After a year and a week of living as an inpatient in medical facilities, I am now in a private residence. Through the Herculean efforts of my parents, I have a place to call my own. And making the adjustment has been perhaps the most difficult thing I have been through so far.
I really didn't think it would be this way. Whilst nervous, before the date of the move I experienced a definite uptick in mood. I knew I had to be cautious, having previously been burnt by putting too much faith in the promise of rehab, as well as remembering that the initial lift after moving to the care home was followed by a brutal depressive crash. Nonetheless, whilst I knew it wouldn't be easy, I thought that so long as I guarded against complacency, then making the transition to independent living (albeit with carers) could on balance only be a good thing, experienced as such. Hence when the inevitable palaver occurred on the day of the move, and it looked like I might not be able to leave the care home that day, I pushed hard to make sure that I did. As the transport ambulance pulled out of the car park, I felt a guarded optimism.
This began to fade once we pulled on to the North Circular. Here was a route I had driven many, many times in my old life. The store where I bought furniture for my first apartment. The pet shop where I sometimes got supplies for the cats (that I no longer have). The turning I used to take to get to the Lea Valley to fish for pike in the winter. None of which I had seen for over a year. And when I had last seen them, I was driving my own van. Now I was sat in the back of an ambulance, being awkwardly jolted around. Memories came flooding back; painful jolts of comparison punching me in the gut, reminding me just how bad things have now become, how much I have lost.
We pulled into the street where my new apartment is located. It is a busy part of town, and whilst I did not previously live in this exact location, I had been this way many times before. More memories. A discombobulating, pounding of my mind, unable to process that I used to walk these very pavements, cross these very streets, and somehow never once foresaw – nor even imagined – that one day I would be awkwardly trying to make my way in a wheelchair. And had it always been this busy? Had the world always contained so many people?
My mum came down to meet the ambulance crew and help transfer me and my possessions up into the new flat. My previous cautious excitement rapidly turned to dread. This would be the first time I had ever seen the place. What if it was not everything I’d hoped for? How could it be everything I had hoped for? I suddenly started to feel very stupid.
As I wheeled myself in through the front door, I began to look around. The first thing I noticed was how many of the walls needed repainting. Nothing horrendous, just wear and tear that the previous occupiers left behind. But this immediately triggered memories of having painted all the walls and doors in my old flat just a couple of weeks before my accident. Hardly a professional job, but one I had happily undertaken as a distraction from my last break up. My walls don't need repainting, I incoherently protested to myself, whilst realising that any repainting done here was certainly not going to be done by me. Another thing lost.
Vast quantities of medical paraphernalia were transferred to the bedroom, or else piled up in various places. My mum made me dinner, whilst I tried to take it all in. But I couldn’t. Here I was in a new, alien environment. And yet it wasn’t quite alien. That is my TV. That is my table. Those are my chairs. Those are my sideboards. Those are my speakers. But what are they doing here? These things belong at home. But this is not my home. And I did not move them here (violation?). Memories flooded back; self-inflicted psychic blows as I tried to grasp, yet again, that I am never going home, that my life really is gone.
The next two days were hard. Having care staff hoist me to bed, in a room filled with medical contraptions and supplies, and the continuing indignity of manual evacuation – but with new people, and hence new shame – all conspired to make me feel as much an in-patient as ever. The room that I was trying (and mostly failing) to sleep in felt indistinguishable from the past year. Bare white walls. Trapped in bed. A thousand reminders of how utterly fucked I am, everywhere I look. I quickly began to loathe what I now had to call my bedroom.
Although it took me a few days to realise it, I had a dilemma to face. One thing stopping this apartment from feeling like somewhere I live - like somewhere anyone lives - is that the walls are all bare. The tell-tale evidence of previous artwork abounds: nails, drill holes, chipped paint covered up by frames in previous times, the usual. But the current absence of artwork of any kind – of photographs, posters, prints – prevents this from feeling like a home. The answer to which would normally be obvious and easy: hang up my own pictures. But there’s the rub. Although my parents ensured that all my previous artwork has come to the new flat, hanging any of it on the walls is almost too painful to contemplate. It obviously doesn't help that quite a lot of my framed art consists of panoramic pictures of mountains. Mountains that I have climbed. Even nonclimbing artwork inevitably comes with emotional attachment: memories of where such specially chosen images originate from; previous homes they've hung in; past times in my past life; friends in happier years. Thus, my dilemma: leave the walls bare, and fail to make this house a home - or surround myself with images of everything I have lost, and trigger grief upon every glance. And it is no good trying to get around this by putting up new artwork. I have no desire to frame images that mean nothing to me. Yet any that might have meaning must inevitably draw it from the life I've lost. A week on, and my walls remain empty.
