You can listen to this as an audio-blog at sazzy.co.uk

I was musing the other day about my life as a teenager. I was reflecting on how much calmer, more simple, and less dramatic life was then. Most importantly, I was remembering how much better I used to sleep.

I was lucky to grow up on the cusp of emerging technology, but lately, I find myself missing the old days. Back then, solid plans were made with friends on the weekend and rarely broken. If you had to break plans, it meant making a phone call to your friend’s parent’s landline in the hope that your friend would even be there to pick up. If I was expected home at 7pm, I walked through the door at 7pm. My only way to tell Mum that I would be late was to use a BT payphone, and again, she would have to be home to get the call.

If you were with your friends, you gave them your undivided attention. There wasn’t a device to pull out every 10 minutes, so these were truly personal times without distractions.

Mum then got me a pager. The most anxiety I ever felt would be when that super-cool brick of technology on my hip would buzz. It would usually mean one of two things: Mum was pranking me (she loved nothing more than to ring the operator and leave a silly message for me) or I wasn’t at the designated pickup point and she needed to tell me where she was parked. It was a one-way conversation.

Then mobile phones hit the scene. I still remember my first ever mobile, the Motorola C520. Texts were extortionately expensive, and phone calls meant you had to sell a kidney. We used them in a very different way and with far more intent than we do now. The constraint on price meant we were always conscious of our time on them.

I’m making it sound like I’m a dinosaur who’s unhappy that technology moved on, but let’s face it, I wouldn’t be doing what I love without them. I adore them and still sit in awe of this device that sits in my pocket, but I think we’re missing a crucial element.

Our social circles got blurred and we set the limited access to ourselves to “all of the time” and “everywhere”.

It’s all about access.

I’ve had a knot of anxiety in my stomach for months. Some days I even have chest pain. “It’s dull and nothing to worry about”, I tell myself. I found myself anxious to look at my phone in the morning (especially when I was in the States and the UK had been awake for 5 hours). I was anxious after long periods of time away from my phone, like when I was transatlantic flying sans internet. I was constantly worried that when I turned it back on, I would be pinged with impending doom.

I already had most notifications set to “badges only”, no banners, and no home-screen notifications, but even then seeing the numbers rise would fill me with dread. I never knew what to expect and I was anxious about how people would feel if I didn’t get back to them quick enough.

Maybe other people don’t have this problem, but I’m pretty damn sure I’m not alone.

It’s all about access.

I was giving everyone access to me, all of time. It was like having someone jumping up and down in front of me screaming “I’m here! I’m here! I’m here! Answer me! Answer me! Answer me!”.

I started putting everyone in boxes. I realised I needed to control who was where for my own sanity. My Facebook had employees of Blushbar, group members from various hobbies, work friends, and industry friends. The lines were all blurred. I would be getting messages via Facebook messenger from an employee telling me they were sick, whilst simultaneously congratulating pregnant friends and checking rehearsal schedules. Three separate patterns of thought and three separate social circles, all at once. Total lunacy.

My breaking point this month was when a friend of a friend used my personal What’s App to keep pestering me about advice on her career. Despite the fact that I had never even met her, she had no regard for what time the messages were sent. Her messages would range from 6.30am to 1.30am.

I’ve noticed What’s App has become the go to “I want an answer and I want it now” app. It’s widely used in the UK in place of iMessage. It’s by far the most intrusive form of messaging, and in my opinion, it’s what sets it apart from iMessage. It tells the recipient if and when you’ve read their message and even lets them know it has been delivered to your phone (but hasn’t been read yet). I’ve discovered that people are using it to force a response. As the reader, I feel a sense of pressure to respond because the author of the message knows I’ve read it and I’m not responding.

I have spoken to friends who do the same with Facebook messenger. They don’t read messages because they don’t want someone to know they’ve read it until they’ve got time to respond properly.

I knew that something needed to change for me.

I asked my Blushbar employees (nicely of course) to stop using iMessage, Facebook Messenger, or What’s App to talk to me, and instead switch all communication to Slack. I removed Blushbar employees from my Facebook and my personal Twitter account.

