Tag: Survivor

Dear Diary: Look Down on Me?

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Most days a look of contempt or disdain is nothing to me, the opinion of some random non-entity who knows nothing of who I am

Today it bothered me: today I wanted to shake her and ask who are you to think for one minute you are better than me?

No one is better than anyone; we will all die, we will all hurt, we will all feel pain, hurt, we will grieve and feel the burning sear of loss, we will all be scared, we will be both courageous and cowards, we will regret and we will cry.

 

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Dear Diary: Manchester is not by the Sea

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The seaside, so often the facade of towns long closed down in heart and soul existing was not for me.

This was reflection and calm, the quiet, where people said a cheerful hello while you look out, a gas rig or two between your bench and Norway. A different place, a different sense of time.

A little calm so close to places so familiar and a life so very different to the one I have now.

My obligation fulfilled, respects duly paid, tears respectfully held back, and happy memories built upon the ashes of the past.

My dearest friends a comforting bridge, welcoming arms and helping hands, solace in the storm.

A place does not know, it does not remember, it meant no harm, it held no anger, it will not be bitter, nor will it be sad, it will shed no tears, knowing not the passing of our years. Those we bring, they are ours to leave or take away, memories are our own each day, and the stories ours to tell, like the place lest we too face away.

Dear Diary: 19th July 17, At The Head of the Valley

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Back from a weekend in Wales.

For many, this is a simple thing, for my Mouse this was a weekend of overcoming fears. Fear of the unknown, a trip to a new and unfamiliar place via new roads, to the countryside. No urban landscape, no hospital, no backup plan, no safety net, the very darkest of unknowns.

However, it was great. I walked up hills, found peace and solitude, walked in the woods and listened to the river whisper.

I cooked in a little cabin kitchen and connected back to myself.

The urban expanse brings neither comfort nor security, it feeds my fears and imprisons my minds, plays tricks on me and convinces me that outside is the enemy. It is people I fear, people are the cruel, random, violent, betrayers of trust.

Nature has no favourites, it is not cruel, nor kind, it is, it does not change, it seasons have always been and will always be, it is not capricious of malevolent, it does not plot or betray, it has no skeletons, no secret past, nature has not lied, nature does not rewrite the past.

Mr Mouse keeps on Moving, keeps in doing, good one Mr Mouse!

Monday Night Reflection: Back to Normal

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That is a lie, of course, there is no back to normal. Not in a bad way, but I am not going back. I had decided to move on before any of this dropped on me, I had changed direction, and normal was a fluid state of moving forward towards something new and different.

Normal was not a set routine or structure, I was developing a new business venture, I was practicing my skills, I was growing myself and exploring directions and possibilities to see what and what not plausible or possible, what could be developed for money and what was best left as artistic endeavour for artistic endeavour’s sake. My business was being grown, not pushed, I was learning from past mistakes, and the pace was consciously, in fact very deliberately slow. Each step was small, and consolidated, assessed and embedded, decisions taken carefully, investments very circumspectly undertaken indeed. I was very keen to be in absolutely no rush to spend money, time, or unnecessary effort in a fruitless endeavour. I was keenly aware that every resource I had was very limited and that my project was one I wanted to grow properly, healthily and strong in that organic way of a business finding its rightful place.

None of that has really changed. I have, I have made no secret that my skills and abilities have been affected, and I am relearning things. The timetable has been set back, and along with that, my blog has had to change from what I really wanted to be doing at this point in time and is not really what I wanted to be sharing either. However, my business, my blog, and my personal life are still there, still being developed and I am still working on each of my goals.

I have had a setback, and in the real sense of that, I am working from behind where I was, however, I am still working slowly, and that, ultimately is all that matters.

So while, there may never be, a back to normal, there is a normal service, and that is coming back.

Poetry Corner – The Real Me

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Sometimes you forget
Sometimes you believe
Sometimes you don’t pretend
You are not who you are
Not make believe or fantasy

You believe the empty words
The things they say because they should
Because they should be kind
They are the encouraging sort

Some days I forget they expect me to fail
Some days I believe their belief is real
Some days I am not pretending, it’s not an act

But then I see what is real
And I carry on, no big deal

Monday Night Reflection – Getting Philosophical

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I have resisted for a while, but lately, it has been really very difficult not to turn very simple questions into mini or maybe not so mini motivational speeches about what is really important in life.

What I am saying isn’t new to me, and really is not some sort of amazing light bulb epiphany at all, I have known it for a quite a while. It is the coming together of threads that have been around for a while, so this is not a new fabric that I am weaving. This behaviour has left me wondering, why now? Clearly, something has to have changed for my behaviour to have changed in what is a not terribly subtle way.

