Disturbing the Status Quo

It's been an odd month, January. It always is for me. Many people are coming to the end of a month without alcohol, most others are merely a day away from a much-needed pay day while some have long left behind the idea of a gym regime, favouring the comfort of their sofas with a bowl of popcorn. I've just carried on as normal, trying to keep my head above water.

I got promoted. Although the job search was triggered by events out of my control, I have ended up in a job that pays more and just a ten-minute walk down the road. From band three to band four in the ever disputed NHS pay scale, and of course a bit more responsibility, my NHS career continues to move at an alarming pace. I found out on Friday, thinking I'd destroyed my chances at the interview the day before, and was greeted by enthusiastic congratulations from far and wide, yet unfortunately I have yet to find the same joyfulness in the news.

It feels strange, not feeling happy about a positive life event. I'm not sad about it. Just... ambivalent. For the first time ever I had found myself in a job that I found bearable, with colleagues that are great people and in an environment that supported me through absolutely everything. My manager is the best manager I have ever had, for she understands the inner workings of my brain. I felt stable. All of that has been thrown up in the air, in circumstances I am unable to control, and now I find myself at a new juncture in my life and a career I am not certain can sustain more uncertainty. A pay rise is unable to trump the modicum of stability I found myself in. Sure, it may all end up being like before, with a bit more money in the bank but I'd take happiness and stability over a few more quid any day of the week.

I fear change.

And it's all happening so fast. I start on Monday, after thinking I had to work a notice period, but no. I am to be thrown into a lion's den of uncertainty once more and all of this while I continue to bury things in the back of my mind, not learning lessons of the past. But what else can one do except carry on?

I woke up this morning with the devil's headache, a dizziness that was a good metaphor for the state of my brain and feeling physically sick. I think it's a result of fear and anxiety; of going through change once again. Life has a funny way of disturbing the silence.

Yet outside of work, I continue to pile in to anything and everything, in any attempt to stop me thinking. "Keep busy and you won't have time to think", as my Mum would say. I've taken on even more at the cricket club, heading up communications along with the whole adult cricket side of things. I've began to shape an ambitious idea into helping gay footballers, with the help of Plymouth Argyle and (hopefully) the FA and Stonewall. I don't even want to think about how badly the novel is going. My ultimate dream, going up in smoke along with my confidence and self-belief I briefly once had when it comes to fictional writing.

For that is the one thing in life that escapes me. Maybe it's why I feel so empty about this promotion. A career in the NHS, as rewarding as it can be, isn't what I truly want. What I truly want is currently so far away, it may as well not exist and that hurts.

I Met My Saviour

I met the man who saved my life. A gentleman called Rich, who used to be a “bobby on the beat” but now works as a traffic cop and as soon as I saw his face, it all came flooding back. It was an emotional time meeting him, but I am beyond glad I did.

We had a good conversation about that night. I was always curious as to what was going through his mind at the time. Who knows, if he had said or did one thing differently, I might not be here to type this, which is quite a thought to get my head around, but a thought I’d rather not dwell too much on.

Ever since that day, I’ve been contemplating a suggestion made by my communications manager at work about doing some media work about it. For the whole week, I have been to-ing and fro-ing over whether or not I wanted to publicise this. I have done all I wanted to; I have met the man who saved my life and thanked him and chatted to him. However there is a huge thing at the moment in regards to breaking the stigma of mental health, and I want to do all I can to do that. Presenting my story, going from rock bottom and on the roof of a high-rise building to where I am now shows that it’s possible to get better from mental illness and it isn’t the life sentence many think it is. This story would help chip away at that stigma.

On the other hand, it is a deeply personal story and although I have never shied away from sharing personal stories about me, I do worry about being the face of something like this. It’s not that I’m ashamed, (far from it); it’s more about people asking questions. That one meeting was emotional enough without going through it again and again.

I say “again and again”, because I was asked to write a blog for the charity I work for called the World Youth Organisation, which I was only happy to do. The charity has started to gather some scope in recent months, and as the blog was posted all over their social media, it was publicly visible.

Yesterday, I received a message from The Sun on Twitter:

“Hi Tom, we have just come across your blog about meeting the police officer who saved your life. It sounds like an extraordinary story and we would like to have a chat with you about it.”

Completely out of the blue and bold as brass. I do not like The Sun. At a stretch, I don’t like British newspapers, but The Sun in particular are an establishment I despise for many, many reasons. I had an opportunity a couple of years ago to write a piece for them in a guest section they had running at the time, but after seeing a vicious headline and subsequent general slurs about a pilot who crashed a plane, I changed my mind. This time around, I wasn’t even going to entertain the idea of giving them a personal story to twist. So I (politely) refused.

