I dreamed I was an architect

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Every Wednesday at four I play badminton with my new support worker, who is an exceptional badminton player and drives me into the ground.  Afterwards, we have a coffee and talk about things, and feeling fairly refreshed from the running around I had a good chat unencumbered by the usual anxiety and paranoia that can disrupt my conversations even with dear friends. 

We started off talking about politics for some reason, I think it was just something to talk about because I hadn’t brought anything particular up, and with Trump having unfortunately got in that’s a conversation that’s going to keep occurring for a while.  Actually I do remember why it came up.  We were talking about Charles Saatichi and saying his gallery was interesting but he’s a bit of a shit (paraphrasing).  I didn’t realise he was behind Margaret Thatcher’s ad campaign in the 80s.  I’m assuming it was the 80s.  That it might be earlier and I don’t know is indicative of my view of politics. 

There is a lot of unfairness in the world, and I have sometimes tried to find small ways to help.  But when the struggles of a day are so hard to negotiate, it’s difficult to be engaged with making a better world in any meaningful way.  My mind throws me this way and that, sends me retreating into my head in a dissociated fuzz.  I worry what people think of me.  I worry about who I am.  I disengage from the world around me, while at the same time trying to immerse myself in it because neither am I comfortable in my own world. 

I do a lot of things to entertain myself, going out to gigs, for coffee, to meet friends, doing readings, playing music, writing, drawing, posting obsessively online.  I feel like my activity is evidence that I could be doing more.  That I don’t need to be living at home any more.  That I could work more.  But every day the struggle is waiting and all I can do is all anyone can do, muddle through in my own ineffectual way.

The reason for this post was the revelation that this illness I struggle with has a meaning for me.  When I was still at school, figuring out what to do with my life, but having a broad range of interests, before eventually finding little enthusiasm for anything but expressionist painting and listening to music, while there was still a host of paths I should go down, I opted for architecture.  I had an interview at Cambridge and took my portfolio, which had a lot of writing in it, which I thought demonstrated creativity.  Stupidly, I said to them in the interview “I want to be a writer really, but there’s not likely any money it” thinking they would admire my honesty.  They told me to go and be a writer.  I went away disappointed.  I felt like if I could become an architect it would satisfy the expectations on me, my need for success.  I got a place at Bath to study, a lovely campus by an artificial lake.  I was worried about it, of course, but the future was coming. 

Would this have made me happy?  I wonder.  In the end, a breakdown decided for me.  I wasn’t to go, but spent my first week in hospital.  I went on to do photography at HCA and had a great time.  I remember it as a good time, but I also know I was excessively paranoid much of it.  Still somehow I am nostalgic about the friends I made and the sense of freedom I felt.  I went on to Kingston to pursue my career in writing by studying Journalism and English but my health again moved me towards creativity rather than more academic study and I did Graphic Design.

What I’m getting to, is this illness has allowed me or in fact forced me to explore my creativity, and limit the unfair expectations I had on myself, which at one point were indulging the idea of studying PPE at Oxford to try and get into government, because maybe if I was prime minister it would satisfy the need for validation through success at work!  It’s embarrassing to admit I thought like this, but I always felt I had to ‘be somebody’.  I’ve had to modify those ambitions, and learn to be content as possible with just being me.  The lowering of expectations and slightly improved sense of humility has been helpful, yet there’s a way to go yet with building up gratitude for the little things and allowing myself to be myself and be happy with that.  Maybe only once you give up any idea that you have to succeed for other people is there any chance you can work towards any success in what you’ve chosen to do.  Maybe it would have been a shame to have chosen a career for largely financial reasons, and never explored creativity beyond technical drawing.  Maybe I would have been a happy architect.  Who knows.  But that version of me never came into fruition in this reality, and I have to be content with who I am, even if that sometimes feels like a failure.