Saturday 4 May 2019

It's been many years and two websites since I last posted on this blog.  I've now cycled extensively around Britain and have taken my wheels to France. I've written three books and am ten years older. Most importantly, I'm no longer in a mental health crisis. A decade disappeared in that all consuming darkness. I fought and tried, battled and cried, struggled and almost got consumed before finally finding some release, peace and mindfulness. I feel as though I'm returning to my roots by writing here. Cycling for health is no longer an ambition to circumnavigate the coast of Britain. That is done. It's now a lifestyle. It isn't any longer a series of journeys to raise money for charity. It is me, and I am it. I am whole. Or at least as whole as I ever will be.

I am now working again, part-time, as a Bikeability Cycle Instructor. I'ts the best work I've ever done. I get to teach kids to cycle on the roads (adults too) and get paid for it. It beyond my wildest dreams that I have got this far from where I was in 2009 when I began this blog. I am simply unrecognisable from that person, although there can be no doubt that both of them are me.

Who was the one who pulled me through? It was every facet of me that did that.  The adventurous one created the challenges that helped me feel life was worthwhile again. I tried to take care of him and the little person, the frightened one who had no confidence, so they could both grow into something new. Like twins they argued and challenged one another. The adult not always understanding the fear of the little one and the little one wondering why nobody was listening to his point of view, unable to feel his pain.

Eventually they did both listen, to one-another and to the world outside that they were both so afraid of. A calm overcame them slowly, one piand a light switched on that guided them to where they are now, living side by side in one man, separate but conjoined parts of the same being.  And the sum of those parts is me: Graeme, a man I have grown to like and enjoy being, not one wracked in pain and inadequacy but a content and fulfilled man.

It feels as though the shackles have been thrown off. I am free as a bird. There is no cage now and I can truly fly. My mind and my life are much calmer. I cycle gently, without a thought of performance, distance or speed of travel. I simply pass over the ground, sometimes slowly and sometimes with a little more urgency. I have cycled to work at dawn and returned in the darkness. I have introduced new people to cycling and the joys of using a bike for transport and leisure.

That has to be the biggest joy in life: giving somebody a new life-skill, one that they will have for the rest of their lives. It helps me square my own consumption of planetary goods and wares, safe in the knowledge that another person may walk lighter than I have in their lives with their newly acquired cycling skill and ,I hope, a sense of adventure with the desire to explore. You can see the light come on when somebody rides a bike for the first time. That sense of freedom and speed felt for the first time in a young life. The smile that accompanies it says it all, at least for me. It seems to say: Wow, I never knew you could have this much fun on a bike.

Young and old are no different. Older people smile just as widely when they learn to cycle or gain confidence to use their bike daily. And I smile too, happy in the knowledge that I helped them to gain the skill or confidence to stride out alone and explore a new (to them) world.

So my journey continues apace. I have a wonderful partner and friend with whom I share everything. We walk, cycle, eat, laugh and generally goof around. We sometimes work together and even that is a pleasure as we make such a good team. There is never enough time for us to spend together  as we would like and separation feels unnatural.