The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, August 07th 2017 (Thirty Months Sober)


So today marks the six month point for me being smoke-free which also means I am eighteen months off the drugs and thirty months off the booze. It's a lot of time starting to rack up now but I don't have time for that just now. I have other things to be worrying about.

I've managed to land myself a day where I have loads of appointments all stacked together. It makes the option of working today, even for an hour or two, impossible. This is a shame as it's looking quite dry and relaxed out there this morning. I have other things to be doing though and by doing them today it means that I can free up the rest of the week for nothing but working. There's plenty to be done.

My first appointment is work related, or actually more benefits related. It's Triage. I was with them for a few months prior to going to college last year at this time. When I started studying I was asked to contact Triage and let them know that there was a change in my circumstances and that I would no longer be claiming benefits or requiring their help. I did this, twice. For some reason though they kept sending out letters to me with appointment dates and rather than my student bursary going into my account as had been applied for and accepted – my sickness benefit continued to instead (they actually were both being paid into the Credit Union at one point and this is how I managed to get one thousand pounds in there in the first place).

I must have failed to turn up to two dozen or more Triage appointments over the year I have been studying sound production but no one said anything about it. The, about three weeks ago, I received notification that they were changing address and that Triage was now in a different town. For whatever reason this has put me back on their radar and so I have arranged to meet with them this morning at ten. I'd rather be working but I can't have it all my own way. There are only four weeks left until I start back up again at the college, four weeks to the day, and so I have to just keep thinking about that rather than the job centre shit-storm that may be about to happen.

After this appointment I will be jumping on a bus (better not jump actually or I might slip so rather I'll probably just board the bus instead) and head back to my town where I'll likely have some lunch and then take the walk up to Dr. Bacon's office for our next session, what will be the first of two sessions we'll be having in August. I should try to make the most of them because we only had one session in July and will likely, due to his annual leave coming up, only have one session in September also.

Sometimes I wonder if these staggered appointments have left me feeling a little more disconnected with Dr. Bacon and exactly what it is we are supposed to be doing together. Things haven't quite gone as I might have thought that they would. Picking things up from the notes from Super-Zoe's referral we started to very slowly look for patterns of thinking and behaviour that pop up in my day-to-day life. There is no way to do this part quickly and so the only real way to do it is for Dr. Bacon to try to get to know me and while doing so pick up on certain patterns and ways I react. This can then be taken as a template – a way of gauging how I might cope in the big, bad outside world.

This is known as the assessment phase and we are only just now closing in on the final parts of this stage. We looked at certain parts of my personality and how they step in to protect me at certain times. In the psychologist's rooms we call them modes, in fitting with the Schema Therapy we are working through, and over time I discovered that I have two main coping modes which I bring out whenever I feel threatened. The Detached Protector; and the Bully and Attack. Throughout my whole adulthood I can think of numerous examples of when these two modes have been in control and at the forefront of everything I do.

I have learned to start looking through my back story to connect a little more with Little Stevie as it is he who brings out these two defensive (and unhelpful) coping modes. They are used as ways of protecting himself from the threats and dangers of the world. I have also looked a little as to how my standards and expectations of the world and the people who share it with me comes not from rationale but from a Critical Parent mode that exists in all of us. My one has quite strict expectations of people and these are never lived up to. As a result I can become quite agitated and resentful on a regular basis.

All of this will be discussed at my second appointment of the day when our next session begins at half past one this afternoon.

At five I have my third and final appointment of the day. Relationships Scotland. Lindsay had one of her fuck around days last Friday and so won't now be able to get this afternoon off to come to this session as was originally planned. This is a little disappointing if I'm honest. Two weeks ago I had a solo session as Lindsay was working and then the plan was that last week there was no session; this week we went over my Genogram – looking into my family history as a guideline to how I look at relationships as a whole, we did Lindsay's a few weeks ago – and then Lindsay was to have her solo session next week. Whenever one of us has a solo session the other is due one – it keeps things fair.

Now though there is not enough time to cancel the appointment without having to pay for it and so I'll be going myself. Might as well take the session if I'm gonna be charged for it. It means that Lindsay will be due two sessions with our counsellor and that we won't be able to complete my Genogram this week. When this now will happen I have no idea. Lindsay's work schedule has her not working either of the next two Mondays so we might be able to do it next week.

I've been very into this idea of doing my Genogram, looking at Little Stevie, and doing my family-of-origin work. It helps massively with humility and with finding out exactly what went down, exactly how things were and not just how the bitter part of me who doesn't look at his childhood circumstances accurately feels as though they were.

Lindsay showed me something last night that made me think about all of this stuff even more.

It's great to have the football season back even if it did start off with a 1-0 defeat for Raith Rovers against Alloa.

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Stevie

Better get to this first appointment.

1246

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, August 08th 2017 (Nostalgia)


I'm writing this on the morning of Monday, August 07th but it'll probably continue at a later date as this is the day when I have all of those appointments and so I had better get moving for them. I'll probably just save this post and dump it up onto the website one day when I feel like taking a break from typing (not that this ever really happens much) – a pre-written post, sort of. It'll knock the chronology out of the journal slightly but who really cares about that?!

I just wanted to write a little about how I was feeling this weekend. It was a completely unremarkable weekend really. All that happened of note was that my youngest niece turned four years old. I didn't see her. This is the first time that one of them has had a birthday and I haven't been there although I did miss two consecutive Christmas days back when I was drinking and choose self-annihilation over time with them. Still though – sobriety isn't all it's cracked up to be sometimes and my lack of contact with my family is the most disturbing change I've noticed in the time I've been trying to better myself. It's the big downside to it all.

The other night Lindsay and I were browsing online and she showed me something that she used to do while she was a kid. Turns out that almost anything you type into Google Images will yield a result and it's often exactly the result that you'd want. Memories of childhood come flooding back. I've felt like this before and in the old WQD journal I wrote a post one time when I was feeling similarly nostalgic although this one was aimed more at my elder years, the latter stages of childhood and growing up in St. Andrews.

I am up early the next day so that I can indulge a little in exploration of my past habits. Online I can find images of toys I used to play with and television shows I used to love now long since decommissioned. Youtube helps with this also and I could have spent the entire week recalling memories from days gone by, days when my family – small though it may be – were a hell of a lot tighter than they are now. When missing a birthday was all but impossible.

I don't know if my psychologist or my Relationships Scotland counsellor would think of this as being positive or negative. I have been out on a couple of walks this weekend and more memories have come flooding back – things I literally didn't know I could remember, if that even makes sense. My RS counsellor says that it is very common for people who experience trauma in their early years to have suppressed memories and that it is often helpful to try to recall these in doing our Family-of-origin work. I remembered reading about that in the book ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' that ACA's Sandra loaned me a few weeks ago. Remembering the past and doing my Family-of-origin work in order to move forward. We are supposed to be looking at my Genogram soon as well – a look at my family history so that we can have a look at where my beliefs about relationships come from.

At the moment the BBC Sport website is doing features on the best of the Premier League since it will be twenty five years old in a couple of weeks and this week it is looking at years 1992 – 1997 and so I am noticing more memories coming back. Barry the Bullet and Bain are supposed to be heading out to some rave night out in memory of 1994. The theme and music will all be dedicated to that year. Seems like I am not the only one thinking of the past. We all think about the past all the time I guess.

The important thing is not to get stuck there. At the moment I very much am but it isn't stopping me from getting on with the things that need to be getting done now, here and now, in the real world, not in the fake and essentially imagined world where much of the past lies. I guess that Google Images and Youtube can help in trying to see the past exactly as it was. The things I've seen aren't any different now than they were when they were released. They make the memories seem more real, like I know that I can trust them, when in reality it doesn't matter whether I trust them or not.

The main thing I've learned from all of this thinking about the past, two things actually, are as follows.

1)

Some of us can't get past the past.

When I was a kid there were four of us grandchildren. There was my father's sister's son, born in 1976, then I arrived in '78, my little brother in '79, and then my father's sister's second son in '80. The oldest of us became quite the trouble-maker and we never really saw too much of him but the other three of us became close while growing up. My brother and I had to rely on our grandparents growing up while mum went out to work after dad died and then we moved town in 1996, leaving St. Andrews to move to a bigger town situated a little more centrally. The oldest of us by this time had his own family and had moved on too. This left the younger of my cousins in St. Andrews with his mum as his dad had recently left them for another woman.

In 2004 our grandmother died. Three of us, including me, managed to cope with this tragedy (it was expected – she was ill and in her eighties) but the youngest of us never seemed able to. He had pretty serious drug and alcohol dependencies when I last spoke with him but I don't know what he's like now. He would always make an arse of himself whenever he was drunk. I guess he made my problems seem pretty bland. Same problems he had, just further progressed than my own. A little warning sign as to how things might have been for me.

In 2009 our grandfather died and again my brother and I seemed to be able to cope with this loss. Again though my youngest cousin could not. The funeral was the last time my mother's side of the family had anything to do with my father's side. September 03rd 2009. Exactly three years to the day later I decided to take a little drive through to St. Andrews and see how they were getting on. I had thought about it the previous year but didn't feel ready yet. Three years was long enough. I drove though to my home town. While the reception wasn't hostile it was certainly not welcoming. I left telling myself that I would probably never see them again. My cousin never came out of his room.

I don't know what went wrong really. It's my grandmother I feel for. She was loving. She did her best. I find it remarkable that three of the four of us would end up struggling with life in the way that we have given her efforts and that two of us, my youngest cousin and myself, would go on to become pretty fucked up addicts and lame-brains.

I'm starting to feel a little grateful that I'm beginning to turn a corner with this and sort myself out. I wonder if my youngest cousin is doing the same. St. Andrews isn't too long a bus journey. I don't feel welcome though. They didn't seem to want me there last time. Five years though it was I still am not sure that it would be in everyone's best interests for me to knock on that door once again. I can't just assume that everyone wants to rekindle just because Stevie is going through a hard time with the nostalgia and Family-of-origin work. Some doors are perhaps best left unknocked. For now at least.

