Last Day Of Being 24

Holy fuck, I am 25 tomorrow.  Or possibly today.  (Nobody agrees on what date my birthday is.  I celebrate it on the 4th, but it could be the 3rd.  My mum and dad don’t even agree.  And no, I wasn’t born at midnight.  I explain this almost every year.  It amuses me).

25 is my scary age. It’s the age I scoffed at when I was sixteen. It’s when I called people old and thought they stopped having sex and settled into their beehives with their tiny families and their sad evenings.   I remember when I first moved to London when I was seventeen.  I was the baby amongst my friends, and my oldest friend was in his late thirties, but most of them were about twenty three.  And they felt so worldly wise and mature to me.  Now most of the people I know are in their early thirties.  Robert- who I went out with at fourteen, and whose relationship with me partly ended because of our age gap- is the closest-to-my-age boyfriend that I have had in my adult life. Which is surreal.

And here I am, pretty much where I was four years ago.   I started writing this blog when I was only twenty one. Not a lot has changed, except for me. Reading back, I can see some petulance, some arrogance.  A dogmatic way of thinking, a certain dramatic streak.  Now I see flatulence. And arrogance.   I’m quite different in some ways.  I’m more stable, more laid back, infinitely more independent.  No new cuts for a long long time!  Fatter than I was last year, although as part of my whole trying to get better thing, I try not to weigh myself, though I am aware I have put on almost two stone (almost all of that was in the three months after the contraceptive implant!), and it’s noticeable.   And I swear, I’m bloody shorter.

I’m a woman now.  I feel like one, even if I don’t always dress like one.  I feel like an adult.  Which is helped by the fact I had custody of a child for a weekend recently, which coaxes out my schoolmarm side. I have breasts and everything. In that time I have grown a cup size, lost another, then grown it back.  (For those who closely follow my cup size, I am a double D.  I don’t think I’ve ever had less than a B cup.   I came out of my mum in a bra and mismatched pants from Primark).

Ageing is odd.  Insightful comment there, yep. You never stop ageing but when do you stop changing?

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

I am using all this as an excuse to do nothing with my life! I counted up all the words I’d written (for a project) and it’s a pitiful total. An embarrassing amount. All I ever do is make excuses and say, “Sorry I was… or I am…” And get a reputation for being unreliable in it. Destroying opportunities. I start a thousand things and then never finish them. Everything has been so unstable since April, but it’s not an excuse, I need to just cope with it. I have mood swings, woo, work around them. Do more when I have the energy, less when I don’t.

It’s BULLSHIT. I’m not doing it anymore. I can’t say it’s okay not to do something just because I’m tired, or can’t find the words, or whatever. I’m not even a poor little mentalist in treatment anymore, all dosed up on pills. There is technically fuck-all wrong with me. It’s me, just me that has to deal with it now, and I should. If I let this own me then I’m letting it swallow up not only hours, but my days, my months, my future. It becomes my defining characteristic and I don’t want that. People’s lives are moving on, and mine isn’t.

Just fuck this so much. I am disgusted at myself. I’ve spent the past week or so just drowning in self pity, thinking of dying all the time, feeling sorry for myself, feeling resentful at the crash, being almost silent and just wanting to sleep. The feeling that I’m ruining my life is just fodder for those suicidal thoughts.

I have to make plans to keep myself around for.

So:

WRITE. Write this fucking book even if I find it painful, even if sometimes I don’t want to do it because there is worth in it and I have faffed long enough and the longer I faff the harder it becomes.

Apply for my access course by Friday

It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m not celebrating it. I’m no fun right now and feeling too shy to ask anybody to do something with me. Robert’s working, so I’d be just in the house, like every other day. But it’s my friend’s birthday too and I can go along to that instead of just being alone in my flat. So I should do that.

Go to my sister’s 18th at the end of the month

And I need to make plans to do beyond that.

Seriously, what the fuck am I doing? I’m not out yet. I need to stop living like a dead person in the short term.

Somewhere to say it

I keep having the dream that my dad isn’t dead. He isn’t alive either- it varies. Sometimes, he is alive, but decaying, and we go about our every day lives with him falling apart. He died, but came back. He is well cheered, jovial, even. The way he was when very drunk and in a better mood, the kind of mood that bought chippies in blue plastic bags to the house at 11pm. Or when he was sober and had to look after us, and enjoyed, grudgingly, the telling offs, and scallopped potatoes and bread piled high, the sugary tea.

Other times, he died, came back but has disappeared somewhere. There is the hysteria of paper trails, of phonecalls and finding him. We never know if he left, or if he was taken.

Sometimes he is dead but alive and himself, and there is only one bed in the house, which he will not let me sleep on. It causes fights. There are times within my dreams when I’m not sure what is happening is real or not. At the end of everything is death. In one moment I think we have all escaped and then something happens in the dream that shows me we have not- it is still happening, the veil was a lie, and we are all going to die.

The worst of all is the dream where he is dying. He’s in a little caravan on the grounds of the garage at the bottom of the forri, near our house. He’s in a bed there, getting smaller and smaller each day. We go to visit him, sometimes, sometimes we forget. Uncles loiter outside it. The other caravans become dust heaps as time passes. We need him for a school photograph, and he is a tiny grey cadaver, trying to smile. But he never dies.

I wish I never slept. I wish I never dreamed. The only way I ever sleep is with medication. I take about 4 of the Boots Nytol, and try to avoid Seroquel at all unless my mood is becoming a bit high. It’s sedation, not real sleep, but it also means it is harder and harder to wake up. I am never sure whether I want to wake up from those dreams. They are terrible, but at least he’s there. Sometimes when I’m shaken awake from them I ask to go back to sleep, to get back to where I was in my dream.

It would be better to never sleep at all, if only such things didn’t drive me mad. But the sleep will drive me mad, too.

Article about blogging by Rhodri Marsden in the Independent

Second Independent mention since May!  This now means I own the Independent.

Rhodri Marsden has written a fantastic piece about blogging.  I get a mention in it (along with fat-handed cunt James Ward). It’s a fairly long article, which is pleasing in itself. (Though I have to read things in shifts, due to my much damaged concentration span. I miss novels). Most articles I’ve ever read about blogging fall down squarely on one side of the camp-”blogging is narcissistic wank that kills reasoned impartial debate”- or the other -”blogging is the future, we should all get on our knees and lap gratefully at its beautiful teats”.

Blogs as books-  It’s something I’ve never thought quite worked.  It really is an entirely different medium and I don’t think blogs translate that well into books (with the exceptions maybe of Bete de Jour and The Man Who Fell Asleep, who wrote semi-literary, fictional blogs, and possibly some of the medical blogs like Nee Naw and Random Acts of Reality, because they’re episodic).  And they shouldn’t! A blog is not a book, a book should not be a blog. A huge part of writing a blog is interaction. You lose that utterly in a book. And the best part of blogs are the comments! Even though recently I’ve had my fill of the, “Hey, why don’t you…” emails, I still think of them with an odd fondness.  I don’t reckon many bloggers would continue for years if they never received a comment.  Call it narcissism, but you want to know you’re being heard, otherwise you may as well write a diary, or scribble a face on your knuckles and talk to that instead.

He talks of, “microblogging”, too, such as Twitter.  Which is fun and all but I much prefer here, and even Facebook.  More words, not less!

And…

And yet, while “I write” has a certain nobility to it, “I blog” certainly doesn’t. The two, as acts, are essentially indistinguishable, but “blog” is seen as a four-letter word.

The inherent hideousness of the word doesn’t help. If it were more attractive, if it were “flah” or “sool”, it might not be spat out with such contempt by its detractors. It evolved in the late 1990s from the term “web log”, a collection of links to other websites with added commentary that appeared in the now-familiar reverse-chronological order.

I agree that blogging is an ugly word. I’m always a bit ashamed to admit I write one due to the inevitable frantic eye-rolling it elicits. I tend to say, “I write”. Which is followed by, “What do you write?”, at which point I jump out a window in the waiting sidecar of a motorbike and speed off a cliff.  We need a new one, a new word that isn’t some revolting Marketingspeak like, “microblog” or “superfruit” ( a word which makes me convulse in rage, then feel hungry).  Any ideas?

My Crazy Mum

You know when you realise that your mum is really crazy? When the more acceptably sane parent is the one who kicked in doors and drank himself to death at the age of forty seven.

Gawd bless my mum’s tiny moth heart. I do love her even though she does my head in. She’s not a bad person, but she is mental. In the past, she was more sinister mental than amusing mental. I’ve managed to deal with a lot of my more painful and embarrassing episodes by turning into hilarious little stories. It’s not that easy with my mum. I rarely talk about that side of her, because when I do, people tend to sit in stunned silence. She is much improved these days, though.  She once rang me up as I walked to a job interview to ask me if I could hack the computers of the Bank of Ireland to get her off their blacklist.

Oddly, she’s a lot better since daddy died. It’s partly, I assume, being relieved of the burden of an alcoholic husband. It’s shaming for her to admit that, I guess, but it is true.  As lovely a man as my dad was when he was sober, the two of them together were often corrosive.  She has been a lot calmer since, and I no longer dread visits home. And that’s because I’m partly relieved of the burden of having an alcoholic father. Which is also shaming to admit. Sometimes I hate the quietness at home. I miss being shouted at. Without daddy around, mummy doesn’t shout at me either. I think it’s because I’m more of a guest than a daughter these days, and she treats me with more restrained politeness. And that’s probably why I view her as more sane, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve dodged a plate. I deal with her in much the same way- whereas before I would be concerned, or pissed off, now I’m just mostly amused. When I go home, if I’m in one of my more agitated states, she always has a raft of Valium in the kitchen cupboard next to the gravy that she thrusts upon me, showing me that she loves me, in her own way.

People do like her, almost sympathetically. She’s quite like me in that sense, in that most people’s attitude to me seems to be that they sense something off, and are amused by me at the time. but avoid me thereafter or keep only very shallow relations with me.  It’s quite clear that she’s mad, but she is sometimes kind (especially in her more hyperactive periods, and I still laugh at the memory of her trying to buy my ex boyfriend a flat screen television printer scanner (it was I who was offered the flat screen) to take back to London.  Unfortunately her sporadic kindness is costly), and is often funny without meaning to be. My biggest problem with her is her attitude and treatment of animals, which has often made me question even having a relationship with her. She lies consistently and innocently, without realising how obvious her lies are. They weren’t obvious to me when I was younger, so I grew up believing some odd things about her. She isn’t happy, and I desperately want her to be. She is lonely, I believe. In her tall tales she is alternately the star or the saint. I think she needs a wee nice man. I wouldn’t mind having a stepfather.  Someone who was nice to her.  They could buy the chippie when I’m visiting.

I’m off home later this month for my little sister’s 18th birthday. I’m somewhat freaked out by this. Maybe I shall finally be able to meet her boyfriends without threatening to cut it off. She’s turned out quite well, considering. Orlaigh somehow seemed to deflect all the worst crap our parents put us through.   We all actually turned out alright.  I’m mental often, but not too fucked up.

I don’t think our siblings should be allowed to age. Or if they do, when we blink and wish we return back to the moment in time in which our adulthood was a tiny pinprick a millennia away, and we lived there forever.

Mad Up

On Saturday, there was a meet up in Regent’s Park that I suggested a few months ago when I was feeling particularly social. It was attended by mental health bloggers, the Mentally Interesting and the Interesting (and me). It was colloquially christened, “Mad Up” and I had tons to write about it, in exquisite, sexual detail. And there is a lot of chin-stroking, sociological commentary to make about such a gathering, as well as just recording it in a personal and arousing way.

I can’t find the impetus to type for more than a few minutes. Luckily, other bloggers like Serial Insomniac, Karita, Bipolar on the Mind and Mental Nurse (to name but a few) have posted about it, so I shall say this!

Thank you for coming, and it was ace to meet you all even if I had no fingernails left by the end of the day and an STD by the end of the night. You are all bloody lovely (for a bunch of mentalists, enablers and Cluster B evils. You were all very fragrant. I think I was the only one who smelled vaguely of piss). I hope to see you all again at the next one.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly as I am horrendously unproductive right now and too grumpy and tired to even try the sleep deprivation thing unless I shove amphetamines up my hole. It’s my birthday next week so maybe I will do just that. You know, pamper myself.

Fluff

This is Reggie.

I have no face, just a black hole.

If any of you are bored, feel free to grab a camera, or Paint, and show me something.  A teddy, a person, anything!

So, What Now?

