Thoughts

Were we meant to understand mortality?

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But still there was this fear I couldn’t shake, I had determination, ambition, motivation, frustration but ultimately a strange fear that followed me through. Through all the changes, all the decisions, all the experiences, a dulling, numbing fear that controlled everything. A fear of dying that stops you living.

Were we meant to understand mortality? Is that what drives us to be more? Or is it why we live in denial of it, scared to face what is coming to us all, to live not despite it, but because of it. Because we are given the chance to know that it will end, to make of it what we can while we can.

Time is a strange thing, chasing us all yet stretching on forever before us, and oddly as I get older, there is less fear. It is what it is, I cannot change the defined parameters of time or death, so am at the mercy of them whether I like it or not. Instead of being haunted or followed by them, I have decided they can accompany me on this journey of strangeness, which is now a little less lonely.

(c) K Wicks

Stress

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I have been seeing the word stress used more and more on social media. And rightly so, people are watching their lives and futures being destroyed, not by an illness, but by people. In the beginning back in March, I knew this would be a tough road. Not everyone has experienced high levels of stress, and most certainly won’t have experience in dealing with what is going on now. Nothing like this has ever happened, so how are we meant to have coping mechanisms already in place to help? And while under so much stress, how do you develop them?

I can only use personal experience to try and help myself through this and wonder how everyone else is actually coping. As weird as it sounds, I feel as though my early life was now training, it seemed so confusing at the time and has taken me years to come to terms with it all. But the feelings have been brought back by recent events of lockdown and what has followed.

I’ll explain as best I can. My mother was, picking my words carefully here, controlling, manipulative and selfish. She told many lies for her own gain and controlled everyone in the immediate family through what seemed like clever tactics at the time. Keeping everyone just separate enough so that we wouldn’t discuss it all and find out the truth. We moved house every couple of years and just before I was 10, she married a squaddie and we were shipped of to Germany. To put it all into context for you of what she was really like – I didn’t know she had got married for a third time. I found the wedding photos on her bedroom dresser one day and I asked what they were and who was in the picture with her. The response was “Oh, I got married last week and we are moving to Germany in 3 weeks”.

That is how my life started to be derailed and the type of person I was dealing with to bring me up. I did not know at that point that she had also walked out on us all for a few years when I was very young, my selective amnesia was in play as I understand it now. I look back and realise I had to develop coping mechanisms early for certain things. Germany was ok, I made friends and stuff and got on in school. But I feel like a part of me was left behind, almost as if everything thereafter was an out of body experience. I was present and taking part, but part of me wasn’t. I do wonder now if being hyperphantasic may have added to this strangeness in mind. And the fact that no-one else knew. They didn’t know how much I would be thinking of things, imagining them, projecting future thoughts. It made me feel very separated an awful lot, not lonely, because to be fair, I can replay so much in mind you can make people up if you want to. Not imaginary friends, but imaginary scenarios with people. This is how I prepared myself for life, because nothing else was preparing me. After a year and a half in Germany we were posted back to the UK. Two years here, then posted to Cyprus. Then back to the UK ending up in County Durham, all by the age of 14. Very different from the down south UK I was used to.

My mother also had health issues, which were also used to get what she wanted. At the time it just seemed like someone who was unlucky, was making the best of what they had. Even I thought that, she had me fooled for years too. My older siblings knew more of the truth than I did, so I was easier to ‘work’ on than they were. I was quite trusting of my family and gullible. She tried to convince me I had health ailments as I became a teenager and seemed to want to have a companion with it all (you know what they say, misery loves company!). I could feel the apron strings getting tighter and tighter. But after all the moving and weird family shit that had happened, and ending up in an completely unfamiliar place, I became unstuck mentally. Had a bit of a breakdown they said, clinically depressed and with behavioural issues.

