The Fear, The Guilt & The Thoughts

Today I have an audition for a band. The fear that I have is physical, I have been feeling ill for the last week and my throat is sore and I feel anxious and everything. I have been assured by my darling wife that I always get like this when I have to do things like this. I don't know but I expect that I probably do. Never having sung most of the songs they do and not actually knowing a few of them, only having heard them in passing, adds to the fear greatly. I like to kid myself that I am a singer, and a few people have told me I have a good voice, but I'm not sure I believe it really. It feels like another of those things I can get by doing but am not really as good as I make out or people seem to think. Am I right or are they, I can't tell and will probably always believe I'm not good enough, it has been the same with everything in my life. I think that my therapists may have been right when they have told me I lack self belief. As to the rehearsal, we shall see.



Lately I have been feeling the grip of guilt relating to things I did and didn't do while I was drinking. This guilt lays heavy on top of the depression and weighs me down greatly. I never forget about it but sometimes I can cope with it better than others. The trouble is I don't know how to deal with it or get rid of it, or if that is even possible.



My thoughts of late have been fairly dark and deflating, I hope the call I made about therapy brings some help soon. I'm fed up of being fed up.

Rigidly Defined Areas Of Doubt And Uncertainty.

Brain, brain, go away, can you please be quiet today!


I am tired! Not tired in the way that means I need to sleep, although I know at least one person that would say that it would help, but tired of the way I feel and tired of dealing with it. I'm fed up of being fed up! I'm beginning to think that it is just another addiction, not exactly the same as my alcoholism but similar in as much as it makes my life unmanageable, not completely but it does have that kind of effect. I am a functioning addict, sometimes I function better than others. I think that something within me wants me to stay within my depression because it feeds the addiction, it could be that it is the addiction itself that controls that want, or it may be something else inside that feels safe within the madness and doesn't like to be without it. Don't know if there is a rehab programme for that.



I have been wrestling with a number of things and trying to make decisions, which doesn't come easy for me at the moment but I have come to a decision about one thing. I have been looking into the idea of getting back into singing and have been in touch with a band that are looking for a singer. I haven't sung many of the songs they do before, and there are a couple I've only ever heard other covers bands do. So I am going to take my chances and go for it, despite the fact that I have little or no self belief, I just hope that if it does work out then I am not overwhelmed by it and not able to cope. We shall see. The problem I have is that I don't want to let anyone down and if it turns out that I cannot cope and have to walk away from it, I may have to do just that. I am nervous and worried about it.



There is a darkness in my head, there is a darkness in my soul, there is a darkness in my life, they are sometimes the same darkness and sometimes anywhere between one and many millions of different darknesses. The darknesses are waiting, I try hard to keep some kind of light somewhere around me to keep them at bay, but at times that light grows dim and almost goes out so the darknesses start to engulf me and draw me into the deep shadows, I wrestle and fight to claw my way back into the light but sometimes I just feel like I want to stop, to give up fighting, to let the darknesses take me and cover me in the blackness, but I can't allow that to happen because I have responsibilities and must keep fighting for them and the things they need from me. At times though I must say it gets mighty difficult to keep up that fight and for those responsibilities to be enough to keep me going.

The lessons we learn and the learning we lessen.

When I was at junior school in Hackney I quite liked it, especially the violin lessons we had with a guy from the Royal College of Music and the project I remember doing on the Romans. I made a full size picture of a Roman centurion, which I hung on the inside of my bedroom door, when we moved to Burnt Oak in the early 1970's it got left behind. It became a bit of a family joke over the years but having done a fair bit of therapy I have now become aware that it was a very important thing. I think that that move was majorly responsible for the way my head is, not completely maybe but it had a hell of a lot to do with it. Firstly, as the youngest in the family I always felt like I was ignored when it came to family matters, not told about things that were happening and not feeling like my opinion or voice was important enough to be included, this was worse after the move and part of the reason was that my hurt at the picture of the centurion being left behind was never acknowledged as real and was turned into a joke. Before moving to Burnt Oak I had never experienced being bullied but from the moment I went into my new junior school it started, and carried on until the end of my school life, and in fact beyond. Also I remember being told that Hackney was a"slum" area and that Burnt Oak and Edgware were better places, but there were no more violin lessons and I felt like the things I was being taught weren't as good or as well taught, although there were one or two teachers that stuck in my head and not all of them for good reasons. There were other things that only started after we moved which had much more of an effect on my life but those things have no place here. I'm not saying that everything about moving to Burnt Oak was bad, I met and still have a lot of friends when we moved there, if I hadn't met them then I wouldn't have worked for Neal Kay and therefore wouldn't have met lots more friends in East London, and all the things that meeting them lead to wouldn't have happened. In the end I wouldn't be the person I am today, some may say that wouldn't be a bad thing but my life isn't bad, even though my head and myself might be. You can't live your life on what if's and regrets, life is what it is, I have a loving wife, three kids that I love and a multitude of grand kids that I also love; I have good close friends; I have other, not so close but equally good friends; and I have family on both sides that care about me. Some might say, and have said, that given all that I should be happy and not depressed, but depression doesn't work like that. Too much of what affects my depressive states is in the past or in my head, neither of which I can switch off or get rid of completely. I used to think that the constant consumption of alcohol would help, and in the short term it sort of did, but in the long term it just made things a whole lot worse. It has taken me a while to stop introducing myself to people by saying "My name's Andy and I'm an alcoholic", I got so used to saying it during my time in rehab and at regular AA meetings. Life is a strange old fish and more than that I cannot, at this time, carry on saying.



