Latchkey Kid

Hughes Mike

Description

'The Latchkey Kid' is a moving and powerful memoir of early childhood and adolescent struggles, with an unusual twist.Growing up on a Manchester council estate was tough in the 1970s. And when your mother is a cold woman with little time or care for you, beats you regularly and forgets to feed you, it's little wonder you find yourself on the wrong path in life. But unlike other stories of unfortunate circumstances, this frank and at times heart-breaking account also depicts the author's journey of living with a relatively unknown mental health condition called 'anhedonia'.

Sujets

• Memoir
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839784552
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Latchkey Kid
– an anhedonist’s memoir –
M. J. Hughes


The Latchkey Kid
Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: [phone]
www.theconradpress.com
[e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-839784-55-2
Copyright © M. J. Hughes, 2022
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk with images by Alan Denny on Flickr under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and from www.istockphoto.com
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


Author’s Note
F or the sake of my children, for those who love me, and for those who grew up with me and who have no control over me retelling our story, most names in this book have been changed. But this is a true story and, allowing for the inaccuracies of memory over time, every event you’re about to read of took place as depicted and made me who I am.


Preface
I have been labelled various things and I’m not a fan of labels, but the one that seems to describe my condition the best is anhedonia.
These things have been wrong with me all my life and, having a name for them, a condition with a title, doesn’t change how I am. I am still me. The guy down the pub who doesn’t want to talk to you about football, or Coronation Street , or William and Kate, or Page Three. If I visit your home, I won’t get any enjoyment from the food you cook, I won’t get excited by your new gas barbeque with its searing rods and rotisserie burner, and I won’t cuddle up to your dog. Even if you tell me it cost you the best part of a grand, I won’t be impressed. If you work with me, I won’t want to ask you about your weekend on a Monday morning, or tell you about mine, or take you out at dinnertime, or think to put the radio on when it’s quiet so we can have a sing-song. I won’t ‘want’ to do any of that, but I will because I’m a latchkey kid and I’m a professional at not drawing attention to myself and being invisible to you.
I am Mike Hughes, and I have been diagnosed with anhedonia.
Never heard of it? Neither had I.
The word comes from the French anhédonie , which itself comes from the Greek an- (meaning ‘without’, or ‘lacking’) and hēdonḗ (meaning ‘pleasure’). An inability to experience pleasure. It is categorised as a psychological condition and is often experienced by those who are depressed.
For me, however, it’s a bit different. You see, this is a lifelong condition and it’s never caused me to get depressed, because I don’t actually experience emotion the same as you.
The best way that I can describe it is that if you imagine your senses are like clouds and, depending on your personality, you grab hold of certain clouds and then they turn into an emotion. You see the car you love, you grab that cloud and it fills you with joy/excitement or whatever, or you feel the sun on your face or the music you listen to. For me the clouds float past, I can see them, I understand that certain events should be fun or sad or any of the other emotions on a cognitive level, but I just don’t ‘feel’ them.
Lee Child put it well in his Make Me novel starring Jack Reacher, in which missing Michael suffers from anhedonia: ‘Depressed means what it says, which is pushed down below the normal position. Which implies a range. Which Michael doesn’t have.’ Child refers to it as a ‘happiness meter stuck on zero’, and it’s true: I don’t go above zero on the emotional scale, and I don’t go below. I have never felt pleasure or enjoyment, so how could I possibly feel the depths of such despair?
Since learning this name – ‘anhedonia’ – I have discovered a few other sufferers through forums and blogs on the internet. But not many. And that’s probably because of the very nature of anhedonia itself: deep down we might see that we’re emotionally different from everyone else, but we just accept that this is the way we are, giving it no further thought. We’re not interested in finding out why. We would never think to discuss it with a friend or family member – what good would that do? And we wouldn’t go to see a doctor or psychiatrist, as that would involve some kind of emotional decision – a want to change yourself, a desire to be different, a need to know what’s wrong – and wants, desires and needs aren’t what someone with anhedonia experiences.
The only reason I was diagnosed with anhedonia is because I began studying psychotherapy and that training, one way or another, led me to talk to Dr Greenberg, an American psychotherapist. Until these sessions with Dr Greenberg, I didn’t realise my distinctive personality traits were ‘symptoms’. I just accepted the way I was and I got on with it. This is why I decided to call this book ‘The Latchkey Kid’, because that’s what latchkey kids did, we just got on with things, there was nobody to comfort us, there was nobody to cry to, there was nobody to help us, we could not afford to be sensitive.
