I’m Yianni, I turn 44 years old today, and I’m sensitive. Or as it was called in the 1980s, oversensitive.
YIANNI’S TIMELINE OF SENSITIVITY
When I was four, there was a commercial on TV for a charity called ‘Care for Kids.’ It had quite a heartfelt jingle, so heartfelt in fact, that every time the commercial came on, clearly feeling the tune in my heart, I would begin blubbering. It was very cute and my relatives mention it to this day.
When I was seven, my parents for some unfathomable reason decided take me to a trout farm, an adventure that lasted five minutes, until I yanked the first fish out of the water, saw it flopping around and was so overcome by its pain I burst into distressed tears, was whisked back home and we never spoke of it again.
When I was nine, we had a dog for about three weeks. Apparently my brother and I weren’t walking him enough, and he was rehomed. I had distressing nightmares where the dog told me off for not looking after him well enough.
When I was eleven I started high school. One week at cricket training, I cried when I was dismissed. This became slightly more widely known than I personally would have liked.
When I was eighteen, the running joke amongst my friends was about my propensity to throw my golf clubs around when I sliced one on the links.
When I was nineteen, I discovered that I was funny, and that by cleverly making light of things, most people liked me. This was new, and very welcome. I immediately began replacing the process of replacing my dumb feelings with clever thoughts.
When I was twenty six, I dated three women at once because I couldn’t bring myself to say no to any of them. When it inevitably blew up in my face, one of them labelled me an emotional cripple. She was absolutely correct.
When I was thirty three, three years into an extremely volatile and tempestuous relationship, I was so turned inside out I was convinced that I was fundamentally flawed as a human being and incapable of being close to anyone.
When I was thirty five, I told my current partner Carrie I thought what I’d be best at was being a divorced Dad. I took it as given that I’d ruin the relationship, but I’d be an absolutely fantastic father to my kids.
When I was thirty eight, I wrote Pockets of Equality. It was the first show I’d written that I thought was genuine and personal, and actually sounded like the real me. It ended up being filmed for the ABC. The same year, I had multiple sold out Comedians Against Humanity shows in a two hundred seater Edinburgh room. Either side of this, I was doing a UK tour of my Simpsons show. It was the high water mark of my comedy career.
THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, RIGHT?
By all measures, I should have been ecstatic. However, The next year, I got so drunk on the last night of the Melbourne Comedy Festival that I urinated in the underwear drawer of an AirB’n’B.
Later that day I was bawling my eyes out to my partner Carrie telling her the reason I drank myself numb was that it was the only way I could turn off that voice in my head, the one that questioned everything. That couldn’t just let anything be.
It was hard to even speak against this voice, because it was also the source of how I was able to be funny, a trait that I’d mistakenly become convinced was the source of most of my self-worth.
I told her that sometimes I just wished I was invisible, and all I really wanted deep down was not to be a problem to anyone. Because she cared about me, she made me promise that I’d go to therapy. I did. It was good advice.
LOCKED IN A ROOM WITH MY THOUGHTS
When I was forty two, I got locked in my house for almost a year due to a particularly impudent family of micro-organisms. I threw myself into work presenting online shows, got burned out, and intermittently drank a lot.
I also began observing the plants in our garden for increasing amounts of time, rearing quail, brushing our cat Dixie without wanting to be somewhere else, and having difficult but necessary conversations with people close to me. I built things, I devoured history podcasts, I learned to program.
I got diagnosed with ADHD (which I think should be called OSPD: Overstimulated Sensitive Person Disorder) With medication, I learned I could turn that voice in my head down. That it wasn’t just something that was, but something in my sphere of influence. That I could choose and lead it. I started learning Greek again. Playing the piano again.
I drank less. MUCH less. This was a new, and very good thing.
I learned that having someone close to you doesn’t have to be a threat, or something to constantly navigate. That other people’s lives were better for having me in them.
Twenty hectic and numb years later, I finally got around to unwinding that functional but futile fallacy about feelings. My feelings weren’t stupid. ‘Duh!’, right?
