attracted to, it’s part of my identity. It’s a lens through which I see the world. It’s something that may be a little hard to grasp if it’s something you’ve never personally wrestled with. But just being bi and knowing I’m bi has made me much happier as a person! Plus, coming out is exhausting, so if I can tell everyone at once that really lessens some of my workload, if you know what I’m saying.
If you took the time to read this, thank you so much! I’m in a rarely lucky position to be blessed with an amazing family who supports me in this, and some incredible friends who helped me come to terms with it myself from early on. My one request is that this doesn’t change the way you view me as a person. Not radically, anyway. You might be like, oh damn, Kristian’s bi? That’s pretty hot. That’s okay, you can have those thoughts, if you want. I mean, who am I to stop you? ahem what I mean to say is, I’m still me. I just mentioned those stereotypes as damaging things, so let’s not apply those to someone who didn’t fit them before! Haha, okay, catch you in the next one, happy Pride.
Anxiety and Me
At the beginning of the year, I mentioned that I was looking into mental health issues I have relating to anxiety and ADHD, and whilst I don’t have too much to share since (besides the over-stretched nature of the NHS), I have spent three months learning about my anxiety and how it affects me. Today, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned, both as a reminder for my future self and as a personal experience for anyone who may notice these behaviours within themselves. Plus, I’ll share a general life update with you afterwards! Special treat.
When I first spoke to the mental health practitioner at my local doctors’, she used a word that I’ve found extremely helpful to describe what I do on a daily basis. According to her, I spend a lot of time catastrophising. In other words, my mind takes the express route to town Worst Case Scenario, and it happens a lot. To give a recent example, on Monday I experienced some abdominal pain. Could be anything. Brain said, maybe appendicitis? Turns out, it was not! But boy, did I spend all of Monday thinking about appendicitis. Not for fear of dying or needing an operation. More for fear of the drama it would cause, the interruption to my life, the worries people would have. Of course, I was able to hear the rational part of my brain telling me not all the symptoms aligned, that my father had first hand experience and assured me the pain would be much greater and more immediate were it appendicitis. But here’s the thing about my brain: It doesn’t want to listen to the rational parts. Because the irrational parts now think I’m just talking myself into being fine, that I’m going to die because I’m too stubborn to call the doctors’. I visualise myself dying, and my funeral, multiple times throughout the day. I have a hard time focusing on games and shows that night because of it.
The next day, the pain is mostly gone. I have a great day!
The next day, I notice a spot (now since faded) at the area of the prior pain. Rational brain says, it’s just a spot. Irrational brain says, it could grow into a lump. I lose another day to anxiety. It is exhausting.
At the end of 2021, I developed minor digestive issues which cause heartburn and acid reflux if I drink certain fizzy drinks. I spent the first half of 2022 obsessing over this. (And yes, I went to the doctors. Would you be surprised to hear I’m fine?) One of the issues I face is something akin to imposter syndrome when trying to analyse any problem within myself. Is it heartburn? I don’t know. Did the medication fix it? I guess, but what if I’m wrong? It’s not completely gone. Could be anything!
Point is, I don’t want to be a hypochondriac. And to be clear, my catastrophising is by no means specific to just my health. I believe that despite being a naturally introverted person, my anxiety dramatically limits the amount of time I spend actually visiting friends, especially if they’re not local. It’s something I’ve grown ashamed of, and I worry that friends think I just don’t care. But I’ve come to learn that it’s not a personality flaw, and by sharing it here I hope to help people understand me, or themselves, a little better.
There’s lots more, but this is a public post and you’re not a doctor. Probably. But even if I’m yet to really get a handle on my anxiety, I’ve definitely shifted my mindset away from being hard on myself for facing the issues I face, and that’s been something of a relief. I still get frustrated, but I’m developing counter-arguments for the negativity I levy at myself.
As for my experience getting help for it, it’s still early days, but I’m happy to share what I’ve been through so far. (Keep in mind this is UK based and your experience may vary.) I rang up my doctors asking for an appointment related to anxiety, and spoke to a mental health practitioner who offered me two options: Antidepressants, which I declined, or local mental health services, in this case, Plymouth Options. (Both was probably an option too.) Options set me up on an online CBT course, but due to heavy demand, signed me off from supervisor oversight within the course after just two weeks based on a questionnaire which I apparently answered too positively. When I mentioned this on social media, I had multiple friends and family members contact me telling me they had a similar experience. I subsequently complained to Options, who, to be fair, contacted me seeming legitimately concerned and wanting to hear what went wrong. Today, I had another appointment which puts me back on track within the course.
