1066 All Stars

Life Is What You Make Of It

I have written various posts on my Dad’s death and, understandably I hope, have little desire to revisit the details again.

For context, it is worth just highlighting that it came within a month of starting my new job and three months before our son was born and it is those aspects that I wish to explore.

The last conversation I had with my Dad was in the hospital. He was recovering from his heart attack and appeared weak but in reasonable spirits. His primary concern seemed to be that I was happy as he asked about my new job and my future prospects. Perhaps needless to say, I downplayed it. Less than 48 hours later, he died.

It is difficult to objectively understand the impact that his death has had on me. How do you judge something that isn’t there, isn’t tangible?

One thing that was very apparent was the impact that my experience at The Priory had on me. As I have written elsewhere, I was surprised at how openly emotional I was. I had thought about this eventuality in moments of grim projection and always assumed I would be the ‘strong’ one, holding everyone else together. Instead, I found a connection to my emotions that I hadn’t previously experienced and which I expect helped with the grieving process.

The older I get, the more I recognise elements of my own character that I can see in him. Wanting to be funny, to be good, to better myself and to be liked; these are all noble traits of which I am justifiably proud. But taken to an extreme, they feed anxiety, doubt and self-judgement.

Oh, Boy

As above, I have blogged before on my experiences of adding a son to our family unit, exploring the difficulty I had in adapting and the recognition of suffering a form of postnatal depression.

More recently, our expanded household has undoubtedly been a cause of my stress and anxiety. Three children of 5 and under are hard work. The girls occupy each other to an extent but they also bicker and squabble over the same things that they want to play with. As twins, they are missing the natural hierarchy that exists in a standard sibling relationship where the older child takes the lead. Instead they have to learn to share in a way that other children do not.

At the same time, my boy demands my time in a way that only a two year old can. Trouble is, the girls want me too and so I constantly find myself walking a tightrope of how much time I am dedicating to each, inevitably feeling as though I am failing on all counts. On the one hand, I don’t feel that my boy is getting the dedication that the girls did at the same age. At the same time, I feel that I am constantly having to tell the girls no, unable to dedicate time to them as my boy has more immediate demands. In addition, I feel that I don’t make enough of an effort to ensure the girls are treated as individuals, relying too much on treating them as ‘the twins’ and thus a single unit with the same demands as it is easier to manage.

Whichever I way I cut the parenting pie, I end up eating a large slice of guilt.

As part of my CBT sessions, I am encouraged to challenge negative thinking and look for reasonable, believable alternatives. For example, my therapist would point out that raising twins is hard. We have a pressure that parents of a standard family unit simply don’t have and that should be acknowledged before I rush to pass judgement on my skills as a parent.

And this judgement is a recurring theme that should also be challenged. In moments of high stress, when emotions are frayed and tempers flare, I worry that the enduring image my children will have of me from childhood is a moody, grumpy, tired, angry man who never had time for them and just wanted to be left alone. I worry what example I am setting for them, what messages I am teaching them.

Perhaps all parents have these doubts. I like to confront mine as a means to overcome them. I am not the parent I want to be. Likely I never will be. But I’ll never stop trying.

Brexit

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a dull post about the comical state of British politics. This will be far less interesting!

Having secured a permanent contract at my new employer, I at last had some security, much welcome given the recent addition to the family. Immediately I felt some embarrassment at my job title that placed me at odds with the rest of the team. I felt uncomfortable at any perception that I might have seen myself as above them, torn between wanting to acknowledge my skills and experience whilst not wanting to appear arrogant or presumptuous.

As I settled in, I began to assume more responsibility and carve out a role for myself. I came to be relied upon for certain tasks, my input seemed valued and my skills appeared to be appreciated. I developed a good bond with my new team and felt warmly welcomed. I decided that I could be happy here.

But over time, things began to change, almost imperceptibly. I started pulling away, relying more and more on what I had done in my old job, effectively saying that what we did there was inherently superior. I would place myself at odds with the common view, consciously taking a stance that was different from the others. Often it may have been justified; after all, consensus does not mean correct. But there was a subtext too as I seemingly sought out the chance to stand alone.

Naturally, my relationships began to suffer and as ever, an inner conflict raged. On the one hand, I was pulling myself away and being aloof. On the other, I would decry the sense that I did not feel part of the team.

At the same time, I made a true friendship, one of those people who, for reasons I have yet to grasp, saw enough in me to keep chipping away at the barriers I put up, metaphorically inviting themselves round for tea and biscuits, no matter how stubbornly I kept putting up a ‘No Trespassers’ sign.

But this in turn created an imbalance; if not quite all then certainly a large proportion of my proverbial eggs were transferred to just one or two baskets. In the face of perceived discord, I became ever more reliant on those baskets such that the eggs within inevitably began to crack. I felt like the helpless chick that emerged from within, lost in a world I felt incapable of coping with, desperate for someone to look after him.

Well, that’s very dramatic isn’t it? But there are some quite serious, deep rooted themes that underlie this behaviour that weave throughout the journey I have documented and which will eventually lead us back my tenuous Brexit link.

At the heart of it is a need for external validation borne of my fundamental lack of self confidence. Entering an environment with which I was familiar, coming from a background of management and multi-tasking, I could rightly talk with confidence and both seek out and embrace a senior position. At the same time, I held over my head the twin stigma marks of both redundancy and mental illness. How could I lay claim to be good at my job when my last employer were so keen to get rid of me that they paid me money to leave? How could I have confidence in my abilities when I hadn’t worked since June? How could I operate in the cold, corporate world when I felt so fragile that I felt I could break at there merest whisper of a breeze?

I sensed that others considered me aloof, stand offish and may have perceived this as a belief that I was somehow better. The harsh truth to admit is that I probably did. It is an inherent conflict that as much as I doubt myself, I am also able to recognise my strengths. I seem to veer wildly between arrogance and self-abasement. And so it is with my relationships with others. I crave an invite to a party I have no interest in attending. I convinced myself that I wasn’t liked, wasn’t needed and wasn’t wanted. I withdrew, accentuating my sense of isolation whilst at the same time fuelling my sense of resentment at feeling isolated, a self perpetuating circle. My mood spiralled down into a seemingly endless sadness. And all the while I continued to move my eggs across to the one or two baskets in which they felt safe.

And so we come to the question of Brexit. I found myself standing on the edge of my known world, faced with an important choice to make. I could continue on my current path, ploughing my own furrow, isolating myself from all but a handful of key relationships. Or, I could seek to change by taking a risk, involving myself more, actively seeking out new relationships or developing existing ones. I could choose to leave or I could choose to remain. In or Out.

But unlike the real life Brexit, it is ironically the remain path that holds more doubt. Voting out is easy; I operate within my own bubble, taking bitter comfort from the darkness that I have become so used to operating in. Voting to remain on the other hand is hard. It goes against my natural instincts to put myself out there, proactively attempting to make relationships. What if I am rejected?

But then what if I’m not? Perhaps it is not rejection that I am afraid of but acceptance. Am I ready to forgive myself? Am I ready to be kind to myself? Am I ready to love myself, warts and all? I guess there is only one way to find out.

I vote to remain.