Red Time

I was chopping up chicken when I felt an urge to cut my hand off.

I didn't want to. I wouldn't. I wasn't going to. It was my own mind playing tricks on me again. I'd missed a couple of days of my medication, and I knew that the withdrawal effects were real and they hurt. I knew that the wooden chopping board in front of me was real. I knew that it was an awkward shape and couldn't fit more than two diced chicken thighs.

It was a waking dream, controlled by me and happening to me at the same time. I knew I wasn't going to hurt myself. Not a chance.

But what if I just cut my hand off anyway. Maybe it would grow back, like a lizard.

After dinner, I excused myself and went outside. I have a camping chair in the backyard I retreat to when I need to deescalate. It sits in front of a fig tree, surrounded by overgrown grass. The tree is always humming with life. Lorikeets during the day. Bats at night. The fruit goes rotten, because no one likes figs. But it's nice to have it there.

Planes fly overhead at various altitudes, louder and higher versions of my tree friends. I like to point them out to my kids and we wonder where they are going.

Everywhere I turn has a different rhythm. The birds sing gently to their fellow fruit-seekers. Their brilliant green feathers outshine the deeper shade of the leaves. Their voices are consistent. Loud, but inoffensive.

From inside the house, I can hear my family going about their evening rituals. I feel incredibly guilty about being outside. If I could force normality for like 45 minutes a day, it would be between dinner and bed time.

Despite the guilt, I don't go inside. That's where I was thinking about cutting my hand off. Instead, I open the SuperCoach app and look over my team.

There are 25 guys in my fantasy team. Some are picked on potential, some are my favourite players. Some are proven scorers, some are break out candidates. None are dickheads, as far as I know. That's rule 1 of my coaching philosophy. Get nice or get out.

Inside, they need my help. To be honest, they don't need my help. But I need to feel like I've helped. This back and forth of needing to be involved, yet being unable to cope with the high-stakes world of pyjama retrieval and book reading, defines much of my parenting experience.

My wife is better at it than I am. She is better at most things than me. I am better at playing my guitar and making up silly songs and structuring sentences and knowing about footy. She is better at real life, and right now, I'm forcing her to handle it alone.

I finally return, and I'm relieved to find that everyone still loves me, and that life definitely is better with two hands. In over two decades of various medications I've learnt to ride waves like this well enough that I can get through the rest of the day in a useful enough fashion.

Eventually, the kids sleep, and I breathe. We perform variations of this most days during the week. I try to keep reminding everyone that it's not them, it's me. Or, better yet, just don't let anyone notice. It feels so selfish. Mental illness feels selfish. Everyone has their own shit to deal with.

The Pies played the Crows on the weekend. There's a genuine rivalry there, forged over a few decades of close finishes, goals after the siren, epic finals and the 'right in front of me' guy.

I don't think I'll go into many games confident this season. I worry that the first win was a false dawn. There's been a few of them before.

It's a strange old match, defined by periods of ascendancy from both teams, and a finals-like chaos that brings errors in skill, judgement, and maybe even umpiring. It was kind of crap, but enthralling, tough, willing crap.

The first quarter goes by and we don't manage a goal. They don't even look like it. Second quarter is ours, and the third sees the Crows tear us to shreds. We flirted with a 2002-esque comeback, but it wasn't to be.

A few things struck me about this game. I really like Roan Steele. He plays football like a football player. I liked the way Ed Allan disappeared for a half, but picked himself up and played alright. I liked the way Houston is starting to find his own groove.

I liked the way our backs worked themselves into the ground. The media mouthpieces have used the word 'undersized' a lot in the first two weeks, and here was the proof on display. Maynard, Quaynor, and even Billy Frampton, were dwarfed by the Crows big three. Tex, Fogarty and Thilthorpe are enormous. Three thick balls of muscle and arse, impossible to play from behind, frightening to take on from the front. We looked small.

But what hit me the most during the game was the rhythms, and the way they developed over the two hours. The ebbs and the flows, the breakaways and the standstills.

It occurred to me that it mirrored my own experience of life in a lot of ways. The second quarter was a classic example. For 25 minutes we held the Crows off, rebuilding the damage of the opening stanza, even forcing our way in front. It would have been nice to head into half time in front, and the Pies had earned that.

But then, the red time slip ups came, the Crows goaled, and the lead they had scrapped so hard for vanished, never to return. This is a part of Collingwood that has infuriated me over the years. I don't have the stats, so maybe I'm imagining it, but conceding goals and momentum late in quarters has been a recurring theme.

The way they worked so hard, only to throw in the towel early, is exactly how I often handle things. Maybe it's the ADHD. Maybe it's laziness. It always smelled like laziness, so it's nice to have other labels to legitimately pass the buck to.

The house is littered with reminders of fleeting inspiration, projects started but never finished.

There's a pile of clean washing covering one couch that sums it up best. It's not one load. It's four, or five. And we will continue to retrieve clothes from the pile until such a time that we finally put it away, or it becomes so entwined with the rest of the mess that it all gets reclassified as dirty.

It's often hard to get started, but once we do, we can really get on a roll. Four goals in a row, or four baskets of clothing washed. It's exciting, electrifying, contagious. Everyone gets involved. You feel good.

Then, red time.

You take your eye off the ball, and the opposition kicks a goal. You are distracted by something on your phone at the wrong moment, and the week is in peril. You can defend valiantly for most a match. You can perform to a decent standard for five, even six days a week sometimes.

But you can't see it through. I can never see it through. No matter how good it feels midway through the quarter, those last few minutes are always coming, an impenetrable forcefield standing in the way of accomplishment and self-worth, as well as a half time lead.

The good part is that you always get another go at it. There's always the next quarter. Next half. Next week. Next opportunity. And maybe when it comes, I tell myself, I'll grab it with BOTH hands, because two are better than one.

Maybe next week is the one where it all comes together, and we know we are going to be alright. Thank god for next week.