Crash, Bang, Wollop

 Life, Meh, Moods, Triggers  11 Responses »
Dec 082011
 

This week has been shit. My mood took a nosedive on Monday, and really only started recovering today – though that could be wishful thinking, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

It started on Sunday. I don’t know if I mentioned it on this blog or not, but a while back my mother bought A and I a joint birthday present of a weekend away in a hotel, and said weekend finally rolled around last Friday (the first time they had availability in months). We’d only had one proper day of ‘normal’ life between returning from London and heading off again, and as someone used to doing almost fuck all with her life (partly as a I’m a slave to the hangover-inducing demon of Seroquel, partly because of a crippling type of agoraphobia, partly due to Christ knows what), burning the candle at both ends in this fashion was distinctly unusual for me.

It’s not that I didn’t have a good time either in London nor in the hotel – it really, truly isn’t that, and how could it be? – but I will admit that it was draining nevertheless. Up early, do stuff, meet people, live late, sleep poorly, do it all again. Drive 90 miles, have dinner, have a drink, talk to people (in rural areas of Northern Ireland, people love to talk to randoms. Having been raised near a town, this is alien territory for me), sleep poorly, up at something vaguely approximating a normal time, do stuff, eat, drink, have to put up with the mad drunkard who wants to tell you her life story and how she gave up benzos on her own but still snorts coke, go to bed, sleep poorly, drive 70 of the 90 miles, have car throw a fit, carefully drive remaining 20 miles whilst convinced car is about to blow up, get home, ruminate on potential vehicular disaster, feel ill, go back out because you’d forgotten there was a concert that night, don’t enjoy pre-gig dinner and drinks, go to gig, enjoy gig but find it tiring, leave gig in icy, pissing rain, wait for taxi, come home, sleep poorly, sleep all next day.

You get the picture.

Regular readers will know that I positively revere my car. I love the thing with a passion unsurpassed anywhere else in the material world. If I had to choose between the car and my iPhone, or the PS3, or this laptop, or my gong – I think I’d choose the car. I live in a low-level but constant fearful dread of the day when he finally dies on me. (Admittedly, and quite obviously I’d hope, that terror is nowhere near the sky-high level at which I perpetually frighten and torture myself regarding the hopefully long-in-the-future prospect of my mother’s death. I am distinctly and completely petrified of that, and think I’ll have such a major breakdown when it ((hopefully finally)) happens that I might die myself. So no, it’s not that bad – but it is highly significant nonetheless).

So when the car started going mental on Sunday afternoon, I was terrified. Chug chug, roar roar. It was like something out of fucking Formula One. It was so loud that it made every millimetre of the vehicle shudder and vibrate, which caused us as occupants nausea and headaches. Worst of all, there was damn all that I could do about it on the motorway. Well, I could have pulled over and had the RAC come out or something – I do have such cover on my insurance – but (a) how long would they have been? Sitting at the side of a motorway for hours on end would not only be soul-destroying, it would potentially be dangerous; (b) unless my life was actively threatened, I wasn’t willing to lose my no claims bonus; and (c) it was clearly an exhaust problem, and I’m not sure the good people at the RAC go about carrying the exact exhaust parts for a 12 year old and actually rather rare model of Peugeot on them.

So I drove it home. It was the least worst option. It was pissing it down when we got back to the house, so my attempts at looking underneath the car were somewhat hampered. Still, I had something of a go. No tailpipe was visible, but the rest of the fucking exhaust lay at an angle, so I suspected the former was still there, just tilted so that it was under the bumper.

Anyway. Blah. After the concert on Sunday night – and it was testament to the band’s excellence that my poor mood and physical (somatic?) illness were temporarily assuaged by the performance – I don’t think I got up until about 2pm on Monday. I then proceeded to do nothing. And then…I went back to bed.

I must have sent my mother a text message about the car, because on Tuesday evening she rang me. I made the mistake of answering the phone to her, and she plied and plied and plied me with questions: was it doing this, did it sound like that, did it swerve like this, did it turn into a Transformer and blow shit up like that, blah blah blah. And I cracked. It wasn’t her fault – as she, in a fit of justified pique at my completely unreasonable response, reminded me, she was trying to help me – but a state of heightened sensitivity and agitation that had been threatening for days finally overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t deal with having to think about anything.

She hung up abruptly, telling me she would call our mechanic.

I paced the room for a bit. I ranted on Twitter for a bit. I chewed the tops of my fingers for a bit (acting out?). I cried, simultaneously trying to claw out my eyes, for a bit. I considered resorting to self-harm for a bit. I banged my head off the wall for a bit. I wrote pathetic, whinging paragraphs overusing the term “for a bit” for a bit.

(The last one isn’t true).

My mother interrupted this phase of mentalism by ringing back with the mechanic’s advice (which was to take it to Kwik Fit ((the closest branch being half a mile from here)), rather than to him ((circa 10 miles away)), in case the peelers ((translation for the Non-Norn Irish amongst you: cops)) heard the car roaring and threw three penalty points at me). I don’t know what she said to catalyse it, but in telling her that I had gone mad again, I ended up blathering incoherently in a dysphoric, crying, desperate stream of grammatically disordered bollocks. At this point my mother developed sympathy; although she didn’t let the conversation desist (how can she not know how much I loathe phones by now?! In this case, she was making calls on my behalf!) – indeed, she came off with the usual CBT-like platitudes at which I still shudder after all these years – she did try to be helpful and kind, and I greatly appreciated that.

Long story short (well, vaguely shorter than Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady anyway), I was still blubbering and blabbering aimlessly when A came home, but his presence helped to enable me to eventually get Mum off the phone. Not having to use the device calmed me a little, but the nasty experience didn’t entirely abate.

Mum rang again yesterday to advise that an appointment had been scheduled with the local Kwik Fit for what is now today. Objectively good, subjectively night-marish. She observed that I seemed capable of conversing in a more standard version of English than that to which she had been subjected the previous evening, and as such assumed that I was ‘better’ (which I was, if you count ‘depressed’ as better than ‘depressed and agitated’).

In the course of the ensuing conversation, therefore, she asked me a lot of questions about the awards ceremony, and I was forced to lie directly to her. So I didn’t win then? Oh no, no [feigned casualness]. But they must’ve mentioned my name? Oh you know… No, she doesn’t know. Well…no… [Outraged and aghast] Good Lord, my name didn’t even crop up?!! [Brainwave] Well, it was a subsidiary award, not one of the ‘main’ ones. Oh right. Well, that’s a shame. [Thank God, maybe that's an end to it].

So where was the presentation? [Shit]. Er…in South London. South London’s quite big, don’t I know? OK, the Southbank of the Thames. But she wants to know the name of the place. Er…er…[fucking traitorous mind goes blank]…the BFI [she won't know what that is, so it's OK]. What does that stand for, she wonders? [Resigned now]. British Film Institute.

And so on, and so on, and so on. I don’t blame her for her curiosity – it’s my fault she found out about the whole thing in the first place – but I hate having to wing this bullshit and keep up the enduring pretence that this persona demands.

I don’t generally have any particular moral conscience about lying; I’m a selfish bitch, and it benefits me occasionally (I should punctuate that statement by saying that this is more historical than current; for example, the old teenage favourite of “I’m staying at a friend’s” rather than “we’re going to an over 21s bar in a dodgy area until 6am”, which was so frequently followed with lies to cover the first lies, then lies to cover those lies, ad bloody nauseum. I don’t often have cause to lie these days, but as observed I am selfish, so I couldn’t rule out employing it as a potential tool of convenience). However, lying about something so (relatively) huge feels like a big, fat pile of fuckery sitting in my mind.

I discussed this a little once before. Look what this blog has become. I’ve been writing it, at times very prolifically, for two and a half years. As was noted in the introduction to it at the Mind Awards, I don’t just a write a few sentences going “life is a pile of steaming wank” every so often; I write essays. Reams and reams and reams and reams. Look at the support network that I’ve developed from this writing and from the associated Twitter account. To use an arrogant word that I thoroughly detest, but which seems apt in context, look what I’ve “achieved”; a versatile array of lovely online recognitions, and, in this particular arena (ie. blogging/social media), what is probably the biggest mental health award in the UK.

And my mother knows nothing - nothing – about it. That is fucked. That is seriously fucked.

I mean, she knows I write stuff, and that it’s about mental health. My own idiocy alerted her to the fact that I was nominated for something big for said writing. She knows I do it pseudonymously. But that’s it. If I have any talent in writing – something of which I remain unconvinced – then, in this context at least, she can never “appreciate” it.

It’s a necessity, but it’s one that I bitterly regret.

Anyway, off I go on a pointless and rambling soliloquy yet again. My point, were I ever to sodding well make it, is that this huge, suffocating, grotesque lie added to my distress over the week. London, the hotel and the concert were great, but they were exhausting too, especially given the short timeframe in which they all came to pass. Christmas is closing its sky-scraping, dark walls in on me. The car trouble was a serious stressor. And I had no choice but to shove a gag of deceit down my mother’s throat.

So, although as I endlessly harp on, I believe that my mentalness is largely non-reactive, I think this particular mentalist incident (or set thereof) was (were) attributable to this cosmic confluence of events. Everything just came at once, and, overwhelmed, I couldn’t cope with it all. Whilst arguably my particular expression of the stress – thought/speech disorder, disproportionate anxiety, ruminative propensities towards self-harm as a “solution” – may have been examples of insanity, I don’t think that being upset and fucked off per se was anything other than quite normal. Even for a normal. If you know what I mean. Which would be rather impressive, because I don’t.

Anyfuckingway. Today arrived with the threat of having to see people (and see people without someone with me for support) in the form of having to go to bastarding Kwik Fit (each time I’ve typed that in this post, my fingers have behaved innately and tried to type Quick Fit. Why can’t companies just use the English language properly and stop trying to be “clever”?!).

I rose from my pit with a heavy heart. I went out for a smoke, got dressed (entirely, and quite typically, bypassing the “and washed” part. I never have written about my ablutophobia here, have I? I must do so one of these days) and left the house with the reluctance of a lover of life walking to the gallows. I am pathetic in the most fundamental of ways. Who in their right mind (well…) is filled with abject terror at the thought of getting their car exhaust fixed?!!!

So off I went, my transport ominously dragging me forth (read: car angrily growling and reverberating), to cross the seas of Acheron (drive up the road a bit). After quite a few irritated looks but, fortunately, no examples of Scylla and Charybdis (police*) accosting me, I duly found myself staring fearfully into the gaping infernos of Hades (Kwik Fit). I withdrew my last remaining hope of rescue from the final good vestige of my soul (took the keys out of the ignition) and proceeded onward to Tartarus, my final destination (the Kwik Fit reception).

