Tuesday, November 4, 2014

A Thing

I still reflexively hide, muffle, question, sit on and obsess over feelings of affection and especially attraction, because I am still in some ways the product of my pre-teen and teenage self. I felt a figure of ridicule, pity, and disgust. I reacted to attention from others by becoming completely blank, stoney-faced, by walking by, looking straight ahead and shutting down, being deaf and blind and immovable. I don't want to give the impression that I was, particularly, bullied or hard done by, I brought much of it on myself. I don't want to seem self obsessed. But I am self obsessed. And I endlessly analyse and judge and wonder and ruminate and worry and fear and flagellate. And that's what this post is about really. I nearly got caught up ruminating about whether or not it's a good idea to write this post about rumination, because distraction is important, and turning your attention outward is important, but also writing is important - to me - and finding your voice is important, if you want to make art, or write. I want to unravel this tangle of neuroses and psychological traps and step out of it like a pile of discarded clothing.

Anyway, I digress. So if I had a crush when I was young, I knew beyond any doubt that I would be ridiculed if anyone found out. So I kept it secret.

Now, almost unconsciously a switch is flipped, the decision that I cannot allow another person to suspect what my feelings are. The feelings seem unwieldy and melodramatic, ill-informed and undesirable, and so much of that is because they've been filed immediately under 'dark secret', and then take on those qualities which a secret possesses, whether inherently appropriate to begin with or not. I want to be light of heart, to be immediately genuine, but I deflect the normal healthy feeling back inside and it gets stuck and infected and becomes A Thing - polluted, overblown, and growing. And I don't want it to be A Thing - actually I am so jealous of people who can just have meaningless sex, or not meaningless - but a brief meeting, an exchange, in which everyone is upfront, and each person takes what they need and then that's it.

I desperately want intimacy from relationships, I want intimate friendships. That means honesty and trust and love. For me I think it also means the other person providing me with validation and a sense of self worth that it is not in fact anybody else's responsibility to provide.

I shouldn't need to impress or prove myself, prove that I have an inner life that is intelligent, nuanced, deeply emotional, perceptive, worthwhile, and have it proved to me. I am those things anyway. In trying to prove it I will inevitably arrive nowhere, with the conceit that without proof I am not worthwhile.

I put The Thing in place and it becomes a barrier, a smothering blanket on my genuine feelings and responses. I prevent myself from real experience and real interaction and self actuation, paralysed by fear and indecision. Obsessively, compulsively thinking, checking, reviewing my thoughts, feelings, actions postpones my own meaningful experience, and my behaviour ends up calculated, erratic, manipulative.

I want to be light of heart.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Time Noodle

My partner was telling me the other day about a story in 'Concrete' by Paul Chadwick, in which the titular character imagines what it would be like if we experienced time differently, if we perceived ourselves not as a being tethered inside a discrete moment, but as the foremost tendril of every moment of our lives. In the comic, his body reaches back through every place he has ever been, back and back to the day he was born.

I like to imagine my life stretching backwards and forwards, as one moment. I am not just myself in the here and now, cut off from the things that have happened and the things that will happen. Much suffering comes from feeling bereft of our past, or fear for our future, for the things that may happen or may never happen. The practice of mindfulness aims to teach us to be absolutely in the present, to experience everything that is to be experienced in the here and now, and not to be wrapped up in our past or our future. This is about experiencing the self differently, about stepping outside the self, or discovering the self from a true and objective place rather than from within our own framework of past and future, hopes and desires and fears. I recently attended a meditation workshop and we explored the idea of samsara (life as a cycle of suffering) and of rebirth and reincarnation (just as it sounds). I found this idea comforting; a life without a deadline by which time I must prove myself worthwhile.

