Year: 2024

A few weeks ago, I started writing a new blog post. I wrote around four hundred words then stopped. For some reason, unbeknownst to me at the time I couldn’t continue. It wasn’t the content of what I was writing. The hardest post I have done so far had been the previous blog talking about the day my dad had passed away. I am not sure as to whether this one I am currently writing is going to be harder, as I am writing it feeling the worst I have done for a while. Some may read this and think how is he able to write and be in the middle of a bad moment. I can’t answer that to be honest. I felt that if I was able to, then I should try. For that reason, I don’t think its going to be a long post. An opportunity to empty some thoughts onto the page in a hope that it may help in some way.

Up until the middle of last month things had been going better. I had regained control on my alcohol consumption having been in a bad place up until around May of this year. It had been just over a year since my dad’s passing and I felt a bit of inner strength to try once again to rid myself of the beast. It was tough at first but eventually I got back into some kind of rhythm and was able to stop drinking, get back to the gym and concentrate on the cricket season ahead. Something I know my dad would have wanted me to do.

However, around three weeks ago things started to slide. I didn’t notice at first, and I think that is definitely part of the problem. To still not be able to recognise the signs and warning shots. I hadn’t expected this to happen. I aspired to be stronger as time went on, and then the doubt started to creep in. My mind began to slip and to question everything I was doing. Days became darker and more muddled to a point where I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. When my head gets like that, some of my reasoned thinking goes out the window. Concentration becomes extremely difficult for me. An example of this will be when I am watching tv or trying to read an article or book. I can’t focus on what I’m reading or settle on something to watch. I will attempt maybe five minutes and then have to flick to something else. As I write this, I am finding it difficult to concentrate fully. I doubt I am writing what I want to convey, and I’m sure it is lacking any kind of coherency.

For the last week and a half, things have become more difficult to cope with. I have had a few things on socially and they have been hard to navigate for parts. Although I had been (in some ways) glad to go to them and spend time with people, I have also felt like I could have missed it all quite easily. In some instances, I can find it easier to go and be the person I am expected to be in those situations, and mask how I am truly feeling. I know that isn’t healthy, but neither is thinking like this in a dark room or lying in bed. My mind had got to the place where it was telling me over and over again that I wanted to drink. Needed to in some ways. To at least feel different. It’s exhausting to have the same message play over and over again in your head. Starting off as willing yourself to do something, then reaching a point where you’re justifying and legitimising it. You fantasise about the one thing you know you shouldn’t have to a point where it engulfs you to nearly every minute of the day leaving you feeling bereft of rational thought. Something had to give, and eventually it did.

Last Tuesday I drank for the first time in five months. Although, I have not had a drink every day since I have wanted to. That moment it all changes when the first mouthful hits, felt like a relief in some ways. Because of the internal battle I had been having for the past few weeks it felt like a weight had been lifted. Despite knowing full well, it was the opposite. I wanted to use this part of the blog to try and describe how I feel right now. Things appear very hollow and murky like the light has been turned down with a dimmer switch. I feel lost and ultimately just very sad again. Obviously, I know this is in part down to the alcohol which has only exacerbated the situation. But I still felt the same before I had drank. At times, thoughts of loneliness and being cut off from those closest to me makes me slide deeper into the state of mind I am in now. This is of course in many ways my own doing and not entirely based on reality. But it’s happening in my head right now, therefore it feels very real. I can feel lonely in a room of a hundred people, many of whom I’ve known for the majority of my life. I often wonder how many other people think like this. At times I can feel so very anxious about the smallest of things. Light tasks at work or even just something as simple as being in a shop. Fearing eyes on me or standing out for some reason.

