I consider myself pretty cool in terms of body dysmorphic disorder. I had therapy, it helped, I kept those strategies with me. I understand my fears are irrational. I hate the way I look. I think I will always hate the way I look. But I can get through days without thinking I am a deformed goblin, and I can go out without make-up now and spend less than 3 hours a day putting on make up. I can leave the house and mostly look at myself without wanting to break down, and I have a mirror in my house that’s bigger than a hand mirror. Two in fact. I may not look into them much, but they’re still there, which was a thought intolerable to me in the past. I couldn’t be in the same room as a mirror without panicking. All good.

But being in a new environment, with new people, in a frankly bizarre situation (for me) on placement is making some things flare up again. My little tics are returning. I find myself touching my nose an awful lot. I have really good insight into my behaviours so I understand the touching thing is an anxiety reaction. I have a thing about my big, hideous, misshapen, gonky nose so I tend to try and cover it with my hand if someone is looking at me or speaking to me. I hate my hair too so wear hats, which I’ve started to keep on in the office (not entirely appropriate). The coats are staying on longer, too. The plus side is, it’s cold. But I know it doesn’t look professional to keep a big coat on. But I don’t want to take it off and have people see me. I’ve started taking my make up in (one of my, “homework” tasks when I did therapy was to come to it without make up on, so I try not to take my make up bag out with me as I know I’ll end up getting obsessed by it). So far I haven’t used it and I need to leave it at home.

I’m avoiding mirrors again too because when I look into them my face seems to swell and I can’t cope with the fact I look like this. It frightens and disgusts me that I walk around looking like I do. I’m getting to placement but socially, I’m beginning to withdraw again. I just do not want to be seen. It’s something I’ve discussed here at length before. I do have problems with sociability, ones which nobody who met me would foresee as I come across as being extremely confident and outgoing. As soon as I’m out of a situation where I need to be (work, university), I pretty much sprint back to my nice, safe, anonymous flat. I don’t really have a social life and part of it (though certainly not all of it) is due to worrying about what I look like and being laughed at.

I’ve joined a gym because I want to get healthy this year and lose weight before my wedding but the thought of going there, with other people who are good looking or slim while I am there lumpen and ugly is causing me so much panic that I can’t face it right now. I know I annoy Robert with my excuses; I declare I’m going to go to the gym, join a slimming club, lose weight, get healthy! and then don’t do any of it. It looks like weak-willedness, but I’m not entirely a weak willed person. It’s the people that freak me out.

The thought of having my photo taken on my wedding day is making me feel sick. I’m okay with photos as long as I take them, I can choose them, edit them etc. I hate other people taking my photo and thankfully most people who know me know that and avoid it. I’ve also put on loads of weight and my clothes don’t fit. I can’t afford to replace them (especially not now as I’m paying for a wedding) and it’s making me feel even worse.

I know this is an anxiety thing. I know it’s facile bollocks. I can rationalise it easily and understand it, but I don’t know how to control it. I keep telling myself, “You’re anxious, it’s fine, this is new. All that you’re doing is trying to displace this anxiety from something real and present and out of your hands into something that you can control”. But it’s easier said than done.

But the image anxiety, I am hopeful it will pass, but I don’t like feeling like this.

Bollocks to it anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My dad should be here.

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

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

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

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

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

Among the report’s conclusions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read it here:

Spartacus Report

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

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

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

2) I came off benefits, after four years

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

4) I got my first job in 4 years

5) I started university

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No questions about punishment beatings, though, bollocks.

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

HOLY SHIT SHINY ETC!

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

And I start my placement on Tuesday, argh!

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me know!

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

Many Thanks

Kate Tucker

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you!

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

Reasons Why I Am Bloody Amazing Or At Least Passable.

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

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

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

Likewise I am ridiculously loyal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do the things that scare me.

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

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

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

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

"20 RICHMOND MENTHOL PLEASE!"

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

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

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

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

PS I’m great in bed, I make nice coffee and I sing in a way that makes my cats sit still as though they are meditating or plotting a way out

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

My Belfast family

STATE OF YE

We need a new photo, Stephen!

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

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

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

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

Are you looking forward to Christmas?

I don’t feel negative. As Judith said, the, “Normal” life is one to embrace. There are sacrifices though, and those, I feel acutely sometimes. And with this clarity, of being mostly sane, you get a view of the years past, and it can be a pretty horrific one. I don’t like going out these days, I don’t like drinking, because I store up all my emotions and unneeded apologies for those times and then come back regretful. It’s difficult, letting go of those years, and of who you were. One of my friends told me, a month or so ago, “You used to be fun”. Ouch.

That said, I like my life now. I like myself a hell of a lot better. I’m more in control of myself, and I’m more stable. Normal! I am lonely, though, as I said. I’m not sure how to make friends. I feel new and tainted at the same time. It’s disconcerting and sometimes, it makes me very sad. I can’t deny that. The sadness is there, especially on nights like this, especially when I come home and realise I only have Robert to talk to about my course, and he doesn’t understand.

I wholeheartedly believe in recovery from mental illness. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be studying to be a mental health nurse. That in itself is odd, though. In being a mental health activist, my currency has been my own experience. Now, in the shift to professional, I can’t (and don’t really want to) share my experiences. But this is good. It makes me realise I got into this for the right reason. I am not settling scores or trying to be, “special”. It’s given me a huge appreciation for what my social workers, psychiatrists and nurses did. And I am in it for: wanting to help, understanding, not being someone who becomes freaked out by mental health problems and, above all else, interest. It interests me, it fascinates me.

I think I am as recovered as I will ever be. I have my moments like everybody. But I’ve managed to distance myself a fair bit from my problems. I don’t listen in class and automatically associate all experiences with myself, which I think is healthy. (In thinking
about psychosis lately I remembered my own experiences with it. One thing the class is doing is making me remember, which is partially where my sadness and reflectiveness have come from. I do associate the experiences of a service user- of the isolation, loneliness, the feeling different and the loss, all feelings I had denied in myself, and the grief I had over the years which were by sided by what I was going through- those things are coming to the surface. I keep thinking my dad is not going to be a grandad).

It is an aside though, and I think for the most part I deal with things in a sane way. But with being fairly clear and stable, you do remember. And that can be a bit arse. But I’m looking forward, for the most part. Instead of talking ALL THE TIME about my mental problems, I talk about other things. And the big things- the big, panic inducing things- like having kids (and the big, panic inducing things of, “Oh god, please don’t get ill while pregnant!”) Forward, though.

Anyway, I wasn’t trying to be negative, just in case it came across like that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, how about you?

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

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

Working it out

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, look, this is so lovely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reasons were twofold.

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

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

The second was that I was ashamed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answers on a very large postcard.

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

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

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

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

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

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