As you may or may not be able to tell, I am writing these posts over a period of days. This means that some of the thoughts and feelings super cede each other or change or get lost or get worse or get better or some other such rubbish. There are many things that influence, and don't, my thoughts and feelings, lots of those things are to do with other people and those people are a mix of the known and the unknown, but all are there in the world, except of course for the ones that are not really there in the world, but even those ones are still there just not in a physical sense.



The strangeness that sometimes pervades my soul, head and world is all numbing and slowly breaks my life into a million pieces, those pieces melt into each other and form a lake of memories which drains away into the void of forgetfulness, my life is then replaced by another copy almost exactly the same but slightly more scared and battered. These things are what they are and forever will be so. They don't define me but do re-design me and have done for years, making of me what they do.



Many things around me are changing and moving all the time, just as they do for everyone else I suppose. Why is it that I find it hard to cope with that fact, almost as hard as dealing with the fact that deep down underneath it all, I might be normal. I've fought so hard against being normal all my life and mainly because I didn't want to be me, maybe the me I really am is just a normal every day guy, just like every other normal bloke in the street. Maybe that's what I've been running away from or fighting against, and maybe part of that is the fact that as a normal person I didn't think people would notice me or want to know me. Then again it's possible that none of that is true. Who the f**k knows?

Is The Fat Man Spread Too Thin?

Over the last recentness I have started or taken on a few things, to add to the other things I already have to do. The question is am I taking on too much, especially at a time when my mind is doing a lot of screaming at me and wanting to either hide or destroy? As I have been reminded, at the moment neither of the two newest things I'm going to take on are definate, it could be that they will come to nothing, so until I start them I won't know if they will continue and therefore take any of my time and focus. So I shall wait and see what happens, but it won't stop me worrying about things, I don't think anything would. There are still the other things, some of which are things I have to do and some are things I have said I will do but am unsure of both my ability to carry out and how well I can do them. Me doubting myself and my abilities is nothing new, in fact it has been a habit of mine for as long as I can remember but it is based on experience of me screwing things up and, although I know it is mostly me setting the levels of how good or bad I am at doing things, not achieving anywhere near a good level of success. Maybe I am just talking rubbish again, maybe I am completely paranoid and have a leaning towards self destruction, maybe none of that or this is true, maybe I am not true, maybe there is no truth, maybe all things are true, maybe or maybe not. There is no way of knowing and no way of being without it in my head. There is nothing I can do to get rid of it from my head, I just have to find a way for it and I to co-exist and live peacefully together, instead of dying angrily together. Like any relationship there has to be a certain amount of ..... what is that word? You know, when both sides have to give up things in order for them to work together, er...... can't think of it....... compromise, that's it. The problem is all the compromises will be on my side as far as I can see, I can't see it giving way on anything. Even then there is no possible way to tell if things will work out, also do I want them too? Now there's a question. Yes it is!!!


I have sat away from this for a while, not to think about it or anything in particular, but to see what else may be happening in and around. I fear for the future of our planet; I fear for the future of our country; I fear for our children's future; I fear for the lives of the sick, poor, elderly and disabled; and most of all I fear for the people closest to me and how their futures will be. We live in a world where caring for others is met with ridicule and even hatred on a national, political level, and yet we raise more money for more than one TV charity night every year. Some people have said to me that they don't see why I'm depressed because so many other people in the world have it so much worse than I do, but my empathy towards those others feeds my feelings. I would ask how can anyone now feel depressed given the way the world is going, surely NOT feeling anxious or depressed in these times is more of a mental illness than depression.

