mostly david ephgrave

For a long time, I've had a complex about giving presents. I often leave gift shopping until the absolute last minute, not because I'm lazy but for fear that I'll choose something that isn't good enough and cause offence. I get extremely anxious about it and second-guess my judgment. I can trace this paranoia to two events. One Mother's Day when I was twelve or thirteen, I decided to write a song for my mum and record it on my four-track recorder so she could have a nice version to keep. I spent a few days methodically preparing a demo, recording guitar parts and then overdubbing vocals and percussion. It wasn't my finest work, but I took the time to get it right. I can still remember the moment I played it to her. We were in my bedroom when I gave her a card and the tape. As she ripped open the package to reveal the cassette, I felt tense. I put it into my Hi-Fi and we listened in silence. Suddenly, the whole idea felt wrong. She looked irritable. And her respo...

The other day, I dreamt about my dad, who passed away a little over two years ago. These dreams don't happen too often, but when they do, it can be difficult. It wasn't until I woke up that I remembered he was gone. In it, I'd bumped into him in a shop like Wilkinson, where he was browsing with a friend. I was in a bit of a hurry so it was more of a quick hello than anything. I may even have been a little brusque because I needed to get away. It was as I'd left the shop that I remembered there was something important I needed to tell him, but on turning back, I found I could barely lift my legs. The more I tried, the less I moved. I knew if I didn't hurry, he'd be gone, but it made no difference. It was like swimming against the tide. When I woke up, sadness hit me. The mundanity of the situation in the dream was bittersweet. I felt guilty for being irritable even though it wasn't real. It's not hard to decipher the meaning of my jelly legs. The prison o...

Fuck me, I'm forty. The fateful day. The milestone's significant and inevitably a moment for reflection. It seems like only yesterday I was celebrating my thirtieth while on tour in the Netherlands and suddenly I'm a step closer to what's commonly regarded as middle-age...if I'm not there already. And all those gits who say "Life begins at forty" are conspicuous in their absence. I may speak to Citizen's Advice about a recount. Joking aside, I see my fortieth as a positive chance to sink more comfortably into my skin. For much of my life, I questioned my self-worth to the point that it made me unwell. The events of my childhood scarred me mentally and left me riddled with self-doubt and ill-equipped for a happy adulthood. The kid I could have been was drowned out by the role forced upon me and it crippled my progress. And so much energy was consumed in pretending I was okay when I wasn't. I had to bury the truth at all costs. It didn't matter h...

There's a real fragility to my life at the moment as I carefully navigate the depressive trough I find myself in. It's so hard to express the damage a narcissist does to you. They present themselves as guiltless, while they're endlessly hypercritical of you. They're cruel, bitter, dishonest people who feel they owe you nothing and are incapable of processing criticism, however justified, without blowing up like a petulant child. And they see every interaction as something to win. It's all black or white with no shades of grey, so you're either toeing the line or a villain. And they'll lie without flinching and then seem to forget the difference between fantasy and reality in an instant. I read a tweet the other day that hammered home the problem I face: (Link to the original tweet.) That's my situation in a nutshell. My mother shows little remorse for the damage caused by raising me in such a toxic atmosphere and expecting me to conceal it. Her likely re...

How do you create a new narrative when your old one's so heavily ingrained and difficult events have pushed it to the surface? That's the question I ask myself this afternoon as I sit in front of a blank computer screen, trying to be productive. It's something I ask myself often, both directly and indirectly. I know I'm inclined to be a hard taskmaster and am prone to believe I'm somehow failing, but how can I stop my internal monologue from stymying me? It doesn't help that I've been frequently criticised by a relative who acts beyond criticism - particularly from me - irrespective of their behaviour. I was raised in a toxic household with guilt projected onto me and often blindsided by unexpected accusations that back footed me into apologies before I had time to consider whether they were necessary. In hindsight, I see that a lot weren't, and I was being subtly manipulated by someone committed to overbearing me, but it's still hard to dial down th...

Like so many people right now, my future looks like a massive gaudy question mark. We've now passed a year since Mostly Comedy's last show and, while there's scope for potentially reopening in the Autumn (if Boris' plans are to be believed), it's hard to know when to commit to booking a line-up. This also depends on the venue upping their provisional capacity for the gig to go ahead. On top of this, I'm trying to sell my flat before the lease extension deadline hits in May and I have to find a lot of money to pay for it myself. So much of the past two years has been taken up with resolving the problems behind buying my mum out of my dad's house that I've had little mental space for the creativity my job depends on, plus my longstanding financial fears have been gone through the roof: I used to worry about finding a few thousand to clear my debt or fund Edinburgh...but now, I'm trying to find tens-to-hundreds of thousands while my work's at a stan...

