Note: These are very much in the roughest of rough form (as is rather apt with these being a sort of hangover extra to the party of the actual book) but there has been requests for a little of the extra bits that hit the cutting room floor for being too personal and not IBD enough. I didn't want to feel I was making my book a name-and-shame game, so situations like this, whilst important to my character as a whole, didn't have as much of a direct bearing on my condition.
Deleted Section I:
To my mother’s credit we did talk considerably about the effect this would have, and although we were not the most financially comfortable of families, she and my dad would help pay for train fare so that I could continue my final 2 years at high school without too much disruption that would at this point directly impact my grades, and for this time at least continue to have my friends without having to start my life from scratch, as well of course continuing my Cadet training with a regiment I was already familiar with.
This was nothing new to me. I had at least experienced something of a taster for this some years prior. I had a step dad through most of my childhood with my parents splitting up shortly after I was born, and he and I grew really close and bonded almost like brothers. That was until I was about 7 when he and my mum split for reasons I only have conjecture to go on so will leave that out here. But our locks changed and contact was cut off. At this point I had assumed he had moved away like so many others I saw come and go in life to look after his real son (whose mother was not a fan of me, so understood the trade-off I had placed in my head. No doubt in a back alley of some form). However two years later I would find him, and I would get my answer. The breakup between my mother and him had spiralled him into a depression and he had traded vitamins for prosac, and weight lifting for beer swilling. This is a combined past time anyone with an experience of depression will tell you should be kept as far apart as possible, and they in a sense fried his brain. In that state of frazzled mind he had discovered an easy way out for his feelings that plagued him. He had decided to kill us off like a bad soap opera in his mind.
At 9 years old I had heard this, from him no-less after an archaeological travel to the local Spar had reintroduced us. We had started to hang out again, my mum more accepting of him seeing me but not her, so every weekend I would go to the local snooker centre and be slipped a few glasses of ‘Yellow’ as I sophisticatedly dubbed my preferred drink of the time, and we would hang out. Often able to steal a couple of free games from his connections, or a lifetime on the Q-Bert machine. But one night where I had been planned to stay over for a babysitting, he had gotten very drunk, and that was when he told me.
It’s amazing how much the mind can choose to filter information of choice, and all mine would dwell on was he imagined me dead. He told people I was dead. Why what could I have possibly done that was heinous enough for my own ethereal murder? How had I even died? I mean this wasn’t fair, I had already used up a spare life I didn’t even know I had and yet there was no answer as to how! The gut feeling could probably be summed up with that of reaching into an old pair of jeans you forgot you owned, only to pull out a large fine. And then you got punched in the stomach.
I basically took away from this for a number of years that it must have been me. I had been too childish, he had afterall ditched me, the shrieking little brat who was busy shimmying across garage roofs and watching Fievel Goes West ad nauseum, and here he was seemingly happy surrounded by people his own age. Something had to change lest I encourage some curious running pattern of spiritual murders. For some years after that I shunned anything that appeared remotely child-centric, no cartoons, no Disney, and certainly no make-believe. This got what I affectionately refer to as a breakdown after a few years where I rediscovered Disney and the simple joys in life. But it very nearly cost me my friends in doing so as for the only time to date, I had spent a period of my life pretending I was someone else entirely.
I wish in hindsight I could say I stopped speaking to my step dad after this. Surely this was grounds enough, but no. I had come to accept this was not a fault of his own, the man I knew would never have made that decision. It was the toxic fuel of the drink and antidepressants that had ended me, not him. So, though I never forgave him for it entirely, I would still visit him with frequency. Until one day I entered the snooker centre with hopes of a free glass or Yellow and a bit of a chat, only to be greeted with terrible confusion from the manager. He had done it again. I was done. Kill me once, shame on you, but kill me twice? Shame on you and the laws of reality.
I tell you this not to broach sympathy, or even vent my own demons here - I’d be lying to say it didn’t still hurt in some way but I have come to terms with it being a fault other than my own. But to help summise the difficulty I would later come to when it came to dealing with depression and heavy drinking.
Deleted Section II:
Now, as my years at high school were coming to a close, my illness was still burning on and slowly corroding away all remaining fat and physique but my will was pumping enough iron to topple Arnold Schwarzenegger should it wish. I was beginning to feel stronger than I had ever been, even with a past consisting of boot camps and rugby.
This only brought me so far of course. Now I had to deal with a complete reset. Sure I would still try and keep in contact with my friends, and promised myself no-one would replace them, somewhat foolishly. But now I had to start college in a town I had only learned of it’s existence the week of my application, Leigh. This now took me an extra several miles further from my friends who were already pushing 60. Two years of my ‘nothingness’ of a condition had left me physically weak and bitter to a lot of things, and I taken to fighting this with drinking. Vodka proved a cheap alternative to water in my own body mass with some regularity - I go back and forth on whether I consider myself at this point a true alcoholic or not, but there was certainly some dependency on it.
I had sobered for my first day at college, but was placed in the dead centre of pre-existing cliques. Of course everyone already knew each other, I was the only fucking idiot who had chosen to not bond with the right people. I was fucked. I hid my tears for the day, and spent the next few weeks smuggling in drinks for some little booster to me as I kept myself away from people, permanently convinced they would not want something like me for a friend. It was truly pathetic, but that was completely reasonable. A contempt for myself had resurfaced and it needed to be stopped, even I knew that. I needed some alternative to alcohol. Just something to tide me over during the day and could then have some in the evening as a reward for good behaviour or a comfort for a bad day.
I discovered Coke, in beverage form of course, this isn’t travelling down to a new level of Hell with addiction. Coca Cola seemed almost perfect; a sweet and quenching drink that tasted great and consistently so without getting sickly, and without dehydrating me as many soft drinks do. But also had enough in it to give me a little boost. Not to mention with the likes of B&M I could now quadriple my intake of drinking with this alternative. To this day I still have something of an addiction to Coke, and have tried twice now to quit and suffer bad withdrawal. It is never a problem though, as much as people tease otherwise; it’s cheap enough to not be a costly addiction compared to most, and is a genuine joy to drink so has little downside to it. Maybe one day I will be able to quit and drink it for just a special occasion, but that day is not a priority for any time now. At least nowadays I can trust myself around alcohol as part of a night out, without having to worry about where it could lead.
From The Inside Out is available, with much better writing (I hope) on all good amazon links, such as this one; http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1500671223/ref=gno_cart_title_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
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