(* That one’s quite dubious, but those two did fuck you up if you ran into either of them, just like the peelers probably would, so the crappy analogy works for me.

…

Oh, hang on. It wasn’t the police that fuck you up. It was your parents. How could I possibly have thought that Larkin had existential commentary on the police to whine out in his musings? They fuck you up, the police. It doesn’t quite work, does it? Hmm. I’m fighting a losing battle with classically depressing poetry here. This is not good. But just for clarification: Scylla and Charybdis are perfect metaphors for the ills of modern policing, and if you don’t agree, then you are wrong. Sorry, GCHQ.).

OK, enough of that pretentiously moronic guff. Terrified, I went into Qu… Kwik Fit. In what should have been an Oscar-winning performance, I confidently and charismatically explained to the bloke why I was there. He was talkative and friendly – and, to my exasperated shock, made me feel at ease. He took and checked the car, returned, and told me what was wrong. What was particularly impressive was that he took me underneath the car and specifically showed me the damage (the centre-piece had separated from the still-present tailpipe). He checked that he had a replacement part in stock, told me to come back in 45 minutes and…well, and that was that.

I went and had lunch…alone. Well, alone except for my Kindle. Result, Pan. Result! I rang my mother – she had made me promise to do so – to report on what had occurred, then I went back to Kwik Fit and waited for the car. In a few minutes, Friendly Bloke confirmed it was ready; I paid him, he wished me a merry Christmas (which, even though I hate the silly festival, was a lovely sentiment), I reciprocated, and I left. With a beautifully silent, functional, darling little car.

And I felt OK.

And the car was OK.

So I felt more OK.

Which is…OK :)

—

Actually, it’s not entirely OK. I’m not really in great form at all (it could be worse, but you know what I mean), and there’s no particular reason anymore. But I wanted to end the post on a high note! So…er…here’s a more genuine one.

Most of you are probably aware of this, but just in case you’ve missed it, voting is now open for the 2011 This Week in Mentalists awards. You can vote for your favourite blogs and discover lots of new ones over here! And if you’re new to TWIM, don’t be shy. It’s a welcoming place.

Mind Media Awards: The 2011 Presentation, Part Two (The Full Version)

 Blog News, Life  14 Responses »
Dec 022011
 

I Don’t Know Where to Start

So, in the time-honoured tradition of writers everywhere and everywhen (well, it makes structural sense, does it not?), let’s start at the very beginning (/ A very good place to start / When you read, you begin with A-B-C / When you sing you begin with doh-ray-me / etc etc etc. It’s kind of hard not to break into song when something like this has just happened to you).

As you know, I found out that I had been short-listed for this prestigious (to use Mind’s parlance) award back in September. That was astonishing; I know I’ve won awards before, but – at the risk of sounding arrogant, and I really don’t mean to – winning something online, however wonderful (and it is wonderful, and I’ve been truly delighted and grateful for every one) is different to being nominated for a full-blown ceremonial thing like this, complete with short-listers, judging panels, large presentations with hosts and actual, real, tangible trophies. But you must understand, because this is just a personal blog – how many millions of the things are out there by now? – I was utterly stunned to have made it into a shortlist, and truly never thought I could ever win something so huge. Why would I have thought that even possible?

Between learning of the nomination and going to the awards, I had time to look at the other nominees in my category. I already knew Dawn Willis – the fabulous author of News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy, which is not only an excellent blog, but a truly invaluable news aggregation resource in relation to mental health – and seeing her blog alone convinced me that I couldn’t win, because what she does is of much more value than me barking on about taking tablets and ceaselessly moaning about how crap my life is.

Then I looked at the other entries. The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is a remarkable charity that is aimed at preventing suicide amongst young men. As noted on their site:

Men are three times more at risk of suicide than young women – in 2010 75% of suicides were men. But while smoking and knife crime make the headlines, suicide is the biggest killer. Most men who take their own lives aren’t in contact with any other agency, and don’t identify with much out there. When asked, what they indicated they wanted was practical, anonymous, confidential help from professionals. Which is why CALM was formed.

Not only does CALM run the website, but they also offer a helpline and ‘zones’ where they work with local authorities to give access to the project to vulnerable young men. According to the above link, they have been in Merseryside for 10 years – and in that time, suicides amongst the targeted demographic have reduced by 55%. That’s compared to a general UK decline of about 20% across the same period. How awesome is that? How and why would or could anyone deem me – a unpaid but nonetheless professional whinger – able to compete with that?!

Next up was the YouTube video on trichotillomania that had been short-listed…and I was bowled over. Wow. Go and watch it. Now. It’s quite long by YouTube standards – but once you’ve been watching it for a minute or two, you’ll no longer realise that, because you’ll be mesmerised under its spell. Go on, off you go. This dirge of mine will still be here for you to peruse when you’re finished.

Beckie0, as video-maker Rebecca Brown is known online, was only 16 (she’s now 18) when she made this short film about a relatively little known mental health issue. That in itself is remarkable – it takes a fuckload of courage to speak out so openly in the way that she has done, especially with the potential demon of peer pressure lurking snake-like around a young person affected by a mental health condition. Plus she has the insight and wisdom of someone so much older – which sounds like a patronising load of bollocks, but I do mean it in good faith. She is also charismatic and intelligent, and the video is technically brilliant.

So, I had three truly heavy-weight competitors. The judging panel was, in A’s view especially, made up of quite a few individuals whose primary expertise lay in televisual media, and to that end he and I both believed that Beckie would win the New Media category – especially considering her entry was so deserving of winning by virtue of its own merits.

I genuinely didn’t mind. I thought, “well, I’ll go to this event, and I’ll meet some cool people, maybe meet some contacts and get my name ‘out there’, blah blah blah”. As I’ve already discussed, it was an absolute honour to even receive the nomination, especially in memory of Mark Hanson.

Mark was a social and new media strategist for, amongst others, the UK Labour party. I’ll admit that I hadn’t been aware of him before I received the nomination for the award in his name, but after that I did look into his work – and it was extremely impressive and wide-ranging. Yet beneath what by all accounts was confident exterior, Mark suffered from anxiety and severe depression, and tragically killed himself in early March.

After his death, his widow Clare Francis and Money Supermarket, for whom she works, ran half-marathons for Mind, raising about £10,000. She wrote movingly about this on Mind’s blog, and I was struck by the strength she exuded in her writing, and that she’d also evidently been exhibiting over what must have been an unimaginable nine months.

Although I didn’t think for any more than half a second that I could win the award, had I done so, I would not have considered myself even remotely worthy of receiving something sponsored by such a remarkable and courageous woman in memory such of a talented and popular man. I still don’t see myself as thus meritorious – but that being said, I feel humbled and privileged that I did get it. It’s a privilege beyond anything I could ever have expected.

This is getting rather long (what a surprise that is). As you can see, in short – I genuinely, honestly did not think I would win. And neither did A – not, he opined, because he thought I was unworthy, but because to him I probably just wasn’t what the judges would be looking for. We also concurred that the amount of cunting fucking swearing on this shittery fuckwipe of a twatting blog found here was likely to preclude me from any real chance of claiming a prize.

A was so confident in these beliefs that he said he’d give me £100 if I did win.

I jokingly replied, “make it a thousand and we’re on.”

“OK,” he replied.

I paused for a second, waiting for him to laugh in confirmation that he knew I hadn’t been serious. However, the expected cachinnation did not duly transpire.

“I was taking the piss,” I explained. “I do not expect you to give me £1,000.”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to, because you’re not going to win it. And if, in the 99.9999999999th percentile chance that you do, then I will give you £1,000. But, again, it’s moot. You won’t get it.”

Believing utterly that he was right, I chuckled and moved on.

That is how much I didn’t expect to win this thing.

Monday – D-Day

I didn’t sleep well in London at all, even though we were staying in a perfectly reasonable and quiet hotel (albeit basic); I was waking about 3.30 to 4am each morning, and Monday was no exception.

So, in that morning’s early hours, I woke to the bleak blackness that only the sun’s downtime can bring. A was asleep, so I couldn’t comfort myself with the television (not that there’s anything comforting about BBC News 24, which is the channel I would have turned to, in this day and age anyway), and for reasons I don’t recall I didn’t check my phone until a few hours later.

When I did look at it, I decided to start my own personal hashtag on Twitter (the more general one being #mindawards) to discuss the awards ceremony; my intention had been to use it for ease of reference when writing a post about the event. It was to be comprised of the intended compendium of live, as-it-happened tweets, rather than this usual tired, ballbag-eric prose. Sadly, that idea fucked up in the end, but I’ll get to that later.

As I lay there staring at nothing, I could feel my muscles tighten, my stomach churn, my breath quicken. I willed fate or providence or the arbiters of bloody space-time to just make it Tuesday morning. Despite ramblings about 10 days ago which described how I was looking forward to the ceremony, I knew I’d be shitting myself come the day itself – but ‘shitting myself’ turned into a full blown oh fucking hell, I’m going to die right here, right now, in a dank underground room in an anonymous London hotel panic attack.

I got up and took a Diazepam. It didn’t work. I got up and took a second Diazepam. It didn’t work. Eventually, A woke up and, duly noting my restless agitation, advised me to take a Diazepam. I advised A that I had already consumed two of the aforementioned sweets pills. A shrugged (presumably knowing that I only take the things in times of great stress, his resultant opinion being that an occasional 15mg isn’t a huge deal) and advised me to take it anyway. I did.

And…lo and be-fucking-hold, it granted me some mercy and actually bloody worked. I don’t remember if I went back to sleep or not – I might have done – but either way, the next clear recollection I have was of going round the corner to get a pub lunch, and being pretty much entirely fine.

Away We Go

I could detail the ridiculous palaver I went through whilst I was getting ready, but if you’re not bored already, then the tale of my struggles to adequately attire myself would surely fucking kill you. So instead, after I had clad myself in my preposterous disguise, off we trotted to the tube. I kept glancing about me, fearfully expecting half the world to be watching the weird woman with the bizarre curly read hair and hat in bemused repulsion – but no one seemed to give a flying duck’s arse. Sometimes I love London – it’s such a diverse city that no one really has time nor inclination to care about someone looking ‘alternative’. If I wore what I wore that day here – and actually, I’d like to, because I was quite pleased with it – then I’d be subjected not only to stares, but to abuse by groups of teenage males who’d be much more amenable to me if they were peripatetic NPCs in Saints Row: The Third.

