Exquisitely Evolved

Over millions of years, our bodies, brains, thoughts and emotions have exquisitely evolved for a hunter-gatherer, tribal existence.

And yet...

The closest I get to being a hunter is trying to find a better broadband tariff.

The closest I get to being a gatherer is shopping online.

And the closest I have to a tribal existence is interacting with people via words on a screen, who mostly seem to be preoccupied with potholes and immigrants, while insane, psychopathic industry and political leaders are hell-bent on destroying the world and humanity in order to temporarily increase their wealth and power.

Is it any wonder why I frequently feel my body, brain, thoughts and emotions aren't coping particularly well?

A memory of pain

A memory. 

Both at once familiar, and distant.

I have recalled it and spoken of it many times, but not for a long time.

Always before, I gave the details, matter of fact.

But suddenly, this time I vividly recall the shock, the pain.

And I feel myself wanting to cry.

The crippling sciatica of 2 years ago was not my first experience of extreme agony and fear.

11 years old.

Sitting at the dinner table, waiting, I see my sister has a straw for her drink.

I have to have one.

I jump off my chair to run into the kitchen, just as my mother comes through carrying a tray with a pot of freshly boiled tea.

It crashes over my stomach.

I scream.

Panic.

My father rushes me upstairs and starts filling the bath with cold water.

He tells me to lie in it, on my front.

I'm lying on the couch.

My father has given me a pain killer.

The last of a handful that he has kept for years, from some previous illness or condition.

I think it was morphine based.

I think these things are impossible to get hold of because they don't prescribe them any more.

I'm told I'm brave.

My skin is black with large blisters.

Someone says it looks like a moon base.

The doctor puts a dressing on it.

I have some kind of elasticated net vest to hold it in place.

I'm told that if it had been any worse, if my father hadn't acted quickly, then they would have had to take me to hospital in Swansea, which was a long way away.

It's the beginning of the summer holidays.

Trips to the beach have me keeping a shirt on, covered up.

I'm not allowed to go swimming.

For many years my skin has a slight discolouration and scars, but eventually they disappear.

I don't know why I suddenly remembered this so clearly that I momentarily felt the shock and pain.

Nor why I feel the tears now, when I have never felt emotional about it before.

Squandered

I've squandered my life by spending my entire life worrying about squandering my life and yet not feeling I've been able to do anything about it...

Consent and Power Relationships

I took my camera long with me to the Steampunk Weekend in Kirkcudbright.

I wasn't an official photographer, but I have a soft spot for Steampunk and knew there would be lots of people dressed up.

Almost immediately I bumped into someone I knew, dressed up to the hilt, with her friend who had similarly gone all out for it. A bit of a chat and then I suggested I could take their photo, with an idea of sending them a copy later.

But as we moved away from all the stalls towards a tree that created a less busy backdrop, a bloke with a camera was suddenly behind me and was clearly wanting to take advantage of the fact that I had isolated them so he could take some images too.

I gave him a bit of space and just tried to concentrate on taking my own images, but they were clearly torn between the 2 of us, with at least one of them looking at the other guy each time I clicked. Then I noticed a 3rd bloke had turned up.

Not wanting to be rude, but feeling a little deflated, I thanked my friend for her time, and as I headed off noticed even more camera-weilding blokes had arrived on the scene and I wondered how long it would be before she would be able to get back to exploring the event.

From then on, it felt like there were more middle-aged blokes with cameras than there were people dressed in Steampunk outfits.

They were everywhere. It seemed like anyone who had on an outfit was being swarmed upon.

It didn't feel right.

Of course if you dress up outlandishly you can expect to get some attention, but this felt positively intrusive.

And then I caught sight of myself in a mirror hanging on one of the outfit stalls and saw a middle-aged bloke with a big camera over his shoulder, wearing my face.

And, to be honest, I felt a bit sick.

It took me a while to understand my reaction, but eventually I realised it was all about power relationships.

For me, a photo shoot, however brief, is a collaboration between myself and the subject – it is a relationship of equals – a coming together to create something you both would like to see.

But it felt to me that most of these other photographers were feeling, or acting on, some level of entitlement. These people had dressed up so they were entitled to photograph them, whether the subjects were comfortable about it or not. And if they didn't like it, they shouldn't dress that way...

