Day 9: Fowey to Lostwithiel — Progress Isn’t Always Measured in Miles

I was supposed to be busking in Fowey today.

Instead, today felt like the right day to talk about mental health.

It is not a buzzword to me. It is not a campaign slogan, an awareness week or something to post about when it is trending. It is something I live with every day, and some days I manage it better than others.

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and, like a lot of children, I was prescribed more than one medication, often in high doses.

From an adult’s perspective, perhaps it worked because it curtailed some of the behaviour. I was quieter and probably easier to manage. But the side effects were monstrous. I stopped eating properly, struggled to maintain a healthy weight and moved through life like a zombie.

The medication did not help me understand the world around me.

It numbed the world out.

Sometimes I wonder whether that is part of the reason drugs had such a hold on me later in life. They did something familiar: they quieted everything, switched off the noise and made the world feel further away.

I cannot say for certain that one caused the other, but I do wonder whether learning so young that relief meant feeling less led me to spend years trying to recreate that same numbness in other ways.

People often think ADHD simply means being distracted or unable to sit still.

For me, it is much more than that.

It can feel like too much input all at once: too much noise, too much information and too many thoughts moving too quickly. My mind starts racing and everything becomes louder.

When that happens, I can become overwhelmed very quickly. I can be impatient and short-tempered. I already have a sharp sense of humour, but in those moments my sarcasm can become cutting.

I was raised being told that I could not use ADHD as an excuse.

I understand what the adults around me were probably trying to teach me. They wanted me to take responsibility for my behaviour rather than blame everything on a diagnosis.

But what I heard was that ADHD was not something I was allowed to acknowledge at all.

If I became overwhelmed, I needed to get over it. If my mind was racing, I needed to control it. If I reacted badly, I simply needed to behave better.

Over time, I stopped viewing ADHD as a real medical condition that affected how my brain worked. I began to see any attempt to understand it as making excuses.

That has followed me into adulthood. Even now, I struggle to accept that ADHD plays a part in how I process noise, pressure, disappointment and judgement, because part of me still hears that childhood instruction:

Do not use it as an excuse.

I am beginning to understand that acknowledging ADHD is not the same as avoiding responsibility.

It does not excuse the things I say or do when I am overwhelmed. I still have to own my reactions and their effect on other people. But accepting that this is a real medical condition gives me a chance to recognise my triggers and learn how to manage myself better.

Ignoring it never helped me do either of those things.

For years, I thought I was simply short-tempered or overly defensive.

I do not think that is the whole story anymore.

When someone looks into my bucket to see how much I have earned, asks whether I am homeless, questions where I sleep or assumes my dogs are not properly cared for, my mind does not always hear one innocent question.

It hears every similar judgement that came before it.

That is something I have only recently begun to understand about myself.

To someone else, those questions may seem harmless or simply curious.

To me, they can sound like:

You are a beggar.

You do not belong here.

You are irresponsible.

You are not good enough.

You should not be doing this.

I know those are probably not the words the other person intended.

But sometimes that is how my mind receives them.

I am quick-witted, and sarcasm has always been one of my defence mechanisms. If I want to hurt someone with words, I probably can. I can hit back ten times harder and find the part that will sting.

But being able to do that does not mean I should.

Learning not to react that way has become just as important as understanding why I do it. My reaction still belongs to me, even when I understand where it came from.

People see the way I dress, the life I have chosen, the fact that I busk for a living and the moments when I do not handle things well.

They make up the rest.

What they do not always see is that most of the things they judge me for are connected to the very things that saved my life.

Busking is my job.

Living in the van has allowed me to travel and play.

My dogs are my entire life.

The piano is the reason I survived.

My struggles with addiction were never separate from my mental health. They were part of it.

People often talk about recovery as though there is a finish line, as though one day you become sober and the problem is solved.

It is not that simple.

I have now been free from the drugs that nearly destroyed my life, including spice and ketamine, for around two years. That is the longest I have ever managed, and I am proud of it.

I do not spend every day fighting the urge to go back. Those demons feel long since put to bed.

A big part of that has been changing the people I spend time with, both in real life and online, and working hard to keep my environment as positive as possible.

Social media has been a huge part of my life for around ten years, and I have had to learn how to survive it. I do not read every comment, I ignore the trolls and I block quickly when I need to.

I have also learned the difference between someone saying they support you and someone who truly means those words.

That is not about dismissing people or being ungrateful. It is about managing my expectations more realistically.

When your mind already has a tendency to race, disappointment can become much bigger than it really is. Managing my expectations has helped me control the thoughts that might otherwise cause me to spiral.

Recovery, for me, has been about more than stopping drugs. It has also been about changing what I allow around me and protecting the life I have worked so hard to rebuild.

This journey is not just about cycling a piano from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.

It is becoming a year of self-exploration too.

I am learning more about the country, but I am also learning more about myself: what triggers me, what grounds me, what helps, what harms and what responsibility I have when I become overwhelmed.

I do not expect to finish this journey with every answer, but I do hope to finish it understanding myself better than when I started.

I am grateful for the people who are patient with me while I do that, those who understand that progress is not always straightforward, that I will not handle every situation perfectly and that learning to respond differently takes time.

Perhaps one of the most important things I am learning is that I need to offer myself some of that same patience.

I am still learning.

And, for now, that is enough.

The VOK also experienced a technical issue today, so the cycling part of the journey will pause while the engineers assess what has happened and determine what is needed to get us safely back on the road.

Until then, I have an opportunity to stay local, sit down at the piano and play for some of the people here.

I am looking forward to bringing a little happiness to the people around me through music while we wait to get back on the road.

It’s a reminder to me that progress isn’t always measured in miles.

— James

Day 9 Counter
Fowey to Lostwithiel
Miles travelled: 7.9
Average speed: 10.4 mph
Elevation gain: 644 ft
Elevation loss: 693 ft
Locations busked: 0

Journey Total
Total miles travelled: 97.2
Total locations busked: 6