I sat drunk and alone in that hotel room, far from home, realising I had gotten older and that my life was gradually spiralling out of control. When I stopped and thought about it, my behaviours had become more extreme over the last few years, and I had all the hallmarks of another doomed soul drifting into the darkness, slowly losing his way until there was no way – just a wide expansive wilderness which swallowed him up. I could see the pitiful headline of my life being written; another young death, someone who went off the rails, consumed by mental illness and addiction. I could imagine the comments from friends and relatives. I could imagine their momentary sentimental reflections at the funeral before everyone carried on with their lives. Yes, it was as I sat there that I saw it all unfolding clearly before me. But it was also at that moment that I realised the awareness of such a fate was perhaps enough to do something about it. It was at that moment that I got up and stared at my tired eyes in the mirror. It was at that moment that I decided I was going to do something radical. It was at that moment, in that hotel room, that I decided I was going to save myself.
Growing older, it’s so easy to sink into slumber The sofa groove; the spiritual chamber The suppressed desires and unspoken words It’s so easy to accept the weight of the adult world And let those slumped shoulders form As you stand with the others on the assembly line.
But do the radical thing And nurture the parts inside yourself In whatever way that keeps those eyes shining And letting that mouth speak words of meaning As you continue on your truest path Shaking off the forces that want you To become another background character Bitterly beeping in life’s traffic jam.
Do the radical thing. And love yourself unashamedly Don’t submit to mindless drudgery Nor let the bottle or the pills Numb you to a conditioned reality.
Let the sanctity of solitude Remind you who you are; Let the rhythm of happiness Flutter in your heart.
Be someone that your child self Would look up to and delight in And nurture a life in which you live naturally A life in which you live with integrity,
I see normal people Normal people with normal heads Normal heads full of normal thoughts Thinking about their wives and jobs Or what they have to do when they get home The next time they’ll visit their family Or what show they’re going to watch Before going to bed.
Those normal people I know if they took one look inside this head It would be like watching some foreign film Without subtitles.
How is it even possible I ended up this way So far removed from the rest That I have to train my tongue To act out a performance just to get by.
I’m honestly so tired of this I’m so tired of this script I’m so tired of this performance And these predictable people.
I think it’s time to loosen this tongue And let the normal people see Just what’s inside my head Even if it’s just insanity Or irrationality Or a deranged poem From a deranged mind
On the eve of my 32nd birthday, I sit here at my laptop, a beer by my side, wondering what awaits me in the coming year as a strong winter wind blows outside. I’ve sent out another load of job applications today. At this point, with the current job market, it feels like half-heartedly throwing a fishing line into polluted waters to try and catch something fresh. I know I’m not going to yield any tasty results, but I find myself just doing it for the hell of it (perhaps to fight off the insanity that comes from sitting around doing nothing). For the first time in my life, I feel like actually getting a stable, regular job; something to give me some routine and a bit of needed structure. It’s a bleak time to have such a basic wish though. Most of my applications aren’t even viewed, no doubt filtered out by AI systems and keyword searches. And even if they are viewed, it’s a lottery to even hear back from them given the absurd competition (a recent minimum wage warehouse job I applied for has received 1265 applications). I’ve also lately heard that a lot of job adverts are ‘ghost’ adverts – just there to harvest the data of applicants and sell to advertising companies. Yes, the UK in 2024 is not a great country to live in – a failing economy, a dramatically rising cost of living, continuous shit weather, no longer in the EU, and just seemingly going further and further down the drain each year. What chance does any young person have today if not born into wealth? For me, I don’t even ask for a lot; I just want a simple and modest life, living in a one-bedroom apartment, working an introvert-friendly job while writing my books in my spare time. Such a life seems to be increasingly further away as the days of destitution and desperation go by.
Call me a pessimist, but I am of the opinion that the total collapse of our current system is not far away at all. I have watched the cracks in society widen these last years as the gap between the rich and poor grows at an unprecedented rate, leaving hard-working people unable to heat their homes or stock their fridges or fuel their cars. Worker rights are being continually eroded and, for the first time, each generation is poorer than the previous one. On top of this, jobs begin to disappear because of AI and many of the few that do appear are poorly-paid with zero-hour contracts. Meanwhile the cost of rent and groceries skyrockets while wages stagnant. Whatever is happening is certainly not sustainable, and the increasing number of homeless people on the streets only serves as a grim introduction of the post-capitalism wasteland that awaits us. And that’s not even to mention the climate crisis which sits waiting for us as well, ready to well and truly turn this society into something from a post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel.
