Let me take you back in time one week.

I had just put the finishing touches on yet another blog.

My finger hovered over the Publish button.

But I hesitated.

I made myself a cup of coffee and then went to sit in the garden for a moment.

I had called the article I had just written The Dark (Part 1). (https://whatsadaddyfor.blog/2017/08/12/the-dark-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-203).

The reason for my doubts were clear.

The story documented just a little bit of my experiences in dealing with mental illness. It was a small insight into a tortured world of suffering and chronic self-doubt.

I had my suspicions and fears that the moment I published that article then my life would change forever.

As soon as I pressed that button then I’d for evermore be known as the guy who had the breakdown.

Was that something I really wanted to live with? Was it a bundle of sticks I was strong enough to carry?

I thought about the effect it would have on my family.

I thought about my circle of friends. It did cross my mind that some of them might not feel comfortable with me remaining within their social circle.

I assumed they would be sympathetic but might just find the stigma a little too toxic.

I thought about how people would find it hard to accept my story. How they might not believe me. How they might think I was exaggerating, that I simply wasn’t strong enough.

That I lacked the certain amount of steel or grit that a grown man needs.

My black coffee had gone cold in the mug. I noticed that it was raining. A fine drizzle. The sort you seem to get every day this summer.

I wondered how long ago the rain had started.

I went back inside.

All my thoughts had been about why I should not go public.

But it had felt good to put my story into a narrative. An easing of pressure. Like my skull had undergone a trephination.

Logic was telling me not to go on. Emotion was making me feel like I should have done it long ago.

I pressed Publish.

Then I turned off my laptop and went out for a meal with my wife and son.

I didn’t bring my phone with me. I told myself that I needed a few hours away from the blog. A bit of family time.

What I wasn’t admitting to myself was that I was scared what what the phone might be telling me.

It was late at night before I returned home.

Then I checked my account. The post had been read a decent number of times. I had a few encouraging comments from friends.

I went to bed relieved and slept well.

I don’t really understand the the digital age. I have an analogue mind and can’t really get my head round how information spreads online.

But something had happened overnight. Like the ripples on the surface of a pond when you drop a pebble, my story seemed to have spread in every direction.

The usual few dozen views had somehow been transformed into thousands. Something puzzling was going on.

I had a direct message from Stephen Nolan on my phone asking if I would talk on his live radio show.

That was fine. I’ve done my share of broadcast over the years.

But then something very unexpected began to happen. Something I hadn’t prepared for.

The messages started to come. Slow at first, but then in a glut.

A handful. Dozens. And then hundreds.

Many were people who just wanted to give me their support. This moved me incredibly.

A very tiny number were from people who wanted to hurt me. This didn’t bother me at all.

Indeed it gave many of the visitors to my site a good laugh as we played with the Little Snowflake title.

My son and nephew have taken to calling me The Little Snowflake.

But the majority of the messages were from people who wanted to share their story with me.

And there was one thing that tied all of these correspondences. The same sentiment over and over.

‘You were describing exactly how I feel’. ‘It was like reading my own life story’. ‘Your experiences resonated so much with me’. ‘I’ve been through exactly the same thing’.

‘I cried when I read it because it was so familiar’.

I heard from wives who had lost their husbands to suicide. Mothers whose sons had been sectioned.

Young men who were afraid to tell their families. Young mothers weighed down by the burden of trying to be a perfect parent.

I read every single account and was moved to tears many times.

It was heartbreaking.

But it was also inspirational.

I never received a single message that was not without hope. Not without some defiance. Not without that wonderful human attribute of basic stubbornness.

A refusal to be beaten by this thing.

Many of the messages were from complete strangers. I was genuinely humbled that they felt enough trust to reach out to me.

But just as many were from people I knew, friends and acquaintances who had glided in and out of my life.

And this was even more revealing. I thought I knew these people.

Except I didn’t.

Some were people I had been envious of. People who had everything together. People who I had looked at and thought ‘I wish I could be like that.’

Except that they were just like me.

One morning I awoke to find I had received a message from a person I had not seen or heard from in over a quarter of a century.

This person was one of the most popular and confident I had ever encountered.

And now this person was telling me an account of a life lived in fear. Of depression and anxiety.

The message finished with the line.

‘What can I do to make it better?’

I was numb. I read the line again and again.

