The Dam and The Wave

For just over two and a half years I made a weekly trip, on a Wednesday afternoon, to Winchester; firstly by train from Eastleigh and then by car from Whiteley. Now Winchester is not my favourite town, it lacks soul, but it has coffee shops and more importantly a decent Waterstone’s; my needs are indeed few.

Why?

Well I found myself some help!

Now, if you have read a previous blog, Black Dog you would see that I was in need of help. However, (there is always a however - just wait a minute ed) strangely this occurred before the train conundrum happened.

(So what are you saying - it didn’t help? - clarity ed)

Well it definitely helped, but not necessarily in the way you think. (How do you know how I think - Mr(s) A Laskan Reader)

Perhaps a little of context might helped here.

As mentioned in Black Dog, I have been suffering from Depression my entire adult life, I just didn’t know it. (Hold your horses there cowboy - how can you be suffering Depression and not know it - Dr ed)

Simple really, I was rarely, if ever, physically ill, so had few occasions to visit a GP, and how I felt was what I thought was normal. (But as I have come to believe, however it is for you, is your normal, so each and everyone of us has our own normal.)

The first time I considered suicide was when I was 15. The family had come back to the UK from West Germany (like Germany - but only the western parts - geography ed) and I had ended up at Burford School in Oxfordshire, and sadly had been mis-streamed (Is that a single word or two? - literary ed), which meant I was in the CSE stream rather than the ‘O’ level stream.

The CSE stream was apparently where the ‘rough’ and practical boys and given-up-upon-waiting-for-a-baby girls were put so that the school could get on with educating the ones that wanted to learn and keep a lid on the rest until they could leave school as soon as they possibly could. (Aren’t you being a trifle harsh - bleeding heart liberal ed).

Now the consequence of being in the wrong stream, is that using words like ‘trifle’ and ‘chap’ are going to make you stand out like a sore thumb, and I was a big throbbing red one, or to put it another way I felt like I was on a pedestal with a searchlight pointing at me and with someone using a  loudhailer shouting, “Look at him, look at him, different, different”, followed by that noise that warships in Second World War films make, something like, “Vrooop vroop”, but with happiness quotient removed and a large dose of foreboding, fear and loathing thrown in.

So, being out of place was bad enough, but there was a group of boys in the metalwork class (you were doing metalwork - but you bleed when you are near anything mechanical - engineering ed), who really made my life a misery.

It wasn’t physical bullying, well I did feel physically threatened but I was never hit. (You could argue that that would have been easier to deal with - a bruised body heals - a bruised mind is a different kettle of pisces); it was verbal and psychological, but you could say they were beating up my mind; well that is how it felt.

Now (meaning right now, at this moment and looking back) it is obvious what to do in this situation, you talk to someone in authority to sort it out. Well, easy to say from a perspective of nearly 40 years later(whaddya mean nearly 40 years, 39 years 8 months - precision ed). But that didn’t happen - at the time I didn’t know any of the teachers at the school, having recently arrived; talking to my parents was naturally out of the question, and at the time I am not sure that I realised that I was being bullied. I simply felt that it was something that I had to deal with by myself (that’s right sonny, stand up for yourself, have it out with the bullies - pugilistic ed)

So, not knowing how to ask for help, instead I started thinking about to to deal with the problem. Initially it was to attack, main and or kill one or more of my tormentors with one of the many sharp edge instruments to be found in a metalworking class; but this would end up with me being imprisoned and the thought of that was terrifying. I would end up in a Borstal where even worse boys were and I would have just moved from a place where it was only school days that were unbearable to a place where every moment of every day would be unbearable. So that wasn’t going to work as a plan.

So, I can hear you ask, what other plans did you come up with. Easy really, if I committed suicide, which is all a bit emotive, so how about simply if I ended my life, after all, it was my life and how I dealt with it was up to me? (Whoa there cowboy, that was all a but quick, a bit of bullying and you want to end your life, you give up easily - be a man and stand up for yourself ed).

Now the words here are quick to read and judge by, but you have to understand that this was not a quick decision.

This decision was mulled over, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.

Minutes felt like days, hours felt like weeks and days felt like years.

Every waking second was spent in absolute mental turmoil, thoughts thrashing around, battering the inside of my head; at times I could not understand why my head didn’t simply explode from the wave upon wave of rolling, tossing, razor edged thoughts; the utter dread of going to school to suffer that day’s torture; every minute outside of school was mental torture trying to think my way out of the situation.