We took the tube to Borough and headed to a pub close to the Cross Bones graveyard, where Zarathustra (Z) of The Not So Big Society fame was due to meet us. Perhaps this is a good point at which to note that I was able to bring five guests. These were A (obviously!); Z (as noted); Carrie Holroyd, an activist with Young Minds and a freelance mental health writer that I’ve known online for some time; and my wonderful best friend Daniel and his lovely partner Craig.

The Before

To cut a long story short(er), eventually all of us – Carrie excepted, as she met us just before we all went into the auditorium – ended up in the National Theatre for a pre-ceremony drink.

Z asked me if I had crafted an acceptance speech. I looked conspiratorially at A, then turned back to Z and laughed in his face.

“Why the fuck would I?” I asked him, in all sincerity. “I’m not going to win the thing.”

Z furrowed his brow slightly. “I think you have a chance,” he replied.

I scoffed, and if memory serves me correctly, I might even have accused him of being somewhat delusional. Not anything of which to be ashamed, clearly, but still not cognisant of reality ;)

When Daniel arrived, he almost immediately stated that I seemed really nervous. Curiously though, by that point, I wasn’t – or, at least, not consciously. That said, after a 15 minute fight in the woman’s bogs with the fucking high heels that I’d been idiotic enough to think I could wear for an entire bloody evening, off we trotted (stumbled in my case) next door to the awards venue, the Southbank BFI. Here anxiety threatened, briefly, to paralyse me (or catalyse me into fleeing – not that the heels would have permitted that, the evil bastards) – but in the end, I managed far better than I ever thought I would. I was a bit rambly at points, I know, and I’m pretty certain I made a tit of myself, but it could have been a lot worse.

Dan, having detected that perhaps now I was slightly struggling (I’ve known him for over half my life – other than A, I don’t think anyone knows me better), grabbed an angelic glass of red wine as it floated by, and thrust it into my hand. I sipped at it with relieved gladness, and felt myself gravitating towards a table where – although I couldn’t sit – I could at least stand with support and not topple over. Fucking Shoes. Anyway, I’d just stuck some crisp thing or other into my fat gob when a tall gentleman approached me, and asked if I was the person responsible for the Serial Insomniac blog. Trying my hardest – and failing – to swallow the stupid, calorie-laden piece of nourishment I’d just lifted, I responded in the affirmative, apologising to the man for eating with my mouth full. He introduced himself as Matt [Wilkinson], one of the judges, and told me – to my stunned delight – that he wanted to let me know how “brilliant” my blog was. I was really touched that he’d specifically taken the time to come over and tell me that.

Unfortunately, at that point the BFI staff were asking us to move into the auditorium, so I didn’t get long to chat to Matt, but he did tell me that the New Media category had been particularly strong (a statement with which I obviously entirely agreed).

The During

Having found Carrie somewhere along the way, all six of us strode forth into the classy auditorium (or, more accurately, five of us did. I tiptoed, wobbled and tripped my way in. As I did so, I seriously pondered whether I should take off the Fucking Shoes and throw them into the close-by Thames – but I swear the things are malevolently alive. They would have crawled out of their watery non-grave and come to avenge themselves by embarrassing me in front of all the assembled attendees at the ceremony). As we chose our seats, Z suggested I sit on the outside, “just in case” I had to get out to the stage. I rolled my eyes, but acquiesced.

As I said somewhere way, way up above, in the figurative Gods of this post, I had intended to live tweet from the event, but the reception was abysmal inside the plush and comfortable auditorium. I managed to send a few text messages to Twitter – one about the introduction given by Paul Farmer, Mind’s Chief Executive, another about the opening speech from Rebecca Front, the actress and comedian hosting the presentation. By some miracle of telecommunications, I even managed a few messages about the winners of both the journalism and student journalism awards. At that juncture, though, the telecommunication gods decided to withdraw their support. My phone decided it would absolutely not work at all any more, and as I was trying to piss about with the settings in the hope that I could force its co-operation, I dropped the fucker. Predictably enough, it was not good enough for the phone to fall merely in front of me – oh no, it fucking richocheted off the row in front of me and made its merry way off to Temporary Phone Oblivion. So ended my spurious attempts at live tweeting.

I can’t remember the exact order of the ceremony, because it wasn’t in the chronology listed in either the programme for the evening nor the online short-list pages. So, before I move on to discussion of the New Media presentation, let me say a few words (as if!) on some of the entries that I especially liked. Z has written a great post on this over at The Not So Big Society, and I agree with nearly all of what he said (the exception being the bits about me!), but I’ll offer a few views anyway.

Josh Jackson, who won the Student Journalist category, had made a remarkably touching and brave film about his experiences of depression entitled Suffering in Silence (which is now available here – go and watch it! I’ll still be here when you get back – we’re only 3,000 words in, after all ;) ). The other two nominees in this category did seem excellent, but the very personal nature of Josh’s piece really struck a chord with me, and I was delighted when it was his name read out as winner. A few whoops from the audience confirmed that I was far from alone in seeing him as an extremely worthy recipient.

Victoria Derbyshire’s Radio 5 Alcoholic GP won the News and Current Affairs gong. As the clip of her show was played, I found even my cynical self genuinely moved by the content, and the implications thereof. Granted, the GP did most of the talking in that particular segment, with Ms Derbyshire only speaking at certain points – but to me that was the entire point. She knew exactly when it was appropriate to ask questions or add sensitive comments, and seemed to have an innate appreciation of how she should handle her words and tone. In her acceptance speech, she said that the team behind the show were still in touch with the GP, and that she was “working very hard.” I’m sure neither of them will ever read this, but just in case, I wish them both all the very best.

The Speech Radio winner was, again, a Radio 5 programme, this time looking at the life of Robert Enke, the German footballer who sadly killed himself two years ago. This too was a poignant and eloquent documentary, and it felt all the more tragically appropriate in the immediate aftermath of the awful news of Gary Speed‘s death. A Life Too Short highlighted the strains inherent in sporting professions, and how living in such a ‘macho’ world make it difficult for those affected to speak out.

And speaking of…well, of speaking out. There was a non-categorised, special award for doing just that, and I think we were all thrilled and delighted when we learnt that it was Beckie0′s superlative YouTube video that won that award. I had actually felt guilty about winning the New Media category in lieu of her, such was the candour and courage she displayed. So this was really well deserved, and I was thrilled for her.

I have no idea if Beckie ever did face any form of intolerance due to her condition – but if she did, I think we can rather definitively say that she had the last laugh.

So You Won It?

Yes. Weren’t you reading the other day?!

The very worst part of the evening, which in a perverse, adrenaline-ODing sort of way was also the most thrilling, was when Rebecca Front said, “…and now to the Mark Hanson New Media Award…”

I felt as if I’d been stabbed with a live wire encumbered with a form anxiety that would cripple even a wooly fucking mammoth. My pulse quickened, my mouth went dry and I could scarcely breathe.

Ohmygodohmygodohmyfuckingfuckinggod.

Why? Who the hell knows? It doesn’t make any sense to me, as – as was extensively discussed above – I thought I knew I wouldn’t win. So why would I be so nervous? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, especially given that until that point, save for the incident in the early morning, I’d felt surprisingly OK about the whole thing.

Anyway, Rebecca invited Donna Franceschild, one of the judges of the awards and a BAFTA-winning TV writer, to the stage to present the award. As Donna reached the podium, she advised – poignantly, and to my personal smiles – that Clare Francis, Mark Hanson’s wife, was in situ. She was asked to also come up on stage.

Donna then proceeded to read out descriptions of the short-listed entries.

My heart stopped beating.

I heard the terms “beautifully written”, “by turns heart-breaking and hilarious” and “essays” (I loved that one) bouncing about the room without really being sure that they were being levied at Confessions. Of course, there was a giant screenshot of this blog behind the stage, so I don’t really know where my confusion came from; perhaps it was some weird form of dissociative mechanism for dealing with the surge of adrenaline pumping through and suffocating every capillary of my body.

[Amusing aside: Mind's PR company, Keystone, had asked me to send them screenshots several weeks ago. I sent them the profile image from the top right of the sidebar, which was published in the programme - but I also sent them a copy of the header, in which I had removed the myriad instances of words like 'fuck', 'cunt', 'twatbags' etc. However, when it came to the bit, they had taken a more recent screenshot themselves; although I didn't examine it closely - I didn't think to look at the time and anyway, I was hardly thinking straight - it seems likely that the 'dirtiest' words in the English language were visually blared out to the great and the good of the British media. How pathetic is it that I find this amusing? At 28, I'm still the most puerile person I know].

Donna read out the names of the rest of the nominees and their descriptions. I have to be honest here and admit that I don’t remember a word of what she said; my head was somewhere in a cloud-cuckoo land of waaaaghhh! The next thing I do remember, though, is watching – as if in slow motion – her picking that envelope up from the lectern. Time stopped as she opened it, and took a breath in readiness to speak.

“And the anonymous winner…” [my emphasis].

Anonymous. Who else was anonymous, Pan? It must have been someone…

“…of the Mark Hanson New Media Award…”

Maybe one of the others uses a pseudonym and I mistook it for a real name? You stupid cow, how could you have missed that?

“…is…”

GAAAAAAH.

“…Confessions of a Serial Insomniac.”

And time stopped standing still, and everything came into focus, yet simultaneously spinned around me and the world suddenly had colours, bright, vibrant colours, and applause, and people on my left-hand side (A and my friends, despite the former just having lost £1,000!) grabbing my arm and grinning madly and speaking words of excited congratulation. Some automated version of me through her hands over her mouth in a gesture of utter shock as soon as the words had left Donna Franceschild’s lips. I turned to my friends, my eyes wide with delight, with disbelief, with oh my God, did you just hear that, with appeals to their ears in case I had misunderstood what had been announced in some sort of warped narcissistic delusional hallucination.

Somehow, I clambered up from my seat and cautiously made my way down the stairs, towards the stage. Curiously, the only thoughts I recall going through my head at the time were along the lines of, “don’t fall, Pan. Don’t fucking fall.” Which I nearly did on the ramp up to the stage, thanks to the Fucking Shoes. But I balanced myself, and eventually found myself in front of Rebecca Front, Donna Franceschild and Clare Francis.

I don’t remember much about that; I remember that I was asked in whispers if, in recognition of my anonymity, I wanted to make a speech; I confirmed that I did, even though I had absolutely nothing prepared. Sorry for not listening to you, Z – you and Dan were right, you told me so, yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I remember slight confusion over whether or not to take the award and certificate or make the speech first. I remember standing at the lectern, seeing a mass of faces in front of me and shaking – but shaking because of the Fucking Shoes trying to murder me, rather than out of the terror one might surely have expected in such a circumstance (incidentally, I did a lot of public speaking at school, and was one of those rare people that enjoyed talking in front of an audience. I know I’m ridden with social anxiety these days, so it would seem odd if I were still thus comfortable, but strangely, I think I was).