‘What can I do to make it better?’

This was several days ago but I still can’t get it out of my head.

‘What can I do to make it better?’

When I started writing this blog one month ago I made a decision that I would respond to every person who messaged me.

It seemed the least I could do if someone read my ramblings and then took the trouble to contact me.

But what I hadn’t expected was the sheer volume. Or the unvarnished emotion they contained.

One morning I awoke to discover I had 90 messages waiting for me. It took time but I got through them all.

Some good friends warned me to be careful. Not to take too much on my shoulders. The phrase ‘compassion fatigue’ was mentioned to me on more than one occasion.

But the truth was a bond had been formed. Friendships established. A conversation started which I didn’t feel I could stop.

I must admit there were times when I was asking myself, is there anyone out there who has not been touched by this blackness?

The often used statistic that one in four will suffer a mental illness in their life now seemed like a ludicrous underestimation of the problem.

All my life I had thought of myself as different than everyone else. A man apart. Trapped by the terror of my own mind.

Now it turned out that all the other people were thinking exactly the same thing.

It was almost comic in its poignancy.

All these people interacting on a daily basis, all thinking the same things, but all to afraid to say it out loud because they think the other will despise them for it.

I was reminded of GK Chesteron’s novel ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’.

The book tells the story of a undercover detective, Gabriel Syme, who infiltrates a secret anarchist council which wants to destroy order in the world.

All the members of the council are known by days of the week. Syme becomes Thursday.

As the story reaches its climax it is eventually revealed that all the other members are also undercover detectives.

They have all kept their true mission a secret from each other and this has allowed the real anarchists to operate freely.

The truth is I have no idea why mental illness has got such a grip in our society. Perhaps the evolution of our brains just can’t keep up with the pace of societal change.

But what does seem clear is that while there are still so many who feel they can’t talk openly about it, then our ability to understand will always be limited.

I don’t have the answers and I’ve referred a number of the people who have contacted me this week onto the proper agencies or advised them to seek help.

But the question from my friend keeps coming back to my mind.

What can I do to make it better?

Let’s start by talking about it.

Sharing our common experiences. Making it easier for those who come after us.

Let’s not feel that we have to hide from our own minds.

My initial feelings a week ago that I was about to do something which would change my life have been confirmed.

It is all different now.

And it’s one of the best things I ever did.

Now I’m back to where I started. Putting the finishing touches on yet another blog.

This time I have no hesitation in pressing Publish.

* If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog or need immediate help call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000

There is something momentous, almost sacred, in the cutting of a young child’s hair.

Perhaps it’s because the kid inevitably looks older with the shorn locks.

Perhaps it’s the physical act of removing something which had been part of their body since infancy.

Whatever the truth it’s a process that can easily land a daddy in a whole heap of trouble.

In DH Lawrence’s wonderful novel Sons and Lovers, Walter Morel cuts his one-year-old son William’s hair while his wife is sleeping.

When Gertrude awakes she finds her beloved son ‘cropped like a sheep’ with a ‘myriad of crescent shaped curls, like the petals of a marigold scattered in the reddening firelight.’

I don’t possess Lawrence’s eloquence but suffice to say that Mrs Morel goes native and very nearly bates the head off her husband.

Now Mr Morel is a pretty unsympathetic character, a brute who gives his life and money to alcohol rather than his family. But this is one of the rare moments when I feel some sympathy for him.

‘Yer non want ter make a wench on ‘im,’ he hopelessly pleads.

But the incident represents the beginning of the decline of the Morels’ failing marriage. Things are never quite the same.

‘He felt something final had happened.’

All over a haircut.

I remember first reading this when I was at school and thinking the passage was very strange. But now, as a daddy, the exchange makes a lot more sense.

My son has inherited the same mop of mad wavy golden hair that I had as a child. When it grows a bit and goes curly it’s a guaranteed shortcut to an ‘Aw bless’ from every old lady we meet in the street.

If I was to take the scissors to my son’s hair I suspect my wife would not show the same restraint as Mrs Morel.

In my own childhood my mother seemed unable to bear the thought of having my hair cut at all. I think she was secretly hoping that I would be a girl.

In most of the old photos I’ve got big hair. Really big hair.

I look like a miniature version of Michael Bolton.

But hair does have to be cut. To be tidied.

