Just another 30 day blog challenge… #23

Really? I am so fucking chuffed that I just can’t stop writing and can do it so fast.

So how about how far you have come and that you feel like you have leapt out of a car going over a cliff that has been on the way for ages and you knew you had to get out of it but were too frightened to do anything.

I have always known I’d make it, I just knew. If you had looked at me on the way you would have been right to think I would not have, there are days when the dominant forces within me are – fuck it you are not worth it.

Deep deep down inside where only #supercoolwife and #babybernie can see me I knew I’d be ok. Not just ok, brilliant.

I worry about being the ‘big I am’ being an ego maniac show stealing knob end – it is not so much the knob bit I am worried about it is stamping out other people, shouting over someone to rob them of their self-expression.

Working to out-smart people, using shame as a weapon, to dominate to avoid domination.

We do all these things with children and then have a sneery pride that we have won.

80% of the time when I am working with people these days when I say ‘what ever works best for you’ I mean it. Of course this used to be much lower – probably even 30%  of the time I meant what I said (even believed what I said) ‘what ever is best for you’ the other 70% was abdicating responsibility, getting out a decision and being too weedy to ask a question or admit I did not know. Some of this is me being a twat – the rest is how I ‘was trained’ to be a compliant and obedient schoolboy.

Obviously I think about way more than I actually makes it here to this blog, and like I have said before I write to find out what I think. For ages I did not know what I thought, I shouted stuff out that I thought people wanted to hear. I am always thinking, not like the panic of being in a car ON FIRE and hurtling towards a cliff, these days ‘thinking’ is a beautiful languid nearly effortless sequence. I do less things with less people and have more time for those people, most of my thinking is done walking around parks with #babybernie. I am focused on him and then everything else is submitted to the hard drive of my brain.

As I learn more meditation I get better at paying attention to him, so if I am with him I am focused on him. I don’t tell him this, or he’d become a spot light stealing obnoxious little arsehole whose only dream in life was to meet Simon Cowell. I focus on him in the way I know if he is going to fall or not, I trust him to work it out and I am confident that I can leap in and catch him. I have become familiar with his rhythm, how long it takes him to get up when he falls flat on his face in the park, how he can scale the mesh ladder on the climbing frame.

Next I thought about an old housemate of mine called Fraser, what a guy, he and his wife nursed me with chicken soup and hugs when ‘second big relationship’ ended.  We shared a place in Chalk Farm and then Camden, this new TV show called Friend’s was taking the world by storm, we watched it, ate home made soup and over the course of the first series I started to feel ok. Then I got a new girl friend that Fraser nicknamed ‘potatoes’ – we liked getting mashed together.

One day when Fraser was really pissed off with me. He was pissed off because I had spent most of my rent money (that Ralph at Black Catz was waiting for) on tequila and Rolling Rock in the Road House bar in Covent Garden, not content with that I popped into China Town for a sit down dinner after. He had every right to be pissed off, I was pissed off with me – I’d only gone for a quick drink after work at 5:45pm and suddenly was waking up wondering what was going on.

He shouted at me, ‘Why do you always hurt the people who care about you most Bernie?’ I noticed he did not say ‘fuck over’ or ‘shit on’ or ‘cheat’ he said ‘hurt’ – he went out and paid my rent for me. I went back to bed and was quiet for a very very very long time. I did hurt people, when it came right up to the moment of kissing a girl who really cared for me I’d run the other way. More than once a smart, amazing, funny and gracious girl has declared their undying love for me and I have ordered a HUGE round of shots and chickened out.

Not in a funny way, I have rejected them ‘in a long way round’ because I did not think I could cope, was worth it, felt inadequate, would have to grow up, sober up, get up.

I am sure that #Supercoolwife is the only person ever to have ducked all my attempts to screw it up and get rid of her. I could naïvely assume it is because she is a highly trained Clinical Psychologist and of course there is comical value in that. Actually it is because she loves me more than anyone and I have learnt to hate myself less, understand myself more and stop pretending I don’t care. Since I have been married to her I have read more books, written more blogs, travelled to more places, finished University, stopped smoking, stopped drinking, stopped pouring drugs down my neck and stopped being an angry angry little boy.

I certainly could not recruit at this level again.

Yes life has been up and down. However, I really believe that when you commit to anything more than 100% it is hard, inconvenient and uncertain – but something is even MORE wrong if you don’t do a bit of questioning and doubting.

The answer was a clear no, I have never been more alive and more aware than now. If anything she allowed me to ‘get over myself’ tragic as that sounds, to make the connection between my responsibility and other people’s.

I was able to climb out of a very big dark hole that I have been sitting in for years, as I pulled myself up I banged my head and broke a couple of finger nails but I would never have started if she had not thrown me the rope in the first place.

By making it I do not mean ‘winning the lottery’ or bollox like that. I mean to wake up in the morning and not be depressed, scared, angry and numb. To not have to walk around pretending.

Making it is being open, honest, vulnerable, interested, creative and connected to those around me, especially #supercoolwife and #babybernie – just in case you thought it was some thing else.