Author: Lawrence Gartshore

By Lawrence Gartshore.

As a student of theology, one of the major criticisms that one learns about God’s existence (or lack thereof) relates to a seemingly very simple notion – the idea that, for Christians, God is good. I beg of you to bear with me here; I promise that there is a deeper point coming than simple religious semantics.

On the face of it, stating that God is good seems to be a rather straightforward assertion. If the God of Christianity does exist, which for the sake of argument here I will assume is true, then, of course, this omnibenevolent deity must be good. If he wasn’t, then one would not be thinking of the Christian God at all and rather some other, lesser, meaner god.

Yet, this statement of ‘God is good’ is, in many ways, a tautology. A tautology, in layman’s terms, is when one states the same idea twice and, in doing so, commits a fault in style. Simply put, saying ‘God is good’ is no different linguistically to saying ‘return back to’. The word ‘back’ is redundant here, for the meaning of the sentence does not change with its addition; ‘return to’ says the same in fewer words. In much the same way, therefore, the argument goes that as for Christians, God is goodness itself, so saying ‘God is good’ is, in fact, simply saying ‘God is God’ – which is perfectly meaningless.

For those of you interested in reading more about this theological minefield, I would point you in the direction of the Euthyphro dilemma but, and I can almost hear the audible sigh of relief, this article is not one on theology.

Rather, I would like to propose another tautology exists in the world – one that is perhaps even more ever-permeating than that of God’s goodness. I speak of the concepts of living and loving.

This may seem like a strange proposition on the face of it. Why, using my earlier logic surrounding the divine one could, in fact, perfectly conceive of something being alive without necessarily feeling the emotion of love. There appears to be no contradiction in terms, nor does one possess a linguistic meaning that necessitates the other.

However, I believe most strongly that we, as human beings, are not merely ‘something’ – no, every one of us, from the highest to the lowest, is rather ‘someone’.

‘Someone’, in my opinion, cannot live without love. Many of us are lucky enough to be born with it bestowed upon us by our parents. We develop the feeling as we grow, eventually finding the ability to love others. We grow a little more and obtain the far more difficult talent to love ourselves. Even when we are at our absolute lowest, and we cannot locate the facilities for self-love, when we think that all our love reserves have been spent, someone new enters our life and teaches us that we do in fact have more to give.

Love is, fundamentally, what sets us as species apart from so many others. Other animals may mate for life, such as the dolphin, but no other, as far as I am aware, show the same capacity for unbridled love as we humans. We fight for it; we are guided by it. It provides safety, and pain, and joy, and agony, and it is through all those feelings, good and bad, that we truly know we are alive.

Love can hurt, as life can hurt, but it is only through love that the very act of living becomes possible. We needn’t say that to live is to love – the statement is redundant – both words mean the very same.

By Lawrence Gartshore.

Something that is becoming increasingly apparent to me is the fact that certain situations will not, as one continues to struggle with waves of mental illness, feel entirely okay. And that is, equally, entirely, okay.

I have written before about my own personal situation – the fact that I still harbour a great deal of guilt for the way I treated certain individuals during my time plagued by mental illness – and how I am desperately trying to make up for that. I do not wish to rehash this in this particular article – know only that there are specific people whom I still struggle to deal with.

Now I have, since I made this decision to break free from the clasp of mental health issues, found myself slipping back into momentary lapses of depression only when dealing with these individuals. People whom I feel, rightly or wrongly, have been affected most deeply by my actions whilst under the cosh of depression and, as such, have seen our relationships damaged by that.

It has caused me, on a number of occasions, to withdraw from social situations in which we find ourselves in close proximity, fearing that I cannot continue to have a decent time whilst the thick air of our broken friendship hangs in the atmosphere. I write this very article after one such escape.

However, I am also coming to realise that this, whilst seemingly ridiculous, is okay. It is an okay way to think, an okay way to act, an okay way to feel.

I believed that all would be put to rights the second I made the call to cease my depressive state – that all would immediately slot back into normality; back into the way things used to be. I now understand that this is foolish.

I have written before about how depression changes people and relationships, yet never did I truly heed my own writing. Rather did I view it as a distinct, distant, hypothetical – something that touches me, yes, but something I could easily overcome.

Now, I comprehend that this is not the case. It will continue to be tricky to navigate, and these broken relationships will continue to hurt – but what is humanity without pain? Would it not be a far more strange scenario for me to feel nothing towards these people who loved me once?

Yes, this is in fact healthy. It’s also healthy to wish to not hurt oneself any more by staying in close proximity to these people whom you love yet cannot love you back. It is, rather, a great sense of self-knowledge, to understand when one is feeling overwhelmed and, for the sake of self-preservation, to withdraw oneself from it.