I have exchanged some intellectual knowledge for experience recently; the experience did not change the intellectual knowledge, rather confirmed it with field data. However, in terms of what was important, and what people who knew the days ahead would be days not months or years, considered important, I already had good field data, so my own, not sure if I will see tomorrow experience did not cause a change even if it added my own data to the set.

I am also not sure any new data has been added, or that anything new was required for me to realise the unique and genuinely blessed situation in which I currently reside. So while I face challenges, the place I face them from is unique for me, and objectively one of the better places to be. I am also aware or the privileges and blessings or my situation and the experiences that I have had on my way here, and how in facing any challenge I am equipped in ways other people are not so fortunate to be. This is not new, and not to do down my own situation, which is not great, there are definitely people worse off, and a lot of worse situations to be in facing what I face.

So I am not sure what has happened, it’s been a while since my birthday, no one close to me has died, although yes people have passed away in my world, and their loss did sadden me to a tear or two, especially those I knew, perhaps it is that. But in general, there has been no change bar the passing of time from a week or a couple of weeks ago when I was not so introspective nor so philosophical.

Which has been my week, rather mundane tasks of sorting out my workspace and getting rid of things that should have been gone long ago, having bad days where nothing happened, and trying to gently sketch out the best way forward and what done looks like now that my personal landscape has changed. Things are definitely slower and taking more time, however, I am not convinced that is a bad change, and I my enthusiasm has changed in quality.

My business head knows that the best business makes money when the owner is not working as well as when the business is working, and it also knows that a lot of markets are very saturated with awesome unique products from very talented people. Add to that, skills in new media promotion and things that I am not sure I could do even if I wanted to do them, which I am not sure I do, I am having to work out a plan, strategy and even define purpose carefully. Perhaps learning from my previous, not outright failure, but definitely not success either enterprise and the things I didn’t do with that business, and how I massively overextended myself and my workload in that venture.

I still have no idea why these inputs have made me so philosophical.

Monday Night Reflection – Success and Failure

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I planned to take a week off after competing and it ended up being a very good idea. The competition when exceptionally well and I secured my qualification for the British Finals as I set out to do, came back healthy and am now on course to go from the British Finals to the World Championships and be considered a contender.

That is the success, and I am not going to down play that success, I am still stunned to have this amazing opportunity at all, let alone after all that has happened so far this year. The weekend was successful with many improvements in self-management and performance management across the whole time which point towards a successful British performance and importantly that this will open up not just the opportunity to represent Britain at world level but also to be a legitimate podium contender. It is impossible to convey how surreal and odd it feels to be writing that about myself, and how I am proud of what I have done, but at the same time it really does not feel very real so I am not really that proud because I don’t feel I have done that much. Although, as I am told pretty regularly, to have the opportunity only 6 weeks after lying in a hospital with paralysis, its one hell of a comeback.

However, when I got home it had been 8 days without an attack, and while I made it through the weekend out the house when I got in I sat on the sofa and I went out. The full monty, this was a high register attack, lasting well over half an hour with the loss of speech, tone, and with paralysis. This would have been a hospital admission if we did not already know nothing would happen. I was devastated. I knew what was coming and it did, the hangover effects, this time it included the slightly hilarious not being able remember how to write a question mark.

By Wednesday most of the glitchyness was gone, most of my understanding and cognition was back, my emotional fragility was on the way out, and my motor skills were returning, left behind were a headache and dizziness. Its now 8 days later, and several smaller attacks later as well and I am at best 80% back to where I was 6pm on that Sunday night.

That was the failure. It probably feels like a bigger set back than it really is, but it is a real setback. I did have plans for the week after half term and so far to day I have lost most of the morning because I passed out, and I cant drive till we are sure I am safe which along with my motor skills and paralysis changes the athletic endeavour part of my life significantly. But I am still embarking on this part of my personal, professional and life journey back from where I really wanted to be. Even this reflection is not the reflection I would have wanted to be writing.

This is Monday, last week pushed me back, but I have achievement locked, and I have plans to grow my business project slowly but surely, I have another small scale little income project running and that can run its life and earn its little bit while it burns too, and I am busy taking the steps I can to get from where I am to where I want to be accepting they are smaller than I may have wanted or anticipated but that a step is a step nonetheless and I can build from where I am.

My plans have not changed, they may just take a little longer and happen a little more slowly.

