We all have those niggley things that bug us, for some it’s twiglet haired wannabe rockstars whinging & rabbiting on about sobriety in lengthy self absorbed blogs, for others it’s the weather, politics, religion or Ed fucking Sheeran… for me, as well as all of the above, it’s the social media baby picture overload cannon that keeps firing and vomiting itself regularly over my various timeline feeds like a never-ending goo goo gah gah sprout fest…

Hey, you want honesty, well you came to the right place!

It’s not because I’m a miserable bastard that despises other people’s display’s of happiness, nor is it that I despise babies, I simply dislike aspects of social media and what it’s doing to us as a society… and my A.D.H.D mind can’t stand the repetition, add into that mix the deeply personal windows into peoples lives I think should be kept discreet and protected, god only knows just how saturated the little blighters lives will be later on as they grow up in the expected and judging digital savvy social domain of narcissistic mayhem we now consider the norm! It’s bollocks really isn’t it, when real life is determined by online profiles, likes and subscriptions, as we draw ourselves lethal comparisons to other peoples lives and wallow in the false glory of it all, of folks wearing false happiness like false eyelashes, picture perfect bodies and lives shoved in our faces routinely robbing ourselves of the real life, of mother natures grand design… I was as guilty of participating in all this as the worst of em’, but it just added to my own downward spiral of self loathing that I couldn’t tell what was real and what was my mask trying to look the part, fit in with the herd and be liked or at least noticed by your hand held devices…

Can you imagine if we depicted and digitally documented our lives in a brutally honest way, posting updates about doing a really satisfying fart and quite enjoying the putrid smell of our bowels escaping into the atmosphere, or perhaps that really satisfying bogey we just excavated out of our hooter that seems so impressive in scale and dimension that we feel it a shame to discard like dirt… insta that! just a few examples of the many real life scenarios we all hide, so… As the boss profoundly stated in 1992:

I ain’t looking for praise or pity
I ain’t comin’ ’round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch!

Now, with that being said and out of my system like an exhalation of bitterness and personal grievance I would like to take this moment to officially contradict myself in two gargantuan ways – as I participate in both aforementioned crimes… and realise how monumentally naive and wrong I am/was to judge other people, no matter how much I personally agree or disagree… another lesson learned!

One: Here I am using digital media to publish my deeply personal life strife and voyage through recovery to the other side of addiction, escaping the grip of the grim reaper and living to tell the tales hoping to inspire those similarly lost souls searching for a reason to carry on, or a means to get out of addictions grasp… all via social media platforms.

And two: I have just become the disgustingly joyous father to a baby Girl and I’m about to fire my own emotionally loaded verbal/literal cannon all over your naked steaming eyes!

Brace Yourself Rodney! Sammy finally ‘get’s it’… I think I went and stumbled across the meaning of life, when pride and joy explode inside you like emotional fireworks, igniting your soul like the biggest internal inferno this mortal soul has ever witnessed thus far in this topsy turvy thing called life!

The most saccahrine of moments occurred at precisely 2:00 a.m in the early hours of August 10th… my little Pocahontas swam into the world and an existential level of consciousness was ascended upon, for me personally all the cynicism, pessimism and hostility still bound up in my human caged heart was extinguished in that one defining moment.

Maggie Mary was born still inside her amniotic sac, born with a veil- known as a birth caul, with less than one in every 80’000 babies born with a caul it’s no surprise that superstitions abound from such a rare phenomenon, supposedly those born with a caul are very lucky and immune to drowning… something Claire and I shall not be putting the test! Back in days of old, mothers sold birth cauls to sailors for good money, (good money exchanged for good nautical luck out on the treacherous open seas… so naturally Claire and myself have just returned from a bit of wheeling’ & dealing’ down at the docks, having narrowly escaped arrest, I am sorry to say that no money or cauls were exchanged).

Also known as a mermaid birth- the baby doesn’t know they’ve been born until the sac is opened by the midwife, then comes that first newborn screeching wail that hits you like a bullet of endearment straight into the heart… well that’s as best a way to describe what I felt in that moment as I can muster, all while simultaneously in sheer awe of Claire, mama bear extraordinaire. utterly consumed with love for the two of them.

I suppose it’s fair to say that in this most magical of moments my life gained true purpose, ‘Living Proof’ so to speak, just as the Boss once sang, a song about his own son’s birth. It’s an interesting parallel to draw upon actually, basically it’s about spending ones life recklessly questioning the idea of faith and the belief in something spiritual other than the atheist point of view… well I too have dug deep trying to find meaning and belief in a higher realm I call spirituality, but most refer to as ‘god’, its an ongoing questioning of sorts that has wrestled in me my whole life, from being force fed catholicism growing up, feeling disdain for that of which I saw- I went the other way and nearly got consumed by a darkness so intoxicating that I longed to be dead, to let the reaper take me away from a worthless existence of confused suffering. I needed some kind of proof, and well, I thought I had found it with my own rebirth into sobriety, but as life chips away at you, the feelings of disdain and skepticism start to creep in. The loss of a job, accidents with frightful consequences, financial struggles and unsympathetic rejection all test ones ability to abstain from the ever tempting darkness that I am undeniably drawn to like a default mechanism within my mental circuitry. Through my efforts to remain clean and sober I have managed to maintain a sense of spiritual calm and inner peace, simply by practicing 12 step recovery daily, pissing off my sponsor with my frustrating ways and a variety of other methods I implemented along the way to keep my shambles of a brain occupied.

