Self-regulation

I’ve never thought much about how I regulated before. I’m sure many people can relate. Then I was forced to grow up. My birthday started to include a 3 as the first digit and I was still hiding in a bath tub with a joint and a pint. It was time I started to get a few more details.

First step: research.

Along the way, I looked at some blogs. It appears that the times I posted more were directly related to the time I didn’t otherwise have anyone else to talk to, or any other outlet keeping me busy.

Figures.

I’d always heard the phrase “idle handles are a devil’s workshop”, but I’m not sure I see it that way. I wasn’t idle. I was alone. Not in life. But in my ability to regulate emotions. Without the distraction of friendship, I had no other choice but to address the demons. It anything, the idleness gave me the space to address what needed to be addressed.

I’ve revisited this post roughly every hour in the past two days.

Granted I am lucky enough that I’ve had two days where my laptop can stay on in between alternative activities, but the nut of the matter is: I’ve found alternative things to do.

It’s been a couple of years since I posted regularly on a smattering or blogs and social media accounts. In that time, I’ve been lucky enough to live in a place where the view outside the window, encouraged me out.

More recently, I’ve had to regulate other ways. The only decent walk within half an hour of my current living quarters is a nondescript nature reserve where you can hear the A3 from every turn. I’m sure it’s a peaceful walk for some less privileged folk. But it reminds me of the reclaimed meadows near the home I spent my teenage years wandering around.

The fishlake Meadows is now a nature reserve, too. Although, when I walked along it, the nature was vastly different. A canal path one side, mounds of dirt bike tracks the other. A trip over the road took you up to Chivver’s field; a huge expanse of wild land with a huge oak tree in the middle. It was hot in the summer. So hot I used to stop at various points around the field and lay in the long grass. When I was 11, it was a nerve inducing adaptation to my normal route of “up to the cross paths and back”.

By the time I was 13, it was a prelim to a building site.

By the time we were leaving the estate, when I was 19, it was a small field with plywood fences surrounding it, dog bins at every turn, and a plaque up at the old oak tree to stop children climbing on it. Despite my height having never changed between the age of 13 to even now (5 ft 8 and a bit), I could no longer hide in the grass.

In Scotland, I had a house with a straight 30 minute walk into the wilderness in one direction, and a 30 minute bus ride to the base of The Ochils in the other.

Only in my tiredness moments did I choose to spend my evenings sitting in writing in blogs and posting to social media. The times when I most needed to address my demons.

And here I am, back again. No friends to visit. No car to drive about in. The nearest beauty is a nature reserve that is twenty shades of bramble bush. The nearest bus ride doesn’t exactly take me to the Surrey Hills. And even if it did, these places would not be a reprise from human existence. There are plenty of humans roaming around them.

I think of the places that have taken my sanity back to it’s routes in recent years. The southern edge of Loch Venechar, an hour and a half from the bus stop outside my house or 35 minutes by car. The half hour bus ride to the base of Benn Cleuch, through the back of golf course in a down-and-out town reticent of the miner’s revolt. The desolate walk from Stirling to North Third, albeit a popular walking spot, still largely limited to those who live in the area. Tourists tend to venture to the more impressive Loch lomond, the Cairngorms or just anywhere on the A3 north of Dunblane.

And how did I find these places? Through the experiences of people I became close to.

When I first moved to Scotland, I had no interest in the landscape. The free drugs, lilted accent and lack judgement all drew me to that small flat in Cornton where the bathroom shelves helped me from falling into the abyss. It took a backward country boy (who raped me and abused me) to show me the power of the outdoors. It took the friendships I made whilst attempting to acquire ounces worth of weed in one go, that lead me to appreciate the land that was on offer just outside my window.

When I first moved to Scotland, I lived in a flat where you could see the Wallace monument out of the living room windows, and the Ochils out of the kitchen ones. Yet, this view was often removed. The blinds were frequently drawn, to stop people from seeing the debauchery that went on inside.

So why did i move there? “Freedom” seems a trite response, given that I had relative freedom to do as I pleased in the sunny south. “Excitement” seems the next possibility. But that excitement was largely led by free and frequent access to; MCAT, council cocaine, Speed and unhealthily cheap alcohol in pubs whose patrons were also regular staff.

I’ve heard the wind carry through the windows in that little town, above my head many a time. But each time I have, it has filled me with a sense of “H”; anxiety. A feeling I identified early in my teens. A memory of my later child years where I would deal by folding myself over dining room table chair, offering up the H pattern of wooden slating beneath.

When I was 12, I couldn’t have imagined a lonelier experience than the sound of the wind rattling through your brain. When I was 22, it was no different. Living in a tidy, but quiet, dockside apartment in Southampton, I barely considered the outside, and frequently had more alcohol than food in the flat to avoid the sound of the winds in the sails. By the time I was 25, I was eating enough to feed a horse and using wind-style soundscapes to go to sleep, a hot water bottle at my abdomen and a fan on my face (much to the displeasure of the partner whose home I lived in). A few years later, housed in a safe space in Stirling, with income and no reason to leave the front door, I was back to square one; looking to other’s for regulation techniques. If it hadn’t had been for my rapist ex, I would never have seen the outside as a regulator, I would have returned to my computer. And on occasions, I did. But for the most part, I didn’t have time. My weekends were largely taken up by my ex’s need to get out of the house. The only time I spent online was during the week when, in between contracts and no real interest of my own to pursue, I had nothing to guide me.

I recently visited Wales; the closest I could get to the Ochil’s without taking more than a day to travel. Abergavenny by train then Brecon by bus before a kip somewhere south and then a walk up Pen Y fan before a bus down to Merthyr where a shower in a Premier Inn was a welcome end to the whole debacle. It was no different to the desolate Ochils. But in my mind, I was world’s away. I had no friend to help. No experience of the landscape. No knowledge of the local area. No particular interest in the area. other than the views from the top of Pen Y Fan, I generally felt like I was a nobody, walking nowhere. No peace was to be seen.

What I have learned: in my most difficult moments, I need to self regulate using familiar regulation techniques. Techniques I have learned by following other’s experiences of regulation. This is not self-regulation, this is an attempt at self-regulation that has been defined by watching others self-regulate. But when I think back to the starting position of no regulation, perhaps copying others has it’s merits. But surely, eventually, I have to take something as my own.

I have a few hour rides south to the “South Downs” organised for next week. This is entirely alone. It has nothing to do with the people I know here. It hasn’t been recommended by anyone other than the OS account I pay for. This is official self-regulation. I can now fall asleep in minutes by putting a wind soundscape on my phone and an eye patch over my eyes. We will see how it goes.