Hello…

Yes, I am updating, mostly because I don’t want my other blog to have much to do with my life.  I know that’s slightly unnatural, but I like things to be compartmentalised.  Especially mentalised.

I’m having a minor panic attack about finding my way back from being a mental patient.  

One of the search terms for this blog is, “conjuring Michael Palin”. If you find out how to, tell me. In the meantime…

I’m following others (like the slobbering little lemming I am) in that I’m having a break from the madosphere. I don’t think (mentalist) blogging or reading blogs is good for me at the moment! Focusing too much on mentalism is never good.

I’ll be over at at my website (imaginatively called www.seaneenmolloy.co.uk) writing about the great wide world outside my brain, if I can remember how to log in because at the moment, I have absolutely no idea and just stare dumbly at its abandoned expanses. If you’re wondering, the reason I tend not to blog about day-to-day life or general opinions here is because when people google it they’re usually looking for some help, and reading about my cats or tinned tomatoes or whatever isn’t very helpful!

I’ll leave you with this, which I can’t get out of my bloody head.

I’ve explained the narcissistic reasoning for grandly announcing absences before- it’s so people don’t think I’m dead, as I often do with mental health bloggers who’ve buggered orf.

Love, and take care, and thank you for your support, continuing to read and offering advice, and general loveliness when I am often annoying and long-winded.

(Edit: oh…

And I’ve just realised I’ve passed a million hits

Please send cake.

Not that one.

“I Had An Appointment Today” and musing upon why we hate the BPD label

Courtesy of Prozacville

Edit:  Ooh, Mind already linked a post on this topic.  Anyway…

Hello! I made my last post about youth work private as I got some hassle via the lovely medium of email and I cannot be arsed to deal with it.

On that note, I seem to be adept at starting hassle unintentionally because of my colourful language and gung-ho ness. For the record, thank you and as lovely as it is that people care enough about me to stand up for me, please don’t feel the need to defend me anywhere, I’m quite capable and it creates needless drama.

EDIT: Whoever you are, you clearly didn’t listen to me. Will you stop, please?

I had an appointment today. We went outside and I chainsmoked my way though it. There was a squirrel family innd I met two cats!

It rained like hell today, which I was grateful for.  I like the rain a lot better than the sun.  It clapped out when me and Robert were hiding outside Kings Cross after googling Spanish breakfast and ending up eating churros.  He’d been on his night shift and wasn’t exhausted yet, and I was wide awake, so it was nice to spend a few hours together before he got his hibernating bear sleep and I did my thing.

My mood is good right now- good enough that my social worker is ringing me to check I’ve not been arrested on Monday. I’ve been having issues with agitation and ARGH! shakiness for a wee while.   And some fluttering, constant anxiety that’s been affecting me, ahem, physically, so I need to be within sprinting distance of a bucket or a hole in the ground.  I was quite low, but I think a lot of it was to do with the flueyness and feeling awful-ness of shingles.  It pissed me off and it hurts!  The agitation and a bit of irritation remains while my mood has escalated a little, partly, I imagine, due to lack of sleep. Which was a relief, as my tiny high spikes lately have been rather enjoyable, if not also vaguely silly (Just ask my poor, awful, recently chopped off hair.  After spending half my life avoiding looking into mirrors even in a good mood I can’t do it, thus have no fucking clue what the hairdresser is doing.  My third haircut since I moved to London and apparently so bad that the stylist didn’t want me to pay for it.  It’s growing on me, a bit, unlike my poor hair). She’s not particularly worried and neither am I.   It’s a good mood and if it goes tits, well.  No point worrying until there’s something to worry about.   I’ve been a lot more productive (16000 words in the past week,  been writing a lot, although my social worker said, “Did you read over them? They might have been, y’know… manic nonsense…”  Nope, never do, but Robert did) and have a lovely clean and tidy bedroom, hurrah. The kitchen still does not exist.  And weed helps calm me down.

I think I’m okay without, but it’s a kind of insurance, I guess.  There’s little urgency on either side, which is a good thing.  It’s all mild suggestion.  I told her I knocked my last high mood on the head with a fuckload of Seroquel and Lorezapam, so that was fine.  She rightly pointed out how could I knock it on the head now since I have neither of those medications?  Ah well, people can duck then, I might meet the new psychiatrist when he starts, and I might not.  I still want to be discharged, four years is enough and I don’t think I’m unwell enough for the CMHT.

As for the BPD thing, who knows!  If I recovered then I’m skeptical.  BPD doesn’t just “get better” on its own without treatment. It’s ingrained, and while it can lessen as you age, usually you need some sort of therapy to recover from it as far as I know. I got nada, and yet I don’t have symptoms of it any more. My own theory is that I had traits-self harm, which, although scarred and I hate those, I often fail to see the problem with,  fear of being alone, insecurity, self hatred and etc- to cope with things as a teenager- then I learned to cope better.  I don’t have the problems with unstable relationships (I have social anxiety, lessening, but I view that separately, it’s not fear of rejection, it’s embarrassment!), emptiness, etc. I can see why I was diagnosed with it, but not a full-blown disorder.  It’s more complicated than that, I know, but in short, I’m no longer concerned. I’m a lot better in a lot of ways so I yay that rather than want to question too much why. Since I stopped throwing up what little I ate and stopped taking laxatives for the rest, I’ve gained 20lbs, but I steel myself, and it’s okay. I eat healthily, my body deserves that and so does my loo, it’s important. It’s all good. I repeat this to myself if I feel panicky. No scuffed knuckles, no blood in my mouth. No self harm, less insecurity. This is good and analysing how I got here isn’t helpful.

If things go tits and I end up in hospital at some point, it’ll likely be quite clear what’s up, whether it’s a manic thing, depression, BPD madness or Other. If not, then even better. I’ve been reassured that if I become really unwell, nobody will consign me to the bin. That is what I was terrified of.  I’m not concerned, but I am interested in it.  It’s been quite a, “Hmm, that’s interesting” thoughtful time. Well, to me, anyway, probably boring as balls to anyone else.  I’ve gone on and on about labels and identity here before in my chin stroking moments, but now I’m curious as to the rather quite visceral way me and others refute things.

We talked a little about blogging today. We’ve never really discussed blogging, even though it’s part of my life. In mentioning the borderline thing (in context of medications), I told her a few other mental health bloggers previously or concurrently diagnosed with BPD had resisted it violently and were distraught about it. One blogger was diagnosed with schizophrenia and then BPD, and the BPD thing threw her most. I think it says a lot about that diagnosis. “Phew, schizophrenia…hang on, BPD?” I was, as you know, massively upset with the BPD diagnosis. I’d finally kind-of-accepted bipolar disorder, and that’s apparently a lifelong disorder that’s mostly controlled with medication that makes you fat, sexless, gassy and bald. But borderline personality disorder, well, that seemed like a giant kick in my beautiful, bipolar balls.

I mused on why some people are so resistant to the label, even though it’s all fluid and will change from person to person, doctor to doctor, and is sometimes quite subjective and only useful as far as treatment.  It was the, “instead of” rather than, “the and” that threw me.  I was quite obsessed with it for a few weeks in that intensely focused way I’m capable of occasionally. I read absolutely everything about it that I could find (including this article on end of life care with a patient who has BPD.  It’s fascinating and it literally never occurred to me that such a situation could exist) and tried to find myself in there.  I found little bits.  Was he right? Was it all really… and here, I think, is the rub… my fault?

There is stigma at work here- inside and out.  I like to think I’m a groovy accepting person, but my annoyance at the borderline comment shows I’m not entirely free of stigmatising attitudes myself, which annoys me because my rational mind understands it.  The so called “biological” mental illnesses (that is, Axis I disorders in the DSM-IV) are kind of blameless. They’re still unpleasant and joyously murderous, but nobody really blames you for having manic depression or schizophrenia. They blame your genes. Axis II, well, that’s you. You’re just fucked up. Even the moniker, “personality disorder” is accusatory. It’s oft said, but it’s true- your personality, your fault. You’re fucked up. Piss off. DBT handbook will be in the post! Axis I is real, Axis II is made-up. It’s crap. This is stuff that has been classified in a certain way; they all exist with each other, because they are all descriptions of behaviours, and that’s all the names are. Behaviours that exist and that I believe can be classified, named and treated if needs be, but that’s all. Sociopaths exist like schizophrenics exist.

The cruelty of this perspective cuts me to the quick, even though I know on a deeper level, I fear there’s truth in it and that’s why I run from it.   Personality disorders- and the dreaded, hated borderline personality disorder in particular- are often shaped by abuse.  There’s the “good” abuse victim (hello, PTSD) and the “bad” abuse victim (hello BPD).  And she’s usually a young woman.  The pain is too visceral, too visible, and thus terribly frightening and threatening. It makes people want to wince and look away, or to expel your from their presence. But in a sane world, people with things like BPD would be treated more sympathetically, not less. I don’t read many mental health blogs anymore (it starts to get bad for…well, your mental health) and I had to stop reading some BPD blogs because the descriptions of abuse that they’d suffered were agonising for me to read. To read, so imagining how they actually felt every day is horrible. And makes me a wanky little coward.

I somewhat intellectualised my protest- labels, pah! I just want the right treatment, pah! You didn’t read my fecking notes properly, pah! But really, one sentence summed it up- “Please, please do not tell me that I have done this to myself!”

Bollocks, this got long.  SNIP!

I suit this.

I am not an American Maverick. I am an Irish Midget.

This is the only photo of myself that I’ve liked for a long time. I think it’s settled then; I’m growing a moustache. And a giant chin.

Thanks for the comments on the previous entry- there’s a lot less of a disparity than I thought there would be, but then again, it isn’t exactly a scientific poll…

And a question: medications

Oh, and this was bothering me earlier:  are Americans on a lot more medication that the rest of the world?  The answer is most likely yes (privatised healthcare et al) but I thought I’d ask for personal experiences to see for myself.  When I’ve peeked at mentalist forums, which often have signatures that share diagnosis and medication- the Americans seem to be on a fuckload of pills that I’ve never heard of but that if I didn’t know the context, I’d swear were the Latin names for plants.

So, out of curiousity…(and by prescribed, I mean currently, not in total)…

Included Canada because, although I know their healthcare is different,
though they still have a ton of medical billing people and nurses, I
wondered if it had a similar attitude.

If you’re taking more than 4, why?  I don’t mean that in a howling OH MY GOD WHY way, but what were they prescribed for? I know with things like manic depression you can get a mood stabiliser, antipsychotic and antidepressant, so there’s three already (that’s the most I’ve been on at any one time and it felt like far too much).

Thanks, I’m just curious!

Nee gnaw

Do you ever read your old journals, diaries, blogs and forum posts and want to chew your own fist off in embarrassment?

As a general rule, I never read anything on this blog from 2007- mid 2008. Oh god. What an uppity little madam. Young and mad (and newly diagnosed as such, which is even worse! Once I got that magic affirmation of my mentalism and sort-of accepted it, I pretty much thought psychiatry was my bitch and had to do what I said), that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. See also: my old Livejournal, 2003-2007, especially the manic periods where I’d write 3000 words four times a day, sometimes going into exquisite and florid detail about the beauty of the walk home from a tube station. Oh how the cosmos and I were one! Jesus christ. There’s something charming and innocent about the obnoxiousness of youthful diaries. The universe-halting significance of a nipple hair. The emotional storms blazing across pock marked skin. Relationships based entirely on mutual music taste. But my seventeen year old self really sounds like the manic depressive Adrian Mole. As did my twenty year old self. And my twenty four year old self. Only, y’know, sexier.

It’s there forever online. Or for at least 10 years. If I hadn’t thrown out all my paper journals (when I’ve been depressed and thinking about suicide I’ve tided up a lot and thrown things out) I think I’d have no knuckles left. And I’m writing a bloody book! In ten years, in the unlikely event it’s still in print, should it even be published at all, I’ll be sneaking into Waterstones wearing a beige mac with a lighter in my pocket. (If they still have Waterstones, and not just iPads. OOH YOU CRAZY KIDS AND YOUR TECHNOLOGY!)

