Its like a Marvel Origin Story, but without a Superhero.
Once upon a time, there was nothing that would get me more inspired than a cold, wild autumn night, darkness and candles, and a deep and mind chilling ghost story. now I am here, disillusioned by the cruelty of the real world, a disappointment to everyone and everything, just wishing that those ghost stories were real to alleviate the dread of no longer existing in any form, material or spiritual. As someone who habitually romanticises everything about Death I should be more than ready to die, but ironically, hypocritically, I’m not.
I hadn’t always been like this. Not too long ago I was working hard to turn my life around following several suicide attempts and a late-in-life Autism diagnosis. I was working as a Photographer (albeit being paid mostly in Wine and Social Media exposure) at several Nightclubs run by friends in my Goth Community in South Wales, at underground gigs dealing in dark and creepy music, a handful of alternative Events and lurking around derelict buildings and cemeteries. I even did a few shoots abroad, including the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the Catacombs of Paris. My photography business, Ailura Photography, was slowly growing year by year.
Then 2020 came round. Along came Brexit. Then the Covid Pandemic hit. It was a death blow to my hope of becoming a Photographer, my last chance at a career. I ended up in hospital again for massive self harm after people who I once considered friends turned on me in the early days of Lockdown. At that point I didn’t care if I died because I felt that I deserved to. I then had to learn to live without the feeling in half of my left arm.
All through this I was carrying an even darker, even more humiliating secret. I was bleeding on the toilet. not just a few spots on the toilet tissue. this was more equal to a crime scene. And there was a lump that prolapsed out and had to be pushed back in after every visit, and made a horrible, gurgling feeling from deep insde. With this confined to the privacy of toilet trips, I went about my miserable Pandemic life convincing myself it was just haemorrhoids, that the already exhausted doctors had far more serious things to worry about. I had long learned that you don’t moan about lumps in the private reaches of your body, long learned that i was just a paranoid hypochondriac constantly anxious over nothing. I went on like this for 18 months, until I had been convinced that there was enough of a break in the Covid Storm to have the Haemorrhoids finally dealt with.
I had the routine check up. My blood tests were normal. I hadn’t had any sudden weight loss and was still as Fat as I had been for the last several years. Nothing to see here. I was packed off with Haemorrhoid Cream and asked to attend an Endoscopy just to rule out what it wasn’t going to be anyway. To “cross the T’s and dot the I’s” as they said.
So I did as I was asked and went for the Endoscopy at the height of 2021 Spooky Season, and on the 20th October my entire world came crashing down.
The Gothstomate 