Memories – somewhat abstract

😣 Good Grief, 🥳 Happy Holidays

🥳The Holidays are upon us. In the US, what folks refer to as The Holidays is generally accepted to start around Thanksgiving – the third Thursday of November, though my observations suggest it really starts at the end of October, with Halloween. In the UK, in my anglo-Christian family, it was Christmas and the commercialised build up to it. Perhaps it is something else for you. Whatever The Holidays means to you, they are here and they can be a struggle for many. Suffocating societal expectations of Happy Holidays. Debt-fueling challenges to shower loved ones with gifts. Reminiscence of happier times. Remembrance of past pain. "Happy Holidays", we tell each other, persevering to manifest it as truth, wearing it like an inverted halloween mask, the scary facade on the inside. Upon us like a rabid gang armed with tinsel, Christmas music, and peppermint candy canes, intent on forcing us to ignore how we feel and join in with someone else's idea of fun, The Holidays lie waiting to sabotage some of us when we least expect it.

Collage of me and friends on a few different Christmas Days — A few Christmas memories

😣The Holidays are complicated. This post is not intended as some War on Christmas manifesto or a downer on the holiday season. I have incredibly happy memories of The Holidays: traditions, roaring fires, home-cooked family meals. The camaraderie of working shifts with friends at the local pub. My Grandma's birthday on Christmas Eve. Waking up early to open gifts. Going to bed late after too much food and far too many drinks. Friends, family, church, caroling, and more. I fondly remember my time in the church choir¹, singing at midnight mass, or walking the village, caroling door to door. Or my Nana staying with us on Christmas Eve so that she could spend Christmas Day with us. And that time my Uncle Peter surprised my Nana and the rest of us, showing up at the local pub in England after calling us from his home in Canada just the night before (he was really in a hotel nearby). Or the time I surprised my mum with a visit when she thought I was spending Christmas here in the US (and yes, it was my Uncle's visit years before that inspired that surprise). My first Christmas meeting much of my girlfriend's family long before she became my wife, and the time I was welcomed into the home of Gary and Carol to eat together with many neighbours and friends. The Holidays have been filled with happiness for me and I am grateful to carry these memories with me. Yet The Holidays also represent an unhappy, twisted, ugly place. A place that ripped my cousin away in a tragic plane crash and stole the sparkle of my friend Mary, both far too soon. The annual reminder my Nana will visit nevermore, that my Grandma's birthday will be remembered without her.

The Holidays are happy moments and sad, and these moments do not cancel each other out, they weave themselves together into a complex tapestry of deep emotion that can in an instant swing from joyful remembrance to helpless sobbing and back again. This is The Holidays for me. A complicated dance of happiness and grief. Grief is good, grief is healthy if we embrace it rather than dodge it. I find my grief is a journey, walking hand in hand with my emotions as I learn a new way to live without the loves I never expected to lose.

😔The Holidays are lonely. This year is my first year alone for The Holidays since my partner and I concluded our marriage was over, since we separated, since we divorced. This is my first time publicly acknowledging that as a thing that happened. It felt crass to announce it as some thing worthy of everyone else's attention. I do not know if that is because it is or because I am just afraid or something else. There have been many days where I wished for my Nan or Mary to show up for a cup of tea and a chat to help me work that out. In some ways, they did. Grief is complicated.

After reading this, you may think I am misguided to be alone right now or to be sharing all this so candidly. Your gut reaction might be to reach out and invite me over to spend time with people for The Holidays. Please don't, though I very much appreciate the sentiment. I already have the right amount of plans (I will be spending Christmas Day with a few of my friends) and I need to do this. I need to do this and I need to do it now, this year, this moment, with these feelings. If this isn't The First Holidays Alone then I have to wait a whole year before I can get past that seemingly arbitrary yet looming milestone. Right now, I need to spend time with me and my grief, and continue our journey working out exactly how things work from this point on.

🤗The Holidays are hopeful. The Holidays are whatever you need them to be. For me, this year at least, they are a time to reflect and to grow as I come to terms with my grief, my loneliness, and the path I have lying ahead, somewhere in the unknown. I have been here before and I cleared a path to get where I am, I know I can learn to clear a different path than the one I planned. You can too. Whatever you are facing as the year end draws near, whatever The Holidays mean to you, you have the strength to endure. We all have our own paths to clear, and no one is better suited to clear yours than you. You can do it. You have done it before. Do not let society shame you into thinking you are not succeeding just because you don't fit the Hallmark picture of The Holidays. You are enough, you are loved. 💝

this may surprise those that know me to be an atheist – our roads are long and winding, with many turns and stops [↩]

Forgiveness

This is a long time coming. I have thought about writing this for as long as I have thought about having a blog. I have tried writing it in stories, lyrics and poems. All have fallen short somehow and I have similar expectations for this, but I need it. I need to find a way to reach myself and let myself know it is okay.

