Wednesday 21 September 2011

Midlife Realisations!

I read a book written by a bloke all about turning 30. It was very funny and I could relate to much of what was in there, But it wasn’t how I felt about turning 30 it was more like how I felt about turning 35.
It sounds strange I suppose that turning 35 should be an age where I feel differently but hey ho that’s what’s happened.
I feel older, not just a year older than when I turned 34, but older in the way that I can’t stay out late on a regular basis and that staying up until 11pm is “a late one”. I look back on my life and think that although school wasn’t the happiest of times for me, the world seemed so much simpler, work was something your parents did, pubs were the holy grail and money troubles were not having enough pocket money to buy the latest Nike trainers.
Now everything seems far too real, I see the struggles of my parents are now my struggles, My friends need me for support for illness or family deaths rather than for a game on the commodore 64. As a kid anything seems possible, whereas as an adult the realities of life seem to beat the dreams out of you and the only way you can see beyond this is the wholly unlikely lottery win we all dream about.
You see dreams change as you become an adult. I cannot put a date or even a year when this changes as you “grow up” I think it must be different for everyone but it seems to coincide with the realisation that life is not as easy as you think it is when a kid and the denial lasts different amounts of time for different people.
These days my non-lottery win dreams are very meagre. I want to sell my house and move into a family home where we can eat at a dining table as a family. I want quality time with the wife and the kids. I want quality time with my wife alone. I want quality time with my friends. I want my family and friends to be healthy and happy.
Slightly different from those you have as a kid but seemingly just as difficult to achieve!
We all get into our routines and life zips by in a flash. Routines are necessary in anyone’s life but they can also be destructive to lives as well. It all gets too easy to not go out to see friends, not do the normal on a particular night. We are all guilty of it and sometimes we don’t even realise we are doing it but we do.
How many times have you gone out thinking what’s the point, or I don’t feel like it or I’m not in the mood for a laugh and they have been the best nights out?
I realised today that sometimes as adults we need to be the people we are underneath, maybe the children we are underneath. If I had to label myself and try this yourself, I would say I’m a husband, a dad, and employee, a homeowner, a car owner.
But when I look at this, it’s not who I am. I am all of these things of course but that doesn’t include me. To put this into words is difficult, but some of you will know what I mean. More and more rarely in recent years the real me doesn’t get an airing.
The days and nights where I don’t have to be a dad or any of the other things that prevent me from being the child that stays within us all.
It’s the nights out with your friends when they can leave all of these things at the door as well where I feel more like myself and for those brief moments all the realities of life get left at the door.
I wouldn’t describe myself as having a midlife crisis, more a midlife realisation that much of my life, at least for now won’t change, no matter how much I want it to.
But it ain’t all bad and that’s the truth of it, Life can be shit sometimes but not all the time, so remember to take the time to be yourselves sometimes and keep yourself sane! And for those not understanding what the hell I’m talking about……your still young so enjoy it while it lasts x

Friday 9 September 2011

Shite Year

I've started and deleted this next blog several times.
I have written so many things and thought that I actually do not want to share my inner thoughts on that subject and so have decided to just write things up to a point.
This year has sucked so far in a massive way. We as a family have lost 2 loved ones, one far too early in their life. Myself and family wanted to move house into a decent sized family home so we can improve our home life, this has not happened due to no interest in our current house.
This one simple thing has been having a profound effect on me, my wife and our overall happyness, lump this together with the losses to the family plus other outside influences adding shit into the pot and it all ends up with a great steaming pile of shit for the year so far.
Small highs have been there in the year, plus 1 massive high. But overall shite for me and mine.
I worry about the stress put upon family members and how unhappy they are at the moment. I worry about friends who are having troubles and how I want to make it all go away for them. But life is not as simple as this so we all strive to just be there for each other and try to make the best of life.
We all hope for a big win on the lottery which would certainly sort some of the crap out but this is probably the last thing that would happen.
So there is not a purpose this time to my blog, No thought to end with or message. Just wanted to vent a bit I suppose and hope that one day soon there is a bit more happyness in life for me and mine. x