I toyed with the idea of deleting everyone from my Facebook and starting again, but there seems to be a certain social etiquette around doing that. I decided there would be less fallout to just mute 80% of them and set up a “close friends” group who can see my new posts. As far as the rest go, I was happy to go dark. I deleted any people I didn’t speak to regularly and stopped notifications from Facebook messenger.

I then set about compartmentalising my work life. My work chatter, correspondence, and social all happens on Twitter, so it made sense for that to be the work “water-cooler”. I removed all work acquaintances from Facebook and removed all friends and acquaintances from Twitter.

I then had friends in silos that were no longer screaming at me or fighting for attention. I knew my personal social priorities on a day-to-day basis and could better handle any social anxiety that stemmed from them. I could now decide to turn notifications on or off daily, based on what was happening in my life that week/month. I knew if there was a number “4” notification on Facebook, it wasn’t going to be a work issue. If twitter was alight, it was likely to be because Sketch just had an update, or someone was expressing genuine appreciation for an online course.

The possibilities of what I could read were no longer blurred and my imagination didn’t have to run wild if I was in a situation where I couldn’t respond. In just a few days, I’m much more calm and enjoying social platforms again.

It feels like a form of social prescription and it feels good. My self diagnoses was clear: channels of specific people, limited notifications, put down the phone at 9pm where possible, set it to “emergency contacts only” on “do not disturb” and pick up a book instead.

You might be happy with everyone having access to you all of the time, but I wasn’t. It was actually making me ill.

Look at everyone that has access to you and how. Are you allowing situations or toxic people to pop up on your feed hourly? Is that healthy? Are your messages from true friends being drowned out by the majority noise?

These were all questions I started to ask myself and it helped me to make a change. You can curate and create what you see, from the moment you wake up, to the last feed you scroll at night. It took me a while to realise this. Now the question is whether or not those feeds should be the first and last thing we look at in the day, but that’s for another time.

Remember, it’s all about access.

Selling Everything I Have, for Just Five Minutes.

At the top of my road where I grew up — there is a toy shop. My Mum would sometimes take me there on the walk back from school, and very occasionally, I would be allowed to pick out a small piece of Playmobil.

The top shelf of the Playmobil section was reserved for the larger pieces; ships, cars and houses. Every time I walked into the store, I would see this pink box that contained a Victorian-style Playmobil mansion. I fell in love with it, and Mum explained that it was very expensive and would be reserved for a special occasion, and possibly even a combined Christmas and Birthday present.

Every time I visited the store, I would look up at the pink box shining back at me. Imagining the scenario of one day being able to open the box and be the owner of this beautiful plastic mansion. This went on for months and months. My birthday is in September, and I got a small present for my birthday and the Playmobil mansion that Christmas. I remember being so excited that Christmas, at even just the prospect of possibly getting the Playmobil mansion, that I barely slept. As the sun came up, I watched until the clock ticked to 7am (my curfew wake-up time on Chrismas Day) and ran down the stairs to be greeted by the plastic epiphany that was ‘The Mansion’. Mum and Dad had stayed up into the small hours, putting it all together for me, which was no mean feat — especially for Dad who would work a 14 hour day, every day, in the run up to Christmas.

I’m sure every one of you can think back to a scenario just like mine, whether it was a bike, a toy, or special game you wanted. That deep longing and endless days that would seemingly tick by, before you could add the coveted item to your toy inventory.

I realised, I had been carrying around the same feeling. The exact same feeling of wanting something so badly, you would wait any amount of time in order for it to come to fruition. It’s taken me a while to realise I’ve been bargaining with myself.

“Would I sell everything I owned, to be able to speak to my Mum for just five minutes?” the answer is always a resounding yes. I then go through the emotions of the anticipation, the feeling of excitement and wonder, until I realise that feeling is never going to be fulfilled. I’m never going to run down the stairs and find her standing there. I still can’t quite grasp that, and it’s been almost two years.