When I was a kid, I was confident. I was funny. I was naive. I was sensitive. I believed that people were kind and forgiving and that the world was safe…not such terrible things and perhaps a starting point for every child. I wasn't perfect, obviously. I was mean sometimes, I talked too much. I was snarky and loud. To those that know me, this may sound familiar. I'm still that person. Turns out you can't much help being who you are and that is just how it should be. You should be you. As Alan H. Stevens said at KalamazooX, "you don't need anyone's permission to be you". As a kid I inherently seemed to know this, but as I grew older I began desperately needing someone's permission to just be me, so much so that I lost sight of who I was because I so desperately just wanted to be liked. No, to be loved.

It all changed because I was bullied. I was beaten, called names, and ostracised by my peers and others. I was even made to think that my suffering was not worthy of help because others suffered worse than me. I don't know when it started but I have distinct and painful memories that are as strong now as they have ever been. Like when painting at nursery school and being very publicly derided by a supervisor for painting the wrong part. I am sure I messed up and I was probably not being at all graceful about it, but I was three or four, I had things to learn. And then there was the time at primary school when, after a particularly vicious break where even my friend had been participating in the name calling, he approached me and said something like, "I'm sorry, but I have to join in or they'll start on me. You understand, right?" I dutifully agreed, grateful to have a friend at all and feeling my friend's dilemma. And then there was high school, the church choir and my first job at the local pub where I was gay, smelly or the reason my sister wouldn't date someone¹; I was bullied in many ways by many people for a long time, so many incidents that I could write more than just a single blog about them. Still, I do not want you to think that I am removing myself from any responsibility here. There are things I could have done to not be such an easy target (oh how I hated that phrase, "don't be such an easy target!"). I was a fat kid with a smart mouth; quick witted, cutting, but too damn slow to run away. I was certainly not street smart enough to realise the correlation and keep my mouth shut. Yet just because I perhaps did some things that enticed bullying, because I liked being the centre of attention, does not mean I am responsible for the actions of others.

I doubt my experience is unique. Many kids are bullied. Like me, they may not look for help for fear of being passed off with advice like "avoid them", "don't be an easy target", and "fight back", or because of threatened retribution by their abusers. Seeking help can be incredibly daunting, but reaching out will help and it will get better (there are links below where you can find numbers to call or email addresses)². Eventually, we get to leave behind the petty-mindedness and surround ourselves with those who value us for who we are.

For me, that started at university. I had been there for two years and had made some good friends, but I was still lacking confidence or a sense of who I was when I decided to take a year out to get some work experience. There, I met some new people and got a chance to “reset” who I was. By the time I got back to university, I found the confidence to join a band, get on stage and sing. It was amazing and before long I had my first proper girlfriend where I didn't flinch at every moment of physical contact. I wasn't fixed, but I felt more myself than I ever had before.

You are worthy of being loved. You are worthy of being you. You are not responsible for the actions of others.

Repeat that to yourself as often as you can. I still need to repeat it to myself because even though I know it to be true, I still struggle with accepting it. I still feel responsible. I had a smart mouth. I talked back. I used words where others used fists (and still do). I was fat. I challenged. I made myself an “easy target” and I struggle to let that go. I am a victim and yet I blame myself for how I was treated more than I blame those who abused me. It makes no sense, but that's their legacy and the only way I can get past it is to face it and forgive them, and you must find a way to do the same.

For most of my life, I did not understand forgiveness. I was too angry. Too angry at myself and the world to realise what it really meant. “How can I forgive them? Look what they did to me. Look what they've done to me!” I was so wrapped up in being a victim, fighting to get my confidence back and fighting to be loved that I couldn't focus on anything else. It was making me bitter, arrogant and nasty. It was making me hate myself. It was making me a bully. In struggling to deal with my own experiences, I let it infect me to the point where I bullied others because I felt worthless and unloved. How could I forgive anyone that had made me feel this way or do these things? But I had forgiveness all wrong. Just a few years ago I learned forgiveness is not about accepting what happened as being justified or okay, forgiveness is about letting go. As I sat with my wife watching Madea Goes To Jail³, forgiveness finally made sense to me:

Forgiveness is not for the other person. It's for you.