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Heroes and Morons

When I see the depths that our society in this country have stooped to over the last few nights, it shames me to say I’m British.
I know in my heart that most normal citizens in this country will be as shocked and upset by the level of mindless violence and thievery that we have witnessed.
These morons have no regard for other people or their property, they laugh at the polices inability to act to stop them, and no doubt most of those arrested will be released without charge. WHY?
I will tell you. The government in this country have watered down all of our public sector services including the police to the point that when something like this happens they have neither the numbers or the equipment to be able to respond. Last year the home secretary Teresa May went on record to state that “We can cut police budget without risking violent unrest”. Um, bollocks Mrs May because it just happened in London and the only reaction I saw from the police was one of fear that they were outnumbered maybe 10 to 1, had insufficient equipment to deal with the level of violence being aimed at them and also they all seemed frightened to actually do anything to these wankers.
That I want to make clear is not a criticism of the men and women of our police force because I will back them up in the way they dealt with it all. This namby pamby, eco-mentalist, tree hugging government is so bloody afraid of what Brussels and the bunch of muppet’s running Europe might say if a person belonging to a “minority” group was given the fucking beating they have rightly earned the minute they smashed a window or lobbed a brick at a policeman. That they have made our policemen and women scared to death of actually fighting back and getting these bastards to conform to the laws of the country.
Once upon a time in this once “Great” Britain if you did wrong, you got a punishment to reflect the crime. You steal a mars bar, you got a bloody hard whack around the lug hole from the copper who caught you, then you got frog marched home to your parent for them to be informed of what you did and then you probably got a whack around the lug hole from your dad as well. If you committed murder, you got hung. If you were rioting you got tear gas lobbed at you and whilst you were gasping for breath and gagging a copper was able to walk in, in relative safety and batter the shit out of you before throwing you in a cell.
Now however, a policeman can’t lay a finger on a low life scroate without being sacked and put in prison him or herself.
The government are reconveining to address the ongoing issues……REALLY, your going to undo 30 years of fucking the country up are you??
Here’s a thought…..Stop paying these useless illiterate wankers to sit on their arses at home, drinking and taking drugs and make them work for their money. Put them to work in their communities and make them clean it, repair it, especially those that have been damaged. Make them help the binmen, make them sweep the streets and help the communities that they talk about when it suits them.
Why should we all be made to struggle and pay so much to the government to keep so many people that are just too bone idle to work for their money. Why should honest people with genuine reasons for not being able to work be made to struggle and prove that they are in need of help, people who have paid into the system and then need help as they cannot work because of sickness be made to go without because there isn’t enough money to go around. If these wasters on benefits because they do not want to work, were made to contribute something they may think twice about not working.
If these girls that think that life is all about shitting out as many kids as possible just to get a council house and live off the state were made to get a qualification in childcare and then look after other peoples children when they are at work to qualify for benefits, do you think they would still want to live that way?
Of course this just my opinion, probably not shared by many, but I feel victimised by the government because I have a job. I want the money I am taxed on to go to those who need help. People who although working cannot afford to privately rent or buy a house, I want it to go to those people who have worked and maybe have become too ill to carry on, so they do not worry that they will be homeless.
I worry for my kids. I worry that by the time they are old enough to not be the innocents that they are now and old enough that life is not seen from those eyes that see the world as one with fairies, santa, pirates that have hooks instead of hands that sail on old galleys, that the world they are living in is not one I would want them to suffer. This country is heading for some seriously tough times of civil unrest if the current and future governments do not stop the rot, and the only way I can see them doing this is to pull out or Europe and start governing this country the way that we, the voters want it governed. By our elected government for the people that have put them into government. By civil unrest I do not mean the rioting and violence of the stupid and moronic that we have witnessed in recent days, I’m talking about the everyday man who gets to breaking point and just cannot take anymore.
May our emergency services stay safe and out of harms way and for their efforts I sincerely hope that they all go home to their families tonight.

