Sometimes i think about how it must feel to be gay and in the closet, constantly wanting to shout it out and tell people, that feeling you just could explode at anytime and once you did the weight would be lifted and your world would be yours nothing to hide from anyone.... i feel like that a lot but im not gay and i have no idea what it is i want to shout.
My family life is weird, i've never felt comfortable with it and its always made me feel , odd, i think is the only word i can use. When i was one my father was having an affair with the next door neighbour when she fell pregnant and he left. He did it for love i guess, and even though now i understand that concept, it has not made things emotionally any easier. Im sure it is this that has influenced my behaviour towards women which is questionable to say the least and i feel bad but i keep doing it, treating people like dirt.
It also has affected how i feel towards people in general. Unconditional love towards family should be a given but in this case i love and despise all at the same time. It is not being able to understand these feelings as a boy which made alcohol appealing when i first started. One thing alcohol does is make you feel a certain way, love, hate, sexual, anger, confident. These emotions can be seen pouring out of people every weekend along any high street.
I was a very timid child who was scared of everything, my mother spent most of her time reading i were not often in the same room. I stayed hidden away in some part of the upstairs playing with my toys and thinking up whole new worlds and scenarios. Where i grew up was particularly rough and i had to build up a front in order to cope with the reality i was confronted with. For most of my school life i was bullied and it was a moment i remember thinking, no more. It was drugs which in a strange way made this stop. Drugs in schools such as the one i went to are often considered a status symbol of being tough or cool. Its not the case though. It was also years as a teenager smoking weed and dabling with other things that made me hide in my shell more a silent character in the backdrop to high to think or speak. when i first started drinking i used to love how confident it made me i was like a whole new person and to me, someone who loathed himself so much, this was amazing.
A man once pulled a knife on me on my doorstep when i was standing there talking to friends, this moment i think made realise exactly where i was and again the confidence brought by alcohol once again felt more appealing, maybe i wouldn't have been so scared and wet myself.
This self sufficient innocent boy in his bedroom with nothing but good intentions, creative imagination and love for all things nerdy without even knowing it, would be a boy i would search to find for the rest of my life somewhere within.
The sense of being a creative is later something that fuelled my lust for alcohol, with the names of Kerouac, Bukowski, Keith Richards all ringing out in my head. It worked for them, why not me?
These were my family in later life, these mystical people with the power of creative genius at their beck and call, but for me it has not lead to this, it has only lead to depression and not being able to motivate myself or stay sober long enough to master my endeavours.
As i touched on there depression, when i was about thirteen my mother had a nervous breakdown and on that night i felt myself change forever. My family it seemed had been expecting it and when it happened all came quickly. When my uncle arrived (from the previous post about the ferry incident) he grabbed me and threatened to beat me as he thought it had happened as a result of my actions. I don't know if i contributed i probably did, but it was more to do with a mental instability that appears to run in my family. It made me again feel hatred towards a family member.
It was this incident which lead me going to live with my father for the first time, it also was the time my step sister ran away from home after my dad attacked her in a rage. No one noticed i was there so busy trying to find her for what was maybe six weeks maybe more. It was also the first time i felt part of an actual full family home, and even though there was so much despair, i loved it.
Having to go home after was difficulty as my mother was clearly not the same but she was still my mother and i love her the most. It did make me feel let down, and i really do know this is a terrible selfish thing to feel, but you can't help the way you feel.
As a teenager i had a small group of friends, and only now i realise the one thing apart from the smoking of weed we had in common, that is all our home lives we're not normal ones by any standard. I will not talk about them as it is not my right to talk about other peoples lives apart from my own.
I had one friend out of them who was my closest friend and who betrayed me and broke my heart and also led me to leave where i was living and move away. Again into my fathers this time though it was not a pleasant experience as i was clearly not welcome and after overhearing my step mother telling him i had to go i simply packed my bags and left. I then was eighteen and at this age the drinking started in full earnest. As any 18 year old it is viewed as acceptable normal behaviour but this was not and i don't know if anyone really noticed the full picture of what was happening. At this time with no prospects for work i decided to join the army. The regiment my uncle, the man from the ferry, the man who had been so cruel to me when my mother was ill. A girlfriend who will have a whole piece dedicated shortly once pointed out that i am drawn to people who do not love me whilst pushing away the ones who do. I will also cover work life later as well and stick solely to family for this piece.
