Jun 14

 I'm up early this morning. Buzzing slightly. My still not come down self yet has a new target to burn towards.

Gearing up to go to Oxford next week.

The burn has started. Ordering bits and pieces I think I will need. USB sticks for backups ( they wont have a clue until I tell them how they should schedule backups ). Keyboard. Mouse. Network cable. Assume they have nothing. Gotta switch a router into my home network. Take the old server offline. Clean it. Wipe it. Set it up fresh. Install their software on it ready for next week. Check out the accomodation.

The accomodation.

Ugh.

So I was naive about this. £50 a night I thought. A week. £250 I thought.

Yeah. No.

The first price came in at something like £800.

Are you absolutely fucking kidding me.

No.

The prices ramped up during the week way, wayyy over £100 a night.

Gah.

I dunno whether it's Oxford being an absolute ball ache - everything is pricey there. Or it's greedflation. Or it's me not having had to stay in such a place for an age. Or all of the above.

I searched around for a bit and realised you were better going through a broker than direct. How shit is that. Searched around more. Decided to not even target Oxford anymore, go outside of Oxford. And managed to get the absolute cheapest price I could, 6 mile outside of Oxford, for £350 for the week. Which. Is more like it. But still.

No good deed goes unpunished. I feel like in a better world I should get accomodation for free, if I myself am working for free for a charity. Ha. Yeah. No. Although to be fair I haven't asked. I'm sure if you asked around and maximised your rizz ( as the youngsters say, short for chaRISma for the old farts ), you could maybe get a discount.

Anywho.

I haven't booked it yet. I am still unsure if I will be able to do next week. Because I am a flake. And also. Hazel has had a meltdown. Too much stress about the possibility of moving I think. That and she stayed up until 11am before going to bed. So I'm unsure if she's going to be in a position to housesit. Although to be frank it will probably do her a lot of good.

She's been under a lot of stress from shitty neighbours. Shitty neigbours. And that she only has one method of conflict resolution. Pour oil on it and stand back. So dubious neighbours inevitably turn into neighbours from hell as open warfare results. Even neighbours she gets on with she falls into disputes arguments and drama with. For one thing it kind of goes with the territory for where she lives. People that are struggling in life. Have issues. Major problems. Nowhere else to go. Make no mistake, these people run the gamut from threat to society, to broken. Difficult. For the second thing however it's her own borderline personality disorder continually reinforcing the truism that people with it cannot maintain relationships and always end up having high octane conflict fuelled interactions.

And then the whole thing is reinforcing. Not great environment. Act shitty. Get shit back. Expectation that the world is shit. Confirmed. Act shitty.

And down the spiral it goes. I'm not sure someone with borderline can ever truly find peace, either with themselves or more pressingly, people around them. But I do know putting them in a difficult environment is guaranteed to get the worst results.

I think this is maybe her fifth neighbour she has gotten into full blown confrontations with. And currently. Is in an open fight with two of them and major drama with another. Another two she outright reviles. To their face. There are only 10 people in her block to put it in context. And in her area she has picked fights with at least half a dozen more.

She will end up getting properly assaulted at some point. It's just the odds.

Hopefully her move will help her out. Different neighbours. Better environment. Positive outlook. It will be peace and light when she moves. Quiet. No problem neighbours.

Negative outlook. She cannot escape herself. And some of her issues will follow her, because, it's her. And. One area will be much like another. Same kind of people. Same kind of struggles. With a person that escalates and finds fault and fight with everyone. 

We shall see I guess.

One problem I already have foreseen is the amount of light in her new place.

Her current place - which I really like, neighbours aside - is extremely light and airy. Third floor. Windows everywhere. Facing the sun. Overlooking Norwich. It's very chill. And open and light.

She complains that my place on the other hand is dark. It's not dark. It's your typical terrace. So no, it's not a third floor very windowed wall facing the sun kind of light. But it's fine.

Her new place has a tiny recessed balcony that is obscured by buildings and trees. Everything else is inside a solid ziggurat style block. No light. Even from the outside you can tell it's dark. Personally I wouldn't have a problem with it much. But it is tomb like. Really. Really. Tomb like. Think dystopian sci fi apartment with small outside window deal.

