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?
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