When I imagine life as a physical part of my body stretching backward and forward, when my self is everything that it has been and everything that it ever will be, I can put to rest the voices that cry out, 'I miss those days', 'I will never do anything that important again', 'What if I never get there?', 'Do they feel the same ?', 'Every day my life is getting shorter'. I can be inside a memory more fully; because I put to one side the pain of being cut off from it, of being trapped here, partitioned off from my past and future. Because I am at once a newborn full of potential, an impassioned adolescent and a diminished old woman on her deathbed. I am connected to everything that I will ever do and experience and every person I have ever been - rather than condemning my present self as not worthwhile, next to these past and future selves. It makes me feel calm. I suppose I am then the person that I am to other people - not confined to my own present mindstate - or the person I will be remembered as after I am gone.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Tweens

As I mentioned, I was a very anxious child. I was scared of the dark, I was scared of the ankle-grabber under the bed (I would make a running leap into bed each night to avoid his grasp), I was scared of the woman in the wardrobe and of piles of clothes around my room. I was scared of the things in the toilet that would be angry if I flushed at night, and I was terrified of the dark at the bottom of the stairs, that crept up on me silently if I walked slowly, and chased me if I ran.


I grew into an awkward pre-teen with social problems. I was taller than anyone my age, and shrunk against walls and into corners. I wet the bed for years, and I wet myself at school until I was quite old. Besides this I was ahead of my class academically, certainly in reading and writing and general comprehension, although I had a problem with maths. I was 'the creative one'. I was a 'boffin'. In my first junior school I had a best friend, we were both top of the class and would compete each week in how complex a word we could learn to spell. Not long before I moved to a primary school, she was allowed to skip a year, and moved up, where she would be alongside the bigger girls.
I wondered why I had not been allowed to skip a year; we were comparable academically. I asked my mum such, and she said it was because of my social skills. 'Oh, that I find it hard to make friends?', I asked, and she snapped angrily, 'no, because of your wetting yourself'.

At playtimes I would trail the edge of the playground, and if I was sadly without a book (Christopher Pike or Stephen King were my favourites) - I'd pick the tiny red berries from the hedge, and place them onto the long thorns that grew there, watching the red juice spill out. A few of the teachers were quite protective of me I believe, and I generally worked hard, receiving praise and good grades gave me a sense of worth and identity. I remember I was also often bored though, it was hard to focus, and I would read my book under the wooden hinge-topped desk (mine was full to the brim of screwed up paper, broken pens, pencil shavings, long-lost workbooks, splurting ink cartridges).

I know that my personal hygiene was something my mum saw as a problem, or my ability to look after myself and brush my hair. Shame permeated these years of transition - what I now identify as shame - an intolerable state of being that is inescapable and excruciating. My mum would type lists and tape them to the bathroom door, a step-by-step itemised list of where and how to wash. These lists made me incredibly angry, I hated being micro-managed in this way,  and some of the list made me cringe with horror and embarrassment. This was my mother's way of trying to help and guide me. I was always a little eccentric in the clothes I chose, and it took me a while to start noticing and caring about looking good - sadly when I was ravaged by acne and going through a really quite hideous phase around ages 11-13. There are more anecdotes on that, but I'll leave it be for now.

My mum moved out of the house, leaving it for the twins, waiving her custody of them as she felt that it was best for them, and maybe she was right. I feel that this decision came from a place of shame and worthlessness, though; I think that her husband/soon to be ex-husband had made her believe that she was not worthy of seeing the twins. It seems surreal now to think that they were ever married.

I was very sad that I would not be able to see my little brother and sister anymore. I felt bereaved, as if I had had my own children taken away. Since their father didn't want them to have any contact with my mum, we were somewhat blacklisted as well. My brother and I would visit the twins on occasion after school, when they were being cared for by their grandparents. This was difficult and clearly made Nan and Granddad uncomfortable and worried. These visits were bittersweet, and I often felt dreadfully guilty for not visiting enough; unwanted when I did visit, and eventually unworthy of seeing them at all, and inflicting my depressive affect on them. For many years I was devastated about being torn away from my little brother and sister, and about their being deprived of a mother, and it has taken many years for it to dull to a manageable sense of sorrow, and anger at my mum for letting this happen to her.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Total narcissism (childhood memoirs)

It occurred to me I haven't written much about where I came from, and the roots of my neuroses, my parents and childhood. It feels so dull and self obsessed to go back there, and for ages I didn't as I assumed that my problems came from nowhere and were entirely of my own manufacture, and in fact that was what I *wanted* to believe, I wanted to be a product of my own intellect, and not a cliche (how cliche, for a teenager). On the one hand there was not much special about it, except within the context of its normality, on the other I have to admit its significance, I am deeply sensitive and prone to navel-gaze and obsess and I can't change that about myself.