I just didn't want to be associated with these people.

To the outside world, there would be no perceptible difference between me and the other guys. We were all middle-aged blokes with cameras taking photos of people dressed up.

But the attitude behind the photography was everything.

I could only photograph my friend because I knew her already, I've photographed her before, and she was more than happy to play to the camera a bit.

But afterwards, I felt like I'd abandoned her to the jackals and didn't feel particularly proud of myself.

A guy I know who makes Steampunk accessories and had a stall there, said he'd heard that the previous year a photographer from one of the bigger camera clubs in the area had stumbled across the Steampunk Weekend last year, taken a photo of the guy I knew, and then had apparently won a camera club competition with the image.

It seems that word had got around and this year most of that camera club had descended on Kirkcudbright, out to get a competition winning photo, whatever the cost.

I didn't take any more photos, and left early.

The whole experience has just left me with a unpleasant taste in my mouth, and I'm going to be processing this for some time.

Hop along now...

The revelations I'm going through at the moment, exploring the it-might-not-yet-have-been-officially-diagnosed-but-hey-who-are-we-trying-to-kid likelihood that I have ADHD, is continually shifting the whole world beneath my feet.

Imagine for a moment you reach the age of 56 and suddenly discover that for your entire life you have only ever had one leg but never realised it. 

After reading other people's accounts of being a uni-ped - particularly those who weren't diagnosed in childhood - recognition of their experiences causes you to notice for the first time that you too have been struggling to perform in a world that was never really designed for you, no matter how many adaptations you have tried to make.

Suddenly, every memory of every experience is now being reinterpreted as it starts to dawn on you that it wasn't normal to always find it impossible to correct a stumble if you tripped on something; that the reason you were bullied in school had very little to do with the colour of your hair; and that never being selected for the football team had nothing to do with your father not being a member of the Masons.

Of course it's obvious NOW, but what a mindfuck that despite the clues being there all along, no one ever came right out and said it, so you never actually joined the dots.

As bizarre as this analogy might sound, it's about as accurate a description I can find to explain  what it feels like trying to process this discovery.

The Burden...

"You can achieve anything you want if you put your mind to it!"

Except for the fact I can't. 

I realise being told this as a child was meant as an encouragement, even a form of praise, 

But I'm now beginning to understand the huge burden of guilt I have been carrying, and adding to throughout my life, for all the stuff I haven't been able to achieve - frame-worked internally that clearly I haven't been trying hard enough, so am a failure.

We do not all have the same wiring in our brains. 

What is simple for some is excruciatingly difficult, if not impossible, for others.

If we all put our neuro-vastly-diverse brains together to work towards a common goal, then we can achieve almost anything.

But individually? 

We did not evolve as lone creatures with all the skills needed to survive and thrive. Very few people are true loners who need no others to withstand all that life throws at us.

The rest of us need others to fill the gaps.

Together we are strong. 

Alone we are puny humans, feeling guilty we do not have all the skills and abilities of an entire tribe. 

Not a Hero

Underneath it all, truth be told, I thought I was a hero-in-waiting. 

My time would come when I would save the world.

Other things seem to have got in way quite a lot - not insignificantly the ME/CFS.

In fact the ME/CFS has been around such a long time that I have periodically revised the timetable for when I might be called upon to be the right person in the right place at the right time.

In fact, I had pretty much become convinced that the ME/CFS might mean it would never happen after all.

And this has sometimes been a cause for sadness - a grief for lost futures.

More recently, however, I've become aware that I am in fact a small child, desperate for attention, and have been for the past 5 decades.

My long-awaited expectation for the opportunity to express my heroism is actually just a sign of emotional underdevelopment.

Probably no point in sewing my pants to the outside of my trousers then...

Why do I have to be the grown up?

“Why do I have to be the grown up?”

“Because someone has to be, and it looks like you're the only one capable of being so, even if you don't want to be.” I can hear the voice in my head. It could be my mother's.

Of course, I can be right and they can be wrong – but they won't see it that way. And if I persist, then the stakes will get higher and higher until real damage is done.

It's not fair! Why am I the only one who seems to see this early enough to back down, even though I know they are the one being unreasonable?