I realised that whenever I get something of value, I ask myself whether I would sell it, and everything I had on me, to be able to speak to her. Almost as a way of still justifying her value in my life. The answer never changes. Worse still, I would work every day of my life earning nothing, happily, if the promise was on my last working day, I got to speak to her.

That’s quite a weight to be carrying around daily.

The plastic mansion still sits in my family home. Dusty and abandoned, but still very much standing. Waiting to be resurrected one day.

The irony of that isn’t lost on me.

Selling everything I have, for just five minutes. was originally published in Be Yourself on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A reflective account of unspoken truths surrounding death.  

I’m on countdown mode. It’s been almost a year without my Mum. In my head, this breaks down into the hundreds of phone calls, cups of tea and hugs and kisses that haven’t been exchanged, and crucially a landmark birthday of mine – all missing from my 2013 memory log.

For a while I’ve wanted to write about my experiences of the last year, particularly what a winding road grief is, and continues to be. You may think this is too sobering a subject to enjoy reading, or too depressing. You might be right, however, I also think it could be one of the most important things you force yourself to read.

Death, and everything that surrounds it, is full of clichés.

“They wouldn’t have known anything about it. It would have been quick.”
“Anything I can do, just call.”
“They’re in a better place.”
“They’re not suffering anymore.”
“They’re with Grandma and Fido now.”

Good intentions and well meant words, dissipate into thin air and after a few weeks, you’re left with a lot of empty promises – no doubt a byproduct of everyones ever increasing busy lives. You start to rank your friends by those who pick up the phone and those who “like” a Facebook status to show they’ve read a post that hints at you being sad.

I always thought I would be able to recognise unhealthy behaviour or changes of the mind. I always thought I was acutely aware of my own mental health as well as those around me. I wasn’t. Looking back, I spent a lot of time in the denial phase. I’d been taught that if I worked hard enough for anything, I could achieve the thing I strived for. I struggled with the notion that I could work myself into the ground, but not inch myself a step closer to my goal of having my Mum back. It took me a long time to deal with that.

I also didn’t cope very well with change; certain that change would be unfamiliar to her should she return and make it uneasy for her to slip back into life as she knew it. I even convinced myself I was part of the most cruel reality TV programme ever. I had visions of a camera crew arriving at my doorstep and me running back into my Mums arms, vowing to spend more time with her and undo all my wrong doings I’d stupidly convinced myself I’d made.

The brutal sights of what happened the day I lost her snap me back to reality, and I am back at square one.

I was unprepared for the sleepless nights and the feeling of wanting to walk around in a protective bubble. For someone who’s spent an entire life proud of the strong facade I could switch on should I need to, I wanted people to know what had happened to me, so it would excuse my quietness at times. I didn’t want them to make a fuss, just hold the knowledge. The biggest security blanket I’ve craved for is for people to not expect too much of me.

I yearned to spend time with people I could be myself with; always having valued a smaller group of close friends than a large group of friends, paid off. Airs and graces were not an option. New friendships or friendships that always bordered on your outer circle of friends became a struggle, and unless I feel instant warmth from someone, I held them at arms length and rarely let them into my bubble.

I’ve seen the way England deals with grief. Our stiff upper lip culture simply sends the grieving person underground. I found myself wondering how I’d never heard of some truly terribly things you have to go through, logistically, when I knew so many people who had lost loved ones. I promised to write about them so no one, especially at my age (then, 29), would be in the dark surrounding some of the tougher questions death puts to you, and often within hours of losing a loved one. These may be tough to read, but I’ve always thought being well-informed is better than having something emotional sprung on me, especially in difficult circumstances — when the consequences of each, will haunt you for life and can’t be reversed.

1) If the circumstances are right, you’ll be asked if you wish to see the deceased. I’m glad I did in the hospital (as disturbing as it was) but I didn’t want to see her in the funeral home, for reasons I’ll document later. They also rarely look like they are sleeping. I’d always assumed they would look nothing but peaceful and twice now, have been caught out by the Hollywood mirage.