2)

The power of the Step Nine amends.

This was always the most important of the Twelve Steps for me, that and the Fifth. I know – they are all important. I get it. But in terms of trying to locate those damn Promises I think that this Step, the Ninth, is the one where the most action must take place. It's after this Step that we are told to expect to start to feel the Promises after all. I did okay when I was going through my Step Nine amends. It was tricky at times and I did a lot of backing down and so on but eventually I got the main ones done. All apart from one.

There was a friend of mine at school. He used to stay next door to my youngest cousin actually. He was at my fifth birthday party and my eighteenth birthday party. He wasn't at my thirtieth though. This was because he and I had fought. It was my drunken fault. I've struggled to forgive myself in the years since. This was the next amend my sponsor (Stu) and I were to get done. This was an important one but one I felt would clear away more of the wreckage of my past. We never got around to doing it.

These two doors would be very difficult doors to knock. I've no evidence that either party even lives at the same address. I also have no idea how welcome I'd be. It says in the Big Book that we must go to any lengths to sort this all out but not if it is going to harm anyone. This is debatable. Perhaps I could take some business cards with me, I usually carry them around with me anyway, and if I am unsuccessful at the front door then I could write a little note and ask them to fire me a text if they one day find that they have both the time and inclination.

Sometimes maybe we have to accept that the past is the past and that it should remain there. That families fall out and some people don't see each other for years. That sometimes the hurt caused during our drinking days can never be fully healed. I think that the fact I seem to have become more distant from my mother and brother since getting sober has something to do with all of this whirling around in my head at the moment. Perhaps there is a case that the reason I didn't grieve too much for either grandparent was because I drank on it and so I should now expect the grief to come now that these thoughts are starting to pop into my head. Maybe all this IS me grieving for them. I certainly feel as though I am grieving right now the loss of both my friendship with Greame and the family connection in my auntie and younger cousin – the only two connections I really have with my father's side of the family and the only connections I have with St. Andrews at all anymore.

Right then – I'm not really getting anywhere now so I'd do best to wrap things up.

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Stevie

Wrapping it up.

1928

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, August 09th 2017 (Relationships Scotland Part Five: Hector, Hanny and the Stress Mist)


So I had planned to just throw in yesterday's post as a kind of afterthought at some point during the week, or even next week, at some point when I was perhaps struggling to get the words in, but the subject matter came up during both my psychology session with Dr. Bacon and with my Relationships Scotland counsellor Donna. Because of this it felt better to just post that writing from yesterday into the journal, felt like it was in keeping with the natural order of things in Stevie-Ville, and so this post was written yesterday. That's fine though.

People do get nostalgic from time to time. This is obvious. Barry is not going to the 1994-themed night out with Bain next month but this does set off conversation between us over the course of the working day yesterday. Barry the Bullet was also born in 1978, just a couple of months before me, and so he knows all about that year just as I do. It was also the year he turned sixteen. Musically we are similar from this year but you'd have to swap his motorsport knowledge with my football. We reminisce fondly of old times and I learn a little more about what Barry was like when he was younger. I am painfully aware that I keep my cards very close to my chest by default but hopefully I offered up something.

This is not the only time I have noticed someone talking fondly of past experiences. Just on Saturday night at the AA meeting there was someone talking about VHS tapes and how they still, every now and then and when the fancy takes them, whip out the video recorder and watch television the old fashioned way. She's a lot older than me. Maybe this is all this really is – I'm getting older!

If you look up anything online you can find without any problems at all a site dedicated to it. Some of them are, as can be expected, super geeky, but others are pretty normal or at least seem like it is pretty normal people running them and visiting them. People like to stay connected to their childhoods somehow and the internet provides for this. You can easily meet people your own age group online just by looking for your own former interests. It's really eye-opening, if perhaps a little unnecessary.

Right now the BBC are milking for all it's worth their celebrations of twenty five years of the Premier League. They have been for a few days now looking back over many of the events on and off the football field over the last two and a half decades.

When English Sara and I took Dennis back to his home town Montrose last April he started telling us all about what he used to get up to back in the day. When we returned to Fife he often seemed quiet as though deep in thought and he would talk about how he wanted to go back again although we have never yet managed to. He and English Sara are even thinking about the possibility of a little move through there when they decide it's time to settle down for good.

Dr. Bacon finds this revisiting of the past very interesting. He's a psychologist so there are obvious negative things he brings up with me regarding this most recent obsession. Since one of the things I struggle with most – the whole reason I am involved in this process to begin with – is lack of connection. Perhaps by trying to reconnect with my past I am trying to find a very Detached Protector way of communicating and connecting with others? I don't know if this is true but it certainly could turn out to be if this continues for too long (another week is fine I guess but if it becomes long term it could give me problems).

I'll talk a little more about this session tomorrow as I have some things I want to talk about other than this but am aware of the already high word count after yesterday's super long post so I'm going to move on for now.

With all of this floating around in my head I had figured that doing my Genogram at this evening's Relationships Scotland meeting would be coming at just the right time but we went off down a different track. We've decided that next week will be my Genogram week and the following Monday will be Lindsay's solo session. She managed to make it this evening by getting an authorised absence from the placement (the dreaded placement).

We are asked to think of names for both our stress and our fear and think of visual explanations of them. My stress is a mist, like smoke in a pub before the ban, whereas my fear lurks in the corner – a horrible black liquid. I call my stress the Stress Mist and try to think up a name for my fear. I try to link two movie villians together and end up with Hannibal Lecter crossed with Freddy Krueger but it comes out as Hann/y and so Donna goes with that. Lindsay names her fear and stress Hector, which is pretty creepy to be fair.

It turns out that I can see these as separate entities, which we are told that they are, but for Lindsay stress and fear very much operate as one. This placement is testing her beyond what I thought for a while she'd be able to take. Two months to go and it's all over. As Lindsay explains how she mentally prepares for her working days the evening before Donna picks up on just how much mental strength is taken up with this placement. After my solo session the other week Lindsay is due a one-to-one and so this will happen next week. They'll be looking at stress management techniques. I'm hopeful.

My stress gets out. That's something else Donna noticed. I like to go on walks and things which help to get my stress out and keep me in the game. I write every day which often gets the shit out of my head and onto the page, or the screen as it were. Lindsay's techniques don't allow for this and so most of it is bottled up.

All in all I am learning that I've actually done quite well since joining the sober community. I've tried things out and when they haven't worked I've moved on to other things until I do find out what works. Life isn't perfect and I'm always struggling with something new to do but this is, I guess, what it will be like for other people and what it will always be like. I'll go over the Genogram in two weeks.

I have another session with Dr. Bacon in a fortnight also but after that I am not scheduled to see him until September 25th – five weeks and three days later. It's not ideal but I'll work around it. I remember there were times when I would have weekly sessions with my FASS (Fife Alcohol Support Service) counsellor and I would rely quite heavily on those sessions. This was because I didn't have enough going on in my life to keep me occupied and because I wasn't strong enough to last a week without some kind of help.

I'm feeling a little stronger within myself these days.

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Stevie

Feeling that little bit stronger.

1275

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, August 10th 2017 (Lindsay Turns Two)


I got her a little card for it. If she went to AA once in a while she might even get a cake. I got a card and cake when I shared at my second sober anniversary a little over six months ago. She's two today though. It's great stuff. Two years ago she walked through the doors of my AA home group with bruises all over her face. Most people thought she'd been fighting but she'd fallen over in her house, in the bedroom I've not long walked out of actually, and managed to give herself a brain haemorrhage. Two years ago. Things are on the up now. I'd already got her a card and a bag of goodies so she got them last night. Stevie in the good books.

Today is probably the day I should call the job centre number. I don't want my sickness benefit to be stopped and at the moment, since the work assessment people found me capable of going back to work (it would have been easy to lie and milk it – claim that I am much worse than I am and so succumb to my fears, as many people in AA advised I try – but I have to try to move on if I want to move on), and so today would be the best day. They'll not waste any time and I'll probably be scheduled an appointment for early next week, Monday most probably, by which time there will only be three weeks until the college opens back up for business and I begin studying for another year, cleaning windows with Barry the Bullet on my day off.

I'm old enough and ugly enough to be making this phone call. I'm not forty yet but forty years ago today and I was forming within my mother, being sculpted into what I would later become, into what I am now, it all began around forty years ago. The thing is, as Barry is kind enough to remind me, that the people at the job centre will want evidence that I have no money. Less than one thousand pounds in the bank I think it is. This is a problem. Mainly because I have over one thousand in the bank. This means I won't qualify. They'll want to see three months backdated statements. It's the usual protocol. I'll just say nothing and hope for the best.

Although we're on Thursday now I want to jump back to Tuesday just for a paragraph or two. Dr. Bacon wants me to connect more. He's actually assigned me homework. There's a gig being played at a local games this coming weekend and I mentioned that it had been suggested I attend by an AA ''friend''. The homework is not so much to ensure that I get myself to this event, that would merely be a huge bonus, but is more to analyse and think about the processed I go through while trying to do this. As it has turned out I will not be going to this gig. But that does not mean that things are not going well.

Barry was a little late on Monday morning and he had the stuff with him so I had to wait. Rather than mess around doing nothing I went to see Gillon. I reached out to someone, an existing contact of mine, and tried to build a connection. As it turns out he and his family have plenty on their plates at the moment with their daughter as she's in the sick kids' hospital in Edinburgh. He's getting ready to go through and see what's happening as we speak. We do chat for an hour while waiting on Sleeping Barry to arrive fresh off the next bus. I wonder if Gillon too sometimes gets this feeling of nostalgia that I have been......suffering?.....from these last few days, getting close to being a week.