There is something sad about being a Grown Up and not being allowed to be a stroppy seventeen year old anymore.   I don’t think I was ever really emotionally unstable, I think that I was a teenager, maybe for two years longer than I should have been.  A teenager who was coping with some quite adult things sometimes, but still delightfully, stupidly, simply a teenager.    As a teenager, everything felt so vitally important and significant, and thus every little thing could illicit a dramatic response. Nowadays anything short of a nuclear bomb dropping on my face doesn’t faze me. I’m still moody and insecure and still feel like the girl in the corner of the playground sometimes.  I still get pissed off and stroppy about things.  But now I’m all Grown Up about it.  Instead of thinking, “OH MY GOD THEY HATE ME, THEY HATE ME, I’M AWFUL!” when people don’t speak to me, I get all Grown Up and think, “Well, they’re probably busy, and to be fair, here I am not saying hello to them, either”.  I should, one day for old time’s sake, run home in tears and write a poem about it, in my own blood, titled, “Why Am I So Fucking Shit?”

I do sometimes miss slamming the door because my mum shouted at me. And writing loud UNDERLINED!!!!!!!! diary entries about how much I hate her.  I became a grown up, and one who grew up in the psychiatric system.  It can feel like being emotional is punished within it, and it’s a shame.  Teenagehood had a lot going for it.  It still does- I think as a teenager, unformed as we are supposed to be, we’re also our raw, essential selves.

If you kept a diary or journal when you were younger, what was it like? Bonus points if you post excerpts! I may if I get the balls to.

I Like Robert

I jokingly called Robert a narcissist earlier. His response was, “I’m as narcissistic as any handsome, intelligent, excellent dancer with a body built for sex”.

I like Robert.

It’s all true, of course.

Today has been conducted through a haze of painkillers, which is getting me down somewhat. The only thing I really did was go to Tesco for juice and toilet roll. I spent about five minutes agonising over the decision. “I could get the cheap rolls. They’re only 42p. Or I could treat myself with 3ply posh roll. But that’s nearly £2…”

And that is how interesting my life is.

(I bought the 42p rolls. Despite what the Daily Mail would lead you believe, most people on benefits cannot afford to wipe their arses with 3ply, let alone have a flat screen telly in every room).

I mentioned lamotrogine to my social worker. I have taken it before, but I don’t think I did so with much diligence. As far as I remember, I didn’t have many side effects from it- certainly not the crippling ones I had with Lithium and Depakote. Either way, if I’m going to take medication I just want something that will even me out so I can be discharged and bugger off from the mental health system. That, and this, helps me focus too much on mentalism, when I don’t really want to anymore. I think it’s becoming counterproductive. I find mental health fascinating in general, but it’s not healthy. As long as I’m in the mental health system, I’ll end up writing here because my appointments are too dull to bore the cats with.

Either way, la! I’m okay with continuing without medication, if I can learn to live better. My feeling is that the doctor won’t discuss it anyway, since they are understaffed and overworked, and he doesn’t think I need medication. If only hypomania didn’t turn to rage then depression, I’d be a happy, probably imprisoned, little bunny.

Anyway, back to the subject- I like Robert. He is nice.

Edit: apologies that I keep editing posts and deleting details. I’m feeling uncomfortable here at the moment so prefer to post the minimum of what I’m thinking, if I post at all.

Ding dong

EDIT: Worst written post ever!

I do indeed have shingles, so a shiny pustule to everybody who said so!

I went to the walk-in clinic on Saturday in Soho. People kept wandering in and out, asking to use the toilet, returning with the suspiciously glazed eyes of someone who was smacking up. The two hour wait was almost like sport. There were two nurses there, one who seemed stressed and grumpy, the other who seemed to carry the sun in her pocket. Luckily, I saw the sun nurse.

She examined me, confirmed it was shingles then explained to me what that was. She took me temperature too, which hasn’t been done to me for years. Little bit of a fever, unsurprising because I’ve generally felt a bit fluey and shite. She asked for any conditions I have- only two, manic depression (I think, who knows) and asthma- and then asked what medication I was taking. I told her none, and she put down her pen. She then told me that she had noticed I was shaking very badly. I do this sometimes, as I’ve explained before. I have confetti days where excess energy just kind of shivers me down. In the waiting room I couldn’t hold the pen properly to fill in the forms so Robert offered to do it. I did it, just in very arch, careful handwriting. The shaking and occasional problems with my speech are two little tics that sometimes give me away.

Anyway, I was quite embarrassed by this and she reassured me nobody else was going to notice and jump to any conclusions, she just did because she was a nurse. She went back to saying that because the rash had been there for more than three days, there was no point in taking any antiviral medication, but I did need to take better care of myself because I’m too young to be getting shingles. I am always run down. I haven’t been in good physical condition for quite a while now.

Before I left, she made me promise I would speak to someone about taking medication.

I left feeling a bit exposed. That morning, I’d been woken up by a paramedic shining a torch in my face. Thank fuck I wasn’t having one of my North Korea dreams or else I would have died of heart failure. Or summary execution. This was because I had sent a depressive text to Robert (it wasn’t anything particularly scary, and it was partly due to feeling manky because I’m all shingley), then promptly fallen asleep due to the antihistimines I’d taken for scratching. Oh, and my phone is broken. So I didn’t hear his calls, he assumed I’d topped myself or hurt myself, and panicked.

Nothing did happen, but there is something Not Right when someone close to you worries about you like that. Someone’s first reaction to not answering the phone at 2am should be, “Oh, she’s asleep”. Not that. I am not terrible at the moment, but there are some things in the past two months (that I don’t feel like talking about) that remind me of me back in 2006. And not in a good way. I’m aware I’m Not Quite Right at the moment. Not in any profound way, but it’s there. And also that I’m better at hiding it these days. I’m sleeping well enough, so it’s not just that.

Anyway, I’m going to start taking medication again. Maybe I just needed more time to adjust to life without it and develop better ways of living without it, but if I’m being honest, the whole experiment has been a failure, and I need some extra help for my moods. Because I want to get somewhere in my life. I want to write, consistently, I want to earn enough money to live somewhere with Robert and the cats, to study and to travel, I want to have a baby one day and have a spare room for a crib, I want to learn stuff and talk to people, and just live my bloody life. Not spend it on a constant balancing act. I don’t get anything done. I don’t get anywhere. I want a fucking life. A proper, full one where I can forget that I have a mental illness.

It doesn’t have to be forever, just until I get more stable. I am more stable than I was four years ago, but slipping, a bit. I don’t want to slip a lot. So, it might not even help, but it’s worth a go. I don’t just owe it to myself to try harder. It’s not just me that this affects. I sometimes forget that.

Anyway, it’ll just be Seroquel, so.

Ho hum- the edited, not long version

Ooh, this is my third post with the title, “Ho Hum”.  ”Ho Hum 3″ sounds like a film trilogy.

My social worker wants me to think about going back on medication and maybe not fuck around with the dose so much (that wasn’t malicious, I was ok-ed to lower and higher as I needed to, I think I messed up a bit) as things have been all over the place off it.  In the past four or so days my head has been so incredibly noisy (lots of low voices, sometimes a roaring) that it’s actively distracting and I can’t keep my mind on conversation or much else.

I came off medication with the hope that it would clear my head up as I was so tired and so sluggish that I couldn’t get much done.  I feel drugged on it, deadened.  I slur and am clumsy and exhausted. I still can’t get much done but instead it’s because I’ve been swinging around for the past two months.  I wish I wasn’t so into writing sometimes.  It’s the thing that makes me feel most achieve-y, and also the thing I find hardest to do when my head is up my hole.   This is a bit of an effort but hey ho!

My mood isn’t too bad at the moment, it’s gone to being mildly depressed but I am having quite a lot of trouble organising my thoughts and drinking a little bit too much and stuff to help me sleep.  Managing, though.

I don’t know how I feel about medication anymore.  In the beginning when I was properly diagnosed, I wasn’t against it at all and I’m still not- it seemed quite straightforward.  You’re ill, you take pills, they help you get better.  And I have gotten a lot better in the past four years.  I’m not sure whether I attribute it to medication knocking off the extremes or to just sucking it up and dealing with it, or medication giving me the ability to suck it up and deal with it.

But now- something has changed.  Well, everything has.  My whole perspective on mental illness has shifted from the more dogmatic position I once held.  I no longer see it as an identifier.  Back in the day I used to list my diagnosis like they were physical attributes.  ”I’m Seaneen, and I have blue eyes, pale skin, bipolar disorder, borderline traits, body dysmorphia (ahah, are my eyes blue? Skin pale?), avoidant personality disorder, panic attacks and black hair”.  Part of it was the natural coming to terms with things period of overidentification, and the relief/horror (delete as appropriate, it cycles) of knowing that I wasn’t going mad, I just was mad.

Now I’m far less inclined to do that.  For a start- and this is something that is almost never said- I wouldn’t meet the diagnostic criteria for half of that list anymore.  Mental health problems are not forever. Nor are they who you are. You do recover.

While I still may have issues, over the past four years I’ve gotten enough of a handle on most of them to be able to cope okay.  I eat normally now, for example, after spending last year trying to quietly sort myself out (I quit laxatives and dug my heels in through it, reintroduced myself to three meals a day- I rarely binged and threw up normal amounts of food, but it meant I sometimes ate in an odd schedule) and although I’ve gained weight and do still worry, dislike my appearance and count calories, I don’t weight myself or throw up, just grit my teeth and try to get through it, read a bollock load about feminism and culture and realise it doesn’t matter.  Which is progress.

So all these things that I almost defined myself by are not there anymore.  And the psychiatric appointment pushed me further into thinking about that- I had never really known my bipolar disorder diagnosis was under question, and then, foof, it was, and replaced with borderline personality disorder. I’d spent almost four years coming to terms with one thing for it to be replaced with something else.  He is just one person, but one person with a lot of power!  It made me realise how fluid this all is. How defining yourself by one (or two or three, depending on how many doctors you’ve seen) person’s opinion of you isn’t good.  That it’s not forever. That it isn’t defining nor should it be.  Would I be a different person now if my diagnosis in the beginning had been borderline personality disorder and not manic depression?  I don’t think I would be.  I’d still have had the same life, the same personality.  I’d still be me, and would always have been.

So, on that note- should I take medication? Is it being on medication and taking control of my mental health at least partly the reason why all of the above are now personal issues rather than mental disorders?  Will it all go to hell if I carry on without medication and carry on swinging?  I’m uncomfortable with it being prescribed by the psychiatrist since his opinion is that I don’t need it.  My social worker disagrees with him.  Robert also thinks I’d be better off on medication again, but it’s my opinion that counts!

On one hand, it’s no big deal. Seroquel’s not that heavy, but it’s so sedating and I was never able to outrun that effect, on any dose.  And I’m still deeply resentful of needing to take medication, and still questioning whether I truly need to.  The conflict is more than just not wanting the side effects.  It will either stable me out or make me exhausted and depressed, again.  And taking medication might mean I might not get discharged in September, but then again, not taking it might mean the same thing.  I don’t find therapy helpful and don’t think I really need it, so it’s either medication or nowt.  I really, really want to be discharged as four years in the community mental health team is just too long and I think, as much as I like my social worker, I would possibly be better off without the CMHT, as it means I could get my head out of the whole mental illness thing- it wouldn’t be so “official”, and I could try getting on with things.  At this point my treatment comes down to just being monitored, and I thought if I was discharged, then if things went to shit and I needed help, I’d be able to go to ERC or something.  I’m not sure I need the CMHT, and other people do, so, make room!

Maybe I am just being petulant, eh!  The healthiness of seeing myself as a whole, rounded person and not just a set of mental problems meaning that I am then just ignoring a mental problem,  Who knows.  I just want to find my way back to the really real world.  I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to stop blogging about this, too.  Which is good, I think.

So, I see her in two weeks and shall decide!

A-duh

My head is so far up my hole today. I have just returned from a cafe in which, instead of lifting my cup of tea up to my mouth to drink it, I absent mindedly began to pour it all over the table.

That is all.

Doctors

Out of curiousity, when you go to a GP for a physical health problem, how often do they say it’s all in your head, or put it down to your mental health?

I’ve barely seen my GP due to his unfortunate habit of making me pull my sleeves up on every visit.  I find it hugely embarrassing and demeaning.  I don’t like my friends to see my scars, so why a stranger?  (I also don’t really get the whole big deal about self harm, but that’s a tale for another post…)

I don’t tend to go to the doctor’s for physical health problems unless forced, such as last year when people around me were wondering if I had leukemia, because I was covered in huge bruises and could barely stay awake.  He did a blood test and gave me a lecture on self harm.  Annoyingly, it was the first time I’d done it in over a year, and I did it after the (understandably hugely upsetting) abortion.  Still, it made a change from when I was getting lectures about my weight after I’d put on stones on medication.  And nothing was up in the blood tests, so god knows, maybe I was just being beaten up by ants in my sleep.