For the first six months, I did not leave the house after developing agoraphobia on top of it all. Then I was bribed, or rather my mother came up with a compromise, she said if she got a dog, would I go out? Of course I said. (We had given up our three family dogs to go into the army life and I was gutted at the time). Took a little while, but we did get a couple of dogs, and I did make the effort to go out. I also set myself small tasks each week of going to the library so I had something to focus on. I loved to read and needed books to keep me occupied. Pocket money wasn’t enough for my reading appetite back then. I still had my anxiety pretty much everyday for years, I just got used to it and decided to go with the saying – Feel the fear and do it anyway. I couldn’t go to school so I had a state supplied home tutor for 3 hours per week as I couldn’t cope with the mainstream curriculum anymore. Before I was due to do exams I turned 16 and my tutor informed me that my compulsory education was now over and I could officially leave if I wanted to and not do exams (which to be honest were freaking me out). I was delighted and instantly dropped out, but was also devastated and believed I had ruined my whole life already. I believed the lie that if you don’t get a formal education you can’t do well in life, and that lie came from my grandparents – who funnily enough both went to university. But at the time I felt I had set myself up for failure from just 16 years old. So I started trying to get jobs and despite having depression, anxiety, full blown psoriasis from stress and migraines – I still put myself out there and tried to take part in life. I had no friends to socialise with even if i had wanted to and couldn’t just walk into shops or places without having a quiet panic attack.

After four years of trying to get myself back on track to just be able to be vaguely normal, a tragedy struck two weeks before my 18th birthday. My mother, who’s behaviour had recently become quite erratic and strange, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. So whatever I thought my life was going to be like, changed from that point. Any plans I might have had or decisions I thought I was wrestling with, were all gone. Instantly replaced by a new set of issues and a new future that was not of my choice or my making. I left home five weeks after my birthday, moved to a county where I had no family but one old family friend and tried to make a life for myself. It was stressful, there is no other word for it. That’s the short version of those events, there was a lot more to it and within it, and maybe one I will be able to write it all.

Having the rug pulled out from under you and the goalposts changed at every hurdle is stressful. Never knowing where you are or what is going to happen next, is stressful. And your health being used as a weapon of control, is stressful. All these things have been recently triggered again in my mind by the events happening around the country. They seem oddly familiar, the tricks of someone/something that is not being honest, has an ulterior motive and is entirely self-serving. And despite what they say, don’t have your best interests at heart. I can only hope that other people are finding ways to cope and are developing the mental strategies needed to understand what is happening and the long term effects that it will undoubtedly have, on us all.

(c) K Wicks

Who were we?

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How could we have known.

We found ourselves in the middle of the biggest disaster of living memory. But within that disaster a plot began to unfold. We were being used as weapons against each other during what initially appeared to be a terrible new illness. There was a silent invisible enemy, one you could not quantify or calculate, but one they told you was there. The government told you, the media told you, even the doctors told you. Why would they all lie you asked yourself?

For years the people had wanted looking after. For years they have begged the government for more rules, more surveillance, more punishment, more control. In times of uncertainty they looked to them for safety, guidance and support. Not each other. Work and life moved people further away from each other, and communities split apart and fell. No-one was looking out for each other anymore. Every man for himself was the new way. This was not an accident.

We might wonder why the ‘people’ look to the government for answers, assistance and to hold their hand, because that is the way they wanted it to be. But they needed everyone on board, so they took away all you have worked hard for or wanted to have. They made us sit while our futures slipped away, made us watch it slowly crumble. They knew we would comply, they planted enough fear to make it so. But what could we do, they had politicians, the police, the army and all the medical personnel on their side being fed from the same trough.

Who were we?

Enlight65

Unexplained#1…

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Sometimes you see things that can’t always be explained by your rational mind, but that doesn’t mean it has to have an outrageous or far fetched origin. I’m a skeptic. I read what people have seen, and have watched the programs about abductions and experiments. I take an interest in the idea that there may be something other than ourselves here, I’m just not sure that something is from somewhere else. There are dark, remote and barren regions on what we call Earth, and in the vast depths of the ocean we have not yet begun to explore or understand.

I have seen a few strange lights in the night sky, that move far quicker than I would expect for an airplane, or they don’t move for a time. Not alien, just out of place and unidentified to my eye. Noticeable, but not explainable to my own mind. It’s hard to come to a conclusion based on just hearsay and other peoples experiences and when you can’t clearly see what you are seeing.

