There is a party at a large house and all the guests are in the brightly lit front room. Maybe it’s Christmas, and the room is tastefully decorated with red tinsel and silver baubles. There might be a wreath of holly on an interior door, and a small Christmas tree on the upright piano. Perhaps the host greets her guests with a chaste kiss and a hug, underneath a large bunch of mistletoe. The room must have a large window though, a window that looks out onto well maintained garden. It is night now, and the window has become black, revealing nothing of the outside. The featureless dark square absorbs all curiosity and reflects all perception. The people inside cannot see out. They have no need to. All they need is here. Inside.
Seen from the outside, the large window frames the inside world perfectly. The inside is a picture of warmth and friendship, but a picture with no sound. The view through the window is clear, and entirely silent. It is vibrant and inaudible. It is near but cannot be heard. Like the inside, the outside is silent, but in a different way. Its silence rustles and whispers. It is not muted noise, it is a living thing. The silent outside people, like to look inside. It’s interesting and there is lots to see. But there’s more to see on the outside, there is just less to say about it. It is better just to look, to observe, to be aware.
It’s different outside. It’s different to be on the outside looking in.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2022. Generally people are diagnosed as children, but I was missed at school. I wasn’t climbing the walls or jumping out of windows, so no-one noticed my endless chatter, or my constant low level disruption. I’m part of a cohort of men and women diagnosed with ADHD in later life. We’ve finally learnt that not everyone fidgets constantly, that most people don’t blurt out every thought, and that it’s only us that puts our car keys in the fridge, then can’t find them again. We are Generation Distraction.
I’m ADHD combined type: inattentive and impulsive, which means I don’t listen and I can’t shut up. I’ve been mostly fine living with undiagnosed ADHD, but not totally fine. I ran high levels of anxiety for years, kept annoying people, and was tired a lot of the time. A few years ago, when the anxiety peaked again, I realised that I couldn’t deal with it alone, so I sought medical help, which culminated in an ADHD diagnosis, and taking medication. The meds have been transformative.
I moved to Australia from the UK in 2017. While the UK and Australia are undoubtedly similar places, they are not the same. Australia is a foreign country – people do things differently there. After a year, I reflected on whether I fit in to this foreign place; did I blend in seamlessly with the Australian multitudes? Did I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of sports? Did large gatherings of friends routinely come round to my house? Did I spend Christmas on the beach? I did none of those things. I didn’t fit in.
No matter. I didn’t fit in when I lived in the UK either, and I was born there. I’ve never felt like I fit in anywhere, but that’s OK. I believed that no-one feels like they fit in. We are all ill fitting jigsaw pieces. Some of us are on the tray near the half completed puzzle, and some of us are lost under the sofa. But none of us fit in. Not really. Not completely.
I was wrong. It turns out that people do feel like they fit in; not everyone, not all the time, but enough people, enough of the time. Two years working with a psychologist taught me that, and the ADHD diagnosis confirmed it. People do have parties with lots of friends, they do like sports, they can be in a room full of strangers and feel delighted to talk to them. At that moment, with those people, they are inside. And I am outside looking in.
When we read fiction we are outside. We are holding the book, reading the words, and peering into another world, a world that is not us, but a world which have been granted temporary access, privileged access. We can see inside people’s heads. We might know things they don’t. They might know things we don’t. We see their most private moments. It’s intimate, but an outside kind of intimacy. Everyone who reads is an outsider, an outsider to the world inside their book. They are looking through the glass darkly, or perhaps a scanner.
When we write, it’s even stranger. Are we outside, looking into a world of our own creation? Or are we inside that world, inviting readers to join us? It depends on what you believe writing is. If you believe that it doesn’t exist until you write it down, then you’ll always be the insider to your writing – it’s your creation. If you believe that your writing exists independently from you, and merely flows through you on its way to the page, then you’re outside. When I write it feels like it’s channelled through me, and I have no direct control. I might be able to redirect the current somewhat, or fish something out when it washes by – but the river is the river, and it flows whether I’m there or not.
I think the literary world splits into inside and outside writers. Inside writers are masters of their own worlds. They sit in the centre and direct the events; omniscient gods who invite the reader to look in. They know what’s good and they know what’s best. Outside writers are looking at their emergent worlds, alongside you. They have no more idea of what it all means than you do. It’s unfolded in front of them. It’s grown. It’s arrived. It was a dream that came to them. It’s a giant surprise or a huge cosmic joke. That’s how I experience writing; from the outside. I’m an outside writer. I’m outside looking in.
When I walk to work, I see people sleeping on the floor, or laid on benches. They are there every day, in the same spot. I pass them all the time, and I never speak to them, and I have never seen anyone else speak to them either. They are invariably in a bad way. They have the agelessness of a hard life. They might be fifty, they might be thirty, it’s difficult to tell. I pass them by, carrying laptops in my bag and noise cancelling headphones round my neck – part of the urban flow. I’m casually dressed, but look I healthy, and I’m aged in a guessable way. I am inside.
They are outside. They are so far outside, that they are unnoticeable, ignorable, unrecoverable. They are not there. Can they even see us through the dark glass? Can they even look inside? Are they in another place entirely? Can they ever come back? They’ve gone beyond the edges of the world. We see them and we don’t. They are outside. I hope they can look in.