Monday 1 August 2011

Life

It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog and I have had some odd feelings about life in that time.
Joy for a friend who recieved a life saving lung transplant,and delight at watching my youngest turn 4.
But I myself have been unable to drag my mind out of feelings of gloom, like a shadow is hanging over my head. I don't like my job that much, I want to move house but cannot until someone wants to buy ours. I feel stuck in a rut and cannot seem to be happy for some reason.
Why am I putting my feelings out there for you all to read?
DEPRESSION.....It can be in many forms and I have suffered many years ago after a car accident which changed my life perminantly. I did have physical injuries which I still suffer from today but I also worry about the depression I suffered during those times.
I got little in that way of sympathy or understanding and was made to feel like I was making it all up and that I should just "pull myself together". But real depression is not something the sufferer is aware of and it's not a sudden thing that comes on overnight. Neither is it a case of popping a pill on one day and your better the next.
I always, when I feel like I do at the moment worry that I might be slipping back into that dark place that I was in 10 years ago but then I remind myself that although feeling down and pissed off, I'm far too aware that I am that way, and that I have a beutiful wife and kids that for as long as they are in my life will mean that I could not possibly be depressed.
My reasons for this blog mainly is to say that mental illness, is exactly that, an illness as common as Flu and just like flu can affect anyone at anytime. Mental illness certainly doesn't affect only the mentally weak and anyone that thinks it could never happen to them should think again as I once thought that as well.

I mentioned a friend that is recovering from a lung transplant. She mentioned struggling with the thought that she had accepted that she was going to die, but woke up with someone elses lungs after they died and donated their lungs to her. Something we all thought she would just take in and get on with it. But this is something unless you go through it that none of us that haven't cannot begin to comprehend how we might feel. my point of brnging this up is this:-
We all saw this as a physical fight, and I along with i'm sure many others will admit, but the biggest fight to start with was a mental one, as difficult as the physical one her body was undertaking. I believe she has won the main part of that fight and is now concentrating on the physical but I want to make everyone aware that just because someone looks ok, and says they are ok, it doesn't mean they are.
If you have a friend or loved one that you think is not well mentally, be brave, be there and be strong enough to help them deal with it, because not all illness is visable and sometimes we all need someone to say to us I know your not alright but i'm here and lets deal with it together.
I myself will be fine, because I have my family and friends around me, not everyone is as blessed as me and I will drag my sorry arse out of the doldrums very soon, but I know that some people cannot do that alone. x

Tuesday 12 July 2011

what a week already!

Well, where do I start?
I suppose the first thing would be to welcome Kirstie's new lungs to their new home where I know they will be loved and cherished in ways unimaginable to me and people like me who have not been through a transplant.
But what I can understand and also this time enjoy is the feelings created by someone who although i have only known for a short amount of time I come to admire very much.
I am 14 years Kirstie's senior but she has shown me a very different side to someone living and fighting against Cystic Fibrosis and i don't think it is possible for me to oralise or put into words the feelings that I have had following her on her journey and also some of the wounds that although reopened, have also been healed.
What i mean by that is I lost my cousin Katie to CF 13 years ago and when she died she was full of bitterness and negativity which I have always accepted as normal for someone who has lived with so much pain and hardship that CF brings a person.
Kirstie, her husband Stuart, Her Mum and her sister Kerry have allowed me to see that something like this doesn't always end in a family being torn apart ike mine, but can bring people family and friends closer.
I have like many others cried alot of tears in the last few weeks and I am honestly shocked by how badly I have been affected emotionally by being involved albeit on the very distant fringes.
I have even been inspired to start my own blog as Kirstie seemed to be able pour her heart out on hers better than maybe she would even to closest family in person, and this is exactly what I find.
With new lungs and a new start I have no doubt that Kirstie will be doing even more to help get the message and importance of organ donation out there. The difference being people like me are now enthused and inspired to do the same and I have already started the ball rolling on a few things.
I also have stopped putting things off that I have been like my singing and have started a duo with my friend Mark. You can always find excuses to not do something, what I have been taught by a person so damned determined and positive is that it is easy to put things off, but nothing worth having is easy and life is too damned precious to not live every day as it is your last. So as always my blog ends with a thought/statement....
Life is fragile and all too short, don't put something off saying I will do it, but not yet. Do it now, you can make time if you try, we all work, have families and commitments, but if you want to achieve something, then do it.
Someone lost their life the day Kirstie got her lungs and a family grieves. Did they know it was their last day, of course not. But they had thought that if I die today, I do not want my body to just be wasted, my death meaningless. They had maybe read Kirsties blog? They might have read something one of us have written about organ donation? They might have seen Kirstie or another person on the telly raising awareness? or just maybe they were someone like me that knows how precious organs are and donating them is, because they lost someone like me....... But whatever prompted them to donate, I want to thank them and I hope that they can loo down upon Kirstie and al the others that might have been saved that day and know that it was the greatest gift they could ever give. So next time you find yourself with friends or family, raise a glass to the unknown hero, The Organ Donor.

