Day Twelve

Mood: 6/10 - Much improved.

Energy: 6/10 - Felt ok today.

Withdrawals? Not so much.

Ate/Drank:

• Breakfast - Nakd bar.
• Lunch - Chicken stir fry
• Dinner - Chicken, sweet potato, carrots and onions.
• Drank: 2l water, 4 cups of peppermint/detox/camomile tea.

Not sure where to begin today. I had a session with Erin tonight and feel very open, very raw after it. Which is usually the sign of a productive hour. When I started this Whole 30, the idea was to break my addiction to sugar. As I highlighted in my opening blog post, I have always been addicted to something or other. And sure as night follows day, the pattern is continuing. I've been snacking on fruit and guzzling fizzy water with lime in the evenings no different to how I previously snacked on sweets and guzzled diet coke. Sure, I don't eat or drink the same volume, but there again I didn't eat or drink the same volume of those things when I started either. My concern is that the pattern repeats. I'm compulsive. So after much digging, it feels apparent that the reason I put away such a volume of food and liquid is because I'm physically trying to bury feelings. Anxiety has always been a big problem for me, and it manifests in my stomach, as does emotional pain - rejection, loss etc. The more I eat and drink, the more I can avoid it. The pattern is clear as day, whether it be booze or food, I've always done each to excess and when you're full, you can't feel. I take a table every day called Nexium, because I've had a problem with stomach acid going back about 7 years. I had a slew of tests by a bunch of doctors, and I had a camera down my throat to see what was going on. No one could ever find out the exact cause. I believe it was just the sheet volume of food & drink my body has been pounded with over the past two decades. 

So why? Why do I do this? What am I pushing away? No-one is more tired of exploring my past than me, believe me, but it's apparent that there is still an unresolved element. When I try and track back, I feel my father's accident in 1998 is the most traumatic thing in my past, more so even than his death, and I believe those wounds are less explored than his passing which I have reflected on many times over the years. I discussed it this evening.

It's funny that there are things that happened last week and I couldn't remember what specific day they were, but these memories are burnt into me. I stayed in Dad's house on the night of February 15th '98 to watch the WWF pay-per-view on Sky Sports, "No Way Out". I was up till 3am watching it. I was exhausted the next morning when he dropped me to school. I remember where we parked when he dropped me off, and him giving me a kiss on the forehead. He was going on holiday to Spain. I told him I'd see him when he got back. He never came back. Well, Des Murphy came back. But that was the last conversation I ever had with my Dad. 

When he didn't come home as scheduled, Mum told me he was ill. I don't know if it's just the self involved nature of a 13 year old, but I think it took weeks before I found this curious. I remember eventually wondering what was happening but only getting vague answers. Someone came up to me in school one day and said he hoped my Dad was ok, which in hindsight was such a giveaway. Eventually a couple months had passed when my Mum burst into tears one night telling me he was out of his coma. 

Out of his coma? I didn't know he was in a fucking coma. That hit me pretty hard.

When he came home, he was a different person. About 3 stone lighter, bloodshot eyes, 20 staples in his head. He wished me a Happy Christmas. It was May. He thought I was one of his friends and spoke about going to the pub. He thought we were in the 1970's. At that age I just remember the devastation I was heartbroken. Dad went away and I don't know who came back. Brain injuries are an ugly thing. At the time, it was discussed as a matter of when he'd be 'better' rather than if. It seems incredibly naive in hindsight, but I never considered the possibility he wouldn't be. Eventually, around the end of the year, a full 10 months after his accident, Mum gently broke the news to me one night as we were getting out of the car. "He might never be the same" she told me. You know when there's a twist at the end of a movie, and they flashback and show you all the clues they dropped that you missed along the way? I got that sensation. In an instant, I knew he was gone forever and that this new person was here to stay. And not only that, I knew I'd known it all along, but just never faced it. I was just turned 14. I couldn't. It just crushed me. Really did. Even typing it now, 19 years later, the devastation is right at the surface. 

In retrospect, I can understand why uncertainty breeds such mammoth anxiety in me. At such a defining age in my life, there were all these situations where things could go one way or another, and in each instance, the worst case scenario proved to be true. I believe that it's this period that is at the root of my desire to escape and avoid. The pain of that period and the 3 years between the accident and his passing are something I find it difficult to get any peace with. It feels as though there were these different moments when I lost him in different ways. It was just so bruising. I am not trying to start a pity party here, life happens. I just wish it hadn't happened when I was that age, so fragile and impressionable. Watching someone waste away like that and lose so much of their dignity. He wasn't my Dad anymore and it tore away at me, it was brutal. 

I needed to put this all down on paper after talking about it, to get it out, to put it into the world and be real. I told MT before she went to bed that it feels like I have this bag of rocks I'm carrying around. The weight of all this shit I had to experience when I should've been getting drunk and chasing girls. And try as I might, I can't quite put it down. But I really want to. And that's a start, which, for now, is good enough.