So I took my son to the kiddie barber today.

I usually take him because…well because I have nothing much better to do.

But even though I’m theoretically in control, mummy has already texted ahead to give our brilliant barber the instructions.

I’ve never seen the content of any of these texts but I’ve always assumed them to go something like, ‘Ignore everything daddy says.’ And quite possibly ‘Apologies in advance for him.’

I’m clearly not to be trusted with big decisions like this.

The obvious fear is that if it’s left to me my son will come home with a multi-coloured mohican, a pierced eyebrow and a Hitler moustache tattooed onto his upper lip.

The haircut itself takes no time. My son sits happily in a toy green car watching a film while the barber snips away efficiently with the scissors.

The only momentary complication is when, dampening down his hair, a tat is discovered. My son’s mop seems to have made a unilateral decision to form itself into dreadlocks.

But soon it’s finished. He looks more like a boy than a toddler now.

Snippets of his hair lie randomly sprinkled on the ground like the petals of a daisy after a little girl’s innocent game of He Loves Me. (Ha! Take that Lawrence!)

And ever the pragmatist, I decide to take the opportunity to get my hair trimmed also.

I get exactly the same treatment as my son, except I’m not allowed to sit in the green car.

I’ve never much enjoyed going to the barber. I’ve always found it a bit awkward. Not really knowing what to say to someone holding a pair of sharp scissors just inches from my throat.

But now, as I slide lazily through my forties, I’ve found two I’m completely comfortable with in the same village where I live.

I get my hair cut twice as often as my son so I alternate between the Turkish barber and the kiddie barber.

The Turk seems to enjoy my bad jokes and, even though I suspect he doesn’t have a clue what I’m saying most of the time, we get along famously.

He does weird things, like setting my ear hairs on fire. And all at no extra charge.

Every time I leave him there’s a burning smell around my head for the rest of the day.

We also bonded over the fact that we started growing a beard at the same time.

But while mine is determinedly still growing, defying fashion and public opinion, he had to shear his off after his own mum told him he looked like a member of ISIS.

The kiddie barber allows me to natter away contentedly and even makes me nice cups of coffee.

Every so often my inventive flow is momentarily interrupted when she asks a question like ‘Well, what would you like done with your hair?’

I shrug and allow her to do her stuff. The truth is she could shave a giant phallus into the back of my head and I probably wouldn’t notice.

In fact she may already have done so. I don’t look back there too often.

But I assume not. My son likes the tight-cropped effect of my newly shaved head.

He insists on touching my head sporadically for the rest of the day and wanted to go to sleep with his face against my velvety crop.

This was obviously comforting for him. Awkward for me.

The thing is my son will be starting school in a few weeks. We want him to be well turned out. To look smart.

The haircut is part of the process of transforming him from our boy into a boy.

Mrs Morel knew it. My wife knows it. And I suppose I now do too.

I’ve always had a fascination with sports.

In the right mood and at the right time I’d happily watch anything sporty.

I’m as comfortable watching bowls, darts or sumo wrestling as I am football. A fact that has caused me to endure much derision from my friends over the years.

There’s something about the statistical nature of sport which seems to appeal to my brain. Perhaps this is why I’m so taken with US games like basketball and American football which are dominated by numbers.

I’m obsessed with the figures. Who’s done what the most times? Scored the most runs? Kicked the highest percentage of penalties? Made the most tackles? They’re all rattling about in my head somewhere.

There’s probably not too many people who trouble themselves to worrying about whether Paul Foster will ever match Alex Marshall’s record of six World Indoor Bowls titles, but that’s exactly the sort of thought which goes through my mind when I can’t sleep at night.

It’s all gloriously inconsequential and that’s the attraction for me.

The legendary football manager Bill Shankly said football was much more serious than life or death. But his tongue was firmly in his cheek. All sport is merely the gloss we put on the grey wall of life to make it more fun to look at.

People who read my blogs regularly will know that I’ve spoken before about my obsessive personality traits.

When I was a teenager I applied all my obsessive powers to the sport of boxing. I immersed myself in it.

I suppose I used it as some sort of comfort against all of the ravens which constantly circled me at that time.

I spent every penny I had amassing a huge collection of tapes of grainy black and white fights (remember this was before the Internet). I bought every book or magazine that was available.

