the duo of pain ·
31 July 09

Ack, I’ve had two things on my mind lately. Well, in the last week, time seems to be flowing slowly when it comes to finding things to do or trying to be proactive, but if it’s a problem, time shifts quicker. Science by sekhu – sure it doesn’t make sense, but we can pretend can’t we?

The first issue is about my biological dad, and whether I ought to contact him. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t see him, and I won’t be butter or sullen about the matter, but it has cropped up in my thoughts and I have tried to weigh the pros and cons of meeting up with him. I don’t even know that after 19 years whether he would want to see me having outright declared him a menace thanks to my mother feeding in, possible, lies about what he had done.

Even when I was at college, I did think about contacting him. I was at a very sensitive juncture when I was thinking about this 10 years ago, and I think I was just caught up in the emotion of wanting to see him that it paralysed me into not seeing him. I felt numb, drained and confused about the conflicting thoughts I had with regards to him.

Now, 10 years later, I’m able to think about the topic and distance myself from any emotional baggage that may have latched on to the idea 10 years ago. I can look at this more objectively without giving into petty emotions.

So, I’ve wondered and considered the consequences of seeing my father. My mother at one point suspected that I had tried to contact my father; that I told my aunt I want to. I don’t know how this got to my mother, but I hadn’t wanted to contact him and didn’t want to. My mother suggesting I wanted to see him triggered this old thought and now I’m looking at the possibility of getting his number and just saying “remember me?”

Though I am able to distance myself from emotion, I can’t do so completely, therefore my objectivity falters somewhat. My concern is of the possibility of rejection by my father. I’m not sure how I would react to that, what with my current paranoid schizophrenia. For the voice, it relishes the prospect of failure, to give it more control. It’s putting ideas into my head of the worst case scenario. What would that look like? It would be outright rejection, and probably stern warnings of “Don’t ever show your face around here again”.

It may impact on my family back here, as it may unsettle things with my half-brother and step-dad. For the voice there’s also the sinister side of self harm, or the harm I may cause my father. Will the emotion that has been stored and contained for so many years overwhelm, put the voice in control and end up in dangerous situation whatever the outcome, then I think it’s a real concern. It’s a valid one. It does bother me, and it can happen.

My current and biggest concern is about university. I have received a confirmed place at my first choice university, but I also want to attend my local university, which is about a 30 min bus ride from where I currently live. I want to go there because that’s where the majority of my college class are going to. It took me a few months to actually start communication with these guys, and they’re not such bad people, in fact they are pretty decent, and I enjoyed hanging out with them. At a University that’s up north, whereas I am down south-east, with some extended family, things can go wrong easily and I might be left there without any help or aid should the shit hit the proverbial fan.

So what the fuck do I do? It’s kept me awake at night, along with my insomnia, in disabling me from thinking clearly or logically to get this decision made. I’m taking baby steps towards going to the University up north, however, I am also taking steps towards the local University.

In terms of quality, the Northern university is better than the local one, and it has better facilities, better lecturers etc. The local Uni, though not as good as the one up north, is still a University, so I’m thinking “how bad can they be?” OK they don’t have a Maths department, but other than that it can’t be that bad can it? I mean there’s no guarantee that I will do well at either university, so what’s to say I won’t fuck up.

I’m too old to be fucking up and starting afresh, so I’ve got to make sure that the choice I make is the right one and that I don’t screw up getting wasted or trashed. I will make sure I don’t and that I study hard, but fuck I need a social life too. The last year has been just studying, with no let up on exams and assessments. My brain fried for a while, and now I’m so bored with nothing to do that studying again can’t come soon enough. I just wish I didn’t have to move out and have to start all over again with making friends. I’m too shy to do that shit again it was hard enough the first time.

Fuck. I’ve got no one that I can bounce ideas off that is available and that I feel could help me decide objectively. I’ve got my friends, I could use a forum I frequent, but I think I need to sit with someone, a professional, and talk out the issue. Not therapy, just ideas and guidance towards making the choice that I feel would be the best in my own interests. My mother and half-brother both don’t want me to move up north, they’d rather I went to a Uni locally, even if it’s a shit one.

I’m banging my head against a wall and it’s stressing me out.