Signed aff, pissed aff: A journey trundling towards self acceptance

What will there is to spend, what fortitude which lies inside, what good grace we hold is not immune to truncation. Not ever.

Erosion of self can take you to a point beyond all definition and which belies the very nature you are brought up to adopt.

For me, my education was a Paisley one. Modest, working class and always fighting.

Why? Well, that is a mystery with staying power.

Despite thinly-veiled, state-mandated propaganda glamorising a system pitted against us and unwittingly hoovered up and accepted by my kind, I still do not know.

Necessity, probably.

Childhood was simple, happy in fact, a foundation from which a young man was shaped.

Adolescence, however, brought with it deleterious damage.

That carried into adulthood — lurking in the background, masked and cloaked to the naked eye but, behind closed doors, the lights were ever on.

At times, behaviour was destructive and regrettable — decisions ill-advised. It has not all been excusable but the seismic shifts in my life and of those around me in my 27 years has taken its toll.

Beyond teenage trauma, mine is a circle which has, first hand, dealt with death, divorce, heartbreak, a suicide attempt, isolation, financial worries, stress — I could go on.

I’m not the only one facing or to have faced these problems. As far as I’m concerned I’m a fairly regular guy — nice and down to earth but keen to educate himself, seek counselling and improve.

Only recently has a diagnosis of PTSD hurtled towards me like a hangover of shattered glass and aching throbs spawned in the nooks and crannies of my mind.

Coupled with a on-off battle with anxiety beyond the specificity of time and a recent trundling acceptance that depression and its medication are, for now, a part of my life, it can take a man past the point of breaking.

Conversely, what has aided my understanding of all these issues often feels like a shameful act where I come from. Signing aff.

Four weeks, most which spent thoroughly pissed aff at circumstance and despairing at personal plight.

Stress the doctor called it. I suppose that’s right.

Tears, anger, worry, doubt, fear, anguish, downright disgust and hopelessness. Under that banner they fall.

Since I was 16, I’ve never not worked. I’ve always needed to.

Tomorrow I return to the home newsroom, and I’m likely not fully ready, but those who rallied around me have enabled the restoration of dilapidated pillars which once held firm to a semi-stable state.

They give me strength — friends, family, counsellor, colleagues but I also needed a break.

That was hard to accept because we just don’t do that, even when things come to a head.

Where we’re from, we work our fingers to the bone but no more.

Typing will cease. Digits will rest. Until tomorrow…