I’m increasingly having feelings I had as a teenager, when I couldn’t do the things that helped me cope on a daily basis. When my legs were bad, because I’d run too much during that year, or the weather was just way too bad to go out, but I’d also eaten a full meal, and felt that feeling in my belly like a solid weight of judgement. I had to sit there and wait in pain for when it was ok to sleep (I didn’t have alcohol back then).
Why am I writing this now? Because I’m 39 in a week, and I know I can’t live like this anymore – on the run.
It’s got me nowhere. I’ve done some great things, but these artistic feats have by and large been an expression of how I feel about life, and not actually living that life.
But I also know that I’ve spent a long time being incredibly creative in designing routines and projects for myself that, in the short term, abate the horrible feelings about myself and life that are still there, waiting, from being a young person.
I always get scared these days when I write so honesltly. I fear that it will make ten people unfollow me on instagram (I will, in their eyes, become a ‘loser’), it will make people in my workplace think of me with suspicion, that I’m always on the verge of needing time off. But, more so, there’s always that sneering inner voice which isn’t necessarily warning me against exposing how “much of a mess(!!!!!)” I am, but says “I’m sure other people are suffering too, so why do your words need expressing – just get on with it?”
If I’d had been able to “get on with it”, I wouldn’t be writing this now.
My 30s have been a time when my inner battles have evolved from a daily protection from a self disgust in face of the threats I may face, to a self-disgust at my failure to do even the most basic of adult things. Part of this battle has been an inner fight to prove that my pain is real. This has undoubtably been a harsh 15 years for many of us, and I constantly fight the inner suggestion that I ” need to be quiet because there’s people far worse off than me”.
It’s true, I know full well: I live in a town with a hell of a lot of poverty, and a hell of a lot of homelessness since the Tories got in 12 years ago. It hurts me dearly everytime I see it, no more so, because I feel so much shame and guilt at the same time.
Shame and guilt are not mature feelings to have. I would love to feel more empathy and even possibly solidarity with these people. But I can’t do this until I face these horrible feelings about myself that I’ve had since being a young person.
It’s hard, because I have no choice now but to look at the feelings, and look at myself, in a way I didn’t dare do for 25 years. I have to face things that I’ve both run away from, and being ever more desperately trying to run towards (like finding a partner, and all that shit), and realise that at near-enough 40, I’m in a place I always prayed I’d never be in.
I’m here, aged 39, because I couldn’t face the horribleness I felt in the Now for 25 years – in the house, in front of the TV, on the late train home, on a pavement walking home – that sense of disgust and inability to deal with that in that present moment. I’ve got to face that now.
I’ve run faster, faster, faster over the past ten years, because when I stop, the voice I hear tells me that I have failed. I have to listen to that now, kindly.
John B Ledger 