Coupled with the mental side of things I have also physically not been too great. I know this has also had a knock-on effect to my mental health, but I can’t attribute it all to that. Maybe it’s just a phase, and I will be back on form again soon. But on the other side of that, a part of me has this deep-rooted sense that this is me. This is what I am, and maybe I am always going to be like this, and ultimately fail. Maybe I am not strong enough to get back to the person I was two years ago. At the moment, I really just don’t know. When I get into a cycle like this, I find it very difficult to break. Something provides itself as a catalyst for change. But at the moment I just don’t see that for myself. I feel an element of despair coupled with a sense that this is just the way it is for me now and I will always experience lows like this. I feel guilty for the way I am being. Knowing that I am causing myself damage and making those around me worry. It isn’t deliberate and feels unavoidable.

The blog is called Drown taken from the song by Bring Me The Horizon. I feel the lyrics perfectly sum up my state of mind right now and express in words better than I ever could. This really doesn’t feel like its my best blog but probably on balance is a reflection of where I am right now.

Thanks for reading.

Nick Denton

Sobering Thoughts  

It’s been ten months since my last post, so I feel like there is a lot to try and explain but I don’t want to try to unburden this all at once. It’s too much. I was in a bad way October time last year. Drinking heavily and most days, not looking after myself and not really caring for much. In truth, I was very close to the end in December time. I got to the point in my mental state where I could not take it any longer.

This is why.

The twenty fifth of April 2023 will forever be etched into my memory. I will never be able to erase it. It started off quite simple as Tuesdays normally would. I was at work for 8 (ish) but subconsciously aware that something wasn’t right. My dad had been ill for the best part of four months and had been deteriorating rapidly in the days running up to the twenty fifth. At that stage we didn’t know what was about to happen. He started feeling ill around December time, we had attended a few scans, but nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. The doctors and specialists hadn’t shown any real sign they were too concerned, but yet something was happening. My dad had been diagnosed in 2019 with cancer of the lungs. At stage 4 the prognosis was very bleak, but he had battled so hard and his mental tenacity towards the whole thing was incredibly inspiring. He was determined not to let it get him straight away.

In the new year something began to go wrong with his throat, and he was struggling to swallow properly. There were multiple visits to hospital, endless tests but no real progress to get him back to normal. His decline was happening before our eyes, little did we know. We had originally thought something was lodged in his throat, and he was unable to swallow because of that. Sitting here now I know it was far more serious than that. Despite it being hard for him to eat and go about his usual routines he ploughed on and tried to do as much as possible. The new cricket season had started in April which of course was a huge priority, for us both. It still felt like he was always going to get better, and this was a small series of setbacks that we where working through. The Doctors still hadn’t communicate to us that anything was considerably wrong. Scans had revealed that part of his cancer had returned but not to the point where they were offering unwanted news. Maybe, they had spoken to Dad privately and he had not wanted to express the seriousness of the situation to us. I really don’t know, I never will.

Dad was brought down to Wansbeck hospital on that Tuesday morning around eleven. In the couple of weeks running up to this his condition had got worse. He was so thin. I don’t think I appreciated how slender he had got as I was seeing him regularly but the weight he had lost was staggering. I had seen him on the Sunday and on the Saturday as he had come to watch the first game of the season. A miserable wet and cold day at Alnmouth. Despite that, he still wanted to be there and watch the team play. Maybe to watch me as well. My aunty let us know on the route down to the hospital that he was being taken to palliative care. Immediately, hearing those words I became scared. You hear words like that and think right off this can only be bad. I rushed down to Ashington but got there before him, the ambulance was taking its time to get to him and transfer him to hospital. I had to wait in the café area, which was dreadful. I was on my own at this time, just waiting.

He was eventually moved onto the palliative care ward, and I could see him. The nurses were getting him comfortable when I got upstairs. Both my aunty and uncle were there with him, they had travelled in the ambulance not wanting to leave him on his own. We went to book some visiting times in with the nurses for the coming days as we were told this needed to be done. I thought this to be a little odd, I just wanted to see my dad not worry about the day after or day after that. The doctor who had initially seen him came back and spoke to my dad and us directly. It’s a moment I will never forget, something that I can still hear in my mind now. She said that over the last few months, all the issues he had been having with his throat had been his body beginning to shut down and that he was dying. I don’t think it really hit me at first because he was comfortable, and I knew he was in the right place to get the care he needed. It didn’t feel real, I still thought that he was going to be ok.

