Come Clap Thy Hands

I'm closing the Asylum down for a little while.  I like to think it's for repairs, just like the Cathedral and the north side of the nave roof.  Yes, imagine that, a whole load of scaffold up around my head; whole wings lay in ruins, hardly any of the lights work and various doors either won't open or close depending on where they are and who's behind them.

I'm tired, I suppose.  I know I'm upset about the end of the year as well, before anyone points it out for me, especially as it feels particularly abrupt this year - just so many things have happened: Filming 9 Lessons and Carols alongside the usual packed Christmas timetable, audio recordings in January, Come and Sing, the termly concerts with their own highs and lows (Less than half the Cathedral full on a Friday night?  Thoughtless errors in the Durufle Requiem?!), this year's CD followed swiftly by the broadcast... It's been a packed schedule.  Maybe you as audience may scoff at this - perhaps you are part of a choir that does this every year so it's in your stride?  Maybe you have a full time job and demanding home life?  Or maybe you have no idea why this sounds like a lot?  Who knows.  I know that as we reached and somehow survived this last hurrah... I just feel knackered.  I'm worn through and burnt out really; not so much burning the candle at both ends as throwing the whole candle into the fire.  

So, like I say, the place is going to close for a little bit.  If anybody catches me publishing anything before the 6th of September then, then... I don't know, some arbitrary measure of punishment ought to be involved.  Seven weeks ought to be good enough.  Did you know there's a difference between saying something doesn't matter and saying something isn't important?  Amazing.  But I digress.  I used to write about how much it upset me that I didn't fit in: Humanity is still essentially a herd animal - social but ultimately stupid and dangerous in large numbers.  After a modicum of success I once again feel pretty much the same, so I guess this is my get out post for now though - there's just so much bullshit I've decided that the best option now is to down tools and shut the doors - there are battles here that I will never win, ever, and trying to fight on terms other than my own is destroying what's left of me.  Sometimes I feel like the monomaniacal Ahab, hell-bent on his own destruction... Although having thought about who or what my own white whale would be, and what sort of short-sighted offence might be taken, I should say no more on it.

I wonder whether I have left bridges unburnt merely for the sake of it?  I've never felt so inadequate in all my life, said I, before processing up for Evensong... But that's for another time, I suppose.  Frankly, I feel more and more that I have been treated increasingly as a commodity: enough is enough.  That my opinions are increasingly invalid; that my decisions are easy to overturn, or are simply incorrect in the first place; that I am at others' convenience, and that alone; that I may be cancelled, and cancelled on; that simply, it does not matter.  Good for answering your questions, but not much else.  Maybe if I tear enough down, tear it all down, maybe I can build something better.  Yes!  Build a better asylum, build a better mousetrap, build a better me.  Such lofty aspirations.  

There are some good things to come out of all this dread though, in a way.  I now look after a tiny little doglet person, a Golden Retriever puppy of gradually increasing age,size and appetite.  Odds are that nobody would ever have thought I'd be a dog person, in fact probably not any kind of animal at all person but there we go - a change really is as good as a rest.  In a way, he acts like a little Emotional Support Animal, what with me being "on the spectrum" and all (before any of you clever dicks out there say it first), and that I have had no more fun this year so far than chasing this tiny dog around the house and garden, and taking him out and gradually introducing him to the world at large.  He may not strictly be my dog... But when I have custody of him he is my responsibility, and what I say goes.  I've taken to carrying the treat pouch around with me now, to encourage him to behave better (especially at road sides), which garnered me the strange but (probably deserved) compliment that I was "like a proper daddy", which filled me with an as yet unknown sense of pride.

I suppose I'm angry as well.  Maybe it's all misplaced, or totally unwarranted or even unjustified, but that's neither here nor there.  I really need to get my life in order for a really quite substantial change (no, I'm not moving away... But I can't help but think perhaps I missed an opportunity, but actually I do have promises to keep after all), and relieving myself of any guilt of having not posted anything is as much a part of it as anything else.  I am in a time of change, as always at the end of an academic year, and as old totems finally crumble from sheer age I don't really know how to replace them - I am unsure and feel almost totally alone.

