Winter Blues

I hope you have a moment for my little Christmas speech.  Let's call it a ghost story, as is the festive tradition.  I most certainly shall be talking about unseen terrors, and, let's say, I'm the ghost at your celebration.  Let's say I'm behind you, in that empty armchair that nobody wanted to sit on for some reason.  Don't look around, just know that I'm there.  The day is upon us now and we're half way out of the bitterest season.  But, for those of us with mental health problems, particularly the kind that are inflamed during the chill season, the worst is still to come.

My fear of the winter is, thankfully, suppressed and blanketed by my love for Christmas.  I am eased in to the colder, greyer turn of year by the joyful approach of the festive day and all the celebration that comes along for the ride.  And I've had a good ride.  I've climbed a castle while dressed as a Victorian gent, I've sang and danced and drank and I've even had a little Christmas day of my own with my two best friends.  December has been as good as ever (I try to recall how wonderful last year's was but with the hindsight of what happened to me shortly after, and how that was clearly already an idea in the mind of the person who dealt that blow by then, I can't feel fondness for December 2013.  Anyone who has read Children's Hospice will know how I am capable of illustrating a less-than-stellar Christmas).  But Christmas day will be over soon.  We'll have a long, lovely day with the people we love, we'll squeeze every moment and drink every drop and make it count, but it will be over.  Boxing day does good by its name to the depressed as it is the vanguard of a series of thuds and blows thumping us through the close of the year and the dreaded January.  Pain returns in the month of my birth - a pain more complex than the December head-kicking I got a few years back, and far less curable by a wad of titanium in the skull.

Feelings of constant sadness are notoriously difficult to express.  With the threat of embarrassment, ridicule or a change in how your nearest and dearest appreciate you, we feel they must remain inside.  So we suffer through the winter in silence, not ever letting on and, thus, never being asked how we are feeling.  It is at the fault of nobody that we are not reached out to - when the assumption is that somebody is absolutely fine, why bother asking if that is indeed the case?  So I implore you all, on this day of good will to all, to hold the good will tightly and not let it loose when the day is over.  Ask a friend if they're okay whenever possible, even if they seem so.  You can't know what they're going through this time of year, but you can count on the likelihood that they might want to talk about it if the invitation were to arise.  Winter has brought terror to my doorstep every year.  Whether it's in almost losing an eye or clutching a banister tightly and thinking with utter certainty that I am experiencing my very last seconds on Earth, the darkest season delights on doing the darkest things.  I wish I could locate a reason for this connection; maybe it's a lack of vitamin D, or years of poetic, pathetic fallacy feeding my subconscious.  Either way, all I can do right now is try to fight it.

I can reflect on the year that's been and that is a comforting thing to do.  I spent a hefty part of it assuming it to be a year of loss but (although I can say with confidence that this year I've turned getting dumped into a hobby), it really was a year of gain.  I leave with more than I had when I went in - I've finally become the person I've wanted to be all my life.  I've discovered powerful sides to myself that have been suppressed for years and I've made friends that I know will be with me until the very end.  Furthermore I've taken long-overdue steps into doing the sort of work I want to do; perhaps I'm not doomed to repeat the phrase "do you want a glass of ice with that?" over and over again until I collapse into ancient dust.  I had a triumphant mess of a Summer and I've been on some remarkable adventures.  A scroll back through my facebook photos paints 2014 as a year of constant fun, and that is no distortion of the truth; it really was.  When the midnight bell chimes, though, and January rears its head, I must begin to look forward, to an oblique, unknowable year ahead.  And doing that whilst cold and alone can, and always will, exacerbate my low feelings.  I won't ask my friends to be there for me, because I know that I never have to ask that.  Substitute currency for loved ones and I am the richest man on the planet.  I hope you can all compete.

So Merry Christmas to everyone.  I hope your various Christmas days are as fun as mine always are and I hope there are plenty of people near to you who you can legitimately be there for in the coming months, however happy or sad they are feeling.  My ramble is almost over now and if you've read to the end then I thank you.  Go and pour yourself a brandy and play Wizzard at full volume.

And lastly, to wrap this up, I'm talking to you now.  Yes, YOU.  Don't look around, there's no one else there (I was just joking about being a ghost in the armchair).  I don't know if you even read my blog but, if you're reading this, I hope you realise that it's you I'm referring to.  I think you will.  I shan't embarrass you by naming you but I just want you to know that I hope you're okay, and that, as I've promised before, I'll always be there for you in whatever capacity you need me.  If, when the bad winter withers, the year to come makes good on its promise, our friendship will be strong again.  I know how you do in the cold and the dark, and that you've got far worse to return to than most of us, and if things were perfect you'd only ever exist in the sunshine, like you so deserve.  Life won't allow that, but if it's anywhere near a decent compromise, I'm here.  I'm always here.  Merry Christmas.

Children's Hospice - Noteworthy Quotations

Here are twenty-one lines from Children's Hospice that aren't about dogs shitting, women being smacked by chair legs, rotting babies being torn up and chewed or naked boys eating fish out of bins.


"If I were a thousand times more intelligent, and if I were a thousand times more beautiful, then maybe I could be her.  But as it stands I have to make do simply being with her, which is hardly a poor compromise."

"Mummy - the conduit for all of Little Baby Victor's future fallibility where daddy's nine-month-passed euphoric release signalled the passing of his accountability."

"Fatherhood truly makes a man himself."

"Her boy, her joy, a greater melody than ever she created on that piano."

"Oh if he were truly absent this would be a happy home, but his vacancy is just of the heart and this is a Hell house now."

