Holes in My Saturdays

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By Radical Rhymes

Holes. Black holes. I’ve just finished a book by AG Riddle, a trilogy, which talks about the space time impact of black holes, amongst other things, and it opened a passageway, a vehicle for understanding. Not just about the workings of the universe (albeit a fictional work) but about my own life.

It’s no revelation to those good souls who read my scribblings here and elsewhere that I suffer from mental health problems. But the reality is, despite a belated diagnosis, I am still learning about them, and about their role in my existence.

Yesterday I learned something interesting. I noticed a pattern that has been with me since I can remember. Every Saturday morning, literally every single one, has a hole in it. A space that hurts me. A hole of deep despair and fear. It hits me like a slap in the face and I have no way to counter it.

There is specific time that it appears, nor does it last a specific amount of time. It can be measured in minutes or hours, but it always rears its head. As I don’t keep a journal or diary, I’ve had no way to identify it before. It was as a result of thinking about black holes that I truly saw the pattern for the first time.

Why Saturdays? I mean, I have anxiety and depression as generalized components of bipolar, so why do I have these regular dips or slides or whatever you want to call them? Why?

And then I realized that it’s part of the structure of our weeks. Saturdays, for me, were always an oasis. They were times that I didn’t have to go to school, a time for sport and self-expression, ‘freeish’ from the misery and drudgery of everyday life.

With some reflection, I was able to access my hatred of going to school. Not just your average dislike, but a soul searing detestation of the whole experience. The discipline, the discouragement, the eating up of precious time. I was able to recall one of my worst and recurring nightmares, the revelation that schooling would now be happening on Saturdays too!

I was even able to get inside that dream, to see it clearly, like a movie. As a small boy sitting on the step of the main building with its solid red door, desperately crying while friends tried to console me. It was so vivid it almost feels like a memory. The horror was so palpable that I can still taste the blood in my mouth because I chewed a hole in my lip. Another hole.

Okay, but why the recurring hole in my Saturdays?

Because, and I have just managed to work this out, they were an oasis. They were a breaker between the slavery of being a school kid, the forced erosion of my life. Something that would continue into adulthood. I came from a tough background, emotionally and financially, but I drove myself to succeed, to become a senior lecturer at one of the best universities in Britain. I was well paid, had status, all of the things we’d never had as a family.

But I wasn’t happy. It was just another form of slavery. An extension of the schoolyard. All the trappings of success couldn’t obscure the fact that I was still eating up my hours with things I didn’t want to do, creating books and papers I didn’t want to write. Researching issues I didn’t truly care about, simply to obtain research money to furnish a reputation I didn’t value.

Saturdays were less of an oasis because I often had to work through them, but that sense that they SHOULD be an oasis remained.

And the hole existed because, regardless of my best efforts, the mental gymnastics I played to survive, I always had to go back to work formally on Monday. I had to be that school kid again, the clueless, unimportant cog in a machine I loathed, or, the expert, the academic who taught and wrote and dispensed wisdom, amid the constant fear that it was all based on air. That my expertise and status was baseless, a mirage.

Even now, freed from that, I still suffer the hole in my Saturdays. But, and this is crucial, I understand them now. I see them and comprehend them, and even if they persist, I will be able to ride them out with more confidence. Holes have many functions, and my intention going forward is to fill mine with the knowledge that they can be filled, that they are fleeting….

Holes? Well I’m writing this on a Sunday, evidence that I negotiated it once again….

Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media – predominantly animal/human portraits and landscapes – including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter @RhymesRadical.

For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on Etsy

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