I sat up in the middle of the night to watch fights taking place in America and I spoke passionately in defence of the sport at school debates.

At that time my mind had the capacity to store huge amounts of information and I took great pride in knowing every fact that could be gathered about every fighter.

Even though most of the knowledge has since seeped out through the ever widening holes, I can still at any moment recite in chronological order every fighter who has ever held the World Heavyweight Championship stretching back to the original Boston Strong Boy John L Sullivan.

I even fancied getting in the ring myself.

But it didn’t go well.

I’m a pacifist by nature and when you have the gloves on and the bell goes, I found that saying ‘Let’s talk about it’ didn’t get me very far.

Nowadays I don’t care so much. I still know most of the main fighters but I have nothing more than a casual fan’s interest.

In truth I’ve got a major problem with it now. I can’t watch a live fight anymore. I get too nervous. The capacity that someone could be hurt scares me too much. I’m not comfortable with witnessing the aggression.

I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say I don’t follow it anymore. I still check out the results. I might even watch the fight later when I know both men or women are safe.

I just don’t feel very good about myself when I do.

The last time I was at a live boxing event was several years ago. My friend and I were watching a Belfast fighter.

At one point during the bout the local man gained the advantage, hurting his opponent. The noise from the intoxicated crowd swelled as the opponent was battered against the ropes.

I remember my friend, a wonderfully gentle man, rising to his feet to urge the local fighter on. I did the same. Roaring him on to hurt the other man.

Later that night I felt ashamed.

Recently it’s been quite hard to avoid all the attention surrounding the upcoming crossover fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor.

Mayweather, a boxing champion, will fight McGregor, a mixed martial artist, in the richest fight in combat sports history. Both men are expected to earn in excess of $100m.

Perhaps this is the point where my silent shame finally transforms itself into open disgust at the repugnance of the spectacle.

The cynicism involved in the marketing of the event is breathtaking. The trumpeting of hatred, aggression and greed as showbusiness virtues for young men to ape is now running unchecked.

The naked venom that these two men display towards each other while being cheered on by baying crowds is unsettling. Frankly I find it upsetting.

And yes, I know that much of the poison is staged and built up to increase audience interest, but doesn’t that just increase the cynicism even more?

I’m not here to tell anyone what to do or to preach. I believe entirely in freedom of expression and action within the laws.

I’m not calling for anything to be banned or even reigned in. I’ve no right to do that and frankly it’s none of my business.

Combat sports have been going on for thousands of years and will always exist. They clearly fulfil a need for some people and there’s a huge fascination with them.

My point is about my journey. How I’ve changed. Moved away from what I once loved.

Yes I do believe that the sport has changed too, for the worse, but the bigger transformation has been mine.

Maybe it’s growing old. Maybe it’s being a father. Maybe it’s the idea of trying to explain to my son in a few years why two men are being paid to shout insults at each other while others watch.

Maybe it’s my own feelings about standing on my feet cheering while one man beat another with his hands.

I was with my son at the park a few days back.

He had fallen in with a group of other boys. All young, around pre-school or P1 age. They were all talking their own special language.

As usual I was lurking not too far away. Trying to come across as the caring dad but probably resembling The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

And then something stirred in me. I noticed one of the little boys was pointing and laughing at another. Then he called him a ‘weirdo’. A second boy jumped in, using the same term.

I felt compelled to get involved. Gently I tried to talk to them.

‘Hey buddy, we don’t say things like that about our friends. We’re all different but we’re all good pals.’

The kids looked at me like I was a crazy man. Was I right to intervene? I don’t know. Did it help? I don’t know.

But certainly an emotion had been stirred. Something confusing, something so contradictory, familiar and troubling.

My wife and I talk to our son a lot about bullying. Probably one of my greatest fears in life is that my boy will be bullied. Or be a bully.

One of my proudest recent moments was when he stood up to a bigger boy in an adventure playground. The kid was pushing the smaller children. My son went up to him and said ‘Stop being a bully!’ My heart swelled.

But I don’t want to run away with myself here. These were innocent kids in the park. Good kids. The boy who was called a weirdo didn’t seem to register at all what had happened. I was more upset than he was.

There are things in the world that no amount of good intentions can change. Children can act in a way that is brutish. Hunting in packs and targeting the weakest.

Finding comfort in being inside the cave huddled around the fire rather than the one who is left stranded outside in the cold.