Living with my stepfather who at this time my mother didn't live with was an odd experience, i had never shared a house with another man, i had never had a father in my life on a day to day basis, and him himself having no children i feel neither of us knew how to feel.
He has though in these years become someone who i have grown to love very much and is now as much a father to me as my own if not more.
My grandparents on my fathers side had once wanted to take me to live with them in chance of what they considered a better upbringing but my mother would not even entertain the idea. My memories of my grandad are little as he died when i was young but i remember how kind he was, always trying to teach the timid little boy to defend himself. My grandmother i saw a lot especially before she died of a cancer which horribly ate her away slowly. It was before she died she told me little bits about her life and i felt i knew her the better for it.
On my mothers side my granparnets were separated after having seven children. My grandfather who is still alive as i write at the age of 94, had run away with his secretary who was half his age. He is where the charm comes from, he is a very charming man and as a result has always been a ladies man. As a father he was violent and the stories my mother has told me are not nice, but then war makes monsters of men, and his war time was not a pleasant one. My grandmother Grace held the family together but as they had moved down the country the eldest children had left home, mostly due to my grandfather, until they came to Southampton where my mother and her younger brother would stay. My grandmother was an amazing women with thick black gypsy hair and i always feel this is a part of my ancestry as all of my family have never stayed put (apart from my mother) She was someone i truly felt loved by but sadly she also passed away when i was young, again of cancer.
My family life these days consists of a good relationship with my younger brother who his daughter i love completely and unconditionally and is one of the reasons i have given myself for giving up alcohol. My mother and step father i have good relationship with even if sometimes i feel they should have intervened in my drinking problem but that is fine. Unfortunately my father and i have drifted apart and rarely see each other maybe speaking once a month. This is sad but i do not have the energy to try and be a part of someones life who doesn't want it. I also have a very close family who have all but adopted me who i spend every Christmas with and also are the people who have helped me the most in moving in a better direction with my life.
Wednesday, 30 December 2015
Monday, 28 December 2015
In the beginning
So i begin.......
Its December the 28th 2015 and like most people I have over indulged in everything this year. Unfortunately though there is one thing i over indulge in all year round and this has been the case ever since my teenage years. I am now almost 31 and rather than growing out of it i have instead grown into it. To the point where I am such a mess when I'm drinking that i have lost a few friends and become that 'annoying drunk guy'. As a teenager if i look back i think it was mainly not to feel scared of people. People who know me might find this quite hard to believe as i have grown up into someone who has an abundance of confidence and can talk to anyone at anytime, pursue women with no apparent shyness and often succeed in my endeavours.
I have bounced from one relationship to another over the past ten years and my taste for alcohol has always caused problems. What i hate hearing and is the reason i know i am different to others when it comes down to this particular matter is when people say "Why don't you just have one or two and you'll be fine?" .......... If it was that easy don't you think i would ? Once I have that first taste all i can think about is getting as much inside my body until i physically pass out. I know this isn't normal as most people have the restraint that i seem not be able to possess. For them alcohol means something completely different for me there is no one or two there is only all or nothing.
Back in 2012 i believe it was, i finished university and moved to London where i moved to a part called New Cross, i moved in with people i did not know well and tried to keep my level of drinking a secret as i knew it would put people off being around me. I grew very fond of one of my housemates as we both were interested in songwriting and playing music and i felt we would have a life long friendship. I had also met one of the most beautiful girls i had ever seen when at a gig with friends one evening and i very much thought life was almost perfect all i needed was a job and the holy trilogy would be complete, good home, amazing girlfriend and finally good job, what more does one simple man need in life to be content ??? One afternoon i had gone and signed up with an old acquaintance casting agency and after we had drinks, everything was fine as it usually is when i start.
It is hear i will take a moment to describe my behaviour/personalty better so you can understand a little more about my thought process and understand how things usually escalate very fast. As i write more of these blogs i shall reflect thus so on my childhood. These blogs are to help me but if they help the person reading it great, i was going to say you can buy me a drink but probably not, hopefully this will save my future and help make it a happy one where the author rids himself of this affliction and looks back in ten years and smiles upon a great personal triumph.