The longer you hold on to it, the longer you hold onto the pain and the past and the hurt, the longer you hold yourself back from being free.

– Madea

Forgiveness is hard. I don't know if I am there yet, but I finally understand where I need to be. I refuse to justify my actions because of something someone did when I was kid, when they were hurting, trying to gain control of their own lives. These painful memories will always be a part of me — they are anecdotes when I want to relate, they are lessons when I want to help, and they are inspiration when I want to write, but it is time to stop letting them be shackles that hold me back.

I cried eight or nine times while writing this. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said it was because I was bullied, but I suspect the real reason is that I am empathetic. It is just a part of who I am. I am also a funny bastard. A funny bastard with one imaginary kid, two cats (one with opposable thumbs and a smoker's voice) and an amazing wife who sees me as I always was.

—

If you are struggling with abuse of any kind, reach out. There are people who know what you're going through, there are people who love you and there are people who can help you.

National Bullying Hotline (UK): http://nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

The real reason was that she had some level of taste. [↩]
Unfortunately, for some kids, it is too much and they give up, an all too familiar and unnecessary story. [↩]
Seriously. In fact, being in an interracial couple means I have to watch Tyler Perry movies or they revoke our marriage license. [↩]

Mr. Simpson

I want to take this blog entry to tell you all about the man I knew as Mr. Simpson. The problem is, I don't know that much about him, so instead, I'll tell you what I remember.

Mr. David Simpson was one of my high school English teachers. He was really Dr. Simpson, yet he seemed to go out of his way to avoid the title that he had earned. He was a tall, bespectacled, dark-haired man whom I always remember wearing a suit and tie. He was always impeccably groomed and he had a razor sharp wit.

Mr. Simpson somehow got me to connect with Shakespeare. He had us creating a cast list for our own Romeo & Juliet movie based on whichever contemporary actors we wanted. All mine were from Whose Line Is It Anyway (I was never going to be a casting director), but somehow, his discussion about my justifications for Tony Slattery and Josie Lawrence to be the lead roles was never condescending (it probably should have been). We even watched Romeo & Juliet¹ on VHS, so that we could experience Shakespeare through the actors rather than just from the text. Because of Mr. Simpson, The Taming of the Shrew is my favourite Shakespeare play.

Mr. Simpson encouraged me to write. He gave me access to the Apple Mac in his classroom so that I could spend more time writing my homework with a computer to overcome my poor handwriting. He pushed me to write for the school newspaper (though much to our lament, I never made it to print). I wrote a short science fiction story on my Amiga 500— it was 20-something pages long once printed from the dot matrix printer my Dad had bought me from a bric-a-brac store in Blackpool. When I gave it to him to read, eager to hear what he had to say, Mr. Simpson took it home and read it, and he gave me feedback.

Mr. Simpson helped me cope with bullies.

Mr. Simpson and I had our first trips to the top of the Eiffel Tower together. I know because as we made our journey to the top, he proclaimed to the elevator full of other sixth formers from school, "My first time up the Eiffel Tower, and with Jeff Yates too!" Everyone laughed and though I felt a little embarrassed at the time, I look back on it fondly now. And when I subsequently got left behind at the top of the tower for 30 minutes, Mr. Simpson and the other teachers were happy to let me tag along with them for dinner when they found me alone, waiting at the rendezvous point an hour early².

If my memory were better, I'd be able to tell you more, if my memory were better. The thing is, this might be the best my memory will ever be when it comes to Mr. Simpson. I found out today that sometime in the last few years, he passed away aged 47 years old. I don't know when or how, just that he's gone, that those imagined emails or conversations where we got to reminisce as adults, where I got to thank him for everything that he had done for me— all the things he knew about and the many he didn't, where I got to try and pay him back for his lessons and support will not exist.

It's cliché, but don't wait. Take the opportunity to reach out to those who have influenced your life for the better and thank them. Do it before that opportunity isn't there anymore. I am still crying as I write this. I wish I could take every tear back just to shake his hand and say, "Thank you."

Mr. Simpson was a great teacher and though we hadn't spoken in over 15 years, I will miss him.

The version from before Leo. [↩]
The journey to get there is another story. [↩]