But pictures were by no means the worst of it. For the past year, I’ve essentially lived in five different T-shirts on rotation, and various sweatpants – the uniform of the vulnerable-skinned, beginner spinal patient. But another thing transported from my old home to my new, whilst I languished in a nursing facility, was all of my old clothes. The problem is, not only have I always had too many clothes, but now I can’t wear most of them. All of my old jeans, and anything with a button or a buckle, has long since been taken away by my parents (too much of a threat do they pose now that I must constantly worry about pressure sores rendering me bedridden). But even just when it comes to upper layers, anything snug against my former physique is now impossible to combine with the repulsive potbelly I permanently sport. So, to make some much-needed space, I agreed to help my mum triage my old clothes, deciding what to keep and what to throw away.
And I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do. The predictable problem stemmed from the fact that due to my former obsession with climbing, virtually every item of clothing presented to me had some connection to that former of life. Climbing gear companies, bouldering gym merch, T-shirts bought from climbing destinations, outdoor brands – aside from the odd Guns N’ Roses or Mastadon t-shirt, almost every item of clothing I had to look at put a dagger through my heart. Or rather, two daggers. One for myself, who died. One for climbing, the love I lost. I have been lucky that so far in my life nobody truly close to me has yet died, and I have never been forced to go through a loved one’s possessions to close their affairs. But I now, without a doubt, know how that feels. It is a kind of pain that words cannot adequately capture. A kind of pain that I’m mildly astonished does not have the immediate effect of either permanently dissolving a person’s mind, or simply killing them outright. Although I tried to do that part of the job for it, begging my poor, helpless Mum to please let me die.
I could easily go on. About being unable to cope with the idea of directing care staff in how to cook for me once my mum left (and as I can confirm, directing is indeed necessary for people who speak almost no English and do not know how to use a toaster). About how the constant barrage of various community and social workers entering the apartment, to make me repeat again and again all the horrible facts of my new existence, felt almost unmanageable. But it’s clear from I’ve already said that the frequent, and near total, breakdowns that I repeatedly fell into were firmly overdetermined. It was all just too much.
And yet, even so, there is I think a root cause explaining why the absolute nadir (so far) of my ongoing failure(s) to cope came when and where it did. For what else was this but the final death of hope? No doubt, I had carefully rationalised to myself in advance that moving to my own apartment would not be a panacea. Life was still going to be largely horrible, on a day-to-day basis; the transition period would inevitably be bumpy. No golden bullets to be had. Yet at a more emotional level, this marked the end of the beginning. For nearly a year, I have been focused on finally leaving institutionalised medicine, on returning to the real world. Having that to look forward to – to aim for, to make as my goal – fed the unarticulated, quiet, yet persistent fantasy that if I could just keep pushing, and hit the final milestone, then things would get easier from there. Maybe I would magically start to get better – or at least, feel like I was finally learning how to cope.
But then I hit the milestone, and obviously nothing changed. Except that there are no more goals to feed the quiet fantasy. Just the reality of my life sentence stretching out before me. The fantasy was revealed as what it always was, and hope died with it.
But it had to be done. The fantasy had to die. Just as I had to throw away so many of my clothes, whilst also accepting that because I need to wear something, climbing-reminders will come out every morning, at least for a while. And so perhaps this was the real milestone, after all. A necessary agony that I first had to pass through, in order to allow what I have left of myself to someday, somehow, be rebuilt. I think I can just about believe that might be true. But I never dreamed that it – that anything – could be so hard, could hurt so much.
I don't know whether the undecorated state of your new residence was intentional - the painting of the walls rather low down on a list of priorities. Whatever the reason, it seems prudent. This is your domain, where following over a year of abstract living in various hospitals, rehab facilities and care homes, rubber finally bites down on tarmac and you have to carve out a life for yourself. Part of that will entail asserting control over what you can reasonably expect to control, accepting what you can't, and, over time, working out small ways to extend your reach. Somewhere in that messy dichotomy lies the formula for human dignity. At a fundamental level, the control part of the equation must encompass how your home is decorated. Nobody wants to suddenly be thrust in-between lavender-toned walls with homey upbeat platitudes burnt into the exposed woodwork. You get the blank canvas that displays the scars of a previous occupancy and you get to say what goes on it.
