There are six seats across the middle section of the front row of the auditorium. Our seats are the middle two, the front, middle two seats, the best seats of the show.

At Christmas, I had opened the envelope with trepidation, it was slim and light and not a real envelope but an A4 sheet of paper, origami’d into the rough shape of an envelope and sealed with a piece of sellotape that bears the thumb print of my husband. I imagined the tip of his tongue poking through his lips, the gesture he does unconsciously when he concentrates, as he formed the package and tore a strip of tape to hold it all in place. It say Mrs C on the front in blue biro ink and he hands it to me on Christmas morning as we sit in our pyjamas with plates of reheated croissants on the coffee table and glasses of Bucks Fizz in our hands.

Inside is a sheet of paper with the home-printed tickets and the performer’s masked face looking out at me. Tickets for a live recording of the Blindboy podcast in June the following year, just after my birthday. I make a yipping noise and smile a real smile with teeth and a little too much gum as I excitedly lean over and kiss him in gratitude of the very much wanted gift. I had been hinting. Well, the type of hinting you do to a neurodivergent person, of sending links to the ticketing website saying “I’d love to go to this”.

We decided a few years ago, that we like to get experiences rather than things for gifts. When you have been together for nigh on 27 years and have a reasonable income, your children are adults and need you less and if you really want something, you buy it yourself, buying physical gifts becomes quite difficult. Neither of us are bothered about fancy stuff, we love a charity shop or a car boot sale, we like to make do and mend and find joy in saving stuff from landfill. We moved to a village last year and within six months became known as the Wombles, as we will take in any junk people are getting rid of. And by junk, I mean treasure. No, of course you shouldn’t put those original church tiles in a skip! Drop them on our drive and we’ll find a purpose for them. You have an old pond liner? Well, we better build a pond hadn’t we! Since moving here, we have been gifted greenhouses, sheds, paving slabs, wood and books that villagers would rather drop on our doorstep than drive to a charity shop.

We decided that we get more pleasure from ‘doing’ something, than ‘owning’ something and so gig tickets, podcasts, plays, days out, afternoon teas and similar jaunts have become the norm for gift buying between us. I found the Blindboy podcast accidentally a few years ago, sometimes I fall into a Spotify hole of clicking the ‘More Like This’ button. My usual podcast go to’s are true crime and so I wonder how many clicks it took to bring the soft, Limerick drawl into my earholes that made me pause. He was talking about a “mental health plan for when the news is overwhelming’ and his opening gambit was asking ‘What’s the craic, you anaemic queavers?’ As the faint piano notes play in the background, this gentle voice spoke to me about these Big topics with beautiful profanity and poetic truths and I was hooked.

So the day has arrived. We travel an hour to the city and spend the day as tourists, something you rarely do in your own home town. We looked up, admired the shapes of the buildings and the signage of old, we paid £10 for two 99s, we meandered around the town centre like the pigeons that were everywhere and watched a man who had a huge owl on one of those gauntlet type gloves entertain two young boys who shouted with glee when he showed them the pellet of desiccated bone and fur that the owl had hacked up earlier that day. I notice more detail that I do at home, but I also seem to notice more detail that many people around me in general. My mental health is shot, drowning somewhere between cPTSD and anxiety, I am Working On Myself. Therapy and drugs and thinking and looking inwards and being a detective into the details of my life that we often push deep down into a big bottom drawer that we have to put our foot on to shove all the stuff down and be able to squeeze it shut again.

I have learnt that I am an introverted extrovert. I love a stage. I love to speak. I had a radio show, I interview people, I do public speaking. I am ‘showy’, I dress like a cross between a pensioner who no longer gives a fuck and a toddler who is attracted to bright primary colours, stripes and spots. I write about my inner most thoughts and put them on the internet. I take photos and videos of myself. I laugh loudly. I sing to myself in the supermarket. I love being on a stage. I am an artist. I am an extrovert.

But I also have crippling social anxiety. Put me on a stage and I will gladly regale you with stories and laughter and intrigue and heart, I’ll laugh with you and cry with you. Put me in a social situation and my chest pounds, my jaw clenches. I become awkward and clumsy. I will say the wrong thing and then point out that I said the wrong thing and make everyone feel more awkward that I said the wrong thing and then cringe into my own soul as this cycles into horrific silence. I will be the one who trips over or breaks the glass. Who tries to be the fun person I am on stage but then speak too loud as if I am projecting to the back of the room rather than speaking to your aunty in a small backroom of a pub.

My mind whirs with remembering How To People. Should I speak now as there is a silence? Oh no, their face has frozen as I tell them that I read about Wombat’s arses and how they are so tough that they can break a fox’s neck. That was not the right topic. I should smile, they are now smiling. But in 1989, someone told me my smile had too much gum in it and now when I look at photos of me, there is a lot of gum and I sometimes look a bit deranged, so I should do a moderate smile, one with less teeth and gum. She is smiling with her mouth closed, I’ll try that. Timm looks at me, his brow is furrowed, he leans over and whispers “Are you in pain?” “No”, I say, “I’m doing a Moderate Smile”. “We’ve talked about this Sam” he whispers back, “it’s fucking weird, just smile, you have a lovely smile, or don’t smile! But stop with that weird face.” I nod, solemnly, he nods back. Then I am quiet and thinking about how nodding is a weird thing. Why does up and down mean yes, and side to side mean no?