I am not sure that when Hazel has complained my place is dark, she genuinely thinks this, or this is just facets of her anxiety and disagreeableness airing out their laundry. She rarely says she likes things. She is long on the things she hates and dislikes or has a grudge against. You get used to there being a complaint about everything. And also it changing like the wind. And also denying that it was ever a problem in the first place. It's just. How it goes. You have to be flexible with reality around Hazel.

So.

If it's just her being disagreeable regarding the light, then she will probably be ok with her new place.

If she genuinely likes the light and her complaint is therefore also genuine, her new place is going to be awful for her.

She commented that the light seemed fine to her when I mentioned it was dark at the new place.

Double standards. Wishful thinking ? I definitely got the strongest wishful thinking vibe. To be fair, I guess she is trying to stay positive.

I think she has however gotten very used to living in a very light and airy flat. Despite other problems her current flat is *very* good in that regard. Honestly, I think it's a bit of a catch of a flat. If you had good neighbours, and overlooked the shitty 1960's brutalist horrible stairwell, it would be a very decent place to live.

Anyway.

I hope her move goes well and she settles.

I fear it's just going to be a new ( old ) set of problems in a different place. And might, in fact, actually be worse.

A change is as good as a rest they say. So. Eh.

Today I think I'll try and go swimming again. And I really want to sort the server out et al. Which is going to be a long day for me. Ho hum. Why does it feel like I am working and not resting ?

Oh yes. Because I am.

Change of topic. I've been again reflecting on the influence your upbringing and after that general experiences have on you as a person later on. Your personality. The things you are compelled to do. And more than that. The dysfunctions you pick up. The damage. The trauma. The fuckery. Your baggage if you like.

I understand now that the things your parents subject you to, either knowingly or not, has a major influence on the person you turn out to be. Like it or not. It's also apparent parents, particularly of my generation and older, commonly inflicted a lot of shit and damage on their kids. Perhaps because society didn't know better. Or that's just how it was done. Once upon a time sending 5 year olds into the mines was a done thing. Until it wasn't. And then was regarded as a horror. I get the sense the psychological bullshit and stresses the pre millennial generation grew up with fall somewhere in this Oh Thats Not Good ballpark. For sure not everyone was subjected to it. But a lot were to the point it isn't surprising when you hear about it.

Anywho. Whatever.

Knowing this I have always reflected that it's one thing to be influenced by your parents. Taught stuff. Be fucked up. But another to get to an adult, start to get a sense that this shit isn't right. And then the responsibility starts to shift away from your parents to the individual. It becomes your responsibility to correct. Unfair ? Sure. But you have a capability to unlearn stuff. And alter the bad shit you inherited.

Except.

I have come to realise that some of that stuff is impossible to unlearn. I understand that some of it can be hard to overcome. But I now also think some of it is impossible to overcome. You can mitigate it at best. Redirect it. But never eliminate it. Oh yeah ?

Yeah. Easy test.

When you were a child, if you were anything like me in some Western kinda modelled education system you probably learned your "times table". It was drilled into you. By rote. Memorisation. Sure you also learned at some point how to do arithmetic too. How to work it out. But your times table was slightly different. It was reinforced at the earliest age. To repeat from memory. By rote. No thinking. Just recitation. 8 x 7. 56 ! 7 x 9. 63 ! And so on. Ok.

So that was hardcore ingrained into you as an impressionable child. Hilariously if it was a "bad thing" we would call it brainwashing. As it's a "good thing" we call it education. But anywho. The "education" worked. It stuck. Even decades later. If you learned it well. It has probably stuck.

Now imagine your times table is a Bad Thing. So we kinda want to do away with it.

Now I'm going to tell you to unlearn your times table. Come on. Get over it. Forget it. Move on.

Stop remembering that 7 x 9 is 63.

Except you can't. Can you.

It just is.

It is embedded so deep, so early, so fundamentally that there is no erasing that. It's there. A scar. If you like. It is now a piece of you, threaded through your whole being for the rest of your life.

And so it is I think a lot of our early experiences and upbringing are always part of us. We can learn and change and heal. But it never takes the thing away. It is always there. For good or ill.

It's not about changing it and removing it. It's just about how to fucking cope with dealing with it on an ongoing basis.

