intervenous, gateways and signposts
words just get in the way
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
PS. A note on language. ‘This word doesn’t exist,’ said my editor in 2015. ‘Shakespeare invented words,’ says I. ‘You’re not Shakespeare.’
True, too true. ‘intervenous’: the act of intervention in triage situations when Authorities tell you not to but the idea, on the ground (in the field) is to keep someone alive.
Counsellors, Psychotherapists, have a strict policy of non-intervention. Let the client work it out. In 2017, I was in deep trouble when Housing Benefit was stopped. Nobody would tell me why. Without intervention — the intervenour got a telling off from on-high — I would have been on the street with my dog. Brilliant. This site page is about self-intervention. When not to go with the flow, when overwhelming your own mind.
a picture paints a thousand words
The two mugshot pictures on the front cover of this site (not this one) were taken four years apart. They are sign-posts, gate-keepers. One gate is the passing through, the beginning of the end, of one kind of life. The second, after four years of — um, let’s call it ’stuff’ for now — the beginning of a new kind of life. The four years bounded as intro and outro of the prison sentence of transition.
2016 (the picture on the right of the front page) was two years after diagnosis. Although it limped for a bit) the ending of a relationship with a lady who looked after me and in return I delivered an alcoholic’s snarling anger. I so, so wish her well. Four years earlier I had put my company into administration, lost my family-home and family, my identity, my self-respect. I was in free-fall. The picture in the middle column is between lock-down visits to a Cheltenham pub with two dear friends, the point where the belay kicked in and the inching task of jumar-ing myself back up the rope began. I’ll glide over the two diseases architected to kill me in this period, not caused by Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, but a result of ‘multiple and large pulmonary embolisms’ (‘what’s the good news?’ to the consultant in AEC. ‘You’re still alive, son.’) in both lungs as side-effects.
There are a few problems talking about self-administered ‘mental health’. Words are inadequate. Everybody’s journey is different, exposition of one’s own journey ought be a template, but is assumed to be, or taken as, instruction. It takes a long time, can be painful, and if you get it wrong, can be dangerous. The footballer’s sneering ’show us yer medals’ misses the point. Usain Bolt had a coach, the coach had no Olympic gold medals. Bolt had plenty. For the team. And, there will always be people who joy in ‘shooting you down’. However well-meaning you may be, if their ill-meaning is book-covered in qualification or confidence, and if it comes cloaked in both, their ill-meaning is sugar-coated as authority — an imposter authority often undiscovered — then your own well-meaning seems inadequate. They bite through the substrate of your words being guidance not rules, and it is for the reader to evaluate, not them. Bolt has a skill, his coach (Glen Mills) has wisdom. Detractors have nothing but venom. A rattle snake that once it detects the warmth of infra-red just strikes, no matter what, because, well why not? it’s an apex predator (don’t tell that to the mongoose). Detractors have no other reflex. Unlike in the telling of your own story, which comes with consideration, empathy and respect for others’ intelligence.
go see who Courtney Hulbert became when he morphed into his shadow side … (or maybe morphed out of his shadow side!) –>