I’m having a physical health problem now but I doubt I’ll go to the doctor unless it really begins to scupper me.  My GP is okay, but probably somewhat too thorough when it comes to mental health.  So he tends, in my case, to just put everything down to mental health.  One day when I snuff of cancer I’ll laugh.

Every Time I Try To Write About the Budget, My Teeth Fall Out

It’s been a good week, for a few reasons.

The first is that hypomanic eBaying sometimes pays off, and bloody cheaply at that.  I have wanted a rocking chair my whole life.  ’Tis a modest want (it being a rocking chair, it warrants a ’tis.  Bring my vermooth), but they’re so damnably expensive that I leave “shabby chic” (i.e broken, scuffed and crap) furniture stores with tears pouring down my face.  Not in sadness, you understand, but in rage that some people have that level of disposable income.

During my most recent Funny Turn I bid on a gorgeous (fake) leather rocking chair on eBay, thinking I could drag it on the tube from Kent.  Which is stupid, really, given that:

a) I am about the size of a hermit crab and

b) I have the strength of the weedy, loser hermit crab that gets beaten up by all the other hermit crabs.

I won it (whoops) and for the princely sum of £20!  So overjoyed was I that I sifted through similar eBay listings joyfully bellowing, “FUCK YOU!” at their absurd price tags.

I am not usually a Look What I Bought type person.  Those sections in loathsome lifestyle Sunday supplements titled, “What I Bought This Week” make me want to headbutt their writers until death.  Stop waxing idiotic about your fucking meaningless purchases you use to prop up your failing self esteem!

But… look what I bought this week!

LOOK AT IT.

TOUCH IT.

It really makes my mentalist, “rocking back and forth in a room” a lot more glamourous.  So far, I’m the only person who has reclined on it who has not had a snooze.

Even better was that I posted, “Er, fuck, seemed to have bought a chair in Kent, I have no idea how to get it back up here” on Facebook and my lovely fellow blogger Karita offered to pick it up for me!  So not only did I have an excellent chair to sit on, I also had the opportunity to meet someone I have liked from afar for ages under quite strange circumstances.  Nervewracking but hooray!  I met her husband, too, and we chain smoked, talked about mentalism and had a gay old time.  Marvellous!

(I thankfully didn’t win any of the more absurd shit I bid on).

The second reason this week has been a good one is that I spent a day in which I was social.  Four people in one day!  That’s good stuff.  I also met someone who answered questions with human beatboxing, and that is…well, that’s just great.  My best friend Stephen also wrote something lovely about me on his blog which almost made me cry. It is the second nicest thing ever committed to the internet about me; the first being someone on CaB remarking that I had, “nice tits”.

I haven’t been very productive this week but it was mostly due to lazily enjoying feeling fairly normal and getting out of the house.

I’ve been okay, and I think the reason why is that I’ve been sleeping regularly.  Not a lot, and a few times I’ve had to take Seroquel to help (almost run out of them now) but still sleeping.  Sleeping really seems to be the key for me.  If I sleep too little, I go doolally, and sleeping too much very, very obviously impacts on my mood and makes me depressed.  Last week, I panicked a bit because I had taken Lorazepam and Seroquel to calm down (this was at the tale end of the hyper episode, which turned to rage and me screaming and trying to kick the shit out of everything), and I slept way too much.  I woke feeling desperate and suicidal, but I made sure I didn’t sleep the next two days, and it seemed to leaven things out.

All of this has pretty much confirmed in my mind that the initial diagnosis of bipolar rapid cycling was spot on.  People close to me agree, there.  I have huge mood swings for no discernible reason, which, when you boil it down, is it, really.

That said, I’m being offered no treatment- no DBT for borderline (my social worker doesn’t think it will be useful, she doesn’t think I have BPD), no medication (and I have always been too afraid of being bollocked to tell the doctor and social worker that my medications haven’t worked because I stopped taking them and didn’t tell them- yes, I know, sorry), so, hopefully, if I don’t go totally mental, I’ll still be discharged and see how it all goes.  I think I should probably take some medication but am also wondering if I can manage it alone by being very careful in my sleep.    I’ll try again for the next month, and if it all goes tits, I’ll hit the panic button, and we’ll see.

Thing is, though, I don’t seem to have many other problems these days.  I hate saying that because it feels like I’m tempting fate.  Which is bullshit but you can’t rid yourself of all superstition, even if you’re like me.  I have massive mood swings that are fairly bastardy, but that’s about it.  Everything else seems to have kind of shimmied away.   No self harming, no crazy flip outs.  I deal with everything in a far calmer way, am almost, in fact, unfazeable.  I think I am, mostly, “healthy” mentally.  Bad body image aside, but these days I make sure I eat (I was never a bulimic who binged, I threw up normal amounts of food.  So not bulimic, but pa purger) and keep my fingers away from my throat.  I’ve put on weight, but sighingly accepted that because I don’t fancy getting more dental work and seemed to damage my metabolism quite a bit with it all.  I’m being, AHEM, mindful.  Which helps.  And going out with someone who has such a healthy attitude towards food and for whom it’s a huge part of their social life also helps.  Robert is like a Mediterranean grandmother. I’d miss out on so much, and I don’t want to any more.

So,  I wonder where I’ll end up?  Well, on the streets sometime soon, if George Osbourne and Iain Duncan Smith have their way.

I’ve avoided writing about the budget because I begin to panic when I even think about it.  I can barely bring myself to even read about it without wanting to spit in disgust.  Reward the banks, penalise the poor.  It’s not an attack on “benefits dependency culture”, it’s an attack on the sick and disabled.  People screw the system and in these times we need the extra cash in the coffers.  My problem isn’t so much with the idea of getting people off benefits- I want to work within the next year.  It’s the ethos of it.  The, “pull your bootstraps up” bollocks, the fact that the government basically blames a lot of sick people for their own problems.  It’s as if they were reading the venom on HYS and thought, “My gosh!  You’re right!”

As a mentalist on benefits, over the past few years I’ve felt under fire.  I don’t read the comment pages on newspaper sites anymore for that reason.  It makes me so uncomfortable that people out there view people like me in such a derogatory way.  I’m scared of even posting the cost of that chair in case someone shouts, “HOW DARE YOU BUY ANYTHING OTHER THAN GRUEL WITH YOUR MONEY?”  I did work, I worked my arse off until I was too sick to do it anymore.  I’ve worked since I was seventeen, worked instead of getting an education because I had to support myself.  At the moment, I’m still too unstable to work, but I want to. Anyway, it’s not people like me, is it?  I forgot.

I had another IB50 form to fill in in March.  Only last week I received notification that I met the threshold for incapacity, which means I don’t have to go to a medical.  I was petrified of that- as I opened the envelope, my mouth dried, my heart started hammering through my chest wall.  I’ve only ever been to one medical and so was so confidently crazy that the person performing it rang the Jobcentre to see why the hell I couldn’t get Incapacity Benefit and stated I should categorically not work.  She seemed to have a mental health background, or at least, she was very knowledgeable upon it and believed I was manic.  I still had to work as I didn’t have enough contributions due to years of temping.  We all know how that ended.

I’ve heard so many horror stories of medicals.  People I know have bought suicide kits to their appeals.  And yet they’re getting harsher.  I’ll definitely have to go to one early next year, when I’ll be moved over to the ESA.  I am dreading it.

They talk about ending the “benefits dependency culture”, and yet they target DLA, a non-means tested benefit!  It’s there to cover the extra cost of being disabled.

I’m in a strange age bracket where, if my DLA was taken away from me, I’d also lose my home.  I receive the Severe Disability Premium because I get middle rate care DLA, and lower rate mobility.  I have an indefinite award which means I’ve been judged ill enough that it’s likely I’ll still be ill in two years time.  This is true; even though I am managing myself fairly well, the nature of my illness means it hits me out of  nowhere.  I didn’t exaggerate on my DLA forms, and that almost makes it more galling.  I was telling the truth when I wrote that  there are times I am so depressed I can’t get out of bed to urinate so I kept a pot close to the bed.  I have indeed burned down four cookers due to my inability to concentrate.  I have indeed propositioned strangers in the street.  It’s all true.

I was happy when I received the indefinite award when I renewed it because, if you’ve ever done a DLA form, you’ll understand how bonecrushingly humiliating they are to fill in.  I spend most of my day-to-day real life trying to hide the extent of my mental health problems.   I’m open here, of course, but I am often reclusive for that reason.  On those forms you have to go into the tiniest and most private details.  Seeing on paper how rubbish you can be is upsetting.  And doing it for monetary reasons is even more so.  It’s emotional prostitution.

I’m under 25 so I can only claim enough Housing Benefit for a single room.  Disabled people under 25 who receive the right benefit (Income Support and the Severe Disability Premium) are exempt from that rule, so, I live in a one bedroom flat, which puts me- and I’m aware of this- in an absurdly priveleged position.  For people who have physical disabilities, the single room rule exemption means they have room for people to come and care for them, and for their various apparatus.  In my case, it was helpful because my mental health problems made it difficult for me to live with people.  When I did share houses, it was at the time when it was clear I was mentally ill, which got me into trouble and made it very uncomfortable.  And also fairly vulnerable.  At one of the points in which I was sharing, I was suffering from psychosis, hearing things and very paranoid, so I could barely get the courage to even leave the room and lived in fear.  Having social phobia also did not help.

A one bedroom place frankly gives me the privacy to be as mad as I like, and also gives me the space to have people stay with me when I need it.

If I lost my DLA, I’d lose that.  I don’t want to live on benefits forever.  I never wanted them in the first place, but I needed them.  I am dedicating what time I can properly use (i.e time not spent being mental and finding it impossible to focus) on writing right now, to put myself in stead for the future, and then I will come off benefits.  If I’d never been able to claim them (and it looked like for a while, I wouldn’t be), I don’t know where I’d be right now.  Homeless and dead, probably.  Having a stable home has improved my situation tenfold.  But that’s going to end for a lot of people too- the Housing Benefit cap will be set at £400 a week for a four bed house.  That may sound like a lot, but consider families living in London.  The rent here is ridiculous, and it’s not like families can just sticks and move somewhere cheaper when their kids are in school.   Chuck the poor people into the cheap ghettos!

The crux of it is that the budget cuts aimed at sick, unemployed, disabled and poor is that it’s founded on suspicion and dislike.  The assumption that you are dishonest, idle and inherently unworthy.  It’s a Victorian, upper-class sneering attitude to take.

Where will the work come, and how will people will be to undertake it given the cuts to NHS services, particularly mental health services?  In the smallest sense, my social worker confided in me that my psychiatrist had been so brusque, bad tempered and rushed at my last appointment because the cuts had meant that they were drastically understaffed.  That appointment made me cry and has also made me fairly against the idea of seeing a psychiatrist again.  That’s one tiny event caused by cuts affecting one person; in the future, access to services will be more difficult to obtain, and treatment is going to suffer.  So how is the nation supposed to be healthy and well if they cannot find the treatment and support they need?

In short, bollocks to them all and I wish I’d pissed and shit on my vote then shoved it up Nick Clegg’s arse.  I don’t even want to continue writing about it.  I could have been all intelligent and academic, but nah, at the end of the day, I’m selfish and worried personally about what’s going to happen to me.

Birds

All my dreaming last night was this:

Except instead of a man, it was birds.  And stretched out over hours.  Curiouser.

BBC Ouch interview with Mark Brown of One in Four

Hello! I put the, “Posts Page” as a sticky for two reasons: one is because I want to add a new page to the top and doing so would knock another off, so, that one was least commented upon, and could be deleted, another was because I’m a rampant egotistic and it was the one that was easiest cut.  Anyway!

Here is an interview I did with BBC Ouch with my employer and long-haired Geordie Friend Mark Brown.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/seaneen_meets_mark_brown.shtml

It was subbed, as articles are, and the original included references to not usually greeting people I interview with massive hugs and scaring the photography.  I have no phone credit so had to use my browser and saw the photos.  Bloody hell.  Anyway, I love Mark!

I forgot to post it because I’m rubbish like that, but I also interviewed Valerie Mason John, who’s a teacher of mindfulness.  I did some exercises and they photographed me shagging a pillow, practically.  I’d never had anything to do with mindfulness before, and it was interesting.  Do any of you have any experience of it?

Bloody Sunday and the Saville Inquiry

This is a subject close to heart, close to my home, in fact.  My granny, a strong, opinionated Republican woman from the Falls area in Belfast, was there that day in 1972.  When it all kicked off, my uncles ran into the streets to find my dad amidst some minor, recreational rioting.  They dragged him in and they watched the news unfolding with their hearts in their mouths.

