Open Journal #41
Open Journal #41
full collection link in my signature below
When I arrived at Schiphol airport I needed to catch a train to Utrecht and I assumed I would pay with a swipe of a phone or my apple watch using a bank card. I found myself stepping on a train that was just leaving and realised I hadn’t seen anything to swipe and in the flurry of finding the train standing on the platform I had just instinctively jumped on and the doors hissed and we were away. I had managed to not pay for a ticket. A night in the cells and a long prison term awaited me.
I blame decades of being a London Underground user, it is what you do, survival skills of the urban Londoner means you just step onto the departing tube train, a kind of jump on ask questions afterwards kind of thing.
In Utrecht station i found an information point and spoke to a man and explained what I had done. He very kindly opened the gate for me without charge and welcomed me to Holland. I momentarily considered playing the same trick every day but figured I would be busted quickly as the English bloke from yesterday.
A feature of my time in Holland was the space it created in my head and around me. The lack of other responsibilities, no distractions and time completely alone created the sense that I could focus on myself. It also felt as if my sessions cleared things away and dealt with some of the minor things and gave me a clear view of myself.
What was I?, what had I become? How had I become this and what would I have been without all this? Is there something of the original boy left? For example aged 12 I was a sprinter and ran 100/200 meters and played Tennis almost every day. Naturally fit and lithe and no inclination for anything unhealthy. By 14 I was smoking 20 cigarettes a day and kept it going for decades.
What if the 12 year old was the untampered with version? What if I had sustained that attitude into adulthood? I know what happened and I know why I first picked up a cigarette. If that raises questions what else did I do that I might not have done.
Something I stumbled across was a weird attitude to food. I hadn’t really been aware that I do it. It was as if I suddenly saw myself clearly. Every morning I would leave my room and slip outside and smoke a couple of cigarettes and have a phone call with my wife. Then I would make my way to breakfast.
A typical hotel buffet style breakfast. From the moment I left my room a little bit of my brain would be deciding what I was going to have for breakfast and exactly how much. I would maybe decide I would order a small omelette and would get one piece of toast. That was it, nothing else. Then I would take a banana and a cereal bar with me for my lunch but I would only eat one of them, sometimes neither, and they would be there for the next day. I would get a salad and eat that for my dinner.
When I realised that this was what I had done day after day I started to examine it and work out what I was doing, it bothered me. I had reached this point in my thoughts that I had almost decided that it was a reaction to stress and I should just ignore it and what did it matter. Then there was this strong absolute thought that this had been going on for a very long time.
Left to my own devices I drastically reduce the amount of food I eat, skip meals, and even go days eating very little or next to nothing. The most disturbing thing is that I had kind of hidden it from myself. The more I examined it the more I saw of what I had been doing.
It explained why when I was young I had always been slim bordering on skinny. It would be normal to eat just one meal a day. I was never one for junk food, had a thing for good chocolate and ate small meals.
I married someone who could cook and who fed me and I guess my eating was more normal. Any time I was left alone I reverted to not being hungry and not bothering with food. If I went away to work for a week I would eat some breakfast and then just not bother with food. Water and coffee but just never bothered with meals. Maybe a banana in my bag if I actually felt hungry.
I have no idea why I did any of this, or continued to and never saw it clearly or thought of it as even noteworthy let alone a problem. Which leads me to another place of pondering, how many other bits of behaviour exist that I unconsciously do that is rooted in trauma and some kind of background coping mechanism?!
On a whim we decided to break with our usual routine and take our dogs for a walk in a nearby park that we hadn’t been to since the start of Covid. The urge for a change of scene and a coffee at a favourite cafe. Five minutes in and I was having the weirdest experience. As we walked I was remembering all kinds of things that had happened in this park, I felt as if I had been asleep.
I haven’t been myself. I am starting to see how I removed myself and retreated. A sense of how I had disconnected, almost as if I decided I couldn’t cope anymore and I needed to reduce everything down to basics. This house, these people and no more. Remove the risk and reduce the interaction.
It might have been a form of depression, some kind of breakdown, mostly I think it was just no longer wanting to deal with all those feelings. Decades of coping can be exhausting. Fight or flight is not something you can sustain.
The thing is, on that walk, it was clear it was over, I had this sense of not feeling like that any more. That I could see what I had been and I wasn’t that now.
The question is what am I now? See next weeks exciting instalment … just kidding I have no idea … I guess that is what I work out. What is left.