I always have to spend time explaining the composition of my family, and repeat things until the listener understands. I think because it starts with married heterosexual parents and 2 children, working class backgrounds transitioning to lower middle class, on the cusp, all very normal, and then within that frame of reference things get a bit complex - beginning with a divorce when I was 4, which was fine, my brother and I spent weekends and holidays with our dad, also fine. Our home life with our mum, however, started to get pretty messy at some point. I don't have much memory of my childhood, it's very fragmented, I've never been good with time, managing it or envisioning it. Certainly there was a lot of happiness in it, mostly time spent with our dad in the summer - outdoors, biking, fishing, building dens, catching frogs, climbing trees, swimming.

But at some point mum met someone new (quite quickly I think), later she told me it was because she was scared of managing alone. Neither myself or my brother took to him, whether for a good reason or just because he was a stranger to us, I don't know. I remember his moustache, which fills me with disgust, and my mum having us kiss him goodnight on the cheek. I remember screaming fights and smashing plates, and my brother and I sitting on the stairs, listening. I remember he drank cans of Diamond White cider and smoked by the back window, creating drifts of cigarette ends on the patio.

My mum gave birth to twins. They were beautiful. I loved them very much, I also at some point began to feel shameful and unworthy next to them, they seemed so pure. Whilst I was an overachieving, introverted, tomboyish loner, they were everything I wasn't. I feel that my mum was especially protective of them, at times I would be accused of spitefulness towards them which seemed incredibly unfair to me, although certainly I would have been spiteful at times. 

I was always painfully shy. Mistakes mortified me, and I could not go into a shop and buy something on my own until I was pretty old. I found having to interact with other children at school utterly horrifying for the most part - maybe save for a short string of best friends, with the passion and jealousy and explosiveness that went with those relationships. I moved schools several times, miserable and unable to fit in at one school we hoped that I would find my feet socially at the next. I wonder if my mum had just let me be, maybe I would have learned to cope better. A new school never changed anything. I remember spending a lot of time crying in the toilet, or reading on the playground. I easily got through the entire school library at junior school. I started getting acne when I was around 11, before I got to secondary - and I remember being scolded for poor hygiene, for not brushing my hair or taking care of my appearance, and I remember feeling disgusting and terribly vulnerable.

At home, my mum was falling apart. We often did not have money for lunch and would have to queue up on the stage in the assembly hall/lunch room for an I.O.U dinner ticket from the headmaster. I could never find my shoes in the morning, and we would often be running down the road to school with a piece of toast in hand, late and disorganised. It felt chaotic. I would fantasise about flying away, or discovering I had magical powers or going to live in the woods. Once I woke up with a fever, I felt sick and just wanted my mum, but when I went into the master bedroom where her and our stepdad slept, I heard the muffled noises of intercourse. Something about the sounds struck me as terribly unhappy, and I quietly went back to bed and cried myself to sleep. That memory has always been sharp in my mind.

I know now that my mum was abused as a child; in terms of neglect, as well as sexually and possibly physically. She grew up in a family with I think 7 or 8 children from a number of fathers, and they were very poor. There is a story she tells of a man from the church or the Salvation Army or similar coming to the door at Christmas and offering money or food since they had nothing to eat for christmas dinner, but her mother was a proud woman and sent him away.
There was a period as a child in which her previously absent father, with a new partner, took her in to live with them. He is, I believe, schizophrenic, although I am unsure of the severity or any details; I have never met him and understandably he is rarely spoken of. My mother was neglected during that time. She was ignored or forgotten about, her clothes were not washed or replaced, I think she went hungry at times or was locked away. Most significantly she was sexually abused by him.  I don't know much about this, only what my mum wrote in a letter to me. I had long suspected this, my mum clearly had a lot of difficulties. She is epileptic and has (infuriating) memory problems and emotional complications. I think she mentioned that the epilepsy is believed to be trauma-induced or related. I have never known her to have a seizure, except for once, as she has always been medicated. That was when my brother and the twins and I were sitting in the sedan, outside the house, excited and all strapped in and surrounded by luggage and belongings, literally ready to go on holiday. Mum and our stepdad (the twins' father) had gone back into the house to quickly fetch something before we set off. We all waited and waited, for an age. An ambulance pulled up nearby, and I wondered if it could be for our house? But dismissed that thought. And we waited more. After a long time our next door neighbor came to fetch us and took us to her house, mum had had a fall down the stairs. She had had a seizure, later she said they had been fighting, I suppose it was induced by stress and anxiety. So we didn’t go on holiday that time. 