This to me is exactly the same as bereavement. A major trauma.

The pain. Does not. Go. Away.

At least that is my experience and understanding of myself and others.

The fact someone or something is gone. Lost. Never alters. Never goes away. That happened. Has happened. It is irrevocable. You cannot change reality.

But time occurs. And you - maybe - learn to cope with it. It softens over time. Like moss growing over a stone, the stone is still there. But now moss has covered it.

But mistake it for just a lump of moss and go to kick it, and you will break your toes. Try to pick it up and you'll find it's heavy. Or even not able to be moved. It is. Still. And forever will be. A rock.

I think. In the end. Some parts of us can change and heal and even be exorcised. But other parts. Will always be there. And when it's nasty shit. It will always be a dark shadow that follows you. All that changes is how you cope with it. An everyday thing. An everyday challenge. And everyday fight. That is never won. That you can't be complacent with. And is your burden. Your baggage.

It is a rock in your garden. Maybe you were given it by someone else. Perhaps it just fell from the sky, no ones fault. No ones "gift". But nevertheless, there's a rock. It's always going to be there. You can try to bury it. Or maybe chip away at it. But it's hard. And some of it is not for chipping. Or maybe you can make a feature of it. Or incorporate it into the design of your garden. Stick some seats around it. Or disguise it. Paint it green and cover it with plants. But the rock is always going to be there. And it's going to fundamentally inform certain properties of your garden. The garden. With the big fucking rock right there.

It's a somewhat depressing thought. But. It's also an understanding. Sometimes things that are damaged can never quite be put back together as well again.

The positive spiel some shrinks give this is that it allows you to be stronger. To learn from a mishap and like a broken bone that heals stronger, you can grow as a person in understanding and feeling. This is they say, what life is all about. Learning. Adapting. Growing stronger. Moving on.

Which is lovely.

But ignores the flip side of that coin, that when a knee is smashed, it then aches every winter because it's fucked.

Sometimes shit is just shit. No matter how well you gild the lily or how much positive you spin ( and at some point becomes outright intellectually dishonest ).

Anyway. The shit you have. Are given. Your baggage.

For me.

This comes down to aspects of my personality about my compulsion to help people who are suffering. To not be able to think of myself in terms of joy or looking after myself. How that very much stunts my ability to extract happiness, peace, fulfillment from the world and how it sets me on a hard path where the negative aspects of the world land full force, and the positive ones simply ghost through me. My deep sense of unsettled and anxiety if someone is unhappy or suffering because of something I might have done, because I was trained to jump when someone had a moodswing. Because of the various bits of stunted adulthood I have had where I have struggled to not have a childlike incapability to do somethings, an inability to cope, because I am lopsided in the spending of my energies. All of which opens me to being miserable and not fitting in, and always at the beck and call of someone else.

I cannot change some of those fundamentals. They are ingrained into me. Like my times table. I cannot unlearn them. I can do my best to mitigate it. Try to lean into the other side of things. But it's hard. And unnatural. And just.. not... me ?The mould I was poured into was set a long time ago.

I think also as I get older, I too have slowed down in my capability to adapt and learn and change. I too am accreting into an inflexible lump. Old. Some aspects of me are still dynamic. But others have defintely slowed down dramatically in the last few years. Since I have been ill with the malaise.

Ho well.

Food for thought.

I think on the whole. The lesson is kids are very malleable. Whilst in the past we haven't given much thought about what you teach them. Or what examples you set. I think it's very easy to get that wrong and fuck people up. In fact. I think it's probably the default. I think perhaps our species has evolved a bit of a shit property there. I think even today we get this badly wrong. The lessons and examples we give our kids. I think we are poisoning them today the same as ever, just in new different ways. And the internet is, I think, a blight to them all. Perhaps it will always be our lot. To live very fractured dysfunctional existences. Perhaps it's also a symptom of us pushing out our lifespans. Living longer. Expecting more. Evolution didn't design us for that. Physical health is one thing. Live longer. Keep fit. But the mental aspects of it. Past trauma and baggage. That hasn't been looked at at all in terms of longevity. It's not even discussed.

Which is about right.

Mental health lags about a zillion miles behind physical health. Which isn't exactly going great guns itself these days.

Ha.