Burnt down and out of damns.

I have been on a down of late, well actually I've been drifting in and out of it for some time, and it has got to a point now where I feel it is affecting my ability to cope with the day to day necessities of adult/husbandly/fatherly life. I have decided that it is time for me to get back into therapy, if I can. When I was in group therapy I was just getting to the point where I was opening up and being willing and able to talk about some of the real deep stuff from my childhood and drinking life, when we were told that the Government had changed the rules and now you can't stay in group therapy for longer than 2 years (not sure if it's the same for individual therapy) whereas when I started you had to sign something to say you were willing to stay for at least 2 years because they don't think you can see it doing anything until you done at least that long. So, being the pillock that I am, instead of opening up and getting all the crap out, I shut back down and put it all back in it's little locked box in my head. It has been shouting to be let out again and has seeped out a little which has been part of the down I have been slipping in and out of, that is why I think I need to try to deal with that stuff once and for all. There are also other things that have been part of that down, things from every day life and the world around me, things from other areas of my past, thoughts and feelings that sit inside me and fester because I am too scared to let out or say aloud. Now I know there isn't a "cure" for depression, it is more just dealing with as much as you can and trying to find a way to live with whatever is left, which may well be all of it. I have made the first step and now just have to sit and wait for them to contact me. I know some people think too much therapy can become another addiction or a crutch to lean on, but I have always tried to have periods of therapy interspersed with periods of trying to live out in the real world and cope with things as best  I can. I don't know of any other way to try to deal with all the crap in my head and soul, and believe this is the best thing for me and the right time to go back into it.


I am suprised that I have been able to focus on this one thing long enough to make this entry actually make sense. My focus has lately been more that a little lacking, as have I.


All of that said, of course, there has to be days to live in between now and the day they contact me and I have to try to keep enough focus to do the things needed. Focus!!!!! House Of The King, that was good. Saw them live a few years ago, not entirely the original line up but they were good. Drifting to eye rest, think it might be best to end. I will be back, maybe somebody else will too, thank you to everyone that even looks at my blog in passing. I am writing this as an exercise in purging my brain and knowing some people are reading it is at the same time, odd, exciting, interesting and not really bothering me. I know that might not make sense, and I hope it doesn't upset anyone. I will try to explain. The fact that I can get at least some of my brain juice out and on here is a good thing, the fact it is read by anyone is not really the point of doing it, but there is a part of me that is excited by that fact because I like to think it might have some kind of effect on at least one of the people who read it, egotistical wanker that I am. I also like it when and if people leave comments, partly because they can help (even if it is just because it shows people read and hopefully understand what I write) but also because it stokes that massive ego that sits inside me. Anyway, enough of this waffling bull-shit, I will be posting again at some point, if you stop by, thank you, if not, there you go.

The Irrationality Of It All

There are many number of things that go on in my head/life on a daily basis that I neither understand or have any control over. The external things I try very hard, as directed by the serenity prayer, to find the serenity, courage and wisdom to cope with them. The internal things are a little more difficult because they can be very sudden to come on, very strange and very unexpected. Thus it is that I can go from having a not bad day to wanting to scream into people's faces and rip off heads in a matter of seconds. The problem is I have a habit of taking it out on whoever is around me at the time, which too often is my 9 year old son. I try so hard not to shout or get aggressive when I'm with him but there are times when I don't manage it. I always apologise to him afterwards but I shouldn't need to do that, I shouldn't be taking it out on him in the first place.


The fact that I can see the point of having a bad mood and the other side of my life is so much better than that, I have no idea what I was just about to write, oh well, that's the way my head works sometimes.


There are times when I look at myself and think. I



That's it my self has switched off!!!

Killing Me Softly

Something I have had to come to terms with in recent years is the fact that, for whatever reason, I have spent a large amount of my life deliberately trying to destroy myself. There is something within me that doesn't seem to like me and has been doing its best to wreck my life and, if possible, end it. Of course it hasn't been in quick violent ways, it has been in slower and more subtle ways. Using the weapons of addiction, depression and selfishness, it has battered me and still continues to do so. Now I know about it, I try to fight it and stop it from doing anything before it has a chance to act, it doesn't always work but, in the main I've been successful. The thing is that coming to terms with this, and I'm still not completely sure I have fully, has been very difficult and I have realised that it doesn't mean that I can cope with it or deal with it or stop it in any way, I try to but I know that it may well be the fact that I will never be able to stop it, but hopefully I can learn to live with it and deal with it on a day to day basis.