There was no respite.

What was worse, I felt I could not end my life due to the effect that would have on my family, in particular my Mum.

I was trapped in a terrible, dark, cold, isolated place; being alive was an absolute Hell, but ending my life would cause grief and upset to others. and given my Catholic roots (going back to my roots, yeah - music ed) - ending my life was not only a Sin, but I would end up in Hell if I did.

Hell to the left or me Hell to the right of me, hmm, living Hell, that about sums it up. (Just how much Hell can You live with? - ed) 

Given that I am still here (nearly) 40 years (how many years?) later, what happened?

Were the bullies bested,?

Did you beat them to a pulp with a large hammer, jump up and down on their remains, throw petrol over their dead bloodied mangled bodies, burn them and the school to the ground and manage to set the situation up so that it appeared that they had killed one another in a metalwork class frenzy and trigger an accidental explosion that burnt all the evidence away?

(‘Wistful sigh’, that was one of my more esoteric ideas - not a bad plan I thought at the time, just wasn’t sure how I could get away with it - ed)

No, nothing so gratifying; one morning I woke up in pain, not the usual mental pain (torture - helpful ed), that I was afflicted with when becoming conscious after another night of an unconscious hell, with dreams of death and despair (enough already, we get it - ed), but a physical pain in my stomach. It was so bad that I could barely stand (this was mistyped as barley stand - which I quite like the idea of:, Barley Stand - a place where Barley is put after harvesting - agricultural ed).

It was not a type of pain that I had ever had before. I was used to knocks and bruises, cuts and grazes; as a young adolescent male (ooh well done - a grown up word about not being grown up - nice one ed) your body is growing at an alarming rate and so knowing where your extremities are at any moment in time, is quite difficult.

The result of which, is that you spend your days tripping over, having cut and graze on your hands, elbows knees and even occasionally your head; knock into and against tables, chairs, walls (when they suddenly move when you aren’t looking) and people (as they frequently move when you aren’t looking). So it was not the run of the mill, previously experience type of pain.

(Tangential alert, tangential alert, whoop whoop - you have lost the point - continuity ed)

OK, where was I; a pain in the stomach (more like a pain in the arse at this point - ed)

Yes, well after waking my parents, I ended up in the medical centre on the Brize Norton air base (I am sure I mentioned that I was an Royal AIr Force brat - autobiographical ed). Time passed in a very hard and uncomfortable bed, where the first conclusion was that I constipated, but this was disproved by the insertion of something cold, narrow and well lubricated in a fundamentally uncomfortable place to prove that this was not the case.

When I started throwing up, then throwing up some more (goodbye last night’s dinner, I remember it looking better than that on the way down, but not so nice on the way out and a darn sight less tasty, Can I have a glass of acid on the side please) and then throwing up green bile (tasty tasty, it’s very very tasty - historical ad ed) and the pain was concentrated in a particular part of my abdomen, it was finally decided that maybe I had a problem with my appendix.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am not the hugest fan of doctors (well obviously a big fan of Dr Who and Dr Matt), individually they seem to be alright, but as a general group I remain to be convinced (sharing a chalet with a bunch of new doctors many decades ago was certainly an eye-opener on what they thought about their patients.)

[Prejudice alert at this point. I would like to introduce the concept of “Somebunall - that is some but not all”]

The point (if the editor will let me) is that I was having a particular irksome pain in my abdomen - and the on-call doctor felt it (haha) necessary to probe my abdomen quite firmly to determine where it hurt the most.

I will misremember this part, to make it more humorous, When the doctor said, “You can come down from the ceiling David”, I think he had hit the spot - and an inflamed appendix was diagnosed.

Major interruption by the editor at this point.

Firstly, why is this blog post entitled ‘The Dam and the Wave’ - neither of which has been mentioned so far?

Secondly, why did you start off talking about getting help with your Depression in Winchester and now we are in a medical centre in Brize Norton with appendicitis?

Ah, well spotted dear editor, it is all about context; however I do think that you might have a point.

I was trying (yes you are very trying - literary ed) to give some context and the context bled further and further into the past. But I do assure you, my dear sole (I do cherish you - circulation ed) reader, that the hospital is a key part in the cessation of the bullying.

But just how is this related to Wednesday afternoon in Winchester?

Well I may have strayed a little, but if you could let me continue with fewer interruptions it would be most helpful.