But then I accidentally photographed something, a first hand picture I took myself back in 2011. With not a notice of the actual content at first, I did not see this in the sky at the time. I wanted to take a picture of a colourful hedge in my garden, two tones in fact, green leaves with dark red leaves behind them, with the bright blue sky for contrast. Not a great pic, but not a bad one for its purpose. I took two photos a few seconds apart.

Photograph 1

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Photograph 2

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It took me about a week to get round to uploading and working out if I could make a nice sky edit from these. But on closer inspection, realised that in pic 1, there is a small flat line, an object that looks metallic but without wings. I have spent much time looking up and have seen glimpses of many planes, they are extremely noticeable in the day time sky, lets be honest, and much easier to zoom in on. So, the only reason I gave this more attention than I usually would is that I didn’t see this when taking a picture and it has disappeared within a second or two. By pic 2, the object is gone completely and in the top left hand corner there are two crows messing around, highlighting to me how different birds look to this – and the birds were quite a distance away and appear as two tiny black dots almost. I do photography birds of prey like kites and kestrels so am quite used to seeing nature flying around.

Possibly UFO 2

Most ordinary planes I have seen take some amount to time to make their journey across the sky, and technically I didn’t even see it, not with my own eyes anyway. So I have to put this as a UFO, not an alien craft from another world, I couldn’t possibly presume that. But a flying craft of unknown origin to me. In fact there may be many explanations of what it might have been, but I just haven’t settled on one yet…

 

(c) K L Wicks

 

 

Anxiety…(mine was more relevant than I thought)

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Another chapter excerpt from my book – Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere. This chapter is more relevant now more than ever for me…

ANXIETY

Society alone can give you anxiety, a stressful home life or working environment can trigger these emotions and feelings too. But if through your life of extra upheaval, emotional blackmail and what would be termed ‘a very dysfunctional’ upbringing, what if you didn’t get the necessary experience to understand all this and know what was going on? What if you didn’t ever develop coping mechanisms or recognise what might be a weakness in yourself or potential strength? Then how can you hope to make it easier for yourself and work through it? This is the type of question I ask myself, then go to work trying to unravel what it really means. I also know you don’t have to have had a dysfunctional life to feel anxiety, it can happen to anyone, but it definitely makes the path a bit harder.

What I did work out was to spend less time worrying and trying to predict the outcome of things I hadn’t done yet or that hadn’t yet happened. This is where I feel mental time travel has held me back a bit. I missed out on a lot of experiences because I couldn’t stop theorising what would happen and how I would feel. I have a good memory for feelings, so unfortunately I still come across an event or idea that would require me to be in the presence of ‘people’ and I just can’t do it. However much I might want to be a part of the subject matter. Not because I am always anxious, but because now I have the experience to know I don’t want to cause it and will be awkward and can seem rude. There are some things I just like the idea of, but I ‘walk’ myself through and it does always end the same. I’m bored, don’t know how to join in, feel uncomfortable and want to go home.

This isn’t negative, this is realistic. I am not a naturally happy go lucky person, and I can deal with crowds if I have to. I’ve been to trade shows, tattoo conventions, festivals and work networking events, although that was a number of years ago now. I like to believe I could again if I really wanted or had to.

I have just worked out I don’t want to, I am not that person. I just tried to be for a really long time. I don’t socialise now at all, have very limited family and keep myself to myself mostly in real life, and I am happier and more stable for it. But it is a shame to think in order to have a quiet enjoyable life you can’t have people generally in it. I know now that’s because people are the random element I cannot foresee, predict, control or understand fully. I myself am included in that.

It is disturbing to me to see what society has become, how frustrated everyone is, how the goalposts keep moving and creating a confused landscape. It seems we went through a phase of encouraging everyone to be themselves when nobody knew who they were, and it’s all gone a bit wrong.