I need proper counselling, I think, but unfortunately this country isn’t in a position to provide it unless I meet “certain criteria”, or have money to pay for it privately, which I don’t. But for the time being, I’ll give the CBT a second whack. Hopefully the ADHD self-referral I completed with my mental health practitioner two months ago gets a response soon too, so I can enter a six-month waiting list to be seen for that.
So, three months into 2023, that’s where I’m at. If you’re seeing some glaring issues with the NHS here, please remember to vote the Tories out at any opportunity. As for me, I’ve spent my entire life battling this stuff, so don’t worry; treatment for me comes down to quality of life, nothing more.
In other news (I did promise), I’m having another history binge! This time, it’s in the format of a podcast called The History of England, which is a podcast that talks about, well, you might guess. But it’s chronological, from the Dark Ages onwards, and it’s bloody fascinating! Well, it’s a bit long winded, but that’s history for you, isn’t it? I’m also continuing my foray into audiobooks. After reading How To Stop Time by the fantastic Matt Haig, I decided to take on the Doctor Who New Adventure series of novels. I’m only two books deep, but I can tell you that The Clockwise Man is a proper Ninth Doctor adventure.
The entire reason I wrote today’s blog post is because… well, you know when you’re dusting, and you get distracted by something on your bookshelf? It’s the digital equivalent of that. I’ve decided to finally invest in cloud storage, and was moving writing files from my free Dropbox account to this Google Drive when I realised I hadn’t updated The Tombstone Project since 2020. Of course, I read some entries as I was pasting them in to the document, and I realised how far I’ve come in the past three years in regards to my attitude about my own mental health. So, to any ancestors reading this in the far off paradise of the year 2538, don’t worry, Kristian did finally gain some level of self-awareness and seek outside help for his inner problems. Keep reading, as I’m sure it only gets better from here!
To those of you reading today in 2023, though, thank you for caring. Be kind to yourselves and each other.
(Oh, and a note to anyone leaving comments: Speculating about what’s wrong with me would actually be really unhelpful, so please don’t do that <3)
Faith In A Godless Age
(Disclaimer: People of faith, I truly respect you and your beliefs. This blog post is about me and mine, and will be written accordingly.)
I was raised in a moderately religious household. We didn’t “practice” as such, but God was real, with the capital G and everything. Mostly I’d pray for personal favours, such as the acquisition of a new videogame, or for technology to stop malfunctioning on me, which surely isn’t how that’s supposed to work. I’m afraid my core understanding of the bible comes from a picture-book version for primary school children, and whatever my distracted mind soaked up in RE at school. And so I suppose it’s no surprise that as I got older, I treated the Christian faith as one might treat Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny: something to tell the little ones to make the world a little more magical.
I don’t mean this derisively, of course. Whilst religion may have been the perpetrator of many crimes across history, I also know many people here in the modern world who have a perfectly well adjusted view of their faith. I’m not one of those atheists who believes that I’m the only smart person in the room if I’m the only non-believer. But if I’m to write about what I want to write about today, I have to be honest about my perception of the world.
Let’s continue to talk about atheism, because I don’t like to label myself as atheistic. It’s… true, as far as the heart is concerned, but I prefer to call myself agnostic. We covered as much in the previous blog post. The reason for it, besides what I covered already, is because I don’t consider my belief system to be a closed book. I’m not about to embrace religion, and this isn’t an invitation to be “converted”. I’m simply not comfortable proclaiming that I absolutely know that there’s nothing outside of scientific coincidence that causes us to exist when we still have so few answers on that front officially. But, yes, as far as the heart is concerned, I’ve spent the last decade or so of my life adjusting to the reality that there is no great plan, there is (broadly speaking) no life after death, and there is nothing to make us behave aside from our own moral code.
So, nihilism then. Right? Life has no meaning, we were born to die, let’s bang on some metal instruments and scream into a microphone about it. (I’m allowed to make that joke, I listen to Architects.) Well, not necessarily. A lot of people who think they don’t have a faith kind of do. Some turn to conspiracy theories about aliens existing among us for thousands of years. Others look to ghost stories for proof of something coming afterwards. It doesn’t have to be a theistic belief system as long as it tethers you to a world with a larger meaning, with room for the unexplained. But I can’t say I fall into those categories, either. I’m largely a cynic when it comes to ghost stories, and don’t get me started on the History Channel.