2) When you register the death, in the UK you are required to take their driving licence and passport to the registry office. They will cut it up in front of you, with a degree of empathy council officials have when they do this day in day out; scissors through your loved ones face a few days after their death, isn’t something I was prepared for. Nor the hundreds of questions they had to ask.

3) If you’re asked if you want to see them in the funeral home, there’s a level of preparation that has to be done in order to make it safe and pleasant for you to do this. Read up on what this preparation entails, as graphic as it was, I’m glad I did. I made an informed choice and chose not to. Individual situations and beliefs prevail here, naturally.

4) If the loved one has to go for a post-mortem due to unexpected death, this can take weeks and delay the funeral. Expect to be dealt with in cold, callous language throughout your exchange — “there’s a backlog at the moment due to the cold weather” was my favourite.
N.B. I found anyone who deals in funerals as a business (florists, caterers, and so on) can be quite absurd and removed from the situation.

Sobering. Yes. Horrible to read. Probably. Something everyone has to go through and no one talks about? Without doubt.

Dealing with a someone who is grieving.

On the flip side, if you’re dealing with a friend experiencing grief, you can make their journey a little easier along the way.

1) Don’t say “Anything I can do, please shout/call” or similar. Offer to do something, anything. Real tangible things. “Can I come over for a coffee?” — “Can I bring you anything from the supermarket?” — anything that’s an actual do than hot-air coming out of your mouth. You learn to hear “anything I can do, please call” as “I have no idea what to say and have no intention of doing anything”. Don’t put yourself in that bracket.

2) Understand you’re now dealing with a muddled mind. The person grieving needs help making decisions, but gently. Clarity of whatever you’re offering, is imperative. Simply just deciding a meeting place and time for that promised coffee was (and still is) enough for me and lessened the cognitive load just that bit more. I’ve heard the words “I’ve told you before” more times this year than I have in my life, and each time, it’s a bittersweet reminder of what happened to cause the memory lapse in the first place – be a little more patient.

3) Everything and anything can set the griever off on an emotional downward spiral, but often, talking about the lost loved one is the thing that brings the most peace; yet the one thing people skirt around.

4) Speak about any triggers. Often the griever has triggers associated with death. Mine is ambulances on sirens, amongst other things. This is not so you can tread on eggshells around the griever nor baby them. It’s so that you can understand a change of behaviour if in the presence of the trigger.

5) If the griever tries to tell you of a change in behaviour, or something they’ve noticed as being different about the way they cope. Listen. Intently. Read between the lines, schedule a cup of tea and go and talk about it — they could be trying to tell you they are going downhill and need a shoulder, without wanting to appear weak or startle you.

6) Understand they can function perfectly normally too. My job was the one thing I never struggled with, because my Mum was never really part of my job. When it came to my job, I was able to focus, deliver great projects and do good work. The minute 5pm hit, however, I’d be exhausted and often a bottle of emotions, but I’m proud to say, my clients along the way would have been unaware of what had happened to me.

Lastly…

7) Tears. They make almost everyone uncomfortable don’t they? I’ve had one person shake me, physically, and tell me I had to get a grip and move on (it had been three weeks since my Mum had died). While others have sat and quietly listened and passed tissues. Knowing how you deal with people who are crying before you enter yourself into a situation where it’s likely to happen, will help.

To finish. The biggest fallacy statement that gets bounded around is “time heals” – while I’m left in no doubt, you don’t. You learn to live with it. It’s very different. One of the worst pressures was thinking that by a certain date, I should have been healed. I got worse. Progressively worse over the year, not better. Time lessens the sting; but for the griever, it’s almost a prison sentence without parole. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. You just have to get up each morning and hope something gives you a glimmer that gets you through the day.

That glimmer for me has been in the shape of good friends, new friends, family, and the small things they’ve done along the way, to show me they’ve realised they’re dealing with someone made of glass – a reflective glass, which means one day, I’ll repay the huge favour of kindness they are showing me, when sadly, their time undoubtedly comes to tread the same road.