It is okay to not always feel okay, and these moments of self-doubt; of depression; of anxiety; are all key parts in healing oneself. One cannot become immediately sea-ready following a storm – one first has to take time to fill in the holes.

By Lawrence Gartshore.

I should begin here with a confession. When I speak of abandonment, I do not refer to the notion of physical isolation. Deserted on a desert island like a pirate who mutinied against his captain. Nor do I speak of those days where you simply cannot bring yourself to leave your house, or even your room, and so abandonment is a by-product of your self-isolation. Anxiety, in these instances, is most understandable indeed.

No, the abandonment which I have found most keenly affecting is that which one concocts in one’s own mind. This is, in many ways, entirely unsurprising. If one is plagued with other mental health issues, depression for instance, then this notion of attached anxiety surrounding abandonment is not revolutionary. It is not unusual to feel as though you cannot engage in social situations because you simply don’t have the right words to speak – you should hate to make yourself seem like a fool!

Again, even this general situational abandonment is not that of which I truly speak. It is closer to the truth, yes, however the real feeling of abandonment, the one I would contend is far more palpable, far more common, is that of feelings of specific abandonment.

What do I mean by this? Well, I mean those days when you have had an otherwise fabulous time. You have been surrounded by friends; you have done the things you most love doing in the world. You have eaten good food; you have drunk good drink. It would seem as though nothing could ever get you down again. And yet, in a flash, a single interaction can bring you spiralling back down into misery. Five minutes in a day that ruin the other one-thousand, four-hundred, and thirty-five.

I speak here of those moments where you question all that you are doing, simply because you have convinced yourself that someone, for whatever reason, has a problem with you. It could be a stranger; it could be a peripheral friend. Most damaging, however, are those moments when you find yourself questioning whether someone you love, someone you consider your rock, truly loves you too.

An unread message, and you question all that you have ever said to them. Perceived flippancy in a pub, and you question every action you have performed in front of them. You question everything about yourself, desperately trying to think what it could possibly be that has caused this perceived angst. The braver amongst us may try to confront the issue head on, asking directly what it is that has caused this supposed animosity. Yet, given that the problem is likely to only exist in one’s own mind, it is deeply unsurprising to be met with the response of ‘nothing at all’.

This should put the issue to bed. Were one thinking with a sane mind then that would be all the confirmation needed to move on, dispel this strange idea of some permeating feud, and return to conversation as the dearest of friends. Yet, of course, for this issue to arise in the first place one cannot be in the possession of a completely sane mind.

As such, you allow it to cloud all your future encounters. They begin as friendly, but tense. Then merely civil. Then, when all possible avenues have been considered in your mind, the only solution one can imagine is that they simply long for space from you. That you have offended them so deeply that you cannot ever truly aim to rebuild the friendship.

I can only tell you how destructive this is. I cannot profess to take my own advice here – I speak from a personal position of weakness, unable to reason my own way back, ignorant of my own guidance. Indeed, such encounters are the only consistent factor now that cause me to slip back into bouts of depression. However, I do truly believe that, as with all other aspects of mental health, this is a battle one must fight – and one that is infinitely winnable.

Now, in some instances, loved ones have every reason to feel slighted by you. As I detailed in my previous article, one cannot apologise for having mental health issues, but one can and should apologise for, and acutely recognise, the hurt that you cause others as a result. That being said, I implore you to not allow this plague to permanently burn the bridges of loving friendship. I have read recently that coming to terms with the fact that certain friendships simply won’t survive is an important part of maturing; if you truly love someone, let them go. I do not, I cannot, accept this. Allowing mental health issues to keep fostering these damaging relationships is, in my opinion, incredibly damaging

Do not allow feelings of abandonment, feelings of anxiety, to cloud those most precious relationships. It is through those that we find the most joy; that act as the rock upon which the foundation of our happiness is built. For as long as you do, you shall never truly break free from the shackles of the black-dog of depression. And always, on a personal note, question whenever you are feeling down due to interactions such as this – have you actually had a terrible day, or have you allowed a bad five minutes to ruin the other one-thousand, four-hundred, and thirty-five?

By Lawrence Gartshore.

The notion of clothing has always been one that has perturbed me. Quite simply, I cannot in all good reason understand its necessity. Why is it that we, as the human race, are the only species of animal to have evolved to be ashamed of our naked flesh?