I opened my mouth to speak…

It’s Just a Silly Blog

A videoed my speech. The sound on the camera is shit, but insofar as I could hear it, the following is an exact transcript of what I said.

Um, I have nothing prepared – I genuinely didn’t think I would win this but, um, first of all, thank you, and I must say that it’s a great honour to win this in honour* of Mark Hanson – I know [that] Mark was very well known in the social media world and, er, it’s particularly wonderful to see Clare here as well. Um…yeah. I don’t know why people read it – it’s just a silly blog [audience: polite laughter] – but I would like to dedicate the award to them [my readers] and I’d like to thank my friends, some of whom are in the audience here, and particularly my partner who[m] I love very much and who’s been wonderfully supportive during this rollercoaster [me: nervous laughter at the use of a world I loathe in this context] I’ve experienced…so, thank you all very much.

* I used the word ‘honour’ twice in quick succession, which displeases me. In the second instance, it would have been more appropriate to have used ‘memory’.

Nevertheless, for having prepared nothing – literally nothing – beforehand, it could have been a lot worse. Someone on stage – I think it was Rebecca Front – said that it had been a good speech. A number of others reiterated the sentiment afterwards. A later told me that he thought I spoke well, content-wise, but that I sounded nervous (I blame the Fucking Shoes for that). However, he claims – as he claimed of Beckie Brown’s speech also – that our surprise and justified nerves made our acceptances all the more endearing.

As I left the podium, an award and a tube containing my certificate were thrust into my hands. The award is incredible. Bright, shiny, reflective metal, heavy, perfectly engraved with Mind’s logo and font – and my details. MY details. Wow. Just…wow.

The After

The immediate aftermath of the ceremony was a whirlwind. Daniel, who was in tears, flung his arms around me and waxed lyrical about how wonderful he thinks I am which – even though I already knew that he’s sweet enough to think that, it’s still so lovely to hear. We stood and hugged for ages, before he had to dash off (thanks to the Budget the following day, on which he was up to 2am working. Fuck you, Gideon). I remember hugging Craig too before he left. It was only the second time I’d met him – the first only being the day before – but I like him. He and Dan seem to ‘work’ together, and I really hope their relationship lasts.

People, so many people, they came to offer congratulations, to offer interest in what I write, to chat, to be wonderful. I had to wait around in the auditorium for a few official pictures, and gave what were probably waffly, nervous answers to a number of questions the photographer, along with Clare, Donna and Rebecca, had been kind enough to ask. In my defence, the Fucking Shoes were conspiring to plot my (literal and metaphorical) downfall, and I was still on a nervy-adrenaline high, so if any of the four of you are reading this, sorry if I seemed like a twat!

Back in the lobby, I was advised by someone – I’m not sure who, sorry – that there had been a minor Twitter storm about my win. I felt dreadful that I’d not been able to announce it there myself as I would have liked, and I know that one or two of you noticed that omission ;) I believe that the madness started when Mind themselves tweeted about the result of the New Media Award and, subsequently, about my acceptance speech. As he’d left the auditorium, I know Z intended to announce it too, so even though I failed you, at least you knew :)

I’ve apologised for this on Twitter, but lest you missed it: when I had a chance to check my client, I was completely overwhelmed with @mentions. Seriously, there was something like 100 of them. I know if you’re a celebrity that must seem like an infinitesimal amount even by the standards of fuck all squared, but for me? That was a lot. There was no way I could respond to them all individually so my only viable option was to send a more general tweet thanking everyone, in the hope that said everyone would see it.

I Met…

I met Dawn, who was lovely, gracious, flattering, and so wonderfully enthusiastic about social media, and the quiet revolution in mental health that blogging and Twitter are making. I met Beckie, who is every bit as smart and charming in reality as she is on YouTube. I met Dan from CALM, who was a really friendly and truly interesting guy, really (and rightly!) positive about the great work he’s doing. Watch this space for news of a potential guest post for the CALM site :)

I met Taryn, Mind’s Digital Officer, who’ve I’ve known on Twitter since I reviewed Wendy Perriam’s Broken Pieces for them. She was great – bubbly, charismatic, full of good conversation. I met her colleagues Matt and Eve too – and guess what? They were lovely! I met several more of her colleagues later when I did a voxpop for them – more on that shortly – but I can’t remember their names and I feel awful about that because…yep, that’s right: they were lovely.

I properly spoke to Carrie, who was a delight, for the first time, mainly about the excellence that is Babylon 5 – however, our conversation was cut all too short by something or other, so I suppose I’ll just have to meet her again soon to make up for that ;) I met @YouMustBeMental, who had bravely come to the occasion on her own, but who was easy-going, great to chat to and all-round good craic. I met Mark Brown from One in Four (look out for my article rounding up blogs in its next issue), who was a gentleman. I met Liz Main, one of the judges who, by random coincidence, is married to a (relatively) local bloke that A and I have known on Twitter for months. Small world! I met Paul Farmer, Mind’s Chief Executive, who is nothing like the stereotypical stuck-up Executive type – he was, instead, friendly, congratulatory and thoroughly down-to-Earth. And I met so, so many more – and I haven’t a single negative word to say about any of them. I was convinced that there would be a few pricks who were a bit up their own arses, but seriously, if there were any such people there, I did not encounter any of them.

Perhaps most intriguingly, I also met one of the short-listers – I’m so sorry, but if you’re reading this, I never did catch your name…*blushes*…maybe you can give us a wave?! :) – and learnt some of the inside story.

It turns out that A and I had been partially correct that the language used on Confessions could have been detrimental to the possibility of me winning the award. The (guess what?) lovely girl to whom I was talking said it was actually a bit of a challenge to get the blog onto the shortlist for this reason. However, it wasn’t so much the multitude of ‘fuck’s and ‘cunt’s that were the problem – but more my penchant for what could be considered stigmatic nomenclature. For example, “batshit”. “Doolally” (Paul always liked that one, though). The self-directed commonality of “mental freak” and similar accolades. References to “catching the bus” or “topping oneself”. For the avoidance of doubt, my informant did not give me any specific examples of that to which was objected, but I think it was mainly that kind of thing. It seems that I ultimately got away with it because the references were frequently tongue-in-cheek, used satirically, or were self-, rather than widely-, directed. Also, I address the matter directly in my ‘About‘ page, stating that I can be rather crass at times, but that I do aim to break barriers and fight stigma. In a way, there is part of me that wants to reclaim these terms for the mentalist lexicon; the LGBTQ community admirably did it with, for instance, ‘queer’, so why not those of us that are mad?

Voxy-Poppy

As noted briefly above, at one point Taryn asked me to do a voxpop for Mind’s website, a proposition to which I agreed. This may seem like the most monumentally moronic thing in which an anonymous blogger could partake – but honestly, the disguise was goooooooood. I really looked nothing like my real self at all, so I’m confident that the video taken will not lead to my identification. After all, _why the lucky stiff got away with parading himself publicly for ages whilst maintaining his anonymity, and he wasn’t even trying to hide his real looks. [/gratuitous geek reference].

I felt that I muddled myself quite a bit in the first two questions of the voxpop, although the lady conducting the interview – yet another lovely person whose name I have, to my disgusted regret, forgotten – seemed appreciative of my answers. The third though, as verified by the observing A, went better. The question was something about the profundity of social media in the lives of people with mental illness, and I proffered my sincerely-held view that were it not for Twitter, and to a lesser extent blogging, I would be dead today. Fuck you, Nadine Dorries (not that I said that on tape, of course ;) ). I know I wax lyrical about this all the time, but it does merit reiteration; Twitter is the best support group – and, by dent of that, therapy – that I’ve ever come across. Words fail here, so I’ll offer an inadequate but sincere ‘thank you’ once again.

The After-After

Things started wrapping up towards 10.30pm or so, and off back to the hotel headed A and I, saying our farewells to Z at Waterloo Station.

We got back, drained and exhausted, but thrilled and elated at the same time.

Knowing that I had won this thing, this thing that I didn’t feel I really deserved but about which I was nonetheless genuinely thrilled, was surreal. So surreal, in fact, that I started packing (even though we didn’t leave until Wednesday) and then went to bed, rather than gawking in awe at the beautiful trophy. It was only the next day, whilst sitting in a pub waiting for a brief but welcome meet-up with Dan, that I really felt it. As I said to A, I couldn’t stop thinking about the award and how unutterably and stunningly humbling it was that people actually like this nonsense and somehow see it as being valuable.

Because, Thank God, It Has to End Somewhere

So it ends – almost – here. In conclusion – what an incredible night, and what incredible people I was both fortunate enough to meet, and am fortunate enough to know.

So, as I leave this preposterously-even-by-my-standards post, let me do one more raft of thanks. I’d especially like to thank Clare, Donna and Rebecca for presenting me with the award. Thanks to Keystone – and, in particular, Jenny – for their organisation of the event, and especially for their efforts in maintaining my anonymity. Thanks to Taryn and the other digital folks at Mind for all their hard and valuable work, and to the BFI staff for running around with booze and food for us ;)

Zarathustra, Carrie and Craig – it was an honour to have you there with me, and your support and congratulations were immeasurable to me. Phil Groom – not only are you a gentleman of the…er…gentlest proportions, I know that you were one of the people that nominated me for this honour, and I appreciate that more than you know. I appreciate you more than you know. @bourach – meeting you on Saturday was absolutely brilliant, and when I said this blog would not have existed in the first place but for you, I meant it. You won’t believe me, but I don’t care; I think you’re strong, smart, witty, and just generally terrific. And to all of my wonderful, supportive, passionate, intelligent and ever-entertaining readers – all the superlatives in this post and the award itself are completely dedicated to you. Thank you again. You really are teh absolute r0ck0rz.

If you’re eagle-eyed, or if you’re one of the personnel concerned, you’ll notice some glaring omissions here. Firstly, Daniel. I’ve known him for over half my life now, and although the Irish Sea has nefariously separated us for 10 years, the mark and strength of a friendship – a proper, loving, symmetrical friendship – is its enduring longevity and ability to ‘pick up where you left off’. That could not be more accurate in this case. Daniel, you’ve been a constant in my life for so long, and you have never once let me down. Also, you’re an idiot. A puerile, irreverent, off-the-wall idiot – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, you daft sod, and thank you for everything, always.

