I've heard people say " I'm on the edge..." before, but I never really knew what it meant.
I do now.
I get to the end of the day and I am shattered, the sheer mental and physical energy that is required to stay away from the edge is unbelievable. I'm on the edge of collapsing in a heap every second. I'm on the edge of breaking down every second. I'm on the edge of just giving up all the time.
I know what it's like to live on the edge now.
As you may know I'm in the process of moving house, that is stressful enough in itself but trying to arrange for three children to start GCSE, A-level and college courses at the same time, sort out buses to school, uniforms & college equipment is insane.
Coupled with the fact that we have other 'things' going on in life which I'm not able to talk about at the moment makes for a very stressful time.
I can feel that permanent burden almost physically resting on my head, the pressure is behind my eyes and manifests as a permanent headache.
Yes, I know what it's like to live on the edge.
The toughest thing is doing all this alone, not alone in the sense that there is no one around me, but alone in the sense that I'm not complete without Claire. We faced these trials in life together, it was always 'Mark and Claire' - that was how we lived. My coping habits and strategies involve Claire and have been very well rehearsed over the last 22 years together and it takes more than three months to break these habits and install new strategies.
I feel like an amputee, like there's a part of my body missing. I feel like I'm the world's most accomplished drummer and I've just had my arm amputated.
Oh my god, I've just remembered Rick Allen from Def Leppard, the one armed drummer.
So after some YouTube-ing I've just found this video of him playing drums and I'm crying at it...
I remember seeing a TV show years ago about Rick when he lost his arm, he didn't know how he would ever complete his passion and play drums again, how could he, he only had one arm and who has ever heard of a one armed drummer?
But he decided that he'd do it, he redesigned the drum kit... Now I am no drummer, but from what I understand he redesigned it to use the upstroke of his knees which had never been done before. The result of that tweak to the drum kit was that he was now able to play things that no other drummer could... All with one arm.
The video above is only 30 seconds long, but I have now watched it six times.
It inspires me, it motivates me and I'm now really glad I wrote this blog post, because I was on the edge of not bothering.