Gillon – ''I think everyone thinks about their childhoods all the time. You can only plan for what's coming by looking at what has happened.''

Ooohh....very philosophical, Gillon.

Gillon – ''But I never let myself think about the past for two long, and never dwell on it, rather than think about the past and look back I always try to look forward.''

Uh oh... Now he's getting dangerously close to cliché rather than philosophy. The old ''Don't look back; look forwards'' chestnut. I'm guessing he does look back then but limits how he does so. I don't know how healthy this whole attitude whereby we always think about what's ahead is but I have felt rather stuck in the past recently. It's not that I'm moping or upset. It's different. Perhaps it's a necessary part of my exploration. Perhaps I am trying to connect with my family by looking back since at this moment in time they seem so very distant.

I decide to try mum on the phone. When she and I last met she had talked about maybe taking the nieces to a local travelling market which visits, you guessed it – my home town St. Andrews – every year. She calls me back later on and says that she had planned on taking them on Monday afternoon next week. So it turns out that I will be working that morning and then will be travelling with my mum and nieces to my home town for the afternoon. I can give Youngest Niece her birthday present then. It'll be the first time I'll have seen either of my nieces in over four months – the longest time since they've been alive.

I bumped into an old pal I haven't seen since my brother's wedding last September and so have arranged to meet with him to see his new pad when he comes back from his holidays next week. More connection-building!

Lindsay and I are going to take a little trip to St. Andrews this weekend. There's an AA meeting on in the town every Saturday morning. I once tried to go to it but couldn't find it but she's been before to the same meeting place but on a Thursday evening. We'll have lunch afterwards and then see if just being there will help remove this apparent need to think about all things past and not present.

I have been doing it too – thinking more about the past. I seem to be remembering things out of the blue and these lead simply to remembering more things. Inside my head it's as though I'm trying to construct some kind of timeline of my life. Most of the thoughts and memories are positive but I know that this is not how it would have been. I am simply for some reason choosing my memories selectively and am omitting those I might find objectionable.

So – get to work today and survive that. Then there will be another day tomorrow with a debt-collecting session at the end of it. Then I'll be at a different AA meeting to what I'm used to and Lindsay and I will take a little tour around St. Andrews. This all happens on Saturday. A relaxing Sunday and then mum, the nieces and I will be making our way back there to join in the fun at the travelling market.

But that's all coming up over the next few days.

Today is all about Lindsay turning two.

Well done, Lindsay!!

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Stevie

Has recently turned two and a half.

1265

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, August 11th 2017 (Off The System)


It's so early this morning still that it could be last night.

Just got to survive today and things get better. Tomorrow it's off to St. Andrews for the day including an AA meeting I've never been to that is too far away really for any of those who go to meetings around here to be found. My anonymity will be intact. I hope it will be filled with new and happy faces. In saying that – Lindsay has been to this meeting before and so who knows who'll be there!? The weather has taken a turn for the better also and this week we have seen very little rainfall. For over two weeks there it was raining every day. Tomorrow we'll have to be up early but it will be a rewarding day I am hoping.

I read recently a little reminder, a little warning really, from reading another post in another journal, that self-pity and self-indulgence are no ways to live and that they can easily hamper the chances of having a good and productive life, which is what we're all supposed to be aiming for here, right!? I have been wondering since whether all of this nostalgia that has been floating around inside my head these last however many days is actually a serious dose of the self-indulgence and if it is how I can get it to stop. Is it just my Detached Protector trying to pass some time by in between courses of study? By going to St. Andrews, into the Lion's Den of my past if you like, am I not tempting the beast all the more? Am I not asking for memories upon memories to come a-calling? Perhaps I am thinking that if I can spend some time there I can see that things were not as I am remembering them. That I'll be able to see that this was not some little fantasy childhood but was instead just a normal one with good things and bad things.

It's really weird how this has all happened. In the past (here we go – looking backwards again) I would always look at the worst of my growing up, nothing but bad, then last year I had that little spell where I looked back more fondly and I wrote a couple of posts about my growing up when I was on the bus on the way to Dundee to meet a bass player. Now I am in the middle of a nostalgic attack of the senses and again it is all positive, albeit with a maudlin aftertaste, essentially sadness and a sense of loss and longing at its core, but positive and heart-warming on the surface.

Anyway, Barry the Bullet and I had some problems yesterday in that he didn't show up for work again and so I decided that enough was enough – it's time to move on. I had a real think about what this might mean next for this business. I could go it alone. That is definitely one option. A scary one but, the more I think about it, the most likely one. I'm thinking a little more long-term now. I popped into the cave and found a few letters at the door. I've been in my home a couple of times recently but haven't actually spent a night there for three weeks now. I managed to use this journal to get that figure. Three weeks. It's the longest time I've been away from my home since at least the Christmas period. It's no wonder the council were getting complaints that the property was abandoned.

Three of the letters pertained to my recent changes in benefit payments. I failed my fitness for work assessment and so no longer meet the requirements for this benefit. From now on I will not be getting paid in this way. They are asking me to contact the job centre and schedule an appointment with them to discuss what happens next. I know exactly what would happen next. I'd have to go through the process of applying for Universal Credit and one of the pieces of evidence I'd be asked to show would be bank statements to prove I don't have any savings. The Credit Union is essentially a savings account and I currently have around fifteen hundred bucks in there. It's a no-brainer really. There will be no contacting the job centre.

They won't like it. Records will show that I am not in employment, not a student, and not claiming any benefits. They will want to know why I have disappeared from their system but by the time this happens I will be back at the college. It'll all work out. It just means that between now and the start of the student loan payments I am on my own. Never more have I needed to get back out to work daily. When I do return to study I will still need an external income and so working solo would give me two days per week I could get out there and pull in some money without having to rely on anyone else. I could shrink the business further so that it was made up only of customers I trust, the easy ones. The ones closest to my home. This is the way of the future. Working without others to let me down.

Barry does get in contact later in the afternoon and we have a good talk about it. I tell him of my decision and he practically begs for his job back. I hope he has had the scare that means we'll be out working together for at least the three weeks I have left of this rather long break from study. After that I will have to come to a decision about what will happen once I am back at the college.

Just one more day to go then and we will have arrived at yet another weekend. This one will include an AA meeting I have never been to before in my home town of St. Andrews which I am very much looking forward to. After the day of rest I will be heading back to my home town but this time with mum and the nieces. Britain's oldest medieval travelling market comes to town and so we're paying it a visit. No one I know has ever heard of this market, they have their own one, but it was a big deal growing up. Much more than this, though, I am looking forward to seeing mum and my nieces.

This means that I'll be missing the Relationships Scotland session this Monday. Originally this week was supposed to be when we do my Genogram and then next week Lindsay has her solo session where they are going to be looking at the stress she has over her work placement. This'll be changing. There's no rush for my session. Lindsay is more than welcome. I'll not miss the chance to be with my family at this stage with the way things have been this year so far. Donna, our Relationship Scotland counsellor, says about us that the way we communicate is great and that we seem to ''get'' each other in ways that is rare in her line of work. There are still enough reasons for us to continue attending for now. We'll see where it leads but I like these sessions.

Well, here we go again. Another working day. I didn't even get the chance to talk about the things that happened last night after work. I visited English Sara and Old Dennis and then planned on trotting across the car park to the AA meeting at their local church.

I'll most likely waffle on about them in tomorrow's post.

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Stevie

Off the government's radar. Again.

1309

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, August 12th 2017 (Home Town AA)


Morning peoples! In a little while I'll be waking Lindsay so that we can begin to prepare for our little trip to St. Andrews today. We'll need to get off pretty sharp to make it for the AA meeting kicking off at eleven o'clock this morning. I really am hopeful that this could be a return to form for me. As much as I have been reflecting upon the past these last few days I am aware that at some point in the future I will likely look back on the early days of getting sober with fond lenses. Perhaps I am just nostalgic and backwards thinking by nature. I have to admit that joining AA was something quite unique at the time. Hundreds of people; dozens of different meetings and locations. There was a lot going on. It's possible that it's become so stale that I am trying out this meeting as a way of trying to recapture the early days of my involvement in the fellowship when everything seemed knew and everyone was a stranger. Trying to reclaim that childlike innocence I had with regards to alcoholism and recovery.

Continuing this thing where I look back at things all the time I thought I'd ask around, find out if others ever go through spells like this where they spend the majority of their time and mental energy fondly recalling times that were and never can be again, or even thinking back perhaps not so fondly. As long as it involves thinking about the past then it can be included in my little study.

I don't have to ask Lindsay – she thinks about her recently deceased mother (died 2014) a fair bit and will sometimes mention something about her when a bus we are on will drive by a certain memory location or something that was important for them. I know that she thinks about her past with her son as well now that he no longer lives with her and hasn't had contact since around March/early April. Memories will obviously be cropping up. Nothing bad though – fond memories. The kind of memories I've been having.

Gillon played the cliché game and says to me that he makes a point of not entertaining the past and just tries to look forwards. Then he tells me about his weekend??? He's perhaps confused here and is thinking that I am referring to moping about the past, thinking regretfully, playing the blame game, thinking about what might have been. This isn't really the way I have been looking at my past though, thinking about what may have been but never was - more it is a case of me thinking only about what actually was. He also mentions, however, that everything we do in the present depends upon what we have done in the past and so we are all thinking about our pasts constantly.

On Thursday I am chatting with English Sara and Dennis about it. I also speak with Barry the Bullet. Dennis plays it like Gillon even though I know that his past haunts him and that he can't get over the death of his partner almost forty years ago. She starved her pregnant self to death taking Dennis' baby with her. He believes he should have known she was getting thin to the point where her life was in danger. Sara and I think that he did know but was powerless to stop her, or too cowardly, and so now the memory follows him around like an evil spirit. I'll take him at face value though and so he says that she will pop into his mind from time to time but he tries not to think about the past. He would rather think about the now.

