Well I have struggled to keep this up haven’t I?
Anyhow, here are some words written in a jumble over a period of 6-7 months. Some of it is true, some of it is not true - and I mean both factually and emotionally. Some of it has leaked in from other things I’m working on, some of it is repurposed. For example I am writing a show about time travel and some of this will creep into that. Some of it is shit, but this Substack is for pouring out ideas and to keep the channel open. Be kind.
Let me describe my run this evening. Moon is pink and it leaks into the sky around it. I have not eaten lunch today and I couldn’t eat very much dinner. My belly aches. I have been keeping a food diary to address my frequent food binging, and I have managed to cut back a little on the endless mindless chocolate, bread, pasta, biscuits. Mindless consumption of crap, I have replaced alcohol and cigarettes with food and I have only avoided ballooning by running. I am addressing this with my food diary. I list everything I am eating in the day, the idea is to think about it before I eat something. The first few days are thick with Mars bars, cinnamon buns, croissants, coffee, sandwiches, muffins, more coffees, cereal. Slowly as the days pass the list grows thinner, until today I have not eaten lunch. I ache inside. I worry that if I am not binging, I will consume myself - I will eat myself from the inside out and become a cracked and empty shell, running. Always running.
Let me describe my run this evening. I start level before slowly going uphill into the back of Mile Oak toward the Sussex Downs. I look to my left at one point and see Southwick Hill across the valley, dotted with trees and the occasional pony or sheep. The pink moon is directly above and my belly aches as it moves around and I can feel it being ground away into pain and regret. I want to stop, I want to give up, I remember the first time I gave up running, when I was doing an inter-school race when I was 14 or 15. I was a good cross-country runner. I was selected to run in a county race and after a few steps I stopped and said “I feel sick. I can’t run anymore.” I walked off, apologetic, ignoring the disappointed look on my P.E teacher’s face. I disappeared behind a tree and wolfed down Mars bars until I actually did feel sick.
Each poem I write is a small sculpture. Imagine a piece of coral, the size of your fist. The poem lurks inside it, waiting to be carved out. Now imagine a mountain, inside it is a monolith of black granite. Maybe that is the novel. People say things like: you must tell the truth, you must be excoriating, you must burn through the brush until you find the earth underneath. I think: what if the earth has already been scorched? Here is a list of truths about me: I am a father; I am a boyfriend; I am a writer; I have worked in a rather boring data security job for 5 years; I am Irish; I am an alcoholic, I have ADHD. I am sure there are a million other truths about me, but if I’m honest they are being destroyed, consumed rather, by one massive truth, that of being a father. I am consumed by one huge truth that threatens to engulf everything else. That one truth is a wolf which feasts upon my world. Fenrir, the fact of my fatherhood. Xiwangmu, the blessing of my fatherhood.
That was a bit grandiose wasn't it? I wrote that a while ago and it doesn’t sit right with me. The next paragraph also.
When both parents work it is the mother who ends up bearing the brunt of the housework and carries a lot of the emotional and physical labour. This is true. It is also true that even before fatherhood this was a thing that happened. My own personal experience is that as someone with ADHD I am not regulated enough, organised enough, to complete housework in a timely manner. I go to do these things, I find they have already been done or are being done, accompanied by huge sighs of resignation. My girlfriend’s, not mine, obviously. I feel so in pieces so much of the time. I feel so in pieces. I feel so bad about being so useless. My mind races and I slowly eat myself into numbness.
I wrote both these paragraphs whilst feeling sorry for myself in December but there is something there.
Let me describe my run this evening. The aching slowly recedes as I glide down into the valley and rise up again on Swallow Rise. As I make my way back down the other side, I start to feel calmer. The buzzing stops and while my stomach still groans loudly and painfully it has become fainter and more distant. My thoughts collect and I look up at the pink sky and my entire body begins to vibrate in pain, love, regret, and happiness. The green of the downs stretches up to either side of my like wings. I am a greenfinch, I want to be flying.
I am a father. This fact burns through my being. It is simultaneously the greatest thing that has ever happened and the most dreadful thing that I could have done. The world is on fire. I am into my forties now and the fact is I have not accomplished what I wished. Even if I knew what it is I wish. My mind is like a disintegrating wooden cage. When I try to remember things, I find they are not there, or if they are they’re in ghost form – faded, see-through, a hint of an aroma of something. Perhaps they wear sheets. I have strong glimpses of events but no real sense of the time that stretches between them. My first memory is of being in a steam tent at the hospital when I had croup as a toddler. I know when it was because I know when I had croup and I know I was small. But it is as real to me as when I was ten and I waved across the school carpark before a school choir trip, thinking Joanne Williams was inviting me to go in the car with her. I wasn’t and I still feel the burning shame and embarrassment now. But it was yesterday. Or was it tomorrow. Or was it last week. Or was it thirty years ago. That is as real to me as when I was sixteen and I vomited over Shelley’s drive. But I only know I was sixteen because I was at Shelley’s house. Time passes, the joy of communion remains, time passes, now I’m leaving my wife because I want to be alone, and she is telling me she hopes I’m happy when I’m dying alone. Next, I’m at my daughter’s birth. In all these memories I’m a father because I cannot place them, and so when I live in them, I am who I am now. I am into my forties now and the fact is I have accomplished the greatest thing I will ever accomplish, my daughter.
I travelled through time once. Seems like a stupid thing to admit to. I was in my house, the one I am in now, looking out the back door at the tree in the garden. I picked up a cup and as I did so the quality of the air changed. I could see the garden outside changing, slowly at first and then faster. The tree grew and shed its leaves and then the leaves returned. It sped up. Faster and faster, until I almost felt seasick. I was vaguely aware of great feeling outside this speed. I felt fear, love, hope and despair. Eventually things slowed down, like a great clock dying. I was looking out at a wizened bare tree, I felt heavy, ancient, alone. I knew I was in the same place but time had passed. I felt so sad. Alone in this house, everyone had gone. My wife was gone and I was alone. Then the speed began to ramp up again and this time it went backward until I was back where I had been, in my house, aged 30, with my wife and friends, feeling sick.
How true was this? My wife and I divorced, we never had kids. Now I am back in the same house, but different. I have a girlfriend I love deeply, and I have a daughter. I am a father who is engulfed by fatherhood. The entire thrust of my being is fatherhood. In the garden stands a tree which wasn’t there when I was thirty. It is winter and its leaves are bare. I can sit in a rocking chair in my kitchen and gaze out at it.
The year my wife and I separated I was getting CBT for dermatophagia. I would eat my hands to the quick. I still do now in times of nervousness. I must consume something. No booze anymore. It must be my own hands as if they are a foaming bottle of ale or a chilled bottle of red. My fingers pulse even as I type this, begging to be chewed to the bone.
Let me describe my run this evening. My legs are freer and my arms pump. My speed is increasing. I sprint past trees, gardens, houses. Dogs bark; cats leap out of the way. I veer across a road and almost get flattened by a bus. All I can think about is getting home, and being at home, and feeling at home. The moon is lower, and the air is cooler. My stomach throbs as I pass the corner shop. I briefly think about stopping for chocolate but instead I keep running until I reach my front door.
I am no longer eating myself, but I will continue to eat my own mind.
Thanks for reading.
My book of poems about drinking and hillwalking, Greenfinch is available from Flight of the Dragonfly Press here.
You can buy me a coffee here.