I released my first song officially last Friday, a huge moment personally and naturally came with a fair bit of anxiety.

The song went live while I was sitting alone trying to record some new music.

Not an ideal moment given the inevitable hiccups that come with anything you’re attempting for the first time.

Having had little luck getting useful answers from a cursory google search, I messaged a few friends who have some experience in this field.

Alas, they were busy, but the messages appeared as read. Typically this would be merely one of the vague irritations of our impatient internet culture, but to an anxious mind, alone on a big day…

Tears of abandonment began to flood so heavy that the salt stung my cheeks and I found myself fighting for breath between sobs, crying as pathetically as a distraught child.

“Why wheeze am wheeze I wheeze alone?”

Ten minutes or an hour or whatever time it actually was later with still no reply, I climbed deeper into the anxiety attack and vented my despair by bruising my right hand to the point of swelling against bricks and mortar, like any healthy adult is want to do.

I’m usually much better at regulating this type of anxiety, and can catch the early warning signs enough to rationalise the situation before it gets that bad. On occasion one can slip through though, as the current batch of bruises can attest.

Now that’s a pretty intense way to start this piece and I have good reason for it, though you can wait for the end for an explanation.

I have more tales to tell. So let us begin with something pubescent:

My teenage years were pretty much one long anxiety attack.

Towards the end of secondary school I had more or less given up attending in favour of any available means of hiding.

I would wake every morning crying and shaking and rush straight to the bathroom to violently puke up the contents of my pre breakfast guts before I was even ready to piss away my morning wood. Dressing in the officially mandated removal of personality and independent thought and the ugly green tie it came with, I’d stuff my thoroughly doodled school books in my wardrobe and pack my back with a change of clothes. After detouring past the bus stop I’d wander into the woods and find a spot to rid myself of the insipid school uniform.

The day would be spent walking, listening to music on a minidisc player and practicing kickboxing, without contact with any other human. Then reverse the process in time to go home and hide in my room with my guitars and still have minimal human interaction. I maintained this as a near daily routine for over a year. What else was I going to do with my time? GCSE’s? Bollocks to that.

The years after school we’re a little better. I had a few friends that bmx’d and skateboarded that I’d known since early childhood. Socialising was becoming possible, if exhausting and awkward. So bikes and skateboards were my new thing. No learning would take place with more than one person present, but I got better at being around people even if I never got any good at the sports. Girls remained a problem though, I was utterly useless.

18 years old, going to parties and nightclubs (the two most anxiety inducing environments possible) and nursing my mortal terror with obscene quantities of alcohol, I could endure or even enjoy a few hours.

Anxiety made my alcoholic “prowess” something that was beginning to gain a reputation. The sheer volume of adrenaline in my bloodstream had a similar effect to the white lines so many of the others were snorting off toilet seats. So I’d maintain the ability to walk and talk in spite of the almost stomach pump worthy binge drinking sessions. Though these days I’d likely puke after the third pint.

Contrary to popular belief, no amount of dutch courage will cure anxiety, it will simply make you too numb to notice it. It’s still there, and you’re still afraid and panicky. With little to no inhibitions this is a dangerous state of mind.

From nasty brawls, to being thrown out of wetherspoons for dancing on a table and attempting to strip, I have many absurd moments to choose from for this piece but the most emotional moment is probably one of the smallest. Just a brief moment of embarrassment of the kind you’d find in an early blink 182 song, that to this day makes me cringe so hard I could break my teeth.

All I did was lose my friend while getting my round in, and get distracted by a stunning young lady. “Now or never” I told myself. I walked up, peacock feathers ready to flutter, and froze. Full eye contact, motionless, for far too long.

“What?” Was all she said. Completely baffled by my own actions or lack of, and her mildly irritated reaction, I simply maintained the unblinking eye contact, necked both pints of beer, turned on my heel and marched away with sergeant like rigidity.

Such a tiny moment of shame, but it brings me to tears of laughter and spine cracking cringes at the same time. I can picture that woman using me as an obvious example of how weird and unpleasant men in bars are.

Fast forward about seven years or so, I didn’t have a full drivers license and used a little 125cc motorbike to get around. Parked up outside my house with a flat tyre, some utter bell end yocal from the squalid little dump town I live in thought stealing it would be tremendous fun. He wrecked it, and I sincerely hope he was badly hurt. Calling the insurance company provided me with an unexpected challenge. Probably the most severe attack of my life.

Staring at the paperwork and the phone, ready to dial the number and recite the policy number, I froze once again. I forgot how to read. The letters and numbers on the page were as clear as day but my mind had reverted to the state of a pre schooler. Knowing the alphabet but without a clue how to actually use it. Just a random mess of letters, even my own name was unrecognisable to me.

There’s so many other, much more severe or tragic or traumatic moments. Moments where I could have died, moments that I wake up in tears with my heart racing having just relived them in a photorealistic nightmare. Nights I have scars from, both physical and psychological.

I chose these moments to write about specifically because it’s humiliating and it’s funny in places, and because they are mundane. Which anxiety often is. My intention is that by being able to laugh at my own emotional damage in a public format, perhaps I can inspire someone else to turn one of their horrible moments into a big joke or an intriguing story, or to realise that those lonely, boring and isolated moments are as important as any crazy drunken adventures.

Once you can do that, it’s yours to own and it can’t hurt you anymore, at least that seems to be the theory Chuck Palahniuk has based his writing career on, and that’s good enough for me.

Now onwards to try to find the humour in my much darker moments and own them too.

Someone who was once a very close friend chose to end his life very recently. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in some years, but his impact in my life has been profound.

Very early in our first year of secondary school, at an appalling school, notorious to this day for its severe bullying problems, Ian made it clear that he was a friend worth having.

