Reading The Classics – ‘Rabbit, Run’

In 2019, myself and a friend sat down to form a pseudo bookclub. Our goal: to read the classics we are yet to get round to. We started with John Updike’s debut novel Rabbit, Run.

The text follows the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a former high-school basketball star who abandons his family before the imminent birth of his second child; chasing a feeling of “it” that he deems missing, he instead ends up in a relationship with a local prostitute. In the opening pages of the text Rabbit realises that “[local children] have not forgotten him: worse, they never heard of him”. It is this lost sense of purpose that Updike uses as the driving theme throughout the novel.

Haiku 3.

Why are all my poems

Miserable? And why cant

I stick to the lines?

Haiku 1.

Alcohol doesn’t.

Fill the void you feel inside.

Borderline violence.

Break Up – An Open Letter

On Getting Better and Starting Again.

I initially started this blog about half hour after turning in my final essay at University. I finished all my work early to be prepared for an operation that never came, and I suddenly found myself without anything to do. I was about to step out into the ‘Adult World’ for the first time, unsure of where I was going to find myself but certain that regardless of work I wanted to continue writing. This was my outlet for that.

That’s the idealised version. In reality I was writing to escape a very nasty break up, and this can be felt throughout everything I wrote; there were constant subtle and unsubtle attacks everywhere. I’m now able to recognise that during this time I was not very well. As I moved past the trauma of the breakup and entered full time work, my mental health deteriorated further. Unable to maintain the respectable amount of clicks I got when I started, I kept forcing out content that was subpar just for the sake of it. Eventually I was hospitalised and I stopped writing entirely. Ultimately I’m not proud or fulfilled by everything written on this blog.

Perhaps all of this was oversharing, but as of this week I have been discharged from therapy for showing a “continued and concentrated effort to get better”. I desperately want to get my passion for writing back and it felt like the only way I could start to do that was to admit to my previous failings. Over the next few days I’m going to start pruning content and restructuring this blog into something I can be proud of. Going forward there’s going to be no schedule or expectations, I’m solely going to be writing when the mood strikes me.

 

This is my return to writing after four months, but for the first time in a little while I don’t expect anyone to ever read this. I’m writing solely for me and it’s refreshing.

Admitting To Who I Am – An Essay on Mental Illness

Today is “Mental Health Day 2018” and I have sat silently seething watching my Twitter and Instagram timelines. It’s not that I’m not broadly in favour of breaking down the stigma attached to mental illness within society, I just don’t think people really understand the concept. I’ve watched people I know personally end tweets #mentalhealthday thinking that’s enough, when I know full well that they’ll continue with stigmatising behaviour (bullying, peer pressure etc.) regardless. In short I don’t think people engage with the spirit of the day in the right way.

Rather than work myself into a state, I started thinking about what I could bring to the discussion. Big headed I know, but I have often been very frank about my struggles with mental illness and my therapist has been increasingly eager for me to write an update; there’s the suggestion that I’m much more honest about myself in writing than I would be with an internal dialogue. So this is the update – who I am, how I feel and how mental illness affects my day to day. If you struggle with mental illness yourself, I hope you read this and recognise that you are not alone in your battle. If you have no history with mental illness I hope this allows you more insight into mental illness than you might get from a hashtag on social media.

 

Super Mario Odyssey – Review

The release of the Nintendo Switch was something of a statement of intent from the legendary Japanese brand; an exercise in reinvention after the relative failure of the Wii U. The console launched with a new Legend of Zelda game, a long running series built around different re-tellings of the same “myth”. Rather than rely on tradition, Breath of the World forgoes the typical Zelda structure for an organic open world where the player can go wherever they choose. Nintendo took a brave risk with one of it’s most beloved franchises and it paid off.

Now it’s Mario’s time for reinvention – and, just like Link before him, he’s finally embracing the open world.

Wish you were here.

‘Turtles All The Way Down’ Review – Reading John Green As An Adult

As a twenty-something man, John Green emerged after my adolescence and as such I was never part of his target audience. However with his phenomenal new novel Green shows the strength of his writing is his ability to be universal.

A Few Notes on Depression and Getting Help

(all statistics in this article can be found here: https://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/key-data-mental-health)

The biggest ‘cause of death of men aged under 45 in the United Kingdom is suicide. A frankly shocking statistic that can be reinforced with many more. It is believed that one man out of eight will be suffering from some form of mental illness which, using statistics from the 2016 census, would total roughly four million people. Men account for 76% of all suicides within the country, but only 36% of referrals to psychiatric treatment were for men. From all of this data we can draw the conclusion that there is perhaps a social stigma that prevents men from recognising mental health issues, or choosing to access mental healthcare services when they are struggling.

This is reinforced with my own experiences with mental illness. I am a 22 year old, English Literature graduate living in South East London. I have been aware of all of these statistics for numerous years and would always encourage my friends to get medical help if they were struggling; I even devoted much of my undergraduate career to research on toxic-masculinity and mental health within modern literature. Yet despite this, I never once considered myself depressed until I was on the brink of killing myself. I suffer from a physical disability called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and whenever that got bad I would always go straight to hospital. When it came to my mental health I let it build up until I could take it no more; to this day I still couldn’t tell you why this was, I can only guess I was scared of how people would react.

But I did get help, and it’s one of the best things I have ever done. In May of this year, I was formally diagnosed with Severe Depression and I’ve been receiving treatment since. Recently a Doctor encouraged me to write about my feelings so that I could better understand them – I’m not there yet unfortunately – instead I would rather talk about my experiences with mental healthcare. Every single doctor or nurse I have discussed my condition with has been patient, kind and empathetic. It wasn’t treated like a weakness as I had feared, but rather something they could help me overcome. I have watched the NHS perform miracles with an incredibly small budget, and I feel morally bound to record this experiences so that it may encourage anyone like me who struggles but is afraid of taking that initial leap.

Going to my GP to discuss mental illness and suicidal thoughts has changed my life.  I can’t pretend, recently I have been feeling a little low and on particularly bad days I’ve blamed my anti-depressants for making me feel worse. But that’s just the depression talking. When I felt like that I went back to my doctor, and when I panicked during the discussions he instead asked about my love of reading – he treated me like a human, rather than a patient to rush out of the door. If you have read this far down and found any of this resonating with you, I beg that you get help. You are not weak for being depressed, and no doctor will treat you as such. In my experience they treated me like an individual, giving me access to tools that may help me in future. In all honesty I still struggle with my mental health every day, but now I’ve got a lot more in my corner to keep me battling on. There’s a wealth of wonderful people out there trained and willing to help you, all you’ve got to do is take that first brave step and get help.

(If you’ve read this blog and would like to reach out for advice, hit me up on the contact page and I will get back to you asap)

White Noise #9

Here’s the 5 tracks that have gone on to define my last 3 months – here’s a hint: it’s suprisingly not all sad American bands!