My mother will probably – by turns hopefully and sadly – never read this, but of course none of it would be possible without her. That she doesn’t know that I’ve achieved this makes me feel full of nauseated regret and woe – but I’d rather that than ruin her life, or even possibly endanger her very existence, what with the dark revelations that so frequently inhabit this blog. But lest she ever does read it, and lest anyone else be in any doubt, I love her very, very much and without her I would not only not be writing, but I would be dead.

And you, A. Thanks for the grand, Mister! (Yes, he really did pay up on the back of my ridiculous joke! Such an action truly makes me look sane). It’ll come in handy ;)

Seriously. There’s no doubt that I’d be six feet under (or lying at the bottom of Beachy Head or something) without you and your unwavering support, companionship, private sentimentality and profound love. Maybe I don’t always show it, and fuck knows I don’t say it often enough – but I know I’m so, so lucky to have you in my life, and I love you to the ends of the Earth.

Over and out. (Finally. Well done to anyone that got this far. What kind of sad life you must lead to have read all of this. Similar to the kind of sad life I lead by having written it all. OK. Enough. Really. Gone now. Vanished. Bye.).

Mind Media Awards: The 2011 Presentation, Part One

 Blog News  16 Responses »
Nov 292011
 

I have a hundred million observations to write about last night’s Mind Media Awards ceremony, but being as I am still in London, I’m constrained by the limitations presented by iPhone blogging applications, and the frustratingly shite battery capacity of said phone. So I will post more on this – either tomorrow evening or on Thursday – but I couldn’t not say something in the immediate aftermath of the event.

The Mind staff are lovely. All of them, especially Digital Officer Taryn – but all of them. And it was an honour to speak, albeit briefly, to Paul Farmer, the Chief Executive (who, again, was lovely!).

I had been slightly apprehensive about hob-nobbing with many well-known media types, but they too were lovely.

Most of all, the other nominees were incredible and inspirational human beings; to even be deemed worthy of being in their company was an incredible honour.

But I won it. I WON IT. I really did. I won it. I have a beautiful trophy, and a beautiful certificate.

I can’t believe it. I’m stunned into virtual speechlessness. But I am so humbled, so honoured, so much in awe of the amazing people I met at this once in lifetime occasion.

I don’t know what to say. Why do you read this rubbish? Why do you like it?!

But I’m thrilled and humbled beyond measure that you do, and that this silly blog – as I described it in my acceptance speech – has been deemed worthy of this amazing honour.

Thank you. Seriously, thank you, all of you. Many of you lot have kept me alive over the last 30ish months, and I love you all.

Here it is – dedicated to you, my wonderful readers:

20111129-142418.jpg

Ending Therapy: How To (Mostly But Not Entirely) Do It Properly – Paul: Week 25, Part II

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  3 Responses »
Oct 282011
 

This post is continued from here. What follows will not make a great deal of sense unless you’ve read that first; however, it mostly likely won’t make a great deal of sense if you have. I disclaim any culpability for the boredom, confusion and irritation at the mammoth self-indulgence that you will find in the forthcoming. If you want to ruin 20 minutes of your day by continuing to tolerate this complete and utter nonsense, then you do so at YOUR OWN RISK. Now, rather than bother with this bullshit, why don’t you have yourself a nice pint instead?

—

After a contemplative silence, Paul moved back to discussing my writing projects; he wanted to know what they were about. I was forced to admit that everything I have been doing in this sphere has been about mentalism. Even my proposed novel is going to be about mental health issues.

I defended the piece for Rethink on the grounds that it is about my recovery from borderline personality disorder. As I stated to Paul, there is a false perception that BPD is incurable and that, furthermore, there are a billion myths out there about how people with the disorder can’t have loving relationships, or that they’re abusive, etc etc, ad infinitum (Zarathustra noted that I’d debunked some of this bullwank in my writing of this blog, which I hope is true). In that way, I think that article was a very important one to write, because these fallacies need to be corrected, and people afflicted with BPD deserve to have some genuine hope of recovery.

However, as I’m sure many of you will agree, living a life narrative entirely dictated by one’s mental illness is a potentially dangerous idea. I should, at least sometimes, write about normal stuff (insofar as anything is ‘normal’). I told him that I was considering resurrecting the Not as Smart as Pandora Braithwaite blog, which had once been my haven to bang on about telly, the arseholery of Facebook, gaming – normal things in which I take an interest, rather than being devoted to the exclusive domain of mental health or the lack thereof.

Indeed, at about the time of this session, when I was feeling so much better, my prolific posting here on Confessions went notably down. This was because I was living in that fabled place called real life and, y’know…doing stuff.

“Well,” he said, looking piercingly over his glasses at me, “I take what you’re saying, and mostly agree. But you don’t want to be too sane in your writing. That would see you suppressing that pained part of yourself yet again.”

Ha. Would it really. I don’t often use this blog to ‘let loose’ with feeling and emotion, and I am certainly not going to do that with any published pieces. That is just not me.

Rather than labour the point, though, I returned to my old favourite Freudian dictum about the transition from “hysteria” to “ordinary unhappiness.”

To my considerable consternation, Paul started quoting that arsehole R.D. Laing whose tolchock, were he still alive, I would take pleasure in punching. Paul claims that, as per Laing’s advice, he suspends his concept of normality when working with clients. At some point or another, he also alluded to Adam Philips and his book Going Sane. In short, he was blathering about how we are all mad in our own way. Laing-hatred notwithstanding, I did have to concede that point to him.

“The problem I face,” I sighed, “is that I have been out of work for so long now that all I know is mentalness and the pertinent issues surrounding it. It has entirely become my life, yet people in the real world don’t care. They don’t spend their days talking about psychosis or manic depression or borderline personality disorder. They talk about the weather, last night’s shit TV, politics and salary cuts. They don’t care.” I briefly (and anonymously) alluded to a post that Seaneen had written on this subject (a second excellent article she wrote on the issue for One in Four can be found here).

Seaneen is still highly involved with organisations like Rethink, but her own mental health is not the sole kaleidoscope through which she sees life these days; her life is about her boyfriend, her family and friends, and her mental health nursing course, which is an amazing thing, and something to which to aspire. Could it ever be that way for me, though? I have no idea, but one thing I do know is that I have a right gob on me, and whether normals care or not, I will end up talking about mentalism. I mean, I just won’t walk into a room and go, “hi, my name’s Pandora. Yours? … Nice name, I like that. Anyway, I’m mental. … No, I mean really mental. I had borderline personality disorder and still have manic depression and complex PTSD with psychotic and dissociative features. … Hey! Where are you going? … What did I say?!” No, obviously not like that. But if someone says, “where did you get that scar from?” or “so, what were you doing before I met you?” I am going to tell them the truth (see my posts on speaking up here and here).

Having babbled all that out, I concluded my monologue to Paul by saying that although I’m not sure about the accuracy of the perennial ‘one in four’ statistic, that at least it serves as a sort of motif to highlight the prevalence of mental health difficulties in society. “So why not speak up?” I pondered. “Fuck stigma. Fighting it is my cause célèbre.”

He said, “I work five days a week, and I’m off for two – so I get a break from the intensity that inevitably comes with my job. You, however, never get a break from your mind.”

I nodded pointlessly.

He went on, “so wouldn’t it be nice if you could not be mental for, say, two days a week?”

I nodded pointlessly again.

“So…could you take a break from your cause célèbre for a couple of days a week?”

Of course I can. I already do. I don’t spend every single sodding day trying to play some sort of omnipotent mental health warrior advocate. However, that does not mean that I can somehow turn off my mind during those non-advocacy periods, as his penultimate comment had insinuated. If it were that simple, I would have no mental health problems at all, would I?!

Nevertheless, he asked me in what activities I could engage that did not pertain to madness. I monotoned out the usual list you might expect to see on the ‘what are your interests’ section of a social network or dating profile. For some reason, that led to a short discussion around my frequent disconnections from the world at large – how I push this laptop away, religiously ignore my phone, and hide alone in my living room, pretending that no one else exists.

I shrugged. “That’s not healthy, is it?”

“There’s a fine line there,” Paul replied, cocking his head in muse. “Overall I think that whether or not it’s healthy, it’s more normal than not – but I suppose it depends on the extent of it.”

“You see, I struggle with this a lot,” I complained. “If you will permit my use of psychiatric parlance for once, where does pathology end and idiosyncrasy begin? Or, indeed, vice versa.”

As you know, most darling readers, I’ve been grateful for my diagnoses, and have found having a name for the various aspects of my insanity to be helpful in several ways. However, I still think this issue is a very valid criticism of the practice and more general discipline of psychiatry. I suppose the line is where the ‘idiosyncrasy’ becomes distressing to the ‘idiosyncrasist’ (indeed, for this reason, there is an ongoing debate about the validity of schizoid personality disorder as a discrete condition), but even that line can be blurred.

“My wife has a great-uncle that the family frequently describe as ‘eccentric’,” Paul told me. “When they mentioned it in front of me, I responded by saying that that simply meant that he was mad, but with money.”

I laughed. A fair enough assessment – most people I’ve heard described as ‘eccentric’ would broadly fit within that bracket.

Anyway, he had reminded me of a conversation I’d once had with Mike, my erstwhile teacher. For some reason Mike and I had been talking about how well (or indeed badly) we fitted in with social norms, and I characterised myself as, indeed, “eccentric.”

“No, Pandora,” he’d responded. “Not ‘eccentric’. You’re individual.”

Paul liked this little anecdote. Apparently Mike’s “eloquent” distinction had touched upon Paul’s perceived truth that psychiatry involves a certain amount of repression of one’s individuality. He banged on that sanity and insanity are concepts created by times and places.

He’s right – to a point. Psychiatry is an imperfect science, if indeed it can be said to be a science at all, and if we consider the inclusion of homosexuality as a mental illness as recently as the DSM-III, I can agree that some supposed diagnoses are societally constructed. Despite my general support for this field, I do accept those criticisms of it, and have never denied them. But, as I said, there’s a point, surely, when that can no longer be true. I’m told, reliably so, that hallucinating gnomes and being so severely depressed that all you can think about is killing yourself on a chronic basis are not normal states in which to exist…and I would believe that that, at least, transcends times and places.

Not that I had the balls to say any of that to Paul. I sat there, nodding pathetically compliantly. What the fuck, Pandora? Am I afraid of him unwitting me or something? Of looking less intelligent than him (which, frankly, I probably am)? Why can I debate my points intelligently and coherently online or even in the fucking pub, but not do it with Paul? What a stupid bitch.

As I allowed his anti-psychiatry rhetoric to progress, I found myself becoming vaguely irritated with him again. Not because of his opposition to that field per se, but because of how he related it back to me. One thing that had apparently been “big” in his engagement with me had been “peeling back the layers” that were “enforced upon” me: diagnoses, medical examinations, medication.

