I’m An Ex-Mental Patient

…so, this is the end.

The first tagline I ever had for this blog, way back in 2007, was, “Navigating the labyrinth of the NHS Mental Health Services”. Four years and six months later, I’ve found my way out.

I had my final appointment on Friday. It was with my social worker and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist has such a fantastic name that I expected her to smash through the window on a trapeze before backflipping onto the customary blue fabric chair. She didn’t, and quite frankly I don’t know why I pay my taxes.

I wish my dad was coming to my wedding.

I remember the first time I realised my dad wouldn’t walk me down the aisle. I was around 20. I can’t remember the date, the month, but I clearly remember that I was sitting on a bus, in the evening, leaning against the window with my fingers covering my eyes (the sunlight must have been weaving in and out of them, so it must have been summer). A woman got on, and held onto the pole, stared ahead, in that way you do. Something about her made me look. She reminded me of the girl in a Cancer Research advert at the time, one which was being broadcast with the wild abandon of supermarket commercials, between soaps, between documentaries, between seconds and minutes of days and weeks, and was unforgettable, and inescapable. And I had tried to escape it.

The girl in the advert was in her wedding dress. She looked every bit the cake-topper in her ordinary bedroom, in the oval of the mirror, with a painfully empty reflection behind her. She had tears running down her face, and she said, “My mum should be here”.

The advert, up until then, had annoyed me in the way that all cancer-saturation annoys me. I know that cancer is a horrific illness (my fiancé’s grandfather died of it on Boxing Day, the day we got engaged), I know the pain and despair it causes, I know it is awful and I know I am terrified of it, too. I know this because it is everywhere. Money is pumped into cancer charities, and cancer is the illness of bravery, of determination, of halo-dom. Automatic sainthood bestows upon the cancer patient, which, I believed, saccharined the reality of a terrible, destructive illness. All people who are ill are brave, because it requires bravery to live through any awful experience, through anything, really, through life. Whether in tears of laughter.

In my bleak little cocoon of grief (what is it like outside? I still don’t know), I felt resentment that people like me were not represented in these adverts. Or anywhere. No brave adverts for alcoholism and drug addiction, for mental illness, for the less glamourous, not-so-”blameless” (how horrible a concept) battles that steal our loved ones every day and which leave the children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers and friends silent under the weight of shame, of blame themselves (“couldn’t you stop him drinking? Put him into a hospital or something? Five children and it’s still not enough? What kind of children are you?”). The well-known by now turn-away of the face, the lowering of the gaze, not of death, but of a socially unacceptable death. One that does not proffer forth, “Ah, how brave they were! How wonderful. So much a life lived, and now the suffering is ended. They fought a battle”, but a defence, a, “But he was good. He was. I know he was. I remember it. Inside, he was good. He wasn’t himself- it wasn’t his fault”. The scrabbling for old memories, good ones. From childhood, maybe, or a glimpse, one day, in between drinks, of who he was, who you loved, who you would miss so desperately even when you hated them sometimes, and even when they so clearly hated you sometimes to, and even when you both said as much. And cancer patients are alcoholics too, have wasted, desperate lives, and die young. There is no sainthood, everyone is the same, everyone is human. A kind of death doesn’t make a kind of life. But so it is for the alcoholic, the drug addict, the mentally ill. Because they were so, then they must have been so.

And moreso than silent, invisible. I wanted, so desperately, to see someone represent my experience. To do it publicly. Please, please don’t let me be alone. I want to talk. I want someone to say something about what is happening to people and to the people left behind (My wonderful friend Brendan, who battled alcohol addiction too, died the year after my dad. He was the person who understood the most and I had wanted to shock him with my grief- it never works, it didn’t work with my dad, either. He saw people in his group die, and then he did anyway). It is why I wanted to write a book- not just one about mental illness (of which I have little to say about my own anymore) but about the experience of growing up with an alcoholic, with another who was mentally ill (It was like having half a parent most of the time. They ebbed and flowed, sometimes, one could be capable, one not, and vice versa. Sometimes they both were, and those were the best of times). Two parents who you love but who are flawed so deeply, but you love. Of not being a Jeremy Kyle caricature nor a placid professorly drinker, of being taught to read by someone who had misspelling on their gravestone, all too soon.

So this woman on the bus, her face like the advert girl. And I thought about it, her standing in front of the lonely mirror, and realised that my experience is there. It is there because I, my siblings and millions of people have lost a parent- forever and ever- and lost the futures we had in our hearts for ourselves, and for them. I had always imagined my dad walking me down the aisle (and probably getting drunk and ruining my wedding, but at least being by my side, genuinely proud and composed, for a few minutes. Like the childhood memories of making Toasted Toppers, it would be worth it for the rapidly fading memory of his true self), I had imagined smiling at him and getting one of my decade-kisses (only 3 times, not out of lack of love, but he was not that kind of man, he was shy) and then being released by him.

It struck me with shuddering, sickening force that it wouldn’t happen. It would never happen, it was gone, gone and could never be taken back. I had a new future and it was one without my dad. Without my children having him as a grandad, without my future husband meeting him (he did, when he was 18, and my dad baldly asked him, “Do you love her?”, to which my future husband replied, “Yes”), without arguments, without tense Christmasses, without shouting, without anything at all. He was gone. Was he even my dad anymore? Do they exist as parents, if they are dead? When they are 47 and I have friends older than that, who are alive?

I wanted to be sick. I shoved my head against the window and let tears roll down my face, too immobilised by shock and grief to even move, to get off the bus, to spare myself the embarrassment. When I finally did it was with fingers clenched in and drenched. I walked, I don’t even remember where- nowhere dramatic, probably home- trying to push the thought out of my mind, as I had done so many times before. But it wouldn’t go, it kept floating back, the awful reality of what had happened, that I had to accept and couldn’t bear to.

And now it is almost six years later. I’m getting married in August without my dad. Hopefully my mum will come, hopefully Robert’s dad will come, too. My little brother is giving me away. We’re having alcohol and I wonder if that’s like putting out lines of coke for the drug addict funeral. Should I raise a toast to my dad? Is that like saluting the Grim Reaper with a scythe?

But I know alcohol didn’t kill my dad, and that alcoholism did.

My dad should be here.

The Spartacus Report into DLA reform, written, funded, researched by people with disablities. PLEASE READ IT!

If you read or do or tweet or talk about one thing today, please read, tweet and talk about the Spartacus Report. I will let the absolutely inspirational Diary of a Benefit Scrounger explain:

A report published today (9 January) finds that Government misled MPs and Peers over the hostility to disability benefit reform. It finds that Parliament has been given only a partial view of the overwhelming opposition to the Coalition’s planned reforms of a key disability benefit, Disability Living Allowance (DLA). It finds that this opposition was previously not released to public scrutiny by the Government.

It is based on the responses to the government’s own consultation on its planned DLA reforms, which were only made public once disabled people requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. Findings included:

* 98 per cent of respondents objected to the qualifying period for benefits being raised from 3 months to 6 months

* 99 per cent of respondents objected to Disability Living Allowance no longer being used as a qualification for other benefits

* 92% opposed removing the lowest rate of support for disabled people

Among the report’s conclusions:

* Only 7% of organisations that took part in the consultation were fully in support of plans to replace DLA with PIP

* There was overwhelming opposition in the consultation responses to nearly all of the government’s proposals for DLA reform

* The government has consistently used inaccurate figures to exaggerate the rise in DLA claimants

* The report shows that nearly all of the recent increase in working-age claimants of DLA has been associated with mental health conditions and learning difficulties. Between 2002 and 2010, the number of working-age DLA claimants – excluding those with mental health conditions and learning difficulties remained remarkably stable

* 98% of those who responded opposed plans to change the qualifying period for PIP from three months (as it is with DLA) to six months

* 90% opposed plans for a new assessment, which disabled people fear will be far too similar to the much-criticised work capability assessment used to test eligibility for employment and support allowance (ESA)

* Respondents to the consultation repeatedly warned that the government’s plans could breach the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Read it here:

Spartacus Report

I’m not going to say much more. I think the changes to DLA are amongst the worst sleight of hand the government has performed. There is a twisted justification in going after ESA as it can be explained away with, “fraud! malingering! dependency!” DLA cannot. It has a minuscule fraud rate, it is not an out-of-work benefit and personally, my life would be totally different without it (I would not have gotten funding for my course. I would not have had somewhere safe to live). Please read, retweet and resist reform of Disability Living Allowance.

2011- that was the year that was

2011 was a good year for me. It was the only year in my adult life where I haven’t had some sort of mental health crisis. I even got past the dreaded October. October seems to throw me into storms, unreasonable storms that appear from nowhere. But not this year. I did spend a lot of this year waiting to get really ill. Or nearly making myself so by going over the past for no real reason other than that’s what my brain tends to do! But I think I’ve kicked that, too. I’m quite excited about the future.

It wasn’t perfect. January was sent from hell, but the year improved as time went on. When I did get stressed or depressed, it was for entirely understandable reasons. It was quite a busy year! For example…

1) I was discharged from the community mental health team after 4 years

2) I came off benefits, after four years

3) I finished my course at Birkbeck, which made me feel like a Real Person again

4) I got my first job in 4 years

5) I started university

6) I got engaged to my very first love, and my very last.

7) I didn’t write a book. And my lovely agent has (quite understandably) stopped replying to my emails, so it may not happen. But, as the above testifies to, 2011 was the year of getting my life together, rather than staring at my naval. I found it incredibly painful to even try- maybe this year, if I can find another agent!

8) I’ve been quite quiet this year. Undoubtedly lost my position as one of the more vocal mental health bloggers. But I had forgotten that I actually DID STUFF. I still did write a fair amount, did some performing, did things with Rethink and got involved in activism and was on radio.

In 2012, I hope to do more writing, more work with charities, more STUFF, not fail my placements, be more sociable and get married. Hooray!

So, that was 2011. How was it for you?

I am getting married, hooray!

Christmas was good. I got engaged! Christ, I feel like a proper grown up now.

Robert came to my family’s for Christmas, which meant the unromantic setting of dog wee in the kitchen (he is a very excitable boxer dog, who kept trying to shag him). But the more romantic setting of introducing Robert to my extended family and getting fat together on the sofa with the Eastenders Christmas special.

On Boxing Day, Robert was rather adamant that we go for a walk in town. He was very nicely dressed- unusually so for a tramp like him- so I followed his lead and dressed up a bit, too. He was quite insistent in walking to the River Lagan, as when we were first together as teenagers we used to go for walks there. Then we went to this little bandstand area, in blue lights, little steps, a bench. He gave me a kiss, extremely nervous. I realised what was happening and asked to sit down, and he knelt down in front of me. I’d gotten him this notebook he loved, an old, leatherbound one, which I said he had to put something lovely in as it was too nice for hastily scribbled swearwords. He pulled it out of his pocket, started to read me something he had written, and asked me to marry him. When he took the ring out I said, “I bloody knew it!” as he had been somewhat dropping clangers. But it was lovely, all the lovelier really as it meant I was as nervous as he was.

Anyway, we kissed and walked back. On the way across the bridge, a woman barked, “Let me see the ring!” and I thought I was being mugged. She worked there, and the whole thing had been caught on CCTV. Hooray!

The ring did not quite fit, so we choose a new one together, a pink sapphire, which is beautiful. The ring which doesn’t fit me is now his wedding ring, which I’m wearing around my neck on a chain, and will put on his finger on our wedding day. He gave me the new ring at the bus station where we first met, when he came to visit from London when I was 14 and he was 18 after eight months of phone calls and letters, and where he looked all shy and pretty in is suit and make up and took my hand, and I pulled it away because I was dissolving with nerves.

Afterwards we rang my sister who came into town with my brother and we had a bottle of Prosecco. We want to get married in August as it’s the only time we have free. I got a bit excited talking about it all but truth is, god knows what will happen. We are completely broke and neither of us want a big do. We don’t know if we will have it in Belfast or London yet- Belfast would be good for my family, but for the ceremony I really only want a very small number of people there. We are not traditional, and we’re not formal. I asked my sisters and Robert’s sister to be my bridesmaid (and my big sister to be my maid of honour!), which is one of two concessions to tradition we’ll give as they mean a lot to me. But they can wear what they like! Since my dad obviously can’t give me away (being dead and all), my brother wants to give me away in a leopardprint tophat and we are finding uses for the battery powered LEDs I have, so. We’ll see. A party afterwards would be nice but the whole thing boils down to the fact that we just want to marry each other and have a day with people we love! No white fancy bullshit!

(This stuff is already making my head spin. I want my London friends at my wedding and I can’t afford hotels in Belfast, but my family cannot afford to help AT ALL so it’s all on us. Also, Robert’s mum can’t take any time off in August so she wouldn’t be able to come to Belfast for a wedding. AAAAAARRRRRGH).

It was a bittersweet day. When we came back to my mum’s, Robert got a phone call informing him his grandad had died. We knew it was going to happen and the love his grandparents had is what spurred him on to propose. His mum told his grandparents- his granny was delighted, and his grandfather (who was a lovely man) died knowing, so she said that was nice. But it was kind of heartbreaking. We had a big cry- about him, about the possibility of losing each other and the inherent madness involved in spending your life with someone, and in being in love. It is strange to be engaged to Robert, after our messy, complex history together. I have loved him since his first letter dropped on my door mat when I was 13. He makes me happier, more comfortable, more myself (as myself as I can be drugged to the nuts) than I ever imagined I could be. Now we are getting married I feel the pain of losing him one day acutely- but it’s worth the life we could have, I know. Then we went to sleep.

We went to my friend Stephen’s the next day, Robert rocking up drunk as he sold his Dulwich Hamlet scarf in a pub for 4 drinks and £12. Stephen and Aislinn’s house is fairy tale beautiful, and we couldn’t believe someone we knew lived there.

We played a board game called, “Us and Them”- about the Troubles. It had green cards with questions about Catholicism on them, and Orange cards about protestantism. There were also Innocent Victim cards, with questions like this:

No questions about punishment beatings, though, bollocks.

Back in London now and it all feels quite surreal. But I keep looking at the ring. I’m still happy, so is he, so, all good!

HOLY SHIT SHINY ETC!

My family, and Robert and Freddy would both be even if we never got married. But it’s nice to make it official.

And I start my placement on Tuesday, argh!

Disclosing your mental health problems at work?

Hooray!

Well, my voice is now done coming out of the radio, but you can listen again on BBC iPlayer, Radio 4. Thank you if you listened, thank you for lovely tweets and thank you Radio 4 for having me!

The topic last week- and touched upon this week- was disclosing mental health problems at work. People are now protected in that we no longer have to disclose a history of mental health problems on application forms. There’s also legal protection under the Disability Discrimination Act.

But in practice, how much of a barrier to discrimination are these things? While laws may change, do peoples’ attitudes?

How do you feel about disclosing mental health problems at work? If you have done so, did it change anything? Were you supported?

I’ve disclosed once just after I’d been diagnosed and I disclosed because I had been told I should. I was unwell at the time so the reaction I got was more likely due to the very blatantness of my illness (this was the job in which I spent an afternoon drawing moustaches on sticky paper then plastering them on my face and my monitor because I’d finished my work at light speed and had finished all the emails I had sent the bosses with my great ideas. Then I went into the directors’ office covered in moustaches, did a dance and then paced up and down the 12th floor singing. Then I went home and applied for jobs as a gym instructor despite being 12 stone at the time. So, er!)

What do you think?

I’m on All In the Mind, BBC Radio 4, tonight at 9pm

Hello chaps, a heads up that if you couldn’t get enough of my perplexed Belfast tones on the Rethink advert below, you can hear them briefly talk a little about returning to work and a tiny bit on being a mental-mental nurse on BBC Radio 4′s, “All In the Mind” tonight at 9pm. Here’s a link! You can listen live or it’ll be available afterwards on BBC iPlayer.

My rambling aside, tonight sounds like a very interesting programme that I’d have listened to anyway!

Claudia Hammond explores the implications from the latest developments in neuroscience for the legal process and asks what kind of new brain based information might be submissible as evidence in court? Claudia will explore the ethical issues raised by the possibility of predicting criminal behaviour and asks what our rapidly increased understanding of how the brain works will mean for how we understand decision-making, free will, and systems of punishment.

Was quite exciting to be in a radio studio again, I really enjoy it. The biggest one I was ever in was the Birmingham studio for Dos and Don’ts, where I discovered they had actual stairs with different materials on for sound effects. I wish things personally hadn’t been so rubbish at that moment so I could have enjoyed it more, but I was stupidly and rather naively mind blown that they used STUFF for sound effects. It’s all digital now! I’m even writing this to you digitally and not on a piece of palm leaf with a stunned octopus like they did back when I was a child in the eighties.

Do excuse the relative quietness here! I have a gigantic bit about suicide and Last Offices to post. I have been thinking a lot about it since my After Death Care class, but as it is an emotionally exhausting topic to write about, I have been writing about it in little bits. It’s also exam season for me and my energy (and my bowels) have been largely focused on that. Hooray!

Anyway, it would be great if you listen tonight, and if you do, let me know what you think!

No Quick Fixes for Mental Illness video

Here’s Rethink’s new campaign, called, “No Quick Fixes for Mental Illness”. It’s a video featuring the voices of real people with mental illness:

For those who may struggle to hear, there’s a transcript here:

http://www.rethink.org/about_mental_illness/personal_stories_blogs_forum/no_quick_fixes_cam.html

I plug not only because the first voice (the halting Northern Irish one) is mine!

I like this video for a few reasons. The first is that they have a woman talking about schizophrenia. A small thing, perhaps, but to me it seems the experience of women with schizophrenia is almost totally overlooked, in the same way that the experiences of from ethnic minorities often are, despite the prevalence of diagnosis in that group.

I like it because when they used parts of my interview, they didn’t focus on the things I said about mania that were positive, and that’s often the thing that gets disproportionate attention in terms of bipolar disorder. I think it borders on harmful.

I like the fact that it deals with severe mental illness at all. I sometimes feel the discourse regarding the more uncomfortable aspects of mental illness (such as psychosis) is stunted.

The oozy brain has been contentious- what do you think of it?

Let me know!

The Last Goodbye: Comedy fundraiser, 15th December

In honour of the comedian, Mackenzie Taylor, who died last year, there will be a comedy fundraiser in aid of Mind on December 15th-  Here are the details:

We are putting on a comedy night to celebrate his life and raise money for MIND, It would be wonderful if you could all come down a support the night.
The Laugh Goodbye – Comedy Fundraiser
Date December 15th 2011
Time 7.30 -10.30
A cracking comedy line up to celebrate the life of Comedian Mackenzie Taylor and raise money for MIND.
Line Up  Tom Wrigglesworth, Kevin Shepherd, Joe Wilkinson, John Gordillo, Holly Walsh, Richard Sandling and Tony Law
Cost £10 in Advance £12 on the Door (all proceeds go to MIND)
Venue: New Diorama Theatre
Box Office Number:
+44 (0)207 383 9034
Nearest Tube: Great Portland Street/Warren Street/Euston Square
Bus: New Diorama is directly on the following bus routes: 18, 27, 30, 88, 205, 453, C2, N18

Many Thanks

Kate Tucker

New Year, New You?

Hello chaps!

I’d like to pick your lovely brains on something.

I’m writing an article for One in Four on the subject of the New Year.  I celebrate the New Year (capitals and all) as a means of a sort of bookmark. “Done!” It used to be a celebration of, “Holy shit, I’m STILL ALIVE! Who’d have thunk it?” I think that does have a value.  It’s a more acceptable way of doing, “one day at a time”. And I will say I am personally a person who likes markers- like I said, bookmarks.  I need those little milestones, and I value them, and January 1st is as good as any.  I also like having that acceptable time to assess where I’m off to.  And 2011 has been a great year for me so damn right I’m going to see it out with a raised glass. So I’m aware a lot of people reading may feel similarly to me in that they value the bookmark of a new year as a means to move on.

But I bloody hate all this, “New Year, New You!” bullshit that gets hysterically vomited out of the press starting September.  I hate that the Old You isn’t enough anymore. I hate that in particular that it shrinks huge facets of your humanity down to easily marketable packages and does it under the loathsome guise of self improvement.  ”Shit, you’re fat! Don’t be fat anymore! Buy this!”, “Shit, you look like a purse! Buy this purse, accessorise your purse face!” and etc.  I also detest the implicit message that if you just had enough willpower you could do anything!

It sets anyone up for failure (which is why I’m not making resolutions this year) but I think it can be even more so of a trap for people with mental health problems.  What if January 1st is just a day?  If Christmas was just a day? You’re still the Old You, with the Old Life.  And the, “willpower” aspect of getting over mental health problems- that you might have had in 2011, 2010 and before- is not a pleasant thing to play with.  You can’t be well by wishing alone, and the assertion that you can get anything by basically closing your eyes and wishing hard enough is dangerous.  Willpower can be good, it can help you quit smoking etc- but I don’t think that willpower alone is going to cure someone of schizophrenia or drug addiction, or loneliness.

I also think that, particularly for people with depression, the bollocks of a New Start is a bit of a kick in the nuts.  Some people may find it helpful, and that’s cool, but I think we should drop the superstitions around New Year and take what we will from it without it being shoved down our throats.  A new year could simply mean, to a lot of people, another year of shit and dread and wondering if you should be alive at all.

What do you think?  I’m having trouble getting my thoughts in order about the topic (maybe it’s not a strong topic?) and it would be helpful if you could tell me what you think and maybe what things you’d like to be discussed in regards to new year and mental health?

Thank you!

Reasons Why I Am Bloody Amazing

…or at least passable.  I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately, self attacking thoughts being very loud indeed and just wanting to sleep my nuts off.  Ah, winter! Hello old friend.

Anyway, I could make this privately but that means I’d end up at about 2 before starting to scribble cocks.  Also, I want you to have your turn.  Spread the early Christmas cheer, from yourself, to yourself.

Reasons Why I Am Bloody Amazing Or At Least Passable.

I am nice.  I may put my foot in my mouth an awful lot but I am not purposely unkind or malicious. I have mostly nice thoughts about people and I tend to see the good in people rather than the bad.  I am not spiteful and I find spite very ugly.

I like to make people feel comfortable.  I try to be sensitive and I like helping people.  I am compassionate.  I’m kind to animals, except for fucking cockroaches, which are not animals, but demons.

I am giving and  loving to the people I love.  I am picky about who I love, but when I love people, I love them…er, well.  That sounds incredibly pervy. I LOVE THEM HARD, OKAY?

Likewise I am ridiculously loyal.

I don’t get angry easily, and when I do I don’t stay angry for very long. (This is something I have developed over the years). I am generally quite equable when other people are angry, rather than being angry back.

I am funny.  I can turn a phrase when I feel like it.  I don’t mind making a dick out of myself.

I am quite patient these days.  I like my own company and I don’t mind pootling around.  I don’t get bored easily and I like just dandering seeing what’s what.  This is a good thing.

I’m intelligent, in an intuitive way.  I can be dense as crap but I admit to my blind spots.

I have a degree of charisma which I know not everybody has.  (Whether this is a good thing is up to debate as the confidence I supposedly exude is partly bluster, but I think this is very true of most people who seem confident on the outside).

I am quite active in my own life.  I don’t wait for things to happen, and I take a large degree of responsibility for myself.  I’m independent!  I GET SHIT DONE INNIT.

I do the things that scare me.

I am adaptable.  I’m open to and deal with change quite well.

I’m good with money.  This is a skill!

I am nowhere near as emotionally messed up as I should be given the things that have happened in my life.  Nor am I as bitter.  I am resilient. I don’t seek my self esteem from other people, and my self concept is pretty solid for the most part (this is also open to debate whether this is a good thing, given the good things tend to bounce off somewhat!)

Due to the ageing gene being missing me and my siblings, I can still pass for someone under 18.  This usually pisses me off as people tend to treat me like an imbecilic child (and deny to me my cigarettes!) but I know I’ll appreciate it in 4 years and I’m thirty and suddenly my boobs hit my toes and my faceplate falls off to reveal Predator beneath.

"20 RICHMOND MENTHOL PLEASE!"

Despite what this list would attest to, I am not narcissistic or up my own hole!

Aaaaaaand, I can write, when I put my mind to it.

That’s all I can muster for now and by the formal language, you can see it was a bit difficult!  I am fighting the urge to write, “And here is why I am also an idiot”, starting with the fact that I am procrastinating by writing this!

Anyway, your turn.  Tell me good things about yourself!

 

 

 

My Family and Christmas

My London Family

That's Freddy in the middle. He's very handsome, and is, "The Older Man", being 29 and all.

My Belfast family

STATE OF YE

We need a new photo, Stephen!

I’m looking forward to Christmas.  I have found it increasingly less fraught as the years pass.  My eating problems aren’t so bad now. And I guess it means less.  It’s stopped being this magical thing and is now just a welcome respite from normal life, a chance to eat and sit fatly on a sofa without feeling bad about it.

And I wonder- guiltily- if it’s because I don’t have to go home and confront my dad’s drinking and him and mum trying to kill each other.  I miss him a lot at Christmas, but I can’t deny there are things that I don’t miss.  He took Christmas quite seriously, and that was infectious.  It made it an event.  It made every creak from our bedroom floorboards at 4am in the morning elicit a roar that shook the tinsel. I miss that a lot.  But he never took it so seriously he would stop drinking. Inevitably it would descend into tears and screaming.  Some of my worst memories are from Christmas.  But so are some of my best.  He didn’t the last Christmas he was alive, which I am grateful for, and it is a Christmas I cherish. It was the last time I saw him not a yellow papier mache dying in a bed.  He jumped into the taxi with me on the way to the airport.  Then jumped out at the off licence.  He took in my dismay, but it was pointless to protest-if letters and hospitals and pleading and screaming and tears and kicking out then taking back didn’t work, a weak, “Please” in a rushed taxi was not going to work either.  He pressed a twenty pound note into my hand for the fare and kissed me on the cheek.  And his breath was scentless- the last scent I had of him living, untainted by alcohol.

This year, Robert and Freddy will be coming to Belfast with me. It’s going to be weird!  Although Robert has seen me in many of my less glamourous moments in our 10 years of distrustful acquaintanceship and 3 of love, he has never seen me shout at my brother while wearing Primark pyjamas, nor has he witnessed my prestigious ability to eat more Brussel sprouts than the average farmer can grow in a month.  In one sitting!  It is a skill. I revert to Childhoodom, fighting with siblings, unabashedly farting, helping my mum with the stuffing and peeling gammon off the plate in the fridge and blaming it on Paula.

He knows of my family dramas- my dead dad, obviously and my dad mum.  But if he can handle me he can handle a Christmas amongst the Molloys.  It feels very grown up, though, moreso than last year when I spent Christmas in London with him, eating Polish food in our friends’ large and welcoming home.  We even went to Christmas midnight mass, which I found both moving and amusing.  I’d never been to a Church of England service before.  The reverend referenced Twitter and Facebook.  But it was quite lovely.  It had snowed and the church looked beautiful and made me feel very Christmassy.  It’s not a time to be cynical, it’s missing the point to be cynical about it.

Are you looking forward to Christmas?

The Recovery Truth

I didn’t realise my last post came across so negatively!

The Recovery Myth

I just found this: I wrote it in June. It came to my mind because I keep forgetting that as a person I will have mood swings, and as a person with dodgy moods, even more so. And I fear being mad again, when newlife, largely lonely, is hurtling towards me. Career, kids, marriage (I want them all, I could have them all). Don’t be mad, not again. Even the sniff makes me fear, I blink at the glare, deny everything. From open, to closed.

 

So now I am recovered from mental illness. Now I can pass for normal to the untrained eye, one that isn’t looking too closely into my own glazed, unfocused ones. I do Recovered Person Things; I study, I work, I take public transport and people sit next to me, on a good day.

Whoever was doing the PR for tampons was doing them for mental illness
recovery. The same euphoric aerial splits celebrating the joy of
working Coke machine, the same toothy grin over a latte with your
girlfriends, the giant kitchen, with holy glittering worktops awaiting
a weekend of salad preparation for the family- all this will be yours,
if you get better. A life, they call it. A normal life.

And deep down a part of me sighs, “Don’t believe the hype”. Recovery can be a more profoundly lonely experience than the illness itself. Years have passed now, like a dream. But if it were a dream, then nobody else would remember. But they do, and better than I. Vignettes of a life I had forgotten before I even finished living it are bold A4s in other peoples’ brains. How jealous I am of my memories being locked in other peoples’ brains! And afraid I am to ask for the key. A part of me does not want to remember.

I had expected that after four years, I would one day fling open the door and see a line, stretching far down the street, snaking around the corner and into the road, the people who I had hurt, bored, confused, frightened and bored again waiting, wreathed in smiles, bedecked in flowers, overflowing with forgiveness, welcoming me back.

Back to… where? Somewhere I have never been, as someone I have never been. In the four years of the regrettably necessary self-obsession required to Recover, I had stopped asking about the lives of my friends, the lives of my family, the lives of people I had loved, or could have loved and who could have loved me. In time, they stopped asking me, too. They had Real Lives. They have promotions at work, fall outs, nights out. I had the stasis of the still-sickening, of an inner-life with no outer life. My most exciting trips were to hospitals, or onto the pavement. If it is dull to me (and it is), it is even more dull to them. And rightly so.

You find this too, when you recover. This is not cancer, not even close. You can’t whip your sleeves up and show your self harm scars as a mark of how far you come. That’s bullshit-speak from social workers trying to salve the pain of you destroying perfectly lovely parts of your body for the rest of your life. No-one is interested in your inspirational tale. In fact to mention it you’d think the earth’s axis has shifted ever so slightly one centimetre as people have the irresistible urge to be drawn backwards. Really far back. I’ve made that mistake before. I thought that now I was stable (but not normal, never normal and untainted) everybody would be happy for me. Bumping into an old school friend, the conversation goes like this,

“Oh, hi, Seaneen! What have you been up to?”
“Oh, hello! Well, I’ve been mad for a couple of years! But I’m fine now! Just off to get a sandwich. What about you?”

With no outer life, or at least, with a less of a socially conventional outer life if your mental illness knocked you into a ditch somewhere, you may have lost social skills. How do you talk to people when you’re not a little high? (Slowly, by the way). How do you have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around what your
psychiatrist said that week? (Bullshit, as usual). It’s okay- practice on strangers. Which you’ll be doing a lot since, as mentioned above, you have lost most of your friends in the period in which you were mad and trying to be less mad.

If you were lucky, you might have made some nice mad friends to keep you company. They’ll be really happy for you when you recover and
start to claw your way back to normality. Which is how it should be. Except, some of them think you’re a traitor. Some of them are genuinely pleased for you, but then you find that aside from talking about your mental problems, you don’t really have that much in common anymore.

Where do you go then? Into a new life, with new people. And what do you tell them? What of the past years? What did you do, where did you come from? What did you do? Where did you come from? The answers make you dumb.

How did you feel when you were diagnosed with a case of the Mentals?

I’m doing a thing with Rethink tomorrow in which I talk about what it was like to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder almost…shit, 5 years ago. I know how I felt (incredulous, scared, confused, why-am-I-in-bloody-hospital) but how did you feel when you first got your diagnosis of bipolar disorder or otherwise?

(My diagnosis at the time was bipolar I disorder, which I remember thinking, “That sounds like a film. BIPOLAR I: THE ATTACK”. Not unlike, “BIPOLAR II: THE REVENGE”. Or, “CYCLOTHYMIA: THIS TIME IT’S…SORRY, WHAT WERE YOU SAYING? LOOK, I KNOW I WAS IN A GOOD MOOD YESTERDAY BUT TODAY, GO SCREW YOURSELF, YEAH? I’M GOING TO BED. FIRST, LET ME PICK UP THESE BISCUITS. YEAH, ALL OF THEM, SO WHAT? DO I JUDGE YOU? NO? WELL, SHUT UP THEN”.)

For me, it was a total kick in the balls. For everyone around me, it was a case of, “Oh, yeah, we knew that”. I’d been tentatively given that diagnosis before, but it’s changed, morphed and been so, “Eh?” over the years I hadn’t taken it seriously. Five years later, due to the changing and morphing, I still don’t take it seriously. What I did do was overidentify with it for a while (and then, four years later, distanced myself from entirely). I thought, “Oh god, this is the end of my life!” It was, in some ways. The end of a life I had known. I had to take…shit, four years?! out of life and then readjust. And recover, as now I am at the point where there’s not a sniff of mental illness about me, unless you looked really hard for it. I still have my tics and I still take medication. My life is different. I’m different. It’s part in growing up (a large part, I think). And part- well, it has to be.

The medication was the worst part of it. It was so frightening sounding, and the side effects were equally frightening. I struggled for years to take it, I resented that I had to.

In a way, I had expected too much from recovery. It has almost been lonelier than living with the actual illness had been. I expected that once I’d reached that point I’d open the front door and all the friends I’d known and loved and pissed off and frustrated and irritated over the years would be there brimming with forgiveness, ready to welcome me back into the world. It hasn’t been like that- it has been getting used to being this different, quieter, more careful person, and getting used to it on my own as I’m not the person those friends knew. For better or worse. There are things about me that don’t- cannot- exist anymore. The boundless energy, the sociability, the indiscretion, the emotionalness, the things I thought were part of me, were who I was, the things I realised that were practically parasitical. Those were things that DAMN! I would never have expected to happen.

There was relief, too, now tempered by not being sure (in that sense, I am jealous of people with a fairly concrete diagnosis). But I was undeniably relieved to know what ailed me, even if for 6 weeks after I fought with the home treatment team and said it was just depression and Lithium was kept in the top cupboard so my shortarse self couldn’t reach it. Christ. Five years ago. It may as well have been another life.

So, how about you?

The NHS Saved Me

I was encouraged to post this photo, so here I am, posting it.

I scrawled it on my arms at the Block the Bridge, Block the Bill protest last week, which, as other protests against steamrolled government policy, did not even give them pause for thought.

Working After Being Mental/Stigma

Hi chaps, here is some writing, elsewhere!

There are 2 things I’ve recently written floating about. The first is an article for One in Four on working post-mental-illness. (Which made it into the Guardian’s society daily, hooray!)

Working it out

After four years of treatment, three years on benefits and two interviews, I finally found myself one job.

I thought I’d never have a job again. My employment history is fractured at best. In attempting to work when I was ill, I made that situation and my health worse. Claiming benefits took a long time, but when I was finally successful, it gave me the space I desperately needed to get well. It gave me time, above all else. Time to sort out my housing, time to attend appointments, time to process what was happening to me and learn to live with it.

After three years receiving benefits, I realised I was no longer ill enough to justify claiming them. At the same time, I lost my entitlement to the support that came along with benefits and therefore lost all help toward getting a job. For the first time in four years, I was absolutely on my own. At that point, though, I felt that was where I was ready to be. Well, sometimes. At other times I almost crumbled with the fear that I wasn’t ready for work, that I wasn’t prepared for life without stabilisers.

And a piece with the mental health campaign, Time to Change, on stigmatising yourself.

used to be a very prolific blogger on the subject of bipolar disorder. That was, until I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Bipolar disorder, through the visibility of sufferers such as Stephen Fry, could be construed as one of the more acceptable mental health conditions to have. It is associated with great creativity. Borderline personality disorder, however, is a less acceptable condition to have, if anybody knows what it is at all. It is portrayed in the media via the prisms of films like Fatal Attraction, with the terminally attached Glenn Close cutting her wrists as she waits for the disinterested Michael Douglas to call. Within mental health services, its image fares little better. In this study, 84% of mental health professionals said that people with borderline personality disorder were the hardest client group to deal with.

I hope you like them. And hooray for feeling able to write again! It’s been months!

How To Be Alone

This is an absolutely beautiful little video.  And close to my heart.  I spend most of my time alone.  The nature of living with a night shift worker means there are seven days in every fourteen when I am alone.  I don’t see people other than him so much.  Not much of a social life here.

There are times I feel very lonely.  That’s exacerbated by the internet- of having many connections but few with whom I truly connect.  With someone always on chat but never on the phone.  With 600 tagged photos of faces I never see in real life.  Sometimes I do feel very lonely.  I feel bad to admit to it.

But being alone. The older I’ve grown, the more I enjoy my own company.  I realise how much I value it when it’s taken away.  I get a little image of myself sitting here, drinking a coffee, being alone, and I yearn for it.  When I was working I was late home every day because I liked to look in the shop windows and run my hands through the vegetable racks and sniff the tomatoes.  I would rifle through my pockets for the change for tea.  6.30…7.30…head still in the paper.  I am used to getting looks for eating alone.  A £5 meze plate, my favourite treat, with just me eating and people taking my empty chair.  No, no-one is coming.  It’s just me.

In a way, I am halting about making new friends or polishing the friendships I already have because I like to be alone so much.  I like the space to think.  I feel bad admitting to that, too.  But I’m working on that.  I need to make the time for people.

Anyway, look, this is so lovely.

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were you were not okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find its fine to be alone once you’re embracing it. We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the box, your not suppose to talk much anyway so its safe there. There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in. There’s public transportation, we all gotta go places. And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation. Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on avoid being principles. The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouse work across town, and they, like you, will be alone. Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone. When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out to dinner to a restaurant with linen and silver wear. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were. Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst fleeting community. And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no ones watching because they are probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely move to beats, after-all, is gorgeous and affecting. Dance till you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings. Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile no one is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it. You can stand swaffed by groups and mobs and hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cause if you’re happy in your head, and solitude is blessed, and alone is okay., Its okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses can’t think like you, this be ?, keeps things interesting, lifes magic things ?, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, the community is not present, just take back to you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it, if you have an art that needs practice stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it. You could me in an instant surrounded if you need it, if your heart is bleeding, make the best of it, there is heat and freezing be a testiment.

World Mental Health Day: Stigma of the Self

Today is World Mental Health Day, and m’colleague Mark Brown has written a piece for the Time to Change website regarding stigma:

Negative ideas about mental health difficulty and the people who experience it seem to many to be natural facts, ideas that we absorb as correct without ever being conscious of their source. They feel like common sense. When we’re asked where a particular negative idea comes from we can always find examples of how that idea has been used but very rarely the point from which it originates.

Often people use the formulation ‘Well, there are rules, laws and regulations about people with mental health difficulties doing this particular thing, therefore there must be a reason.’ If asked what they know about those who experience mental health difficulties, people will extrapolate from what they know of laws, rules and regulations. Examples of this include; ‘People with mental health difficulties must be dangerous or they wouldn’t lock them up in hospital’ and ‘people with mental health difficulties must be worse at their jobs or there wouldn’t be so many who are unemployed’.

But where do those ideas originate from and what’s it got to do with stigma?

A stigma is an indelible taint or mark placed on you by a community or authority that not only tells you that you’re wrong or undesirable, but also tells other people the same thing. As Catherine Amey writes in the winter edition of One in Four the idea of stigma is rooted in the wish to set a group within a society apart from others and to dictate how others should behave toward them. The word derives from the practice of branding criminals or other ‘undesirables’ so that they would carry a mark or scar for life to serve as a deterrent and punishment to the criminal and as a warning to others about their past. It was literally a way of marking people out as dangerous and to be avoided. As Catherine writes: “Stigma seems to serve a dual function: it protects people from individuals who pose a potential threat while saving them the trouble of thinking too hard.”

I posted this link on my Facebook page, and Phoenix Moon commented upon the idea of self-stigma. The one in which we hide ourselves. It’s not just having a mental illness that causes stigma. It’s which one.

As you may have noticed, my posts here tailed off last year. It is no coincidence that it was around the time my diagnosis had changed from bipolar disorder to borderline personality disorder.

Shameful as it is- and it is shameful- it was in part because I felt as though that diagnosis was a kick in the nuts, and people might view me differently.

The reasons were twofold.

One is that I did not personally identify as someone with BPD. I never had those shuddering, tipping-world realisations I had about BPD as I had with bipolar. After my periods of discussion with, “professionals”, it is generally agreed that I do not have BPD. I don’t have the, “core” traits such as fear of abandonment, emptiness, etc. But what I didn’t want to admit- what I didn’t even want to admit to myself at the time- is that I did. When I was younger, I did have those issues. Possibly not to the extent of a disorder, but I did have them. I did self harm impulsively. I did lose my temper a lot and I did hate being alone. I understood why the doctor made that judgement about me. And realising that I had had those problems meant I was able to face up to them. Those are the reasons why I couldn’t just off-hand dismiss the doctor.

However, the time passed, and it passed without treatment for those symptoms. I had either recovered from BPD, or it was a part of being young, or something else. Either way, it has such little impact on my life that I would struggle to write about it. But why then didn’t I continue with the blog in the same way I had?

The second was that I was ashamed.

I was fine with bipolar disorder, to a degree. That comfort with the label lessened when it became clear it was just that- a label, an interchangeable, fluid thing, not a solid fact in time and space. Not even a dust speck- not even that. It was not a part of me as an arm and a leg was, but I treated it as though it were. As did others.

But bipolar disorder comes with perks, if you can call them that. Anyone who has been in the system would contest it, because you are still treated like a mental patient. However, the perks are that you are treated as having a, “real” illness. There is sympathy there. You didn’t do anything wrong to get bipolar disorder. It’s like a nasty bug- ah, you’re unlucky. You must have caught it off your mum.

Culturally, we all know what the perks of bipolar disorder are. It has quite the glamourous image. Most people, when asked to think of someone with bipolar disorder, would call to mind Stephen Fry or some similarly artistic person sitting on a giant velvet pillow writing 10 books a day. When asked to think of somebody with BPD- if they even knew what that was- the image would be rather different. Think young, hysterical, self harming woman. (Guess which one vain, writerly I wanted to be?) Is that what they think of me, I worried? Is that what I am? Any of you reading this know the score with a personality disorder. It is the most dreaded diagnosis of them all. Your brain is not messed up- you are.

That was a horrible thought. I just wanted to crawl away. Gone from being a loud and proud person with manic depression, all shiny and visible and okay talking about it- to wanting to hide. I couldn’t bear the thought of being a public person who was thought of as messed up. Even in 3 years of blogging, I didn’t think anyone thought of me as, “damaged”. I didn’t feel that way about myself, either.

It also made me question things about myself I had not thought of. I had not thought that my dyeing my hair bright colours was some sort of sign of identity disturbance- it *was* my identity, I had been doing it since I was 12. I had also had an abortion prior to knowing my diagnosis had changed, and I wondered if that in itself cemented views about me. It was not an impulsive or blase thing, it was a serious and difficult decision two people who had been together four years made. I was distraught at the thought that it might have any weight in it. I was distraught and cried for days that no-one told me I had a personality disorder instead before I went through with it. The bipolar thing was a factor as I was terrified of getting ill when I was pregnant and I knew it was a possibility.

Navigating the space between was hurtful to me and led to a period of self questioning. As I wrote about at the time, the diagnosis change was not, “and (understandable to me)” but, “instead of”. If the professionals say it, well, it must be true! Because I didn’t feel I had BPD, but was also told I didn’t have bipolar, I had lost the language with which to describe my own experiences. I had lost the frame of reference I had used to explain why what happened to me had happened. And labels are, at the end of the day, shorthand. They are a phrase used to describe a cluster of experiences. In feeling as though I could no longer use that label with any- for want of a better word- credibility- I found it more difficult to talk about my experiences to the point where I am at now. As in, I don’t. Not to a doctor, not to a friend. I find it hard even here, in case the Really Ill people laugh at me. I used to private posts, but god, I do it 90% of the time now.

The long period of self questioning was one of the most valuable periods in my life. I’m Seaneen Molloy- I’d forgotten about that! Remember her? Short, silly and shy and would probably always be if not a manic depressive, or personality disordered, or Irish or any other of the vaguely meaningful but open to debate labels attached to me?

It is no surprise nor secret I do much better these days than I have ever done. It was partly because I had embraced the bipolar label too strongly. I think that that is partly natural- you do when you’re first diagnosed, it is how you make sense of it. I called everything an episode, when it just was. When I retreated, it was depression, not just that I liked being alone because I am too lazy to socialise sometimes. Necessary as it was to begin to deal with my problems, it was also crippling because it was all-encompassing. I had let it overshadow the flawed and silly aspects of my own humanity. Of which is complex and wonderful- like all humanity is. To dismiss it, to define it with one label is to do it a disservice. To realise it was just a label- that it was not concrete and did not exist anywhere except my medical records- gave me the freedom to move away from it. And thus to recover from it. When I was at first diagnosed with BPD I had those awful thoughts of, “What must they think of me?” I was wary of writing here in case it cemented that view. Now, I feel the same way about bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder does “fit” better than BPD- those close to me, and myself, would find it hard to argue that now in the wake of being an Old Woman, the “episodic” nature of my issues is much more clear. But that is all it is- a word to describe those episodes. I sometimes wish that I could still confidently use that language because it explains things I find difficult to. But I should explain. They are MY experiences, after all.

The rediagnosis had changed my perspective- if that didn’t fit, then maybe bipolar didn’t. Or maybe it did. But what did it matter? It was just a word that gave a shorthand to my experiences, and not much more than that. It was a word that determined sometimes how I would be spoken to by professionals- but that was their problem, and not mine. Case in point- depending on which GP I’ve seen, my diagnosis is different on their screen. One GP sympathetically gave me the rundown on why taking medications was important due to my bipolar. The other asked me to roll up my sleeves show I could prove I wasn’t self harming (I haven’t done since I was 24 and then only once that year- I am 26 now) and then maybe I’d get the month’s prescription of the medication the previous GP had told me to take. When I was told it was BPD, I was urged not to be hurt because it was a label. When it was bipolar, it was an illness. So go figure.

My symptoms didn’t stop when I thought less of the label. I still have mood swings (to a lesser extent). I still struggle with cognitive problems. The way I dealt with them did. The confusing labels just made me think, “Right, well, they have no idea and either do I, so what do I do here?” I did what I knew worked best. I wasn’t sure what for, but it worked. Having regular sleep worked. Taking medication worked. Controlling my stress worked. And worked regardless of what label I had. Being too invested in one or other made me too invested in the fixes for either- when what worked for me, worked.

I was horrified at my own feelings about BPD considering I wanted to be a mental health nurse (and am now studying to be one). Was I going to be one of those bastards who referred to people with borderline personality disorder as a, “PD”? But part of my horror was the inbuilt prejudice against it. I had heard and seen enough that I was afraid of suddenly being one cast into the bin. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t- not because I disliked what BPD was (I think of it as a legitimate illness and in some cases an utterly rational response to trauma) and not because it was not entirely who I was, but because I was afraid of the prejudice that came with it. So I turned it inwards to deal with it. I would damn well work on the things that got me that diagnosis so I could escape the bin.

It isn’t fair. But what I found was is that the stigma was a motivator. The period of, “Well, then, what the hell is wrong with me?” meant that I came to the conclusion- nowhere near as much as anybody thought. I was not just better than that doctor thought- I was better than I thought. I had come further than I’d given myself credit for. I was stronger than I thought I was. And that was comforting, in a way. What was also important to me is that I didn’t change. From one diagnosis to the next- I was still me. So how much did it matter? It is also a motivator in never, ever becoming one of those bastard mental health professionals who treat, “PDs” like that.

That said, though, I still have issues with my self harm scars. The mass advice I get is to be proud of them because they are a signifier of how far I’ve come. I don’t view them that way, I’m not sure I ever will. It isn’t peoples’ judgements that make me want to cover up- it’s my own feelings. I hate looking at them- I hate being looked at. So how do you deal with that?

And now I have another issue! I’m a student mental health nurse. Not a, “real” nurse, as has been said to me twice so far. “Why would you want to get pissed on by mad people?” and other such lovelies. If the professionals are stigmatised, what hope do the patients have?

Answers on a very large postcard.

I Can’t Write

Hi chaps. Since I last spoke to you, London burned, I turned 26, I had my disabled students’ assessment (ah, a side of you you abandon, and then when you need to revisit it you realise how much the glove still fits), I went to Madrid and to the pub for the first time in many months.

Excuse the quietness both here and on my website. I have been struggling to write for a while now. I don’t even have many ideas. I had a lot to say about the riots but due to social media, news moving so fast, everything I had to say ended up being said. I still want to say it but it feels irrelevant.

A combination of many things, I imagine; a wireless connection (and streaming telly), having been busy with work (which is no more as I start university) and possibly the Lamictal stupids. I often get writers’ block, struggle with my concentration, or become exhausted writing about my own life. The balance between what I am comfortable sharing and what I feel is helpful to share is a tricky one. Sometimes I don’t want to share, but I do, I do want to share- not myself, but the joys, the pains, opinions, the human things, intellectual things, silly things. I am a hermit. So I share by writing.

This time feels significantly different. I’m not sure why. I have been fine for a long time, I am content now to sit and watch rubbish or lie still, when I have rarely been in my life. To lie still before was the stillness of death and depression, and to be still is not my natural way. It is wholly unnatural, though not unpleasant. I am fine, but flat, and I feel it. My brain is not racing, it is quiet. It is not dead, dumb or empty, just quiet. I’m not used to that at all. My mind isn’t restless, but I am, for something, to do something, to write. I sit and try and sweat with the effort. I’ve never had the discipline but I want it now, more than ever. I am going to instill it in myself, because if it doesn’t work, then what? I am struggling to find the words- I keep repeating myself, my vocabulary seems to have shrivelled. It’s melodramatic but I understand those I used to think as glamourising, glorifying imbeciles who said they had lost themselves, lost part of themselves, when they became stable. Because I have lost a part of myself too. I am trying to force myself to write. But I feel such grief at this realisation. Maybe it’s not my magic power. Maybe it comes from somewhere that is, for now, closed from me, to give me time to live in other ways. But I have lived through this. Something is gone. I hope it is not forever.

I don’t even feel as though I can call myself a writer anymore. Maybe I never was one, I have never really had much faith in myself in that respect. And maybe that’s why- I didn’t write a book when I had the chance, I haven’t taken the chances I’ve had, I haven’t exploited things or pursued them. Maybe I subconsciously feel that a writer would do those things, and I didn’t. Or that I just gave up and decided to be a nurse instead, as if, “instead” mattered. I know I can be both, if I want.

That’s why I’ve been quiet. I start university next week, so I may be quieter still. Take care chaps!

(PS: I’m aware some people may go, “Oh but you can!” But I’m mostly talking about the physical, blank, draining, difficult effort of actually doing it, which is not something I have really experienced before. Struggled and stuff, but the words came easy enough. My confidence just might be severely knocked or something- I don’t know. “Don’t knowing” is what is annoying me, too).

Download Do’s and Don’ts… BBC Radio 4 play online! Wahoo!

People have often asked me for a copy of “Do’s and Don’ts for the Mentally Interesting”- the Radio 4 play based upon this blog.  I often can’t help due to having one CD copy meself, and that’s it.  It’s now available for download!  You can download it at Audiogo, and you can also get it via iTunes.

There’s a charge, but by downloading it for your listening pleasure, you can keep it and I will also get about 1p! If 17 of you download it, it means I can buy a Fudge, the king of modestly priced chocolate!

It’s pretty weird that it’s out there now, but I hope you like it!

So then, a Mentalist Update!

Well, if it’s here and some old readers may return, I shall give you a brief Mental Health Update!

I am fine, as I was when I last wrote to you, and I continue to be fine. A few stress/panic episodes which were absolutely understandable aside (first proper full time job non-dossing non-writing job in 4 years! College! etc!), I have been stable for quite a long time now! My last bout with the devil was in September last year. And I kicked its arse! Bastard.

I currently have a full time job, I’m trying to finish 2 essays before Monday and, that done, I shall hopefully receive my hallowed Certificate of Higher Education! Hooray! I may indeed be YOUR future mental health nurse. I absolutely promise not to be a total bell-end. If I ever recommend a nice cup of tea and a bath then you have my permission to kick me out of your house and into traffic.

I’m no longer taking any medication. That’s a new development- I stopped it two weeks ago. The first week was horrific insomnia, tearfulness and ARGH ITCHING, but this week has been fine, thanks to a ton of antihistamines and melatonin. To fall asleep- not to be bludgeoned into its submission- is a wonderful thing. I have not gone a bit weird, as feared. Sleep, as I thought, seems to be the absolute crux of me staying well and groovy. However, I’ve run out of melatonin, so I may be stripping to my knickers and firing the rest of my togs out the window yet.

I’m seeing my GP in just over a week to discuss long term, non-sedating medication. But honestly, if I continue to be alright as I am, I think I’ll say nay bother. The downside is, I’m pretty sure I have developed diabetes. So I need to mention that. Thanks, Seroquel!

Robert and I are still together and still very happy.

Life is good. And thus I have very little to write about on this blog!

Will you see at the Other Place!

Back!

News for my many ones of fans!

I no longer need to keep it private, so it’s back here, in all its unglory, and the redirect is off.

I’m actually going to bring the archives online again, too. I’ve hidden everything more than a year old, but what’s the point? As far away from those posts, as that person- as I feel these days, it all still happened!

I wish I could change the URL as I do not believe I have manic depression, so I should be done under the Trades Descriptions Act!

You can now read and comment here again!

That said, I still live over at the more updated http://www.seaneenmolloy.co.uk so see ya!

The Happy Suicide

I’m quite stressed right now, as I’ve explained a few times.  

I’ve started having panic attacks again.  They’re disturbing my sleep, because I am afraid to go to sleep.   The thought of wilfully consigning myself to darkness makes me feel panicked in itself.  Taking my medication helps, in that it knocks me out,  but I’m scared of lying there in the dark waiting for it to take effect.  So I take it earlier, and this is partly, I think, what is leading to sleepwalking.  I’m not properly asleep or properly awake and I don’t fall asleep in the same way if I take it then stay awake and active.  My brain is still going and between those cracks from the panic.

Bastard.

What I Do In My Sleep

Firstly, this is one of my favourite poems.  If you don’t want to read about cake, pish and menstrual blood, read this instead.  It’s called The Lady’s Reward by Dorothy Parker.

So, I’m a sleepwalker.    I’ve sleepwalked since I was a child.  When I was around eight years old, I sleepwalked out of the house, down the street, barefooted but open-eyed, knocked on my neighbour’s door and demanded that he fix my bike.  I was gently guided home.  I don’t remember this.  It was, like so much of my life, recounted to me afterwards by my family.  I should have realised at eight that that was going to be the order of things.

In the past few years, there has been a resurgence of sleepwalking.  This is due, I think, to Seroquel.   With Seroquel I’ve had sleep paralysis too.  It’s like it switches off my body but my mind keeps tottering around.  The ghost rising from the corpse, looking down and saying, “Bloody hell!  Right, I’m off to have a sandwich”.

The combination of Seroquel and alcohol is a particularly potent one.

Without alcohol, my Seroquel sleepwalking is benign enough.  I eat.  I wake up, walk in a drugged haze to the kitchen, locate- with magical accuracy-whatever has the highest percentage of carbohydrates and then I eat them.  Recently I have woken up with white chocolate in my belly button.  Yesterday, I pilfered two bags of crisps.   Hooray for house warming left overs!  I have no recollection of this- I never do.  I leave a trail of crumbs which the ants march upon.   A few weeks ago I took a carrot cake and ate it on the toilet.  I realised that I had done so when it was missing from the fridge and there was a little ring of icing and walnut segments growing around the toilet bowl.

This is making me fat.  I try to compensate during the day by eating less, but fat I still am, and fatter I am becoming.  It is distressing, but I’m used to being fat.  I have always been, to some degree, rather fat.  But it isn’t hurting anybody, except for Robert when I sit on his knee.

Seroquel combined with alcohol- ah.  Recently it has led to two particularly hideous episodes/

So, this was about two years ago. It was a jolly night- two of my friends were staying with me and my boyfriend.

We had dinner and lovely amounts of alcohol. To bed! Lots of yawning. We put the inflatable mattress on the living room floor and bid them goodnight.

The next part of this was recounted to me by my boyfriend, who was watching from the door way, hiding his glorious morning erection with a pillow.

Apparently, stark bollock naked, I woke up from bed and wandered into the living room.  They woke up and watched me as I obliviously got down on all fours in the corner of the room and proceeded to piss myself. Apparently I craned my neck backwards to watch the extremely long, very noisy stream of wee as I did so.

As I got up and walked away from my damp patch, I stepped back over the mattress, onto the bloke friend’s head. He got a fantastic view of my vagina. I was at least in the right mind to say, “Sorry”, to which he quietly responded, “It’s okay”.

Robert guided me back to bed.  I didn’t believe him when he told me. I tried to bury into the pillow, into the mattress, into the centre of the earth with embarrassment.  But it was mostly an act- I felt an odd sort of pride that I had been so far gone, in such an animalistic act.  It was beyond the pale.  And my friends are at least odd enough to appreciate- well, my being odd enough.  And Robert, who is also odd, counts it amongst the sexiest things he’s ever seen.  Someone in such abandonment of conventions is sexy to him.  It’s not to me- I can just imagine my stretchmarked stomach in the dawn light and sagging breasts like some sort of cow.

The next thing is only repulsive if you think eating your own menstrual blood is disgusting.

A few months ago, Robert burst into the bedroom, waking me up from a (somewhat drugged due to insomnia) sleep.

“THERE’S A FUCKING MOUSE ON THE SOFA!” he bellowed. He is very phobic of such things. Great with spiders and cockroaches, but shits it when Mickey comes to visit.

I was in no state to even understand him so made a noise and turned around to sleep.

“Come and get the mouse”, he beseeched. “The cats are batting it around!”, but I slept on. I don’t like mice either anyway, especially not dead ones.

So, he posted on Facebook, like a wuss-”There’s a dead mouse on the sofa. I’m too scared to touch it. I will give you £allmymoney if you come and get rid of it for me”.

My fetching 4ft 10″ female friend happened to be in the area. She valiantly stepped up to the challenge.

About two hours later, somewhat more lucid, I awoke. My boyfriend came into the bedroom.

“What happened to the mouse?” I asked.

He glanced down sheepishly.

“Er…”

And then he explained that my friend had come, approached the chair with caution and then turned to him and said,

“Robert, it’s a used tampon”.

I neglected to tell him the tampon was there because in my sleepwalking state, I had sleepily wandered into the sitting room, pulled it out with the intention of flushing it away, then instead sat on the sofa, chewed on the end until it was frayed, then gone back to bed.

He needs his eyes tested.

Now- those things, tragic and unavoidable as they are, amuse me.  But my sleepeating is starting to fail in its amusement.  I have a lock on my door, but as Robert works night shifts, this means locking him out of the bedroom as I sleep.  It can’t be opened from the outside when it’s locked.  I would rather not do that for many reasons.  One, he needs to sleep, two, I enjoy sharing a bed with him and three, my panic attacks have returned and suddenly waking up, with my body being flung upright and my breath ragged and strangled is not a state to be in with a locked door.  The anxiety is making it worse, I think.  I don’t sleep eat all the time, but have been mad-anxious lately and it’s stepped up.

Fitting locks on the cupboards and fridge seems overkill, and besides, I can’t afford it (or indeed, want to spend money on more important things.  The cupboard doors are horizontal at the top, rather than vertical, so it would also involve drilling into fancy wooden worktops and I’d be out a deposit).  My now “oh-fuck” level of poverty may be the solution.  I can’t really afford food any more so soon there’ll be nothing more to eat.  Huzzah!

Do any of you have this problem?  How do you solve a problem like eating the crap out of anything not nailed down in your sleep?

Homesick

For a place and for a time.

Maybe it’s because tomorrow I have my first exam since my GCSEs.

And I feel clueless and like I’m fifteen again.

[Only that time, I was too ill for school, I was right to be nervous and afraid of my exams.  I came back that day to quietness.  God knows what was happening to me.  Ten years later and I still don't know.  I managed a few months, here and there, once got applause when I came in, 90 minutes late, but I did. I took a proud bow.  By that time they had stopped chastising me, and my name no longer adorned most columns of the school's late book in the secretary's office.  I didn't need notes from my mum anymore. Just showing up once in a while was good enough.  Eventually, everybody stops asking.  You hear from the lower forms you've slipped into mythology without even realising it].

And it’s too quiet here, in my adult life, with my dad dead now and my mum very quiet on the phone.  I miss the sound of them fighting.

Upstairs’ television blaring down fills me with nostalgia. Except it used to be downstairs blaring up.

Exams were the times when there was hot tea on the fire place in the morning.

I know I have family here in London.  Robert and the cats are my family, too.

Robert introduced me to his grandparents over the weekend.  I was in a family photo, looking more adult than I have ever done.  I want to introduce him to my granny, she’s the only one left.  And she’s brilliant.  At daddy’s funeral, at his graveside, she asked me if I believed in god.  I told her honestly no.  She told me she didn’t either but she hoped there was a hell so Iain Paisley would burn in it.

I know I tell that story a lot, but it says all you need to know about my granny.  That, and when I went to hospital a year or two ago, we traipsed the ward with our cold coffee to visit her in intensive care after a major operation.  She wasn’t there; we thought the worst.  We had tears ready to ambush the poor nurse.  But she’d been moved- two days in, not weeks- to the normal ward, and was sitting up.

But I miss my mum and my brother and sisters.

I haven’t seen them in ages because I couldn’t get home for Christmas.  How can Belfast feel like the other side of the world sometimes?  How can fifteen seem so present when there is nothing in my earthly possession but my nervousness and faulting memory that is from the years?

I miss my dad.  I miss his grave, and like missing him when he was alive, I’m afraid to go home and see it in case its in an even worse state than when I saw it last.

I'm the wreck here! Face sponsored by Olanzapine.

I miss home!

Tender and tired.  Goodnight.

Body dysmorphic disorder- the only ex I really hate

I received an email a few days ago asking me why I never mention body dysmorphia these days. (This reader also has body dysmorphia and wrote that she liked this blog because there’s not a lot out there about it).  And I realised I did rather abruptly stop talking about it.

Well!  There’s a few reasons for that.

The first one is that I have never liked to discuss it as I just felt vain.  It’s also a very boring topic, your looks.   The times I talked about it most were when I was going through CBT, with body dysmorphic disorder being the diagnosis that led me there.

The second and most important reason it doesn’t feature largely on this blog is because it no longer features largely in my thoughts.  I don’t have body dysmorphic disorder any more.  The rituals are gone, as is the overwhelming anxiety.  So I consider that one dusted.

So, in this entry I’m going to talk about why that is, and what helped me.

This got long…

Depression?

“Oh dear”, I thought.  ”I spent three days asleep.  I keep bursting into tears for no reason.  Every time Robert opens his mouth, every time I open my inbox, every time I pick up the phone, read a sentence, watch an advert, I think they’re criticising me.  And why wouldn’t they?  I’m so crap.  I’m so stupid and ugly and hideous.  No wonder I didn’t get accepted to King’s.  No wonder everyone hates me.  I just want to eat.  I just want to eat chicken and chocolate and go back to bed in my pyjamas.  I stink like shit.  I haven’t washed in days.  I can’t face doing any of my work.  I have no energy.

Am I getting depressed again?  But there’s no reason to be depressed.  And that’s always a bad sign.  Oh shit, oh bollocks.  Not again.  I can’t do this again”.

Then a day later, curled in the foetal position, a powerful pulse of pain.  I reached for the painkillers and cancelled the evening.  And then I realised.  I’m not depressed.  It’s just, y’know.

Y'KNOW.

Never been so grateful to be doubled up in agony.  I was getting worried.  I have become hyper-vigilant to my moods.  I’m constantly waiting for another episode of something to knock me on my arse into the dust.    I sometimes forget I’m the type of woman who gets down and emotional and thinks plants are calling her fat when I’m Y’KNOW.

Today I feel normal again.  And I view my five days of bursting into tears at Andrex ads like a little bit of a holiday.  This is why I missed my periods when they stopped dead from stress.  I remember when I wasn’t using tampons but I was using Lithium and listening to women moan about PMS.  I felt a sense of grief at how natural and how uncomplicated that was.  There is something so wonderfully ordinary, something that makes me feel part of the human race, about being a woman on her period.

But there are no jaffa cakes left.

FAKE EDIT: I’m aware some of you will read this and roll your eyes.  Please feel free to discuss CHICKEN, JAFFA CAKES or FEMINISM in the comments instead.

Rethink podcast: mental health and social networking

A while ago I was involved in a podcast with Rethink on the topic of social networking. I wrote a bit about it here.  All the swearing has been edited out so now you can listen to it!  Links below.

If you are still feeling charitable, please go to the podcast on the iTunes store and give it 5 stars. Then send the link to your friends and ask them to do the same. This is really important, because if we get more than 20 ratings, we could become the highest-rated mental health podcast on iTunes – which will help us make the case for Rethink investing in and producing more podcasts, including items more directly focused on helping people affected by mental illness.

Direct link to iTunes

1. · http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/rethink-mental-illness-podcasts/id426002353 – share and enjoy.

It is also on the main Rethink site here:

· www.rethink.org/podcasts

Thank you!

Life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it

Privated last post, I think I have enough comments now.  Few months to decide.  Realistically, I feel I’m going to have to push ahead with this year.  A large part of me just really wants to get started, I spend so much time reading student nurse forums and feeling jealous.  My non-realistic side is saying, “Follow the dream!  The insanely competitive dream!” From people “in the know” (nurses, lecturers), I’ve been very strongly advised to go this year due to intake cuts next year.  So who knows!  Either way I can’t mope and wah about it.  

Whoops, I’m fine!

I made an old post (October 2008, so very old) about an overdose public because somebody emailed me remembering that they’d read it and wanted to again.  For some reason, it always publicises on Twitter or emails people when I change the post status.   Because of this, it looks like a recent post if you don’t check the date.  Likewise, it means that sometimes you’ll see a link on Twitter or Facebook to a non-existent post- that’s usually me accidentally publishing an old post that I didn’t mean to.

So, just to reassure people- I am, in fact, completely fine!  Thank you for your well-wishing, but I haven’t taken an overdose or been to hospital.  Well, I have, but not in two and a half years and I’d really be milking it by now.

x

Comic Relief and there is a duck outside my flat

Edit: read my previous post, people are saying interesting things!

Why is there currently a duck outside my flat?  It’s been there a while.  It scared the bollocks out of me when I heard it quack.  I like my nature where I can find it, at a safe distance in parks, not on an estate in South London.

What do I?  Not used to nature visiting like this.  Do I offer it a fag or something?  I’ve only got menthols.

Speaking of ducks, it’s Red Nose Day tomorrow!

http://www.rednoseday.com

That’s an event sponsored by Comic Relief, one of the better UK charities and whose annual with Rowan Atkinson scared me as a child.   They fund many great projects, including some of mental health charities such as Rethink. I went to their BBC Radio Three concert on Monday and galliantly- along with almost 4000 other people- broke the world record for most kazoos players in one room!  Hooray!

All proceeds of that raucousness went to Comic Relief.  If you support them, donate!  I’m partly posting this because my limit right now is a fiver, so I hope if people read this and like Comic Relief they can add a fiver, too!

There’s also twitrelief on Twitter and eBay, auctioning off celebrity twitter following and some extras.  I’m not sure whether that’s inventive and generous or cynical profile raising shit but it raises cash, so who gives a toss?  If there was an auction for kicking Nelson Mandela right in the balls that raised money, it’d be worth it.  If there was one for kicking Ricky Gervais in the balls, I’d happily donate both money and an afternoon to really dedicate myself to it.

Anyway, hooray for Comic Relief!

When I Was Racist/Studying

I had forgotten other people read national newspapers. When I wrote the Observer bit, I didn’t think about other people reading it. I realised yesterday on the way back from class that there was a good chance my tutors and some of my classmates may have seen it. Nobody (save for one friend) at my college knows I have any mental health problems. It’s likely some of them do now. Oh well!  Hello anyone from Birkbeck who may have found me!  I hope you liked it!

Edit: Heh, my sister was on the phone and commented on the, “sad and darkly funny life” tagline saying, “But you’re happy!  You’ve always been happy!  Even when you tried to top yourself, you were like, “It’s alright!  Nothing to do with you lot!  Just a bit mental right now!”

I am really enjoying studying, though. It’s only a part time course, but I feel a little like it’s making up for the fact that I was a GCSE drop-out.   As much as I used to triumphantly declare that you don’t need to be educated to be smart, I feel a bit, well, smarter being educated.   My brain was atrophying a bit, considering all I was reading was Take a Break and Chat (and it’s THURSDAY!  Best day of the week!  I get my fix today.  I will finally stop the shakes).

I like to moan about the workload, but it’s in the same affectionate way parents moan about their children (when they’re not exalting them as the world’s most interesting demi-gods on Facebook). It takes me completely out of my comfort zone.   My module is on physiology at the moment.  I had no idea what hormones actually did apart from make me force down the doors of KFCs at 3am bawling, “PLEASE, I NEED CHICKEN!!!” every month or so.   Now I know!  A bit!  I even managed to give a presentation on it and sounded almost like I knew what I was talking about!  (And got to say the word, “vagina” while pointing at a diagram, thus pleasing my giggling six year old self).  I like how stupid it makes me feel. It’s a bizarre type of masochism- I actively enjoy being confronted with my own dumbarsey. The mathematics in particular totally baffle me. When we have maths questions in our tests I just stare at the paper, hoping a genie will pop out of the page and maybe perform an enlightening little rap for me.

I like coming home and having new things to talk about, things to explain- to struggle to explain. I like standing outside having a fag and hearing people discuss what they’re learning. But there’s a snobbery that irks me. My classes are in SOAS right now, and there’s a lot of students doing High Brow subjects. My modules are geared towards nursing and health, and by buggery, I am finding out how stupid people think anyone who wants to be a nurse is. I’ve talked to some students from other courses and I see the lights begin to dim once I mention what I’m doing.  They’re doing more, “academic” subjects- they think I spend my time reading about the methodology of arse-wiping rather than writing essays on how and why poor housing affects health and mortality.    When I say I want to be a mental health nurse, I peer into their eyes and they’ve by then vacated the building.  I’m also finding out- to, quite frankly, my terror- there are some less than lovely people who want to be nurses for reasons I can’t fathom.  There are people who shouldn’t be nurses (I’m not specifically talking about my course here) and I hope they fail, and sink without a trace.  But that’s another tale!

There’s something else I wanted to write but worried about it in case I sounded racist, but ah well. I was a bit racist at one point.

Plymouth- something about it made me feel  uncomfortable.  It isn’t just that it’s not a place for pleasure.  Its seaside status is a fraud.  It’s not the same kind of seaside as Whitstable or Broadstairs.  It’s a naval town and the naval grey is everywhere- in the sky, on the ground, in the water.  It has a few interesting streets, some little cafés.  But it’s artifice.  They may as well have been ripped from London and plonked down there.

On my last jaunt to Plymouth (my boyfriend used to live there), I realised what it was that was making me uncomfortable.  It was the same thing that niggles at me if I venture to Hampstead, even when I return home, to the place that I was born.

It’s that everybody is white.  They all speak the same, plain English.   I don’t feel like I belong there, even though I am white, too.  Whiter than white.  I have the milky white Irish complexion.  I don’t speak any other language than plain English myself.

I’m from Belfast, a city that is homogenous, though now less so.  There are only two types of people in Belfast- Catholic and Protestant.  You cannot identify as c) other.  I’m an atheist, but it’s not an oxymoron to say I’m a Catholic atheist.  Religion is more than faith- it is cultural, and in Northern Ireland, the cultural differences are marked.  I was raised by fairly liberal Republican parents.  I wasn’t taught to hate Protestants- just the English.  Still, they didn’t mind when I first introduced them to my English boyfriend, in 2000, the same one that I wandered around Plymouth’s desperate streets with.

Robert- the English boyfriend- looks, to the untrained (i.e Northern Irish) eye, as though he is Asian.  He has somewhat Asiastic eyelids and that lean, angular appearance of a Manga character, which was as far as my cultural nous went in those days.  Despite being nothing but English, he was regular catcalled with,  ”Chinky” by the Belfast locals.  That’s how often we saw Chinese people in the city- we had to imagine them instead.  As much as I’d love to call the chinky-baiters racist bastards, I used the “nigger” term as a child, when I wasn’t sure what it meant but knew it was a bad word.  Knowing it was a bad word put me a little ahead of my peers.

"Oi Chinky! Oi Paddy! Oi Other Paddy!"

I had always viewed people of different races as, “other”.  Because their skin colour was different than mine, I thought we couldn’t share experience.  I did view black people as somehow, “slower” than me.  After all, they didn’t speak English, did they?  Oh wait, they did, but I didn’t know that.  I did think I was better than them.  It was fourteen years before I met a black person in real life.  I’m pretty sure I asked if I could touch his hair.  There was one non-white person in my school.  Her name was Niamh- Niamh Chakavardy.  She was a friend of my sister’s, and the first time I ever spoke to her, I was astounded at the strong Belfast accent she had.   She-like the black twins at my baby sister’s school- was a curiousity to me.  She was beautiful- not, “exotic” in the sense of modelling casting agencies who hire ethnic models to promote “exotic” goods-which made her even more curious to me.

When I was fifteen, I acquired an Australian penpal.  We met on a PJ Harvey forum.  I had no idea for a while that she was a Muslim.  I had never thought to ask, assuming that a PJ Harvey fan would be white, because it was, “white” music.  We’ve been friends for a decade now, and I can’t quite believe I ever thought that way.

When I moved to London, I rang my friend from the office of my first job at the Royal Mail.  ”Oh wow!”, she exclaimed.  ”I can hear all these different accents in the background!”  Then I started college in Romford.  And I was the only white girl there.  There were no other white people for me to club together with just because they were white, thus we must have loads in common.  I was forced to interact with people from different races and at first, it made me deeply uncomfortable.  I stuck out so much.  People whispered about me.  Some of the girls laughed at me.  Now I was the Other- a white Irish girl in an all-black class.  I hated it.

Then I signed up for a temp agency.  I was asked, rather bluntly, by the agent dealing with me if I’d consider changing my name to something more , “normal”.

“None of our clients know how to pronounce your name”, she said. “I can’t pronounce it.  Is it Seamus or something like that?”

I was stunned.  In a multicultural society, I’d have thought my name would be easier than most to pronounce.  But it wasn’t, and nor was understanding my accent easy.  For a year or two, until London living softened the barbed edges of my West Belfast braw, people spoke to me veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly.  As though I were stupid.

Almost every time somebody talked to me- taxi drivers, people in clubs- and clocked that I was Irish, they’d hoot, “OOH!  Do you like Guinness?  LUCKY CHARMS!” or some other stupid, thick-headed stereotypical shit.  I usually smiled politely.  I think I’ve only once bellowed back, “OH HA FUCKING HA HA HA HA YEAH I’M FUCKING IRISH YOU FUCKING CUNT WELL DONE!” and then I scalped them and sent it back to the MOTHER COUNTRY.

This constant reference to my nationality made me shrink back, at first.  And then, naturally, I became more nationalistic than I had ever been in Belfast.  In defiance.  YES I AM FUCKING IRISH ALRIGHT?

There are always things that mark you out as different, because everybody is, in fact, different.  Out of all the people I know, I probably win the, “Most Deprived Background” award, a dubious honour indeed.  There have been times I’ve wanted to hide the fact, and times I’ve realised my own prejudices on it.  I am genuinely stunned when I hear of people being funded by their parents, just because the concept is utterly alien to me.  My mum is more likely to nick my money than give me money (many suspiciously opened birthday cards from granny attested to that, as does the fact that in school I stopped doing fundraisers because she’d just steal what I had collected.  I should have just walked round with a bucket, knocked on doors and said that my mum needed money).

I have- and I’m not proud of it- an instinctual distrust and dislike of rich people, particularly posh rich people.  I met a guy who is a fucking Earl and was involved, heavily, in the student protests.  He was spouting off about socialism- saying, at some points- sensible things.  But I didn’t trust or care what he had to say because he was wearing a fashionably grungy top that had cost into the hundreds of pounds and was a fucking Earl!   I just wanted to smack him and tell him to shut up about socialism.  While he was buggering off on posh holidays, my family were having our food money spent on the cheapest of cheap piss alcohol and dodging rats in the breadbin when trying to make toast, which we practically lived on for most days of the month.  (The beginning of the month was a Feast, when daddy got paid and the Big Shop was done- the rest of the month there was nothing to eat).  What’s £9,000 a year going to be to his family compared to families who don’t have Earls in them?  Why should he, and people like him, become the faces of protests when they’re the ones less likely to lose out?

But that’s not right.  Does it really matter who’s drawing attention to a subject?  And, of course, rich kids, rich people, posh people, famous people, tend to have more influence, tend to be noticed more, and if they use it for a good cause, why not?  With some subjects, I think it matters.  But hey, students have a reputation for being middle class anyway, and that’s why lots of people who weren’t students didn’t care about the fees hike.  They don’t think about poor people or understand how they would be discouraged from applying to university.  They don’t think about poor people and education at all- if they did, there would have been more of an outcry when the Education Maintainance Allowance was scrapped, which helped poor children like my brother afford to be in education.  That £30 would cover getting there and food for the week.  It was a disgrace it was scrapped, but education itself has a reputation for being something for the middle classes, just like supposedly “high” culture, just like supposedly, “high brow” degree subjects that make people believe that those taking, “low brow” vocational degrees like nursing are stupid arse-wipers who can’t handle real academia.  ”Oh yeah, my dad’s a doctor”.

But how would I/do I feel if people judged me unworthy of speaking on some topics because of my background, my race or my gender, which are things I can’t help?  I hated in when at Romford nobody talked to me, I hated it when people called me Paddy and assumed I was thick because of my accent.  When I was rejected by King’s, I did wonder if it was partly because I had dropped out of school and didn’t have expensive schooling.  There were a lot of privately educated people there, and I did feel quite unworthy.  How could I compete with people from public schools with good accents, good education and the self confidence such things bring?  (Badly, it transpired!) But that’s equally bullshit- if I put every failing down to snobbery on the parts of others, then I wouldn’t ever address the issues of why I actually failed.  I’d shrug it off, or try to, as it might be difficult with such an enormous chip on my shoulder.  That’s not helpful to me, or anybody else.  And I understand why people are privately educated- if you have the money, you want to give your kids the best possible.  Same way that parents with mentally ill children will send them for private treatment if they can afford it.

That said, when I do go home, I am accused of being posh!  My accent has changed a little bit since I moved to England.  People assume I’m from the posh end of Belfast rather than from Poleglass.  Like with my nationality, I think I defiantly overstate my class, too, despite the fact I live in London and own an espresso machine (it was a gift, and I am unemployed, but such things are bizarre markers of class).

It took me a few weeks to realise that I’m one of two white people in my class now.  I have no feelings on it either way.  I would hate to live somewhere that wasn’t multicultural.  I feel like part of the multi-cultural because as an Irish person, my culture is different from someone who is English.  I no longer feel at home in Belfast because it’s too white.  On the whole, it’s kind of a racist place.  My uncle freely uses the word nigger and told me to stop being uptight when I said it was offensive.  The shops are all the same, selling the same things.  Last time I was there, Robert made a gumbo and the only okra he could find was in a fecking delicatessen.  IT’S OKRA!  And such a small thing is a little indicator as to how Belfast still views people, foods and cultures other than its own- as a delicacy. As different and deserving of different treatment.  And while it’s a probably tokenistic thing to say, I love the fact that in London, my local newsagent stocks stuff from around the world.  On the estate on which I live, the smells drifting through my windows, the accents I can hear, the different music, is all thrilling to me because I feel part of a bigger society, a less insular one.   It has made me aware of my own privilege as a white person, which has also made me aware of where my own prejudices and faults lie, and thus, I can address those.  I’m going to be working in a profession full of people from around the world- the staff, the patients.  It makes it more exciting.  There are different cultures to consider, different perspectives.  A huge part of the reason I wanted to go to King’s is because they do overseas electives- I am absolutely fascinated by how mental illness is viewed and treated within different cultures, and I was dying to go to somewhere like Zambia and see what it was like.  (Wipes away more tears of rejection!)

I don’t understand the mentality of people who want an all-white, all-British society.  Not only would it be unnatural (migration and immigration is completely natural), it would be desperately boring.  There are some ethnically homogenous countries like Japan out there- but their homogeneity is utterly different as to what a White British homogenous society would be like.  Some have been citing Japan’s homogenousity as a reason as to why there isn’t looting at the moment, compared to say, New Orleans- the implicit racism in that statement is very ugly.   Japan’s culture is very, well, Japanese.  They have strong etiquette there.  I can’t say why I think it’s nothing to do with race with much knowledge, but I suspect in Japan being seen as a looter would be incredibly shameful.

So I’m less racist these days, in that it’s a non-issue to me.   Now I need to get over my distrust of rich people, because I’ll meet them, too and will have to not punch them in their posh faces.

Observer article on confessional blogging

Hello!  If you want to read the article, it’s here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/13/blogging-fine-art-of-confessional?INTCMP=SRCH

It’s quite an interesting article about the roots and rise of confessional blogging.  Why do we share so much, and what are the pitfalls of using the internet like a box in a church?  In the print version, I was slightly amused that the strapline accompanying my piece was, “Bipolar writer blogs about her sad but darkly funny life”.  It was the, “sad” bit that made me grin.  I might get, “Sad” tattooed on one knuckle, and, “Darkly funny” on another.  I don’t have a sad life- I don’t think I’ve had a sad life, either.  Apart from the usual things of a troubled family and dead parent- and, of course, periods of being a bit mental- I think my life has been quite a good one.  Right now, it is a lovely one.  In general I’m not particularly sad in my demeanor.  I’m wondering if people who read it now think I blog in a darkened room, adorned in a veil, capturing my tears in a well. (I actually catch my tears in a saucepan, then add them to ink).

That aside, it’s an excellent article. Part arch cautionary tale, part wink-wink celebration. I know why I started: I’ve always kept a journal and I was worried about boring the knobs of the people around me with my tiresome bibbling about treatment. I know why I wound down, too- I started out as a barely-left-teenagehood mentalist and have ended up a 25 year old woman who was tied to the identity of a young mentalist. I’ve been quite lucky in terms of blogging.  I write about something that is intensely personal.  In the before-subbing version of my bit, I mentioned that this topic leaves you open and vulnerable to some very damaging criticism, or just plain malice.  I haven’t had much of that.  Apart from a few unpleasant commenters, the worst thing that’s happened to me as a result of this blog is somebody finding my address and harassing me via email and other means, threatening to come to my door.  If they had, they would have had their balls knocked into their throat by me.  That was ages ago, though.

Having said that, I am still keeping the majority of this blog offline for now. It isn’t trying to hide my past, it’s that my past is in a searchable archive that people keep quoting back at me. And also some of it makes me bite my fist in its melodramatic silliness. I’m not ashamed of my past, though, and not ashamed of this blog. I do feel less of a compulsion to write here these days, and I’m sometimes irritated at myself for finding it difficult to write about topics that aren’t confined to the few square inches of my own skull.  It’s not good.  But I am weirdly attached to it!

Anyway, go, have a read! And if you blog- why?

Show Me Something Saturday

I’ve updated my other blog with this post, go there and show me something!

http://www.seaneenmolloy.co.uk/?p=173

(Fixed)

PS: Don’t use the mentallyinteresting.org.uk link to get here anymore, it’s gone!

I think I might be in the Observer magazine on Sunday

(Edit; Not writing about world events right now as it would sound trite, but I hope Japanese readers out there are okay).

I think, anyway.  I’m not entirely sure but I wrote about confessional blogging for them, and to my knowledge it’s being published on Sunday.  So if you want to read it, there you go!  It’s about the pros (and pitfalls) of being a non-anonymous blogger.  I haven’t read the final edit of it so it’ll be a surprise to me, too!

So much for not blogging anymore, eh?  I sneakily lost about 70% of my readers in the process, which I don’t mind, and I’m a lot more comfortable here now I have privated a lot of my posts.  I let the domain lapse, too, which I regret a bit, but I didn’t know how to sort it out.  I had started to become freaked out by it all, which I’ve explained before (see above post).  This is a quieter place now, come to my lounge, let us drink tea and talk of times past!

If this is going to be a pluggy self obsessed post, I may as well get it all out the way now…

I wrote an article for lovely One in Four, too, about recovery.  Their current issue is now out. It’s over here:

http://www.oneinfourmag.org/index.php/what-does-recovery-mean/

I also have a backlog of emails to respond to- I’ve been on a shitty mobile connection for two months and I haven’t been keeping up. I was doing blog posts on Word then emailing them and copying and pasting.  I’m aware it’s self important to say such things, but I feel like an arse for not replying to emails when I know the balls it takes people to write them.

I finally have Internet Proper, which means streaming Robocop and fantasising about making tiny armour for the cat.  Aside from wasting my time doing that, I am inundated with school work, which is pretty much sapping my life.   The knockback from KCL somewhat dented my momentum on my course, but I’m shaking it off and trotting on.  I missed my ICT class tonight due to needing to do a presentation on Tuesday.  About polycystic ovarian syndrome.  Anything  you need to know and be delivered nervously on endocrine disorders, I’m yer girl.

Aside from that, I really have almost nothing to say for myself!  I have inadvertently become someone who tidies up the kitchen without being asked.   I have more than two clean dishes on the go at a time.  I’ve taken up fucking BAKING.  Life is quiet and mostly happy. Except…I am struck often by the feeling I am wasting my life and that I have wasted the past five years. I had all this time, and what did I do with it but bitch and moan?  I haven’t done much, haven’t written much that I wanted to (still haven’t written a bloody book, but that’s due to fighting discomfort about being that open to boots in the balls), few jobs, no qualifications.  Starting again, in a way, twenty five and potless for pissing, screwing my eyes up at Harvard referencing and dreaming of being a nurse-writer, or a writer-nurse, depending on how infuriating I am finding the formally mentioned Harvard referencing.  But then I find myself on the toilet downloading PDFs about mental health nursing and psychology and reading them in bed or at the bus stop.

It’s something I’m finding hard to face and reconcile- I know, rationally, I haven’t wasted my life, I’ve done Stuff, some interesting, awesome, fun and unusual stuff.  (Radio 4 is still surreal when I think about, working with Rethink has always been brilliant and fun things are as fun as running over the, “This is a fucking deathtrap” bridge in the Dog Kennel Hill Adventure Playground on Wednesday, and smiling, fondly, like a mum, at the football table I’d gotten for Robert two Christmasses ago, residing happily between the warring arms of two teenagers in the youth portacabin).  I know this, but part of my surprise at enjoying baking and doing the dishes, being domestic, is because I don’t feel 25, as my life- the 9-5 working life, the saving-up-for-the-future-life (impossible on benefits) stopped when I was 21.  I might have had a 15 month old baby by now.  When I hear upstairs’ baby bawling its balls off at 1am I’m relieved, and then I hear it laughing at 8am, and I feel, briefly, wistful.

It’s ordinary, it’s a normal feeling to have.  Everyone goes through phases of thinking, “My life is a waste!” and wishing they were more windswept, more interesting.  They’ll write that novel and travel the world and they don’t, few do. Some try, have a kind of spasmodic crisis.  But it’s not a waste.  Not really. I know this, too.

I’m still doing fine.  Bit hermitty and lonesome, as my social life is dead these days.  I’m too busy doing school work anyway.   I continue to look as though I am storing food in my cheeks.   My writing ability has somewhat deserted me, and it takes a lot more effort to write than I’m used to. I keep missing out words. I know this, I was aware of this before. But it’s irritating, especially as I have essays. They’re supposed to sound dull and dry. But duller and drier still. Ah well.  I am mostly happy, though.  Having small adventures.

There’s a tank in Bermondsey.

Go and visit it if you’re in London, it’s here!  It’s just there, at the corner of a street on one of the busiest roads in the city, near the monolithic Elephant and Castle.  It’s like walking into an animation.

Anyway, I’m tired, sick of looking at Powerpoint and bibbling!  Goodnight!

Britain’s Secret Slaves

Nothing to do with mental health, but you should all watch this on 4oD.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-69/episode-1

From the website:

Over 15,000 domestic workers leave their families to come to Britain every year. Charities claim that many are not only badly treated but that they are living as slaves.

I didn’t get into King’s

Feel completely devastated. Probably because I sucked so much at interview. Red wine and crying for tonight. I wish I didn’t live here right now, that I hadn’t moved here in the hope I’d be going there; I have to pass King’s College Hospital and the Maudsley all the time. I also wish I had some friends (most people on my FB are people I have never met, and am not likely to, to give you a measure of such things) so I could ring someone up and ask them to sit with me and listen to me bawl my eyes out because I feel foolish and lonely doing it on my own. That said, people are being lovely and supportive and cheering. But I really want my sisters! Damn sea and Newcastle.

I don’t have anything more than a mobile internet connection and few DVDs so I can’t even watch shite on TV to distract myself and cheer myself up. I am embarrassed because I found out in the middle of my class and I had to leave before I burst into tears in front of our King’s lecturer! I just feel stupid, I feel thick and not good enough. I look at my lack of qualifications, not even a job in the past four years, and think, “Of course they didn’t offer me a place. Why would they?” I feel like a failure. I know it’s irrational but it’s how I feel. I have worked my arse off.

Tomorrow I will hopefully feel better. Tomorrow I’ll think of plan Bs. Tonight I am allowed to cry for something I had my heart set on.

PS: Goodbye third year elective in Zambia. Would have been fun.

My Rethink blog about the webchat with Chris Grayling MP on the subject of welfare reform

I would have blogged more about this but I only have my phone for internet access and I pretty much destroyed the data allowance by streaming half an hour’s iPlayer.

On Thursday I went to Rethink (I love Rethink!) to blog about the webchat with Chris Grayling MP. It was a fairly surreal experience. We were sitting in relative silence, save for the times we interjected his typing to press him to answer something. He was rather polite, though sometimes flustered, which was understandable as occasionally our (and my) tone turned a bit demanding and he was trying to concentrate. I’m glad he agreed to it- someone should be visibly accountable for these actions, though I understand why a lot of people over on the forum aren’t happy with his answers.

I blogged my thoughts over at the Rethink website, so you can trot over there to read them.   Here’s an excerpt:

Chris Grayling, imposingly tall and bedecked in the customary party blue tie, arrived fresh from the underground to answer questions from members of the RethinkTalk community.  As the Minister for Employment (and how do you address an MP?  “Yes, minister?”), he is best placed to respond to the myriad concerns that we have about the changes to the benefit system.

The main questions were: Why is contributory ESA time-limited, which implies that people will spontaneously recover from their mental health problems in an allocated time frame?  If they don’t, they are penalised by being shuffled onto jobseeker’s allowance, in which the “support” element of that benefit is completely withdrawn. And what about the lack of provisions in the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) for fluctuating conditions such as mental illness?  What about real support to help people get back to work?  And did the Minister recognise the very real risks that the stress of going through the system only to reassessed or refused can bring?

The atmosphere in the room was one of studious concentration.  I had expected for him to verbalise his answers and then for them to be typed, but he was straight in, with his head down, responding to the questions himself.  Occasionally, he was prompted by Rethink’s Lily Carter to respond to specific questions, the ones that had been posed time and time again.  Rethink staff, to my relief, did not give him an easy time. He remained polite and direct when we challenged him on a few points, and didn’t shrug off our questions. But there are no easy answers. It can’t be avoided that there are people out there who will be suicidal because of these changes.  As an activist, a blogger and someone with a mental illness, it is hard to feel equable towards welfare reform when I have seen first hand the effect it is having.   Government ministers do not see this, and while I do not envy Mr Grayling’s position, I am grateful that he took the time to speak to us.

People are afraid.  Fear, coupled with indignation, is the thread that ran through the web-chat.  I don’t know if Mr Grayling understands the true depth of that fear.  He is aware people are suffering due to the whole process, and the fact that it is difficult to identify who they are and thus support them seems to exasperate him.  For those fearing the thud of the ATOS envelope on the door mat, he has reassured them that they will be telephoned and kept up to date with what is happening, rather than shocked out of the blue.  He agreed that the system was flawed.   In his answers, he frequently referenced the Harrington Report (http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/wca-review-2010.pdf), an independent review of the WCA that described the assessment as “impersonal, mechanistic and lacking in empathy”.  This may be, in part, why such a high number of assessment decisions which find someone capable of work are subsequently overturned on appeal. Other questions focused on the fact that those who carry out the assessments are neither mental health professionals, nor do they have much knowledge of mental illness.  Indeed, many of the decisions are made without – or by ignoring – the supporting evidence of psychiatrists, social workers and other professionals.  He wrote that his government will be following up the recommendations of that report, using, “mental health champions” such as charities and mental health professionals to reexamine the way people with mental illness are assessed.  But is this enough?

The webchat is, obviously, over now, but if you want to send him questions, then you can.  Details are:

Hi – we will collate and forward questions sent to campaigns@rethink.org and publish any reply sent to us by the Minister, so everyone can see the responses – however if you want an individual contact and reply, please emailministers@dwp.gsi.gov.uk – I suggest marking your email ‘For Chris Grayling MP re. Rethink live webchat’.

An update, and the last from North London

Hello!

I should really post these updates on my other blog since I so extravagantly heralded my exit here. But it’s vaguely mental health related (as in, I will reference it briefly) so, er, it goes here and I kind of miss writing here sometimes.

I seem to start most of my posts with a chirpy, “Hello!” but that’s how I feel when I begin them. Like I’m kicking open a door and interupting a conversation, obliviously, outrageously rude. So,

HELLO!

for the even ruder.  Not as chirpy as I…well, type.  Especially right at this moment where I am in a pyjama top, pants that don’t fit and a frightwig of currently awful hair.

It’s all change here.   I’m not going to write about the world or politics here because I would just sound like a knob.  So have my tiny life instead, it’s what I know best.

So, what’s been going on:

*I rather desperately need a job.  I had an interview yesterday for one I hope I’ll get.  I’d be working in the same place as Robert and numerous friends, which would obviously be brilliant.  Part of the, “Argh!” about starting new jobs is the new girl feeling, making new friends and etc.  I’d do that, too, obviously, but it would be nice to have some friendly faces there.

*I’m enjoying studying a lot! I like going to SOAS on a Tuesday and huddle outside the giant block of windowlight and breathe smoke into the air. I like struggling, in a way (not struggling exactly, but it’s all new and shiny! Newness! Shininess!). I like staring at a page of complex diagrams of this system ticking inside me and you and everybody else and watching it all dissolve into nonsense. I still want to study mental health nursing but I’m surprised, too, at how much I’m enjoying relearning biological stuff. That said, I mostly perked up when we were going over brain structure, so my heart (which is 15cm, apparently) is still in psychology.  Brains are unwieldy, ugly things.  I really want to hold one in my hand then fwing it into the air to see what happens. On Saturday, I’m spending all day in a lab!

I’m in module 2 now. My overall grade for my first module (introductions to health, nursing and midwifery) was 74%. I did a happy jig. I had my first test last week and arsed it up due to revising absolutely the wrong thing, but I know now where I went wrong.

*Still writing, but have been astonishingly busy. I’m not used to having demands on my time and now I feel a little bit like I have wasted three years not doing enough creative stuff.

*I had my baby brother staying!  It was his birthday.

He's the one that looks like me.

That was on the way back from an abortive attempt to see the Manics.  My sister can’t count!  It was lovely to see him, and strange how grown up he is now.  I’m not very good at people staying with me, due to being viciously protective of my space.  But it was nice.  He stole salt shakers from the chinese restaurant we took him to. Robert is a bit in love with him.

*I’m moving house on Monday.  I can’t wait to get out of here.  I shall be living with Robert. Finally, he will clean a toilet (OH MEN YEAH YEAH YEAH? PSH! TSCH! ETC!) because it’s his toilet, not my shameful toilet.  I’m moving to East Dulwich- well, the slightly more cred-filled “borders” on Denmark Hill in South London.  My estate has a mascot.  LOOK AT HIM. He is fantastic.

He is a friend dog. What is his name?

We chose this area to move to on the very-off chance that I get accepted to Kings. It’ll be good, hopefully. We spend a lot of time together anyway so it won’t be a shock, and I dearly love domestication with him. After almost two years, everything is still fun with him, even going to the shop. And he is a giant idiot as well. On the 9th he’s doing a performance as his alter-ego, Wolfgang Moneypenny who now genuinely lives in South London. So, hopefully it shall all be good.

All in all, though, I’m pretty good. Stressed out, concerned about the future, but not at all unhappy.

I did a podcast with Rethink (who I love) last week, which was fantastic. There were seven of us there- three Rethink staff, then a bloke who’s doing his PhD on the Rethink Time to Change page. There was the Talk moderator, me, and a psychiatrist. I didn’t realise he was a psychiatrist for a while and we were chatting, chomping bread sticks and drinking orange juice.

The podcast was about social media and mental health (I’ll post it up when it’s, well, up). It was surprisingly balanced. With these kind of things, I sometimes anticipate blanket praise. But there was both positive commentary and criticism. Some of it from me. They asked me how blogging had helped/hindered my mental health and how it had changed my life. It has, undoubtedly, I wouldn’t be there if not for my position as a prominent ex-blogger. But I explained the reasons I have mostly stopped, and some of the things I think people need to consider carefully with mental health blogging. One is that by starting a mental health blog, you are now someone with a mental health problem and that’s the attraction. It is an identity I began to feel was dangerous towards the end.  Some blogs (none I’ve linked here) get too focused on statistics and who’s reading- that can lead to exaggeration and crisis-making when things start to wane.  Again, dangerous.

It also opens you up to criticism, which, if you’re in a bad place, can make you feel like ass. Because I’d written that I had body dysmorphic disorder, certain knobheads zeroed in on it as a way to hurt me. By sharing your life- and your past, present, feelings- then people assume ownership of them. Before I privated most of this blog, someone was going back and quoting my own 4 year old posts at me as proof as to why I should never be a nurse, despite the fact it’s not only four years later, but I’m 25 now, and rather older and wiser. That horrified me, and was a reason why I pulled the majority of my posts.  It’s my frigging life, you know?   I always appreciate advice and support, but in the end, it’s my life, my past, my future, my blog, my choices.

There’s the problem of recovery as well. I felt almost concerned about getting better because then I didn’t fit into the blogosphere anymore. I feel guilty for doing alright and not having stuff to write about. Isn’t that silly? But I know it’s how other people feel. I also know some people out there would love to see me fail, so now I feel less inclined to share when I’m not feeling so good.

That said, I wouldn’t change it, I wouldn’t go back and not write it. All the mad shit that has come from it- from the play, to doing comedy, to my friends that I’ve met- I wouldn’t change. The pros have outweighed the cons, and I’m sure I’ll be back. But it was good to discuss that and hear what other people think. Gil- the psychiatrist- actively encourages his patients to write and look up information, which is unusual, certainly with the doctors I’ve met. One great thing about blogging and the internet in general- and I wish I’d mentioned this- is that it’s a brilliant leveller. Psychiatrists and nurses hold the power balance in the relationship, but on the internet, we all comment on each other’s stuff and email each other. I don’t feel so intimidated by doctors and nurses now- and reading mental health nurse blogs is partly the reason I want to be one.

I like Facebook and Twitter as well.  I use my Mentally Interesting page to talk to people who read this blog.  I’m not so into Twitter but I’ve seen it used for great things, particularly activism, news and protests.  I just don’t really understand how it works, unfortunately.

On the internet, particularly with mental health, there’s also the problem of medication second-hand scare stories and antipsychiatry people trolling blogs. In the wrong frame of mind, it could stop someone taking their medication. Grr.

In general, it was really good. I enjoy doing stuff with Rethink. I’m blogging their webchat on the 10th, so that should be interesting. It’s with Chris Grayling on the subject of welfare reform.   Anyone can get involved so go and submit questions!