We arrive at the venue and headed to the seats. Our seats are the middle two, the front, middle two seats, the best seats of the show. I can’t believe it, this is very exciting. We sit down and I start thinking about how Blindboy might see me and think to himself that I look quite fun and then we become best friends and he will call me and say ‘What’s the craic you heaven sent Kevin?’ and then we will talk about the smell of rain and the birds whose call sounds like two marbles clacking together. Timm and I take a photo of ourselves, I share it on instagram, congratulating him for getting us the best seats of the show. He is drinking a lager shandy and I am drinking a pint of lager, they cost £16.50 and I am working out how much each drink must have cost.

Four people arrive. They do that thing of looking at their seat numbers and counting the seats. I am dividing £16.50 but then wondering the difference in cost for half lager, half lemonade versus a full lager. “Oh no!” they say, “our seats are split!” we look up and I wonder how they ever thought that 18 and 19 could be next to 22 and 23. We awkwardly smile and they stand in front of us staring, shuffling and waiting. The guy tells us that they are all together so can we just switch seats so they can all sit together? It’s no big deal! My eyes shoot down, I don’t want to move, these are the best seats in the show. But I am a people pleaser and cannot stand the awkwardness, I know I’m about to blurt out that it’s fine and then feel sad about this series of events that mean I now have slightly worse seats. Timm speaks up. “No, sorry pal, she is very excited about being in these seats.” They stare and then split apart and sit either side of us. The man says that there is a monitor right in front of him now. I stare at the ground.

My ears are full of the sound of blood going in and out of my heart, I feel hot and shrink back into my seat and the two couple speak across us. I feel small and mortified and question if we are in the wrong. Should we have just moved? It’s not that big a deal is it? I know if it were any other seats I would have moved. But these are the best seats in the show. And I don’t want to sit behind that monitor. And it’s fine, they bought those seats knowing. And we bought these seats. And it’s not even sold out, so they could have bought other seats all together. And Timm must have been first on the website to buy these seats. That’s so nice to know. And we’ve had a shocking few years with my health. And I am in a lot of pain. And Im using my walking cane today. And they are sat down now. And this is all in my head. And they probably just were chancing it. They probably don’t hate me. Unless they do. And maybe they are fuming. And maybe I just ruined their night. Am I being selfish? I’m not being selfish. This is OK. This is awful. This is fine. This is terrible.

My brain is full.

But I am Working On Myself remember. So I can CBT the shit out of this. I know I could easily tumble into this whirlwind of self doubt and insecurity and anxiety and sit in the audience of my favourite podcaster and not hear his words as they are drowned out by my inner demons. But I also know I have the ability to recognise this and stop myself. I whisper to Timm that it’s so awkward, that I am mortified and that I could ruin this for myself. He whispers back “let it go, leave it behind.”

He tells me to leave it behind when my trauma is so large and heavy that I carry it with me like a terrible one woman moving van, stacks of dishes in my hands as I balance an armchair on my back and loop plastic bags of crap up my arms so heavy that they cut into my skin, the sharpness of the sliced flesh only outweighed by the man sat on the armchair shouting down at me with a megaphone that I am a useless burden. And when Timm sees those moments reflecting in my eyes like a slideshow, he tells me to leave it behind. It’s three words that reset me, that remind me that I have control of this, this doesn’t have control of me. He knows me better than any human in the world and I believe him when he tells me to let it go and leave it behind.

I take a deep breath, I shake my shoulders, flicking off the obsessive overthinking like a cow whips flies away from it’s arsehole. I look at the people. They are not some terrible overlords who demand me to bow down and shuffle away like a serf, they are just two couples who thought they’d chance an ask in a polite way to see if they could sit together. They aren’t the cause of my internal meltdown, I am. My brain feels as though it fizzes, and that fizziness works for me a lot of the time. It allows me creative thoughts, it helps me plan projects and make art. It’s whirliness makes me who I am. But it also has a dark side that makes me hurt.

When we feel anger or hurt, we project that onto others and I have to learn to accept my role in this is the only role that I have any control of. This story could have been a complaint about the people who ‘ruined my night by making us move’. It isn’t the story. The story is of a woman who is Working on herself and learning that the big bottom drawer is bursting open. That 44 years of ‘stuff’ is bursting out of the drawer, it can’t take anymore as it is full to the brim. I have two choices. I can build another drawer, maybe a big chest type one with a sturdy padlock. Or I start to unpack it. Piece by piece. Item by item. Pain by pain.

I choose that option.

I shared this as a spoke word piece over on instagram, so you can check that out here:

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