Today has been one of those days where i’ve felt the world change. I’m a mixture of euphoric and devastated. The rollercoaster that drives my life never lets up.

First off though, i really don’t get how anorexic girls starve themselves of food. I haven’t eaten for about 3 days but i’m getting there. I couldn’t believe how bad i felt this morning. I didn’t have any energy whatsoever, my arms were as heavy as they get and i just wanted to sleep. My legs have been wobbly, i’ve been dizzy, i haven’t been able to concentrate and i have just been all over the place. Unbelievable. I need choc fudge cake, and lots of it.

My sis is so incredibly wise. I am stunned each time i look at her at how she really has become the most amazing woman. We were having one of our late-night drinks a while back and she was explaining about how she loved the film “Evan Almighty”, particularly one scene. It went something like “if you prayed for faith, what would the Father do? Would He just hand it over to you on a plate, or would He put you in a situation where you needed it?”

And that was one of the wisest things i have ever heard. I prayed to be a better person, and here i am in a situation where i need to be a better person. I’ve learnt that after immediate healing, it’s time for a partnership with the Father to accomplish the things you are going to do. I think it’s one of the most common misunderstandings when it comes to Him too. If you pray to find faith, you will be put in a position where you have the free choice to develop it. As i say in the intro to my book, when it looks like the world is falling apart once you’ve cried out to Him, He’s desperately clearing a path for you to find Him as soon as you possibly can. It’s not punishment, it’s “i’m here, come to me.”

When you know someone you love is suffering you just instantly want to reach out to them, hold them, fight for them, shelter them and tell them how much you love them. Letting them go is fighting your natural instinct, and fuck me, it’s really hard. All i want to do is throw my arms around Kel and spill out every bit of love i have in me. You want to DO something. You want to take action somehow to fix the situation. In my case i want to research everything i can to help her understand what’s going on. But i also know i’m one of the sources of pain, it’s not my battle and i can only really help by leaving her alone. I guess that’s what Debs meant by putting someone else above yourself. Being a selfish prick, this is alien to me.

I was writing to Kel last night and told her i was going to pray my heart out for her today, and as i was writing i really couldn’t finish the sentence because tears were streaming down my face. I was trying to write that even if were weak and useless, my Father isn’t. It was my way of saying that i can’t do anything, and i know the things i have done. I felt the most terrible shame and said that my Father would answer because He knows of the good side of me and that the intentions behind it were pure. If she didn’t know the depth of love of love i have for her in my heart and how desperately sad i feel for her, He does, so that would mean He would honour it for that reason. He could strike off my idiocy.

It was then that i sat there and just asked myself what i was feeling. Is it heartbreak? Sadness? No.
Guilt. Terrible, overwhelming guilt.

Now that may come as strange to you, but i’ve never really felt guilt before. No, really. It was so absent when i was younger that i had a psychopath test. I was nothing of the kind but had just shut down and gone numb from depression to survive. I’ve shut out guilt for years but i really couldn’t this time. My god it’s awful. I have no idea how people survive when that guilt is unnecessary and unfounded.

I was just saying “Father, i have let her down. I have let you down.” And i realised by hurting like i did, i had let her down in the time she needed it most. I was asking myself why on earth i behave like that. Guilt is the most paralysing and terrible of emotions, but it is right that i should feel it. It is just. It is not pointless or unwarranted. It’s important i feel it because i have done something wrong and hurt someone. Guilt is me recognising the hurt and the damage i have caused. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I am literally obsessed with not letting people down and people not letting me down, so it was like a massive betrayal of the values i hold so dear to me. I failed myself.

The honest truth is i have no idea what to do. I don’t know how to do just nothing at all. I’m useful at accepting my own powerlessness. I’m trying to explain to myself that doing nothing is doing something, but it’s not going too well.

