You’ll never walk alone.
Liverpool Football Club motto
I’m grateful to Aimee for the opportunity to write this guest piece for International Men’s Day (IMD). For those who don’t know, IMD is marked every year on November 19. The purpose is to acknowledge the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, and raise awareness of men’s health, mental health, and well-being. The theme for 2025 is “Celebrating Men and Boys.”
With my best friend Fran Houston I blog at Gum on My Shoe on mental health and supportive friendships. I’ve written for IMD in the past but I was unsure how to approach this year’s theme until Aimee suggested I think back to when I was a boy. What did I imagine my life would be like when I grew up? What did I want to be? It was a great idea and you can read the piece it inspired on my blog here. Writing it was both interesting and challenging, so when Aimee suggested I explore that process in a separate post for I’m NOT Disordered, I leapt at the chance.
I’ll begin by noting that “think back to when you were a boy” is a challenge in itself when you’re in your sixty-fifth year! It’s something I’m reminded of every time I register for something online and I’m asked for my date of birth. Scrolling back to 1961 takes longer than it used to! The first thing I did was figure out how to supplement the few memories I have of my childhood. The main resources at my disposal were old photos, my diaries (I’ve kept a daily diary since I was fourteen), the poetry I wrote in my teens and twenties, and blog posts I’ve written in the past.
I find it helps to have a working title when I’m writing. I started off with “From Nitram to Marty: The Boy I Was and the Man I Became.” I chose that because Nitram (my name in reverse) was one of very few nicknames I’ve ever being given. Just to note, I’d hate to be called that now, so please don’t! I’ll answer to Martin, Marty, or pretty much anything as long as it isn’t too rude! The final title was close to my working one except that I swapped Nitram out for Joe 90. That’s another childhood nickname but one with fewer negative associations.
I also like to open my blog posts with a short quotation. I found
an excellent one by singer Adam Ant (Stuart Leslie Goddard): “I became a man.
Before that I was a little boy.” I love the research aspect of blogging and one
thing I learned about the singer was the back story to his stage name. In a
2011 interview for the
BBC, Goddard explained that he chose the name
because “I really knew I wanted to be Adam, because Adam was the first man. Ant
I chose because, if there’s a nuclear explosion, the ants will survive.” In the
same interview he spoke of his struggles with bipolar disorder including being
sectioned twice under the Mental Health Act.
Mental
health needs a great deal of attention. It’s the final taboo and it needs to be
faced and dealt with. It’s not something I’m ashamed of. It’s not something I’m
particularly proud of. I did wrong things as a result of it. But there’s only
one thing worse than making a mistake, and that’s not learning from it … and I’ve
learnt from it.
— “Adam
Ant on fame, depression and infamy” (BBC)
I can’t recall mental health ever being mentioned at home in any context, but the realities of mental illness are central to my friendship with Fran and to our book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder. They’re also highly relevant to my friendship with Aimee and to her blog here at I’m NOT Disordered.
The quotation I’ve chosen for this guest post for Aimee is “You’ll never walk alone.” The song from which it’s taken was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical Carousel. It was made popular in the sixties by Merseybeat group Gerry and the Pacemakers and was adopted as an anthem by Liverpool Football Club. There are a couple of reasons for my choosing it.
I was born in Liverpool and lived there until I left for university at the age of eighteen. The first of three photos I chose to illustrate my IMD post shows me posing awkwardly in the front garden of my childhood home, wearing my Liverpool FC football strip. I’m maybe eight or nine years old. I was useless at sports but football was something boys my age were expected to be interested in. I tried my best but it didn’t work. I’ve never understood the passion men and women of all ages have for their local and national teams. It’s one of many things I’ve never “got” and places me outside of things to this day. For that reason amongst others my choice of “You’ll never walk alone” is deeply ironic.
The second photo I chose was from my University of Bradford Student Union Card. I used it on the back cover of the anthology of my poetry I self-published decades later. Alongside my diary, poetry was how I processed what I was going through emotionally in my teens and early twenties. The third photo was a recent one in which I’m wearing my Live2Lives “you are enough” t-shirt. It’s an important message, and more personally relevant than “You’ll never walk alone.” Whether we live with mental health issues or not, we often do walk alone, or at least it feels that way. Recognising we’re enough just as we are, with all our insecurities, hang-ups, and problems, is the most valuable of self-realisations. I’m reminded of social media creator AK Przy (Anna Przybylski). She’s been described as “the viral role model of boundary-setting and self-acceptance.” With the tagine “Keep it up, cutie, I’m so frickin’ proud of you,” her videos are a breath of fresh air and powerfully validating.
Writing “From Joe 90 to Marty” helped me appreciate the boy-to-man
journey I’ve been on for the past sixty-four years. In many ways I’m still the
boy standing awkwardly in the garden, wondering why the things others are
passionate about hold no interest for me at all. It’s significant that the
photo shows me standing in the garden rather than on the playing field. I’ve
never felt on the pitch with the rest of the team. When I left home at eighteen I was taking my first steps into
the arena, trying my best to figure out the rules of the game.
As an adult (at sixty-four I can hardly deny the label) I still feel — I still am — an outsider. But I’m at ease with that now. As I wrote in an article to be published on my blog later this year, “I now view my lack of belonging as less a personal fault or failing and more a simple statement of fact. There are circles, collections, groupings of people — and there is me, out on the periphery, looking in from the outside.” I’ve made peace with that. I have strong friendships. I am loved, valued, and supported. I’m rarely lonely (and it’s ok when I am) but as many do, I walk alone. I’ll close with two quotations by writers I admire. The wolf connection is coincidental, if pertinent.
Our
friends — how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I,
too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not.
Life is a dream surely.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
I
am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that
finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and
incomprehensible to him.
— Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
I’m grateful to Aimee for the opportunity to further explore my connection to my childhood and the piece I wrote for IMD: From Joe 90 to Marty: Celebrating the Boy I Was and the Man I Would Become. For more on International Men’s Day check out the official International Men’s Day website and International Men’s Day in the UK.