Since having my heart attack, about 10 years ago, I have come to realise that I am not afraid of death at all. I am scared of dying alone, and also worried about how I die and who finds me, but death itself does not scare me in any way. Maybe it's partly to do with the fact that when I lived at home with my parents, my mum and I used to talk openly about death and dying. We had many conversations about what she thought about death and how people deal with it, also about her advancing age and her death. I didn't have the same sort of conversations with my dad, but my relationship with him was never exactly the same as my relationship with my mum. I always felt close to both of them, as I did to all my family, but I always seemed to be closer to my mum when it came to things like that, we could talk about just about everything.


I can say that I feel it every single day but there are a number of times a month that I miss the family members that I have lost, and I miss the family that we had, or at least I always thought we had. One of the problems of being the youngest of the family is that you often don't get told of things, especially if those things are "bad" things, you are seen as being too young to understand or they don't want to bother you with it, at least that's the way it feels (of course sometimes it feels more like you're just being ignored or left out of things). I know that I have a TV and film fuelled dream-like vision of what I have always thought somethings, like Christmas, should be like and I also know that, not only have those things never been like that, they also will never be like that, mainly because life is not a Bing Crosby or Perry Como or Val Doonican TV special, and I am starting to think maybe my "memory" and thoughts about how our family were are the same, not real.


Gradually, over time, all these things eat away at you and then, if you have that self-loathing thing going on like I have, you start to use them as a weapon against yourself. The thoughts go similar to this: "I am stupid! I must be to continue thinking that things like Christmas could and should be just the way I think they should. More over, I am more stupid for continuing thinking that way even when I know it not possibly. I am even more stupid for getting disappointed ever time they are not the way I think they should be in my 'visions'. Maybe it is my ongoing stupidity that is the reason I want to destroy myself. Well, I'm so useless I can't even do that properly. So I am useless and stupid, why would and does anyone like me, I am not worth the love people show me so what does it matter if I destroy myself?" The strange thing is that, even though I know all these things, and I know that the things I tell myself are not true, it doesn't stop me thinking or feeling them, or help in any way with knowing how to or actually doing anything to stop.

Growing and not and things

I suppose, when it comes down to it, the thing we all do is grow older. That doesn't necessarily mean growing up, just that every year you get another year older. All people grow older at the same rate but they grow up at different rates, so people never grow up at all. The problem is that even when you do grow up, you don't always want to stay grown up, sometimes you want to revert either to your twenties or teenage years or, sometimes, even further back. For some it is a matter of wanting to go back to a time when you were free of the responsibilities of older life, for others it is a matter of wanting to be looked after, for others still it is about virility or control or fun or any one of a million other things. Personally I didn't grow up for a long time, held in stasis by alcohol and not wanting to change that. I spent many years pretending I was growing up, I didn't do a bad job of it but the pretence was difficult to maintain and often slipped away to reveal me as an immature twat. Once I removed the alcohol, I could really grow up and I did, but sometimes I don't want to be so grown up and responsible and sensible but, as a father especially, I can't allow myself to do anything about it, this causes a battle in my head and heart, one which I can never win because I'm the only one fighting.

One thing I have noticed recently is the difference between myself and some other people when it comes to growing up. I have always equated growing up with responsibility and the leaving behind of childish things, that's not to say that you can't be silly and revert occasionally, but that in the main you think about your responsibilities before making any decision to act. I now realise that there are people, some of whom I know, that seem to equate being grown up with swearing, violence and sex. To me, apart from the sex (or at least any actual act relating to sex), they are actually quite immature and childish things. Maybe I am the one who is wrong, or at least has the wrong outlook on life.





I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't become an alcoholic, or if certain things hadn't happened in my childhood which had a major effect on the way I feel about myself and,
therefore, the way my life has played out. I don't necessarily regret the way my life has unfolded, but I do regret the fact that people, including me, got hurt along the way. I'm not saying that I wish my life had gone differently because if it hadn't gone the way it has then there are many things that I have done, many people that I have met and experiences I have had that I would never have had in my life and I wouldn't like them not to be there. What I am saying is that just occasionally I wonder what roads I would have taken and where they would have lead me if I hadn't been so influenced by fear, anger and addiction. I have no doubt that others feel and think the same, sometimes, but for me there are times that it becomes all engulfing for at least a few hours. Often I find myself cursing my "butterfly" mind and wishing I could be more focused, but I'm not, so I just have to make the most of being the unfocused, befuddled twat that I've always been.