This raises a psychological conundrum. In decorating, do you wilfully estrange yourself from your past in order to move forward? Is that healthy? Climbing was a massive part of your life - a raison d'être. You can't do it any more but that doesn't mean that you can draw a hard line under it either. For one thing, those experiences are a part of you. They shaped your character. While you have lost physical mobility, the mental fortitude and the resourcefulness that you developed during those climbs remains in a state of continuance and can be brought to bear when addressing aspects of your future. We are four-dimensional entities moving in one direction. Our past informs our future.
My foray into psychology ended with my formal education, at the A-level stage, so I am certainly over-reaching. However, it occurs to me that a significant mental breakthrough will come when you are able to contemplate a rock that you once scaled, or even a photograph of yourself mid-climb, and regard it as an accomplishment – a moment to be recalled fondly rather than a source of anguish that must be erased because it causes you too much pain. If turn your head away from it, you are also turning your head away from valuable parts of yourself. You are narrowing your horizons.
What is the alternative? A framed watercolour print of some daffodils? A wall mural of the 17th Century Rationalists, painted by John Cottingham – the Banksy of Cartesian punditry – written-off for tax purposes as a rehab aid? I once fell asleep at the foot of a television set and awoke to a Saturday morning football show with the face of Alan Hanson looming over me. It's no way to live.
When I was 13 years old, our family moved to a larger house a couple of miles away. This relocation occurred while I was on five-day a school trip to Bradwell. All I can really remember of the experience is the gigantic pair of soiled Y-fronts that one of my dorm-mates found festering in his rented sleeping bag, and the large crab that was interviewed on video camera regarding its thoughts on the planned construction of a new dock. I returned to a completely different home, to an L-shaped bedroom, smaller than the one I previously occupied and decorated with cartoony air plane wallpaper. All my stuff was there but it was arranged differently. It was awful. Because I hadn't been a part of the move and had no say in where my belongings went, I felt alienated from my own possessions.
The room that I occupy now is a summation of my interests, my past and my present. The cacti and the carnivorous plants; the box-framed insects and abundant ceiling origami. The numbered boxes of CDs that crowd the shelving units. There are pictures on the wall that once evoked pain and melancholy. I think that I maybe put them up as a means of coming to terms with loss. There is a photograph of Cat Moore who died at the age of 35 from the same illness that is killing me. Alongside the wardrobe (now full of CDs) there is a framed biro sketch of me and some Romanian / Israeli fishermen that was drawn by an Eritrean whore. I used to travel a lot. Now I can't; I'm too sick, but even before then I'd lost my nerve I don't even own a passport. It troubled me for a while.
My great uncle, in his bed-bound, post-centennial dotage was able to look fondly upon a framed photograph of the ship he served on during World War II, in spite of the horrors that he witnessed. I hope that, in time, you will be able to broker a similar peace with images of your past. I don't think you should kick dirt over them.
As someone who found my only child hanged, it's clear you are in grief. My trauma is hidden from the outside world because I look and move the same as I did before my son's suicide. Your trauma is visible, but your grief is hidden. It's exceptionally hard living after a major trauma permanently destroys your life. I instinctively knew I must face the trauma I experienced by going into the bedroom where my son died and sorting through his belongings. I still can't believe I managed to take the vast majority of his belongings to the thrift store in large garbage bags just a week after he died. Like you, I realized trying to maintain or recreated a life that was suddenly gone would be more painful.
I still live in the house where he died. We had recently moved in and my now husband endured horrific cancer treatment a year prior and was still recovering. Moving would have been too hard, so we stayed. Each day I see my son's school, the skate park he loved, his favorite hangouts, and the hospital where he died.
While my trauma is very different from yours, I believe our grief is similar. I'm not going to get you a load of crap that this is for the best and someday you will look at your accident as a gift. I actually had a well-meaning friend give me a book about a woman who said her son's suicide was a gift! Nope, your accident and my son's suicide aren't challenges: they are horrific traumas that caused irreparable damage. I lost my job because of my panic attacks, which affected my family financially. Basically, my entire life was shattered leaving me to pick up the pieces.
I can share the panic attacks and triggers are milder than they were six years ago. There are moments of beauty and joy that push through the pain. I hope the same will happen for you. That someday when you see a reminder from your past life it will only make you sad for a short period, that you will be sad instead of consumed by the deepest depression. I have good days, and I also have bad days. I guess the years have helped me accept the irreversible loss and find a way to go on. Lockdowns triggered my PTSD, and I very much regret yelling at my family. Now, I understand such loss and trauma gives me insight into how hard life can be on some people. My focus isn't on making my life better because I can't do that. I just try each day to do the best I can and be kind to others because like me, they're probably hurting too.
I wish you peace -- and new paint and beautiful artwork to transform your blank, dirty walls into something beautiful.