I'm forty in three months and very conscious of all the negative self-talk I still do. And I'm worried that if I don't address this habit soon, it will start to define me (if it hasn't already). That may sound melodramatic, but it's meant sincerely. The fug of depression frequently slows me down and affects my sense of self-worth. I work on this with therapy and meditation, but the recent fallout from a difficult familial relationship that I had little control over knocked me sideways while  filling me with enough projected responsibility  to feel like I'm rebuilding from scratch. Add my dad's death to this - along with the financial implications of my mum's unyielding approach - and it's like I'm running on empty.  I can't help but compare what my parents were doing at my age. When I was born, my mum and dad were 35 and 34 respectively and had been married for nearly thirteen years so they had time on their side to have a baby (though they w...

I need to turn my head to new thoughts and a different direction before my narrative becomes so weighted in the past that I become trapped in the role of a toxic person's definition of me and tied to their disordered expectations. The damage a narcissist causes is too complex to sum up in a few words and seeps into any space you let it. And the truth seldom plays a part in your dialogue, nor is there any recognition for your previous actions or character traits. It's all projection and recrimination in the hope they'll provoke a reaction that's big enough to deflect from their own behaviour; it's the bully who pushes you over, then tries to blame your decision to obey gravity for you hitting the ground. But while I'm still coming to terms with our toxic relationship, I recognise it's wholly down to me to remove the validity of their critique. Every so often, I remember the times I begged them to treat me fairly like it was down to me to make a case for it. A...

Compiling my records in time for the now-extended self-assessment deadline over the past week was emotionally hard for many reasons. The fact the 2019/20 tax year crossed two cancelled Edinburgh Fringe runs - both outside of my control - was bound to make for grim reading, even outside of me losing my dad that year too. It's strange noting the mundane transactions leading up to his death and remembering what was happening then and what would follow. Every aspect was tough, with the pain multiplied by my mum's stonewalling behind the scenes that only worsened when I asked if I could buy her out of the house that we'd joint-inherited so I could live there instead of putting it on the market. And when I asked if we could at least draw up a temporary agreement to cover the month I went to Scotland so that her share wouldn't automatically fall to the person she'd secretly married a few months earlier without telling my dad, should anything bad happen while I was away - i...

While I'm slowly coming to terms with the abuse I suffered within a toxic family relationship and am learning tactics to cope with it, it's still hard to counteract the mental burnout. I'm dealing with many layers at once. Firstly, I'm receiving therapy for narcissistic abuse, which has specific and nuanced characteristics. One of the most painful aspects of recovery is learning you'll never rationalise with a narcissist. They'll never empathise, acknowledge or apologise for their behaviour. They can't be wrong. And they deliberately create drama to feed off; hurting you has an impact, and that's the best retaliation to hand if they can't compete with the truth (though if they can distract and deflect from their actions in the process, that's a bonus). And they have little autobiographical memory and endless double standards; it's one rule for you and another for them. On top of this, I'm gradually accepting that the person I thought they...

The thing that made this year bearable for me was, without a doubt, meditation. If it hadn't been for the often-weekly Zoom classes run by the Letchworth Centre of Healthy Living, I wouldn't have leant so heavily into the gift of space and perspective that meditation can give. It was all about grounding for me and quieting the noise and the anxiety. Of course, it doesn't take your problems away, but it creates a little breathing space to consider them with equanimity. And that's a useful tool to have in your arsenal. (Insert euphemism here.) The problem for me is my deeply ingrained fear and depression, which is hard to work around. I hate how depression zaps so much energy from me. It stagnates my creativity and fucks with my sense of self-worth; something which has become harder to sidestep in the past year, although I'm determined not to let it beat me.  It helps that I understand the cause of my poor mental health with more clarity now, in the wake of the atmosp...

Distance and space are helping me reframe the nature and mechanics of my relationship with my mum, with some startling realisations. It's a delicate process, as mulling over the detail can reopen the door to the pain of all the unresolved feelings in the face of someone who can only shut you down. So you have to tread with caution. But if you sidestep the exhaustion from begging to be heard, the overall picture is revealed. Put simply: my mum could have been kinder. She could have tuned in to my requests, which weren't outlandish, and shown interest in helping my future too. She had it in her power to exercise that choice, and to play a part in what lay ahead as well. But when given the option, time and again with as much calmness as I could muster in escalating circumstances, she stonewalled me and threw up barriers and actively chose the route that led to a future without me. That outcome was of her making - just like the acts of emotional abuse through my childhood were too...

Life's sent me into a bit of a mad panic over the past few days. I don't know how to create any stability in the current circumstances without the small income I take from Mostly Comedy, and with the vast majority of the money I inherited after my dad died being piled back into buying my mum out of his house at a price that shows no concession for who she's dealing with. My work is on hold until the COVID-19 situation eases, and I'm putting a lot of energy into our podcast in the meantime in the hope of creating a financial stopgap for the club (except it's currently making a loss). On top of this, I'm trying to process the events surrounding my dad's death and my mum's active decision to not fix them. Despite her frequent disrespect for personal boundaries and inability to discuss a different perspective, I always assumed ours was a protected relationship. But I was wrong. Her words during our final conversation when I suggested a path to repai...

