This next post will follow on from events that happened after my hospital incident. Because if it wasn't enough having nearly died in hospital, then what was about to happen was a lot worst. It was worst because it was unpredicted and happened suddenly.
I am talking about the death of a friend, which triggered off a whole series of events which nearly tore my family to pieces.
This is something which I haven't really properly talked about with a lot of you. So this may be a bit hard to read, so I am going to do my best to sum up the whole situation.
So here goes, my parents decided to lease out half of the house in Horsley to a popular young family, the Harvey Lewis's. They were, Chris and Imogen, with two children Kit and Jake, they were the kind of family that was almost instantly endorsed in the whole village. My parents saw a younger version of themselves, because they threw themselves into all sorts of things.
They were really great to have around, largely because of having someone like Chris around it helped me ease tensions that had arisen between me and my dad. I think this might have something to do with the fact that dad kind of was feeling that he had been a bad parent to me because he did not know how to relate to me. so Chris was a bit of a meditative personality for me, her helped us understand each other so that we would not be cross with each other, I will admit to being a complete hopeless slacker at the time.
Chris was really heavily involved with helping out a local theatre group called Fair Game, who were a started up by local villagers with an aim to provide theatre that had ethical messages behind it which they would take to schools and stuff.
Their first play was about chocolate and the slave trade that many of the producers like kraft use.
Chris used to help them out with the lighting and sound effects, often at times doing narration for their stories. it was whilst he was working for them that he suffered with Anyuerism to the head.
If you don't know what an anyuerism is, it is when a blood vessel bursts because it has been putt under pressure. So basically he was out with the Theatre group at a School when he suddenly collapsed. The thing about Ayuerisms is that there is no way that you can predict when they are going to happen, its like all internal ilnesses you cant predict anything.
You see when I got a call from my Mum saying something had happened I thought to myself it cant be something that serious, it was only the next day when she came to see me in bristol that I got and idea that it was pretty bad. My Mum is usually a pretty cheery character, but that she was pretty cold and emotionally grey.
'They suspect he had an anyuerism bleed in his head' she said coldly as we were having lunch together. 'He may not make it through but if he does then he will be servierly brain damged'
'What is the likely hood of him surviving?' I asked .To which she replied 'The doctors think that it is pretty unlikely'
she placed a hand on mine and said 'We had better prepair for the worst'. This note struck a chord with me as I felt a cold chill.
That night I wrote a song about him called Shining Star, I still have the words somewhere I think, if I do the I will post them up. I had a little prayer because this sent me into turmoil of depression and self blame.
He was placed in a coma, where he was two weeks before he passed away. He was only about 18 years older then me, if he was around to day then he would only just about be 46 years old.
The whole anyuerism thing cast a massive cloud over the village community, things felt like we were started to be placed in a pressure cooker because of the uncertainty of if he was going to survive or not. My Mum would often go in and visit him reporting back on any progress.
I never went to see him in hospital because I was too scared to go anywhere near a hospital. it was only a matter of months after I had been there, in a coma and I didnt want to be reminded of it. And so because I didnt have the nerve to go and see him on his death bed, I kind of blamed myself for his death, i probably shouldnt have, but with the two events so close together I couldnt help but feel what I did.
There was a massive amount of strain endured by my parents around this point, you could just feel tension running out. I mean my parents celebrated their 25th wedding aniversary and joint Birthday Party, even though the event was supposed to be fun, I felt an on running sense of frustration in-between my parents.
There was a lot of stress going on and emotional problems for my parents, I found it really hard to speak to people at the time, you I was a really shy reclusive person, who had little or no social skills at the time.
I was lucky I was at Access To Music at the time par taking in a 3 year course studying in Contemporary popular music in Bristol. so I was lucky that I was not in the cauldron, litteraly it did feel like a cauldron, I would go back to my parents on the weekends because I would get home sick.
The place felt like a valley of death, all emotions were stale. I missed his funeral due to going on a pre arranged skiing holiday with my Mum and my Sister. I think dad couldnt help but feel a kind of frustration.
On the day of his funeral, I had a bad anxiety attack in the worst possible place to ever have one, on top of a mountain about 35,000 feet above sea level, this caused me to go nearly careering off the mountain. I guess that would have been quite some way to go out. My confidence was shot to pieces.
So for me I never got to say good bye to someone really close to, which heaped the sense of self blame on myself and poured pressure on my parents relationship. Things soured pretty quickly, it is amazing to see how quickly the tide can turn on people really, because one moment my parents were lauded as heros of the village and the next moment they were public enemy number 1.
This was partly due to my mum evicting Imogen and the kids, this maybe seen by some as an over reaction. But she hated the feeling of there being no let up in the tension, she also evicted them because she feared loosing my dad her husband, because as per all males pretty much have the soft spot for younger women. She felt very threatened.
You know the whole sticks and Stones, may break my bones but words will never hurt me malarkey, well I tell you from my experience words can lethal weapons especially when you are in small village then words travel very fast. mounting pressure from who you thought were your friends turned their backs.
This is kind of how I felt as my parents separated for 6 months, I felt a grey ness mixed up bag of what I should probably be feeling and what I was actually feeling. I felt hurt by people because I could over hear little whispers hear and there and back stabbing words.
It was a really hard time, because I could over hear my parents rowing in the kitchen below my bedroom sometimes. This made me scared to go down stairs because I didn't know what whirlwind was going to hit me, so I would often hide myself away writing down lyrical notes on pads of paper which my parents would fins scattered around the place.
I didn't feel like I had a voice, you wouldn't believe it now with the amount of noise I can make. I used to just hide behind the drum kit hitting them hard, I hit them real hard, so hard you could hear across the valley.
It was during this period that I created my rap personality Manic F, as in all the gigs I would talk about this period on a track I called Wanted In The Valley Of Death, where I would talk about the feelings of self doubt. I felt that the villagers to a certain extent blamed me for his death, although they probably didn't.
I guess I tried to use music as an anger management tool, because I was really reeling, or maybe still am.
I saw his brother about a year or two ago, both Chris and his brother were huge music fans, especially when it came too chill out music or psychedelic rock. I was at a Secret Machines gig in the Thekla where he turned up. I couldn't bring myself to speak to him. I actually had quite horrific flashback during that gig of me in Hospital and actually had a mini freak out panic attack sort of thing.
I guess this is kind of a bit hard to understand, but hopefully this will have cleared a few potential things up!
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