Throughout the veins of the passing years, the anger at this massacre has throbbed on.  The Army, at that time, were pretty much the police.  It remained so even after the ceasefire.  I grew up with British Army soldiers stationed outside the doors down the street, resting guns on their knees, chatting to kids like me.  And I liked those young men, bewildered, mostly English, far from home, but I hated what they stood for, and I hated the police.  Few in Northern Ireland trust the police, and it’s not just Catholics and Nationalists that feel that way.  Bloody Sunday is part of the reason why my family got bricks thrown at their windows when they once made that 999 call.  They were still the RUC in those days.  Now that they’re the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and not the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The events of that day were a catalyst to the IRA in waging their war, and it was also seen as part of their justification.  And growing up, if anything made me felt that I was a subject in a country that hated me and others like me (Republican Catholics), it was that event.  It wasn’t the first, nor the last act of police and army brutality in my country.

The Saville inquiry has concluded what we have all known over these years: those killings were unprovoked murders.  Those people were not armed.   Nor (apart from one young man being a member of Fianna na hEireann) were they members of the IRA. And that is wonderful news for their families, who have always known this.

Here’s the outcome, now let’s see if the British government have the balls to prosecute the soldiers involved in that killing spree.

As to the effect on Northern Ireland, I don’t really fear this is going to spark a renewal in tensions or actions.  Nobody, not even the hardcore Republicans, want to see a return to the bad old days.  You might have the odd dissident group like the RIRA (IRA Original?  IRA Classic?) and the CIRA attempt to cause some trouble, but they’ve already done so in the past few years, and have been roundly condemned by everybody.  We just want peace.

My wee bit at the Warning: May Contain Nuts night at Reading

Hello everybody not out on a Friday, like me!

There’s some bits missing at the end- I didn’t bother saving what I’d written but I do think I said, “Don’t forget to thank your psychiatrist, just don’t do it a week later standing outside his house”.  OOH MATRON, MY SIDES!  Then I was carried off by burly, naked men to the rousing strains of, “We Are the Champions”.

That’s me there- and yes! I am chubby and yes! I am very short, with a whited out face for CONFIDENTIALITY purposes (or by malevolently glaring lighting, or benevolent glaring lighting, depending on your perspective) performing (or reading, as it was) a bit from my Insane Guide stuff.  I was very nervous as I’d never done anything like that before.  Most of us hadn’t, I think we were all rather good considering!  The only act I didn’t really like was the compere, as it basically revolved around antipsychiatry and telling people they were wrong for ever taking medication.  The idea that mental illness is a social construction is a valid and worthy one, but lots of people there relied on medication to keep them functioning enough to roll their eyes at him.   I was petrified though as the idea of a whole room full of people staring at me scared the shit out of me, and I wasn’t aware I was being filmed either, which would have made me throw myself onto the assembled spikes in the front row (not pictured).  I wasn’t feeling too good that day! I’ve only just managed to allow people to take photos of me and even then it’s on the proviso that I don’t have to look at them.  That also means I read my own BBC Ouch articles on my mobile browser with the images turned off.

Anyway!  I had written a sizeable proportion of it on the day and also made a lot of shit up as I stood there (y’know what, I wasn’t aware it was mostly a comedy night until I got there, which goes to show just how organised I am.  I was supposed to do two bits, but bottled out of one for that reason) so thanks to the chaps there for being kind and helpful to me, and also to the Independent for being kind to me.  And my tights for not falling down, as I’d snapped the fecking elastic and was battling to keep them on my arse.

Anyway, yes, there you go, then!  I’m proud of myself for doing it and being a part of the evening, and once I got past the fear of defecation, I really enjoyed it.  Thank you to Danny for uploading it, and here are more videos from the night, such as the Mad Hatter himself here:

I hope he uploads the John Hegley things and Amy’s Ghost, both who were amazing.

PS:  Vote for Mark Brown as Mind Champion! Or not, if you prefer to vote for someone else.  BUT VOTE FOR MARK! HE IS LOVELY!

Obligatory, “I had an appointment” update

I hid my last blog entry for the reasons I stated in the entry i.e paranoia!  And edited another for the same reason.

I had a social worker appointment yesterday and apparently the receptionist told her to come down because I seemed high.  I don’t think I did, I just didn’t notice the disabled access thing by the toilet so had a swing on it (and why not?) and walked around a bit.  I am highly amused at this, though, I can imagine a big red button they hit behind reception when someone is being mental.  The thing is, the line is so blurred these days.  I mean, is that a bluetooth headset, or is that guy schizophrenic?

Anyway, my social worker thinks I’m getting (hypo?)manic, or am, and I had to beg off crisis team involvement.  I like them as people, they’re lovely and friendly, but they eat into your day, you have to be in when they call, they don’t leave “Sorry You Were Out” cards like the Royal Mail do when they pretend to ring your doorbell.

She asked to speak to Robert instead, to see if he’s dealing okay.  He is, and he is not worried about me.  For a start, my temperament suits him and he appreciates hyperness and strangeness.  He asks me to sleep but apart from that I don’t need him to care for me in anyway.  He says his relaxed attitude is maybe wrong, but there you go.  A prescription for zopiclone was pushed through my letterbox today- it’s a week’s script signed by the psychiatrist.  (It was initially denied to me by the GP who thinks I’m “high risk” for overdosing, despite having done so only four times in my life, twice of those as a teenager)  I don’t know if I’ll get it from the chemist’s or not.  Part of me misses sleeping and the ritual of sleep and part of me likes not sleeping much, although I wake up and find more often than not that I am violently shaking.   She also told him that the crisis team and crisis centre were available, should I need them, or he need them.

I’m not worried, either.  Robert agrees with the social worker and I probably am a bit high (I have a few symptoms and it tallies with my past experience: racing thoughts, insomnia, talking a lot, impulsivity, I guess, non-stop fidgeting and have been more active and full of energy, productive in the sense of getting more than usual done and doing more, but not that creatively because I’m still having trouble concentrating, things or people going too slow piss me off and irritate me so sometimes I sound like Robert’s mum shouting, “Come on!” at him. and also really quite happy, though “grandiose” too, if my social worker is to be believed) but I feel good and I don’t want help, nor would I take any medication for it harder than zopiclone (and nor would the psychiatrist prescribe it, as he doesn’t think I have bipolar and nor do I most of the time.  My social worker does).   Although the background of white noise is annoying sometimes, and I keep getting my speech mixed up (and had a dark moment of panic last night when I suddenly realised one day my name would be on a gravestone with a number after it, as would Robert’s, but it passed quickly), I mostly feel a lot more positive than I have done in a long time.   My next appointment is on Monday and no psychiatric appointment is scheduled so nobody is too worried and hopefully I won’t be pushed into anything.  I just feel better and I’d like to carry on.  Yes, lack of sleep is troubling and physically wrecking me but it’s better than sleeping too much, wasting the day and feeling depressed.  I know I might become depressed but right now I’m not at risk to myself, I’m functioning (mostly) okay, things between Robert and me are amazing and he is not worried, so, that’ll do me!

This post is bought to you by the letter B

Hello!  I’m back, broke and burned.  All of two days away, but still, why not announce it with outrageous derring do? Swash!  Buckle!

The trip to Broadstairs was a failure in terms of getting sleep, despite the opulent bed and relative peace.  I managed three hours on Sunday night and was awake again by 1.30am.  I watched a bit of a video and then went wandering by the sea in the dark, smoking furiously and getting lost.  I came back, I read some, then went out again for another walk.  I was the only guest there so I inspected all the other empty rooms and used the private toilet of one of them, feeling rather smug. At least, I hope the rooms were empty and I wasn’t just plonking myself down on a cold toilet seat being stared at by a small French family.  I did some writing on the beach.  The man who ran the place was lovely and made me a ham sandwich because every single shop for buying such things closed by 8pm.  He reminded me a lot of Rob’s dad, the kind of man whose gentleness radiates from them, who would be happy to spend a morning teaching you the intricacies of sheep shearing, who’d let you run your hands across the soft wool.

Robert joined me on Monday evening, since I thought it would be nice for him to see the seaside, too.  He hates sand, but he’ll have to overcome that phobia considering one day he’ll be buried up to his neck in it by pirates mistaking his bicorne for an insult to their people.  We walked to Ramsgate, a very English place.  I slept for an extremely fitful six hours on Monday night, and now it’s Wednesday morning at 4am and I’m awake again, after trying to sleep but having too many thoughts chainsawing through my head and generally feeling twitchy.

It wasn’t a waste, though, I did have a lovely time away.  The B&B was on a residential street, a rather generic looking one, but it backed onto the sea, across to Belgium, 123 miles away, or thereabouts.  It was owned by a cat called Merlin, who’s one of those thin, slightly ragged cats whom when you stroke him gives under your hands, you can feel the bones, he hasn’t got the reassuring mantle of fluff that younger cats too.  He was a big mouth of mrow.  I feel peaceful by the sea and it did calm me down somewhat.  Today on the beach we ran from a seagull the size of an airplane.   It was probably the same one that shat in Robert’s latte from a great height while he was gearing up to say something sarcastic.

Some photos because I love my camera.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The best one was this, though:

It should be cock.

I spoke to my social worker via email to cancel our Monday appointment and found out that the GP won’t prescribe me anything to help me sleep as I have a history of overdoses and he won’t take the risk.  This irks me slightly as I have overdosed four times.  Okay, four times more than most, but twice was in my teens before I understood what overdosing was, and twice as an adult- one in the midst of a depression that made me believe animals lived in my walls and being at home made me feel unsafe and terrified, and once after I spent most of the year depressed then took Effexor.  I’m not an impulsive overdose-ee, and not at risk to myself.  Mentally, I am fairly cheerful, if not brain-buzzed, but physically I am falling to bits because of lack of sleep.  That combined with completely losing my appetite, bloodshot eyes, legs and hands that keep going numb, cold sores and spot outbreaks means I’m not a pretty specimen right now.  I’m quite irritable, which isn’t fun for Robert.  Make up helps the face, though, and it means I can pull off bits of my flaky skin.

I shall be throwing myself into work for the next week as I feel more enthused about writing and want to make £100,000 somewhere so I can have a houseboat.  And also really rather desperately need to do something with my life.

Quick hit: diagnose yourself with a bunch of shit

MyTherapy is running a three month free trial of their online diagnosis (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) software.   This has amused me greatly.  Differently Sane has already been playing with it and got “diagnosed” with about thirteen different mental disorders.  Robert and I played with it the other day- he got (deep breath): OCD, borderline personality disorder,  avoidant personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.  He concedes he has features of three of those things (borderline, histrionic and avoidance), but then again, everybody does.  It was very amusing scrolling down…down…down and howling while we read the results.  Robert has clearly swallowed the DSM-IV.  We should just punch him and see what he burps out.  “You bastard…don’t you wish you were as wonderful as I? DON’T LEAVE ME!  I’m off to wash my hands thirty thousand times”.

Suffice to say, he has never been in psychiatric treatment and it’s unlikely he ever will be.  Robert’s diagnosis is, “a bit odd”.  I found it interesting it was all personality disorders he got hit with.  Is having a personality a disorder?

I was hoping for a gigantic list I could laugh at, but it failed me by only diagnosing me with two things I have been diagnosed with before: bipolar disorder type I (most recent episode hypomanic, which I don’t think is accurate) and avoidant personality disorder (actually, I’m not sure I have been diagnosed with this.  A suggestion is not a diagnosis, but it’s in my records somewhere, and if I had to “pick” a PD that most fit me, it would be that one.  BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT WORKS, YEAH?)  And I was really honest with it!  I was crossing my fingers that it would tell me I was an alcoholic psychopath with schizophrenia and a giant penis.

I think the thing that might be scuppering a lot of people is the, “how much harm does this do” question, as it would have a subjective response.  “Severe harm” could be hospitalisation to one person, or to another it could be not going out for a week.  It depends, it’s what deviates from normal.  That said, Robert clicked “mild or no harm” for most of his and still got spewed on.

Anyway, have a play and we’ll all link arms and storm a mental hospital with the print out results shoved in our pockets.  For the love of god, do NOT take the results seriously- it’s an automated computer programme that has the ICD-10 on it, it’s not a substitute for an assessment, and just because it uses the clinical terminology, it doesn’t mean it’s any more worthy of being taken seriously than one of those silly little “what personality disorder are you?” tests that fly around on websites like Livejournal.

