I needed to know…

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These are two cases of self inflicted injuries in my childhood, quite unnecessary really, both of them. Some lessons are painful, and these are two of those. Sometimes I just had to prove something to myself, even if it was just what other people had told me.

I think I was about 7 and I had a bike. I loved it and would blat to the shops or down to my friends house, no problems. This one day, while biking to what we called ‘the 10 0’clock shop’ – probably no mystery as to why. Running parallel the very straight road, was another road with a row of houses, but was steeply dipped, coming up at the shop. So I decided to take the dipped road, with the intention of peddling as fast as I could down, so that it was a hard slog up, but you got some momentum behind you. Sounded like a solid plan, and it was.

Until for what would appear to be no reason at all, I started to wonder if what I had been told was true. Does your front wheel buckle if you let go while going fast? Now, you may think this thought might have just been dismissed and I continued on my speedy way. No. I wanted to know. Had to know. So, I did let go. And true to the information I had been given, my front wheel did buckle. I had not given thought to what really would happen next. What did happen next was a lot of pain, a fair amount of blood, some smashed in front teeth with one now missing, and a random lady coming out of one of the houses to help patch me up. I felt stupid, I’m not going to lie. And wasn’t really sure what it was that had made me do it, I had put logic to one side and just went for it. It scared me a bit, when I started to understand what I was capable to doing to myself. We are very breakable, and I guess as children it can be a hard time learning that.

Around the same time in my life, we had dogs, three of them. One of them in particular had an issue with things coming through the letterbox. Anything that came through was, for want of a better word, savaged. So, again, in my ridiculous childhood thought process, wondered. Could it be possible, that if I put my hand through the letterbox, will it get treated with the same contempt. You guessed it, i had to know. And the answer is yes, but only temporarily. In the dogs defense, as soon as he realised it was my hand, he let go, unfortunately his tooth had punctured one of my fingers, there was screaming, and lots of blood. A few stitches in my index finger and I was fine, but started to see a pattern forming. I didn’t trust what I was told and felt the need to prove these things, even at great cost to myself. It was here I think I first started to understand about instinct and how you are just going to have work out some things for yourself. Where others may be giving you really sound advice, take heed. That does not mean take the advice, but keep it in mind.

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(c) K Wicks

Death of the High Street…

~ MKW Publishing ~ 7 Comments

This has been a familiar term to me for years. Not too long ago we saw the shift from going to the high street to do your shopping, to driving out to industrial estates with huge Supermarkets selling everything under one roof. The convenience can’t be denied.

But I am one for saving what should be saved, so I have been looking at what it is that I no longer enjoy about the high street. Previously I used to enjoy being able to walk to town, go to the post office, maybe a charity shop or two, pick up some stationary and maybe pay in a cheque. Just a small list of jobs could involve a minimum of four premises, with a possible stop in a book shop or other clothing shop. But as times have changed this is no longer an option.

Most post office have now closed in smaller villages and in towns have been assimilated into convenience stores, often the staff looking confused at the most simple request. Most clients now pay online, so the need to ‘pop’ to the bank just isn’t there. And none of us could have escaped Amazon, anything you can want, within a day. Saving you travel time, parking fees and shopping time. That’s got to be a win. In comparison, the delivery fees are cheaper than your time. This is a slightly separate but related issue – the infrastructure of this country. It takes an awfully long time to get anywhere by way of a motor vehicle. Not just due to congestion and idiotic road works (where you have a massive piece of road sectioned off for a tiny piece on the pavement, and no one working on it!), but we don’t seem to have a logical system of traffic lights either. No-one looks at the overall flow of traffic, because surely if people can get where they are going, we can all get on and either spend money or make money. After all, that’s what it’s all about apparently. If people can get to work, the economy grows, this is why I am starting to think its meant to be this way, because some things are so easy to improve.

So it takes an age to drive to your high street if you can’t walk, and you will have to pay for parking if you can find any. We very rarely encounter a free car park here (that’s also where the large shopping estates won, they had free massive car parks). Lots of shopping centers within towns have many empty shops and what you do have doesn’t seem to be anything people want.

But, aside from the problems of cost, need and availability for shops there is another issue. We come to quality and customer service. Both of which I now think are long gone. I have worked in retail, as well as hospitality and commercial offices before going into finance, so I do understand what it takes to do these jobs. Most of my recent disappointing experiences in establishments have been down to the people or the product they are selling. It could well be that I have indeed managed to move somewhere that is feeling more and more like a cross between Hot Fuzz and The League of Gentlemen. I do not expect to be looked up and down when booking an appointment, I do not expect to be told ‘no we don’t sell hydrangeas’ when they are literally right behind me it turns out. And I don’t expect to wait for over five minutes before no-one appears, or served moldy food in the shop down the way. This is only within a few months, but it gives me an idea of what is going wrong. I can now say I won’t be putting my money into my local shops and I would say this is the suicide of the high street, not just the death of. I guess the old saying springs to the mind in these instances “If your face doesn’t fit…” But money is money in my book, and manners and etiquette come for free, so no excuse. There are so many things bothering me about this country at the moment, I feel this may not be the last rant!

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(c) K Wicks

Decisions…

~ MKW Publishing ~ 3 Comments

I think it all started with the first real decision that was put upon me.

‘Who do you want to live with? Your mum, or your dad?’

I remember the room, I remember the solicitor and her name. I remember the feeling, the emotion, and confusion and ultimately the decision that I felt was so heavy on my shoulders. I didn’t understand why they were asking me, I was nobody, the youngest. I was 7. I looked at my older siblings and understood they would say mum, so I took the unspoken implied lead and said what I thought I should say. It was power I didn’t want. I almost feel as though I stepped out of my body to make this decision and once I was out, I could see myself as a person. Sudden self-awareness all at once while under pressure, it was overwhelming and enlightening to say the least.