“It’s like it’s been forgotten,” he intoned with an infuriating earnestness, “that somewhere in there is an abused little girl.” [Emphasis mine. I am SO unutterably fucking sick of that fucking fucking fucking term. Jesus hot jumping Christ sliding down a shit-stick. Just. Fucking. Stop. Fucking. Calling. Her. Fucking. That. GAH!]

(Hypocritical) Ranting about terminology aside, this assessment of my situation was not fair. NewVCB has been really good about the abuse bullshit; she usually asks me at some point during each appointment how things are in my head in relation to that subject. She doesn’t just wank endlessly on about my current symptoms, blindly throwing medication at me as a result. OK, so she doesn’t go into intimate, cringe-worthy detail about the whole sordid mess when I’m with her – but guess what, Paul? She isn’t fucking meant to. That’s your job. You’re the therapist, she’s the the psychiatrist. Simple.

More irritably than I’d intended, I retorted that I had not been a “nice little girl,” as he appeared to opine. As I said, “I was precocious, and because of that I was haughty and arrogant at times. In that way my current predilections toward so-called intellectualising are entirely in keeping with my child self.” My point in saying so had been to infer to him that this constant bollocking on about me v my repressed self was not as clear-cut as he might like to think.

He hammered on for a bit with a story he’d told me before. Little boy falls in the playground, maintains a stiff upper lip all day long, eventually sees his mother and then bursts into tears. Containment, blah de blah, yadda yadda.

“It’s a harsh judgement to describe yourself as precocious. You had to be precocious to survive,” he declared.

Oh really? I mean, seriously?

  1. This particular elucidation implicitly suggests that being precocious is an inherently bad thing. Why the fuck should that be the case? Surely being an intelligent child is something to be welcomed, something that both that child and those around it should find gratifying?
  2. I can’t prove anything, but I’d be stunned if precociousness and abuse are directly correlated. I’m all but certain that not every smart child has been/is being abused, and I’m equally sure that not every abused child is demonstrably highly intelligent.
  3. On a related note, why does everything have to come back to abuse and spurious psychodynamic interpretation? Can’t some things just fucking be?

Palpably uncomfortable with the direction in which this conversation was headed, I tried to shift the subject – but I did it subtly, so that it was still ostensibly related to what he’d said. I said that, in a non-literal sense, from what I could remember I had been a Jekyll and Hyde type of kid. The weird, insular one that despite her then-popularity couldn’t relate to her peers – and then the ordinary, outgoing person that most of the world saw.

“I don’t recall having any distressing examples of mental illness until at least my late childhood,” I told him, though now that I think about it, that can’t be true. I tried to strangle myself when I was nine, and I had that constant, horrid somatic feature of itchy feet with such sickening frequency – so evidently some shit was definitely hitting some fans there. But then, I have so many anamnestic gaps when it comes to my brathood that I can’t easily tell you what the conditions generally were.

“In retrospect,” I continued, “obviously I was a bit barmy – I mean, I lived nightly with pseudo-hallucinations and a delusion that a terrorist was right outside my door, every single night. But I don’t recall being chronically unhappy.”

Paul jumped on the terrorist comment with a force that could turn this metaphor literal. He said, “‘terrorised’ is a pretty good word to describe what you must have felt about the abuse, isn’t it?”

It depends whether you subscribe to the etymological or legal definition of the word ‘terrorism’, I suppose. Me, I tend to view terrorism as a macro phenomenon, ostensibly carried out for political or religious reasons (but really carried out simply because you’re a fucking cunt). It’s all very well for Paul to draw parallels between Paedo and my horrified dread each night that I was about to be murdered, but perhaps he forgets my age and my origin. I grew up in Northern Ireland in the ’80s and early ’90s. Terrorism was a very real issue here and then. Could there not be some connection to that, rather than everything always being about being a paedophile’s plaything?

“I’m reminded of a client I used to work with,” he said, as I sat there wondering silently when he might realise that not everything should be narrowed down to Freudian analysis. “When he first properly started communicating with me, he said, ‘I’ve put a bomb under your car’.”

I regarded Paul with an expression of complete revulsion. What a vile thing to say – especially to someone who’s meant to be helping you!

“It was his way of saying, ‘how would you feel if your life were threatened?’” Paul explained. “He had to find some way of expressing how his deepest fears affected him, and that was it.”

Maybe so; I can understand the context of the remark, I suppose, but it feels re-abusive to me – and much as I sympathise and empathise with any abuse victim, re-enacting what happened to you by abusing another is not on in my book (there’s a lot I could say on that, but this post ((and its predecessor)) is ((are)) already stupidly long and way too introspective vis a vis what it’s ((they’re)) meant to actually be discussing).

“In the same way, your most buried terror was expressed – perfectly appropriately – as fear of a terrorist,” Paul was continuing. “Do you remember when we first commenced this therapy that I told you that all clients are geniuses? Well, there’s a perfect example of it. That was a genius thing to do.”

Whilst there can be no doubt that the human mind is capable of great things, I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with the assertion that it simply doing its unconscious job is something worthy of being considered ‘genius’. Surely genius involves intellect, which involves thinking, which surely involves conscious consideration? Still, I’m not a psychologist. A widely-read layperson, maybe, but by no means an expert.

“I firmly believe,” Paul continued, “that all delusional stuff is based in reason.”

I can see what he’s saying, to be fair, and I acknowledged that. The connection he was making in my case is at least arguable. However, what about the cases where a person believes that he or she is Jesus Christ or something? That’s not me rejecting Paul’s claims outright, by the way. It’s a genuine query; in all seriousness, where does that come from, and in what way would it be functional?

In any case, I went on to tell him that I’d gone through very little psychotic experiences in the couple of months that had led up to this session – a few whispers from fringe facets of the odious ‘They‘, but nothing more than that. Rather than simply be glad of it, though, he irked me a little by stating that he was sure that NewVCB would “chalk that up to the wonders of Seroquel.”

Again, this was unfair. As she had openly stated to me once, she only cares about ‘what works’ – and for me, that seems to have been a combination of therapy and psychopharmacology. Moreover, I would chalk my lack of psychosis up to Seroquel myself in many ways – but I’m willing to acknowledge that therapy has also played its part. What’s so terrible about a dual approach?!

He ranted a bit about how Seroquel in particular was being “handed out like sweeties” these days (first I’ve heard of it), but when I actually went to defend both it and psychiatric diagnoses – as useful adjuncts and guidance in the treatment of mentalness respectively – he curiously backed down.

And this is why he’s not a dick. We may disagree, and I may rant here about issues over which there could have been minor conflicts, but he’s not a dick. Ultimately, despite some of his more sarky reactions to my defence of psychiatry in the past, he is willing to respect me as an individual, with individual views. And while, in another time and place, the disagreements we have may have merited longer discussion, that was not possible here, and it was of the upmost importance to him – and me – that we parted on a convivial note.

And suddenly, that note of departure was finally realised. Paul said, his voice deep with regret,”we’ve come to the end.”

As I stood, he told me that it had “really been a pleasure” working with me, and that he would “truly miss” our sessions. I advised him that the feeling was entirely mutual, and went on to tell him that I intended to re-refer myself to the organisation come September or October (as I now have done). I asked if that was too soon, but he said that it wasn’t – as long as I was comfortable with that timeframe, then he was too.

“I look forward to working with you again,” he assured me, as he opened and held the door for me for the final time.

The last bits of these things are always the most awkward. How do you say ‘goodbye’ in a professional but affectionate manner? Rarely have I felt so horribly exposed as the socially awkward knob that I am. After handing him his pound of flesh, I suddenly grabbed his hand, shook it and said that it had “been a pleasure” working with him. Almost before he could respond, I smiled idiotically at him and told him to take care.

“You too,” he said unsurely, but with palpable warmth.

We said our goodbyes, and I left hurriedly. My car was close, and as I had done when things ended with C, I sat in the driver’s seat for quite a while ruminating on the ramifications of the (thankfully temporary) cessation of the relationship. Rather than bawl my eyes out though, I allowed myself to shed one single tear of mourning, then wiped my eyes, shot myself a reassuring grin in the rear-view mirror, and drove away.

Ending Therapy: How To (Mostly) Do It Properly – Paul: Week 25, Part I

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  1 Response »
Oct 282011
 

“So this is it,” he declared, his tone swathed in unwitting drama.

“Yes,” I pointlessly confirmed.

Paul and I looked at each other – what does one say when one comes to the end of a relationship? If the relationship is romantic, although the words are difficult, they’re clear (mostly). If you’re ending a friendship, you generally let it peter out without any particular show-down. But when you’re ending a relationship whose very point is its ending – so as you can live a better life without it – what do you say?

I never did write in detail about my final session with C in August 2010. In short, I sat there defiantly, refusing to tell him my future plans. He whinged a bit about not knowing what would happen to me (something that NewVCB, much to my chagrin, revealed to him – bloody bitch!), and I took satisfaction in his ignorance. When it was over, instead of the normal, “we’ll have to leave it there for today,” he said, “we’ll have to leave it all there.” I stood up, with dignity I think, reluctantly shook his outstretched hand, bade him goodbye, and walked down the corridor with my head held high.

When I got into my car, however, I sat and cried for 20 minutes before finally driving away, but – unless he’s been reading this bilge, which (given the Mind Award nomination and a piece I had in a national publication that I know he reads a few months ago) is actually not impossible – he doesn’t know that.

Anyway, the End of Times with Paul was much more amiable and respectful (as if you couldn’t have guessed that!), excepting a few niggles that I’ll play up later for the purposes of rant material (I’ve noted from my archives that my bitching about C was far more entertaining than my appreciation of Paul, so…). I didn’t piss about trying to keep my future plans secret; Paul made it very clear that he had found working with me to be a challenging but fascinating (!) and enriching (!!) experience; I concluded that ultimately, psychotherapy with him had been greatly beneficial to me. 25 weeks with him compared to 63 with C, the latter having left me in a worst psychological position than when I’d first met him (though the extent to which C is to blame for that is, of course, debatable).

I hope you don’t think I’m employing some sort of apotheosis in the regard I hold for Paul. As the last session (and, to an extent, this one) demonstrate(d), he is not perfect for me; but our differences and any potential conflict points are minor enough that they can be mostly overlooked, and although I still view the concept of therapeutic transference as a beneficial phenomenon in terms of long-term therapy, in terms of a short-term interaction, I think that I shared a healthier relationship with Paul than I did with C. Time has numbed the agony of the bitter wounds I felt so profoundly regarding the latter, to the extent where I feel a bit bad saying that, but overall I can only speak my truth, and that’s it.