Sunday 10 July 2011

emotional time

I have realised that I seem to be very emotional at the moment and have realised why.
There are feelings that I thought I had dealt with many years ago which have resurfaced since I have had to deal with something similar.
I have thought that maybe I shouldn't put myself in a position that would lead me to be in a position where I would be reminded of my cousin Katie who died of Cystic Fibrosis 12 years ago, but that would mean severing ties with some remarkable young people who I have great admiration for.
I see in one of those people, something that was lacking in my own relationship with my cousin, and that being one of being allowed to care. There is a long and quite sad story behind this, and if I could just once meet the transplant coordinator that caused the issues within my family I would punch his lights out.
I never got to say goodbye properly to my cousin Katie, as I, and my immidiate family were not permitted to her funeral. So I dealt with the situation as best I could and thought I had dealt with these feelings. But it seems that although time heals, these feelings have just never really gone away and maybe they never will.
One of these young people is very ill at the moment, laying in a hospital bed waiting for a double lung transplant and it fills me with great sadness not only what she and her loved ones are going through but her friends that also suffer from CF must be going through. All of this has led to some old but familiar feelings resurfacing. Those of helplessness. For we are all in effect wishing that someone else dies to save our friend, obviously we do not wish anyone harm but that is what we are all wishing and praying for. This itself brings on feelings of guilt but none the less that is what we are waiting for, but that in itself has a all too short time limit. I shall stop blundering on and just finish with this thought for any of you still reading.
Live your life everyday like it's your last. Tell everyone that matters in your life how much they mean to you and never hold back on saying how you feel because you may not have the chance tomorrow. If you, or a loved one died today, would you want their pointless passing to have some kind of meaning, some way of comfort knowing that somewhere, someone will get a 2nd chance at life? Would you rather their body get cremated or buried, knowing that those parts are going to waste when they could have made a difference to so many lives. Not just those of the recipients but of the wives, husbands, children, parents, aunties, uncles, cousins and friends of the recipients. I have lived through losing someone because they never got their transplant and it still effects me today. When someone is dead, they have no need for the physical body anymore. But so many good things can happen if they are gifted to someone else, and that is what it is, a gift. A gift of life.
So go now after reading this and Live life, but if it ends too soon please think about then giving life.
Live Life, Then Give Life.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

letter to the big man

Dear God. I know I don't talk to you much, to tell you the truth I'm not even sure I believe. But right now I'm willing to take a punt on your existance and ask you for a favour. There is a lovely, bright, inspirational young lady fighting for the chance at getting new lungs in a hospital in harefield. If you decide to take someone this day, please make it someone that can donate some new lungs to her and not let their passing be in vein. I can assure you that if she gets her 2nd chance at life it would not be wasted. She has dedicated her spare time to spreading the word on Organ Donation and this work needs her to carry on.
I cannot express my feelings well enough in words to describe how much so many people want this to happen and if you are up there you should already know of this. Everyone asks for a lottery win and yes that is lovely and we would all like that, but right now some of us would settle for Kirstie to get new lungs, for life is ritcher for us all with people like her in it.
So if you are up there and you are listening please make this happen soon as time is far too precious.
Thanks.