Before I knew for certain about these things, I had sometimes thought that I displayed the traits, to a small extent, of somebody who was sexually abused. This puzzled me, as I could not remember such an instance - the only conclusion I could reach was that I had somehow osmosed and absorbed this damage and especially a sense of shame from my mother. Because of this I felt some sense of validation when she wrote me a letter and told me some of what she'd gone through - I somehow knew parts of it already, maybe hints were dropped or maybe I had just picked it up - and I was shocked and moved by the extent of what my mum has gone through. It helped me to understand some of the dysfunction in our relationship, and the extreme pain and personal struggles she has faced.

The relationship with her second husband - our stepdad - was also not healthy or loving - as I mentioned there were screaming fights, he was pretty unpleasant as far as we were concerned, and I suppose she was to him a woefully inadequate housewife, scatterbrained and emotionally damaged as she was. He did not get along with my younger brother either - antithetic to me, he was always a little behind with reading and writing and was believed to have dyslexia. He was more social, and tended to get into trouble or into fights, although at heart he has always been a very sweet boy. There was once an incident with the police getting involved, as during a disagreement about something my brother had done our stepdad had pushed him against a wall, and my brother mentioned this at school. I believe this was late primary school, we were definitely living with our real dad by the time I got to secondary. We would often talk together about how much we hated him, in between the usual sibling fights. He had little time for us, although much more for me, as I was generally ‘good’.

When matters between my mum and her husband became irrevocably broken, my mum asked me if I would like to go with my brother and live with our dad for a while, while things at home were so unpleasant, and without much hesitation I said yes - this did indeed seem logical. 
The twins would remain with their father in our family home, the home my mum and dad had purchased from her grandparents when we were small, and my mum hung on there for some miserable months, refusing to be driven out. In the letter she wrote to me many years later, she told me that he did not think her fit to see the twins, that he told schools and authorities that she had been sleeping around (with men actually, he must not have wanted people to know the truth). He allowed her only in one part of the house - the conservatory - and shut off the heat and water to that area. She believed he told the twins lies about her.

Once she broke down when I mentioned her other children, much later in a different time and place. She cried as she recalled 'their little faces as he was hitting me and kicking me'. I put my arms around her and held her tight, she was soft and yielding and vulnerable. That is the only time she has ever gone into any detail about those things.

Around the time we made the move to our dad's, I was visiting with my mum (or possibly still living with her at the house at this point, I really don't know the chronology). I think we did this by coming to the old house and meeting her outside, then going to Macdonald’s or the house of a friend of hers or wherever it is we went. I only remember pulling up to the house in the Landrover after we had been to wherever it was we had been, just my mum and I - I was sitting in the passenger seat - she turned off the engine, we sat and she drew in a breath, and there was this air of terrible awkwardness, and I knew she was going to say something uncomfortable. My mum came out to me that day - in fact she asked if I knew she was 'seeing' a lady two doors over, her friend. Beyond surprised and a little mortified by this revelation, for some reason I said 'yes', anxious to end the conversation. This was obviously a difficult talk for my mother, and one she had worried about my reaction to. She had also been worrying for some reason about whether I would have any questions about sex in this instance - she asked if I wanted to know about what they 'did', or if I wanted to wait until I was older. I was absolutely mortified by this question, a withdrawn and rather innocent child for my age, I think I cringed inwardly, embarrassed beyond belief. I said I would like to wait until I was older (and thought privately, not at ALL!). I don't think I had any problem whatsoever with my mum being gay, but I was completely blindsided by this revelation. It was not something I had ever thought about. I have no idea how old I was, somewhere between 9 and 11 I think. I was incredibly relived when my mum seemed satisfied that the talk was done and I could escape.

