In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey…

You can’t get it right if you can’t relate.
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate.
And my time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite.
That’s chokin’ on the splinters.

The first sentence is the opening lyric from Loser by Beck, followed up by one of the verses. I’m not sure why I have this in head, but it’s there often.

At the moment, as I am not on my bike due to the injury, I feel I am not myself and just not in tune with anything relevant and feel at a loss with the world.

I cannot relate with anything including, more often than not, my wife. She is suffering because of this head of mine, twisting and turning at a rate of knots.

She tries to cope with my mood swings, my snaps of temper, the withdrawals into myself and it is affecting her greatly. Cash flow is an issue at the moment, but she knows what makes me happy, mint choc chip ice cream and my bike.

She told me to get some new tyres for it as the old ones are a bit shot. I’ve been researching the best gear for my bike and it’s helped me take my mind off the things that are irrelevant and don’t need my attention.

Being able to buy these has got me going again. I can start to think about a proper diet, so my mood is picking up minute by minute. I can think about the incline of that hill, that stupid hill, that nonsense in Cumbria that is just a bump in the road. It was this time last year that I started the training regime and it boosted me so much.

Now I know I can ride at a good pace and I know my limitations (tram tracks). So perhaps I can start to push myself even more to be the person I want to be and not the person my wife sometimes sees. She loves me more than anything in the world and because of this head of mine she only sees flashes of this.

Why can’t my head be normal? Am I normal? Is everyone else abnormal and I am the only sane person on the planet? Who cares… my freedom to ride is just around the corner. The happy life of my family is on the horizon again. I love my family and especially my wife, so I need to show her this even more and be the husband she deserves and a dad my daughter deserves.

One of the Happy Mondays songs starts: “I’m coming up, I’m coming up, it’s there.” Not a drug reference, but more the sound in his ears in the recording studio. Well that’s according to Mr Rider in an interview I saw him in. This is how I am starting to feel now, but I’m not quite there, not just yet!

Thank you to Rich for his fundraising contributions and for sharing his experiences of coping with anxiety. If his epic journey has inspired you to support us, visit our fundraising page for more info.

If you’re struggling with anxiety or depression, the Sanctuary is here for you all night, every night. Call us on 0300 003 7029.