Lessons from the past for today

It's March.

In the six years since this blog has been around I've looked at a good number of things that have come up which may of been things just from the past or from when I first realized I seemed to be staying in the same lane as my peers seemed to evolve and move on to very different lives, interests and at times emotions around certain topics.

They may of in most respects moved on into adulthood, seeming on the surface at least to feel comfortable with that while to me they're the "grown ups", I'm not and I feel adulthood from what I see of it is highly overrated with  whole aspects of your life being just shut down to accomodate the demands of "the system".

It's been obvious with me my development is such that I struggle with being anything other than still  a schoolboy and to the extent to which anything regarding "growing up" goes just working towards and maintaining being a responsible, mature boy is far and away more appropriate.

This last two months has been a challenge, from putting other needs first rather than being more around what you felt like doing but in bringing back memories from some of the hardest periods mentally in my life, not least the loss of my best forever friend, Andy in my early teens and for watching a few years after one of the Mark's slowly losing their life.

Those two events pretty much shock me to the core back then, leading me more to living for and in the now lest the next day fail to arrive and yet as badly helped as was common place sadly in that era as it was, I didn't just survive stuck in those times but adapted to those changes, making a fresh start as traumatic as things were.

Today I feel it's essentially the same.

This boy is working through the emotions while rebuilding life and relationships that I need using the life lessons left me so I move on, not forgetting the past but building the future.

I'll be still in grey uniform, looking every inch I feel.

I may need or hug or two but I'll get there.

Loss and Boy Pride

If you hadn't noticed there's been a few minor changes on here in part a response to what I was talking about last week and connected to what is coming soon once I'm a hundred percent happy with it.

Watching Jamie Johnson on Thursday before Blue Peter brought a few issues to my mind forward from where they were last left.

The first is the most painful which is to say that when something has happened to you that affects what you can do like for him his football career for me losing the ability to do much with my hands and the accident that caused brain damage when I was fourteen, you grieve for the loss of those things and the impact on your future.

When you are like this you are not in the most balanced place mentally, you do have the incident playing in slow motion in your head as you deal with things like culpability - who really is to blame for this - and how other people react.

Some people for the best of reasons just seem to get too close and personal wanting to "feel your pain" and "fix everything" and it comes over very much as if they're living through you trying to get a merit badge, as if "I care about you" means you interfere and I should just let you.

That's the point he pretty much exploded and to be honest I'd tell you to "____ off " because you have really no idea how I feel and it isn't about how you do.

I'm very much from a more rugged masculine boyhood who'd run a hundred miles in the other direction if you came anywhere near to treating me as a object of sympathy, with lots of fuss and a gazillion "we thought you might be down and we'd to or take you to... "offers being pushed at you.

Like Jamie even if I had worked hard on something all year I could never accept a compensatory medal or award when I hadn't put in the work which is the standard for it.

All I would of wanted was the practical help to enable me to do that so when I got it it was because of my own efforts, because I'd of channelled my energy into standing on my own two feet again and working at it like anyone else.

Look, like him I'm okay with praise if you do something well, capable of handling told by your team you need to change if not. because you're a part of it and you expect to be treated the same way but I've got my Boy Pride and you darn well should respect it.

Although I made my peace with how I am and how that ties into this life that's very much the thing.