**

As I mentioned, I was a very anxious child. I was scared of the dark, I was scared of the ankle-grabber under the bed (I would make a running leap into bed each night to avoid his grasp), I was scared of the woman in the wardrobe and of piles of clothes around my room. I was scared of the things in the toilet that would be angry if I flushed at night, and I was terrified of the dark at the bottom of the stairs, that crept up on me silently if I walked slowly, and chased me if I ran.

I grew into an awkward pre-teen with social problems. I was taller than anyone my age, and shrunk against walls and into corners. I wet the bed for years beyond what was normal. Besides this I was ahead of my class academically, certainly in reading and writing and general comprehension, although I had a problem with maths. I was 'the creative one'. I was a 'boffin'. In my first junior school I had a best friend, we were both top of the class and would compete each week in how complex a word we could learn to spell. Not long before I moved to a primary school, she was allowed to skip a year, and moved up, where she would be alongside the bigger girls.
I wondered why I had not been allowed to skip a year; we were comparable academically. I asked my mum such, and she said it was because of my social skills. 'Oh, that I find it hard to make friends?', I asked, and she snapped angrily that no, it was to do with the fact I still wet myself.
My mum often snapped like this, over much more trivial matters, or get upset and cry. Knowing her as I do now, I have theorised that she was probably a very unpredictable person to deal with, and extremely confusing and anxiety-inducing for a small child. I think I may never have known what to expect, there being no logic to her reactions. I may have craved validation and praise, which would sometimes come in vast warm swathes and others be snatched away from me and replaced with an angry snap of dragons' jaws.

At playtimes I would trail the edge of the playground, and if I was sadly without a book (Christopher Pike or Stephen King were my favourites) - I'd pick the tiny red berries from the hedge, and place them onto the long thorns that grew there, watching the red juice spill out. A few of the teachers were quite protective of me I believe, and I generally worked hard, receiving praise and good grades gave me a sense of worth and identity. I remember I was also often bored though, it was hard to focus, and I would read my book under the wooden hinge-topped desk (mine was full to the brim of screwed up paper, broken pens, pencil shavings, long-lost workbooks, splurting ink cartridges).

I know that my personal hygiene was something my mum saw as a problem, or my ability to look after myself and brush my hair. Shame permeated these years of transition - what I now identify as shame - an intolerable state of being that is inescapable and excruciating. My mum would suddenly decide I was not clean enough, type lists and tape them to the bathroom door, a step-by-step itemised list of where and how to wash. These lists made me incredibly angry, I hated being micro-managed in this way,  and some of the list made me cringe with horror and embarrassment. This was my mother's way of trying to help and guide me. I was always a little eccentric in the clothes I chose, and it took me a while to start noticing and caring about looking good - sadly when I was ravaged by acne and going through a really quite hideous phase around ages 11-13. There are more anecdotes on that, but I'll leave it be for now. I don't know if the issues that my mum so harangued me for were a real shortcoming in my development, and if so whether it was my fault or if there were some physiological or emotional issues involved. If not, perhaps they were magnified or projected onto me by my mother, a spectre of her own no doubt unresolved shame and desire to save me from the image of the neglected child within herself, or related to a fear of her inadequacy as a mother.

My mum moved out of the house, leaving it for the twins, waiving her custody of them as she felt that it was best for them, and maybe she was right. I feel that this decision came from a place of shame and worthlessness, though; I think that her husband/soon to be ex-husband had made her believe that she was not worthy of seeing the twins. It seems surreal now to think that they were ever married.