So, at the age of 32, what is a guy like me to do but drink this beer and type these words and throw more job applications into the void while contemplating the coming downfall of civilisation? Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have a space on a medical research trial starting in two weeks’ time. I will go into a clinic for 20 days and take an experimental medicine and have tests run on me. In return, I will receive over £5000 tax-free cash. I can’t complain, I guess. Medical trials are a great gig that has funded my life the last ten years, but I am getting to the age where I recognise I can’t always rely on testing pharmaceutical drugs for money. But for now it’s enough to keep me from those cold streets and that howling wind – and even afford me a holiday away from this sinking ship of a country.
So yeah, it could be worse I remind myself. That seems to be the way to cheer myself up in the dying hours of the 31st year of my life. It’s been a pretty tough one in all honesty, with terrible periods of insomnia ravaging my mental health throughout the year. But what else is there to do but pick yourself up and go again? Tomorrow I will wake up, do my morning meditation, strap on my running shoes, do some exercise, spend another hour job searching, and then go see my lovely girlfriend for a delicious meal with wine. Though things aren’t the best overall, I will be grateful of the joys in my life, including the simple fact of actually having one. As one man said to me: “Any day above ground is a good day.” Well, thirty-two years into it, I’m still well and truly above ground, and ready to keep on running into that wind, no matter how strong it gets. Cheers to that.
Another night of laying there unable to sleep. Another night of watching the hours go by as dawn approached, knowing I’d face the world even more sleep-deprived than the day before. Such a situation was nothing new to me. Insomnia had been ravaging my life for years by the time I was in my thirties. It came and went, but at its worst I’d get just a couple of hours of disturbed sleep a night. Sometimes I’d get none. Slowly it would snowball out of control until my mental state was dark, depressed, and delirious. At my very worst, I would even slip into psychosis and begin to have auditory and visual hallucinations. I would be totally exhausted and broken – a pitiful wretch – and all I needed was to simply sleep to fix myself, but I would lay there each night undergoing psychological torture, totally unable to switch off and get the thing my soul was screaming for. One time I got so frustrated I started banging my head against a wall in a desperate attempt to knock myself out. That’s when I realised the severity of the disorder that was violently destroying my life.
It’s now the start of 2024 as I begin this year in this all-too-familiar way. I partly have myself to blame for it, having gone on a weekend bender in Dublin three weeks before. Whenever my routine is disturbed by drinking and late nights, I usually end up spiralling into a state of sleep-deprivation. I guess I should have accepted by now that my partying days are behind me with this paralysing condition, but it’s been hard to let go of all the fun things that filled my youth. So, here I am three weeks on, battling a disease of the mind that no one else can see and only a few can understand. Still, the start of a new year presents the opportunity to start fresh and mark out some targets. Maybe I’ll quit drinking, I say to myself. Maybe I’ll finally get this condition under control. Strict sleeping times and healthy practices. No more partying until dawn. It’s a nice idea that I commit myself to with a sense of vigour and hope. A man can always use the concept of a new year to try and start afresh; even if it’s just a temporary delusion, sometimes that’s what one needs in order to keep marching into another year of existence.
For now though I lay in my room, hiding from the outside world which seemed far too unbearable when one hadn’t slept properly in weeks. I guess it was a good place to be considering that storms had been battering the country for weeks. I couldn’t help but listen to that heavy wind and rain like I was listening to a representation of my turbulent mental state. The nearby river continued to rise as I felt a growing gloom about my life, as if a sprawling swamp surrounded me with sinister creatures lurking somewhere in the shadows. Each year life got considerably harder and I was left wondering how I’ve even made it this far without drowning altogether. I took refuge in the fact that there was obviously some sort of strength inside of me that had kept me fighting off my demons throughout the years – whether that be depression, anxiety, alienation, insomnia, or general madness. However, I didn’t feel as strong and brave as I once did, and things were only getting harder as that river continued to rise and the current got stronger. I could feel my insides shaking; my nervous system vibrating with anxiety. I wondered how the hell I was ever going to get by in this world with my mental health problems and unemployability and the rising cost of living and everything that just seemed to make being a human-being a stupidly difficult and unrealistic task.
I couldn’t let myself get bogged down in a million worries at once, so I set a step by step guide to get out of the darkness first. The first thing I needed was sleep so I focused on fixing that by staying away from booze, meditating, and having set bedtimes. It took a few days but I eventually felt able to head out and face the world. I ran alongside the flooded river; I breathed in the air; I went shopping in the supermarket for healthy foods. Slowly I started to feel somewhat like a human-being again. The next step involved the ever-present necessity of money. I needed a job after my last one decided to let me go a few weeks before Christmas. I started searching and sending out applications. As always, I looked for the most straightforward jobs possible – menial factory or warehouse roles that required you to do just a couple of repetitive tasks. That’s about all I could manage at this point. Perhaps that was my ceiling. I was an autistic daydreamer after all, and my limited capacity for work was hard to ignore when reflecting on my job history.