When i was eleven years old me and a friend from school went to retrieve a boat that a guy he knew who was probably my age had moored up in a boat yard in a place called Hythe, our mission was to sale it back to Southampton. If you don't know Southampton it is a dock for container ships and the biggest liners as well as cruise ships in the world. What could possibly go wrong ? How is this not a bad idea ? I know i was eleven but even the most dense toddler would know how dangerous this is. Anyway when we arrived at the marina to our surprise the guy working there simply let us take it. two eleven year old schoolboys. He clearly was as irresponsible as us. As soon as the boat had gone out as far as the end of the ferry pier adjacent to the yard we looked inside the cabin to find that the hull had a rather large hole in it merely blocked up with what then looked like paper machet and the boat began to sink ... fast very fast. We called for help and to our relief the ferry came off its intended course and saved us just in time, the boat shortly sank there after as passengers looked at us in amazement. The captain said a man who drove the train along the pier would come and sort this mess out as he had trips to make, he constantly told us how lucky/stupid we were (he had a valid point) It wasn't until we reached the end that i realised i knew the man on the train very well, it was in fact my ex soldier uncle, and all i remember him shouting down the pier was if we didn't have life jackets on he was going to bloody drown us.
So here it is even without alcohol or drugs and at a tender age i managed to place myself in situations of peril.
So i am in London 2012 I've had a few drinks and I'm pretty chirpy feeling optimistic about life, here i shall just drop in that the night before i had in fact slept with beautiful girl i had just met so yea life was good. My adoration of the female species is a very close second to my lust for alcohol and i have been very fortunate to have been with some of the most devine of them.
When i got home my housemate said we should get some gear. Now i have always dabbled with drugs especially cocaine, and had all through my teenage years smoked cannabis. I had also lightly at this point experimented with heroin and crack but had scared myself how much i enjoyed them both so managed to keep both at arms length whilst watching friends fall deeper into the heroin hole.
We drove to a pub car park where we met a guy and bought two black capsules what apparently 2CB. After taking them my life would never be the same again. As soon as they started setting in both of us realised the dose we had each taken was far too high and reality soon faded. The next sober moment i had was waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed surrounded by police and doctors with my clothes ripped and covered in blood. I had broken most of my right hand and had managed to cut my wrist on glass from the bathroom. My jeans were soaked i can imagine with my own urine and the blood and mixed with coffee i had smashed a jar of and stuck to my clothes and body and gave the oddest smell, it was until 2015 that I was able to drink a cup let alone smell it without having flashbacks of the intense and disturbing journey my mind had gone on whilst under the control of this drug. To me there had been a very intense alternate reality for those hours in which i had been told in order for everyone to live i had to kill myself and apparently that is exactly what i had tried to do until the police had been called and i had forcefully been restrained, it was the extent of this force which actually led me to getting away with it as i was covered head to toe in footprints where the officers had kicked and punched me into submission.
This is as unpleasant as it sounds and i have tried to make sense of it ever since. Later a nurse would inform me the reason i had to keep going back for psychiatric assessment in the months that followed was because they had never known anyone to come in such a state and either not die or at least be a cabbage. This was after I had gone back after escaping as i was under police custody, so i could get my phone so the beautiful young lady i had slept with the night before did not think i was a one night stand guy. When i went for the assessment in the following weeks i was fine so that was that, accept it wasn't. This experience had made me scared like as little boy i just wanted to be conforted and guess who was there to do it ... you guessed correct the mothering arms of alcohol. My relationship soon went down hill as i could not manage to keep my broken mind under control and with massive amounts of alcohol added i was on a knife edge. The relationship ended shortly after a visit back home with her when i took a dangerous amount of antidepressants i had bought of a dealer who had them lying round his flat and passed out after drinking heavily for an evening, the poor girl thought i was going to die. It was here i knew she no longer liked me for love but felt scared to leave me. If she ever reads this then i apologise for this.
Shortly after i had to move out of the flat as my housemate who was suffering psychologically from the incident would not see me, that night we were together was the last time i ever saw him and it broke my heart.
The only saving factor was my friend from uni had come to the rescue and we soon found a flat in stratford with another guy we knew. The flat was horrible it was infested with cockroaches and for the whole of that winter we had no hot water and had to wash ourselves with kettle water in a big stew pot. The area was bleak and with nothing to do and not even pubs around this is when alone drinking at home began in full earnest.
I had also started a job on shaftsbury avenue which i hated. I will talk about the job later. It was in the following year when i found no enjoyment with alcohol and it was here i believe that any chance of me giving up drinking easily soon disappeared as i became more and more dependent with hardly a day going by i did not pass out drunk at the end of the day. My neurosies from the drug overdose had left me with a mental limp. For the past many years i had been an alcoholic drinking in bars by myself always getting people to come out for drinks etc but it was always part of 'having fun' with a smile and now it was much more than that then it became alone in room, fully stocked for a night out but on a sunny afternoon, rather drinking myself into a state where i did not feel. My friends now noticed how bad it was and rather than joking about it they became sad for me. One once said in a face that looked like a kitten was being put to sleep, "no ones mad at you Mat they all just feel sorry for you". No one likes people to feel sorry for them its a self deprecating feeling and one that does not fill me with anything apart from nausea.