[‘Sigh’, sadly the editor may be correct, in that the contents of this particular blog entry are now really all about what I thought were the roots of my Depression, the bullying at school, which the visits to WInchester helped to reveal were not the real roots. Maybe this could be entitled “Not the roots of my Depression”  or something similar, maybe, “Teenage Hell”, however, I quite like The Dam and the Wave, which I will explain at the end of this post.]

So, now that I had been diagnosed with appendicitis, I was sent cross country to the nearest Armed Forces hospital, no idea why I couldn’t have gone to the nearest hospital. But aged 15 and in quite a lot of pain, that was not my first thought, nor even my second or third.

First thought was that I could die which would be great, as it would not be suicide, so no Hell for me, and I would escape from the bullies. Result!

The nearest Armed Forces hospital was at Wroughton in Wiltshire, long since sold off to allow the building of executive housing or ‘Waiting patiently for Death Homes (™)” also known as retirement homes.

My recollection of the journey to Wroughton Hospital is vague, but I do remember that the driver of the ambulance seemed to aim for every hole in the road and hit it at a good speed. Each jolt was excrutiatingly painful. I would have thought that I would have been given some pain relief, maybe I had, but it didn’t work and the whole journey was one of total agony. If memory serves me right, it took well over an hour to reach the hospital.

The final result of all of this was that the appendix was removed.

Sad to say the operation was botched and the wound got infected, ending up with large amounts of pus weeping through the dressing is a particular poignant memory. I was left with a most interesting scar - looks like a barometer made of human flesh. Large oval shape at the base, a vertical line, and a set of stitches crossing the vertical line. (A picture of this is discretely available on request - photo ed).

There was a great result from all of this though, I finally raised the issue about the mis-streaming with my parents and so when I went back to school I was put into the ‘O’ Level Stream.

This was a life saving result, as no classes with the bullies, so school became a place that I no longer dreaded and the Depression subsided.

(You mean went away for good - mental health ed).

No, didn’t go away for good, just subsided for a while.

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I now need to introduce you to some words that have meanings associated with them (don't all words - literary ed)

The Dam

The wall that I built around my emotions and memories to protect myself from them.

The Wave

The moment that the suppressed emotions and memories breached the Dam.  The wave is not a wave of water, but a moving pile of black beetles glinting with dark light. Each one a thread of an unpleasant memory or upsetting emotion.

The Path

A well worn path that takes me back into my “safe” place, Depression, with a side dish of Self Loathing. The eternal struggle is to avoid walking down it, but to find a different path, a path that takes me into the sun lit uplands and away from the Depression. Sadly the well worn path is the easiest to follow.

The Staircase

At the top of which is me as a small child in need of love and attention. Now, that was an interesting discovery and will be a separate post.

The Black Castle

The fortress that I used in conjunction with the dam to hold in check all the memories and emotions I did not want to find,

The Attic

The room in my mind where all the boxes of unwanted memories and emotions were stacked, and the place where each and every box was eventually opened. 

The Volcano

An erupting jet of pain, bitterness and hurt in the centre of a volcano that I regularly walked into to bathe in its black vile acid, because I deserved it. Sadly still not dormant.

The Door

Once the dam was breached, a door that I created that allowed me to shut away the contents of the boxes opened in the attic. The door finally failed. The result of which we will come to in a future post.

The Big Red Button

A button, I pressed and pressed until my fingers were raw with pain. The big red button to end my life. No matter how long and how hard I pressed it never worked (the force to stay alive is strong in this one - star wars ed)

The Knife

The item that I used to stab my heart, trying to elicit death, pain, hurt, in fact to elicit any feeling whatsoever. Suggesting that I was emotionally locked down. This was, most of the time, an imaginary knife.

The Wish

In my darkest times, the thing I wished for most, that I would be able to go to sleep and never ever wake up.

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I have it in mind to write about each of these subjects in a lot more detail over the coming months.

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Note to the reader: The editors that keep popping up are just thoughts that flit across my mind as I write, and it seems to be a way of capturing these not-so-random thoughts as they are relevant at that moment in time.

What I am failing to indicate, is that there are quite a large number of these thoughts happening in parallel, or so it appears, and it is hard at times to filter them down and fit them in.

(There is a previously started but unfinished blog, called, “The Stream of Unconsciousness”, which is sadly not yet in a fit state to publish. Now that the magic keyboard (™) has been attached to my tablet and I have got into a flow on the trains [and now train replacement buses] into and out of London, and even my lunchtimes at the National Theatre, it may even get finished, then polished and then perhaps published)