It's not you, it's me

It's the 366th day of the 2016th year of our Gregorian Calendar. And what a year it has been. I am glad to see end of it. The New Year, the very first day of January, gives chance for renewed hope and expectations of what the next few months may bring to our short existences. I find myself slightly melancholic because for all the bad and pain it brought, the start of 2016 also took me on a journey of self-exploration. I did things which I never thought were in me to do. I enjoyed it and even loved it at times. So I will try and take that with me into the 2017th year of our Gregorian Calendar. I will try to ride that wave of personal triumphs and make them part of my future however long that may be and wherever that may take me this year. The past only has memories now.

My dark passenger is back in some shape or another. I've been weak and lazy the last few days and it's costing me again. Anxiety is one thing. Anxiety with a very active thought process is another. And because I don't have anything really significant or tangible to keep me distracted it just gets worse. I hate this feeling, I've had it far too much the last few months. It's not fair, but what is. And just when I thought things were getting better, that I was ok accepting everything, that whatever happens is outside of my control it slowly grinds me down and rips me back into the black. It makes me think things I shouldn't, makes me want to inflict hurt which isn't who I am, it makes me angry and I don't want to be angry... It's strange telling those around you to only accept love and look for the happiness around them when all you want to do is take that anger and justify inflicting damage on those that have wronged you... I can't let it win

I've been trying to write something for the past few days but nothing. I come up with a few sentences and then hit a mental block. It's like I want to say it but don't have the words to express what it is... the thing running around this aging head of mine.  I think I'll eventually get there like I did with everything else this year, like everything else in my 30-something years trying to find my place on this big blue speck.  For now though, this is another post.

I know my life is going to look very different in 2017. I know that already, I don’t have to wait for it. There are choices and decisions that will be made, some even now as I’m typing this and over the next few days and weeks which are not mine to make. There are things beyond my control and I will have to accept them, and I have. All I know is I won’t be angry, I won’t be angry anymore. If 2016 taught me anything is that the change starts with myself and that whatever happened in that past has been and gone. There is nothing I can do about it, not a single a thing. All I can do is forgive myself and work on making things better for those that matter. I’m no angel, not by a long shot even, and I know there are some of you that have judged me and I’m OK with that, I won’t hold that against you because it’s only human. What I won’t do is let my mistakes and flaws define me. I've made many mistakes, but I've learned it's not who I am. I don’t want to be that angry person a

I've been closing quite a few doors the last year or two. Ones that very much needed closing which didn't make it very hard but then there are the others which are not that easy. For a long time now I have been a hypocrite. I have judged others for their actions whilst justifying my own with all kinds of reasoning. Making up stories is easier than it is to face the truth, right? We don't like hard do we, we want everything to be easy and if it's not then it's easier to give up. See, easy again. But why do we do that? Is it self preservation? Is it pride? Or is it something as simple as not wanting to be the bad guy? Because no one likes the bad guy, right? We need bad guys to feel better about ourselves and say things like "I would never do a thing like that..." or "I would never do that to someone that I care about...". Pause.

This morning I was thinking about how lucky we are living in a free tolerant society here in the UK. Yes it has its faults and societal issues, which place doesn't, but if the worst thing you have to worry about is the traffic in the mornings or how slow the service is at the local pub or how your local shop doesn't have your favorite yogurt anymore then I would say that's not bad bloody trade off for what other people are facing in the world. People just kin d of get on around here. Just because people voted to leave the EU doesn't it make them racists or delusionals or whatever rhetoric has been thrown around. Yes you have the idiots going around spewing hatred and xenophobia but, again, which place doesn't have it. It's up to us to rise above it and show that it's not OK, it's not acceptable and it never will be. In the words of Jim Jefferies... "Love will always beat hate. And if you show love to someone that hates you then that person mig

It is easy to overuse the expression "This has been the worst year ever" because let us face it, every year has the potential to be the worst year for a number of reasons. In my case however this is a fact... 2016 is officially the toughest year I have ever faced.  On the 3rd day of this year I had what I can only describe as a breakdown. I had been battling my alcohol addiction for many years and certain events on this day triggered a number of emotions and set me off on to a path which I was ill prepared for, to say the least. The booze coupled with stress. anxiety and just a general negative outlook on life did not do me any favours over the last 3 or 4 years. I have been living in England now for 10 years and one of the reasons I moved here was to get away from all the temptations. All the opportunities to consume copious amounts of alcohol and sometimes the same amounts of narcotics. Shock horror yes drugs. The problem is that when I arrived on these Anglian shores I e