For the avoidance of additional stress and anxiety during an unstable period in my mental health, I did the previously unthinkable last weekend. I didn’t watch a second of golf’s Ryder Cup between Europe and USA USA USA. I had been looking forward to it since the last Ryder Cup in Italy two years ago, when our brave lads gave the yanks a proper thumping. But the closer it got, the less I wanted to put myself through it. When it was all over, I was convinced I had made the right call.
I’m of the view that the Ryder Cup is the greatest team sport in the world, better than any other tournament, including the football world cup. I know not many people will agree with that statement. I can only speak for me and when it’s on over three days every two years, I live and breathe it. But not this time.
I have told and retold the story of my old acquaintance who was told by his doctor that watching his beloved Bristol Rovers was making his mental health worse and that he should consider abstaining from matches, at least for a short while. I saw him perhaps a year later, he had followed doctors’ orders and was now back on the terraces, generally in a far better place. He wasn’t sure whether his absences from the Memorial Stadium had actually made a difference or maybe the antidepressants he was prescribed did the job. Either way, what I had considered was just a funny story now had some resonance.
I do fret about things I can’t really change. I do have a fear that we are already at war with Russia by way of numerous skirmishes and provocation by President Putin. I do worry about the USA as it turns into a dictatorship. The Middle East remains a powderkeg and I accept that what we are watching in Gaza is genocide. Christ – even at home, the far right in the form of Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, is on the march and the mainstream media is right behind them. And because all these things directly affect my life and the lives of everyone I love (and everyone I don’t love, for that matter), it chomps away at my mental health. Some things I can’t take out of my life but some I can, even things I actually like.
Nowadays, unless I can really avoid it, I’ll only go to the places I want to go to. I’ll only do the things I really, really want to do. At the weekend, I concluded that watching a raucous golf tournament was not for me. I know it sounds mad because at first I thought I’d miss it. But I didn’t and by the end of the final day when Europe had scraped a win, I was ready for my bed.
I have cut out most football, most notably my only team Bristol Rovers, from whom I divorced in 2018. I only watch televised games when Liverpool are playing even though I am only an armchair fan, not a real supporter, although I confess I did watch a fair chunk of the SPL clash between Livingston and Rangers at the weekend, which was more thud and blunder than blood and thunder. While it was disappointing to see Rangers win, it was comforting just how crap they were. Schadenfreude, for one afternoon only, became my friend.
I am having yet another mental health assessment soon, 45 minutes on the telephone to discuss my 56 years of issues. Perhaps, the therapist/doctor/call centre worker at the other end of the line will come up with a cure for my depression with added ADHD, although I rather doubt it. I suspect it will be the usual, ‘have a look at these websites’, ‘have you tried mindfulness’? (yes and while it didn’t work, it was better than quackery like hypnotherapy, which was laughably suggested to me after my last mental health check) and ‘we’ve nothing for you so unless you are about to top yourself, mind how you go.’
It’s up to me, then. Mental person heal thyself and that’s why I avoided the Ryder Cup, don’t go to the Rovers anymore, avoid Question Time and use social media as little as possible.
Mind you, perhaps social media could be the answer anyway. With the country and the world going to hell in a handcart, perhaps I should join everyone else who avoids reality by sharing photos of cats, or photos of their dinner (what the fuck is that all about?) and unaccountably sharing enormous photo dumps of their holiday photos on Facebook?
There was as much hate at the Ryder Cup, mostly from loudmouthed American gobshites for whom etiquette and good manners are anathema, than you will find on the front page of the Daily Mail. I don’t hate many things but I do hate hate. And if I can avoid hate, that’s what I’ll do.
My natural pessimism and cynicism tells me that things are going to get worse before they get better, if they ever get better at all. I’m wondering what I might have to avoid next in order to avoid losing what little sanity remains.