I was very sad that I would not be able to see my little brother and sister anymore. I felt bereaved, as if I had had my own children taken away. Since their father didn't want them to have any contact with my mum, we were somewhat blacklisted as well. My brother and I would visit the twins on occasion after school, when they were being cared for by their grandparents. This was difficult and clearly made Nan and Granddad uncomfortable and worried. These visits were bittersweet, and I often felt dreadfully guilty for not visiting enough; unwanted when I did visit, and eventually unworthy of seeing them at all, and inflicting my depressive affect on them. For many years I was devastated about being torn away from my little brother and sister, and about their being deprived of a mother, and it has taken many years for it to dull to a manageable sense of sorrow, and a dull anger at my mum for letting this happen to her.

**

I have a vision of my mum as a woman in an apron with big curly hair, and those huge 80s glasses, the way a mum should look, my child's drawings of her, my arms wrapped around her waist. Suddenly she was not this anymore, she was an Other, she had sensible cropped hair, she was somewhere else. We would visit her periodically, in a small flat. This was by a somewhat strange arrangement with the woman she was seeing (we knew her as Jamie, I don't think we knew her by any other term). Jamie was a slightly older woman, a woman of the world, somebody who had clearly been living as a lesbian for some considerable time - and was searingly intelligent and knowledgeable if my mother was to be believed. She also had some money - that is to say I think she owned her home (which she shared with a woman who must have been somewhere in her 60s, on an arrangement which I have even less idea about). Jamie helped her out with the rent, I believe - or let the flat to her - I'm not sure. She seemed to keep my mother at a distance, in any case - and showed no interest at all in her children. My mum was nevertheless happier than she had been before. She took in a cat, or rather as my mum said, the cat chose her. That cat became her joy, and I think the ownership of that cat served for much of the communication which took place between herself and Jamie. When it died many, many years later (and with great reluctance, apparently - thin as a rake and having suffered with feline HIV, kidney problems and goodness knows what else for an age, it refused to eat anything but prawns, and then really nothing at all, until it came time to let him go, and he kept purring and needed two injections), my mum said he had saved her during those years.

I feel a weight of guilt to say my brother and I visited with reluctance - we found it stifling and boring, and I suppose it was strange - and still fight such feelings to this day. She had a habit of promising to pick us up, then telling us to take a taxi, and she delays our leaving for hours or days. She wants to look after me, to bond with me, she wants us to stay with her as long as possible and be mothered, and I think she continually moves the goalposts in order for us to prove, or rather fail to prove, that we love and need her. I do not like being somewhere that I cannot leave of my own volition. I find her sense of humour childish and bizarre, she prods me to react, she is unpredictable and can be very loud and has a way of being wilful in an indirect and passive aggressive way, or becoming upset. She will engage in an adult way and then suddenly change the rules and make you the child again. I wish I did not find it so difficult to spend time with my mother, she has suffered so much.

So mum was married twice and had four children before she came out; she told me later that she had really always known she was gay, but it just simply wasn't done back then, it was not something she could be. I found this very strange, I felt safe in being whoever I wanted in terms of sexuality, and I think for a while I thought her a little silly for believing otherwise - not really grasping how much things have changed or my particular privileges. With an unhappy life of being someone she wasn't, she told me that she was having a second childhood - I think she believed herself to be saved, when she was not quite yet. Her new relationship was abusive in itself; although I felt proud of her for doing what was right for her. My friends at school would pity me for going through a divorce, for having a mother who was gay - but this angered me. To me, the nuclear family was worthless and broken. I did not believe that divorce had a direct effect on a child's happiness. I certainly didn't believe that having a mother who was gay was a problem, and I was glad that she had done what she thought would make her happy. I think this also played into my own sense of worthlessness - an idea I'm still finding it hard to grasp, when you are trapped inside something forever it's almost impossible to imagine the exterior - to reject me was to prove your worthwhileness as a human being.