None of this rage will matter next year though, as I will finally have a job and money and maybe even some status to go along with them.  Maybe people will finally like me!  I crack myself up... Ah, once upon a time, while I still thought that killing myself was a valid and morally reasonable option, I joked about how I would take so long writing a suicide note that would encompass all my feelings of being wronged and why I ought to leave this mortal plane that I would become too engrossed in the actual note itself, inadvertently saving my own life.  It was at that moment, I knew it was a writer's life for me!  All laughter aside though, wouldn't it be boring if I died?  I can't stand being bored myself, and I'm sure plenty of people would be even more bored if it wasn't for me, so I'll be sticking around for a while.  Anyway, I'd have nothing to complain about!  Even at the gallows, one's sense of humour is still important.

I'll leave you with a real joke for now; I think Rorschach said it best...

"I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor.  Says he's depressed.  Life seems harsh, and cruel.  Says he feels all alone in threatening world.  Doctor says: "Treatment is simple.  The great clown - Pagliacci - is in town.  Go see him.  That should pick you up."  Man bursts into tears.  "But doctor..." he says "I am Pagliacci."

Good joke.  Everybody laugh.  Roll on snare drum.  Curtains." 

Come then, and clap thy hands.  

You Black Bright Stars

First things first: I survived turning 25.

It's been two weeks since my last post and, boy!  What a two weeks it's been!  Last Saturday I ended up having one of my once infamous "quiet days", where I initiate a simple yet effective lockdown - no extra-domestic communication or travel.  I'm sure any members of the counseling or medical communities might find this troubling, I know my family and my friends do as well, but I'm not going to sit here and say I would recommend this to anybody unless in a state of absolute mental disarray... Which I may or may not have been.  I've recently been struggling with my depression quite a lot, actually, and sometimes that struggle comes out as being unable to leave the house.  

I guess... I guess I've been getting stuck in my own head more recently.  In considering what the next step is I've actually thought more and more about the things I've missed out on, things that I'll never have chance to get onto because I'm too old - I had lunch with my boss last week and I brought up something as insignificant as never going on an Eton Choral Course; initially not because I had missed on the idea of it, but more that I had missed out on an opportunity to do more singing when I was younger - although I suppose being an alumnus of the "Rod Squad" wouldn't have hurt too much.  Of course, thinking about it, I probably would have had extreme difficulties with my social and emotional states - surely I would have been expelled from the course for hitting someone who would have suggested that Derby was a third rate Cathedral Choir (an assertion that I've had to bite my tongue through several times, both here and at University).  Oh well.  They would have deserved it, but more on the good old days another time... Although I suppose that singing for almost 18 years (and singing countertenor for 10 of those years) is a worthy endorsement in itself. 

Of course, the next great tableau of melodrama is the oncoming Hallmark masterpiece of Valentine's Day... It's more a backdrop that brings my own issues to the top of my thoughts instead of being repressed like most of the time.  I essentially don't have a problem with the whole cards and gift giving and romantic dinner and candles and all that... There's certainly a lot of jealousy that I can't really join in, what with being bitter and alone, but also upset,  more that I just never seem to be able to get almost any kind of relationship right at all.  I feel like I'm a danger to myself and others emotionally, which is probably some kind of psychological equivalent to body dismorphia thinking about it.  The last few years' worth of "romantic" relationships have ended, well... Badly.  I've even had occasion this year to recall one such relationship that impacted my time at choir from almost four years ago as well, as a wave of dreadful similarities line up - don't mourn for me though because it turns out I'm always the villain, a one dimensional emotional and intellectual abyss that it's okay to hate!  I'm reminded of my own failures constantly, and the 14th of February is a perverse focus for me, that I just can't seem to hack that level of physical and emotional relationship with another human being... And if the thought of me having trouble with that amuses you, then why not think about how you would manage facing the same realisation, once you've finished guffawing heartily?

Enough, as I once shouted in the middle of the night when standing out of bed yet still unconscious (a mystery I still have not got to the bottom of), there must be some light at the end of the barrel.  Mustn't there?  I can't really tell at the moment, which means I need to slug it out even as I'm not really sure that it's necessarily going to get better.  It's at times like this that I turn to my old totems for support though, to maintain a symbolic identity at the very least.  It's hard!  It's not fun.  I upset myself more effectively than anybody else does.  Maybe it really is time for the beta blockers.