I have booked one night away in glorious Broadstairs in Kent in the hope that the fresh coastal air might calm me down and help me sleep for more than a few hours at a time.  I’m mentally okay with it, if not somewhat very snappy, but physically, my body is packing in somewhat.  C’mon one night’s sleep.

Another One Bites the Dust

Rest in peace, Moira Stewart.

How sad and limp she is, unlike the real Moira Stewart, who neither withers, nor dies.

I kind of forgot you existed until I witnessed one of your leaves snap off and dissolve into dust.  May you find joy in Spider Plant Heaven with Brian May.

Back in his carefree youth. I clearly didn't even care enough about Moira Stewart to take baby photos.

I give up on plants.  You can’t trust them not to die, especially if you don’t water them or, when you do, experiment with feeding them Diet Coke thinking the sugar might be helpful, then remembering Diet Coke doesn’t have sugar and that you’ve probably just given your plant cancer.  Which may have contributed to the death of Brian May, as this was a repeat experiment that I had forgotten I had performed once already.   I am the Mengeles of the Plant World.

Thank you for the responses to my quick-aye-right previous post.  I think I will at least ask for an explanation, partly out of sheer curiousity and partly because this is my life and I don’t feel it’s accurate.  I also think someone had a point when they said if I took something positive out of it, should I really kick it up?  In that sense, I don’t know.  I’ll give it a month and see how I feel then, if I am still curious, or if I am fine enough off medication (I won’t be discharged until September which gives me a few months to see if I flip out.  My recent depression doesn’t count, really) to maybe envisage a time where I don’t have to see a psychiatrist again.  I didn’t ask to be discharged due to this, by the by, it was something I raised a while ago, but my not being on medication or really receiving treatment meant that I thought it was kind of pointless to continue and I’ve been with them for almost four years, which is a really long time.     I don’t need that level of support anymore and they’re understaffed as it is!

So!  I’ll ask at least.

It’s 8.08am right now, and I’m awake and have not been to sleep.  I’m operating a kind of day-on-day-off policy when it comes to sleeping.  Not sleeping very much at all, but my body seems to have adapted.  First of all, I was sleeping far too much and then still feeling so exhausted I went back to bed four or five times a day, then I slept less and less and was so exhausted I couldn’t function and wanted to kill myself and could barely move, and now I’m sleeping lesser still but am not that tired at all and don’t need that much sleep.  I took some Seroquel the other day because I thought that forcing myself to sleep would be a smart idea.  I did sleep but I had some strange sort of shaking fit upon waking.  So, bollocks to Seroquel.  I am physically rather shaky, my insides feel strange, I do feel “strange” in general (and if I didn’t I’d say I did anyway just to overuse the word gratuitously in this post), a little bit…STRANGE!

I feel good, mood-wise, cheerful, bouncy, bigger breasted, which isn’t good, they’re too big as it is, distractingly large.  I’ve been productive-ish in the sense that I’ve been sorting some stuff out but now need to direct my energies to other things, the things I’ve been trying and failing to do for months due to being depressed.  My concentration is still fucked and I’m still having trouble staying on one topic for more than a second (which led to me asking Robert earlier if he’d ever wear nappies- I think we were talking about Korea or something) and am having racing thoughts (or at least, what I was told were racing thoughts in the past- voices, music, babbling incessantly in the background and sometimes a “tch tch tch” rhythm that keeps going and might have made me look like a mental on Upper Street earlier when I was vocalising it quietly),  which is a hinderence but hey-ho.  I’ve read over this a few times and removed stuff, I commented on the Facebook page earlier that I kept having trouble with words: instead of feet I wrote fleet for flippers, slippers, then of for on and off and such. I always tell Robert I want to fuck off somewhere quiet because my brain is so noisy often and I wonder if a quiet place will help, I want to go to a quiet place that’s beautiful so have been looking today for flights to the Isle of Man but I have feck all money and no overdraft, which is wise, really.

It’s difficult to tell if I’m behaving in any odd way or not because Robert is extremely strange and has a very high standard of what odd behaviour is:  this is him on my window sill at 4am:

Starkers

Absolutely naked, and it’s a busy main road in London.  And dancing!

I don’t think I am anyway, and don’t really care either!

I went out on Monday night (someone told me they missed me, it must have been a while since anyone had seen me be sociable and talkative and uninhibited) and discovered that in The Great Haze of 2003 (most of which is utterly, utterly lost on me), I walked around a country house in front of everyone without knickers.  I do not recall this, at all, and I wasn’t drunk.  I plunged my head into my arms keening somewhat.  It wasn’t that it was a particularly OH MY GOD thing to do- really, it’s on the level of most peoples’ drunken weekend antics- it’s just that I do not remember it, at all, and I was surprised balloons and streamers didn’t appear from the sky while a bell ding-dinged and lights danced around his head as a rotund, ear-drumming smashing American voice boomed, “ALEX SARLL! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE JUST TOLD SEANEEN THE 1 MILLIONTH THING SHE HAS NO RECOLLECTION OF DOING!”  Smile, smile, clutch that rose bunch to your chest as though it were the ashes of your mother.   I had that cold, sickening fear when he said it, because it frightens and upsets me just how much of my own life I don’t remember.  I don’t even have the excuse of alcoholism or drug addiction- it’s just… gone, obliterated by my more extreme states.  It’s no wonder my flat is filled with sentimental crap and almost every birthday card I’ve ever received, I need these little slips of history to finger gratefully, to remember.

ANYWAY!

Since my little mind has now been trained to be ultra-viligant with mood changes (and coming off medication even more so), I’d wonder if I am slightly hypomanic, or maybe I’m just feeling normal.  I don’t know because I’ve forgotten what normal feels like.  I’ve been on medication for four years, and before that, I was completely mental.  Quite a lot of what I think could be hypomania etc could just me, well, me! Who knows? And I expected some instability coming off all medication because… well, you would, wouldn’t you.  I’ve been recording my progress in this blog for three years, but this is the real shit right here, the real challenge.  I decided to come off medication before the psychiatric appointment, but I think he would have withdrawn the prescription anyway as he doesn’t think I need medication.  I gave it a fair go- I gradually dropped a few medications for reasons of side effects (it’s not being OH LORD IT’S TOO MUCH, I do genuinely seem to be unusually sensitive to pills) and kept Seroquel going for years.  It all did help, but I couldn’t deal with the dead feeling anymore.  And because the psychiatrist and social worker don’t think I need medication anyway, I have no-one roaring, “TAKE YOUR MEDICATION!” in my face, which is nice.

Either way, I’m in a good enough mood so it doesn’t matter.  It’s a pleasant change considering that the past few months, bar a week or two, have been exercises in dumb depression.  HOORAY!

Once again, thank you for your advice and kind words.  I will ask, and if I disagree, then challenge it.  I don’t hold out much hope that the diagnosis would be changed, but I’d still like to know why it stands anyway.

I really do have to bugger off for a while now and try to attempt to focus a bit, so take care!

P.S:  I finally updated my blogroll, sorry it takes me forever!

x

EDIT: Apopos of nothing but I just remembered my mum the first time Rob came over a non-funeral related visit and she offered to buy him a TV.  She has mad periods and is massively generous in them and buys a lot of stupid shit which is why she’s in horrendous debt.   But I don’t know how she thought we’d get a TV over to London.

Bang

It infuriates me that the people who suffer most in life are usually those treated most harshly by society.  Which includes everyone from the man at the bus stop to the psychiatrist to the family.  What is it?  Is it spite, or is it the idea that if someone has suffered then they must be weak so pile it right now?  Make them weaker so they can’t fight back anymore? And then what?

I might need a break from the madosphere as reading blogs about people who have gone through horrendous things and are being treated like crap makes me want to fire up my Google-fu, find addresses and dust off my hurley bat.  I feel impotent.  I rarely comment on blogs and that’s the main reason why; some I read are written by people going through hell, and what could I say?

I wish there was a natural equilibrium, in which people who have suffered a lot had life be kinder to them in other ways, something, anything to redress the balance.   Like every day a favourite thing of theirs is delivered to them, a note from the world at large that they deserve nice things, to be loved, to be thought of.  To paraphrase every single four year old in the universe: it’s not fair. (Or a four year old me, it’s not fucking fair. Thanks, mum).

I’m not talking about myself here, by the way. I don’t consider myself to be someone who has suffered a lot.  I have some traumatic things in my past but who doesn’t?  My parents were ill.  My mum is…well, she’s mad, proper mad.  Mentalism unspecified, though she’s been in a mental hospital.  She is a pathological liar so I don’t know what she was diagnosed with, she lies about it!  She is manic depressive, to my knowledge, and has a bit of kind of sociopathy to her.  My dad was an alcoholic with depression, who is dead, now. They hurt themselves, and each other, they struggled but they never wanted to hurt us. We got caught in the crossfire of their sadness, their madnesses, but it was never directed at us.  I don’t know who I would be or what I would do if my family had hurt me, on purpose.  In terms of my family, the traumatic things bought us together.  Our experiences gave us compassion and balls.  They’ve been incredibly supportive of me and I hope I am with them, too.  My big sister once drew a zebra crossing on my arm because that’s what my scars reminded her of- in permanent fucking marker, in July.  That’s love.  And she- and my other big sister-used to call me, “Denny” after the sausage rolls.  If you think about it, you’ll understand.

A few of you reading are probably wondering if I’m talking about you and I most likely am.  The madosphere puts a lot into perspective, and I wish it wasn’t so.

Grr. I throw my love and wishes out there to you all, for as little good as it will do.

In other news, my zopiclone prescription hasn’t been filed, and my social worker is off for the next week, so not sure how I shall sleep.  It sometimes takes my GP surgery a while to get prescriptions or my GP might not have approved it. My normal person sleep is bollocks and broken and left me exhausted and depressed for weeks on end.  I’ve been trying to get through it for over a month, but I’m failing somewhat so my social worker suggested Zopiclone to get me through the nights where I really need a big sleep.  It was going to be difficult coming off Seroquel as it helped me sleep.  In one way, I don’t want any medication and I didn’t accept the offer of Zopiclone for a little while.  I’d like to have some around, though, for times of desperation (and not just my own, the desperation I seem to instil in other people when I don’t sleep.)

I smoked weed for the first time in ages on Thursday because I wasn’t tired but wanted to alter my state a little bit further and also in the hope it would make me sleepy.  I’m jumpy as all fuck right now too, but that’s because I found a tiny tragic dead mouse under my sofa (even more tragic is that it got stuck in the hoover and we didn’t realise until two days later, when debris started snowing out onto the floor) and I’m waiting for the pallbearers to arrive.

I want to be healthy, so, er, drugs, yes, they’re an excellent idea.  Although weed is the drug I probably respond best to.  Not that I have a chequered history- I’m quite unversed in the ways of the dragon.  Alcohol is the drug I respond least well to, but it’s the one cheapest and most freely available.  I don’t drink much anyway, which is good. The only drink I can stand anymore is red wine.  Everything else tastes like a cocktail of piss and meths.

I’m realising that sleep is quite possibly the key for me.  I haven’t slept but so far today I’ve fixed a few things and cleaned the sitting room and rearranged some stuff and taken some photos.  I want to do everything- paint my flat, go to the farm, fix lots of computers and get a loan for a houseboat- except write!  Unusual for me, really.

When it comes to deleting or privating entries here, by the way, I reserve the right to do so.  This is my blog!  Sometimes I am not comfortable with what I’ve written, sometimes I realise I don’t want to get into a discussion about it, or upset someone, sometime it’s irrelevant and I’ll write it elsewhere, or sometimes I just write utter bollocks that should remain private.  A good chunk of this blog is private, I write a fair few things only I can read because I still use this space as a mood journal, which was its original intention.  So! Don’t point out that I shouldn’t delete things.   I sometimes worry about what I write here because it’s public and it’s my life. I once found an internet cafe when I was out with friends because I was desperate to delete a blog entry that in retrospect I thought was too personal.  I do worry, especially with entries concerning other people, because nobody in my life has asked to be written about, and I’m not anonymous.  It’s a bit like blurting out something embarrassing about your sex life down the pub- you just want to push the words back into your mouth.  But in blogland-

Hooray!

Anyway, speaking of photos, how frightening does Girl Cat look when she’s having a bath?

Mrow.

I’m yanking out the umbilical cord to the world for the weekend as I have things I need to do and the internet is not conducive to my distractable self.  The lure of houseboat shopping and easily accessible loans…

Have a good one, chaps!