And from that I believe, my ability to make decisions was affected, either for good or bad I’m not entirely sure. But I have spent much time in my life mulling over the fallout from that, how many lives were changed forever just from that one question and answer that followed. My self-awareness became like a friend and a dark shadow to me after that. I was a child trying to learn how to function in a society I was already part of, but felt more apart from than they could ever know. Trying to work out other people’s intentions, while constantly questioning your own makes it hard to join in and just be yourself. I didn’t know who ‘myself’ was. And I didn’t join in. I was invited to very few birthday parties in my childhood and although I lived in a socially busy house, my home was not really open to friends from school unless they had been ‘vetted’ by my mum. This was awkward in itself and I found it easier to just not invite people home or go to their house instead. They usually had quite normal parents and it was nice sometimes to pretend to be a normal happy go lucky child, I could pull it off for a few hours at a time.

I was troubled though, I won’t lie. My awareness may have increased, but my understanding did not. And this started to lead me into all sorts of trouble and behaviours. I struggled to adapt to life, like many I’m sure. But sometimes I wonder if I ever really got over the sudden change and sense of responsibility, could it be that someone can spend their whole life being in shock?…

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(c) K Wicks

Hyperphantasia…

~ MKW Publishing ~ 1 Comment

I have recently been writing about the differences between two people living together with Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia (myself and my husband), but just wanted to do a small piece focusing on how it feels to have Hyperphantasia.

Visual imagery has been a big part of my life, for my learning, experiences and memories. I didn’t know there were varying degrees of this and now wonder how much this has affected my general interactions with people. For a start I have more hobbies than anyone I know, I need constant stimulation or thoughts to have as my brain feels like it is going ten to the dozen all the time. I never understood why so few people if any had the same mental rate of processing and interest in things as I did. I thought I was neurotic, people told me I was neurotic.

Now I suspect differently. From learning about various things I believe I come into the category of mild hyperthymesia, full hyperphantasia and chronesthesia (capability of mental time travel). All these labels actually well describe why there is so much going in on my head. Like doing a days work, while writing a book, and watching multiple movies, and having conversations – all at the same time as trying to engage in what is actually going on. Occasionally it gets very crowded and jumbled in there, but I have worked on systems, methods and mechanisms to live with it and try and make the best of it. But understanding it is helping. And some things calm and focus my brain to minimize it – like my job, singing and watching a good program. The downside of that is, if the program is that good, it will stay with me after and forever, getting logged in the giant filing room I have inside my head. It’s the same with songs or lyrics (or sometimes just an average phrase), they can get stuck on repeat in my mind, even if I haven’t heard them for an age.

I have had to make a big effort to dissociate emotions from these visuals though, for some that may sound odd, why wouldn’t you want to feel? Somewhere along the line, I felt having traumatic memories or invasive thoughts with imagery disturbing and didn’t want it, it wasn’t productive or helpful. I can’t stop the pictures, but I could work on how they are then processed in mind.

The constant visualization isn’t only confined to my waking hours though. Dreaming is something I have come to see both as an affliction and a welcome escape. The vividness and memory of these dreams is very intense, sometimes following me through the day. Sometimes my dreams are anxious, tiring and stressful, so I have to ask myself, do I feel anxious because of my dream, or was it an anxious dream because of my subconscious trying to tell me something? Or are they just directly influenced by what you see and watch and there is no hidden meaning at all? I am on the fence on that one, either way, they aren’t very settling but are great for fiction writing and ideas, just not for having a restful nights sleep.

For now I am just trying to keep up with my brain and will continue to work on the hows and whys of it all…

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Here is the full book that came of writing about this subject, if it happens to be of interest.

(c) K Wicks

Different Futures…

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Another excerpt from my work in progress…

Before we knew of Aphanstasia we decided to move to Spain. It was a leap of faith, we hadn’t been married long and tried to think of the best way to use our resources to have a good life. We discussed everything and we moved. It was hard and there was a lot to organise and sort out, but because he functioned great in the moment, it seemed a breeze really.

Only a small hiccup of a drunk taxi driver at the last hurdle trying to get to the airport to leave. But another one saved the day and we got there. The drama that unfolded when we were there though couldn’t have been anticipated and was caused mainly by a long list of shoddy agents and bad neighbours. We didn’t really have a chance to settle down and find our feet to plan anything. Instead going from one idea to another and having to change it every other week because of what we had found out, or how we had been treated. It was extremely frustrating. And it was in these frustrating times that we stumbled across this major difference in our thought process. He wasn’t planning ahead at all, he had no concept of our future in Spain and never had. That kind of explained why he always seemed to have objections to things, he speaks his mind at the time, there’s no saving it for later. It can make him seem quite outspoken, but it really isn’t on purpose I now know.

I have to be honest though, when I realised I was on my own with planning our future, it sealed the deal for me. I was already struggling and had thought I wanted to come home, I just didn’t want to ruin it for him. But deep down I must have known we weren’t going to be staying in Spain. I was grossly under prepared going there anyway (I can’t even speak the language), and knew this was the right thing to do.

I couldn’t do it for us both not on home soil. I had spent over thirty years working out how to function in this society, it sounds awful to say, but I actually felt too old to go through it all again. I needed the support of familiarity – not people, or friends as they are thin on the ground, but where I recognised. I realised that was my reference point, my safety zone. I felt like a duck out of water and wanted to correct it as soon as possible. I don’t often live with my mistakes once I have acknowledged them.

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(c) K Wicks (Photography taken in Spain)