There was a kid in our class known as Stinky Pete. (Adolescents are cruel and relentless and have no understanding of boundaries, but they aren’t always creative.)

Before our first day was done it was clear that Pete had been chosen as fair game to be the butt of all the jokes, but not by Ian.

The class filed into an art lesson in disorderly fashion, picking seats in groups of besties. I found myself next to Pete by sheer chance and Ian found himself on the other side of Pete by intent. Plain and simple, Ian did not give a fuck about whether someone was popular or cool or whatever else, he cared about one thing. He cared if he liked you. Pete had made him laugh, so Pete was alright. Ian paid a price for that kindness, he became fair game by association.

I was already fair game myself because I was an angry ginger with anxiety issues. Over the course of that year Ian and I became good friends and I learned that he was someone who would always have your back as long as you were a decent human being.

Fast forward a few years to the summer of 2005, almost 16 and craving every available chance to irritate a beige adult or just have a day out without any adults to pester us.

Ian had made a bunch of new friends and discovered the local “emo scene” where everyone had a fringe over one eye and some dodgy makeup. Everyone you met was either in a band or had something to do with a band, which is basically how Ian persuaded me to meet his new friends.

When he introduced me he bragged about my guitar playing to some other guitar playing people, something at that point I’d been pretty shy about, being a beginner. Had he not inflated my ego I probably wouldn’t have kept it up and developed my ongoing addiction to making music, and had he not dragged me into that social circle I would never have begun developing my own (admittedly still very lacking) social skills and started my ongoing journey of overcoming my anxiety issues.

During that summer Ian and I shared what is to this day one of my fondest teenage memories. Catching a bus from Whitehill to Aldershot to get our lips pierced in true emo style.

We arrived at the piercing place to meet the smell of a sterile room and me shaking like a shitting canine at the sight of the needle.

I sat in the chair and was told to open wide. I complied and my mouth filled with a cold, alcohol thin liquid that tasted of rancid banana and promptly went numb.

A dribble went down my throat before the large man with dreadlocks advised me not to swallow any. Then a small pop and a tiny pinch and the job was done, my face was now metal as fuck. Ian was up next for the same, and we were done. Ian did it without any terrified shaking. Though he did have to wait a moment to stop laughing at me and my anaesthetised slurring.

Against advice, we immediately headed to Maccy D’s for a very dribbly lunch that we couldn’t taste, before catching the bus home. During the return trip, to Ians immense glee, I turned a pale shade of green as I desperately sucked up air trying my hardest not to yack all over the bus.

As soon as we reentered Whitehill Ian was calling up every number he had to show off the new facial decor, which resulted in a monumental party on monument hill.

Inside of an hour I was introduced to a fellow named James who had the cure for my nausea.

Ian had arranged my first few tokes of a spliff, and to this day I thank the pair of them, though I have little recollection of the rest of the evening aside from hearing Coheed & Cambria for the first time and a lot of giggling.

It’s easy to overlook such a simple day of carefree joy after hearing of a suicide, but we shouldn’t. Nor should we call it cowardly, or put it down to the “illness” of depression.

Ian was a man who lived life on his own terms and wouldn’t compromise on that. Living on ones own terms is no small feat and requires a strength of will that very few possess, but it also comes with a price. The price of not simply following the rules, the price of not assuming that something is right just because an “authority” said so and the price of not fitting in.

The death of Ian is a testament to a man strong enough to live without compromise. The final act of his life was to decide for himself that he was finished, as sad as that may seem it requires an absolute will. He also gave one final gift.

Estranged friends, separated for years. People who never got on and even people with enmity gathered in his memory.

Given so many people gathered in that place I’m sure there are thousands of stories of him to tell, and countless ways he made the people around him better, even when they sometimes didn’t want to be. The human race are a slightly better thing because of him.

It’s sad to say goodbye, but sometimes the greatest people aren’t supposed to stay.

I’ve always had a love and fascination for people’s stories. The funny, the dark, the secrets. All that stuff is endlessly wonderful, so I’ve decided to create a space for me to explore that stuff. This means songs about real people and real moments and a tedious and rambling blog of whatever half baked ideas are in my head when the urge to write strikes me.

Today that is a new beginning and a brand new name. I’m Alex Walker, and my old name is gone. Well it’s not, I’m far too lazy to do all that legal change stuff, but in public at least, I’m Alex. Mainly it’s a copyright thing, there’s already a guy with my old name who is an active musician, I saw him on a poster touring with Billy Bragg and couldn’t remember booking shows and didn’t have any songs to play anyway, though if I did then that other guy very kindly filled in.

There is that other reason though, the reason I didn’t mention the old name. This change gives me the freedom to walk away and start over if everything here goes wrong. To me this is important. I have myriad mental health issues and will inevitably do or say something really stupid at some point, and in the internet age that shit doesn’t wash off.

This is turning into something of a mission statement, so I may as well go all in. I’m here to tell stories, to hear your stories and to stay the fuck away from politics.

Yes I want to hear your stories, and not your nice little anecdote about some good deed that made you feel good or how you were a very brave hippy and saved the world.

I want to hear about when you were up to your neck in it. To misquote Doug Stanhope, “I’m not here to die for your sins, your sins are the most interesting thing about you dreary fucks”. He had a point. I don’t care if you’re lefty or righty, privileged or a mere peasant. Just tell me the juicy stuff.

Sometimes what I have to say might seem to touch politics, but I go to lengths to avoid any preaching, though the world of late seems to be hyper politicised and polarised and such a lot of the internet is focused on how offended someone was or the latest bollocks about our inevitable demise. This means any dark stories are bound to upset someone whether I want to or not. That said, if I offend you, whatever your cause or affiliation, I promise I will absolutely laugh at you.

This is about life, warts and all.