EDIT! Oh, wait! I know I change tone wildly in some blog entries, especially ones where I’m trying to fit stuff in, but here is another weekend thing- I love weird animals, and this bird not only has the best name in the world, it also has the best mating display.  This bird is called the Superb Bird of Paradise.

Fuzzy mouth

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a, “Something for the Weekend” post, so here are some lovely things to watch in case it pisses down over the days.

Derren  Brown on 4od is always good value for…well, free things.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od/all#d

The BBC are running a lot of things about mentalism right now, such as Sectioned on BBC 4:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sg94v

…a documentary following people who have been sectioned.

Also, I hope I’m not the only one who is completely obsessed with Scrubs.

http://www.sidereel.com/Scrubs

Not the most recent series, they’re awful, but Scrubs is like my comfort blanket.  I want to say I’m cooler than that and my comfort blanket is the entire works of Evelyn Waugh, but no, it’s Scrubs…

Talking about mental health and humour on BBC Radio Berkshire

Do you want to listen to me ramble about the mental health system, humour, people with marmalade on their faces and then completely going blank and saying, “Um” a lot on BBC Radio Berkshire?  Of course you do!  Skip forward two hours:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p007y7gh/Andrew_Peach_26_05_2010/

This was part of Berkshire’s mental health week, which was also part of the comedy night.  You can listen again to Monday and Tuesday’s segments on the website; tomorrow’s, if you like, is about friends and family.  Today it was me, warm-voice lovely occupational therapist James and huge-laughed want-to-curl-up-in-her-pocket she’s so friendly Polly talking about the mental health system.  Have a listen, should you want to.  Should you not want to GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.

I’m really glad I was involved. I also met a ginger cat at Reading station. A very urbanised ginger cat. And Paddington needs to stop having brass knobs in the floor that look like £2 coins to people who are tired, broke and not wearing their glasses so that I don’t bend down, try to scrape it up and then get kneed in the arse and knocked into an escalator at rush hour. In my defence, I was dying for a drink of something and didn’t have any cash on me.

Because I have no idea how to end this entry, here’s an artists’ impression of the ginger cat.

The scene outside the station today. That is me, in the nude, and that is the concourse of Reading station. With a sombrero.

Two torch lights trying to shine brighter

A hundred pounds to the first person who comes to my flat and whacks me over the head with something heavy so I’m unconscious for say…ooh, nine hours.

Warning: May Contain Nuts review in the Independent

Hooray!

Warning: May Contain Nuts review in the Independent.

At a time when many comedians see being controversial as an excuse to aim for cheap laughs, a night promising a “taboo-busting evening” may not appear too enticing. Thankfully, the taboos challenged in Warning: May Contain Nuts are ones that actually deserve to be confronted – mental health is an issue around which many damaging perceptions still exist, but it is also a topic that comedy rarely takes on.

Organised by the arts charity Company Paradiso, the night is a mix between a workshop event and a comedy show, with professionals sharing the stage alongside some who are performing for the very first time. Of the lesser-known names on the bill, the most impressive contribution comes from Seaneen Molloy, reading from her witty and honest blog about her manic depression. If she ever plans to turn her writing into a full live show, on the evidence of tonight she would be a natural.

If she was looking for inspiration, she could do worse than follow the example of Mackenzie Taylor. Performing an abridged version of his show No Straightjacket Required, he is given the longest set of the event and his tale perfectly suits the theme of the evening. His remarkable true story about struggling with mental illness and his suicide attempt manages to be both unflinchingly candid yet consistently entertaining.

He manages to change the mood of the audience swiftly as he intersperses the more sombre passages of his story with off-beat observations, such as comparing his illness to having a bad modern jazz band constantly playing inside his head.

Before an impressive set from Reading band Amy’s Ghost concludes the evening, the bespectacled John Hegley performs his second short section of the night. With just a mandolin for accompaniment, his comic songs and attempts at audience participation show why he continues to be a master at his rather unique craft.

Whether mental health issues becomes a topic more regularly approached in mainstream comedy remains to be seen, but shows like this make it more likely. Comedy nights that manage to give the audience both food for thought and more than enough laughs are rare – but this is one objective which Warning: May Contain Nuts certainly achieves.

My mention made me blush. I remember Mackenzie’s jazz band comparison well because I turned around to Robert and crowed, “See! I told you! It’s so loud in there! That’s why I can’t concentrate!”   The whole evening was excellent and a lovely review is very heartening.  I hope they do more things like that.

So, I’d like to ask you something.  Is it ever okay to laugh at mental illness?  If you’re reading this blog I assume you think so, but what’s your opinion?  Does it make it a bit easier for you when someone takes the piss a bit?  I remember after I took an overdose and landed myself in hospital, it was on a night that I was supposed to be meeting people down the pub.  They went back to my flat and cleaned the place so neither Rob nor I had to come back and face the vomit and the things I’d knocked over during a fit.  They took the piss right out of me saying, “If you didn’t want to come to the pub, you should have just said,” and, “Next time you want your flat cleaned, just ask”.  That was brilliant.  The exact way to deal with it, for me, at least.

Fuck!

Fun and sunshine

Why do I wake up with this in my head? Almost every day?

While I’m here, who wants to knock Janet Street Porter’s horse teeth down her stupid throat? Because depression is, of course, a trendy illness for rich people.

I’ll surf this beach

Hello! I hope everyone reading is good. I have not felt much like writing (do I ever these days? With medication it was exhaustion, with withdrawal it was physical sickness, with hypomania, distraction and agitation and with depression, lack of energy and motivation. Excuses…) and haven’t had much energy. I’m still struggling through feeling a bit crap. Coupled with getting about three hours sleep a night or getting seven punctuated by waking up two or three billion times, I’m a bit of a vacuum. Or a wee machine that has been set to snooze. On standby. But I wanted to write something here or else I would forget or just move on from recording it. Apologies if I sound a bit flat. So! Let’s see.

The Reading thing was a show called, “Warning: May Contain Nuts”. I was actually quite unsure what the hell I was going to do, so I decided to read out some of the Insane Guide…things. I was worried it was going to be a tokenistic, Care in the Community, “Aw, look at the mentals doing things!” embarrassment, but my fears were unfounded. It was fantastic. Everyone was very funny, and there were a few quite moving moments. Not all the things were about mentalism, but it was quite refreshing when they were. There was some singing, acapella, which I cannot imagine the balls it takes to do. I met John Hegley, who is a man that emanates gentleness in the same way that I emanate an earthy smell. He was, as always, wonderful.

I was actually quite unsure what the hell I was going to do, so I decided to read out some of the Insane Guide…things in a kind of, “Hey, stand-up!”. One of the professional comedians there went through it with me and we added jokes and stuff. It was a surreal experience to be brainstorming inventive and ridiculous ways to kill yourself. (Ones that didn’t make the cut: headbutting a nun until death, one that did that was one of mine, jumping out of a plane wearing a parachute that is fashioned entirely out of the first 76 drafts of your suicide note).

Alas I stupidly didn’t save the updated version so I can’t even repost it! The thing I was actually most nervous about was meeting the other people there and sitting in a room. Going through my material, Dave told me time and time again to slow down. When I actually performed it, I was fine. I wasn’t nearly as freaked out slowly ranting to a group of anonymous people I couldn’t see because of the stage lights as I was reading something to one person I didn’t know. People were lovely to me about it, which was…well, it was lovely, considering I’d been worried about becoming a mobile manure factory. Everyone there was so funny and friendly, it was great. I worry people might have thought I was rude because I tend to seem so, when I am in fact nervous. I ramble then run off. It’s not disinterest, just pure nerves and the desire to hide. I’m still trying to battle my social anxieties and part of that is doing things that frighten me, like meeting new people and standing up in front of a big-arse fecking crowd. However, everyone performing had mental health problems at some point so everyone probably felt a similar fear…

But I kind of bluffed my way through last week though I’m glad I didn’t decide to hide in a hole instead. I want to seek out wildly interesting things, especially things that scare me and challenge me, like that. I am very much trying to keep myself as alive and aware as possible because whereas I feel I am depressed right now, I know how much worse it can get and I am so very afraid of it. At least my brain is still working even if it is being nasty, and at least my body is still working, even if it is being slow. (Am I alone in my fear of worrying that I sound as though I am exaggerating when writing about these things, thus includes lots of provisos that it’s all okay, really?) I will write about it more when I feel more up to it, but for now, here are some photos!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider that a novella and let me off the hook for now. Only one of me because I looked like a total horrorshow. All the food I have been shovelling into myself shows, really!

The show was being recorded for BBC Radio Berkshire and they interviewed me beforehand. It was fun (if being horrendously nervous and ending all my sentences with, “So, yeah” is fun) BUT for two things. One was that the fella said he’d heard the play and was very moved by the relationship between Rob and I (this is strange to me, because it is real. I am proud of the play but it’s my life and still odd when people comment upon it!). I had to tell him that we actually broke up about a week after it was broadcast so I wasn’t the best person to give relationship advice. That was quite painful. It was the mental equivalent to being kicked in the balls.

The second thing was that he asked what mania felt like. And quite honestly, because of the recent diagnosis shift-arounds (which I know are fluid and subjective, and I’m also aware I shouldn’t take it so seriously, and that because a doctor thinks something, then it must be so, but it does throw up questions as I only ever thought that bipolar was wrong when I was just diagnosed or feeling churlish. And they are interesting, self-discovering questions!), I don’t feel so much like talking about things like mania, in case someone hears it, comes here and then headbutts me for misleading them. It’s a stupid fear but it is a strange thing because, whether I like it or not, I allowed my diagnosis to become the prism through which I explained and understood some of the stranger and more destructive/florid aspects of my personality, and now this has made me uncertain of that, I’m less inclined to be- accidentally or otherwise- a bit of a spokesperson. I never sought to be and I don’t generally like the idea of anything having spokespeople because then people think there is a One Size Fits All Experience. I do things because they are interesting or because I want to help. But I now feel a bit discomfited by it. Which is quite silly, because the name does not matter, not really, it’s experiences that do. But in these kind of settings, the name does matter because the name is what people will use to find information.

I also allowed it to become part of my identity. I identified as someone with manic depression. I kind of needed to, in some way, to grasp it and try to overcome it, and also because- well, when you’re off work because you’re mental, you get a bit defensive. And I have always felt a little on the outskirts. There have been things that have alienated me from people somewhat- some of my more manic behaviour, some of my stranger beliefs and funny periods. They’re not the things you bring up down the pub, and it makes you vulnerable, makes you seem odd, so people can back off a bit.

I felt a little more belonging in the madosphere because for every story of shame, of pissing in a bottle because I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed, or for thinking Danny John Jules was stalking me, or being so hypersexual and hypersocial it wasn’t safe to leave me alone in the street, someone else could top me. And there has been something comforting about that. Whereas BPD is every bit a mental illness as bipolar disorder, I feel like- certainly at this point in my life- it fits me so ill that I’m now a bit confused about what the hell has gone on, is going on. If anything. And if any of it actually means anything, and if I have been too dogmatic. If I have, I don’t know, overreacted or something, or somehow done it myself, on some level. And a bit outside. It’s probably not healthy but it’s true that some of us want a name for what ails us because it helps us understand and to find other people to understand us. There aren’t that many support groups called, “Mentalism: Unspecified”. Maybe I should start one.

All in all, I’m alive, ticking over. I’m a little pissed off because I had hoped that off medication I’d be super-fine, doing cartwheels, starring in adverts for Tampax. I know I’m doing well in lots of ways (lots and lots- I am decidedly less “unstable” in other ways than mood than I ever was, I acknowledge this, I am proud of this, it was unimaginable to me four or so years ago that I would be someone who didn’t self harm, who could leave the house without spending hours on make up or walk down the street not wondering if everyone was laughing at my face, who could be someone who wasn’t sure what they weighed. I cannot imagine ever thinking I am acceptable looking, but I have got a handle on the tics and life-killing aspects of it all for the most part), I just wish my moods were, y’know, not swingy. My little week of, “WHEE!” made me feel so hopeful and bouncy even if it did scare Robert a little. Goddamnit.