Aliens. (Cue the meme.) Don’t get me wrong, of course they exist. The universe is so vast, how could they not? But personally, I tend to believe that we’ve not met them. I mean, you look at the vastness of the universe, the likelihood of life emerging, and the difficulties involved in space travel, and the question becomes less if life exists, but if we’ll ever get to meet it. It’s fun to dream of secret galactic empires and guardian aliens watching over us until we meet some perceived threshold, but ultimately, you’ve got to separate the fantasy from the reality. And, speaking of nihilism, the Fermi Paradox is a whole thing… and that truly does frighten me.
But enough beating around the bush. We’ve ticked off religion, aliens, superstition, and nihilism. I guess that leaves the obvious, doesn’t it? Love. We make our own meaning to live. And even if nothing comes afterwards, even if legacies eventually fade, even if the universe finally winks out of existence and there’s nothing left at all, we’ll still have happened. We’re still in this moment, the present, and as hard as I find it to live in sometimes, it’s all that truly matters. I worry that as modern society moves away from the safety net of religious certainty, the question of what gives life meaning is drawing too many of us to nihilistic despair. But the truth is, we don’t need gods. We don’t need ghosts or aliens to affirm our place in the universe. We just need each other. How we got here, whether it was by accident or on purpose, it ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are here. And in an uncaring universe, we’re the ones who have to care for each other.
And of course, it isn’t as easy as that. But as far as faith goes, that’s what I have.
A Letter For My Mother
Hi Mum. I know I’ve never written to you like this but I got the idea from… well, a comic book, actually. I don’t know if somewhere in the great beyond you’re able to read this on some metaphysical wavelength or whatever, but I don’t think worrying about how you’re meant to see this is really the point of the exercise.
In fact, never mind writing to you, I’ve not often spoken to you since you left us. I hope you don’t hold it against me. I don’t remember how I felt about this stuff as a ten year old, but throughout most of my life I’ve been quite far removed from the spiritual side of things. I call myself agnostic, but that’s mostly a formality these days. In my heart of hearts, there has only ever been one thing that’s removed me from pure atheistic disbelief, and that’s the feeling that you’re watching over me. I can put it down to psychological reasoning, sure, but just as I know deep down that there is no god, I also know that somehow, somewhere, you’re still with me.
Anyway, mushy stuff aside. The world has changed a lot since you left us. And obviously you’ve seen it change alongside me, if my threadbare faith is to be believed. The thing is, though, I have no idea what kind of person you’d be in today’s world. Hell, I only ever knew you through the eyes of a child, and those memories age with every passing year. How would you fare in this world of smartphones and Covid and geopolitical tension? Would you be a Candy Crush expert? What would your profile on Facebook look like? What kind of person would I be with 17(!) more years of you in my life?
I must apologise, for this letter will naturally return to me and my life by its very nature. But I don’t think you’d mind. Because you see, the one defining feature I remember of you is your kindness. I could sit here and speculate on how you’d react to every modern development and every passing controversy, but all I need is one glance back at my memories of you to know that it’s all irrelevant to your character. You were amazing, and no matter what life threw your way, that would shine through. It’s your legacy, in a way, because I try to give out the kind of love that I was brought up on.
Grief is different for everyone, every time, and when you died I was certainly left too numb to ever believe that the end of your life had ever really happened to me. It wasn’t until… well, a few years ago that I really opened myself up to what you went through, beyond the scope of what it meant for me and my life. But, by way of this coping mechanism, and as perhaps a kind of mercy, I was spared the raw pain of longing for the times before. They simply… had been, and now were not. That was all. But do not think for a second that you are not as much a part of me as the blood that runs through my veins, the oxygen that enters my lungs. Sometimes I see someone who looks a little like you, and a little part of my brain spins up a fantastic tale of what if… what if, like in some pulp fiction, you were still out there somewhere, alive, hidden for reasons yet unrevealed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something I actually believe, but anyone who’s lost a loved one can probably relate to that little what if…
Of course, the dreadful asymmetry of fate doesn’t give us simple answers to questions of “if I had a time machine, would I undo the past?” Because of course I would, right? But then, of course, I’d never have met some of the other most important and wonderful people in my life. I’d never have met half of my family. And that’s a tough thing to reconcile, sometimes. The life that I lead would not exist if you were still here. How is that meant to make any sense at all? I suspect you would tell me not to worry about it, and remind me that I do not own a time machine. I suspect you would simply be glad that my life was so full of love despite you being gone. But it’s a thing, isn’t it? Like the actual question I ask myself every so often. Who would I be without the loss of you? How much of my personality would be the same without grief?
