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My Brain Took the Safest Man I Knew and Made Him Hurt Me
My brain took one of the safest people I have ever known and turned him into someone who hurt me. I hated it for that. But perhaps the nightmare wasn’t trying to destroy something safe. Perhaps, in its own fucked-up way, it was trying to protect me — and accidentally…
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Woke. Struggled. Pushed. Changed?
I woke up feeling awful. Nightmares, sleep inertia, and every part of me wanting to go back to bed. But I didn’t. I pushed through, worked, went to therapy — and only then realised just how much has changed since the darkest point of my life a few weeks ago.
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Three Half Days. And My Brain Still Works.
This week I went back to work. Actually back to work. Not talking about going back, filling in forms about going back, or having meetings about whether I might be ready to go back. I actually worked three half days. That probably doesn’t sound like a monumental achievement, and months…
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I Hit Rock Bottom. Today I’m Solid.
Last weekend, I got lower than I’ve ever been. Full stop. Work, returning to work, my future, everything else rattling around in my head — it all became too much. I went somewhere genuinely frightening. And then, somehow, in the middle of all that, I found calm. A week later,…
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I Passed the 11-Plus. Then I Learned My Place.
I was lucky. I passed the 11-plus and was offered a place at a state grammar school. I don’t have any interest in rewriting that part of my history to fit a more convenient story about class or education. Going there gave me opportunities I might not otherwise have had,…
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I Found Peace in a Hopeless Place
This is going to be difficult to write. Last weekend I came frighteningly close to the edge. I’m not going to dress that up, and I’m not going to turn it into one of those sanitised mental-health stories where I was feeling a bit sad, reached out to somebody, had…
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Brain Zaps, Email Tennis, and an Apology
A week of prescription problems and email tennis between my GP and pharmacy ended with me running out of venlafaxine and going into withdrawal. Brain zaps, cognitive fog and frustration followed — along with two unexpected apologies and an acknowledgement that the system should have done better.
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I Don’t Want This Body. You Want Your Hands on It. Explain That to Me.
I don’t particularly like my body right now. The strange thing is that other men apparently do. What happens when someone looks at the body you’re busy criticising and thinks, “Fuck, he’s hot”? Perhaps I don’t need to fancy myself. Perhaps I just need to believe you when you say…
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I Like a Belly. I Hate Mine, and what it says about me and my past.
I like a belly. There, I’ve said it. That’s hardly a shocking revelation from a man who describes himself as a bear, but a belly on a man can be a wonderful thing. Soft, hairy, round, substantial, or solid and firm; something you can put your hands on, something warm…