One hour later, I got practically the same message from a journalist at the Bedfordshire on Sunday, my local paper. I was thinking about it, and let them know I was thinking about it, but I got a passive aggressive message back.

“What are you afraid of? All we want is a positive mental health story”.

So I refused them too.

Now I have decided to scrap the whole media coverage idea. My mind has been swayed by journalists who seem too hungry to fill column inches instead of genuinely discussing the issues at hand.
I’ve had dealings with the Bedfordshire on Sunday before, when I went to them with a story about my old chief executive at the Bedfordshire FA sending out racist emails. The backlash from that was pretty nasty. I don’t want to feel like I’ve let the mental health community down by not publicising this good news story, but I simply cannot trust the media, whether local, national or idiotic to run the story sensitively and from my point of view.

Part of this internal debate I’ve had with myself however has been about me. I have to admit, there has always been an element of me who wants others to tell me I’ve done a good job and/or been brave to tell my story. My mind goes back to the column I wrote for Attitude Magazine. While I felt strongly about the words I wrote, I wanted people to think, “Hey, Tom wrote for Attitude Magazine. That’s pretty cool.”

Part of what I do is because I genuinely think I am in a position to help make a difference. But part of it is to help stroke my ego. I've always felt a bit guilty about doing things for my satisfaction, but that’s not a crime, right?

But this time, I don’t think “selling” my story to the tabloids, especially one that has a history of mocking mental health and creating negative headlines for us, isn’t the right move. Hopefully people will appreciate that.

Finding the Man who Saved my Life

Pre-New Years Eve, I always think back to 2012. 31st December 2012. I finished work at 4pm, relieved to get through another anxious Christmas period unscathed and looking forward to the party in the evening. I even bought a new cricket bat as I was in a good mood. I still have it to this day.

Except things that evening went so very, very wrong. I went to my party and I remember very clearly a drunk woman telling me I should be doing so much more with my life. For a man who was questioning his use in the world; who felt at loggerheads with it and thus, on the road to feeling empty, this was confirmation. I had received validation of my own thoughts. It's one thing to question your own place in the world, but when it comes from someone else, it means so much more to me.

My mind collapsed. While everyone else seemed beyond happy to bring in a new year with new opportunities, for me it signalled the start of another year of trouble. I had battled these negative thoughts for years and on December 31st 2012, I snapped. The events are a blur. I was walking home for some reason, telling myself not to walk in front of every car that passed. I reached an ally way, just to get myself away from the road. I must have rang an ambulance, or someone else did, because I ended up in A&E, but the new year's rush did little to calm me, so I ran.

I can't really explain any logic behind any of this, or any of my actions. All I could concentrate on was escaping my thoughts, by any means possible. I seem to remember passing by my favourite pub in some last gasp effort to find someone, but it was closed. It must have been very late.

With some sort of made up confirmation that no one cared about me, I climbed the multi-storey car park. I can't tell you if I was ever close to jumping, for those times are blurry in my memories; as if my mind is trying to stop me revisiting them. I can't tell you how long I was up there for before a man in a hi-visibility jacket walked up the final ramp to the open-air top floor of the car park. One of the things I remember very clearly was warning him not to get any closer as he walked towards me. As if I was going to punch him or something. I can't even imagine what was going through his mind.

In the end, he talked me down.

Naturally, I've thought about that day for a long time. I can't remember most of the events, especially on top of that freezing slab of concrete, but I have often wondered who that man was. Of course, he was a police officer and not a member of the public. I was thinking about it a lot more than usual this new year, before I decided that I wanted to find him.

24 hours or so after sending an aimless tweet to Bedfordshire Police, I have found my man. Thanks to the wonders of social media, I received a message from the policeman's wife this morning who told me he had alerted her husband as the story sounded familiar. Sure enough, it was him. I'm absolutely delighted I've found him and I can't wait to meet him next week, to thank him personally.

There's one thing I regret from all of this though. In the adrenaline rush of finding him, I agreed to Bedfordshire Police running some media coverage of our meeting. I didn't really think about it too much before agreeing to it, but now I really regret agreeing altogether. I don't want this to be a publicity stunt. While it is a good news story; someone finding the policeman who, in my opinion, saved my life, the maximum I want is a photo with the guy and a private conversation. While I admit, it may show that people can succeed despite being on the edge, I fear of what other people may think.

Overall though, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster couple of days. I'm delighted that I'll meet him, 4 years on from that day. I just hope our conversation remains private.