What's worth pointing out in the midst of all this despair is how good things have been at work over the last few days.  Friday night concert, Saturday night singing at a ball, Sunday services and the most nonsensically loud but truly excellent Monday evensong in a long time, with Sunday evening to the end of services this half term presided over by Truro's indefatigable Alto dream team add up to actually a very good time indeed.  This sort of week makes me question my own desire to leave, especially now having dismissed five potential moves back into England, one from a particularly prestigious choir in a particularly beautiful Cathedral (like that narrows it down), because essentially... I don't want to.  Now isn't my time, but I'll really need to be aware of when it's time ahead of time from anything from a year to three months in advance to ensure I'm not unsure.  Or maybe I should just throw caution to the wind and totally uproot myself without a safety net.  So many people do and succeed after all, there must be something to it?

NEXT TIME ON Asylum Southwest... Who knows?!  Outside of existential terror I've finally sat through enough sermons to finish The Trial and I'm convinced I've found it funnier than anyone else has on a first read, almost entirely abandoned the questionable pacing of the Assassin's Creed franchise, and found myself questioning that Jerry Espensen is the token Asperger's character in Boston Legal, when all along it's been Alan Shore.

Cue music.  Roll credits.

Laboravi in gemitu meo

Where do I even start with this one?

See, the problem with looking at yourself critically like I have been (and the usual self-criticism as well IT'S ALWAYS MY FAULT ALL THE TIME) is that you sometimes have to face some unsavoury things.  It's been part of why I've had such screaming depression lately.  I've looked into the abyss so much that I wonder not so much that it stares back but more that I am the abyss.  It would explain a lot.

I am a person who makes inherently bad decisions.  I should not be allowed out on my own in case I make another bad decision... Okay, it isn't that drastic.  But I do wonder how many aspects of not only my life but also yours would be instantly and massively improved if I were no longer allowed to make my own bad decisions but instead had somebody who could make decisions that instead start at fair to middling, and then improve with a following wind.  Short of going into full time care though, I don't suppose this will really happen.  Still, I dunno though, could be good!  I might even get an allowance!

That's a good point really; I am dreadful with money.  Today is pay day in the land of Truro Cathedral Musicians as well, and thanks to being chained to this desk all summer I have earned what I class as an obscene amount of money.  Okay, to anybody who has a real job all the time this will be nothing more than pocket change... But to me, this is it!  This is my ticket out of here!  How much will I throw into my savings account, and how much will I use to fuel my music buying habit?  £76 is an awful lot of money to let go of in one go for a keyboard score, but it is the complete works of Thomas Tomkins after all.  Would that be a bad decision?  I don't really think so.  It'd certainly be a far better decision than the usual cocktail of, well, cocktails.

Even now, just hours after receiving funds through bank transfer, I've already splurged on Burger King for lunch and bought a weighty Pynchon tome from Waterstones.  I cannot be trusted with money.  I must be stopped, no matter the cost.  No pun intended.

Of course, continuing my theme of reflection on my own mental issues, my ultimate bad decision arena is that of interpersonal relationships.  I make plenty of good decisions, but there's still a hell of a lot of gambling going on, especially we look at my track record of romantic relationships.  Don't look for too long though, as it's not exactly an embarrassment of success, shall we say.  Being autistic I'm permanently on the back foot as far as any real certainty of others is concerned.  Your emotions and intentions are a vast, unknowable ocean, an unsoundable deep.  Non-verbal communication is a particular nightmare that is hit and miss at the very best, and anxiety-inducingly volatile at worst.  I've been getting better though!  I'm often complimented by work colleagues and Choral Scholars that they would have no idea that I have horrid panic attacks for no reason or that I'm autistic in any way at all - that is, until something happens to upset the fragile balance.  I feel like I'm retreading old ground here, but it never hurts to be reminded that just because it looks like I'm coping does it mean that I am coping in any way at all.  