Monday Night Reflection: Just Waiting on the Day

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It seems like a lifetime ago that I sat down to write a reflection making sure I wasn’t being too focussed on the latest and the loudest, that I was looking for balance and feeling the need to avoid undue triumphalism because things had been positive for a good while and I had things pointing in the right direction.
I was hesitant because I was wary that the good can so quickly come crashing down, and because I did not want to gloss over the challenges of a very ordinary life and that I am not a particularly extraordinary person doing anything particularly unusual in the grand scheme of things. I want to inspire, if I inspire at all not because I am outstanding but because I am just like everyone else and I am trying in the face of the same stuff as everyone to keep on being better at life and being positive and helping others have a happy time and love the life they have, whatever that life is, and not some bullshit entrepreneur, internet guru, beach crap. Which, to me looks like hell anyway.

I guess I was right to be reticent, it crashed down, and I was not even up that high really, but down it came anyway. And I won’t lie, I am low, really low, not quite suicidal low, but I can’t say I haven’t considered it, I have, it wouldn’t solve anything so, pretty pointless as a solution. It isn’t worth the details, because people insist on telling me how far I have come, and yes, this true. What they miss is this not my first set back, or my second, this is 2017 and I have been essentially coming back from something big since June 2011, that includes a heart attack that I was just starting to feel was behind me and getting to feel I had some fitness returning.

I am broken mentally, it’s been 6 years of fighting, not for excellence, but for a shot at normality. I lost everything, and my second chance just got ripped away too. As coach DAmato says, it’s all about the six inches in front of my face, inch by inch, step by step because that is the difference between living and dying, but in the words of Coldplay, Nobody, said it would be easy, but nobody said it would be this hard.

Monday Night Reflection: Darkness

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I don’t want to reflect, I don’t want to create, I don’t want to be kind, I don’t want to be compassionate, I want nothing to do with people or the world, in fact, to echo Alfred’s characterisation of the Joker, I just want to watch the world burn.

This is not depression, this is darkness. This is the Mouse that would kneel down those who have wronged him put the gun to the head and look them dead in the eye as he pulls the trigger and feel nothing. This is the Mouse that was supposed to be buried away never to return. This is the Mouse that drugs and alcohol kept ssuppressed and others were happy to use, this is the Mouse that tells no stories, this is the Mouse that does not exist, the Mouse that has no past. This is the darkside of the Mouse, this Mouse is cold, this Mouse is detached. This Mouse loves those around him deeply and holds them close, this Mouse is deeply loyal, but to those not Family this Mouse feels nothing, to this Mouse you are nothing. This Mouse is a rat.

If Mouse is Dr Jekyll then right now I am very much closer to Mr Hyde than I have been in many years. I am angry, angry at the Dr’s who didn’t do their job professionally, angry at the abusive ward sister who tried to play her power game with me and who have me that same smug look my ex gave me for so many years when she knew I was powerless to retaliate or do anything back. Angry that I will get no atonement but that I will be expected to grant forgiveness. I want to put those people through the pain, the experience that they let me have without thought, let them know what it is to be the victim of whimsy and truly powerless for once and see how smug and satisfied they look. My foot still hurts from the reflex test 3 weeks ago my Dr friend, let me do the same to you and see how you feel abused by someone in a position of power and trust unable to even scream in pain when it happens or move your foot out the way.

It is more than just the recent experience, it is the culmination of a life of being on the wrong end, of being forced to trust, forced into victimhood by lack of alternatives, needing treatment or help and having my powerlessness used to abuse me. From the physical abuse as child, the mental and physical abuse that followed, to the various abuses of those I turned to for help over the years. I have not cultivated bitterness, I have tried my best to kill it, to cut it back, but today, the bitterness is winning, it is what I feel. Bitter anger, the desire for revenge, and frustration that I will not only get nothing but that I will get no treatment now or justice later. I will be left to rot and survive or die with no care which as usual by those paid to, and supposed to by profession care about my welfare.

I am building a future and I have great people around me, a loving wife building with me, but that is despite the frequent and many attempts to destroy and hurt me, the neglect and injury inflicted by those supposed to help, by people purporting to be friends; by those who betrayed my trust.

Today the world can burn.

Dear Diary: 20th February 2017

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Don’t stroke the Mouse!

Mouse was rushed into hospital last Tuesday with a suspected stroke.

Nearly a week later all we can say for definite is that Thursday night his brain showed no sign of damage.

20 stroke like episodes later Mouse can barely move his left side or speak.

His NHS experience is far from positive but with every reason to be down my brave Mouse is still upbeat and planning new projects for when he finally comes home.

Mrs Mouse