Although jobless, I was at least getting some income being on government unemployment benefits. It required me to attend meetings with a work coach to tell them the steps I was taking in seeking employment. My last one was at the height of my insomnia when my anxiety was through the roof, and I was unfortunate to be met with a guy who grilled me and got me to apply for terrible call centre roles in which I wouldn’t last more than a few days. This time I was better prepared and lucky enough to be met with a woman who clearly didn’t care as much about her job as the previous guy. Perhaps she too knew what a joke it all was. I sat there describing some jobs I’d applied for, as well as some vague future employment goals. She typed some things into a computer and nodded her head as I accepted my place as a misfit and liability in this society. The tedious process plodded on and eventually came to a merciful end.
I then headed back out into the streets of Nottingham city centre. I walked around and saw them all surrounding me again: the normal, civilised faces of humanity. Presentable people with careers and cars and credit scores and shoe collections. People ready to continue on along the treadmill of a normal, sane life – mortgages and marriages; security and stability. The separation from everyone else all was as strong as ever. It was a new year, but it seemed it was the same old me – wandering the world like some sort of alien that had been cast away on planet earth. Still, I reminded myself that I had a beautiful girlfriend; that I was consistently looking for work; that I was twenty hours into learning to drive. Perhaps this year would be different. Perhaps this year I’d finally smoothen and straighten out. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that the ‘new year, new me’ optimistic delusion was taking effect once again.
I continued walking towards home until I reached the river. I stopped and sat down on a bench beside it. The water levels had dropped back down to normal and the winter sunshine twinkled upon the surface. I let myself breathe and observed the pleasant scene before me, watching a flock of birds fly along the river and happy dogs stroll along the pathway. It was a place I had experienced great peace before and, after a few minutes, I noticed that peace there in my soul once again. I felt my inner anxiety being alleviated – all the thunder inside being replaced by a loving, radiant light that had filled me before. Despite my current troubles, I knew that it was a beautiful world, and that I really did belong to it – even if I felt out of place in society. Slowly I began to accept myself and where I was in life. Slowly I began to accept that yes – it was a new year, and in reality would never really be a new me, but the best thing I could do was to nurture the part of myself that had guided me to peace and happiness before. At that moment, I made a decision to look after myself a bit better, starting by resisting an offer to go out for drinks that evening. Something inside of me said the way forward this year was as simple as that. My plan wasn’t to conquer the world, or run a marathon, or some specific goal or resolution like that – but to just treat myself with some basic kindness and gentleness. Starting from there, who knew what it would lead to. For when the storm has passed and the destruction has been cast, it seemed the best and only real thing you could do was dust yourself off, pick up the pieces, and let yourself move forward in the direction of the calming and healing light.
Hear this heart sing Though you try to silence it And wish me to get in line Suppressing my spirit I shall continue to refuse For I know that sanity of yours Is slowly killing you Your tired eyes tell it all Your soul is screaming for music And I do not wish to kill my song too No conformity or career Will put an end to this As this grey world continues You’ll find me dancing within Where my song plays loud Shaking the walls and windows Keeping me thoroughly alive And no amount of knocking at the door Will cause this precious symphony To stop soaring.
It’s a Saturday evening and I’m home alone Trying to write a poem I’m listening to ambient music Looking at pretty pictures of sunsets Hoping that inspiration will strike As the words come flooding onto the page.
It’s a strange process that is hard to explain But doing this, instead of being at the bar, Well it gives me the sort of joy That one only gets when they are in touch With something spiritual and sacred.
For some reason I decided to be a writer I’ve been doing it for over ten years now Nothing has really made much sense to me Except when I’m organising words together.
School didn’t come naturally Jobs didn’t come naturally Social life didn’t come naturally But for some reason this did.
And that’s why I’m here tonight Still giving it all that I’ve got Sailing out on the sea of creative thought Lowering my net into the depths And trying to catch a big juicy 200 pound poem to take home And display on my wall.
For now it appears I’ve only caught this one Which, admittedly, isn’t my best But hey, I’m having fun Typing these words Jamming out alone On a Saturday evening.
I’ll think I’ll even crack open a beer As I keep on sailing on this sea Doing the thing which puts everything in the right place Which makes me feel like I’m on that dancefloor Busting my moves and celebrating life In all its strange joy.