The zero level of emotional engagement means I have no interest in anything. I mean nothing. And I never have. Not food, or drink, or drugs, or sex, or clothes, or travel, or music, or sport, or politics, or business, or finance, or anything else you can imagine. If there’s nothing I’m required to do, I can sit for hours, even days, just waiting, the TV on in the background, a book in my hand. Great for airport delays, not so great for getting ahead in life. This neutral state spreads to every corner of my existence: to find the best line of work for yourself, you need to have an interest in something, anything; to save money, you need to have an interest in the thing you’re saving for; to go down the pub, you need to have an interest in talking to people, or drinking; to make friends, you need to have an interest in others; to feel angry, you need to have an interest in whatever it is you’re fighting for or about; to feel sexy, you need to have an interest in sex; to love someone, you need to have an interest in affection and closeness. To feel any kind of drive, or motivation, you need to have an interest in whatever it is you’re going to do. For someone with anhedonia, there is no interest.
Basically, you could easily mistake me for a miserable sod.
You might have put two and two together and realised that, thanks to my lack of emotional recognition, this book is not about gaining sympathy. While you could find some of what follows distressing or upsetting (so others tell me), to me, your sympathy is a waste of time: what good does feeling sorry for me do? Will it benefit either of us? It’s not a practical response to a situation, therefore, it doesn’t compute with me. No, I’ve written this book as a guide to a mental health condition that isn’t widely understood. Most people have never heard of anhedonia and those I talk to about it find it incredibly hard to get on board with the idea.
There have been huge awareness campaigns to highlight mental health issues, because people don’t see them and so can’t comprehend what it’s like. I still hear sufferers of depression being told to ‘cheer up’; it’s ridiculous! And it’s this lack of understanding that brings about the same response when I try to explain anhedonia:
‘You enjoy football, though?’ they say.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, you must enjoy music?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘How about spending time with your friends?’
‘Nope. Don’t enjoy that either.’
‘I know you enjoy my company…?’
‘No, no – I don’t…’
I want people to understand how different my life is from theirs without that emotional range to guide what I do, and I want to show you how you take those little decisions, made every hour of every day, for granted.
I also want to see if I can help someone else who recognises themselves in my personality; show them there’s a reason for how they are, a reason for why they don’t feel. Although I have never cared about anything, it’s always been hard to understand why I don’t have the reactions of everyone else. ‘Anhedonia’ gives me an explanation for why I am how I am. And this makes my life easier. I no longer have to try and explain something that’s inexplicable, to myself, or to anyone else. I can simply say, instead: ‘It’s anhedonia. And if you don’t know what that means, read this book.’
M. J. Hughes, February 2022


1
Anhedonic Life
Dr Greenberg: Please answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following questions, and be as honest as you can. Do you think that you could be content living alone in a cabin in the woods?
E verything I have learnt about psychology and psychoanalysis indicates that each of us is born the same, ready to be moulded by the lives we lead. Therefore, logically, I wasn’t born without emotion. But, saying that, I don’t ever remember not being like this. Part of me thinks my mum might have had anhedonia too – I never saw her properly smile or laugh, she took no pride in my sister and me, didn’t show any admiration towards us – so maybe it could be genetic. Or maybe I was just born this way.
It doesn’t really matter where it came from, because this is how I’ve always been and I’ve learnt to cope with it, and how to act like a normal person in everyday life.
Fitting in with other people has always been important to me. Not because I want close friendships – I don’t really like talking to people – but because there are practical benefits to having people around who like me. When I was a kid, I’d give a lad a bag of penny sweets, knowing that he’d like the sweets and so later that day would invite me round for tea. Nowadays, it’s more about getting business deals, or a good seat in a restaurant.
I’m opening up a can of worms by writing this, exposing my camouflage completely to those who know me, or who have ever met me, but: in order to appear like a normal human being, I become a kind of chameleon when I’m put in a social situation, mimicking your behaviour, matching your body