I spend a lot of time ruminating over the events of my childhood and those surrounding my dad's death. It returns, repeatedly, without choice. That's the nature of trauma from emotional abuse. And the impact when it's at its worst is frightening and can put me at risk. Recovery's often a case of one step forward, two steps back. You occasionally make leaps apparently from nowhere, though progress is fragile, particularly when you've been conditioned to take the blame, or made to feel your pain's only real if the person who causes it can see it. I hope this doesn't sound conceited, but yesterday, as I lay in the garden mulling it over, a statement came fully-formed in my head. And though I'd heard it before, at that moment, it had clarity:  "It's not your fault. You did your best. And if your dad were here, he'd see it." I can't understate what a massive shift this is. And last night, I had a glass of wine to celebr...

I'm at the very early stages of planning a new podcast about narcissistic abuse, and I'm quite excited about it. It's a subject I'm still getting to grips with, though the act of reading up on it (and talking to other people who've experienced it) is helping me come to terms with it. Every day, I learn little details that put what's happened into perspective. And while I'm still delicate, there's been progress. Just today, I had a mini-revelation that took a little weight off. I was watching a video from a series recommended by a friend that was discussing toxic logic when the penny finally dropped on the common point that narcissists have no empathy and no rules apply to them. While I'd read that frequently and even remarked about it, I hadn't processed it, because it's such an alien concept when you  are  empathetic. So much of the pain comes from asking the question, "Why me?" and "Why wasn't I enough?"...

I'm struggling with dark thoughts at the moment; a familiar territory reinstated by my circumstances. The best way to manage difficult emotions is to approach them kindly and without judgment. Being hard on yourself for being hard on yourself is counterproductive. The physio I see for my vestibular migraines uses the analogy of keeping a glass topped up to prevent my vertigo attacks; if tiredness, stress or caffeine trigger symptoms, the trick is to minimise exposure to reduce the chance of it. With depression, that's more difficult, as with recovery from emotional abuse. You may have strategies in place to combat it, but when the problem's less tangible, it can be harder to identify the triggers, and therefore easier to blame yourself. And, like anything, the tools might not always work, particularly when you're challenged considerably. And if it's severe, you somehow have to keep yourself safe, which can be very hard when you're in a pit. The othe...

I'm struggling to process the loss of both parents; one to cancer and the other to end a cycle of emotional abuse. My nerves feel utterly shot. The past year saw my relationship with my mum unravel through being built on unsteady ground. Whenever her expectations tested my boundaries, I still did my best to meet them. Some of my earliest memories are the lies she made me tell - to hide four affairs from my dad when I was a child, right up to her secretly getting married seven months before he died, yet refusing to tell him, and insisting I lie about that too. And though it wasn't fair to repeatedly put me in this position, I met her terms, because I loved her.  I was a witness at the wedding to show forgiveness to the two people who'd made my childhood so traumatic, yet within months, I was accused of homophobia by a solicitor my mum refused to correct. And she walked off from my dad's burial, seconds after I'd lowered his ashes into the grave, disappearing a...

After a lifetime of narcissistic abuse that only intensified since my dad's death last May - and after a year of trying to preserve our relationship without letting her pathological lies pass unchecked  - I've reluctantly ended contact with my mother. When someone's mistreatment of you and lack of accountability makes you consider ending your life to escape it more than once, both as a child and as an adult, and telling them doesn't make them change their behaviour, self-preservation dictates to walk away. And when they twist reality so frequently that you start recording your calls to maintain your sanity, you're in an imbalanced relationship. How can you continue association with a person who thinks saying a lie out loud makes it real? In time I'll be open about my story, but for now, I want to be clear she doesn't represent me. And I have the support and testimony of my dad's family, his ex-girlfriend & family, the teacher I first opened ...

I currently feel like a bomb's gone off in my head; the energy to work past my low mood isn't there. It's like there's a hole where my drive should be. A load of last-minute admin relating to the online interview we're doing in place of Mostly Comedy next week flew in both yesterday and today, which lifted my anxiety to accentuate my sense of worthlessness. It's like I'm racing to meet deadlines for something I'm no longer interested in, which isn't strictly true, but when depression's at its worst, that's how the world looks. Of course, I know why I'm feeling like this. It's the fallout from a year's worth of watching a close relative illustrate they care less about me than they care about money or maintaining the lies they'd built up. It's learning they never understood what they put me through as a child, then as an adult, and that their temper is such they can't process the truth if it paints them in a n...

I'm navigating a situation at the moment that threatens to overwhelm me if I'm not careful.  (Thankfully, I have support, and I'm approaching things mindfully, but it takes a lot of careful management to keep my panic at bay...except I shouldn't have to do that.) To make matters worse, the other party's never careful. If they feel wronged, they lash out. And they feel wronged always. That's not hyperbole; if anything, I underplay it. And in their world, a lie's as good as the truth if it has the desired effect. And what's the difference? Now's the only reality and everything else is projection. And nothing is sacred if it strengthens their point. (With that mentality, years of abusive behaviour can be dismissed in a few seconds, because it didn't affect them negatively; not for me though as I lived through it with awareness.) Yesterday was a struggle. More than once, I felt on the verge of giving up. At one point, I looked at one of...