I kind of came to a point the other day where I said it was time to stop crossing oceans for people who wouldn't even skip a puddle for me; I'm sure you have felt the same thing, even if you parse it differently.  Perhaps you have sworn never to be a doormat again (okay the stakes are higher but the direction's there).  Maybe I finally hit rock bottom after the last few years of girlfriends that barely limped over the 12 week mark and something that escapes simple definition this year.  I'm not happy.  I have gambled again and again with my emotional well-being and come out bruised and bitter.  I make judgements and give my heart out to people who will just not give back, whether by accident or design.  I have no way of telling if peoples' intentions are serious until there comes a point where there's a 100% black & white situation, and I'm sure that must work the other way as well, that nobody can really tell if I'm being serious either.  That's if I have the confidence to approach in the first place!  Argh!

I'll save a deconstruction for the last line there for another time.  I'll need something to think about and to phrase without too much heart bleeding and a complete avoidance of blame.  The last time somebody mistook my authorial intent well... Oh who cares!

Grant the King a Long Life

I don't take sleeping pills.  In fact, I don't take any pills at all, if I can help it.

Every now and again, I like to remind people that I'm an insomniac.  I don't sleep, as a habit.  I once rationalised that I didn't actually enjoy being asleep, rather than any particular physical or psychological reason behind it.  I'm sure there is a deeper meaning, but I've sort of come to terms that it's because I don't like it, so avoid it.  There are times when this wears particularly thin though.

I'm sure this next part isn't going to illicit much in the way of sympathy, but I don't care.

I've been pulling in weeks of working 9-5 at the Cathedral office since the middle of July.  Thanks to this, not only was there a brief and shining island of being out of my overdraft at the end of August, but I'll be even further out soon due to when my hours get added up, meaning I'll still benefit from all this work in October.  The sad truth of it all is that frankly I'm not well suited to working the front desk.  I'm not really wired up to answer the phone and greet people all day.  It's very draining being constantly asked by people how I fare, when I answer honestly and tell them I might not be feeling as great as maybe they are or they would expect me to be, and being questioned as to why.  Sometimes, these people who come to the door are so unfailingly rude it beggars belief; only today I had one caller who proclaimed loudly that "a man like you would not understand!" in regards to handing over a length of fabric to the correct person, before leaving so disgruntled that I said something deeply offensive.  I now feel upset, as I obviously missed a chance to do so, the outcome being the same either way.

One of the defining points of my disability is that I am not good with people, but as part of this job I have to deal with people for almost 7 straight hours.  I say almost depending on what I do for lunch.  But there I am, having to deal with queries that range from the mundane to the bizarre to people thinking that because I can't connect them to the right office, explaining their problem to me will magically sort it out.  What does this have to do with sleeping pills?  I recently worked out that I'm awake for at least 18 hours a day, sometimes longer.  Sure, I turn up in a suit clutching a mug for tea and pretty much have a working strategy for the phone and everything, but I'm still not sleeping enough for a day at the desk.  I don't want to be asleep though!  And now we're back in choir term, so I go straight to evensong after I finish.  Sometimes I'm late to rehearsal, which I absolutely hate.  I'm tired by the time I get home, and in all honesty can't be bothered to cook because I know I'll need to do the washing up later, by which time I'll be more tired, and then I'll get to bed and find... I just don't want to go to sleep.

Keep taking the pills... No.  Don't take the pills.  I used to be on Amphetamines for my hyperactivity, years ago.  I ended up taking myself off them cold turkey because the girl I was seeing at the time managed to persuade me to do so on the grounds that they were bad for me in the long run or something, I dunno.  I was getting quite a bit of sex in that relationship at the time, so you can see how my judgement might have been clouded ever so slightly.  I was proud that I could manage without them though.  Then I went to University.

My University career isn't the wall-to-wall success story that others seem to have enjoyed (or at least put on their websites that they did) thanks to various factors.  One of the major stumbling blocks I encountered was being suicidally depressed for most of my second year, which isn't something I'd advise for anybody, no matter who they are.  This is about as far from joking that I can get.  There were times, when I sat there in that dark, cold, and often empty house, thinking about the most or least painful way to go, or what would make the least mess (I wouldn't want to cause too much of a problem), what would be quickest, or perhaps the most painful way to die.  I have been to dark places.

