Forward momentum

Over twelve years ago I got around to getting a provisional license and started learning to drive. I got most of the way through and was about to take my test when the accident happened. It took me two counsellors, a number of nights in tears, a lot of very bad decisions and nearly eleven years to start learning to drive again.

Tomorrow I take my first (and hopefully last) driving test.

Tomorrow in a way I can't really explain I close a chapter of my life that's been hanging over me for nearly twelve years, and I get to start moving again.

I've been saying to friends recently that I'm concentrating on me because I get to get better again. I'm not sure any of them really understood exactly what I meant and the sheer power such a statement has over me. I act as if I've got it altogether and like I'm calm and collected, but scratch the surface too deeply and you'll discover a rolling mass of neuroses and issues. Usually you just need to get me drunk, sometimes you just need to see me tired.

Over the last six months it's been a lot more prominent than normal. I've had panic attacks and flashbacks. I've randomly burst into tears for very little reason and I've made some decisions that I'm going to regret for the rest of my life. But I've had some successes too. I've managed to reconnect with a part of me that I hadn't even realised I'd lost. I've both grown and shrunk.

If I had to really describe it, I'd compare myself to a rubber band. A long time ago in a far away place somebody took hold of one end of it, and the two halves of it have slowly been stretching apart ever since. Now it's been let go and I'm snapping back into shape. There was a boom as the two halves connected, but suddenly there's a sense of movement, of forward momentum, that's been lacking in my life for the longest time.

The last six months have been about reconciling this newer, more complete sense of myself with the person I'd so painstakingly created. That although I am who I am, I also had to deal with the fact that I wasn't who I thought I was.

Tonight I'm meeting up with the two people, who in my head at least, are most tied up in the accident. One of them made the mistake of following me across a road, the other made the mistake of picking up the phone twelve hours later. Between them they bookend the events of that day.

Whether they like it, or in fact remember it, or not they were there at the very start of this chapter of my life, it seems only right that they're there for the end of it. I suspect that my relationship with each of them is going to change dramatically over the coming months, although maybe not.

In fact I can see pretty much every aspect of my life getting some sort of overhaul this year, whether I want it to or not. Not in a bad way, just in a... lets call it a realignment of my situation, priorities and motivations.

Because I've caught up with myself, and I can see where I am. If that rolling mess of neuroses and issues is still me then at least it's under control for now, which means I can start to get on with my life. I can take advantage of my current round of forward momentum and see where it gets me.

Or to put it another way: what's next?

The Accident

The following was written not long after the accident. It was adapted for something else, but it was based entirely upon my memories. In it Jon is removed and Roby is changed to be a young woman called Ann. My part is played by a young man called Matt. It wasn't raining.

It's the closest I have to a written transcript of what happened from the time.

One second can change your life.

For an instant Ann was perfect. Her back was ram-rod straight, her body a flow of smooth lines and blurred action. The water in her hair glistened in the light, like a sprinkling of jewels and the rain fell in a halo around her. She positively glowed with movement and energy. Her sharp blue eyes were boring into him, her face was a mask of fury.

She suddenly seemed to notice the car beside her and in mid motion she snapped her head around to stare at it. The bumper hit her across the knees, sending her sprawling forward in a wave. Her thighs touched the front of the radiator. Her belly touched the bonnet. Her head landed just short of the windscreen. Her left hand continued it’s lazy swing to casually graze the glass, sending jagged lines shooting across its surface.

One second and your life is changed. It has happened so suddenly that you don’t even realise until it’s over.

The car’s brakes squealed, slowing it almost to a stand still. Just as quickly as she’d touched it, Ann left the car’s surface. She cart-wheeled through the air, her body turning in the rain. A foot caught the ground. Only one, but it was enough to send her crashing to the tarmac in a sickening crunch. She bounced. Her body spun in the air until she was facing the car, her legs away from Matt. That was about all he had a chance to see before she bounced again. Her body flipped in the air in the long instant before she hit for the third and final time. She slid. Her hair was dragged away from her face to lie in a fan behind her.

Two seconds and now finally your brain can start to catch up with the images that were, and still are, assaulting it.

Everything came to a stand still. The car stood stock still in the rain, two faces starring out from the front seat in the dim lamplight, rain bouncing off it in a steady patter. Ann lay nearly ten feet from where she’d started. A small pool of water, possibly blood, grew around her.

Nothing moved. Nothing at all, and for that instant it was as if the world had paused to consider what had just happened. Matt considered with it, his mind running back and forth across the memory a thousand times in the blink of an eye until he could comprehend what it actually meant.

Three seconds and now your brain is fully up to date with reality but, unable to cope with the completeness of the change, it immediately tries to discard it.

‘That must have hurt,’ thought Matt. ‘Thank God it didn’t happen.’

The rain ran through his short blond hair and continued down into the space between his upturned collar and the back of his neck, drenching his already wet back. He continued to stare at the scene before him but something seemed wrong somehow. The calm in his head seemed to have been defined by something and it was slowly starting to crumple up into him.