I have three memories about my maternal grandmother. She was a slim, relatively young-looking woman with silver hair in a carefully coiffed bob. Firstly, I remember going to her house - one she shared with her then-partner or husband - and being offered the end of a bag of dried apricots. 'Do you want these? They give me the runs.' (I took them, I love dried apricots - although my system has a similar reaction).
The second memory I have is of her at our house - we were in the front room and I was making a pig's ear of a Winnie the Pooh cross-stitch, my fingers grubbying up the fabric. My family were discussing logistics for the afternoon, and the possibility of my grandmother having me for a few hours was brought up. She declared indignantly, 'Well, *I* don't want her!'.  I was not offended; I remember thinking she was cool, I liked her rebelliousness and smiled to myself while I continued sewing.
The third is in the little flat my mum shared with her cat, my brother and I were visiting for the weekend. I am guessing my age at around 12. We were both sitting on the edge of the bed, sorting clothes or similar. The phone rang, mum answered, she said a few words and put it down, and then she started sobbing with her face in her hands, fat tears rolling down her face (my mum often cries, and I've inherited the trait). Shocked and concerned, I asked what was wrong. 'My mum died', she said. It was a stroke.
'Oh, no! I'm sorry, mum!'. I think I put my arm around her.
'No. I hated her', she managed through gulping sobs.





Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Being discharged...

So I've been to a few CBT sessions now [finally] - mostly talking things through, and having realizations about strategies for staying healthy (staying hydrated, sleep, rest, morning routine, breathing, leisure). For the last week or so I've tried to implement more of a routine in the morning, and I take time out to plan my day or to review even when I feel that I don't have time (especially when I feel I don't have time), and try to notice when I'm in 'the grey zone' of not working but not resting either, and doing fun things as well as working and worrying, and not beating myself up as much. I've got a lot done so far in 2014, 3-5 hours of work a day, and I feel pretty positive. I can sometimes scale back or halt an anxiety attack now with breathing and patience.

I have a session next week and then I'll probably be discharged, as the counsellor thinks I've made quite a lot of progress and have a lot of insight, and I'm going away anyway - but we'll review next week if I'm not feeling so in control.

She says my main 'drivers' are perfectionism and people-pleasing, so I'm going to try to remember that when I feel terribly guilty about saying 'no' to people, especially my mum.
I started a blog yesterday - just something silly for reviewing stuff I see or do - and it felt like the first glimpse of an identity that isn't anything to do with depression or anxiety, someone who has worth and an identity beyond what I've felt and experienced, someone funny and thoughtful and not defined by my emotional damage.

I'll keep taking the meds, though...

Saturday, January 4, 2014

http://purplepersuasion.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/the-unsayable/
At some point, I would like to write something coherent about the themes of my thoughts over the last few months. Today is not that day, but I did want to write a few notes to remind myself, when I do get around to it. I've been vaguely unwell for several weeks, firstly with brain fog, and then a resurgence of back pain which was almost completely debilitating, and then just a cold, but all together they rendered me incapable of doing very much at all for weeks. I feel useless and again marvel at how people can work a 9-5 job week in, week out. I've never had the strength for that, and I don't think I ever will - it's nearly 1pm and I am still fighting off apathy and malaise and trying to gather the resilience to get on with anything useful, and this is pretty much every day for me, and it's not because I'm lazy.

Somebody wonderful pointed me towards this article, which articulates a lot of what I've been musing on: http://www.vice.com/read/filthy-lucre

I've had to stop claiming benefits for now, the woman at the jobcentre was a bully, and other elements of my life have meant that I couldn't jump through their hoops anymore, nor was I willing to go in and try to talk to the so-called disability advisor again.

That is okay, because my partner has some money. At least that is what he says, and what I am trying to comprehend and assimilate.

I want to finally stop trying to be the responsible grown-up that doesn't really exist and be the person I've always looked at and sighed and thought, I wish I was like that. Living outside the template, making art. Not everybody is lucky enough to have the means and opportunity to do that, but I do, as difficult as it seems and as hard it is to believe that I'm not going to starve to death, or to ignore what the daily mail says about me and mine. I'm 27, I've never been able to get up early every morning and go into work and do what's required of me without just grinding down into a bloody mess, and I'm probably not going to either. It's time to stop doing everything I want to do by halves.

But yes, not a lot of focus today, hopefully back at some point with improved health. But that might never happen either, not everyone can win.

xx