My therapy assessments are at an end, and the end indeed, we shall go no further. Hurrah, I didn’t feel like I could really engage in therapy, nor was I sure I needed it. She believes I am too preoccupied with mental health in general (I agree with this, but it’s partly out of habit of blogging and reading blogs and hugely out of interest in mental illness, which even if I’d never experienced would fascinate me, I mean, come on, there’s some mad stuff that goes on in this world. And something I have been thinking of, and advised to do, is apply for a travelling fellowship and go and see exactly what goes on in the world of alleged madness, it absolutely intrigues me) and is glad I am working towards being discharged from the CMHT. I am working through my socially anxious, “avoidant” problems on my own and I think that’s for the best. I saw my social worker today and I shall see her again in June. She may get something to help me sleep and antidepressants might be considered again. I am very sceptical because I have always gone mental on them but I might consider them again at some point. Probably not, though as I don’t want to be in the CMHT anymore, as much as I like my social worker and am indebted to her for all her help. I had been thinking about bringing up my discharge for quite some time, and stopping medication hastened the discussion. I think I can go it alone now, and I am hoping against hope that my mood picks up so I can. She has suggested volunteering, and I do need to do something (mostly write. I have, I am so behind because most of the time my brain is made of mud and not feeling hopeful but again reassuring myself that I at least do things, even if I skid in late with torn clothes and nicotine stains on my fingers, huffing and wheezing and hacking and probably laughing). And a holiday for a change of scene, but I can’t afford anything remotely resembling a holiday, like lots of other people. We talked about suicide and I mostly dodged the question by lying slightly about some fears as I do not want to discuss where I am with those kind of thoughts.

I still have no idea what the medical profession think of my experiences and am now starting to agree that my, “history” isn’t that useful because I was young and young people are mad. I am less mad these days but still moody. Teeth-gritting-and-getting-on-with-it-time. The years are receding, it doesn’t matter what I lost or went through anymore, there is no point in being defined by it, life goes on.

(I really love her shoes. She wears excellent shoes. I look at her shoes in every appointment. They are great. I wear the same three pairs of shoes even though I own about ten pairs. Fecking heels. My siblings call me penguin because of my flipper feet and waddly walk).

Today was my dad’s anniversary which is never nice. Four sodding years, the selfish dead get. I keep having these dreams about him, that he is in a caravan, alone, near the petrol station that used to be at the bottom of the path near our old house, and he is slowly dying there, becoming smaller and smaller each time I see him and when I see him I visit him, I don’t stay. I visit him like a waitress visits a table, blow the salt away from the battered woodchip and just leave him again. If I’m not having those dreams, I dream he attends his own funeral, and is dead, but not dead. He’s alive and walking around but yellowing and crisp and will die and we just have to wait for it. Which are not comforting but I still try to force myself back to sleep when I wake up panicked and afraid, because him being there even like that is a thousand times better than him really not being there. But I’m not alone in missing my dad, we all do. It is easier now. I don’t so often have a visceral, strangling grief that grabs me in the middle of a bus journey, that steals my breath. As time does, it gets easier, and it some ways it is almost disappointing, because what if easier is forgetting?

Last May was a clusterfuck of awfulness in the aftermath of things so at least this May has so far been alright aside from mood bollocks. Anyway, I’ll be back, I’m just extremely tired and down and focusing my energy on doing crap things like getting dressed.

I’m just very tired and cranky, like tired people are. I will hopefully feel better when I get some sleep. I joined the library though, and had forgotten how sad I feel when I see a book that hasn’t been borrowed in ages. I thought I’d cheer myself up with two Primo Levi books. Not, “If This Is A Man”, never fear. I don’t get vicarious kicks from the Holocaust. Now I’m off the incredibly scatty making medication, I hope I can manage to read books again. That would be a lovely thing. I might visit the city farm, too. I still find it odd that I can sometimes hear the indignant crowing of a cockerel in my kitchen. It feels as though they are announcing that the kettle is boiled. I wish they would fly out and stand on the windowsill and be my friends.

x

Are You in Reading on Tuesday?

“May Contain Nuts” is on at Reading’s South Street Art Centre on the 11th, and I’ll be there reading stuff for four minutes at a time and trying to keep control of my bowels. It’ll be even more fun since I’ve been too down to actually comprehensively sort out what the hell I’ll be doing at it.

Ahaha, "may".

Come on down to see me slide around in my own poo and also the likes of John Hegley, who may not be covered in my poo. Hooray!

Eek

Firstly, I went to the Take Back Parliament protest in London today.  This is what Nick Clegg had to say to us:

That aside, ah bollocks to the Lib Dems losing seats rather than gaining them.  But they support electoral reform and right now have the power to put it on the agenda if they don’t back down.  If you want electoral reform, sign this petition.

http://www.takebackparliament.com/

63% (sorry Robert) of people in this country voted against the Conservatives.  Let’s get proportional representation so that we no longer have to vote tactically instead of voting for who we want to lead our country. C’mon! Yes! Exclamations! Woo!

Should have clarified in my previous post; I don’t really think that’s what any diagnosis was based upon because it is hideously unprofessional; I was more amused that it was the answer to my question, said in a kind of sheepish manner!

In mood news, I am still feeling fairly low but trying to focus on getting out of the house and stuff.  I am spooked by election results. I haven’t slept properly in weeks and it’s taking its toll.  Damn waking up a million times a night and damn my horrendous mattress that I can’t afford to replace and which means I wake up feeling as though the shit has been kicked out of me.  Or maybe someone is just kicking the shit out of me in my sleep.  Maybe it’s my pocket psychiatrist.  I met my social worker and introduced her to Robert- she offered him TEA.  I have never been offered a drink, not once, not in four years.  He was our hallowed guest.  She thinks I am depressed, though for why, she knows not.  Either a natural mood swing because I was a bit ALRIGHT HIYA before then, a reaction to the BPD stuff (since Robert somewhat overstated it, saying I’d been obsessed with reading about it, but that was only the night before my appointment and the day after the psychiatric one), or…well, the whole, “Fuck knows” springs to mind.  They might give me some Zopiclone or, please god yes, Valium to help me sleep.  I am sleeping, without resting, it’s kind of killing me. I am very tired and all my effort goes into doing the Keeping Alive thing, eating, trying to get up, and that.  It’s so stupidly draining and makes me feel ashamed.  But I’ve been more active in the past few days, so that’s something.

Robert has now been inducted into my world and is duly charged with the mantle of reporting back to her if I start to go weird (mania or suicidality, or a mixture of both).  And her advice is to try and get into a routine, eat properly and get out of the house, which I know I need to do.  My tiredness and low mood means I have been completely unproductive, dangerously so, which in turn makes me depressed…etc.  It’s shameful and shaming how much I’ve been ducking my responsibilities, and they’re ones I charged myself with to help me recover.   Next week I shall be forcefully, er, forced to do things I cannot, in any sense, duck out of. I pretended I lost my charger for a few days last week because I couldn’t face answering the phone.  My friend is staying with me and I am meeting someone for lunch and have the mentalist radio thing.  They’re my little event things I thread through weeks so that I actually cannot just hide, even when I want to.

I care so little about my appearance right now that I’m eating properly, in defiance of not eating enough for quite a while (I piled on a fuckload of weight after getting the implant and had to compensate by lowering my food intake a lot).  So, hooray for the Sads making me care less.  Depression can be oddly liberating in that sense, where I simply pull my unwashed hair into elastic bands and don’t fucking care.  It’s difficult to worry about your huge nose when you smell like week old sweat and don’t feel like leaving the house anyway.  And in a sense I’m lucky that I dress like a bag lady anyway.  Coming off medication also means I’ve lost a bit of weight.  Nothing significant.  But it ushers in a new age of Eating Toast Again.  I for one welcome my new grainy overlords.

Interesting tidbit

I asked my social worker where the psychiatrist got it from that I had unstable relationships.  He apparently listened to my play.

WHAT.

Two whole universes away from reality there…

Vote Tomorrow!

Even if you’re in a safe seat. Even if you don’t believe in any of the parties (and you can still be heard by spoiling your vote). Even if you live in Buckinghamshire and your choices are the Tories and UKIP.

This is our chance for electoral reform so these, “Even if…” arguments never have to be trotted out in this country again. A hung parliament has never happened within my admittedly short, though very sexy, lifetime and if the Tories are the majority, they’ll take the Ulster Unionists with them and not only destroy mainland Britain but they will also reverse all the progress that’s been made in my much maligned but still dear to me Northern Ireland, too.

Vote vote vote! I shall be dragging myself out of my sordid little grief hole to do likewise and spending the evening with a bottle of booze; either to celebrate, or to swaddle my despair.

If I’m nailing my flag to the mast, I’ll forego the secrecy of the ballot to tell you that I’m voting Liberal Democrat. I don’t agree with some of their policies and they are still a centre right party (to me, anyway.  If there was a Green candidate here, I might have voted for them, alas, they have lunatic ideas regarding homeopathy, which, as you may have guessed, I am very passionately opposed to) .  I do agree with involvement in Europe, and also with their scrapping taxes on the first £10,000 you earn.  And they opposed the Iraq War.  It’s also partly because I live in a marginal seat. There’s 484 votes between the Labour MP- who’s not only a hypocrite, but a useless one- and the Liberal Democrats MP.  But voting on principle is sometimes as important as the policies, and the principles of the Lib Dems send a message to the world that Britain believes in equality.  Even if that is somewhat specious.

I hate the Tories.  It’s not because Cameron is rich.  You can’t help being born rich anymore than you can being born poor.  Being rich doesn’t make you a bastard. It just makes you rich. Nor do I hate the people who will, and do, vote for them.  I do not like tribalism. I’m from somewhere that was almost destroyed by it, and where people will vote because their tribe votes that way, too. But I possibly have a few added reasons to hate them than most that I know, being an Irish Catholic.  So it’s not just their protection of the privileged, Section 28 and their various other crimes. I would never vote for them, even if they had a hope in hell of gaining a seat here.  I really hate them.  They go against every single principle I hold.  It’s okay, though, because they hate me, too.

Whereas part of me wants to vote Labour to boost their majority in government- should a hung parliament happen- one of the reasons I will not be is that I have watched people I know, and people I don’t, contemplate suicide over the welfare reform that has demonised, penalised and punished those who need help.

I know that short-sighted view is one of the things that makes people vote Conservative, at least in my mind it is.  There’s a selfishness to it, a self-interestedness, despite Cameron’s grandstanding about a “big society”. Many people vote on things that will directly benefit them, which is human, but wrong. The rich and the comfortable don’t need anyone to stand up for them.  It’s those in poverty, who suffer and who struggle, that need someone to stand up for them.   Labour’s welfare reform, coupled with bailing out banks and taking the country to an illegal war, is indicative that they no longer hold the socialist principles that supposedly, at one time, made them different.  Welfare spending is utterly dwarfed by those expenditures.  At the same time, they cut funding to vital services, including my own community mental health team.  They boot sick people back into work and give them no means to recover so that they can actually work effectively.  There’s is much to be said for backing people who work, but for those who can’t for the time being, they do not deserve to be seen as burdens on society.  (And it includes me.  I’m “one of those”.  I’m not an exception).

I admire a lot of what Labour has done, but it’s one reason (oh, there are many others) I won’t vote for them tomorrow.  And if you want to know where the Tories stand on such things, despite Cameron’s promises to “protect” the frail, the vulnerable, and etc, then read this article by Johann Hari where the Conservative council of Hammersmith and Fulham, a microcosm of what the Tories want across Britain, does to its frail and vulnerable. David Cameron has constantly talked about, “doing the right thing” throughout the election.

We’re fighting the fact that people who do the right thing, who work hard, who save, who play by the rules get hit by the system rather than hurt by the system. We in this election are fighting for people, we are fighting for the children growing up in homes where nobody works.

In the debates, he referenced that elderly people should have saved for their own care in their old age, and that people should do so in the future so that the state does not have to fund their care for free. Except that it’s not for free.  Most elderly people have worked their whole lives and paid into taxes.  They have paid.  No receipt necessary.  He wants people to save their £8000.  A huge amount of money, and how much would it be worth adjusted to inflation?  He ignores that our generation is in debt.  It’s unknown how many of us would be even able to afford our own houses to sell at the end of our lives.  Not everyone is rich enough to put money away every month. Many people have nothing left by the end of the month. They’re not letting society down for that.  It isn’t, “doing the right thing”.  It’s doing what your means can afford you to do.  The Tories believe in a natural social order.  If you are at the bottom, then you deserve to be there because you were not, “responsible” enough.  All this while proposing tax breaks for the richest few in the country.  That, to me, is one of the most dangerous ideals a government can hold.

I’m voting because I want a hung parliament that will push for electoral reform.  And hell, to see what happens.

So!  There’s another ranting, grandstanding, “Look at me, look at how politicised I am!” blog post asking you to use your vote.  The rest of the world, wish us luck for tomorrow!