Barry says that he has been thinking more and more about the past as well and says it's possibly because we are taking stock of where we are at in our lives now that we are a kick in the balls away from turning forty. I'll turn forty in April, Barry a couple of months before me. He says that when he thinks back on his life it is in two different ways. Sometimes he'll reflect in a similar way to which I am and look back fondly over his life, usually childhood and adolescence. The other times are a little darker and he'll do the whole ''What If?'' thing, ruing missed opportunities and spending too long indulging in his failures rather than the successes we all have.

He seems aware that smoking weed all the time is likely to affect the way he perceives his past and that this might be one of the reasons he looks back with regret but seems happy enough to continue doing it. I suppose I should be grateful that I'm not still drinking, not that I think I would still be alive at the moment had I continued doing so as I was, as if I had been and had gone through this look into my past with such intensity I would surely have looked at it through much more sober glasses, there would have been sorrow where there is nostalgia; longing instead of acceptance that it is no more, not that I'm quite at the point of accepting it yet but I'm hoping today's trip to my home town will help to rush this process on a little.

Dennis is out when I arrive at English Sara's on Thursday evening so I get a little time where it's just the two of us – something that I have missed since she moved in with Dennis back in late January. When Dennis does arrive he adds his chain-smoking to the equation and it becomes difficult. One person smoking six or seven cigarettes an hour I can just about handle but two is taking the piss – it starts killing me. I can feel the life leaving me. I am so glad I stopped. Barry forgot to bring his vaping thing to work the other day and so had to get the cigarettes in at lunchtime. This means spending a tenner since we now have these new rules where you can only buy twenty at a time instead of ten. Tobacco rollers like myself get it even worse with thirty grams minimum replacing the nine grams we could buy just a few months ago when I quit.

Sara tells me before Dennis gets back that she thinks about the past constantly. All the time. Every day. She even tells me that last night was one of her bad nights in that she's thinking about the past so much that she struggles to get to sleep.

Stevie – ''That bad?''

English Sara – ''Fuck yeah. Sometimes it's not so bad but there are nights like last night when it's pretty hard going.''

Stevie – ''What sort of periods do you think about? Really far back? Or more recent?''

English Sara – ''All the way back to when I was born and then up although I skip much of my teen years as I don't want to go there.''

This is quite similar to myself actually. I've been thinking through childhood and then skipping a bit until we get to fatherhood. Then I toggle back and forth between those two times although talking with Barry about our individual working histories had me thinking a little about the period 1996 – 99 as well.

Stevie – ''And how do you think about these times? Is it with fondness and gratitude? Or more regret and sadness?''

English Sara – ''Definitely sadness and regret. Sometimes I think back to times with fondness but mostly it's what could and should have been and what never happened that should have.''

She then starts to talk about some of her past, some of the darker parts. Sara had a pretty turbulent time of it when she was around eleven years old which saw her mother commit suicide and her father and elder brother put her through sexual assaults. She's obviously and rightfully haunted by this still, even forty five years later, and still seems to want to take it to court. I think that by doing this, if she ever does, she will be giving her brain license to roam free and to bring up things that she perhaps thought were buried forever.

It seems as though people do think about the past a lot regardless of age or situation and that there are many different reasons for doing so. Once again I am not unique. What this is though is unique to me in that I've never really experienced a phase quite like this where......

Damn it! I really have to get going. I can hear Lindsay's alarm so she'll be up any moment. I really would have liked another five or ten minutes but duty calls. Today will be Lindsay's first AA meeting since March. Going this morning will mean that I don't have to go tonight.

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Stevie

Heading to AA in his home town.

1534

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, August 13th 2017 (Still Haven't Found. . .)


It's kind of ironic that my home town would also be home to the AA meeting where I would feel the most anonymous. I've never been to a meeting here before and so am hopeful of finding new friends with which to play. Lindsay and I are up and on the move early doors to catch the buses we'll need to get there for eleven o'clock. The rain is appalling and is threatening to destroy the day – likely would have been too much for my mood to take back when I was a grumpy drunk – but the weather forecasts get it right and by the time we arrive at St. Andrews the sun has also come out to play. Everyone's a winner. Then we arrive at our destination and discover that, actually, Lindsay and I are the day's losers.

Between the two of us we know more than half the people in attendance. It would seem that there is now nowhere safe for me to go where there is a chance I might not know anyone. Unless I go abroad it is now unlikely. Or if I end up in Sunderland at some point in the future. I wouldn't expect to bump into a known member way down there. In St. Andrews, though, we are essentially still in the same little county. Still – all the same – it's a different story we hear and a different environment.

What isn't different is the lip service paid by the other members as we go around the room in the second half. There was one woman there who I had never met before but who Lindsay seemed to know and she'd had a torrid, story past twelve hours. She was thinking about drinking when she got up this morning and was grateful for the meeting giving her an alternative to heading for a carry out. There were a bunch of others arrived at the meeting from the area I stay yet when the meeting was thrown open for comments only I offered anything up from our group. To some the central Fifers must seem like an awfully quiet bunch.

I didn't say much – just thanked them for having the meeting open and mentioned that I was born and raised in this town and that we were going to take a little trip around the market and have something to eat before we headed back home. The most important thing about me offering something to the meeting was that it was a big one and so I was nervous. It's only when we do things we don't want to do that we grow. Of the visitors from central Fife this morning I am the only one to offer anything to the large meeting. I'm also the only one to have any experience working with a good sponsor. Two of the women said that they didn't speak because they were nervous.

I ask Lindsay later why she didn't say anything. Her first reason was that she felt nervous as the meeting was quite large and it was her first meeting since late March so it felt a bit ''weird'' but that also she was a little angry with the group. The woman who had had the difficult night and had woke this morning to thoughts of drinking had received some comments from around the room. Lindsay says that most of these comments, all from old-timers or people with a fair few years behind them, were incredibly patronising and deluded.

I noticed this too if I'm honest. Rather than resent them for this I try to realise that they are coming from a good place when they are offering this advice. As these particular old-timers speak I am noticing that they may not actually be coming from a place of well-meaning after all. It seems to be ego that is the source of this talk. It's as if they are talking to each other more than they are to the struggling girl. Like they're using her as an example of how well they have done to quit their drinking. There are so many factors to consider when speaking to a newcomer and these people don't seem to have the emotional intelligence between them to even try. I think Lindsay does the right thing in not speaking during the meeting and instead approaching this struggling woman at the end and making sure that they are both on the same phone numbers as when they last spoke. Offering a real hand of friendship and not using her as an ego boost in front of all your friends. Disgusting – but AA to the core.

It was quite strange walking out of a meeting at lunchtime. The earliest I have walked out of one in the past had been two o'clock but here I was at midday. The sun was now shining brightly. It has rained though and so in August so far we have only had one day when there has been no rainfall. I'm happy to say that the rain does not come back for the rest of the day and Lindsay and I have a fun time bonding in St. Andrews. We head down the beach and take a walk around the stalls and the shops. It's been difficult trying to get her out of the house on her days off since this placement has started. It was only really when we spoke about it with Donna, our Relationships Scotland counsellor, that I started to see just how stressful this placement has become. Since she has a fair bit of catch up time to do although most of her peers will be wrapping things up between this week and next – with the graduation ball taking place next Saturday – Lindsay will still have hours to do to finish her degree. In this way this afternoon was very important for us.

Whatever I thought I could get from visiting my home town, whatever it was I was looking for – some way of ending this nostalgic thinking – I didn't get it. I think it was because we were essentially just tourists and visited the same places an American will when they visit the town. I think that I need to come back here again throughout the week. I'll be here again on Monday when mum and the nieces and I take the trip to the market for the afternoon but this will be the same thing I think. It'll be all about bonding with family and there will be no place for exploration of my past. I'll have to come through on my own if I want to do this. I have to get out of the tourist trap that is the beach, golf course and town centre, and get back into the parts of the town I know the best. The parts that mean the most to me. The parts where I might find what it is that I am searching for – this connection with Little Stephen.

Barry and I did okay at work last week. I guess. We only worked Thursday and Friday with a Friday night debt-collecting mission to bring the week to a close. This was the most frustrating part of the week. For some reason people were either out and about so not home to pay us or they didn't have any cash on them and asked us to come back another time. I started feeling bad about people not paying. Rich people don't feel bad about customers not paying – they make sure that they get paid. I would curse the old woman who wasn't home and then feel bad about it afterwards. Rich businesses don't seem to ever feel like that. They seem to do the cursing part but then never feel bad about themselves afterwards.

It looks as though today might be the second day in August where there is no rain.

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Stevie

Still hasn't found what he's looking for.

1355

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, August 14th 2017 (The Ward)


I run up all of the flights of stairs. I can feel the burn getting up the last couple of flights but I reach the top without much of an issue. Now I am standing on the fifth floor of the hospital. Lindsay is at the university and needs her folder which she left at the ward by accident on Friday. I said I'd pick it up while I was on my travels. The nurses on the ward know to expect me at some point. No one is around. No staff makes the ward feel ghostly and creepy. It's a long corridor but I can see where the main desk is in the distance. That hospital smell slowly creeps in. It's visiting hours as I slowly walk down the hall, peering into every room as I pass. Most of these people are fucked, or at least look so, although I know from what Lindsay tells me that most of them will be okay.

There's been a lot of talk about Lindsay and this placement in recent weeks. She's really struggled at times with the stress of it and the pressure she feels under working here. The scope of it hits me as I creep along what should surely be a better lit corridor than this. These patients range in age and number of visitors but they all look ill. Lindsay isn't fucking around with ladders in people's gardens in an attempt to clean their windows. Real lives are at stake here. Her folder is waiting for me at the main desk and I make way for the exit, catching one or two last little looks at the patients on the way out. I am back into the fresh air, something that most of those bed-ridden patients won't be for some time. What scares me about the situation, the thought of working there, is the responsibility. It's never been my favourite thing. Lindsay has no choice but to be responsible though. Her degree depends on it.