But it made sense for me to convince myself that they were, because I’d come to believe that what gave me worth in the world was to prioritise pleasing others. Feelings? Preferences? Desires? They got in the way of that. Better to just ignore them. Maybe even get a job doing that!
I learned that pain isn’t bad, it’s just the price of caring. And that ultimately, there’s no such thing as not caring, just pretending not to.
A PARTIAL TRANSITION
When I was forty three, I soft launched this very blog, Joined Up Thinking. I told a few people, but didn’t make it public.
After I published my seventh piece, about trauma (commas are important kids. “My seventh piece, about trauma” is very different to “My seventh piece about trauma”) my Dad, remarked to me, completely innocuously, ‘I liked it, but people don’t want to read therapy sessions.’ We can all agree, this is a much more valid criticism without the comma.
Breezily assuring him that it wasn’t a problem, that for every feely piece I wrote, there’d be plenty of laughs too, I’ve immediately proceeded not to publish anything for the next three months. You may have noticed this.
I’m Yianni, and I’m sensitive.
WRITING ABOUT NOT WRITING.
So I’ve struggled to publish something for a while. Why? Do you have writer’s block, Yianni?
Not at all. I have hundreds of thoughts a day which I think are worth sharing. That’s what motivated me to start the blog in the first place.
What’s happening to me is much, much subtler than that. More insidious. So how about we get ahead of this thing? Instead of continue to not write anything, maybe what’s best is I’ll publish something about not publishing.
HOW LIFE WORKS, AND WHY YOU DON’T NOTICE.
Not writing doesn’t happen because I don’t care, or have no ideas. No.
The way it manifests in constantly de-prioritising the blog. Rather than being an ongoing experience I’m actively engaged in, instead I relegate it. I still think about it all the time, but it’s this abstract, amorphous thing that I’m doing. Poorly.
Mostly it exists on the periphery of my mind, except for a period maybe once a week where I’ll feel a pang of regret about my negligence accompanied by a thought like “I really should write something.”
That’s the what. The real question, is why?
CLEANING THE SKELETONS IN YOUR CLOSET.
Today, whilst looking for something completely unrelated, I came across an old note I’d made where I cut and pasted multiple diary entries from 2010-2014.
I didn’t have the discipline to keep a regular diary, so of course, I’d normally write these after some red-letter fight with my girlfriend.
I’d write out my thoughts and give my feelings the old college try. As well as any emotional cripple could.
Going over what I’d written back then, even ten years ago was very difficult. Being reminded of things that had happened, many of which I’d forgotten, was hard.
In some ways, wistfully reading the adventures of stupid young me was quite nice, in a nostalgic way. But this much is still true. Some old feelings dissolve themselves into melancholy more reluctantly than others.
Reading about a screaming match I had with my girlfriend on the street in London, there it was again.
“Ah hello there old friend.”
The shame and confusion. The intensity, shackled to and rooted in the feeling of absolute powerlessness. The desire to be better, without any belief that I would, or even could be. Feeling this way for years. Decades.
As heartening as it was seeing how far I’d come, I still felt an acute sadness for the regrettable things that had happened. That I’d done.
Shards of the past, still sharp enough to rouse an emotional response. Perhaps an old self-image? Or is it that T-Shirt that’s mostly holes but I’m loathe to let go of.
But I think I need to let it go now. Stop punishing myself for the past. Shed the old skin. Evolve.
THERAPY SESSIONS = GENUINE HUMAN EMOTION
Yes subscribers, things have been hard. But good hard. Like a gym workout. Hard that ends stronger, not hard that ends wronger.
Writing things like this: real, genuine things. Sharing honest moments with people. Hearing honest moments back. That’s what I enjoy doing. It’s what brings me joy.
But there’s an older version of me mocking me for wanting that. That’s why hearing my Dad say ‘People don’t want to read therapy sessions’ knocks me off balance.
