Sun, Sea, Sand and Angst.

After one of those painfully quiet days in the shop that seem to be the norm at present I decided hat since it was a sunny evening I'd take a drive up to Newcastle and go for a walk...well a short walk to Maud's coffee shop to be exact. I pretend to myself that I'm here because it's such an ideal "sun glinting off the water" type of evening but in reality after another oppressive grind of a day I just couldn't settle and needed to get out...away from Banbridge. Of course as with much in life the anticipation is always better than the reality..it's very pleasant up here on such a balmy evening but if my mind can't settle in one place a change of venue rarely helps that much.  And so it is tonight. Same mental fog...different surroundings.

 On the journey up all sorts of stuff was popping into my head ..several blogs worth in fact...now I can't recall any of it. Maybe I should try the dictation app on the phone. Coming up with a coherent set of words to describe my feelings on nights such as this is a thankless task...nothing will cohere without fairly stressful effort...which sort of defeats the purpose of blogging in order to relieve the pent up stress. Little snippets of memory and vague flashes of hopefulness coexist with the somewhat angst ridden landscape that passes for my mind currently. Then there is the bone numbing, will sapping anxiety that tunnels through the most carefully assembled defences, probing ever corner of my mind and tugging at every fibre of my being. There is no escape from its touch...no way of shielding the thought processes from its constant ingress. You can do as many thought exercises as you want...once anxiety has a grip it is relentless in its progress and ruthless in its application. I am not helping of course by attributing characteristics to it...bigging it up so to speak. But that's how it feels.

 I had a friend once plagued with anxiety and a lot of people used to tell her that she had nothing to be anxious about....she was comfortably off, happily married, had a fulfilling job etc...but of course they missed the point. Her anxiety was real to her and extolling the virtues of the wonderful life she had served only to make her feel even more isolated...and more anxious. She had deep abandonment issues that I won't go into which rendered all talk of how fortunate she was to have loving husband/family  etc pretty much irrelevant. She still struggles with it but with medication has improved. I say all that only to highlight how serious a problem anxiety can be irrespective of people's outward circumstances. There does not always have to be an obvious or specific reason. My own anxiety issues stem from both the general and the specific. The latter is the simplest to explain in that it is quite common these days. The shop is struggling and under constant severe financial pressure. If it continues like this I don't know how it will survive. Needless to say that is a concern. Dealing with the pressure of that day to day is like being in a vice that just keeps tightening. Keeping a lid on it when dealing with customers is next to impossible and requires great concentration. This in turn breeds more stress. I am not alone of course as a small business owner but that doesn't help. So that is the obvious one...the one that looms largest in my mind this evening. 

Then there is the other type. It's much harder to pin down and of course the financial/business pressures bleed into it to an extent. It comes from somewhere deep and is less amenable to reasoned analysis. It's like an undercurrent...flowing beneath and around everything else, releasing its poison as it goes. I suspect I know where it comes from but I am not willing to go there. Some things are too painful for a sunny evening in Newcastle. Or anywhere else. It's roots no doubt are in childhood where all roots terminate....or should that be begin...they are in my DNA perhaps...my code...it found nourishment in the wreckage of a failed marriage...and before that in the fractured relationship that lead there...we all have our code as Andy Kirkpatrick so eloquently laid bare in a recent blog. The code that makes us up that is. Not the code we live by. Mine is written across a tinder box of need, frustration and self loathing ...I am greater than the sum of its parts and yet I am limited by each in turn. Anxiety gets to have a field day in such company. 

There's quite a chill in the air as I walk back to the car. That's somehow fitting. 

Turn on the Bright Lights.

It's much easier to give in than to fight.

Those words or a variation of them have hung around my life like a bad smell for a long time now. Today was a bad day. Well a worse day than usual. There are reasons but I won't go into them. There doesn't always have to be specific ones but today there were.  You need to beware the slippery slope effect. It can start with vague unease and before you know it you are staring into the abyss. That's how it works. The mind (well my mind anyway) doesn't just jump it quantum leaps. Before you know it you are spiraling downwards uncontrollably. The effort required to reach out and grab at anything that can arrest your descent is enormous...you are too busy tumbling. If you've ever slid out of control down a hill or rocky incline you will get the picture. I couldn't settle this evening so I went for a short drive to a quiet, calming spot near where I live...sadly the lake side haven was packed with others of a similar intent so I retraced my steps and found myself turning off the road to a spot I haven't visited in a while. It's a secluded lay by set in off the road and overlooking the river Bann the purpose of which I've never been sure of other than to provide a handy spot for amorous or illicit rendezvous. The last time I was sitting here would have been about six or seven years ago and it would have been about 2 am. I'd stormed out of the house after a particularity caustic exchange and had driven here down the back roads at about 90 miles an hour ...it was the only place I could think of to go through the thick fog of madness that engulfed me. I say madness because I don't know what else to call it. It wasn't the first time I'd walked/run out of the house in a state after som e row or other and it wouldn't be the last but it sticks in my mind more than the others. I was gripped by madness that night. I remember feeling like my head was going to burst. My mind was threatening to break apart...whatever that means. There's no good way of explaining a feeling like that...other than by saying that the memory of it still causes me to wince as you would from a sudden pain. I remember screaming at God to do something...to help me or kill me. And I remember slamming my head repeatedly against the steering wheel as I sat here in the darkness till it hurt...perhaps in the hope that I could shake lose the horror of it all. I can't remember much else. Not even how long I was there for. About six months later I had left the house for good. 

As I sit here now with the light fading in exactly the same spot a lot of those buried emotions are resurfacing as I knew they probably would. They have of course taken on a new and slightly different edge. Pain always adapts and evolves. Darwin would have approved. Writing this has settled me a bit. As to what brought me here...not sure. Partly a need to reconnect with old hurts perhaps ...if that makes any sense at all. A place can do that. Perhaps also to make sense of more immediate turmoil. But that is too ambitious. Maybe to explore the connection between the two. And they are connected...though not in an obvious way. That's how the mind operates. 

I began by saying that it is easier to give in than to fight. And it is. I'm very tired. Tired of the grind of things...of the constant fire-fighting that is my life...of the struggle to keep everything going...of the fear and anxiety that gnaws at me incessantly...of the constant need to keep my guard up...of the way I feel about myself most of the time...of the anger that writhes and burns and won't go away...all of it. For a little while tonight giving up seemed more appealing than usual. But I think I will fight on...for now. 

It's time to head back to the house for some food and a bath. Interpol are playing at full volume. Turn on the Bright Lights. Not sure if it's a metaphor but it'll do.