Yesterday I made the most of the better weather and got out there walking again. This past week, according to the Endomondo account I have kept active to track all this stuff, has been the best week for me since the week of the Moonwalk – the marathon charity walk that started all of this walking. Actually that's not true – it was quitting smoking that started it all up, training for that walk just gave it all a sense of purpose. So that was forty miles walked last week. This takes the month of August up to seventy five miles. Not a bad start. This actually makes August my best month since May which was one hundred and forty miles. It also makes August my fifth best month of the seven I have been doing this for with February being fourth with 88.5, April third with 111, May in second with 140, and March out there on top with 142. The plan is to get back into it for the rest of the summer and the autumn and so it would be nice to get closer to the March score, or at least as close to it as possible, this month. I'm over halfway there and we're not even halfway through the month and so it's well doable.

In total the 651 miles is the equivalent of walking from my front door in the next town, all the way down Scotland and through England, London and through the Channel Tunnel into France, west through Bruges and out of Belgium, into the Netherlands and right now I am (hypothetically at least) on the very outskirts of Rotterdam. It's a decent little effort.

This morning the weather is appalling again. We have pretty bad rain forecast for the remainder of the day. Mum is to be meeting with me in a few hours and she'll be driving myself, her and my nieces through to St. Andrews for the market. When Lindsay and I were there on Saturday it was half built but it will be fully standing by now. I saw my mum last on July 01st so it's been a while but I haven't seen my nieces since before my birthday back in late April. This'll easily be the record length in me not seeing them since they were born five years ago. I have youngest niece's birthday present with me. Better late than never.

I think it's incredibly strange the way blokes act in public toilets. Everyone seems to be so crippled with fear these days and it's in the men's public toilets I notice it more than most places (although it is glaringly obvious in most situations). Where there are three urinals there must be some rule unknown to me where you must not use the middle one if the two side ones are occupied. People head straight to the cubicle instead and then get the fuck outta there to try to save face. If this is also busy then they'll simply stand there and wait. Anything not to get into that personal space with someone else in such a compromising position.

I thought men were supposed to be comfortable with their bodies nowadays? Not the case at all and they pee whilst turning away from others as much as possible, some even struggling to squeeze any out while standing there if someone is close by. I don't like people very much, I think they tend to be self-centred to the core and frightened of everything but put on a false bravado to pointlessly pretend to each other that they are not afraid, so I quite like taking the middle urinal and pissing away and listening out for splashes next to me which never come. Blokes getting stage fright when someone is peeing next to them. It's one of the little pleasures I get each day.

It makes me wonder about sex. It is surely not just me who struggles if most blokes can't even pee in front of someone else. Much more likely is it that we have ourselves in a position now where we are used to shagging what is familiar to us and when we are out on the town we get steaming drunk to smash our inhibitions into touch. I'm sure that there are many people who struggle in this area. When the fuck did we get to be so royal about our bodies?

Having bled into the sink while brushing my teeth I have a good look inside. There are problems all over the place now. My teeth are struggling. I'm really lucky in that I was blessed with a good dentist in the past and that I have pretty straight teeth. They are one of my better features. I've had quite a few problems with them since I sobered up though and soon it looks as though I am going to be told that I'm going to be having a lot more problems with them. I'll have to sort out a trip soon. My teeth is just another thing I've struggled with since getting sober.

One thing I haven't struggled with today is rambling in these pages.

That's one thing being sober hasn't helped me with.

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Stevie

Out of the ward and into the sunshine.

It's raining now.

1235

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, August 15th 2017 (Loans and Bursary)


I might not do too badly for cash over the coming months. The Student Awards Association for Scotland emailed me the other day to let me know that there is a problem with my application and so I call them yesterday morning to ask what the issue is. They cannot pay my student loan into the Credit Union account for reasons I have mentioned many times before in this journal and so I had given them Lindsay's bank details. Because she is still studying (just a few more weeks of placement left and she's a qualified nurse – yippee!!!) it comes up on their system. Because we don't live together there doesn't need to be any income/expenditure forms filled in for a means test and I am told that it's okay to have the money I've been awarded deposited into her account when I start the year.

Turns out I have only applied for the bursary though. I am directed to the page on their website that deals with the student loans and now I have applied there too. There was a part of me thinking that I might be able to get away with not applying for the loan (and part of me might still reject it when it comes through) as I wouldn't be living too differently from what I am at the moment. Right now I am earning only what I pull in from cleaning windows with Barry the Bullet each week. Up until recently I was bringing in sickness benefit after being declared unfit for work and so was also earning around ninety bucks a week from that. The student bursary will be £850 split over the ten months with the first payment going into my account (or rather Lindsay's account) the day I start (September 04th – less than three weeks from now) so it would make up for the loss in benefits and I'll still be able to work two days a week which is about what Barry and I are currently working.

This would mean that I'd be earning around the same as I am now, give or take. But then I remember that this will not include my rent. Lindsay's rent is covered but I forget sometimes that I have my own little cave in the next town and this has to be paid for if I want to keep it, which I do. Seventy pounds per week is the minimum that has to go into that property and so it looks as though I'd have to take out the loan after all. This will be around six thousand pounds. It's frustrating as although there is no interest to be paid it does rise steeply with inflation. I watched the TED talk a while ago on how our government uses student loans to rip off students and profit from them. I'm not too worried about that at the moment though. It feels a little like Restoration – I wouldn't dream of using it now but it was there when I needed it. Perhaps in the future I will look at student loans in the same light.

So it looks as though I'll be taking out the loan too. I wonder about my little cave in the next town. While it is true that it was where the final dark days of my drinking occurred I still feel the need to keep it open to me as a safety net. When I first met Lindsay I stayed most of the time in the cave but as the months have gone by I have noticed me spending less and less time in my cave each month and this last month I have noticed it more than at any other time. The last time I slept in the cave for a night was on the 20th July – four weeks on Thursday. Assuming I don't sleep there tomorrow night or the next then it'll be a full four weeks.

Still though – I feel the need to keep my options open here and try to keep the cave despite the constant abandonment complaints I have been receiving in recent months. Some would say this is my commitment issues at work whereas others would deem it very sensible. It's not my property. I wasn't the kind of drunk who could have any hope of buying a home and so it is owned by the council and rented by me. Someone else could be getting the use of it as we speak but for now I am planning on keeping it available to me as a sort of base, storage for my things, and a place to go if I need isolation for a while.

Anyway – I am painfully aware of ever growing word count already and that I haven't even mentioned a word about my return trip to St. Andrews with my mother and nieces yesterday afternoon in the rain. I don't want to be here all night.

I feel a little angrier than usual when I'm around my mother. I noticed that all afternoon. I guess it's always been like that. Being with the nieces wasn't awkward at all. It took only seconds for me to forget all that is going on and just go with the flow on this. With mum it's different and I can't say for sure why. I do find out a few things though. I seem to have to have everything in my life set out chronologically and at the moment it has just been a random blur of events. I think that all of this thinking about the past is asking me to try to find a structure to a rather hectic series of events. Put things into the order they happened and work from there. If a chapter in a novel is missing it can take a while to make sense of the story you're reading. I think that my life is a little like this at the moment – only there are no complete chapters, just continuous monotony.

Again I leave my home town yearning to revisit the real town. Again we only visit the tourist parts and they hold no real relevance for me. It's the past I'm trying to find. I'm trying to locate Little Stephen, the inner child and all that jazz, trying to connect with him for the first time in any genuine and meaningful way and I know he's around, somewhere in this town. I have to find him. I'm working today (assuming this horrible rain clears up), tomorrow and then on Thursday but we'll start running short of work by then for next week and Barry the Bullet has to sign on the dotted line at the job centre so we're taking Friday off, apart from the debt-collecting in the evening. This is when I'll return to my home town. Three times in one week I'll have been. For an AA meeting and some bonding with Lindsay on Saturday, a trip to the market with mum and the nieces on Monday afternoon, and then a walk around my old haunts on Friday in a bid to find myself.

Mum tells me that she too has a poor relationship with my brother at the moment. She says she doesn't know what's up with him. I think we're all a little frightened to be honest. I think that mum is going to end up moving abroad at some point soon. If I want to continue my studies to degree level then I have the chance of going to England to do so. It's interesting. I think my brother wants to move away too. Each of us running away from something? If this happens then it really will be a case of seeing each other only at Christmas. Often I wonder if it's worth it. Mum is just back from Dublin. She was visiting family. She uses them as an example that it is okay not to see your family for what I consider to be extensive periods of time. ''They hadn't seen each other for eleven months!'' Mum points out.

That is what this has turned into. A family willing to not see each other.

It's not exactly what I was expecting when I sobered up and I don't feel ready for it to turn out this way.

But I'm perhaps gonna have to get ready at some point in the very near future.

Good morning to you all.

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Stevie

Going back to his home town again.

1437

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, August 16th 2017 (Relationships Scotland Part Six: Loss)


We went over Lindsay's Genogram in a session a few weeks ago and this time it was my turn. We're going to look into my family history so that Donna, our relationships counsellor, can get to know me and my outlook in life a little better so that in future sessions she has something to go on. It's becoming more and more obvious that what happens to us in our pasts effects how we are now. The resentment I was feeling a little towards mum yesterday has abated slightly and this is a good thing. I'm not looking for answers. I don't think so anyway. I'm just looking for me. The young Stevie. The little Stevie that created these Schema Modes that often dominate my life. The little Stephen that created the Detached Protector and Bully and Attack modes. The little boy that always feels threatened enough to need to bring up one or both of these modes as coping strategies almost constantly throughout every moment of every day.