Anyhow, in an entirely predictable twist of fate, Paul finally asked me how I felt about the end of the process. “And how well have we done?” he added.

“Fairly well,” I concluded. “I mean, I don’t think 25 weeks is an adequate timeframe for any psychological therapy, but that said, within the weeks that we’ve had, I think a lot of progress has been made – at the very least, we’ve made a good start.”

I also observed that the fact that I was able to return to Nexus in future was a reassurance and, further, that perhaps a break was actually a good thing, given how intense the process had at times been.

He reported (and I concurred) that in his view we had had a “really healthy” relationship, and he stated how much he’d enjoyed working with me. The experience was “very powerful”, apparently. An intriguing comment, I felt; what is even remotely ‘powerful’ about talking to an intellectual snob that loathes the child she used to be and is ambivalent towards the person that abused that child? I personally think it’s fucked up, but who am I to question the judgement of others?

Paul broke into this internal train of rumination. “It’s always great when you’re able to strip away layers, and meet the real person,” he was saying. “And when you get there, you see that there’s a really nice person sitting there.”

I winced at this, and it must have been visible to him, because he laughed at the implied self-invective inherent in my expression.

“You know I have an aversion to compliments,” I hissed, almost spitting the final word out of my mouth.

He laughed again and said, “yes, that’s why I said it!”

Cheeky sod. I am so not ‘really nice’. I mean, even if I were likable – and I don’t necessarily believe that I am – ‘nice’ is such a pathetic word. Paul meant well in his employment of it, I know, but seriously. Before I met A, I went on a few dates that would never have led anywhere. Through same, I met one bloke in particular who seemed genuinely interested in me: the reason that it would never have worked, though, was because he was just so nice. There was no passion, no fire. Just…niceness. I wouldn’t even describe my best mates as ‘nice’. My best friends are smart, funny, witty, irreverent, yadda yadda. They’re not nice. ‘Nice’ is not a ‘nice’ word (as a general rule. There are exceptions – how else would you prove the rule?).

Anyway, that was a pointlessly stupid tangent. I eventually responded to Paul by saying that I had been at a stage in my life for a wee bit where I could accept compliments by saying “thank you,” as opposed to my previous automatic responses of, “oh, you can’t be serious – have you not seen how ugly/fat/boring/stupid/inept at cutting hedges/unable to operate a unicycle using only my tongue/whatever I am?!” Nevertheless, despite my newly found skills in using the words ‘thank you’, being complimented still leaves me squirming.

I exemplified by talking about a mate of ours, who has made no particular secret of the fact that he has something of a crush on me (something I don’t get in itself, mais oui). After imbibing a few too many on-offer pints in his company one evening, I made a thinly veiled reference to the sexual abuse to him. He started wanking on and on and on about how ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘charismatic’ etc I supposedly am. Despite the lowering of inhibitions contingent upon the consumption of alcohol, I still felt horrified by all his gushing. Yeah, there was a part of me that was intimidated by the fact that he has an attraction to me – but it was more than that. It was the praise itself that perturbed me; had it come from someone without an ostensible ‘thing’ for me, I’d have felt the same.

Paul – for the second time, I think – alluded to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo novels. Apparently, the protagonist interprets all support as having an ulterior motive or as being a trick. This led to her being viewed by others as paranoid, but Paul contended that she was responding contextually appropriately in light of her previous relationships, which had been used to manipulate and deceive her.

I empathised entirely with this position; as I told him, one of the rules I’ve lived by for pretty much as long as I can remember is that “everyone is a {insert expletive noun of your choice here} until they prove otherwise.”

“Is that as bad as it was?” he asked.

“No,” I replied – and I am surprised by how genuinely I felt (and, I think, feel) that. “And things in general aren’t as bad as they were.” I told him about the non-Confessions writing projects I’d taken on. An article for Rethink’s Your Voice magazine, for example (not sure when that’s being published, but as and when I know, I’ll advise any readers that care). Latterly some articles for Mind’s blog. Being able to do these things was testament to my improved psychological condition.

“But I think the best measurement of my recovery is exemplified by A’s experience of things,” I mused. “I can’t externally assess my condition, whereas he can. We went from my intention to poison myself with helium to going out geocaching, writing articles and even considering voluntary work.”

As I told Paul, A had also considered my ability to drive in Fuerteventura as an almost perfect metaphor of how far I had come.

[Incidentally, in an entirely predictable reversal of fortune, it's a measure of relapse that I haven't been geocaching for months, have only done a little writing and have not applied for the proposed voluntary position. But at the time of this session - June - I was feeling positive and was looking forward.]

There was a silence for a minute or two, then Paul asked what I was doing for me. Apparently that which I had detailed previously, with the exception of geocaching, was about stuff I was doing for others.

“There’s a certain amount of self-interest in the writing,” I admitted. “It all builds into a portfolio, whether it’s under my real name or my pseudonym, and as I’ve been told I have some talent [!], that might be useful in terms of securing some ‘proper’, paid writing jobs. I’m not delusional about it – I’m never going to make a fortune out of the pursuit, nor do I think it’s a viable full-time job – but you never know; it could be a potential supplementary income.”

“Beyond that? Any other things you’re doing for you?” he queried. Humph. I was ever so slightly miffed – I had that thought the whole writing thing was really rather good!

When I didn’t immediately answer he spoke for me, saying, “well, at least you’re not self-harming. That’s a good thing not to be doing for yourself.”

I shrugged non-committally. I wasn’t self-harming at the time, but even now I just can’t view it with the same horror that he seems to.

He decided to pursue a different vein. “Have we got the balance right? You know, discussing your abusive experiences but also including the whole mental health and psychosis stuff.”

I responded, truthfully, in the affirmative. “I see why we need to focus on the former at times, obviously,” I opined, “but the two aren’t mutually exclusive, are they? My mental health issues have more origins than just those of the abuse, and I think it’s helpful to examine those as well. In terms specifically of psychotic presentations, well – those can’t go unaddressed, can they? So yeah, the balance is good.”

Paul nodded, but went on to say that “when we’re touching on the abuse and feelings related to that, there’s lots of you ‘keeping a lid’ on everything. You have a lot of uncapped pain there, that we’ve only really started to get close to.”

He mentioned the concept of ego-splitting again (ie. the more functional me versus the pained, dissociated mess that Aurora is and that I, myself, often am too), and stated that when dealing with the dissociated part, we had had to tread very carefully during our work together. He seemed to be wondering if he’d pushed too hard at times, or if he hadn’t pushed enough at others. Personally, I think he judged each incidence of this really very well.

He went on to say that he’d experienced the full force of repressed rage projected onto him by other clients – never me – and that it was “pretty horrendous” (though ultimately beneficial). He wondered aloud why I’d never done that; was it to protect myself – or was it to protect others?

The latter is, by and large, the reality. Now, this is an odd one. I have a bolshy, extremely stubborn streak in me when I’m being treated unreasonably, viz the Health Trust saga – but by and large, anger and I are not intimate acquaintances. It lies dormant within me, I know, but it’s only rarely expressed in its rawest form. I will almost never get properly angry without an obvious, here-and-now reason, such as how the Trust failed me, or being falsely charged for something, whatever. Of course, Paul would argue that I have every right to be angry in terms of that to which Paedo subjected me. Rationally, of course, this is a perfectly reasonable position to hold, but I can’t seem to agree. That was 20 fucking years ago, you know? I am calm and collected and calculated. I am zen. *practices mindfulness*

…..

Nah, you guessed it – mindfulness is one thing that could actually wake that hibernating anger, so it can get away to fuck. Anyway, yeah; I rarely feel that visceral sort of fury, and even when I do, I actively attempt to suppress it for, in the main, the sake of those around me. I pointed out to Paul that the (very few) people with whom I deal in everyday life have nothing to do with Paedo’s sexual fascination with little people – so why on Earth would I want to subject them to anything even vaguely relating to it? Besides. I simply don’t feel anything other than a sneering disdain for the man. Bizarre and substantially fucked up? Probably. But true, despite it all. In my conscious mind at least, it just isn’t there.

What I did admit to, though, was my penchant for being very easily irritated. For instance, I drop a pen. I yell expletives at the poor inanimate thing, then kick it across the room in a fit of pathetically infantile pique (oh and then I feel guilty for being so irrationally nasty, catalysing me into – yeah, wait for this one, folks – apologising to the pen. Sane? No. I shouldn’t imagine so).

“Perhaps,” I psycho-babbly posited, “what should come out as a kind of righteous anger towards my uncle instead reveals itself as acute but in-the-moment strong annoyance at very silly little things. I mean, I’d never thought of that potential connection before, but I can see that in context it might be some sort of projection of more profound issues.”

I paused, then decreed that my previous assertions had been “nothing more than pseudo-psychological straw-clutching” because “everyone gets outrageously pissed off when they drop a pen, don’t they?” Well, readers – don’t they? You know it’s true. You know!

—

This post has (unsurprisingly) got out of hand. It shall ergo contineth on the morrow (or rather, later on, given that this is after midnight, but let’s not quibble over niceties). Nighty night, loveliest people! x

—

Continued here.

The Darker Side of Speaking Up

 Blog News, Life, Random Mental Health Related Philosophising  15 Responses »
Oct 142011
 

AWARDHAIR!!!1!!!!11!!!eleven!!!six!My hair has arrived for the awards ceremony. Do you like it?

Initially, I was unsure as to whether I could even go to the ceremony. After all, I would probably be the only person there that writes under a pseudonym, since most of the nominees are from the world of the more traditional media – papers, telly, radio and suchlike. Even amongst the ‘New Media’ short-listees (if that’s a word), as far as I know I’m the only person responsible for a nomination that’s anonymous.

However, I had a quick word on Twitter with some of the lovely folks at Mind – and they, in conjunction with their PR people, are coming up with an anonymity masterplan! I can’t say how delighted this made me, and how very kind of them to accommodate such a bizarre request! So Cinderella will go to the ball after all :) I don’t expect to win anything, don’t get me wrong, but to be short-listed for such a prestigious award is such a big deal to me that simply being there will be amazing. A is coming with me, as is my best friend Daniel and, all being well, a fellow mental health blogger. If there’s enough room, I can even bring two more people :)

So, mentalists of the UK. If you’re kicking about in the general area of the Home Counties in late November and fancy a pale ale or three with a sad blatherer with a Pot Noodle fetish, feel free to give me a shout. We’ll be in Laaaaaahhhhaaaandaaaaaahhhhnnnnn from Saturday 26th to Wednesday 30th November. Monday night is out, as it’s the awards ceremony, and on at least one of the other days I’ll be meeting a friend, but there’s flexibility in the latter if anyone is amenable to a Mini Mad-Up.

