word hero

Do you get those moments, where you think- ‘how the fuck has that much time passed? Only yesterday I was playing Harry Potter on a beach in fancy pink cord flares and a Tammy Girl tee-shirt and now the worlds a mess I actually need to do something about it.’ Or ‘it wasn’t that long ago that I was broken?’ Sometimes life stacks up and you suddenly realise that chapters have filled pages so much faster than you thought possible. Memories that were seconds ago are oh so quickly years in the past. We know this. You know how time works. But it never fails to shock me that it hasn’t stopped. How does it all keep going, isn’t time tired yet? Then of course, I’d only want it to stop it in a Bernard’s Watch way, you know, so I could start it again, because I relish that kind of control.

I have been writing about my brain for almost two years now, and sometimes I worry* I’ve run out, dried out, exhausted those letters on my keyboard. Because all the talk of recovery and therapy and brains has become my normality. It can be so thick and so boring, like paying a gas bill or purchasing a bus ticket, but worst of all, it can feel like it defines me. It doesn’t. Each of us suffers are so much more than our troubles, some of us are really good at bowling, not me, I’m terrible at it. But you see my point. 

However, after all of that, I realised there is more to say, because you don’t go into recovery all shiny and new, sometimes it all fucks up, sometimes it doesn't. It is constant and ongoing. Sometimes being in recovery feels like I’ve found the secret. Like I and all the others, who stand with courage against the monsters in our brains, know something that no one else knows. I’m not even sure what it is, possibly that we can get better, or that we already are, I’m not sure. But it can feel like a super power. Going through the pain and learning how to feel it and not let it kill you. That’s heroic, fuck it, we are super heroes, we are the Batman’s and Wonder Woman’s of this sometimes seemingly post-apocalyptic world. Sometimes it’s not heroic at all though, sometimes the pain creeps in and we forget how to operate. Our capes and our tool box of brain fixing things are abandoned. But on the good days, we are Superman. We find hope in little tiny hidden places. We make the choice to be happy, it’s not as easy as waking up in the morning and saying, ‘I’m going to be happy,’ and putting on that ‘Friday feeling’ playlist on Spotify. It’s could be running away from day time TV into yoga studios, or coffee shops with friends, or (maybe possibly) the gym. Then of course, it’s talking, loud and strong and brave until stories that once made blood burn veins turn from The Shinning to Sharknado. Then it’s up to you, people or high powers, you can choice. Make your film a comedy; the only difference between Ghostbusters and Paranormal Activity is how the character’s deal with the ghosts, (sort of). Laugh, because time does that thing where it catches you, sneaks up behind you and makes you forget the child that still lives in you. They need listening to sometimes, when they need to be loved and looked after. Maybe not the times when they want to eat their body weight in Chewits or get upset because you dropped a 99 flake that cost two pounds twenty, (actually ice cream spillage is totally valued) but mostly listen when they are scared, hear them when they ask for help and courageously take them to it. You can, you’re a super hero. 

*(I also worry that there are so many more important things to write about, but I am writing about them, just in play form- http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2917150 )