Now, as a good theology student, I am well aware of the biblical narrative here. Whisk your minds back to your school chapel services and the tale of the Book of Genesis. Man was created to walk freely in the Garden of Eden, a perfect paradise devoid of any pain or suffering. Indeed, I use the word ‘man’ here keenly, for it was of course, according to the biblical account, the bloke who first stepped foot on the earth, with woman coming a little later from the ribcage of the chaps. All was perfectly fine until the woman, Eve, was tempted by the devil, in guise of a snake, to eat from the prohibited fruit tree and thus gain extra detrimental knowledge – a crucial part we are told, and indeed the bit that appears to tip God off as to the fall of mankind, was a newfound shame of nudity. They fashioned leaves to cover their most intimate parts, God thus saw that they had disobeyed him, and cursed humanity to wander the earth with pain and hardship for the rest of time.

Now, unless you happen to find yourself in the bible bashing Southern states of America, then few people would take this account as verbatim. Thus, the question remains – why on earth are we quite happy to have so much of our body on show, from the face and neck to one’s thighs, and yet publicly revealing the meat and two veg of a man, or the personalities of a woman, is to be feared.

Nowhere, I would argue, is this more ridiculous a concept than in the comfort of one’s own home. So many people I know would find the notion of being nude in front of their parents, or indeed their parents being nude in front of them, a horrifying state of affairs. Is this not mad? By walking around, tackle-out, at home, one is not in some way coming-on to members of one’s own family! I know Freud and his Oedipus concept, but I’m not sure even he believed that sons literally wish to shag their own mothers.

I do not contest that clothes do, in fact, have a place. Were I to find myself in the Arctic Circle, I should, for my own sense of bodily wellbeing, rather like to be sporting a coat. The world is such, and the human body poorly designed, that in order to avoid the pain of frostbite, protection can be a necessity. But in the temperance of mild heat – no damned need!

Now, and I must say that as a proud Englishman this is most painful to write, I think the Germans have the right idea here. You cannot walk through a street in Berlin without seeing a frankfurter wobbling in the breeze. And all power for it! Why is that any more affronting than seeing a morbidly obese male chest at a football match?

No; we, particularly as the British public, are prudes. The mere mention of sex drives most of us into a fit of uncontrollable giggles and, whilst I make no secret of my adoration for the feminine physique, I would so hope that men and women could exist perfectly well in unity without the need to hide our God given rigs.

So, I say my friends, let us move past our animalistic urges; let us throw off the shackles of our Orangutang ancestors; and let us allow the boys and girls to breathe. Life would be far simpler, and far better ventilated.

By Lawrence Gartshore.

My mother doesn’t believe in depression. Don’t get me wrong, she isn’t some callous, emotionally distant parental figure. Far from it. As a single mother, she has had to fulfil the job of two parents for much of my childhood, working all hours that God sends and still finding time to spend with me. However, like so many from her generation, she doesn’t believe in depression.

To tell the truth, for much of my life I harboured some scepticism too; a product of this ‘traditional’ upbringing. Like her, I was a fan of the quintessentially British ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality. If you ever feel down, you should bottle it up and busy yourself with more cheerful things. Labelling depression as a condition only gives it credence in your mind – feeling down is a sign of weakness, and one simply has to snap out of it.

Then, the black dog struck me. In a way that felt rather selfish, that was the first time I understood what depression really was. It wasn’t the fleeting sadness, the down day, that had been instilled in me as a young boy. It was a war, fought against the most difficult opponent of all – one’s own mind.

That is, truly, the best analogy I can give to anyone who has had the fortune to avoid the condition themselves. War. The most destructive war. A war from the moment one wakes up in the morning to the moment one closes one’s eyes at night. A war so destructive, it saps the very energy from you that is needed to fight it. A war that clouds every decision one makes.

I am conscious that this shouldn’t turn into some pitiful anecdote, an alcoholics anonymous-esque confession, so might I rapidly come to my point.

Movember. One cannot escape the sea of dodgy growth and half-baked fluff that adorns the top lip of countless men across the nation at the moment. For many, Movember is little more than an opportunity to finally pursue the very masculine dream of wanting a moustache, whilst trying not to offend one’s better half – I have found, from personal experience, that women are generally less than keen on the sliver of facial hair that I am able to grow.

More than all of that, however, Movember is a chance to talk. As cliché as the old trope is, there is a profound truth in the saying ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’.

In the UK today, ¾ of all suicides are male. The biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in this country is suicide. It is not violent crime, nor accidents, nor disease that puts a man most at risk of death, but rather his own mind.

So, I urge all of you who have continued reading this far, please check in with your friends. Indeed, Movember places an emphasis on men’s mental wellbeing, but depression is pervasive and does not discriminate on who it affects. If your friends seem off, or abrasive, or irritable, do not ignore the signs. Ask them out for a pint, go for a walk with them, share your problems together. Begin to fight back against a condition that cripples so many. 

My mother’s generation may struggle to understand depression, but it just takes one to break the cycle.