All of this ties in nicely with what I've been going through recently. I've been thinking about the past more and more over the last two weeks than at any time I can remember. I'm not fixated or obsessed but I'm definitely disturbed by it all enough to want to try to find a way out of it, an end to the distraction. Next month I begin studying again and I will need my brain power for other things. This month I have the odd window cleaning shift with Barry the Bullet but other than that I have plenty time to do this like this exploration of my past. There's a reason it's all happening now and this could be it. Time. Free time allowing me to do this fearlessly and thoroughly like AA teaches us although AA never mentions anything really the likes of what I am doing just now). I also know that our Higher Powers will never hand us something that we can't handle and so this must surely mean that it is now I am ready for this. I haven't been previously but now I am ready. I hope this is the case.

Talking through my family history was interesting and a little eye-opening. Apparently I never had a chance of going any other way than the way it went. I learned from the youngest age that family communication was to be non-existent and that we don't talk about things. After dad died my carers let me find out at school. My grandmother said on her deathbed that it was her biggest regret where I was concerned. I was asked quite a lot about those days but how can you remember what happened when you were five? I'm not sure I trust my memories from back then. It feels as though I can't distinguish the memory from the fantasy.

Loss is the big one for me. Donna mentions this after we complete the genogram in the same way that Dr. Bacon mentioned it when we first started working together. I get it. After the trip to the market with mum and the nieces the other day, and most notably my mother's talking as though it is fine and ''normal'' to go through long periods of not seeing your family members, has reminded me that this loss will continue to the bitter end. Soon there really will be no one left. Loss is all that will be there. I've been getting angry at her ever since her saying that. What society do we live in now where it is normal and accepted to go through life not seeing any of your family? The pursuit of money first, last, and all the time. Family a distant second, but we say it's first so that we look good to strangers. Anything to look good. It's a shame we can't act on this and be good. I now have a resentment with my mother to deal with.

On both my father's side and my mother's side there are long histories of controlling relationships, drinking and abuse, and relationship breakdowns. My father's parent's kept their marriage going until death chose the time for them. Everyone else ended things in an unholy way. Most of them split either because of abuse or because the guy left for another woman, or in my own parents' case – death in young adulthood. So all I really learned while growing up was that things don't last. That loss should be expected and that we don't talk about it or communicate in any way when it happens.

There aren't many male role models in Little Stephen's life and so it's no surprise to Donna that he went off the rails a little. It would appear to be quite common for a bright young lad such as I was to do well in primary school but then find the transition to secondary school a hassle and find for some unknown reason things to take a downwards trajectory. This tends to be a familiar pattern among those who come from backgrounds where there is a lot of separation and loss in the family.

Mum used to say that the only time she would see her own father was when she or one of her sisters had done something wrong. He would then step in as the disciplinarian. This is where all of this controlling behaviour comes from. It likely dates back several generations but we can't trace it. In fact – it probably just gets worse and worse the further back you go. Donna says that this cycle can be broken with me.

Mum didn't have a meaningful relationship with a man since dad dying in 1983 until she met her current partner in 2008. When they started dating though I thought things moved a little too quickly. As we go through my genogram we can clearly see a bunch of bitter and very angry women in my mother, aunties and grandmother on my mum's side and it is no surprise that they all sought solace in the arms of other men. My two aunties seemed to purposefully look for exactly the type of man who had only just recently beaten and left them. My mum seemed stronger than this though. She was the one natural selection had put its faith in. Then she meets her current partner and within six months had moved out of her house and into his. It showed a different side of her to me. Something a little weaker than I'd perhaps been used to seeing. Now whenever I see my mother I see her money and how it is something she also hides behind. She does a lot of complaining and is still very uncertain about decisions she feels she has to make, a lot of stalling and thinking with very little action, but she has money and so this makes her appear strong. Money is funny like that in how it gives off this false sense of power and influence.

We reach the end of the session and I can't believe we've eaten up the time so quickly. Lindsay hasn't said a word the whole time. Donna has asked the questions and I've done all the talking. Loss. I'm an expert. I already knew this. It's perhaps the reason Donna feels as though I didn't have much of a chance of a ''normal'' life from the beginning. Interestingly, though, she points out how I learned while growing up to view relationships and other people as throwaway and unsubstantial. People leave without a moment's notice and we don't talk about it. That is the way things are. That is normal. Men are controlling and often abusive, certainly drink, and although the women are strong enough to pick up the pieces they are left broken and angry. It's as though they seek out controlling men. I always figured my mum to be the one who is different but she's not. I can see that clearly now.

I come from a broken home where my family, everywhere you look and as far back as you care to go, is held together by nothing but fear, lies, abuse, controlling behaviour and alcohol.

The decision to leave my own family back in 2006 has ensured the inevitable and I have continued the pattern.

While it may be true that I had little chance of being anything but a loser from day one it is now my responsibility to at least try to make the best of what I have just now.

Because I still have quite a lot, so I do.

I just don't think a family is on the list.

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Stevie

Never really had a chance.

1480

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, August 17th 2017 (Too Keep Or Not To Keep)


The cave, I mean.

I can still feel the resentment towards my mother bubbling away inside me. It's dying off, I know this, but it's still there a little. How can she try to justify the modern day family not knowing each other and only seeing each other at Christmas? She isn't doing any soul-searching at the moment though so maybe it is just normal for her. I'm perhaps just trying to naively save something that died a long time ago, something that was in all likelihood never even really there to begin with. If so then I am just being selfish. I would do better to put the past behind me but tomorrow I am heading back to my home town to try to connect with Little Stephen and come to terms with what has happened. I think that all of this looking back I've been doing for around two weeks now has been a good thing for me in recognising how our memories can lie to us in the same way our parents can. That we see memories the way we want to and not the way that they actually are. My family is dying off and has been for years. Soon it'll all be over. The time to protest against this has passed. I should move on. That'll mean trying to find a way of removing this resentment somehow.

On Tuesday Barry the Bullet and I noticed that the work has been reduced in the time he's been running things that it tailors for one worker just fine but for two of us working hard on days when we're out we tend to get through it quite quickly. There was a time when this window cleaning run was too much for four full time workers. Now it is enough for one full time or two part time. By the end of today we will have run out of work to do. Next week we'll have some but not as much as I would like and then the following week we will dry up. This is frustrating as it is the final week of the ten I've had off college as a summer holiday but I've been glad to get out when I have. I reckon that by the end of the break I'll have five hundred quid sitting aside for the coming trip to Spain. That and I managed to pay off a few bills and things too.

The idea of paying rent for my cave the whole of next year while I'm studying is something I've been thinking about a lot this week. It was fine last year as housing benefit covered it but now I am taking out a student loan as well as a bursary and working a couple of shifts a week. I'll be responsible for paying my own way now. The student loan will be worth around six hundred pounds per month and I'm looking at putting half of that towards a bungalow I barely ever visit now, let alone use in any meaningful way. I haven't slept there for a month. I am hesitant though. I like having the option of a little base, somewhere I can indulge my detached protector if I find the world a little too intense and scary for a while. I ask around. What do people in similar positions think about this?

Ian – ''How long have you been together?''

Stevie – ''Just shy of a year.''

Ian – ''It's not long enough. You'll still be in the luvvy-duvvy phase. Wait until you've had an argument or two.''

Stevie – ''Oh we've been there.''

Ian – ''Wait until you've had eight or nine arguments.''

He never gave up his home. His partner wanted him to for a time and they have split up recently. He's grateful now that he kept his place. When it all went to shit he had somewhere to go. Somewhere reasonable, rather than the vultures and modern day scumbags that are private landlords waiting for your life to turn to dogshit so that they can take advantage of your vulnerability and fleece you for every penny.

Barry – ''I'd keep it as long as possible. I'll never give up my house again, and I'll never get married again.''

He moves the conversation onto his marriage (which ended not long after he started working with me) and all the experience he gained from that failing. He, too, ended up in homeless accommodation and noticed how different it was this time to previous times. It's getting more and more difficult to get onto the council housing list and to end up with a house at the end of it. All of this talk of the council trying to eradicate homelessness by 2020 is looking more and more like it is just election talk, referendum chat, meaningless, without confidence or conviction. I'll have to keep thinking about things just now and not make a decision that might seem rash to other people. What if?

More work today then. We still have had only one single day in August so far when it hasn't rained. This is our Scottish summer. It's quite embarrassing actually. Hopefully today will be the second. Tomorrow I am off on another trip to my home town St. Andrews although quite what for I am still not totally and completely sure. Donna – my Relationships Scotland counsellor – says that all of this exploration and delving into my past in a bid to reconnect with the inner child, the Little Stevie, is brilliant and should reap many benefits. I think she is perhaps trying to point out the differences between the way Lindsay copes with things (very detached protector one minute and anxiety fuelled the next) and the way I do (lots of writing, plenty of walking, getting out there and facing things) and how they seem to benefit me more than Lindsay's techniques benefit her.

She says that it seems as though I have many ways of getting my stresses and worries out there, out of me and out into the world, onto forums, onto pathways, rather than keeping it inside, in my gut, where it can build up and then harm me. She did mention while going over my genogram that I have internalised a lot of feelings of loss ever since I was a little boy and since my carers were too cowardly to ever want to talk about it with their young pups and that one day I may have to let all of this out.

Stevie – ''It's coming. One day soon it's all gonna come out. I can feel it bubbling away.''

Donna – ''And how do you feel about that? Does it worry you?''

Stevie – ''I think it used to. When I started working with Dr. Bacon I worried about it. Now I know that it is inevitable. If I want to move on then I'm going to have to let it out. Doing so over the summer when I have had little to keep me occupied makes the most sense. In three weeks I'll be busier.''

It's true. It's all coming out soon. All this suppressed loss. I think tomorrow's trip might bring it out all the sooner.

Which is just what's needed.

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Stevie

Off to work again...

