Mar 7

 A bad headache ghosted across my forehead in the morning.

Oh no.

It threatened to turn into a ass kicking migraine.

I slept it off. Not easy. It didn't let me sleep too easy. But I did it.

By the end of the afternoon, it was back again. Grumbling around the front attic. Making me more spacey. And more dizzy. And more weird. I've had a really "funny" head for the last 2 or 3 weeks now. Ever since the migraines started kicking in regularly. The ongoing shriek of the tinnitus heralds the difficult times. It gets worse when shit is bad.

You Should Get That Looked At Mate.

Been there, done that, the NHS cannot be arsed. Which no doubt leaves me open to when it has become such a problem that it's too late. But there it is. I have been Pavlov responsed into not bothering with the NHS at all, by and large.

The day has wiled its way to a pleasant dusk. A pretty rose coloured horizon, a blue sky, chilly, but not too chilly. A sense of spring in the air. And suddenly. An overwhelming urge in me that right now would be a great time to phone my mom and see how she's doing. Talk about how spring is coming.

Except of course, she's not there. Already gone.

And it makes me a little sad.

I miss her.

I found something out about Andy today. I suspected one of his parents - probably his mom - was an authoritarian. A disciplinarian. But had never really got to the answer. Because I never really looked hard. But. I suspect it was, the few times I had seen her, her body language, her interactions. And her being that way, was the reason Andy is, by and large, the way he is.

As it turns out. She was. In his own words, she ruled by fear. And religion. A hefty dose of religion.

All of which was like getting the final puzzle piece to complete the picture. It makes so much sense. Why Andy struggles with conflict. Why he will scarper rather than stand. Why he will let himself be bullied. Why he lives in fear and anxiety about his existence. Money wise.

It's the abused response. The learned recoil from the blow. The beaten.

Taken in context you can see how it has massively impacted his life, his business, his relationships. Even now. At an age of 50. It is arguably the strongest shaping force in his life.

It's funny how that when you look, more often than not, the shit you find in someones head was put there by their parents. 

I think at this point, to a reasonable extent I now understand the whys and wherefores of Andy. I can see his path. Not all of it. I've not inquired. But enough of it. A good chunk of meat. And the explanations to his current ways. It gives me a little bit more empathy with his situation, a little less criticism. The outcomes are the same. But I understand the circumstance that brought him there better.

So.

This is part of my newly emerged theory of People. So recently we had the whole, a person is a collection of voices, not a single voice bit. Which I have taken as a core theory of people. I am convinced this is How It Is for most people.

A new bit, experiential to add onto it. Not a revolutionary idea in my thinking, but just more of a polishing of the evolutionary ideas I have been having -

Everyone is damaged.

Everyone.

The big lie is, everyone thinks everyone else is, by and large, normal. Undamaged. Whilst secretly plodding through their lives desperately trying to cope and trying to make it look as if that isn't what they're doing, and they are in fact, just easy breezy strolling along.

The coping mechanisms are as long as your arm. Drink. Drugs. Money. Sex. Career addicts. Adrenaline junkies. Gym rats. Social calendar stuffers. Having kids. You name it. All in a swirl of trying to cope and understand with the craziness of who we are and the modern world we find ourselves in. Look for it, and you find it. The coping mechanism. The whiff of desperation. The white knuckle grip on routine. Or the tortured internal screams of them trying to figure out who or what they are and where they are going.

I don't think we are well adapted to a modern world.

I think we are very much a fish out of water. And the amount of coping we have to do, just to tread water, is phenomenal. So much so, that it is corrosive. It's something we cannot really maintain.

Many of us burn out in spectacular fashion. Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Suicide. So many are set ablaze. Even the so called high achievers. The famous. The wealthy. They all burn. Consider any famous person and their run ins with rehab centers. Gurus. Police. Death.

I think. We're all damaged. Right from the get go. Your parents load you up with their own damage flavoured in new ways. And you go from there, laden with all their taught coping mechanisms, and bullshit, designed to get you through the modern world. To navigate what a 21st century life should be about relationships, and kids, and mortgages, and careers, and not going batshit crazy.

But that's the secret.

We're all deeply fucked. Hidden damage. And if you can't see it, I think the likelihood is you just dont know them well enough. They haven't let you past their mask. You haven't managed to peek behind it. Figure it out. Or been trusted enough to share some of it.

To me then. The person that wastes out as an alcoholic. Or jumps from a bridge. Or just knuckles through another day questioning who they are. Are all the same. It's the same problem. The same hellish landscape to navigate. But the failures and the methods of dealing with it are individual. Some fall. Some stay upright. Some stagger before falling. None of them are lesser for it. All are struggling with that burden of damage. Everyone is trying different strategies, answers, coping mechanisms. Some have less damaging outcomes than others. But everyone is suffering.

This. Also chimes in with the Buddhist theory of life. Pain being an inevitable part of life. No matter how well you plan they say, you will encounter pain. Pain of the loss of another. Pain of accident. Or getting ill. The universe in its infinite uncaring wisdom can run you over with the car of shitbaggery, and there's nothing you could have done, or can do to avoid it. Sometimes. It just is. And it's shit.

The Buddhists say then that it's all about the suffering afterwards. The pain is inevitable. But you don't have to make it worse. Linger with it. Dwell on it. Worry about it. Of course. That's farrrrrr easier said than done. And. Arguably perhaps quite a bit disassociative. It can't hurt you, if you empty your head and become a tree. Sure. 1) That's really hard to do and goes against what you're wired to do, and 2) it's not a little disassociative and gets close to being unempathic. Sociopathic even. There is a lot of wisdom in there. I think there's also a dose of wishful thinking in there too. Close your eyes, imagine it away, and you're good.

Nevertheless, conclusions aside. The Buddhists reckon pain, and suffering, is part of life.

I reckon that to be true ( I don't even think it's debatable, is simply IS ), and also, I think our modern lifestyles have placed us very far outside of our comfort zones, and, that we are all damaged in the higher thought processes. Our thinking is fucky, dysfunctional, suffering inducing. We're struggling to cope in an environment where we are drowning.

So.

That's it.

Big Piece of Human Condition Theory #2. Everyone is damaged. 

And much of life that results is the fallout of that damage, and its interactions with everyone elses damage.

It is not a plan. It is not building for success.

It's a collection of accidents and attempts to avoid them, or cope with them.

With brief periods or aspects of planning interspersed.

Bork Theory #1. People are a village internally. Many voices. Some nice. Some nasty. They don't agree. People are comprised of many personalities and internal relationships. They can change in realtime. Many people can identify a nasty "inner critic". There seem to be commonalities of characters to be found amongst people. The nice one. The angry one. The critical one. Masking hides this from external view. Ish.

Bork Theory #2. Everyone is damaged. Higher thinking processes are fundamentally dysfunctional. Coping mechanisms are life. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is almost certainly inevitable. People struggle with this. Masking hides it. Ish.