Suddenly, the realisation that what had been happening over the previous four months started to spread over me. Like a wave rising so quickly that we had no time to run from it. The doctor said that they would be running tests and that she would come back to see him in a couple of days with the results to provide a clearer diagnosis. It still felt like there was time, enough time for everyone to see him. My brothers were on their way, travelling from Leeds and London. Both would be there in the next few hours. It felt more calm for a moment, he was in the hospital and this was where things would start to turn around. My aunty and uncle both left planning on returning in the morning and I stayed with him. They way in which the Doctor had left things felt like he could potentially have days, weeks, longer. I hadn’t even begun to think about what was happening, I just knew I had to be there and not leave. I am unsure as to how long the next period of time lasted for, it is still very much a blur now.

The situation worsened very quickly. Dad seemed to be in more pain, so much pain. He had been suffering for weeks now without being in hospital so I felt relieved in a way that he could get some proper pain relief and at least be comfortable. I think he had masked how much pain he had been in partly to shield us from it but also to possibly not wish to come to terms with what was happening himself. I sat with him for what felt like hours, but I have no real concept of how long it was. The pain kept worsening and even the amount of pain relief they would give him didn’t help. Nurses are restricted as to how much they can administer to a patient. It wasn’t working and he was becoming more distressed. Nothing was working, they were trying to get him comfortable in his bed. When they would leave him, he would cry out for more, desperate for the slightest help. I remember looking into his eyes and it felt like he wasn’t there anymore. He almost looked past me or through me. He grabbed a hold of my arm saying could I go and get the nurse and that he needed more. I felt helpless, not knowing what to do. There wasn’t anything I could do other than sit with him and try to keep him calm. But nothing would work, he was just in so much pain. He was shouting all the time now, crying out in agony and I could do was sit there, useless and no help to him at all.

Every so often, he would drift back and realise it was me to ask where my brothers were. I think when he was regaining those moments of clarity, he knew he was slipping away. Watching him in that amount of pain will remain with me to the end of my life. I am struggling to write exactly how this all happened, how I feel and felt at the time. I’ve spent the last year blocking it out as much as I can only more recently have I made any attempt to understand what had occurred. I stepped outside the room briefly whilst the nurses and doctors tried again to make him more stable. As I walked back into the building, a nurse from the ward had come to find me and rush me back to his room. At this point my mum and stepdad had arrived. Both mum and I went back into the room and one of the nurses said he was dying. I felt like I already knew this having heard those words earlier but this seemed more like it was happening now.

I sat in the chair next to his bed. He was still alive with two nurses were leaning over him. After what seemed like hours, one turned to me to say he had gone. He was dead. My dad had died. I had watch him die in front of my eyes, not just in that moment but over the last few hours. I watched the life slowly drain out of him, momentarily replaced by something else between arriving at hospital and passing away. That wasn’t him in those last few hours and moments. I am extremely sad that my brothers did not get a chance to say a proper goodbye, but also relieved they didn’t have to see him in those last hours in so much pain and not knowing what was happening. When it happened, I felt a part of me died with him.

Some time passed, of which I have no recollection of and my brother travelling from Leeds had arrived. I knew I had to be the one to tell him. He pulled into the hospital car park, got out his car and asked me if I was ok. as soon as I said no, he knew. I could see the colour drain out of his face, the emotion wash over him. He was so important to us both, and to our older brother as well. The crater sized hole he was inevitably going to leave behind had began to open up. Our lives would never be the same again, and not for the better.

In the next few blogs, I will likely come back to what happened immediately after he died and try to convey how I felt in those early stages. This has been both heart breaking and liberating to write. I miss my dad every day. So much of life reminds me of him. Music, tv, sport, politics and day to day stuff. Our lives just aren’t the same without him.

Thanks for reading this if you have got this far. I don’t feel like sixteen hundred words is enough to really explain all of this but I had to give it a try.

Nick Denton

Sobering Thoughts

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain