22.22.22

The significance of the number 22 to me, started about 20 years ago when a friend of mine told me that when he first became mentally unwell he was waiting to be seen by a psychiatrist, when a voice said 'remember 22'. This was a totally abstract and random thing. But when he told me I was quite suggestible, and open to taking meaning from just about anything from anywhere. The number 22, along with many other numbers became signs of things. I took the number 22 to signify that something good was going to happen and for years when dates like 22.02.YYYY came round I would get quite unwell waiting for something to happen - often something good, but also bad. I got out of this habit a few years back, because my illness shifts around its emphasis on different things for different times. However, the Manchester Bombing changed that for a short time. The bomber was 22 years old. He carried out the attack on the 22nd of May. He killed 22 people. It was all coming back and the association I had with that number was no longer good. There was nothing good about what that extremist did.

I see the number 22 everywhere. For example, my friend who first put me on to this number died a few years ago. A month or so after the bombing I had dream about him. We were chatting and laughing, like we used to when he was alive. But the dream woke me up with a start and I woke up and looked at my clock, and it was 2.22 am.

There have been many examples of 22 popping up. Too many to remember and I still don't know what it all means - if anything. But that bomber could not have predicted that he would kill 22 people. He could control the date and his age. Who knows...