1242

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, August 18th 2017 (Monteith)


Lindsay and I have been watching a series on celebrities who died young and the other night the episode was dedicated to Glee star Corey Monteith (who I'd never heard of before) and his death from drinking and heroin use after a spell of bad luck in his life. He was only thirty one. This is common among the people on the show. They died young.

The show looks back over his life and the events leading up to his death. It's not surprising to learn that when he was seven years old his parents split up and his father moved away. He had no relationship with him after that. This is an incredibly common story and one close to my own heart. I've wondered for so long now why it matters so much to a young boy. Why does the leaving of a father and absence of a male role-model shatter a lad so much and lead him so astray? It's something I've been investigating recently.

Donna (Relationships Scotland counsellor) said to me on Monday evening after we had looked at my genogram (method of looking back at family tree to see how relationships developed while I was growing up) that, given my trauma at a young age and the circumstances afterwards, I didn't really have much of a chance of going down any other road than he one I have travelled. I can take heart from this. I can use it to forgive myself more easily for my failings in all areas of life. I can use it to have a little sympathy and love towards that part of me – the young boy who was so badly hurt. This is the boy I am hoping to meet today as I make way for my home town for the third time in a week, but this time I am going alone and am not visiting the tourist traps. I'm going into the town to look for me.

I can also use this information about my past and this opinion of Donna that I didn't really have a chance but to take this path to search for gratitude. I should be grateful that I was born into the relative cocoon of St. Andrews where there isn't too much of a drinking and drug taking culture. Those who still live there will say that there are bad areas in every town and yes, I agree, but growing up I saw very little of it at all. The men in my life drank but there wasn't the drinking culture I learned about when I moved away.

My two best friends when I moved to a bigger town, and two guys I met and befriended very, very quickly, were both different breeds of people than anyone I'd known in St. Andrews. I guess it was the excitement that I was drawn to. One was part of a crew of excellent shoplifters (and equally good drinkers and drug takers) and I learned to do all three with them. The other guy who I ended up starting in business with was a lifetime heroin addict, on and off throughout his life. He lasted just a couple of years longer than the guy on this episode of the show.

While I was definitely led astray by these guys (or rather shown a way of life by them that I subsequently chose to take) and it ended in disturbances and plenty of criminal activity I think I had two advantages with me. Not a Higher Power at that time, watching over me, just advantages I had from my upbringing. I was a little older when I moved home and had already left school. There was always a little part of me that approached drugs cautiously and wanted to start off slowly to see how they would affect me and there was always something that warned me of when enough was enough. Had these friends of mine been pals when I was younger and still at school then it's quite possible that trouble would have started sooner and heroin would have been a realistic possibility. People like this just were not available to me in sunny and sheltered St. Andrews.

It's worrying.


The other morning Barry the Bullet asks me what the difference is between drinking and being an alcoholic and how that change happens. At what point does drinking become heavy drinking and at what point does that escalate to alcoholism? How do you know the difference?

I hear it in the rooms of AA and read about it in the internet forums all the time. People grow up fine and then one day find themselves to be drinking a little too much due to stresses of work or poor family relations and so on and then call themselves alcoholics and find a new form of social contact where they can feel a part of and get out an opinion or two. I am always very wary of the AA member who starts off his or her share by stating that their drinking was not a result of any childhood trauma. When this happens I know exactly what to expect – nothing much of anything. These stories will not teach me anything or give me any kind of identification but are really just there for bonding exercises.

Most people go through the excess drinking phase at some point in their adult lives and most of them tend to quit with very little hassle. It's fine but I don't consider them to be like me. They are drinking to stifle a little stress, complete another rite of passage into middle age; they are not drinking to stuff out a lifetime of pain. Now that I know that there was a kind of destiny involved in my drinking and drug taking past, not only that but also the trouble I've been in; the violence; the lack of apparent caring about much of anything, I find identification in different places. Hearing drinking stories does nothing for me now.

What I need are stories about how other people grew up in dysfunctional homes and managed to turn things around, not just by stopping drinking, but by explaining to me the internal process of change that comes with quitting drinking but then also facing demons. The second part so very vital in the change process.

There has been but one day in August where I haven't seen rain and today is not going to be the second. It's already pissing down out there and most people will still be in bed. It's supposed to be on and off all day. I can hear the occasional clap of thunder too which is rare at this time of the morning – or is it just that I have only started getting up at this time of the morning recently? All of this rain is incredibly disappointing and really makes it feel as though we haven't had a summer at all. The winter will be dry.

Who would ever have thought I'd be looking forward to a winter?

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Stevie

Rain, rain, rain.

1205

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, August 19th 2017 (Homework for Dr. Bacon)


I'm walking up the path that joins my town to Lindsay's town and the rain is tempting me to quit and wait by one of the bus stops. The buses I take to work in the mornings pass by this way every fifteen minutes or so and so there will be one flying by any minute. The pathway has recently had some of the council's money spent on it and has been widened meaning that I am at less risk of being soaked as passing vehicles plough through the roadside puddles. We have still had only one day in August so far where there has been no rainfall. Add that to the wettest June in thirty five years and the rainfall we had last month and you have the worst summer that I can remember. Around a mile from Lindsay's it starts to pour down and I am soaked right through. Everything has to be removed when I finally make it indoors and this includes my mood.

Dr. Bacon has been handing me home work assignments for a couple of sessions now and this coming Monday when I see him next I will have with me no shortage of work for us to look over. The idea is that I record every day events and communications with others so that I can learn more about how my coping modes come into play on your average day. Bacon gets an insight every now and then during the sessions but generally this type of behaviour tends to happen more when I am out and about and on my own. It's good for me to learn about myself through my mistakes. Bacon says that I am not to try to stop doing anything and just let things take their course, even if it often does feel like watching a car crash.

I should have been in St. Andrews just now and not walking back to Lindsay's town but I had predicted that the weather forecasters had this one right and didn't want to risk getting caught in it if it was going to rain all day. I don't mind drizzle and light rain but it looks as though it's going to come teeming down and stick around for a while. It's not just that keeping me from my home town though. There's something else. Maybe I'll go on Sunday instead. Either way it's too late now and the light rain has started.

There are a couple of instances already where I've noticed my coping modes (Detached Protector and Bully and Attack) come out to play (and not in a fun way) during my interactions since my last session. The most obvious one being mum on Monday when we took the nieces to the market. I think Her answer to me saying that I felt as though our little family didn't see each other enough was that her sister hadn't seen her son for eleven months until the other week when they took a trip to Dublin to visit. This triggered Little Stephen and so the defences came out.

This is still a resentment I am dealing with now, almost a week later, and it's obviously related to that sense of abandonment I've known all my life and how this comment by her bring this right back up again. She says that she doesn't have a good relationship with my brother at the moment either. I wonder if maybe she's going through her own little mid-life crisis of sorts or what's going on. Whatever is happening I feel that the three of us – my mother, brother and myself – are drifting apart more now than at any other time and it's definitely having an effect on me.

I can see mum thinking to herself, she might even go back home and say to her partner, why is it that her eldest son just cannot let this go. Why does he not just accept that the modern day family is not close? That the cool and hip way to run a successful family in the twenty first century is to not give a shit but upload onto social media constantly and pretend that the family is tight? Why does he not move on? It's like she doesn't realise that I am trying to move on, feel as though I am just about to embark on something different, but I'd like to move on with my family rather than away from them as seems to be the case.

Maybe I do just need to accept that this ship has sailed. That I need to make a new life without those I used to live with and get on so well with. Or is that just my memory lying to me again? Wait! What the fuck is that noise? What the hell!? A vehicle is parked up on the road coming into Lindsay's town and it looks as though some work is getting done. I passed the worker and he mumbled something but I was too lost in thought and drowned by traffic that I just kept walking. The rain is getting worse and I'm wishing I had just boarded a bus instead of trying to beat it home while upping my mileage for the month so my head is down. Now someone is shouting at me!?

Worker – ''Hey, Fuck-wad!!''

First he'd tried ''Deef Lugs'' which I had ignored but now he's brought out the Fuck-wad, whatever that is, ascending his line of abuse, and I find myself turning around without really wanting to – just let nature take its course even if it's like watching a car crash – and walking back to confront him.

Stevie – ''What seems to be the problem?''

Worker – ''You awrite?''

Stevie – ''Fine. Why you shouting at me?''

Worker – ''I'm asking if you're awrite.''

Stevie – ''You a fucking doctor?''

Worker – ''Hey, I'm asking if you're awrite and you're walking right by without saying anything.''

Stevie – ''So you think that shouting's gonna make it better?''

Worker – ''I shouted because of the noise of the traffic.''

Stevie – ''No you didn't – you shouted because you felt disrespected since I didn't respond to your retard comment the first time so you got all angry about it and thought you'd try to give yourself a little lift by insulting me and now that it's backfired and I'm in your face you're backing down and trying to bullshit your way out of a confrontation.''

Worker – ''I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.''

I'm not but decide not to press the matter further. As I walk away I am half expecting some more abuse to be thrown but can hear nothing. Head down, eyes forward, let's get through the rest of this journey before the rain gets any worse. I am filled with regret and guilt from my reaction. I should be big enough now to just walk on by. It was probably his idea of a bit of banter. I'm supposed to remember that we are all connected and part of the same team and so this stranger is my friend and not my foe.

I'll add it to the list of things I have to speak with my psychologist about when I see him in a couple of days. I spoke with my housing officer the other day as well as he wanted to know how I got on with his referral to the Scottish Welfare Fund for me to get white goods in my cave. When I mentioned that I had failed not only that but also my fitness for work assessment and so had no income (no one knows about the window cleaning) until I start up with the college on the 04th of next month he wrote me out a Food Bank voucher. After I see Dr. Bacon on Monday afternoon I will cash this voucher.

I feel guilty about it – taking free food from the public's donations when I don't really need to – but how could my story be believable without accepting the offer of a Food Bank voucher? Lindsay says that the obvious best way to approach this is to make a couple of generous donations to the Food Bank once my income from the Student Loans Company starts up next month.