"Guilt is a paralytic in action and cowardice is a motivator in silence."

"The only word that gets around is the word of man."

"The elements hold no such grace against the damned."

"I'm not a liar anymore.  But I'm still a killer."

"She just wants to be home.  But home is where the heart is and the where the bloody hell can that be now?"

"Little things have big effects on the over-aware state of mind that the witching hour brings to the sleepless."

"Must men prove the worth of their sex by denying the right of it to others who simply want to get by?"

"Snuff it in the dark or snuff it in the light, what difference does it make?"

"Hope is like sugar to a baby boy; give him too much and he'll climb the bloody walls."

"All children die."

"January is the very worst time of year and one which we all bafflingly herald the arrival of with merriment and midnight kisses."

"Who they were in life can not matter any more for all they know now is pain untold and unending and when pain is all there is to be known then self becomes absent."

"Killing's a sin, whoever you kill.  Them's God's rules."

"You aborted the second coming before he could teach us things and you looked your abortion in the eye as you did so."

"Man is the creator but also the destroyer.  Man destroys himself.  Woman is the giver of life and seldom the brute force and here she is alive and well!"

"Maybe my marrow heart will get the better of me!  Maybe the muscle - the vessel - the withered, pulsing hunk of meat - will finally let me sleep!"

Fuck You I Like Christmas

It's very 'cool' to hate Christmas.  When a jingly old Christmas classic comes on the radio it's expected of the occupants of that room to go 'Eurgh' and giggle misanthropically at their fellow man.  To mumble into your drink and offer a dismissive hand gesture at anyone who dares mention the word earlier than mid-December.  It's a C word that offends more easily than THE C word (cunt).
With that in mind I, as a 27-year-old man with alternative interests and a hatred for processed pop music and capitalist John Lewis heartstring pornography, should be the very vanguard of the anti-festive brigade.  Well I'm sorry to disappoint you, you assuming nincompoop, but I love Christmas.
When I hear Slade's old hit for the first time, I smile.  When I'm treated to that first whiff of delicious mulled wine I feel warmer inside than the cauldron it's served from.  I've liked Christmas ever since it was nothing more to me than a morning of free toys, and as its merit to me has morphed as I've grown up, my fondness for it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. 
It's not my fault, my love for this time of year is out of my control.  If you want to blame someone for this gleeful affront to your yearly grumble, blame my relatives.  Blame my friends.  Hell, even blame my ex-girlfriends if you want.  These are the people who, throughout my life, have always made my Christmases happy, exciting and memorable.  They've been conditioning me since birth towards Pavlovian salivation responsive to the first beats of 'Last Christmas'.
Christmas to me is a gathering of relatives I don't often see (and I actually like mine), good music, games, drinking and feasting.  And Doctor Who is always on.  Any day that's on is Christmas to me.  Prior to that it's me and my friends, prancing about like idiots in my flat to silly songs in the shade of my glowing Christmas tree, festive-events and the sudden influx of good, Christmas ales.  I've yet to have a bad Christmas, but after almost thirty good ones I doubt a sour one-off will make much of a dent in my support for it.
I've been consistently lucky.  Millions haven't.  Many have lost someone precious to them at Christmas time.  Many are abused, neglected or subject to some continued, dreaded form of all-the-year-round torment during the festive season and, however their fortunes have fared, they have a justified disdain for the time of year.  Human evil doesn't take a break when Santa's workshop opens.
On the lighter end of the spectrum, others dislike Christmas because their families have never really bothered with it and so they're baffled at the onslaught of celebration.  Sure, they can have that.  And no, I'm not about to careen into a Geldoffian rant about how we should shove Christmas down the throats of entire cultures who have never historically acknowledged it.  By all means grumble at Him, I'll join you there.
But anyhow, I fall into neither of those categories.  I am humbled to have been left in this section of society, and I recognise the struggles of others, I am not ignorant, I am simply thankful.  And Christmas brings this out in me more than any other time of the year.
"Oh but you aren't religious Joe!  What are you doing celebrating Christmas?" I hear you ask (keep it down, I'm writing).  No, I'm not.  But I won't let a lack of piety stop me from enjoying a festival of light and heat, invented by pagans in order to banish darkness and cold, under a tree introduced to my culture by a German prince in the nineteenth century, and unfortunately obtained by a God-fearing cult with an agenda to promote their fantasy starring a magic baby who was born in September.  I'll leave the light and warmth in, and the religion can go out in the cold (ask me what I'm doing for Easter).
Who else was unashamed to love Christmas?  Him.  Charlie boy.  My hero.  Charles Dickens, who popularised the salutation "Merry Christmas" in the very same year Prince Albert brought Christmas trees to Britain.  If it's good enough for Charlie, it's good enough for me.  And I will most certainly be reading A Christmas Carol for the ninth time this year, and enjoying Kermit's rendition of it for the forty-ninth.  And while, yes, Dickens does sign off with a desire to be blessed by God, it is Dickens I am blessed by, every year (I even got a job in his house this year, so he's technically my boss now too).
Finally, you'll tell me I'm in support of a festival of capitalism.  Well save your breath.  That's not what Christmas is to me, and I don't indulge.  I won't be eagerly awaiting the horrific Coke advert (why people are excited to see a convoy of corporate gas-guzzlers lay waste to an idyllic country village is beyond me, they moan about it at other times of the year), I won't be setting foot into a John Lewis or a Debenhams (the queues for that are huge anyway) and I certainly won't be enjoying any butchered turkey flesh either.  If this is what Christmas is to you, I get why you hate it.  But stay out of my way, I'm putting 'Fairytale of New York' on.
Merry Christmas!