POSSIBILITIES

POSSIBILITIES

The night after Wendy’s birthday I dreamt I was the devil. It is strange that I haven’t before, as it is such a feature of my waking life.

In my dream I was much younger; I was handsome and people loved me, I was confident and gentle and charming. Those people; they thought there was nothing that I could do wrong. I became the co-leader of a vibrant alternative community which was showing the world all about how to live differently and better. However, in true movie style I was a fraud and at critical points, my eyes would suddenly flash green with a mark of evil and whoever saw it would realise what I really was. It all finished when people were looking to me for some sense of comfort in a crisis and instead I howled a howl of rage and joy at showing who I really was. The very buildings shattered and the people I had promised comfort to were destroyed.

My dreams are a vivid place that I go to. I am not so sure why their world is so much more important to me nowadays and I do not know if they bring me meaning or peace or are just another aspect of living that comes when you close your eyes; but perhaps no less important an experience just because they are dreams.

I am so unsure of so much in my waking life but I do cling to little bits that I like to believe in. I like Wendy’s love and her belief that I bring something good to her family. I like it when Dash the dog snuggles up on the couch and rests his head on me while we watch telly. I loved it when James laughed almost to tears when I so comprehensively failed at the mime game we were playing and at Charlottes need for a hug when we leave the children at the corner to walk up the hill to school.

I cling to the skyscape; the heavy stillness of the fog of today when the birds in the narrow range of vision we had, seemed louder and brighter somehow. The sea lit by the sun shining through dark clouds. The wonder of the glow of the sky as the sun sets on a cloudless frosty day. I cling to my first coffee of the day; it seems more real; as does a cheese and hot lime pickle sandwich with crisps. Scraping the ice off the car window or watching the rooks swirling around their roosts as the sky turns pink in the evening also anchors me; gives the world solidity.

My work often feels the opposite of real. increasingly I inhabit a world of philosophy, idealism, policy and academia. I try in vain to pin the language down with the precision of my halting logic. More and more as I try to anchor myself and our vision with the reality I live in and which those I love live in; I lose myself in some sort of mist where everyday life, our shared experiences, curl up as though stung because they do not fit with whatever the new paradigm is we are all being told we are meant to believe in. Strangely people tend to want to say this paradigm is anchored in our communities voice rather than the world of politics and whatever passes for wisdom when ideas are reaching for the sky with little shrieks of excitement.

I am being very cliched. I am reaching for meaning as the solstice approaches and the year draws to and end with the new year commencing with the lengthening of the days. It is such a silly thing to say that beginnings and endings are meaningless; that life, our ideas and beliefs are always changing and yet always much the same.

I do exhort myself to change at this time of year. I promise myself the same each year: to drink less, to learn to trust and be vulnerable; to regain the art of silliness and laughter. Most importantly to, at last, recognise that if I delight my family or my friends with a gesture, it is often of more worth than any scrap of status I get through work. That if I give the lady outside the Co-op my usual ten pounds just a bit more often then I am probably doing more to help people who are homeless than by contributing to policy and change and all of that. Of course, in a place of uncertainty, I am not too sure of what I say here, but it seems the tangible demonstration of love and friendship without judgement; just the joy of being part of humanity, sentience, the natural world is of far more worth than some statement we create to demonstrate or even create our intelligence or worth or value or morality.

Of course I need to recognise our fallibility; the fact that I drive to the co-op for last minute ingredients because I am lazy and do not demonstrate morality or love for the world as I would wish to much of the time. Being able to forgive myself as the days lengthen while my life dwindles is also important.

That devil thing I started with? Everyday it is accompanied by a refrain in my mind that I should die because of what I am. When I am able to, I will say out loud;

“I want to die.”

Sometimes I am a little indiscrete and say such things almost within hearing of those I would never want to hear such a thing from me. I have been saying this for years and years and years. My last CPN but seven (There have been a lot) used to say it was just a habit. Sometimes she would try to get me to practice smiling or saying positive things about myself. I must say that I winced at that and never did.

But now I am beginning to hate the ‘I want to die’ refrain. I caught myself; slightly desperate and very embarrassed with my own voice saying “I don’t want to die” in answer to myself, the other day when driving home after a long day’s work.

To drag myself out of this as my life moves on, as the year changes, as my family grows up and celebrates the sunshine. I would really, really, like this. I am so cross I encountered myself in devil form in my dreams so recently. Once it was just a simple statement of fact (Though you wouldn’t think it when I described my diagnosis of schizophrenia to other people.) Now it repels me.

I seek the chance to jump off the wheel; to challenge certainty and inevitability. I seek the briefest of moments in which I can honestly believe there is some worth in me; that I have something to offer those I love as well as those papers littered with ideals. I hope with those glimpses of a different way, I might find some agency, some way of challenging what even I sometimes describe as something horrific

That hesitant realisation that I could believe differently. It is as wonderful as the flock of curlews in the field at Ardmore today; flying all over the place while a heron sedately blundered past them to land in the next field and my mum said all she could see were the sheep and where were the birds? That last sentence is the critical one. Pity it took me all these words or even years to reach it.

(Photo's Ardmore and Cardross. December. 2021)