Notes from A Cruel Healing

 

Discontented and Restless

So what do I mean by well being? I simply never experienced the ecstatic feelings that follow peak life achievements. By the age of fifteen I was expelled from school for smashing up a Home Economics classroom and allegedly assaulting Mr Brittan who taught Modern Studies. My achievements up to that time and afterwards were not the norm. While people have memories of achieving academic and sporting success during their school years, my memories include being the first among my mates to climb the tallest tree along the banks of the River Clyde, becoming a skilled slalom skateboarder, and being first in my street owning the latest Jam record. I could relate to these small achievements but didn’t derive any great feelings from them. My attitude also made it difficult for me to relate to the nature of the achievements attained by my classmates, and I couldn’t comprehend any of these providing me with a sense of intrinsic reward. Life events like successfully completing school, obtaining favoured employment, settling into your first home, getting married, having a family, achieving promotion are massively important in people’s lives and cause ecstatic emotions, igniting feelings of gratitude, excellence and happiness. I witnessed this excitement in other people however I could not relate to the feelings they expressed as I had never felt that way about any event or any achievement in my life. I could not muster genuine emotion regarding feeling great about myself or about anything I had achieved or nominally achieved. It was as if I was missing the necessary buttons that had to be pressed before these positive feelings could ignite. In other people this expressed exuberance appeared natural, their celebratory whooping and hollering and smiles seemed congruent with their enlivened body language. I had no sense of, and found it difficult to grasp the concept of reward as the catalyst providing these type of feelings that I saw other people intuitively react to and express. I felt like an impoverished being without the very feelings that were the enrichment of the human soul. I had been robbed of an integral part of the human experience and would wonder, stunned;

how come I am not completed, not whole, there are pieces of me missing, and there is a song in other people’s hearts I am deaf to and that my heart has never been able to learn, I had been overlooked by the heavens, the angels know nothing of my existence, the full mystic and majesty of human experience would never be mine, I would be without its warm brotherly embraces, hugs and handshakes, my form has not attained shape,  half made, half finished, abandoned.

Shielding my emotional limp and ugliness from everyone around me, fearful, angry, evasive and as profoundly yearning as the hunchback Quasimodo and like him imprisoned within the confines, not of Notre Dame Cathedral, but the clipped limitations of my emotional range, that were my very own Notre Dame, attached to me like the shell is to a snail, sloth and lumbering I plodded to keep up with other healthy vibrant beings who tasted the heights of joy and gratitude, the zenith of liberating humour and greatness, they tasted as one as there back slapping denoted harmony and togetherness, achievement, well being and reward. And each time with each pang I receded deeper into the tiny font of the yawning loneliness that had become my tone deaf and unmusical heart.

Instead of feeling a rich sense of well being on a par with my contemporaries the windswept barren ache I sensed was the ominous silence of a torn wound I carried whose origin was befogged from my inadequate emotional rummaging. The emotional pain I felt not only regarding my feeling alien to the richest life affirming feelings of being human, and my feelings of disconnectedness, but arose also from the human capacity for love and affection I perceived that were outside my ability to become engaged with or to develop. I viewed other people engage easily with each other; their interactions seemed poised, intuitive and relaxed. They appeared secure in each others’ company and glad to be there. Their conversations meandered unhindered through peaks and troughs of flirtation, fondness and tempered cheerfulness. The elements of their body language were suitable and appropriate to the particular occasion, whether at a children’s party, a wedding or just meeting on the street. Engaging with other people I always found awkward, perplexing and pained. I would look upon the relationship skills proficiency of others as a threat towards me, I felt belittled by my inability to match their aptitude. Their perfectly combed and honed competence towered over me, their flair and ease in accord with each other I found overbearing and anxiety provoking. The anxiety and the resultant feelings became too painful, far too difficult to manage and I withdrew from socialising, especially from social events. Included to be avoided also were every day chit chat, tittle tattle, and simple ‘how is your day’ community exchanges. I kept my interactions with other people to a bare minimum; I kept a distance between myself and others, I did not develop any type of intimacy with anyone where I could express the difficulties I had with being comfortable within myself and being comfortable among people. My perplexity at the ease of how people lived and get on with their lives was relentless, causing me to continually compare myself and conclude I was less than those who seemed to be naturally equipped to do life.

For me living with others and living with myself became unbearable. In the early spring evening just inside the entrance to a concrete pedestrian subway, that had became a hangout for the local youths, I found relief inside a stolen bottle of Bullmans cider. Just before becoming a teenager I had tasted my first alcoholic drink. My anxiety and the feelings that had been unbearable had become much easier to contend with, I felt the most at ease I had ever been, I felt part of the human race, and I felt like the other people who appeared to do life with such grace and poise. Alcohol was providing me with a sense of well being and positive connection I had never experienced, I looked at people with a camaraderie alien to me, there was a new enmity given to me that made it easier and painless to be around people. Alcohol seemed to provide the solution to my discomfort that I was not able to discover under my own resources or with another human being. The respite I felt became a release I hankered after, longed for, ached for.