I find that for me, i feel better about things once i understand what’s going on, so i just go crazy and try to learn everything i can about the problem. If someone i know is suffering i try to give them as much information as i can too so they will be understand what’s going on and feel better. It’s a way of showing how much i care but inevitably gets misunderstood that i’m trying to play psychiatrist/saviour. I’m a man of reason and if something doesn’t work out in my head, it gently resolves itself automatically. Perhaps innocence on my part as i’ve come to learn so many things are due to the heart, so when i sit there looking confused and sad that the paperwork has been thrown back in my face, i feel like that care and effort has been thrown back in my face too.

I asked Marcos how he loved my sis when she pushed him away and how he was there for her even during the hardest moments. If you haven’t met my Chilean future brother-in-law, the only way i can describe him is “Christ-like” for his incredible integrity of character, gentleness of strength and infinite patience. I just don’t have the strength to be like him and love during the dark hours. He lost his temper, walked out and did some stupid things too, but he just felt in his heart of hearts that he and my sis were meant to be. She ripped him to bits, rejected him completely, threw all her anger at him but he just “walked next to her” as her rock. He showed her that a man would stick around just for her; for who she was as a person. My sis couldn’t have it said to her, as all men promised with their words. Marcos showed her without words. I can’t explain how much i respect him for that.

He’s a modest man but so much stronger and wiser than me – i just sit there bewildered in total embarassment at how he is so temperate and how much he loves my sister. It’s a bit like a cave man peering in through the window of a Starbucks, scratching his head and wondering what the hell he’s looking at. To be a good father and a good man as he is to my nephew is partly due to “upbringing” so he says. His dad was a Chilean revolutionary, so he’s certainly no pushover.

I’ve got it so wrong.

I am a warrior by nature. My idea of subtlety is a stealth bomber rather than a nuclear warhead. Unbending, brutal and uncompromising strength and force. I was built to lead a nation into war. Battle-hardened and ready to get any amount of blood on my hands so the mission succeeded. It’s taken so much damage to come to see that it’s only 50% of the equation.

Something has always haunted me and i have never been able to isolate it. I have always had this massive and immense fear that consumes me when i sense someone i love is pulling away from me. After a split it is just unbelievable terror. A totally irrational and paralysing terror. I couldn’t even really tell you what it is that i’m afraid of – all i know is that i’m terrified and sent totally insane with fear. I used to think that it was anger that drove me and made me lash out, but now i’ve come to realise that it’s that overwhelming fear. When i get scared, i lash out. I turn my back, punish, starve myself emotionally and make demands to try and control the situation. I can’t think or love – that terror just blinds me and consumes me.

I started feeling it again this week and i couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make sense at all as i seemed so calm about splitting with Kel. I just put it down to heartbreak. I felt it last year with my ex too, but it was seriously extreme. I’m really wary emotionally so i have this ‘cooling’ period where i kind of gently let myself become attached to someone after i’ve decided i can trust them.

Maybe i’m cynical but when someone needs time out i just assume it’s one of two things – there’s someone else, or they’ve already decided they’re going to leave and are letting you down gently. I know it sounds ridiculous but i never contemplated the 3rd option that it may not be to do with you and they genuinely need time out (yes i am a fucking retard). One thing i get told repetitively is that i’m a very “fast-paced” person so it’s difficult for me to understand why anyone would need more than a few days to process and come to terms with difficult things they may be going through. So when that dreaded thing gets asked, i just go into panic. I start lashing out, trying to fix everything and doing everything i can for reassurance. And of course, that wrecks pretty much everything.

I’ve been feeling that terror all week, and i noticed that it had left my ex and transferred onto Kel, which really kicked off some interesting introspection on my part. What made me raise an eyebrow, metaphorically speaking, was that the fear was disproportionate to the situation – yes it’s painful and lonely when you split, but this was something else entirely. This is not due to a person, this is something inside me.

A button inside me is being pressed.

I didn’t know what to do. So i just stopped for a while and asked myself what i was actually feeling. Fear. Terror. Loneliness. Emptiness. Vulnerability. Not safe. Abandoned. Fragile and paralysed with that terror.