Just paying attention to the world around you and media driven news and propaganda can cause people to feel worry. Throughout the last century there have been many scare tactics and fear campaigns, just for the sake of profit and manipulating the masses. I just try and pick my way through what is around me and apply concern and worry to that which should be worried about. But anxiety for me is sometimes applied to things I cannot change so I try and minimise this where I can.

I know I have covered dreams already but as this is applicable to anxiety, a further reference needs to be mentioned.

Example: I have watched and do watch a lot of disaster movies, apocalyptic, life altering event films that give you the worst case scenario. I love them, partly because we always defeat the impending doom so really they are feel good films to me. I have gone through phases of having nightmares though, not so much these days (I have a theory about why), but most of these are and have been about disaster. Whether it be alien invasion, zombie virus, volcano, tidal wave or tsunami, they all had a common theme. I would need to save myself and my dogs. The panic at knowing it’s coming or of not being able to get away can often linger well into the next day. The nightmare is no longer happening, but the feeling is. My husband found it really bizarre that I even had dreams, and even weirder that the feeling of something completely fabricated can stay with me. Also that I went out of my way to watch films that would give me nightmares.

I determined this to be nothing to with the movies per say. But because I was anxious in real life about something happening to my dogs, or that I wouldn’t be able to save them or myself. The reason I decided this, was because after I met my husband, I very quickly stopped having those nightmares. Because I fully believe in the time of a crisis, he is exactly the person you would want by your side. In real life I began to feel safe, secure and protected (something I had never had before), and this transferred to my dreams. I am still worried about these things on a basic level, because they are possible, but it doesn’t take over as it did before.

The anxiety is managed, but not eliminated. How could you possibly not have some anxiety about the world around you? Firstly we are told we are hurtling through the massive void which is space, while spinning. We are at the mercy of unpredictable weather and on a geologically unstable earth. We are surrounded by unpredictable animals and people, and can be killed by microbes we can’t see. Just that little lot gave me much to worry about, before I even learnt about what terrible things humans do. So when I would hear people talk of being anxious, I used to think, yes, but are you anxious enough? Now I realise it’s turned into something else entirely. It’s become an industry, and rather than help people to cure it, they help to manage their anxiety, labelled it and designed medicines for it – at great profit to someone I’m sure.

I do believe people should be concerned about the world around them and of the harmful things out there that can affect people, but to try and have a quality of life too. That’s the balance I have always been trying to achieve. I now believe experiencing some anxiety is normal, this is a mechanism that has served its purpose well in the evolutionary past, as we are led to believe. I’m not sure we should constantly be trying to dampen our human responses just to function. At what level do we accept that the trigger for so many might need to be addressed – but when the trigger is life itself and society, what can be done? More medication I guess.

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Living Up To Expectations…

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I’m not sure if I had known it would have made a difference, but after I had almost completed my first publishing project I was made aware of other family members who were successful in the field of writing. I had wanted to write since I was six years old, and did, short stories and projects that made me feel satisfied and content. I did not always have support with these stories, often told my reading and writing of horror were a waste of time, I should be reading educational material or at least the classics. They did not entertain me at the time, so I chose horror, or sometimes I think horror chose me.

But my passion for writing continued and after a number of years immersed only in work, the need to write took over. The book was pretty much writing itself in my head so I thought I best put pen to paper (or open a new word file on the computer as is the way these days). Only when it was in the finishing stages of editing did I dare tell my closest family, my grandparents. They are well read people and I was so nervous about what they would think, but I gave them my manuscript and waited.

I hadn’t really comprehended how much their approval meant to me until they gave it. It was the green light I had been waiting for without even realizing it, to have the most critical people I knew pass me as acceptable or at least as having potential. It made my day. But then followed the reveal, did I know, he said, that multiple family members were published including my great uncle, for doing a play script which is still used today of Treasure Island, and my great aunt and her husband, both authors and he having been a journalist and correspondent for a very well heard of paper for years. Even my uncle had published a book.

For a moment I wasn’t sure what this meant, am I now expected to be a successful author like other members of the family, or was it just encouragement to show me it can be done. Either way, I then had to work out exactly who’s expectation was I really trying to live up to, theirs, or mine?…

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(c) MKW Publishing