The Symbol

Just been talking to a friend named Damien from Fiona’s mental health drop in class who has just embarked on a 6 week acting course down in The Big Smoke, London Town. He said he turned up after a long train journey and was asked to perform a scene from the movie Leon The Professional (1994). His venture into that world of performing arts has rejuvenated my own creativity here at the blogspot. I now feel like a living creative spiritual being, full of light and darkness in equal measure, you know, like the yin & yang badge on my bubble jacket says to people. Although, having an informal chat with my chaplain earlier, at Hope Trinity church, she suggested, more in alignment with Christianity rather than Buddhism, that there should be far more lightness than darkness on the symbol, and that the two concepts should not be so equally wrought. The cross, for example, is pure light. David Icke would call it Satanism-lite, because of the horrors of the crucifixion. So my feelings about the yin and yang symbol have changed slightly over the last couple of hours.

I’m talking like John Siddique by calling myself a creative spiritual being. That’s what he’s like. All love and sparks and energy and compassion and faith and everything. Better than self-hatred though, isn’t it? I mentioned the other month that my Man In The Glass technique had failed, because I looked in the mirror and said, “I will never ever take amphetamines again.” Now I use the Man In The Glass to declare self-love and acceptance. Like my pal Paul from Pathways (my local drug rehab clinic) says, “You should look into the mirror and say You are amazing you, I love ya.”

It can seem a bit big-headed and egotistical but like I say, what’s the alternative, staring into the glass and saying, “I hate everything about ya, you’ll never amount to anything, I want nothing but misery and anguish for ya?” As an addict, I know all about self-hatred. Many would say that all addicts do. That feeling of a relapse is debilitating, it’s sheer horrible, the pain is impossible to express with words. You feel so low, so hung out to dry, so useless and meaningless, it’s almost unimaginable. Except that I’m always feeling like that, the identification is common, it’s a week-in, week-out thing. I have a mate called Ricky who I’m concerned about, he had 12 months clean time but he’s gone missing from recovery, I’m wondering if he’s relapsed into that darkness again. Prayers to him if he has, but I hope he hasn’t. I relapsed after 9 months and it stings like a bitch. Now I’m on the right track again, and something is different this time. I know we’ve all said it, “Never again,” but this time I think something has really clicked within the psyche of my members. I’ve found God and Good Spirits and I’m battering Clinical Depression. I know I’m loved, and boy is that hard to comprehend. It’s tough getting used to it, a big hairy-assed old grizzly bear like me. I’ve just got to accept that I’m different to others. I know, I hear you say, who isn’t? But you know what I mean. As Tiny Tempah says, in his video The Wonderman (whose identity I have unashamedly stolen, by the way), “I was born to be special.”