Ok, so it was fear. But what have i actually afraid of? What do i feel i’m losing and why is it suddenly so incredibly devastating?

Believe me this really wasn’t too much fun, especially for an emotional retard. I stopped again and asked myself what i felt i was losing – i was terrified of losing comfort, intimacy, nurturing, affection, attention and so many other things. That’s what i have been looking for and needing. I could curl up to her in bed and feel these things, and then happily turn over and just want to be on my own and do my own thing. That’s not right. You get all those things in a relationship but my fear of that loss was far, far greater.

So it had to be a child-like thing because it just wasn’t rational. I kept thinking. I was scared of that person physically disappearing. I know it sounds strange, but you have to remember it’s childlike thinking embedded in an adult. Right then i was just rolling my eyes and just praying it wasn’t going to turn out to be something weird and Freudian, as i’d feel like a complete twat. But guess what? When i sensed the word “nurturing” i was thinking of my mum and my nan. It was a childish terror of my mum just disappearing and all those disappearing with her, leaving me naked and alone. That was the button inside me being pressed, and that massive sense of terror and loss. There’s a massive hole there.

As a child it doesn’t get processed, it just goes in. My little childish brain learnt that one minute the love and nurturing is there, and the next it’s gone without a trace. Panic sets in. Whenever i feel someone pulling away from me, i get scared they are just about to physically disappear and take all the comfort and nurturing with them, as weird as it sounds. It’s the terror before the bang, as Alfred Hitchcock so wisely said.

So i did what you always have to do when you come against something you don’t understand or don’t know how to deal with – give it up to the Father. As that thinking flowed, i realised there was a massive theme of maternal abandonment in my family on both sides. My mum was taken away from her mum and treated pretty horribly by her, she was ill/unavailable when i was young, and my dad was pretty much abandoned by his mum. One day my beloved Nan was there, the next minute she was gone – she had physically disappeared. I’ve come to learn just how incredibly powerful generational ties are, and how spiritual burdens are passed down the family line.

Those ties have to be manually broken in prayer, and can only be broken by prayer – you have to deliberately identify the themes and issues and specifically sever them with the sheer power of massive divine force (one of the things they do at Acorn and the results are nothing but miraculous). I’ve done it secretly for several people i know, even though they don’t know it. 90% or more of the time they are a spiritual weight that is a burden on innocent children down the bloodline that have down nothing at all to warrant it. It’s also direct learned behaviour passed down where cycles have to be broken. Either way, it’s generational ties.

Suddenly all the implications started to flood in. I must have been looking for that in all my relationships, and looking to them to provide those needs. I must have been carrying that emptiness around and putting it above everything else, which must have meant i couldn’t possibly have really given my heart to anyone. I couldn’t have connected properly. That terror overloaded everything else and it’s why i find it so hard to give emotionally – losing someone i love was like losing that motherly love. You can’t look to a relationship to fill a hole your mum needed to fill, or apply the chronic fear of losing that comfort to a romantic situation, or allow it to be amplified. So, up to the Father it went straight away. Let’s do this Father, let’s face it right here. Take this from me, i give it to you now.

I suddenly saw my relationships in a totally new light and why i have done as i have. How can you be understanding or give anything at all if you’re terrified?

So what did i do? Well i’ve basically done what my dad did to my mum when she was ill. I copied it without thinking even though i’ve spent my life trying not to be like him. He was so useless at supporting her that it was verging on cruelty. But i know now that he could have been scared, not necessarily angry or abusive. I think he was scared in the same way and lashed out. He felt her pulling away from him and i think he must have threatened me and my sister somehow when we were little by telling us she was going to leave and wouldn’t love us anymore. I couldn’t have had a worse role model for being a strong, supportive and loving man if i had personally picked him out from a police line-out of the country’s most uncaring men.