Four seconds and you suddenly realise that your life has changed and that you need to be able to function within its change. Given no other option you force yourself to accept something it can’t even comprehend through sheer force of will alone.

“Oh shit,” he heard himself say. As if that was the catalyst the remains of his denial vanished from beneath him and an overwhelming panic threatened to engulf him. A thousand options and thoughts flashed through his mind and disappeared before he could firmly grasp on to any of them. He didn’t know what to do, or even how to do it. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breath.

Five seconds and your life has been changed. Maybe it has even been destroyed.

Deal with it.

The problem

The problem is I've spent so long stuck in that one infinite moment, I've never considered the rest of it.

In the weeks after the accident I made choices. Conscious choices. I chose to move forward. I chose to survive. I chose to deal with it as best I could. Later.

I just didn't really expect it to be over a decade later.

But here I am and I'm dealing as best I can. It's an... interesting process. Essentially I'm doing two things. Unlocking my 18 year old self, and copeing with the things that were locked away immediately after the accident.

My 18 year old self appears to have moved on. He's grown up quite a bit in the last few years. But I can still see him in what he's become. He plays D&D now rather than WFRP. He still paints minatures. He rewrites the same story (slooooowly) even though he'll never get it published.

He has a full-on beard. It itches. I'd forgotten how much it itched.

Yet he dresses differently. He thinks differently. He's relaxed, which is nice.

I like him. I think I'll keep him.

The problem is, he has an awful lot of baggage. A whole set of memories that are apparently really important and surprisingly enough they're not about the accident. They're about what happened next.

Because contary to popular belief, seeing is not always believing. It's entirely possible to be completely and totally aware that what you are currently seeing is complete and utter nonsense. Complete and utter illogical nonsense. It's also possible to reach out with nothing more than your own willpower and shatter reality to make it real.

Seeing is not always believing, sometimes believing is believing.

And the problem is what happens next.

This Story Starts...

This story starts over 11 years ago in a night of blood and tears in a far away land. It starts with a screech of brakes and two unconscious bodies bouncing down a road.

This story starts with a young man called Cameron who was left to cope with two hospitalised friends in up state New York, when it was all he could do to cross a road, or get in a car. The simple truth of the matter is that he couldn't, and didn't, cope. He was having trouble processing the events and his involvement (or lack there of) in them.

This story starts with him referring to the parents of a friend as 'Mama and Papa' because he needed to cede responsibility to them and it was the only way to trust them. It starts with him playing Spyro endlessly (helped by the lack of a memory card, so he had to start from scratch every single night) because it meant he could leave the world behind and be something else for a while.

This story starts with a bargain, because denial only lasted for the length of a thought. Because you do what you have to to survive and then you pay the price.

This story starts at University, where we get the chance to reinvent ourselves. We arrive as blank slates and have the best chance we'll ever get to stretch our wings in as many new directions as we want, and he was the perfect student in that regard. He used the opportunity to overhaul his personality, to fix the 'mistakes' he made in America.

This story starts with him deciding to be the perfect friend. He would always be approachable, always be friendly. He would re-brand myself as 'Cam' because it sounded friendlier. He took a piece of bargaining and created a whole new personality around it, and then He tried to be that person and bury himself beneath it.

I believe the technical term for it is dis-associative personality disorder, but it's more commonly known as having multiple personalities.

Cameron and Cam. They're similar, so similar I doubt anyone else will notice the change, but I can draw a distinct line between them in my head. As Cameron I feel relaxed, I am me. I'm happy and I can look forward in my life. I take up space in the world, and I can look at my life and change what comes next. As Cam I feel tight, worried. I feel very little, but when I do it's generally unhappy. I'm stuck here and now just coping with the world around me. I'm just trying not to hurt too many people on the way through.

But I understand it now. I see what was wrong with me, and how to fix it. It'll take some time, and there's some unexpected surprises - Cam's got over the accident, Cameron not so much - but the surprises are worth the problems. It's interesting to poke the pieces of my brain to see how it reacts now. To see what happens next.

This story starts over 9 months ago in a fortnight of new beginnings. It starts with the folding of two separate lives into one space, and the closure of the bits that no longer fitted.

This story starts with a man called Cam, a nice guy by all accounts but not necessarily a real one, who made a resolution to improve his life a little bit each day, never knowing that the the resolution wasn't his and the improvements would lead to his own self-destruction.

This story starts with an opportunity, maybe not the best one but certainly not the worst, to leave reality behind for a weekend and come back as someone new. It starts with the right word by the right person at the right time in the right place to knock everything for six.

This story starts right now. What's next?

Stall

At this point you've probably noticed that despite all my optimism to begin with, the re-invention of the blog has, well, stopped. Straight out the gate.

The problem I'm having is that I'm not entirely sure what to write about. I mean I still have a historical stock of entries to add in - if I could find the journal. Even if I could find it, I don't really want to go backwards before I understand exactly how I can go forwards. Before I understand what I need to do to go forwards.

I've thought about a couple of ways it could go. I was seriously considering writing about perspective, and how moving away from something gives you a better look at it. My basic point was that going to London allowed me to look at my life with the perspective of being removed from it.