I have to accept that my son will be as prone to this as any other kid who has ever lived. The solace of belonging.

And who am I to lecture anyone anyway? I was reading back over a recent blog of mine where I had written that we all have to be wary of the impact of our words on others.

Really McCambridge? You really want to open this box of slugs?

I’ve always been blessed/cursed with an overactive mind and a hard-edged tongue.

How many times have I delivered a sharp-witted comment at the expense of a member of my group?

How often have I enjoyed the laughter of my peers. How often have I bothered to stop and think about the impact on the butt of my joke?

And what about my professional persona? The loud boss terrifying a team of younger colleagues.

Did I think enough about how scary it is for a young person starting off in the job? Was I approachable?

Did I enjoy the power of influence a little bit too much and use it like a weapon?

Did I always treat others the way that I would want to be treated myself?

They are uncomfortable questions. The answers are even more uncomfortable.

It means little now but all I can do is hold my hands up and say sorry to any person who I made feel at any time like a lesser person than they should have been.

My own personal experience with bullying runs deep. Right back to a time in the 1970s and 80s when Northern Ireland was a much more brutal place than it is now.

I grew up on a farm in the country. A remote little piece of north Antrim near the Ballinlea crossroads. It wasn’t a village or even a hamlet, it was barely a place at all.

I had to go to primary school in Ballycastle, five miles away. I attended St Patrick’s Boys PS, a Catholic school. I had then, as now, very little knowledge or interest in religion but you had to go somewhere and that was my background.

We wore a blue uniform which clearly identified us.

The only way my older brother and I could get to school was by bus. By a peculiar geographic quirk the only bus which went past our lane was number 171 which took the older kids from the neighbouring villages of Armoy and Mosside to Ballycastle High School.

Our uniforms marked us out as obvious and soft targets for some of the boys who sat on the back seats.

We were the only two children from a Catholic background who took that route.

I started going on that bus when I was four. There were never seats available. We always stood.

Like all children of my generation we grew up knowing nothing other than The Troubles.

Tensions were high then. The hunger strikes were taking place. I know this because I remember a song being sang on the bus which referenced Bobby Sands as a ‘dirty Fenian fucker’.

At that time I knew a lot more about The Sandman who battled Spider-Man than I did about Bobby Sands, but it made no difference. Even though I was just a small child I had an innate understanding that the songs were being sung to frighten me and my brother.

There was another song. Even more sinister. I’ve never heard it sung in any other place or at any other time but the words are still branded into my memory.

‘Take the Popey, put him on the table and ram the poker up his hole!

‘Ram the poker! Ram the poker! Ram the poker up his hole!’

The black-blazered kids on the back seat wore heavy boots which they repeatedly thumped off the floor as they chanted this as if they were hypnotised.

To this day I have never witnessed anything else so genuinely chilling and filled with menace.

I suppose the boys who were doing it were 15 or 16, but in my mind they were giants. I still remember a couple of them, exactly how they looked, the sneering faces.

At this point I just wish to emphasise that I’m not trying to make any sort of narrow political or sectarian point here. Later I went to a secondary school where I was one of the few children from a Catholic background. I never had so much as a sniff of a sectarian incident in seven years.

Back to the bus. This was our daily ritual every morning and afternoon.

Every day when my brother and I got off at the end of our country lane several of the kids in the back seat turned and made obscene gestures out the back window. Sometimes it was the middle finger. Sometimes they ran a finger across their throats.

On some occasions it became physical. My brother was pushed around and knocked over a few times.

One day my little schoolbag was ripped from my grasp. All the contents were scattered. I was on my hands and knees like a desperate starving rat trying to recover my exercise and prayer books. The mocking laughter was all around.

My parents went to the teachers of my school. The high school. The bus operator. Nothing ever seemed to change.

We had to go to school and this was the only way to get there. Getting on that bus every day reduced me to a state close to terror.

I remember the worst day. I suspect it is one of the things which will stay vivid with me even when the rest of my mind is rotting away.

One of the worst bullies moved away from the back seat that day. Instead he took a seat just behind where I was standing in the aisle.

He tortured me on the whole route home. Pushing and shoving, calling me names. The hiss of his voice. ‘Wee Fenian, wee Fenian.’