I don’t blame my Dad of course. I know he only says that because he grew up in a world where his parents didn’t have healthy ways to express their own inner lives, and in the absence of a way to do it, passed its undesirability onto him.
I understand all of that. But it doesn’t stop me momentarily buying into the shame. Because change is hard as long as we’re hoarding our older selves.
But “Therapy sessions” is just code for “Genuine Human Emotion.” And people do want to hear that.
Until we process it, we carry our past around like a grotesque second head. Perhaps it’s mocking you. And like me, maybe in your weaker moments, you believe it.
I understand. We’re awful, awful, people! We’ve caused pain and hurt. Been irresponsible with ourselves and others.
It’s just that we stew on the times we erred and and why. What we might do if we had our time again. That’s not only right, it’s how we learn.
But holding onto our misdeeds for too long is just as bad as not holding onto them for long enough. Maybe worse, with someone left alone making repayments on a karmic debt that’s long since repaid. It might feel right to be over-punished. But that’s just masochism.
Life wants you to learn from your mistakes. But once you have, life wants you to move on. Larger and more powerful than you were, life wants you to take the wisdom that it has imparted you, and share it.
I’M GETTING THERE. I’M NOT THERE. BUT I’M GETTING THERE.
I know that this is the process I’m going through. Of course knowing it doesn’t mean I’ve dealt with it. Personally, I think I’m getting to the end of it. I’m fairly sure I’m getting to the end of it.
There are so many things from my past that it’s so hard to release. But I will. In time, they’ll become wonderful pieces of writing that you’ll read: forged in truth, emanating and elucidated from a candid place of self-forgiveness and responsibility.
But right now, I’m struggling with the last vestiges of guilt. Of regret. Of the responsibility of owning who I am and who I have been. This doesn’t mean I’ve murdered anyone.
I’m Yianni. And I’m sensitive. For better or for worse. But this, writing this has definitely helped.
So I’d like to apologise for the gap in transmission. I’m trying to accept that my story and my history is okay. That people want to hear genuine things. That those things will remind them of their own genuine things, and perhaps help to face them down.
I’m trying to learn that if I lace those stories with humour, or diffuse them with a joke, it’s something I can choose to do and not something that I have to do.
A HISTORICAL RECORD.
I didn’t start a blog because I wanted glory, or fame. I started it because I have so many thoughts that seem to help when I share them with people.
But speaking to a close friend, and speaking to everyone are very different things. And bring up very different feelings. And that’s what I’m realising at the moment.
IF YOU HAVE A HALF HOUR.
I discuss this amongst multiple other things on my episode of Mark Watson' and Michael Chakraverty’s ‘Mankind’ masculinity podcast.
If you have forty minutes, I would implore you to listen to it. It’s here.
MENKIND: YIANNI AGISILAOU, "Truth is an unambiguous good."
I recently wrote an email to Mark thanking him for having me.
‘Looking back at doing stand-up, a booking was something you HAD to do. You had to get the train, go to the place and perform.
Trying to regulate and discipline myself to write independently, is orders of magnitude harder.
Mostly, I want to say thank you for having me on the podcast. Whilst I’m still struggling with the emotional elements of self-expression, opportunities like your podcast; bookings, where I HAVE to do it and I can’t sabotage myself, are worth so, so much.
THANK YOU
Contrary to what you might think, I haven’t spent the three idle months not writing anything.
In actuality, I’ve written so many things that I wanted to post, gotten 90% of the way through, and then bailed out.
In future, when you think I’m prolific (which you will) the only difference between then and now will be that last 10%. You understand. You’ve all got your own thing that you all but complete, then without any notice at all, utterly abscond? I call it the ‘terminal tithe’.
I thank you for your patience, and for listening to me. I think that it’s interesting in itself. Maybe readers do want to hear my struggles? Maybe they mirror their own?
If I’m correct, I’ve probably got a good blog on my hands. If not, I’ll get my practicing certificate back. Maybe I’ll do both.
Take care of yourselves. It’s hard y’know?
Yianni x