Well, as you see I haven't sorted out how to use somethings on this blog, like adding pictures or making it look a bit more interesting, maybe one day, we'll see. I'll be back soon.....ish.

Days of the like and then.

When I woke this morning it felt like a banjo bacon honey kind of day but now it seems to have turned into a Strangled Woodbine Wednesday afternoon. There are no words, well there are but not ones that would be said to be said. The day moves ever onward and I just rotate in my cabin, lost at see but not yet missing. D v hu mmmmmm,,,,,,mkm,kmkio,,,,,,,,,, bnujik.


Sorry!!!


I had to post the above because I wanted to use it as an illustration of what goes on in my mind whenever I sit down to try to write something. I have this sort of thing going on while I'm trying to focus just on the thing I want or need to write about, also there are lists of things I need to do other than the writing being repeated over and over; and at least one song (over the last week it's been "Girls Talk" by Dave Edmunds). The other thing is that the nonsense stuff can change subject, tense and/or tone about every minute, and this is only one of about a dozen different lines of garbage that are all different and all going on at the same time, and fade in and out and through each other. To some extent it's amazing I can ever write anything. I have, for a while now, been trying a thing I read about called "free writing". Basically the idea is to allow the nonsense and garbage that bounces around in your head while you're trying to focus, to flow out onto the page either as words or drawings. It is difficult not to try to make it make sense, or to write something more focused and sensible. There have been a few times that I haven't managed to just let things flow, but on the whole I have. It has been interesting and I will carry it on, at least for a while, maybe once I fill a complete book with my writing and doodles, I will put some of it on line somewhere or get it published (not that I think anyone would want to) or something, or not.



There are times in my life when I have felt alone, no matter how many friends and family I have had and no matter what my relationship situation was. I can, at least, say that right now I don't feel that way and haven't for a few years now. It has taken me a while to realise and acknowledge this fact, I'm not sure why it has taken me so long but I am glad that I have now come to this realisation, and the way I am feeling is due in no small part to my continued sobriety, my years of therapy and my lovely wife.


That's it for this time, be back soon.

Mood Music Or Music Moods.

I have for a while moved away from music a bit. My love of music has never left me but for a while now I have had less desire to listen to it and almost no desire to perform it. Part of the reason for that is my falling out of love with cover bands, although there have been a few exceptions to that. I am of the opinion that doing the same cover versions as all the other bands on the circuit is boring and not what I want to do. I want to play different songs, ones that people don't hear that much anymore or that are just a bit different, if you do have to do some of the same old songs then changing them so they sound different. Not everyone agrees with me, I have been told that a band has to do the songs everyone knows and likes. My argument is that when I starting going to pubs to see live covers band they would have been lynched if they hadn't played Johnny B Goode, Bad Moon Rising or Mustang Sally, these days almost no one plays those songs. The only reason that changed was because bands started playing different songs, and the audience went to see them, it's the bands at the top of the tree of local covers bands that can change things quickest, but smaller and newer bands can try to change things too. The problem is two fold; firstly, finding other musicians that agree with my way of thinking; and secondly, working out what songs to play. There is also the fact that my eyes have been opened over the last year to the fact that there are other and different arenas that bands and musicians can perform in, not just the Rock pub circuit, these offer alternatives of styles of music and songs that could be performed and also the way they can be performed. All of this has left me a little confused as to what I want to do and how to go about it, and also a little jaded as far as Rock covers bands and covers bands in general are concerned.
I have, just recently started a short course on music production and the use of Logic Pro X. It, along with the fact that I seem to be in a lighter place in my head at the moment, has renewed my love of music. I have found myself listening to and enjoying music a lot more than I have been, which is a good thing.



There are days when I really feel like just grabbing someone, anyone, in the street and pushing them up against a wall and just screaming at the top of my voice for as long as I can straight into their face. On those days I try very hard to stifle that desire and end up screaming at myself inside my head, even louder than normal. Thankfully, those days don't occur as often at the moment as they have in the past, and may do again in the future. Life is interesting when you have no idea what sort of mood you will wake up in, or how long it is going to be before that mood changes, it could be minutes or hours or days or weeks. It's partly the unpredictable mood swings and, amongst other various garbage, partly the constantly changing trains if thought and talk inside the head that makes everyday a true adventure and sometimes interesting, sometimes a nightmare. Why was Maxwell's hammer silver? Not an example really, just a thought that I just had, don't know why because I neither know or care what the answer is. Sorry, my mind has gone completely off track now and so this post will end here.

See you again soon....ish, maybe.