I guess I was always a little wild A little rebellious, a little reckless From a young age, I walked my own path Following the signposts of the soul Rather than the signposts of society I trusted the authority of my intuition Rather than any government or institution I still feel this way; each person must find Their own path through this wilderness If they are to find out who they truly are And get the most out of this life.
Self-direction is the way And I will never stop thinking for myself Nor settle down into some sofa Turning on a TV and turning off my mind I shall follow this internal compass to whatever end For without it, I would not have found The joy that I now store in my soul The fire that burns in my heart And the truth that runs through My words.
To write these things I must certainly be a fool. To invest so much of myself into this manic muse of mine. And not just time and effort; I’m talking about scraping the very bottom of my soul, scooping out the contents and placing them onto a page no matter how drained it leaves me. I think of all the other things I could have been doing whilst I’ve been committed to this strange and solitary endeavour. Perhaps I could have been developing some sort of career, building wealth, learning to fix cars, speak another language, or some other thing which I’m pretty sure every other person on this street would see as favourable to torturing oneself to write a pretty sentence. Are these sentences even pretty? Is this collection of words worth everything I have put myself through? I guess when I think about it, through the last ten years, it seemed like I didn’t even have a choice. I was simply possessed, or insane, or just blindly committed to a fool’s errand. I still remember being in a hostel bar in Guatemala with a blonde German girl I had been travelling with. She listened to me describe my need to write – a need which caused me to forsake everything else in the pursuit of becoming a great writer. She sat and stared at me with concerned eyes. I could tell I was a creature that she hadn’t laid eyes on before. Even hailing from Berlin – where I knew there was a wealth of starving artist types roaming the bohemian streets – I was still a foreign thing. She just looked at me and, after a moment of silence, said: “don’t you realise how crazy that actually is? That you would fuck yourself up just in order to write a good sentence?”
At the time I took it as a compliment; her reaction simply reaffirmed my belief that I was someone going to the ultimate effort of becoming what he desired deepest. It didn’t matter if I went crazy, or destitute, or scared away everyone close to me – all that mattered was getting that sentence down in a way that would show me I was a true writer, just like my literary idols – the other madmen: Thompson, Bukowski, Miller, London, Kerouac, Celine et al… all those fellow fools who bled themselves dry in order just to be great practitioners of the craft. None of their lives were pleasant, but they were ferociously alive and could put down immortal words that could put fire in a person’s heart. In my young and idealistic mind, that was the greatest achievement of a man: To create art. To stir souls. To understand the human condition and tap into a sacred place that was out of bounds to those who stayed on the safe path of life. I imagined society as a herd of animals; the majority of the people stayed huddled in the herd for safety and belonging. They had those things, but they were also restricted, held in place by others, and could only see an obscured view of their surroundings. The animals who drifted away from the herd, sure, they were more exposed and vulnerable to the beasts of loneliness and madness; but they also could move freely and see the world with greater vision and clarity. They had a wide screen view of the herd and their place in the environment that was simply unavailable to those within it. I explained this metaphor to her but she just continued to look at me like I was some sort of ranting lunatic.
I quite liked that young German girl. Despite her concerns, we even got close to romance, sharing beds and kissing when drunk. But her block up against me was too strong and we eventually parted ways. I was an unsettling creature and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to see the back of me. She was yet another one scared off by my madness, only to be recounted here in some random story I’m strumming out at 10.42am on a September morning over four years later. I wonder if she ever anticipated that she’d feature in my writings? I guess she wouldn’t have cared.
Anyway, after all this time, I’m perhaps not totally as idealistic as I was then when I was scaring off pretty young German girls. I’ve since self-published four books, selling somewhere around 2000 copies, making almost no money when I take into account the few adverts I’ve done on social media here and there. All of this effort and sacrifice for this. Naturally, you wonder if it’s all worth it. You only seem to get poorer and crazier as the years go on as a writer. Sure, there is the odd success story, but the 20th century is long behind us, and the writers who make any form of living as writers seem to be 1 in 47,897 or something like that. Naturally, you think about packing it all in and becoming a respectable human-being. Maybe you can still write the odd poem here and there, but it just doesn’t seem to make any sense to devote so much of yourself into something that takes you nowhere, other than the realm of your own satisfactory delusion that you’re a great and noble writer – an undiscovered genius strumming his keyboard in his garden at 10.47am on a September morning, as the rest of the world toils in their jobs and responsibilities.
