I woke up and it was 0709am. I got out of bed. Peed. Wandered around the house a little bit. Did 10 pushups. Now it’s 7:25am. I’m pretty proud and excited, although I don’t even know if I can really take credit for this. How does the subconscious mind-clock even work? Does it know what time it is?

I’ve been feeling sleep deprived lately. I’m not sure if I’m actually particularly sleep deprived, more than usual, or if I’m just feeling it. Going through some of my old tweets and blogposts, I’m starting to be convinced that I’ve been chronically sleep deprived for most of the last decade, except for very specific situations – basically when I was away at the military. That was when I neither had to worry about work nor family, simply follow instructions and not be responsible for anything. Also when I was on vacation, which I am far too sparing with – that’s something that I regret.

But here we are. One of my old tweets said, you’re getting old when your regrets start to outnumber your dreams. There was a period of time I remember when I made a big deal out of not regretting anything – I had a blogpost saying something like, I regret nothing, I accept everything. I wonder why I wrote that. I think I was trying to get ahead of myself, trying to do some PR and positioning for my failures. I failed but I don’t care, I failed but I don’t mind, I failed but it’s okay.

Trying to be clear about what you “really” think is such a convoluted thing. I was talking to another friend recently who told me that she had an avoidant personality, that she was a people pleaser and she avoided conflict, and she thinks that it had something to do with her family. I’m thinking about that too. My dad had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. My mother and brother brought him to the hospital, and he had an angioplasty, and he seems to be recovering pretty well now. But still, it’s just been a thing, watching him look weak and frail and at death’s door, basically. In death’s hospital bed. I find myself thinking… I recognise those hands and feet as my own, but that’s not really my childhood memory of my father. My father was a scary man, when I was a child. He was loud, shouty, often angry. I mean, he’d also laugh. He wasn’t an outright evil person. But he wasn’t a fantastic dad. He was scary to me, on’tas a child. My mother was the pliant one who could be manipulated, cajoled, intimidated most of the time, and she used my father as a sort of threat, as a bogeyman. My parents weren’t really much of a team. I don’t think they saw each other as equals. I definitely used my parents as a model of “what I don’t want to be like”.

(The national anthem is playing at a school, I think.)

I don’t care very much for my parents. I don’t have a lot of strong feelings. I sit with them for dinner and it can feel like having dinner with strangers. I do remember laughing with them for a good ten minutes in the hospital, laughing about farts. And it was such a great, funny feeling – but it was also a foreign feeling. So different from childhood. Childhood is a scary place. People often look back and say wow childhood was so fun, childhood was so innocent, childhood was so carefree. Was it really? I’m not sure I relate. I fin myself thinking that childhood was a bit of a noisy, scary place, one where I didn’t have a lot of autonomy, didn’t have a lot of control, didn’t really know what was going on, didn’t really know what my options were, how things were going to turn out for me. And I suppose that partially explains my overall impulsiveness and escapism and avoidant-ness? I am an avoidant person myself. And even this fact is something that often eludes (avoids, ha) me. I want to sit with this truth every day.

(A bus goes by in the distance. I light a green cone of incense. Birds caw.)

I need time to appreciate who I am, what I’ve been through, who I’ve become, who I’m becoming. I need time to reflect on the changes of life. I’m 27 years old now. That’s a full grown adult, some people have had multiple children of their own by this age. What a terrible mistake that can be in a stressful world, if you’re not ready – because then you’re going to rattle your kids with your own lack of self-control, self-regulation. A parent should be a protective membrane for a child, creating for them a nurturing space where they are cared for and challenged in a developmentally appropriate way. Not coddled, not tortured or traumatised.

The changes of life. How old was Elliott Hulse when he started making his videos? When he got married? Gods, I got married at 22 years of age. I needed to get out. I wanted to get out. It was a great decision for my mental health overall, I think. I’m here now, and I need to prioritise my health and well-being (and my partner’s) repeatedly, and do what needs to be done to make a better life. It’s not technically hard, it just takes the will. It just takes courage. (Courage for our friends.)

Courage to stand up in the face of fear, and say no more. We will not be conquered any more. We will not live in fear any more. We will not bow down, we will not be afraid, we will not let you control us. We will not let you dictate our stories.

There are some things in life we’ll never know. Why somebody did something. The general answer is fear and ignorance. The world is a scary, overwhelming and confusing place, and people are very unenlightened. That’s nobody’s fault in particular (though some people throughout history have definitely been in better positions than others to do something about it… and didn’t do much about it. But that’s fear and ignorance on their part.)

This has been good. Let’s do it again.