Once upon a time I was stuck.
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Once upon a time I was born and then I was dying.
Umbilical cord around my neck, it looked like an early exit from a brief life.
But then I wasn’t. The doctor sorted me out. I was being dramatic. But I was a baby so that’s to be expected. My tongue was tied, but otherwise I seemed grand. Just a very un-notable baby it quite an extraordinary world. Classic case of hurtling into existence.
I was a shy boy. I got embarrassed quite easily. I was afraid to talk to people I didn’t know. And at the beginning you don’t know almost everyone. But with people I knew and was comfortable with, I was very open. My brother was my best friend and my worst enemy all rolled into one tiny, blonde person. My mother and father were dead on. They gave me food and a bed and toys the entire way up.
As I got older, I got less shy but more fat. I ate a lot. I loved sweets, hated cheese, and enjoyed everything else in between. I was plump. It was described as puppy fat. Something I’d grow out of. Which made sense as I’d grown into it. But that was my own doing, so I concluded that I’d have to be the one to instigate the growing-out-of too. I hated most sports. Didn’t understand them. That was, until I found basketball and thought it was the most perfect sport anyone could ever play. Once that happened, I started the growing-out-of process. I got taller and less fat – although I’d forever consider myself to be fat afterwards because I had come to believe that I could never not be fat. I grew into my ears that were always bizarrely disproportionate to the rest of my head.
Girls didn’t like me for a long time but then, at some stage, they did start liking me. I was out of the universal friendzone. This was knowledge that changed me. The shyness all but gone, at sixteen I was dating. And then I got my heartbroken. And then my best friend killed himself.
And then I was stuck for the first time really, bar a few micro-moments prior to that. I got stuck. Depressed and untrusting. I wouldn’t open up to anyone in any real way for probably another ten years after that. I was seventeen. My route into stuckness was severe and traumatic.
I was emotionally numb for five years. Five years of emotionless, painless, lifeless fun. I tried lots of things to jumpstart my emotions.
I had a lot of sex. That never worked. I always thought the next time would be different but I always came away feeling nothing but tired. And my partners couldn’t understand it because I didn’t understand it enough to communicate. So they left. And I knew I should have felt upset about that but I didn’t feel anything. I wanted them to stay while also feeling no way different about their leaving.
I drank. I was in college for most of this stuck part so it didn’t appear out of the ordinary. I got on the cans, the pints, the bottles, the whiskey, the vodka. When I was drunk I was able to feel things. It felt nice to feel things. So I got drunk when I could, when my schedule allowed it. Which brings me onto my next point –
I got busy. I played basketball on four different times. I had two jobs. I was at college. I consumed information, played video games, went on nights out. I did everything I could not to spend time on my own because, if I did that, I’d have to acknowledge that something was off.
I didn’t cause myself to become stuck. But I was stuck longer than I had to be because I didn’t want to accept it. I dragged it out because I was scared. Scare of feeling broken. Scared of being seen as broken. I could have gotten myself loose long before I did.