The truth of the matter is that really I needed perspective on the blog first. I don't plan to update this every day, for a start I don't really have time, and I don't want to set myself to some arbitrary timetable.

In other words I need this/these blogs to fit into my life, rather than the other way around. It's possible, but for now it needs some more work in my head. I need some way of moulding it towards the quasi-formed catharsis I want it to be.

So I finally decided the best thing to do would be to write that and explain exactly why I wasn't updating. It's just that as soon as I started this occured. Complete, argued and self-contradictory.

Because as much as I needed perspective to try and work out what I was trying to do, it turns out the best way to use this blog is just to sit down and start writing.

Begin again

As you may have noticed, this project fell a little bit by the wayside. I continued to make entries in the journal, but I just started to lose time to transfer them to the computer.

My time in London continued and extended. In total I spent two and a half years in London. I got a girlfriend, moved out of hotels and in with Kirsten, got burgled - twice - learnt to dive, visited Egypt, Malta and La Palma, lost some friends, gained some more and generally got on with life.

Then came Christmas 2009.

In the space of two weeks I moved back from London, changed job and split up with girlfriend.

In short, I changed everything. Again.

I also made a simple New Year's Resolution. I would do one thing each day that improved my life somehow. It doesn't matter how big or small the change is. It doesn't even matter what the change is. It just has to improve my life.

It's not going so well. I have a tendency to miss days, or forget, or be too tired, or generally unmotivated. It's also hard to think of something you can do EVERY SINGLE DAY.

But it's working.

In the past five months I have quit smoking, started learning to drive, built a media pc from the ground up (age old dream) and reconnected with a number of friends I don't see nearly enough. I've also started some serious exercise, been sailing, been to an alternative club, picked up a hobby that I gave up over ten years ago and helped a couple of friends build the floor of their house. Life, in a way I can't always define, is better. And I think if I twist so the lights at just the right angle and I squint a little, that I might just be able to see happy from here. Or at least content.

I still don't know who I really am, and I haven't really worked out what I want out of life, and now I've got the time I'd like to return to this project and see if it can still work.

So I'd like to invite you to join me on a little journey I'm making. It's called life. It's pretty cool.

Kirsten

20/11/07

Which really leaves me nowhere to go but the third child, which is interesting because there are a couple of other things I've been thinking about. General grumpiness, apologies and lift ettiquette to name a few.

Anyway, the third child; the joker, attention seeker and people person. The one who's trying to be noticed beyond the other two, who's trying to find their place. Generally they're more artistic - I don't know why - but they also have a tendency to have less self-confidence than the others.

All of which perfectly sums up Kirsten. It's also easier for me to see Kirsten's self doubts than the other two's sipmly because I know her better than them. I did after all spend more time with her when I was growing up. In many ways most of my childhood memories include her in some way. I remember her jumping on me on my way home from school one day (I had my nose in a book at the time, so it's not as bad as it sounds). I remember giving her split ends - I don't know why I was doing stuff to her hair, she must have been very patient.

But most of all I remember her. In all her glory. She is funny, she is joyful, she very much enjoys having people around her. She is far more intelligent than she gives herself credit for, and lacks the self-confidence that she clearly should have.

I think the problem is that she's had such a huge influence on my life that it's almost impossible to talk about her, there's just too much to say. Hell we shared a room for the first six to eight years of my life. In fact a few years ago when we ended up sharing a room on holiday again it felt so incredibly natural to lie in our beds talking across the room in the dark that I was almost disappointed we were too tired to do it the next night.

Which reminds me, when we did share a room I had the top bunk and she'd push up on it from below. It was something I enjoyed immensely, even after she accidentally bounced me out of the top bunk.

I think if nothing else that instilled a sense of risk and excitment in me. The ability to look at old and boring things in a new light. It's lead to a lot of my freakish behaviour - which she'd probably be appalled by, but I really must thank her for.

On the other hand though, I know that she was raised to look after and protect me. It was drilled into her from an early age and she has trouble getting past it. If I had one wish it's that she would. Scratch that, if I had one wish it's that she'd realise howe great she is and how valid her viewpoints are. If I had two wishes then the second one would be that she'd get past it and treat me as a friend and equal.

If I had three then the third would be that she did that and yet remained my big sis, because she's damn good at it!

I don't know, I feel like I should gush more about Kirsten. She's too important to me for me not to gush more. More important than Catriona and Euan, which is no disparagement on them just a simple truth. I mean Catriona and Euan are hugely important to my life, it's just that Kirsten is more so. A first among equals, in a good way.

It's just that because she's so important I've got to see a much more rounded view of her. I've seen her worries and so it's hard for me to separate them from her. I can't separate the good from the bad because it's such a complete bundle. It's Kirsten.

She's a people person. She relates. She has an emotional intuition. More importantly she has an ability to improve life for people. To make them laugh when they need it.

No, I can't do it. Because I know she finds it difficult when she can't. I've seen it. Especially with me.

But she's Kirsten, and from my point of view the world is a fundamentally better place for it.