This is not to say i haven't enjoyed being out and drinking since because that would be a lie but it is here where it became obvious to myself i had a problem.
So here we are back at December 2015 and the first day i know i have to stop drinking. I have blacked out consistently the past ten times i have drank now and i am worried another accident could easily happen as it has before only this time i may in fact die which is not something i long for at all.
I doubt myself beyond belief and am almost certain i will fail... who knows i might not though
I will keep writing these blogs about things that have happened to me and maybe this way I'll understand why i am sat here in this position, fighting this monkey on my back.
Its December the 28th 2015 and like most people I have over indulged in everything this year. Unfortunately though there is one thing i over indulge in all year round and this has been the case ever since my teenage years. I am now almost 31 and rather than growing out of it i have instead grown into it. To the point where I am such a mess when I'm drinking that i have lost a few friends and become that 'annoying drunk guy'. As a teenager if i look back i think it was mainly not to feel scared of people. People who know me might find this quite hard to believe as i have grown up into someone who has an abundance of confidence and can talk to anyone at anytime, pursue women with no apparent shyness and often succeed in my endeavours.
I have bounced from one relationship to another over the past ten years and my taste for alcohol has always caused problems. What i hate hearing and is the reason i know i am different to others when it comes down to this particular matter is when people say "Why don't you just have one or two and you'll be fine?" .......... If it was that easy don't you think i would ? Once I have that first taste all i can think about is getting as much inside my body until i physically pass out. I know this isn't normal as most people have the restraint that i seem not be able to possess. For them alcohol means something completely different for me there is no one or two there is only all or nothing.
Back in 2012 i believe it was, i finished university and moved to London where i moved to a part called New Cross, i moved in with people i did not know well and tried to keep my level of drinking a secret as i knew it would put people off being around me. I grew very fond of one of my housemates as we both were interested in songwriting and playing music and i felt we would have a life long friendship. I had also met one of the most beautiful girls i had ever seen when at a gig with friends one evening and i very much thought life was almost perfect all i needed was a job and the holy trilogy would be complete, good home, amazing girlfriend and finally good job, what more does one simple man need in life to be content ??? One afternoon i had gone and signed up with an old acquaintance casting agency and after we had drinks, everything was fine as it usually is when i start.
It is hear i will take a moment to describe my behaviour/personalty better so you can understand a little more about my thought process and understand how things usually escalate very fast. As i write more of these blogs i shall reflect thus so on my childhood. These blogs are to help me but if they help the person reading it great, i was going to say you can buy me a drink but probably not, hopefully this will save my future and help make it a happy one where the author rids himself of this affliction and looks back in ten years and smiles upon a great personal triumph.
When i was eleven years old me and a friend from school went to retrieve a boat that a guy he knew who was probably my age had moored up in a boat yard in a place called Hythe, our mission was to sale it back to Southampton. If you don't know Southampton it is a dock for container ships and the biggest liners as well as cruise ships in the world. What could possibly go wrong ? How is this not a bad idea ? I know i was eleven but even the most dense toddler would know how dangerous this is. Anyway when we arrived at the marina to our surprise the guy working there simply let us take it. two eleven year old schoolboys. He clearly was as irresponsible as us. As soon as the boat had gone out as far as the end of the ferry pier adjacent to the yard we looked inside the cabin to find that the hull had a rather large hole in it merely blocked up with what then looked like paper machet and the boat began to sink ... fast very fast. We called for help and to our relief the ferry came off its intended course and saved us just in time, the boat shortly sank there after as passengers looked at us in amazement. The captain said a man who drove the train along the pier would come and sort this mess out as he had trips to make, he constantly told us how lucky/stupid we were (he had a valid point) It wasn't until we reached the end that i realised i knew the man on the train very well, it was in fact my ex soldier uncle, and all i remember him shouting down the pier was if we didn't have life jackets on he was going to bloody drown us.
So here it is even without alcohol or drugs and at a tender age i managed to place myself in situations of peril.