Such heavy hitting questions. I’d meant to write to you about casual things like iPhones and Instagram. But I suppose that’s what happens when you catch up with someone you love after a long time apart. Just know… well, what you already know. That I laugh every day. That I love more deeply than I can sometimes fathom. That you are my light in the dark. That I still write, that I create fervently, arbitrary notions of success be damned. That, despite many calculations needed to weigh the scales, I am happy.
How do I sign this off? Well, I’m reminded of our goodnight ritual from when I was a boy.
“Love you more than you love me!” “That’s impossible.”
(P.S – Hope you don’t mind but in the morning, I plan on publishing this whole thing on my blog. Partly for autobiographical reasons, partly because… I don’t know. There’s a few people I know who might find comfort in the knowledge that long term grief is more love than pain. I don’t think you’d mind.)
From Here Onwards
I used to write one of these at every turn of the year, but it got a little exhausting talking about the past and the future at intervals where my life saw little change. Last year, I… did nothing, and this year I shall… hopefully do things! It began to feel like empty words. So, as we’re twenty days into January, please feel free to take this as a hint that this is not a scheduled yearly blog post, but one that I’m writing because I actually have things to say.
I’ve spent a lot of my twenties beating myself up about the state of my life. I grew up with grandiose ideas about becoming a world famous story teller who’d change the way people thought about the world! Fast forward to last year, when I’m sitting through a faculty meeting at work, listening to my boss tell us that we wouldn’t realistically be working here if part of us didn’t enjoy the work. No, I think, I’m working here because I’m trapped within my own limitations and only my friends here keep me sane. I still work there. I recently had an attendance review meeting because I took four unpaid days off in four months for being curled up in bed with the flu. It’s going real well.
So how come I’m not a world famous story teller? Well, I have a few theories about that (sans the world famous part). And this year… well, starting from the end of last year, because I wasn’t waiting for an arbitrary New Year’s Resolution before changing my life… this year I’m following up on my theories. For starters, I’m seeing someone about ADHD. I have nothing to share yet, so don’t assume I have it – there are people in my life who certainly don’t think I do – but personally, it’d go a long way to explaining why I have such difficulty not just with sticking to a single idea long enough to see it through, but also with plenty of every day problems in real life. Speaking of which, I’m also starting an online CBT course thing for anxiety! I won’t get into oversharing, but I think that a lot of my issues in life come from a generalised variety of anxiety, and so far it would seem that doctors agree.
So I’m not promising to write a novel this year, because I tried brute forcing that last year and I got four chapters into my first draft before having a crisis of confidence and binning the thing. But I am promising to work on myself. If ADHD and anxiety aren’t the issue, something else is, I know that much by now. I’ve barely dipped my toe into figuring this stuff out but I already feel more confident for the small scraps of validation that my investigations have brought me so far. Maybe I’m not just shit. Maybe I’m facing some real obstacles. Maybe I always have.
On a lighter note, another thing I want to do in 2023 is read more books! I’ve become super engrossed in comic books these last few years, so it’s not that I’ve not been reading exactly, but on the novel front, I’ve been mired seven books into the Wheel of Time series for some months now. Unfortunately, this fantasy epic becomes a notorious slog for the middle three books, and in my stubbornness to not give up I’ve ended up forsaking almost everything else. Last year, I read four books, two of them Wheel of Time novels. (The other two were Good Omens and Sylvanas, a World of Warcraft tie-in novel. Both are excellent.) This year, my aim is to read 15 books by the end of the year, which may not sound difficult to you, but… remember the possible-ADHD thing? I use Audible nowadays to listen to books on the way to work, as I have a tough time keeping my attention on the real physical deal. Unfortunately, Audible only gives out 12 book tokens over the course of a year, so 15 books may actually be an issue! Ah well. I’ll figure it out.
Thanks for reading. I hope your 2023 proves as fruitful as mine is planning to be. I’m considering changing the name of this blog from Perpetually Perturbed to The Tombstone Project, after the real-time memoirs project that every blog post here contributes to. What do you think? Let me know!
Perpetually Perturbed 