I resent them more for this, and so part of me wants to continue escalating, wants to lash out, wants to hurt, to prove the point.

But still I see the damage that will cause, so I have to be the adult, the one to back down, even though I still know them to be unreasonable in their position. If I persist in being right, we will all lose.

Why can't they see it too?

Why do I have to be the grown up in this?

Because someone has to be, and it looks like I'm the only one capable of being so, even if I don't want to be.

Are you normal, or other?

The idea of "normality" is just a loosely defined convention acting as a fragile meeting ground of vastly different ways of thinking and perceiving the world.

No one is actually "normal," instead we all overlap sections of it like a giant venn diagram.

The problem comes when, instead of understanding that no two people see the world in the same way, we are told that anyone who does not fully reside inside this construct is an "other".

Dividing the world into Us and Them has always been a way to control people. We all live in fear of being found out that there are aspects to us which would exclude us from the very narrow definition of what it is to be acceptable.

We are all "other".

Last time I climbed a tree

 I didn't know that the last time I climbed a tree would be the last time I would climb a tree.

Good and Evil

The Eternal Battle Between Good and Evil is basically the continual conflict between compassion and selfishness.

We all have the capacity for both, but which one dominates?

When selfishness rules, then the world becomes a more dangerous place, a far more unpleasant place to live.

But when compassion is foremost, then pain is eased and life feels like it has purpose beyond just struggling to exist.

Forget personified deities.

Forget an afterlife of heaven or hell.

Forget Karma over several lifetimes

Quite simply, the more selfish everyone is, the more hellish life becomes.

I am alive - until I'm not

 Somehow, I find this thought very comforting.

Lost Potential

 My world is a seething mass of stuff I've not done...

WTF, Kim?

"You know," he said, "when you used to tell me about these photo shoot ideas of yours, I would nod and smile, but inside I couldn't imagine they would look any good. But over the years, every time you've produced something great so I've stopped being overly concerned about it."

"So what you're saying," I said, "is when I enthusiastically tell you about the latest shoot I'm planning to do, like this one I've just told you about, your first thought is 'What the fuck, Kim?' which is then followed by, 'Oh, it'll probably be OK because he's got a track record now.'?"

"Er, yes, kind of..." he said, noticing my eyes had narrowed somewhat, "but it's a compliment!"

It had honestly never occurred to me that someone might think this way. Whenever I get an idea, I'm so stoked about it, I assume everyone else will be too - not that they are thinking I'm completely off my trolley but against all the odds somehow seem to make it work.

I'm still not completely convinced this is a compliment...

On Being 55 (or probably any age, really...)

When I look at other people who are 55, I'm struck by just how much older than me they look.

Until I glance in the mirror...

A State of Mind

When I'm not drowning in deep depression,
or wrestling with high anxiety,
or bone-achingly weary with mental exhaustion,
or overwhelmed with existential angst, unable to stop staring into an eternal pit of of the darkest nihilism,
then I find I'm actually quite optimistic...

I'm not OK about not feeling OK

Stop telling me that it's OK not to feel OK!

The whole thing about not feeling OK is that I'm not OK with it!

I get what you're trying to say is that under the current circumstances it's perfectly natural to not feel OK, and there's no need to add extra guilt, or beat myself up about not being OK.

But I'm still not OK with not being OK!

Not being OK feels like a crock of shit, and I don't like it – it's not OK!

I want to stop feeling I'm not OK.

And you telling me it's OK not to feel OK isn't making me feel any better.

It might be making YOU feel better to tell me it's OK not to feel OK, because it helps distract you from not feeling OK.

But it's only making me feel even more useless that I can't be OK with not feeling OK.

I just want to stop feeling not OK.

Payment

I love the eating, so much.

It's the awful physical and emotional feelings of having overdone it afterwards I really hate.

Deceit

Even after 30 years together, I think we both harbour a suspicion that after having fallen madly in love, we had to somehow trick the other one into to feeling the same way, and we each live in fear that sooner or later the other is going to notice they were deceived and realise we are not worthy of their love after all...

The world is not what you thought

One of those conversations where, in a moment of awareness, the world suddenly turns and you realise that every memory of who you are, what you did, and why you did it, is now going to have to be re-written...

...again.