As Bruce Springsteen lays out in his lyrics to Living Proof I think it encapsulates the search we are all in search of at one point or another in our lifetimes, the search for proof, actual physical evidence that there IS something other worldly, that we are not just confined to flesh and blood mortal soon to be corpses merely shuffling about our business in a meaningless fashion… When I held my Daughter for the first time and looked into her eyes I found living proof!

“Well now on a summer night, oh in a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord’s undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother’s arms it was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
Oh, in a world so hard and dirty so fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God’s mercy
I found living proof

Well, I put my heart and soul, babe, I put ’em high upon a shelf
Right next to the faith, the faith that I’d lost in myself
I went down into the desert city
Just tryin’ so hard to shed my skin
I crawled deep into some kind of darkness
Lookin’ to burn out every trace of who I’d been
You do some sad, sad things baby
When it’s you’re tryin’ to lose
You do some sad and hurtful things
I’ve seen living proof

You shot through my anger and rage
To show me my prison was just an open cage
There were no keys no guards
Oh, just one frightened man and some old shadows for bars

Well now all that’s sure on the boulevard
Is that life is just a house of cards
As fragile as each and every breath
Of this boy sleepin’ in our bed
Tonight let’s lie beneath the eaves, babe
Just a close band of happy thieves
And when that train comes we’ll get on board
And steal what we can from the treasures, treasures of the Lord
It’s been along long drought baby
Tonight the rain’s pourin’ down on our roof
Oh, looking for a little bit of God’s mercy…

I found living proof.”

A reason to believe in the greater good, a banishment of, and a fulfilment of such epic human endeavours was accomplished in the birth of a miracle… My daughter Maggie Mary Jolliffe Lee. A wrinkly faced morsel of fragility, first swimming then writhing and screaming herself into the world in such heroic fashion, gracing Claire and I with such a blissful, blessing of innocence, engulfing any lingering skepticism or negativity lurking in the cavern’s of my tepid conditioned cranium like a blaze of unconditional love and gratitude. It’s almost incomprehensible… I say almost because as I gaze at her I see the world and all the joy and love it has to offer all there wrapped up in a tight little bundle staring back at me as only a new born baby can. And there it is, I found living proof!

Named after her grandmother (Claire’s mum Gillian Mary Jollife) her great grandmother (my Nan- Hannah Mary Goddard) and her great great grandmother (my great grandma nanny two -Maggy Lenihan)… also inspired by Robert Plant’s beautiful song “Little Maggie”…Claire wouldn’t let me name her Moon Unit, Dweezle, Jet or Ziggy so we compromised.

If recovery has served as my focus and drive these past two years and two months, then it has now given way to a higher level of consciousness, paved the way to this next step, this ‘one small step for Sam, one giant leap for the ties that bind…’ 

Without a solid foundation of sobriety and the many tools gained along the way, parenthood would not be possible. But now I am ready, I feel like instinct is kicking in and I am receiving life’s transmissions with a clear rejuvenation of the senses and the clarity to comprehend the task of responsibility that is absolutely fundamental and all encompassing to the selfless care, protection, nurture and compassion necessary in parenting a beautiful little girl… The one thing that is concrete in her development (other than a Susan-Perb Stella musical education) is love, and for this particular little lady my love has no limit… truly unconditional.

The feeling I get when I look into my little girls eyes is a whooshing of euphoria and humility, seeing into the past, while staring at the future – knowing that I will do all I can to make her dreams come true! Maggie Mary first smiled at me the day we brought her home, while perched on my lap looking up at me with the Beach Boys playing ‘little Surfer Girl’… I swear to you, straight up! (hey at least it wasn’t ‘God only knows’… that would be a tad too much on the mushy meter) A moment I will cherish for ever… even though she was more than likely satisfyingly relieving herself in her nappy rather than smiling to the soothing summer tones of the best vocal group of all time, while gazing at her daddy.

The feeling of responsibility is not one of burden or stress, not of fear or insignificant preparations, just simply one of gratitude and elevation. It’s time to sack off the ego of old and refuel on humility… but to not post incessant pictures of Claire and I’s baby girl in the false belief that everyone and their dog will agree she is beauty personified, the best looking baby ever and intriguingly fascinating… All I hope is that she takes after her mother in the looks department, and please god spare little Maggie from having my hideous alien feet… there is no need for that kind of cruelty. There is one similarity that I can already identify fondly… no she doesn’t have her daddies eye’s… she has her daddies bowels!

Peace & Love to ya people,

Sammy x