So i am in London 2012 I've had a few drinks and I'm pretty chirpy feeling optimistic about life, here i shall just drop in that the night before i had in fact slept with beautiful girl i had just met so yea life was good. My adoration of the female species is a very close second to my lust for alcohol and i have been very fortunate to have been with some of the most devine of them.
When i got home my housemate said we should get some gear. Now i have always dabbled with drugs especially cocaine, and had all through my teenage years smoked cannabis. I had also lightly at this point experimented with heroin and crack but had scared myself how much i enjoyed them both so managed to keep both at arms length whilst watching friends fall deeper into the heroin hole.
We drove to a pub car park where we met a guy and bought two black capsules what apparently 2CB. After taking them my life would never be the same again. As soon as they started setting in both of us realised the dose we had each taken was far too high and reality soon faded. The next sober moment i had was waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed surrounded by police and doctors with my clothes ripped and covered in blood. I had broken most of my right hand and had managed to cut my wrist on glass from the bathroom. My jeans were soaked i can imagine with my own urine and the blood and mixed with coffee i had smashed a jar of and stuck to my clothes and body and gave the oddest smell, it was until 2015 that I was able to drink a cup let alone smell it without having flashbacks of the intense and disturbing journey my mind had gone on whilst under the control of this drug. To me there had been a very intense alternate reality for those hours in which i had been told in order for everyone to live i had to kill myself and apparently that is exactly what i had tried to do until the police had been called and i had forcefully been restrained, it was the extent of this force which actually led me to getting away with it as i was covered head to toe in footprints where the officers had kicked and punched me into submission.
This is as unpleasant as it sounds and i have tried to make sense of it ever since. Later a nurse would inform me the reason i had to keep going back for psychiatric assessment in the months that followed was because they had never known anyone to come in such a state and either not die or at least be a cabbage. This was after I had gone back after escaping as i was under police custody, so i could get my phone so the beautiful young lady i had slept with the night before did not think i was a one night stand guy. When i went for the assessment in the following weeks i was fine so that was that, accept it wasn't. This experience had made me scared like as little boy i just wanted to be conforted and guess who was there to do it ... you guessed correct the mothering arms of alcohol. My relationship soon went down hill as i could not manage to keep my broken mind under control and with massive amounts of alcohol added i was on a knife edge. The relationship ended shortly after a visit back home with her when i took a dangerous amount of antidepressants i had bought of a dealer who had them lying round his flat and passed out after drinking heavily for an evening, the poor girl thought i was going to die. It was here i knew she no longer liked me for love but felt scared to leave me. If she ever reads this then i apologise for this.
Shortly after i had to move out of the flat as my housemate who was suffering psychologically from the incident would not see me, that night we were together was the last time i ever saw him and it broke my heart.
The only saving factor was my friend from uni had come to the rescue and we soon found a flat in stratford with another guy we knew. The flat was horrible it was infested with cockroaches and for the whole of that winter we had no hot water and had to wash ourselves with kettle water in a big stew pot. The area was bleak and with nothing to do and not even pubs around this is when alone drinking at home began in full earnest.
I had also started a job on shaftsbury avenue which i hated. I will talk about the job later. It was in the following year when i found no enjoyment with alcohol and it was here i believe that any chance of me giving up drinking easily soon disappeared as i became more and more dependent with hardly a day going by i did not pass out drunk at the end of the day. My neurosies from the drug overdose had left me with a mental limp. For the past many years i had been an alcoholic drinking in bars by myself always getting people to come out for drinks etc but it was always part of 'having fun' with a smile and now it was much more than that then it became alone in room, fully stocked for a night out but on a sunny afternoon, rather drinking myself into a state where i did not feel. My friends now noticed how bad it was and rather than joking about it they became sad for me. One once said in a face that looked like a kitten was being put to sleep, "no ones mad at you Mat they all just feel sorry for you". No one likes people to feel sorry for them its a self deprecating feeling and one that does not fill me with anything apart from nausea.
This is not to say i haven't enjoyed being out and drinking since because that would be a lie but it is here where it became obvious to myself i had a problem.
So here we are back at December 2015 and the first day i know i have to stop drinking. I have blacked out consistently the past ten times i have drank now and i am worried another accident could easily happen as it has before only this time i may in fact die which is not something i long for at all.
I doubt myself beyond belief and am almost certain i will fail... who knows i might not though
I will keep writing these blogs about things that have happened to me and maybe this way I'll understand why i am sat here in this position, fighting this monkey on my back.
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