In My Head - 3. Poles

I’m eighteen years old, with four months left of my secondary education. I’ll be nineteen soon. Everyone asks me, ‘Aren’t you going to apply to the opera academy? Or the classical music academy?’

And I, in spite of having spent the past three years wanting to be an opera singer, say, ‘Nah. I’m gonna be a rock musician instead.’ They look at me like I’m crazy.

I don’t apply for either of those schools. I apply for The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, but I don’t get in, and I spend a year at home, not doing much of anything, gaming all night and occasionally temping as a daycare assistant, until finally a friend’s boyfriend tells me of a school that teaches popular music, right here in town. I apply. I get in.

I’m twenty-three, and I’ve finished my Bachelor’s degree in Popular Music, first class. I should feel happy and accomplished, but instead I’m just itching for something new. I’ve always liked the stars, and I decide, fuck music, I want to be an astrophysicist! Never mind that I didn’t take physics or advanced mathematics in secondary school. I’ll just take those up privately, get my exams, then apply for university next year. What an adventure!

I crash and burn, of course. By the end of October I quit my part time job because I can’t handle it. I take my exams, but I quit my studies after Christmas too. I decide to go back to music. I buy a ukulele. I’m going to be the next Amanda Palmer.

I’m twenty-five, and I have just returned from the most wonderful and intensely creative year of my life, at a one-year folk music programme in Sweden, where I’ve made friends, performed music, written songs, and at the same time somehow managed to finish a novel, start a second and a third, and write over a dozen short stories. I come home and . . . I crash. I crash worse than ever before. I go to my doctor, get a referral for a psych evaluation, and start taking anti-depressants.

They make me dull. I stop writing, eventually. Stop playing music, almost. I apply for a few jobs at first, but I’m too sick to cope with the rejections, so I stop. I’m diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. Still, when I start coming out of it a little bit, I decide that I want to be a sound tech. I’ve done some sound work, at school. It was fun. I was pretty good at it. I can do this.

First year, fail an exam, have to wait so I can take it up again. Boyfriend dumps me, I move, I skip a year. I complete the exam. Second year, I have a lot of fun, but I lag behind on things.

I’m twenty-nine, I start third year while also taking a job as a sound tech for an indie theatre production. It’s a much bigger job than I thought. When I applied for it back in June I was so ready! So happy and confident. As autumn drags on, I start to crash, and by the time the show is done, after a month and a half of performances, I’ve stopped attending lectures. I go on sick leave.

After Christmas, pushing thirty with a fairly short stick, I’m finally diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. I look back, at all the things, everything that’s happen, and I think, how did nobody see this before? How did nobody figure it out? All the things I’ve done, my behavioural patterns, it’s fucking classic. How did I spend two and a half years in therapy before they noticed?

I try to start the third year again. I’m doing better, I’m on different meds. I finish all my novels, write another in three weeks. And then I crash. There’s no point anymore. I quit school.

I’m thirty-one years old, staring at a computer screen, typing this. Wondering what’s gonna happen to me. I’m doing an internship at a venue, learning about their systems, I’m supposed to be tagging along at concerts and see how things are done. The more time I spend there, the more I start to think that this isn’t for me and I’m wasting everyone’s time. I can’t do this. I don’t have the knowledge, the experience, the attention span, the ability . . . Anything. This can’t be me.

So what am I? A failed opera singer, a rock musician that never was, absolutely not an astrophysicist, an occasional folk singer who’s almost original; almost, but not quite. A mediocre writer with delusions of grandeur, whose readers abandon in him droves; who can’t deal, with anything. And what of everything else? Is my gender because of my illness too? Am I even who I think I am?

Unemployed. Maybe unemployable. With a massive student debt and benefits that will be cut off in April. And when I get stressed, I either fly off into wonderland with a new idea and a new reason to exist, or I sink down to the bottom of the ocean and become one of those ugly fish that live under rocks.

One way or the other. Up or down. Shifting from pole to pole, or stretched between them.

Maybe that’s all I am.