Weeks without eating properly, not so much alcohol (but still a lot), and weeks where I wouldn't sleep for days as well.  And a violent bout of food poisoning.  Oh, and the Swine Flu?  It was a weird year.  Of course there were calls for me to be medicated, to embark on a course of anti-depressants.  I dodged.  Somehow, I avoided taking them.  There are a number of friends in my life who have looked down that same knife edge, wondering just what the point is; they have been there and they have come back time after time, and the most consistent piece of advice I've heard is "Don't take anti-depressants".  Tales of violent mood swings and lack of appetite without any discernible benefits have soured me for ever more, short of a miracle, from taking a course of pills.  My mood and appetite are bad enough without a further chemical cosh to worry about.  I drink very heavily for a man of my slight weight and low body fat as well, and even if I don't have a problem now, I've certainly had one in the past that looking back, I've managed to hide quite well.  There were several points, especially in my second year at uni and funnily enough here in Truro, where I was doing services distinctly less than sober, and that's simply unacceptable.

Third year came though, which was easily one of the best combinations of people and circumstances I think I've ever had.  There were still plenty of times when I didn't come out of my room... Well, maybe not plenty.  There were, however, plenty of people to help look after me when I didn't.  There's little to say here now except for a concreting of that position that I wouldn't take anti-depressants.  And also sleeping pills.  We can cut to my second year as Choral Scholar at this point. 

Various students from UEA every year fly to foreign colleges, either on exchanges or on straight up years abroad.  The difference in 2012/13 is that this time, I knew some of them, including one whose brushes with suicide make mine look paltry.  Staying up late to best the time difference to hear about hospitalisation, poorly implemented and extremely expensive medical care and disaster after disaster were awful.  Nobody deserves it.  I too was in a bad place, so bad a place in fact that I almost walked out of Truro.  There are some people who are very disappointed that I didn't, but I oh dunno, I have to win sometimes, even if only by the skin of my teeth.  Once more though, the call goes out: sleeping tablets, anti-depressants... Still the answer is as strong!  No!  Then, last year, somebody had an accident.  Somebody who was suicidal enough at the time, what with relationship collapse on top of a mountainous workload, had an accident.  They accidentally overdosed and put themselves back into hospital.  This was shattering to me.  I ended up weeping openly in public that day.

One of the things that stopped me from actually going the whole hog in second year (again, uni or as scholar) was "What if I change my mind and it's too late?"  I know that even though a depressive episode can last a long time, they do end; there is hope.  What if, motivated by sheer emptiness, I had decided to kill myself in a slow and irreversible manner, but then decided I didn't really want to die after all?  There would be no going back.  There'd be no chance to put two feet on the ground when I got out of bed ever again.  No more anything ever again, and that frightens me.  How easy would it be to make a rash decision?  To load up on pills, maybe after coming back, tanked up?  Things like that simple sensation of fear pull me back.  Remind me that there are people other than me who are invested in my life, and often more so.  I have no wish to let any body down by giving up like that.  What would the Big Man say?  What would anybody say?  No matter how bad things get while I'm alive, at least there's chance to improve on what's gone before, even if it's just by virtue of living another day.

I'm sure this hasn't been an easy read.  It hasn't been an easy write either, but it's kind of been sat there in my head for quite a while; I was just waiting for the right title to appear, and having found some new inspiration settled on this one.  It's not Orlando this time, but maybe the keen-eyed among you will work out the theme.  Things aren't too bad, even if I can't seem to shake this depression at the moment.  It looks bad and it feels bad and maybe I ought not to be so bad, but soon I'll stop working full time and I'll be able to put my little Castle of Heaven back together and manage again.  As difficult as it gets, I do in fact choose life.  I already decided to dismiss ending my own life as an option entirely, not a valid choice.  I will manage myself, without any medication unless it becomes completely impossible and I cease to function... But we're a long way from that yet, if at all.

Now, I don't know about you but I'm going to turn in and retire for the evening.  Sleep tight.