At one point I felt a tugging at my coat but I was too afraid to turn around.

Eventually the bus pulled to a stop at the end of our lane. My brother moved up the aisle to depart. I tried to follow.

But I couldn’t. At first I thought someone was holding me back. But then I saw it was something worse.

I used to wear an old faded green anorak, the sort which had laces hanging out of it.

I saw now that I had been tied by the laces to the seat of the bus. I was six-years-old.

I wanted to shout to the driver to hold the bus but I had no voice. I was frozen with shame.

I tried to work at the knots but it was hopeless. My tiny fingers felt like they belonged to another. It was the first time I ever remembered seeing my own hands tremble.

The situation was horrible. But, as I find often, the goodness of human nature cannot be suppressed.

A couple of the older girls from the high school came to help me. Their elegant fingers working at the strings to free me.

The bus driver noticed that I hadn’t got off at my usual point. He stopped the bus and came back to see what was happening.

I still remember that driver. His face. His name. He was a prominent Orangeman in the area.

He asked me if I was alright.

I mumbled something.

He asked who had done this to me.

I was about to tell him that I didn’t know. But then I clearly recall looking up and seeing the face of my tormentor, grinning at me.

I think it was only at this point that I surprised myself by noticing that I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t going to cry.

I found a voice and raised a finger.

‘It was him.’

What happened next is quite direct and more suited to the time it occurred than now, over three decades later. View it through that prism.

The driver caught the boy by the collar of his blazer and dragged him from the seat and up the aisle. He sent him reeling down the bus steps with a solid kick in the arse. Presumably he was miles from home.

I suppose things gradually improved after that. I don’t remember too much about the bus from my later years at primary school. Older boys left school and things settled down.

I’ve never really spoken about or recorded these event before. What their impact has been on me I don’t know. Perhaps none. Perhaps plenty. The mind can’t be cut open and read like the rings of a tree.

So I’ve moved in this post from innocent kids shouting weirdo, to my snide smart-Alec remarks to naked displays of mindless sectarian hatred from my youth.

I am not suggesting there is any commonality here at all or that one thing leads to the other. It is horrendous to suggest they are in anyway linked. They are not.

The boys who I saw at the park where just doing what kids do. It will always be that way.

But that desire to belong to the popular group, to have a common bond, can lead us all into actions which are not what we expect of ourselves. And they are almost always at the expense of somebody weaker.

I talked to my son about what we had seen in the park that day. I tried to reason it through with him.

I told him to imagine how it made the little boy they were calling the name feel. I think he understood. I hope he did.

It does none of us any harm to remember from time to time how the victim feels.

 

Evening folks.

Since I decided to talk openly about my mental health battles I’ve been flooded with comments and contacts. (https://whatsadaddyfor.blog/2017/08/12/the-dark-part-1/)

That’s great. That’s why I did it. 

Some of the stories people have told me have been heartbreaking. They have all been inspirational.

It’s taken some time but I’ve worked my way through every single person who has reached out and responded to you all.

I believe I’ve made many new friends and rediscovered a few I’d lost along the way.

But part of having any open discussion is recognising that not all people are going to agree with you.

That’s fine. I want to hear all views in this discussion.

Today I received a missive from a new correspondent. He called himself Sean.

I’ve reproduced it here exactly as I received it.

i AM SICK AND TIRED OF SUPPOSEDLY GROWN MEN LIKE YOURSELF COMPLAINING ABOUT HAVING TOUGH TIMES. YOU DO NOT HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS. HOW DARE YOU LESSEN SUCH A SICKNESS WITH YOUR PETTY COMPLAINTS ABOUT WHAT EVERY ADULT GOES THROUGH.

TOUGHEN UP YOU SILLY DRAMA QUEEN, SNOWFLAKE. THE WORLD OWES YOU NOTHING. 

WALK IN THE AVERAGE MAN’S SHOES YOU LITTLE SNOWFLAKE.
So there you are.

I had a number of thoughts when I read this.

First I’m always on the lookout for a new nickname and I quite like Snowflake.

Every snowflake is delicate, beautiful and utterly individual.

Hell, I’ve been called a lot worse.

My next thought is, does Sean have a point?

He says I don’t have a mental illness but I’m just dealing with what every adult goes through.

This is exactly the thought I’ve been wrestling with for decades.