Who am I anyway?
svf
full collection link in my signature below
When I arrived at Schiphol airport I needed to catch a train to Utrecht and I assumed I would pay with a swipe of a phone or my apple watch using a bank card. I found myself stepping on a train that was just leaving and realised I hadn’t seen anything to swipe and in the flurry of finding the train standing on the platform I had just instinctively jumped on and the doors hissed and we were away. I had managed to not pay for a ticket. A night in the cells and a long prison term awaited me.
I blame decades of being a London Underground user, it is what you do, survival skills of the urban Londoner means you just step onto the departing tube train, a kind of jump on ask questions afterwards kind of thing.
In Utrecht station i found an information point and spoke to a man and explained what I had done. He very kindly opened the gate for me without charge and welcomed me to Holland. I momentarily considered playing the same trick every day but figured I would be busted quickly as the English bloke from yesterday.
A feature of my time in Holland was the space it created in my head and around me. The lack of other responsibilities, no distractions and time completely alone created the sense that I could focus on myself. It also felt as if my sessions cleared things away and dealt with some of the minor things and gave me a clear view of myself.
What was I?, what had I become? How had I become this and what would I have been without all this? Is there something of the original boy left? For example aged 12 I was a sprinter and ran 100/200 meters and played Tennis almost every day. Naturally fit and lithe and no inclination for anything unhealthy. By 14 I was smoking 20 cigarettes a day and kept it going for decades.
What if the 12 year old was the untampered with version? What if I had sustained that attitude into adulthood? I know what happened and I know why I first picked up a cigarette. If that raises questions what else did I do that I might not have done.
Something I stumbled across was a weird attitude to food. I hadn’t really been aware that I do it. It was as if I suddenly saw myself clearly. Every morning I would leave my room and slip outside and smoke a couple of cigarettes and have a phone call with my wife. Then I would make my way to breakfast.
A typical hotel buffet style breakfast. From the moment I left my room a little bit of my brain would be deciding what I was going to have for breakfast and exactly how much. I would maybe decide I would order a small omelette and would get one piece of toast. That was it, nothing else. Then I would take a banana and a cereal bar with me for my lunch but I would only eat one of them, sometimes neither, and they would be there for the next day. I would get a salad and eat that for my dinner.
When I realised that this was what I had done day after day I started to examine it and work out what I was doing, it bothered me. I had reached this point in my thoughts that I had almost decided that it was a reaction to stress and I should just ignore it and what did it matter. Then there was this strong absolute thought that this had been going on for a very long time.
Left to my own devices I drastically reduce the amount of food I eat, skip meals, and even go days eating very little or next to nothing. The most disturbing thing is that I had kind of hidden it from myself. The more I examined it the more I saw of what I had been doing.
It explained why when I was young I had always been slim bordering on skinny. It would be normal to eat just one meal a day. I was never one for junk food, had a thing for good chocolate and ate small meals.
I married someone who could cook and who fed me and I guess my eating was more normal. Any time I was left alone I reverted to not being hungry and not bothering with food. If I went away to work for a week I would eat some breakfast and then just not bother with food. Water and coffee but just never bothered with meals. Maybe a banana in my bag if I actually felt hungry.
I have no idea why I did any of this, or continued to and never saw it clearly or thought of it as even noteworthy let alone a problem. Which leads me to another place of pondering, how many other bits of behaviour exist that I unconsciously do that is rooted in trauma and some kind of background coping mechanism?!
On a whim we decided to break with our usual routine and take our dogs for a walk in a nearby park that we hadn’t been to since the start of Covid. The urge for a change of scene and a coffee at a favourite cafe. Five minutes in and I was having the weirdest experience. As we walked I was remembering all kinds of things that had happened in this park, I felt as if I had been asleep.
I haven’t been myself. I am starting to see how I removed myself and retreated. A sense of how I had disconnected, almost as if I decided I couldn’t cope anymore and I needed to reduce everything down to basics. This house, these people and no more. Remove the risk and reduce the interaction.
It might have been a form of depression, some kind of breakdown, mostly I think it was just no longer wanting to deal with all those feelings. Decades of coping can be exhausting. Fight or flight is not something you can sustain.
The thing is, on that walk, it was clear it was over, I had this sense of not feeling like that any more. That I could see what I had been and I wasn’t that now.
The question is what am I now? See next weeks exciting instalment … just kidding I have no idea … I guess that is what I work out. What is left.
Who am I anyway?
svf