That would be a little step in the right direction. A way of cleansing this negativity from my mind.

It can be all-consuming.

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Stevie

Writing a little later this morning.

1445

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, August 20th 2017 (The Graduation Ball)



A little later this morning again with the post which is a good thing. All of these early morning rises in a row have taken their toll. Lindsay's cat seems not to bother trying to wake her up (probably knows it won't get much luck) and instead it is me who gets walked on, pushed with the cheek, and meowed at until I get up and feed her and this has now been trained into her. If she wants food in the morning she need only wake me up. This has helped me out immensely over the course of the past few months and has led to real consistency with bedtimes and rising times – something that I can safely say now makes my previous experiences in not sleeping for days on end seem like a great distance away – but this morning I could have done with an extra hour or so.

I think I'll post this and then get myself out and about. The darker nights are creeping in and so I am aware, reminded nightly, that there will actually be an end to all of this light night stuff pretty soon. Summer is but a period of time. The cold will not be too far off. So I think I'll get up off my ass and get out for a walk this morning. It's better on a Sunday as everyone else seems to be doing at this time what Lindsay's cat will not allow me to and so there aren't as many perils on the roads outside of these towns. It gives me options that just aren't there on a Saturday.

At the moment my month of August is still short of one hundred miles but a good walk could break that. Even a thirteen mile one will do it but the route I'm thinking of will be more like seventeen, maybe eighteen miles. That's work off some of that food from last night's graduation ball.

Shaun has been in contact asking me if I'm going to the college induction day a week tomorrow. He was a fellow student of mine last year and will be again this year but when I take a look through my emails I cannot find an invitation. Maybe there are multiple induction days and I am on some other one but more likely it is an administration error like it was last year and I'll have to contact them myself to find out that I am one of a few that has not been added to the system. It's great to think that in two weeks I could be back in a classroom and pushing myself again.

But anyway – the graduation ball! It wasn't really a ball – more like a graduation piss up in a club setting with a bunch of newly qualified nurses drinking as much as they can in as little time as possible. I don't know where the ''ball'' comes from. Maybe they were being polite to the men in attendance and giving a little reference to the return of the football season which is now into its third weekend of the new, and very welcome back, campaign. I doubt it.

As an event it was good. Plenty food, plenty fun and happiness, not the best music but that's just me, and most people having a good time celebrating the fact that university life is over and, barring those who have placement time to make up in the coming weeks like Lindsay has, they can now emigrate into the workplace after a break.

On a personal note I learned a lot of stuff about myself. I felt as though I did a little better than my last big social occasion when Lindsay and I went to her friend's wedding back in May. I didn't know anyone there either but struggled the whole time to connect with anything, with anyone, and the day and night were long. This time I did a little better despite not knowing anyone once again. This is not really Lindsay's group as she took a year out and so the class she started with graduated last year – this group she has been with for only the past year – but it was good to see how she has managed to make friendships, connections with people, over the past twelve months.

Once again, as has been the case on so many occasions during this (becoming quite lengthy) sober stint of mine, I can't help but notice what the wasted time created by my past life has left me with. Everyone else is doing quite well, unless they have their Facebook faces on, but so many people seem to be filled with good ideas and hopes for their futures. Couples appear to already have one half working steady and now that the other has just graduated to being a qualified nurse they can start planning for good times ahead. I notice now no one seems to plan on doing anything that might be considered charitable. Not one couple mentions anything that they might do that would contribute towards any real or significant change – perhaps the caring of nursing is enough, but it's still a shame. I see real power in this hall but everyone seems only to want to use it for their own self image and needs. Maybe the ideas of helping to create a better world comes to people when they are a little older.

Maybe it's something other than this. Maybe it's to do with suffering. I had a friend, Mikey, who used to always say that while we were no doubt suffering – we weren't really suffering, as there are people starving in the world and have no one to care for them. At the time we were actually both starving. At the time I agreed but now I have the feeling that Dr. Bacon would wonder if I was saying this not to attach myself emotionally to the situation. Sleeping in a car on the worst winter in Britain for decades while rarely eating? Until I accept that I was suffering then maybe I'll never be able to move past that part of my life, another part that seems fairly distant now.

Again it helps to put things into perspective. While everyone here seems to have the best of everything and the confidence (and bellies) that go with constantly getting what you want they are simply products of their experiences, as I am mine. I couldn't handle going through their degrees at the ages they were when they went through them but also I could see how what I went through, even over the course of just 2009, would crush their spirits and souls into the ground and render them as useless as I have been.

We are all just fragile little children versions of ourselves. We are powerless. We hate saying this when we arrive in AA. That we are powerless over alcohol. We're actually a heck of a lot more powerless than that. Rio Ferdinand loses his wife and is left to care for his kids alone and talks about how he felt suicidal. Groomed and brought up with the winning mentality that comes with playing football at the highest level not enough to teach him to deal with this. More people die from suicide after war than from the actual war themselves. Soldiers given the ultimate training but ultimately breaking down just like any of the rest of us. We are extremely fragile creatures acting as though we are bomb-proof, all of us.

Walking these seventeen miles will help work off some of that steak pie and cake (not on the same plate) from last night and, if I leave now, I can be back for lunchtime.

The official graduation will be in November.

One hundred new nurses let loose on the Scottish National Health Service.

Lindsay will be one of them.

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Stevie

Not one of them.

1350

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, August 21st 2017 (Relationships Scotland Part Seven: Absent)


The first couple of weeks were just a case of us easing into the service – us getting to know our counsellor Donna and she getting to know us, plus a little insight into why we might be attending such sessions in the first place. When we turned up for the third session things started to take shape a little and we looked at Lindsay's genogram – a method for looking into our past relationships with our family and how members of our family interacted with ourselves and each other. Basically what did we learn about relationships while we were growing up from watching others? Lindsay went first. I had heard most of it before but it was different with Donna taking the counsellor's role and knowing what questions to ask, and when, to get the best responses. In the end I felt as though I had a much better knowledge of where Lindsay comes from.

After this Lindsay was at placement and so we had agreed that I would attend a session solo the following week. To keep things fair and equal it was decided that I would not be going my genogram until Lindsay would be present and that there would also be a session where I wasn't there. If one of us gets a solo session then the other must also have one. My genogram would wait and I was fine with this. During my solo session we talked about my past (which may have triggered this nostalgia I am still getting a month or so later) and where I went to school, and what did I do when I left school, and fatherhood, and on and on.

Session five had intended to be my genogram but we ditched this to look at stress and fear and how Lindsay and I look at both. I look at them as separate entities, which I am told they are; whereas Lindsay looks at the both as one collective evil, which we are told is unhelpful. It is agreed that Lindsay and Donna will go over stress-handling techniques when they have their one to one session in a couple of weeks.

Session six was last week and we looked at my genogram. This came at a time of peak nostalgia and I had just come back from being at my home town with my mother who I hadn't seen for a couple of months and my two nieces who I hadn't seen for four months. I wouldn't say I was feeling emotionally charged or anything like that but my mind was tossing and fro-ing between trying to believe the happy memories of growing up I think I had and fighting the pain and disappointment in knowing that these memories might just be bullshit that I'm making up or remembering inaccurately. It was fine though, I got a bit of a reality check. This week is Lindsay's solo session and so I won't be invited.

This is fine as I have my own agenda for the day starting with work this morning. Ever since I gave Barry the Bullet a little fright when I genuinely wasn't sure if I'd be best just going it alone from now on as I couldn't rely on him any longer he has been up in the mornings and has come to work and he has also managed to keep credit in his phone enabling us to be able to reach each other with little problems. Already this morning it has been agreed that we will both be at the meeting point and so all looks on for a morning of hard work cleaning windows. Yesterday we enjoyed only the second dry day in August and this morning it looks as though we might be getting the third, even if the weatherman is telling us this will all be changing again tomorrow. Live for the present and don't resent the Scottish summer weather – it's out of my control.

Come lunchtime I will be busy with other things. I have to withdraw money from the Credit Union to make up for cash I've taken from our holiday fund for the weekend. It's a shame that the graduation ball wasn't free, food too. Actually – food can be free but we'll get to that in a minute. I'll just have time to then walk from the Credit Union to the local hospital for my session with Dr. Bacon. I have my homework with me and so I would imagine we'll be going over that. I was asked to look closely at my reactions and behaviour this last fortnight, specifically when my coping modes come out to play, and to note it all down in these little sheets he gave me. I have done so with a few examples – the most notable being my reaction to the workman on the road at the end of last week – Deef-Lugs. I'll have to make the best of this session as I know that Bacon goes off on some annual leave after this and we have already pencilled in our next appointment and it isn't until September 28th – more than five weeks away. It'll be a long time but this is okay. He says that once we start getting into more intensive work we will require regular fortnightly appointments but for now it is okay to let a bigger gap appear from time to time if it is okay with me. I'm fine with it. There's no rush for this – so I've been told since the moment I put the drink down.

After this session I will be making way to the local Foodbank office to cash my voucher. I've been quite good at getting these over the time I've been sober (couple of times when I was drunk too although back then they just acted as enablers, in many ways I wonder if they still perhaps do) but this is the first time I'll have had to haul my bags all the way through to another town. Our cupboards will be full this evening. When my first student loan payment goes into the bank I will make a donation to the Foodbank – that it the deal as I wouldn't starve were I not to cash this in this evening whereas in the past it has been a lifeline. I'm kinda just taking it because it was offered at the time, this time by my housing officer.

Tonight's session between Lindsay and Donna is at the later time of seven instead of five so I'll be back here before Lindsay. We did have the five until six slot but this would be no good for when I start back up at college (two weeks today) and so we managed to get the later slot.

All in all – nothing to complain about today.

Not yet.

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Stevie

Not able to complain.

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