It’s the main reason I didn’t come forward to get help sooner.

It’s essentially the same response I got when I went to see a doctor in my teens.

As I said before, part of starting the debate is accepting there’s a different viewpoint.

And leaving aside Sean’s invective and obvious desire to hurt me, he represents a view that is very common.

But more than any other message I have received, this one convinces me I did the right thing in speaking out.

There is so much that is still to be understood. So many still to be persuaded.

Sending a message such as this, so full of obvious malice and spite, to a person who is prone to depression and tendencies of despair is desperately dangerous.

Luckily I’m in a good place and it has no power to wound me.

But imagine I’d received it when I was at my lowest. Or it gets sent to another person who is struggling.

One of the greatest responsibilities we have is over our own words and understanding the impact they can have on another.

I wish Sean all the good luck and happiness in the world.

I hope that your certainties always keep you safe from harm in this world.

Take care my friend xx 

* If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog or need immediate help call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000

It’s sunny this morning and I have to close the blinds to keep the glare off the TV screen.

‘I’m hungry daddy!’ he declares. ‘I want Honey Monsters and a smoothie’.

I dutifully comply.

Then we’re into the usual ritual.

‘Will you take your breakfast at the kitchen table with mummy and daddy?’

‘No, I want to watch TV?’

‘Don’t you want to sit beside mummy and daddy?’

‘No!’

He breakfasts on the sofa.

Just like every other morning.

It’s an L-shaped leather sofa. Extremely comfortable.

I’ve just finished paying it off after four years.

I bring his breakfast.

‘Sit beside me daddy!’

I could, I suppose, point out the inconsistency. The fact that just moments ago he eschewed the chance to sit beside me in the kitchen.

But there doesn’t seem to be much point.

I sit beside him.

He can eat very well by himself. If he chooses to.

It’s just that he seems to lack any sense of occasion or urgency around his meals.

Preferring to view meals as an ongoing relaxed process which you can dip in or out of at any point of the day.

He knows this drives me crazy.

To me mealtime is a sacred ritual. You do it now.

And thus I’m sitting there dopily with a spoonful of sticky sugared cereal while he happily keeps his mouth unambiguously closed.

Instead of eating it’s more fun to wrestle.

He climbs onto my back, locking me in a chokehold which he seems to have perfected.

I move to re-establish my dominance.

‘Let go son….I can’t breathe….I’m not joking son….I really can’t breathe!’

He decides to try to balance on top of my head. Instead he topples sideways back onto the leather sofa.

Right on top of the bowl of Honey Monsters.

The bowl is sent spiralling violently, Honey Monsters careering wildly like the remnants of a once great planet which has just exploded.

‘Aw son!’ I moan despairingly. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

‘It wasn’t me!’ he protests. Implausibly.

‘Of course it was you! Sure you’ve got Honey Monsters all over your arse!’ I retort. Plausibly.

I’m moving urgently but with stealth. Keen to keep it a secret from mummy upstairs.

I blindly pull out a range of bottles and cloths from under the sink and start to spray them on the sofa.

Once I calm a little I realise I’m trying to clean the sofa with a can of radiator paint.

I start scrubbing. Nothing stinks out a room like spilt milk (apart from perhaps radiator paint).

It’s everywhere. The milk has found every crack of the sofa like a determined grout.

I’m pulling out cushions and stuffing  in kitchen roll. Wiping, scrubbing, drying.

And then I look at my son.

He’s sitting on the floor in his pyjamas. 

His little legs crossed. He looks a little miserable, perhaps a little afraid.

He’s watching me. His eyes never wavering away from mine. Seeing if I’m still angry with him.

And then I think.

Feck the sofa.

I give him a huge cuddle and then I begin the tickles.

I tickle him until he’s helpless with giggles and pleading for mercy.

I know I’m too soft. And I know I had every right to be annoyed.

And I know the importance of boundaries. And appropriate behaviour. And doing what you’re told.

But the exuberance of youth is more important to me at this moment. I don’t want to be responsible for curbing that inherent joy.

I think as a parent it’s as important to learn from your child as it is to teach him/her.

We roll about on the floor laughing together.

‘Tomorrow son, you’re eating your breakfast at the table.’

We both laugh again, as if at the absurdity of the suggestion.

I get up. I begin to pick Honey Monsters out of my hair.