And that’s how it works. You do what you know. I had to face the fact that i actually have no idea whatsoever how to support someone in any way or love them. I have no idea how to love. It sounds ridiculous but it’s an incredibly groundbreaking moment when you realise what you’ve copied is so fucking wrong and you don’t actually know what to do in the situation. You should know, but you got the fucked version. When someone asks me for patience, understanding and to support them, i literally don’t know what it means.

Being frightened makes you do some fucking stupid and hurtful things. If you didn’t have fear to explain it, it would look like madness.

So in classic Cameron style, i demanded that mum accompany me for dinner so i could interrogate her about how to be more loving and how to understand and treat women. I just asked her “When you were ill, what did you need Dad to do?”. My mum is so used to my million-mph brain but with her characteristic honestly just put her arm round me and said “i don’t know what you’re going through but i love you, i’m here for you and we’ll work this out together.” Naturally i couldn’t possibly accept that but she went on to tell me love is about not having to ask, and support is telling someone you care, but crucially, not asking anything of them or asking them to do anything. Just to be there and say you care.

Yes, at 29 years old, my mum was explaining to me what support actually is. I feel like a dick, but hey, at least we got to that point. It won’t be a revelation to you, but for me, i really didn’t know. Nobody’s ever taught me and i’ve never seen it to copy. I really felt like a 4 year old asking all these really basic questions and was confessing to her that i really felt i’d let a lot of people down and just didn’t want to be that man who gave her abuse instead of caring for her and being there whilst she went through it. I just have never seen it or known it. You think you know because you can rationalise it as an adult, but you always end up doing what you learnt when you were little.

We went on. When you were screeching at me to be more sensitive, what did you mean? How do i be more sensitive? How do i be thoughtful? How do i do empathy when it really doesn’t come very naturally? How do i put someone first? How do i know if i’m pressuring someone? How do i change my tone of voice, and how i say things?

She was the logical place to start, but now i’m on a fucking mission. I’m going to be the most fucking understanding and sensitive motherfucker your bare vulnerable ass has ever known. Or something. Well, if i manage 1% it’s a good start. Why is it you only learn the things you need to know after you actually fucking need them?

I’ve pointed out that if an anorexic girl can discipline herself to withstand hunger, she surely can discipline herself to do the opposite and withstand the urge to starve. Well, i reckon the same principle applies to me. If i can be a vicious bastard with all the venomous words, surely i can be just as sensitive and supportive? But i think i needed to start honestly and admit i just have never really known. I have to re-learn this stuff. What makes it different for me this time is i actually WANT to do it. Not because i have to or am being nagged to, but because what i know is wrong. My guilt has a purpose in motivating me, which is why it is so important to let me feel the full weight of it.

I can’t tell you – the revelation that you can just tell someone you care without asking anything of them is really amazingly liberating. I didn’t know it was that simple. I thought i had to do way more than that. I have a childish excitement about the whole thing. Fuck you, i’m going to love you anyway whether you want me to or not. I love that idea.

I’m going to try and ask as many people as i can to try and work this out, and learn as much as i can. My notepad is coming with me, so if you see me studying you and writing things down, don’t be alarmed, that’s just me being enthusiastic. I’m just going to be childlike about it and ask for advice about what to do in those situations because i can’t trust my own ideas anymore. Debs has been invaluable to me in that regard and opened my eyes. I know this is going to be so hard and its euphoric today, but the truth will be the dark moments when no-one is watching and it’s really testing. I’m not looking forward to them. But i’m not lookng forward to a life where i carry on behaving the way i have done either.

But that is the very essence of such a decision. Who do i want to be? Do i want to be a loving person known for his compassion or a patronising and insensitive tyrant who never learned?

Now, i think this goes without saying but feel free to inundate me with emails along the lines of “ABOUT TIME”, “FINALLY” and “MARRY THAT GIRL IMMEDIATELY”. There’s nothing better than a whole inbox of shite going into great depth about how much of a fucking moron i am.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”

Ezekiel 37