I think again of utilising this energy for something else. Age 31, I still haven’t learned to drive, and I’ve recently committed myself to trying to obtain my licence again. I could be spending this time learning the theory like I promised myself I’d do this morning. I could also be researching jobs which I also promised myself I’d do seeing as I’m currently getting by on a zero-hour contract job with inconsistent work. But yet, here I am again: all these years on, still totally committed to the same manic muse that has consumed me now throughout the whole part of early adulthood. I can just about imagine that same German girl sitting opposite me now, still with those confused and concerned eyes, wondering why I am still fucking myself up just to write this nonsense that probably only a handful of people will read and forget about. It reminds me of a story I recently read online about a man who took ten years writing his novel and two years promoting it, only to receive no sales. When his family found out, they disowned him. He ended up depressed, moved to another city, and then started work on his second novel…
I guess it comes back to it: a person’s own purpose. We frame human purpose in a positive light; that generally one is meant to find what it is that they’re good at, serves others, and makes them a fulfilled human-being. But we never stop to consider that someone’s purpose can also drive them to the edge – to become fucked up, tortured, isolated, misunderstood, destitute, deserted, and even dead. I think again of Kafka and Van Gogh and Plath and all the others who only ended in darkness while pursuing their innate calling. Once again at the crossroads, I consider packing this laptop away and learning to drive. I consider searching for that job, tidying my room, ironing myself out, and becoming a respectable member of the human race. I hear the German girl urging me on. “Finally stop this madness. You have four books now. You’ve given it a go. You’ve done more than most people and it’s time to give yourself a break. Put down the pen and get yourself in order.”
But alas, the words just keep on coming, and if you’re still here listening to this self-indulgent, introspective, stream-of-the-consciousness crap, then well, I guess maybe you share a similar type of madness. There are so many other productive things one could be doing, but then again, what is the point. What is the point as I now watch two butterflies dance with each other in the morning sun; as I watch a ginger cat strutting elegantly down the path; as I watch a squirrel run along the fence and listen to the birds singing somewhere in the nearby trees. I guess nature doesn’t concern itself with what it ‘should’ do rather than what it is doing. And that in doing so, it is far more graceful than us with our clumsy and clunky lives. Perhaps I was simply born to the wrong species. Humanity was never the intended destination of a soul like mine. I was better off being a cat, or a squirrel, or a butterfly fluttering in the early morning sun. I know the second I stop this story and start studying my driving theory and searching for jobs, I’ll be longer in tune with the great harmony of nature. But this seems to be the requirement for surviving in society and stopping the pretty girls from thinking you’re crazy and wanting to sleep with you. That is an awfully nice thing, I must confess, so now I consider packing it away again. And it seems to me that if I do that, I’ll no longer be considered a fool by others, but I’ll know inside that I am a fool. To neglect this holy feeling I must certainly be mad, and now it’s time to choose: to be mad by my own reckoning, or by theirs. There is no easy way and I guess maybe I’m just too far gone as I decide I’ll be adding this piece of writing to my fifth book: Daft Daydreamer Delusions. I’m choosing to be mad in their eyes again. This one is for you, pretty German girl. I hope your life of sanity and sensibility is as fulfilling as this is. If you read this, get back to me and we can have a chat again. If you’re not too scared, that is.
It was a bad dream, I think I was standing in some strange place And all my friends had faded away All the feelings had faded away Time had shipped out much of my joy And I was left standing in an empty port Of an abandoned town Wondering what to do next With my ragged life.
I wandered back out into the wilderness And felt the nakedness of myself Totally alone with no path to follow Only one to forge to somewhere else That might harbour me and my madness.
The way led me through harsh lands I knew not what would become of me And as night came the stars shone bright I gazed up to them with weary eyes Confused and trapped in some world Whose origin was unknown.
Nowhere seemed to be the place Where I set down my bags for good And I drifted onward in my journey Carrying a great sadness in my heart Wondering what the point was To this strange story.
At times, I thought that I had missed my boat Perhaps I was supposed to join the others And follow their ships to a new world Instead I chose to follow the voice out there Calling me into this barren wilderness That had left me bedraggled and bewildered With no chance of finally finding my way As the wolves howl and vultures circle above As a cold wind blows and the earth begins to shake….
Then suddenly I wake up But the dream isn’t over I stare into the mirror I’m one day older Carrying more hardship in my heart Going to a job I don’t want to do Surrounded by people I can’t relate to And I realise that the wilderness in my dreams Is no different to the one I wander in now Perhaps there are more people around And I am slightly more static But I am a lone wanderer in this life Passing through doorways; shaking hands Attending to the tasks required of me But still, all the while, I’m out there In some great unknown Drifting, searching Caught in some dream And I think it’s a bad one.
~ A Voice From The Wild ~ 