Anyway, speaking of Mind, I have a guest post over on their blog today entitled Speaking Out is the Only Way to End Stigma (see here). Although the title mirrors what I talked about in my last post, I’ve actually looked at the issue of stigma from the other side of the coin than that which I previously discussed here. I thought I’d quote it here too, for your dubious delectation:

I consider myself a fortunate person, in that there are a wonderful – and rather diverse – range of people that I have the privilege of calling my friends. Generally, I’ve been very open with them and my relatives alike about my mental health difficulties – but there’s one group with whom, until recently, I tended to keep my mouth shut.

My partner is partially sighted, and as such his primary education was delivered in a school specialising in teaching children with visual (VI) and auditory impairments. After being reunited with a number of his schoolmates in his adulthood, I was pleased to also make their acquaintance, and am glad to report that I now consider them my friends too.

One thing that repeatedly surprised me about these otherwise lovely people, though, was their attitudes to my mental illness. They are open about their disabilities around the dinner table and, more formally, they vocally demand reasonable adjustments at work, raise money for related charities, and have been known to campaign politically on VI related issues such as traffic calming and electronic accessibility. I think it’s brilliant.

You can tell there’s a ‘but’ coming, can’t you? Here it is. In my view, if you are pro-disability rights – as every right-thinking person should be – then you should be inclusive about the meaning of the term ‘disability’. Unfortunately, mental health problems can represent potentially very severe disabilities, just as physical ones can.

This is something my friends didn’t seem to realise. I remember one night, over dinner, after they had been talking about VI issues, I shifted the subject subtlety with the intention of talking about the barriers I, also, had faced in terms of my disability. The specifics are lost to the passing of time, but I think I was alluding to the HR problems I’d faced during a depression-fuelled absence from work.

My commentary, delivered in my usual matter-of-fact tone, was met with a stony, almost horrified silence. People started staring at their food or fiddling with their wedding rings. An approaching waiter reversed back into the kitchen, having felt the tension emanating from our group. And all the while I sat there, genuinely mystified, thinking, “what did I say?!” Lest I ruin the rest of the evening, though, I decided to keep schtum thereafter, and eventually someone (quite deliberately) changed the subject, and things moved on.

That was several years ago, but if I’m brutally honest, the episode still cuts me to the core when I let myself think about it. Why is someone else’s disability considered more socially “acceptable” than mine? Why do mental health conditions still exist only in the realm of whispered taboo and under-the-carpet brushing?

This was only my second proper encounter with the stigma that continues to permeate discussions pertaining to mental health (or lack thereof). I don’t blame my friends personally: they are a product of a society and culture that remains scared of and ill-informed about psychiatric disorders, and they’re far from alone.

My first significantly prejudicial experience was in my most recent job (mentioned above), in which I had initially gone off sick with “depression”. This was deemed a common and ordinary complaint by my employers, but when my condition failed to improve and I was eventually diagnosed with, initially, borderline personality disorder and bipolar type II (now changed to complex PTSD and either bipolar I or schizoaffective disorder – go me!), their attitudes mysteriously changed. Oh, we really were in mental territory there, weren’t we? They couldn’t have that, now could they?

(I’m being slightly unfair here, as when I was eventually dismissed, I had been absent over a year – my leaving the organisation was therefore both legal and fair. However, the paradigm shift between their tolerance before and after my diagnoses was very evident).

Rather than incite meekness, however, if anything these two incidents encouraged me to speak out more about my mental health troubles, as I wrote about in my World Mental Health Day post here. It started off by writing – anonymously – on my blog (I still write pseudonymously, incidentally, but that’s because I have no choice but to protect some key personnel discussed therein), but in time I found myself openly discussing mental health in ‘real life’ too. Besides those already discussed, I only remember one particularly negative reaction – when explaining to a friend of my boyfriend’s that I was not working due to “being mental,” he replied, “is that ‘I Can’t Be Bothered With Work-Itis’ then?” Not a pleasant comment by any means – but by and large, people have been accepting, willing to listen and mostly sympathetic. I even revealed the severity of my psychotic and dissociative symptoms to an ignorant and rather set-in-their-old-fashioned-ways aunt and uncle recently; I was quite surprised when they didn’t back away in petrified horror, but instead proffered me their genuine good wishes and a listening ear.

Again, though, there’s a ‘but’. Two, actually. Firstly, it is not easy to be so unabashed about this subject to other people (particularly, I would suggest, acquaintances or strangers – you have no clues to enable you to gauge what their reaction might be). As a general rule, I’m remarkably passive in the arena of ‘real life’, but I am both blessed and cursed in having something of a bolshy streak when I feel I’m being treated unfairly, and I think it’s that force that has driven me to speak up. Secondly, even though I have received a number of pretty positive reactions to my disclosures, stigma still exists. There are still those who demonise us as loons or scroungers who should be locked up in an asylum or get back to work, respectively (though, of course, many people with a mental health problem do work). Admitting to mental health issues in such circumstances can seem like a dangerous thing to do.

I think, though, that there is ultimately good news. As many people familiar with Mind will know, the Time to Change campaign has been granted another four years’ worth of funding, which means that the very meaningful in-roads the initiative has already made can be further built upon.

As Time to Change says, we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about mental health. I know it’s easy for me, an anonymous stream of words on a blog post, to say, but I really believe that speaking out is one of the key ways in which we can break down the societal barriers we’re presently forced to face. And although it sounds naïvely simplistic, if people refuse to be educated on the subject, if they make active decisions to remain prejudiced and wilfully ignorant, well – it really is their problem, and not ours. We deserve respect. We don’t deserve to have to hide behind a wall of silence.

Oh, and my visually impaired friends? One got a job in mental health training, and now often shares my material at work. Another recently ran a fund-raising event for a mental health charity. Most importantly to me personally is that, after a lot of determined “I am going to talk about this,” they are now willing to openly discuss my difficulties with me.

Proof, to me, that negative attitudes can change.

And, despite it all, I think that’s true. Feel free to share your experiences, either here or (preferably) on the Mind post itself (since it is likely to have a more diverse audience).

I was supposed to have finished writing about my last stint of therapy with Paul by today, but as you can see I’ve failed. Not that that should surprise you; it certainly doesn’t surprise me. I have no excuse really; I’ve been reading a lot, and doing a bit of my own writing, but that’s about it really. I’ll try to do the two outstanding posts this week, but this time I won’t promise.

My Mum has found out about the awards. It was entirely my fault, so I shouldn’t whinge too much about it. She still doesn’t know the specifics involved, though, and I actually came right out to her and told her I didn’t want her reading my writing because “a lot of it is very personal.”

She said, “to your present life – or your earlier one?”

A curious question, I felt. Why would she even consider the latter. given her lay understanding of mental health difficulties?

I said, feigning a typical nonchalance, “oh, you know. Everything.” Then I changed the subject, and that was that. To be on the safe side, though, I’ve blocked her IP address ;)

Not much else to report. Not seeing NewVCB until 9th November, so no new medication(s) as yet. I can’t remember at all the date of my next appointment with Christine, so will have to bloody ring the CMHT for clarification. In non-mental news, I’m off to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne next weekend for a football (watching, that is) weekend with the lads. I can’t afford it, but I’m going anyway. Cross your fingers for the Toon, please!

Anyway, folks, I’ll catch up properly next week. I hope you’re all well.

Love Pan <3 x

Mind Media Awards 2011

 Blog News  13 Responses »
Sep 262011
 

Confessions of a Serial Insomniac, in common with some extremely good company (for example, the superb Dawn Willis and Guardian journalists), has been shortlisted for a Mind Media Award (in the category of ‘New Media’).

I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve this recognition, and I really, truly do not know what to say, except ‘thank you’ to all concerned. I’ll not write anything much more right now for fear that I’ll turn into a blubbering mess. Again.

What an unexpectedly great way to start the week. Of course, since my darling baby died on Thursday, I’m still existing in a dark, bleak and disbelieving mental dystopia, but I retain the capacity for gratitude and honour, and I feel both in abundance.

The Secrecy of the Confessional

 Blog News, Life, Random Mental Health Related Philosophising  15 Responses »
Sep 212011
 

I don’t like surprises. They intimidate me, and require me to feel like I have to second-guess a person’s motives and intent – and, at the more extreme end of the scale, they can even feel like shocking violations (and apparently it’s not just me and my eccentricity/oddness/paranoia/whatever, so there).

It reasonably follows, therefore, that I don’t like secrets greatly either. I suppose we all have them from each other to a greater or lesser extent, but some can be big, and it is the covering up of those that I find problematic. I write a good bit about sexual abuse on this blog – that remained a perfect secret between me and Paedo for years, and is only known to a small few beyond that dubious duo even now. That’s big, and I hid it. I don’t like that I hid it. People should have known; particularly with other children exposed to the man as potential victims, it wasn’t really my secret to keep.

But before I go on an abuse-related, potentially self-vituperative tangent, let me hark back to where I wanted to go with this. Putting abuse and some of its related issues to one side, I have a pretty big secret. You know about it (yes, you do). A and my closest friend, Daniel, know about it. But my mother, one of the people to whom I’m closest in the world, doesn’t have a clue (if my investigations have been as smart as I think they have). Another close friend, Brian, is similarly oblivious. My wider family, Paedo and friends included, are also in the dark.

I am, of course, talking about this blog.

Now, on the one hand, you might say, “big deal. You throw (a few too many) words on a page once or twice a week, what does it matter whether they know or not?”

However, even though it is not today what it once was (I write less, less people visit – it happens), this blog is a major part of my life. I have an entire identity based on and built around it, and if I’m entirely honest, a lot of the issues I discuss here feed into my ‘real’ identity too. This blog is important to me; it is a life chronicle, a place to vent, a support network and an adjunctive form of psychotherapy all rolled up into one. There must be the best part of a million bloody words written here, and the site ranks highly on Google for many mentalist searches. For whatever reasons – reasons I don’t think I’ll ever entirely understand – some people seem to actually like it. It has won awards (!), for Christ’s sake, and has nearly 300,000 views (which, after two and a half years, is damn all compared to some big blogs – but which isn’t awful for a personal journal, particularly in such a niche interest arena). And how many (wo)man-hours must I have put into getting things to this point? I almost dread to think.

I’m not trying to self-aggrandise or gasconade here (not any more than normal, anyway..!); I’m simply trying to convey that the blog is a big deal in my life.

I chose the suffix ‘confessions of‘ for the site’s title quite deliberately. I know that the term, in the blogosphere at least, has become clichéd almost to the point of vulgarity, but the thing is, it is confessional for me.

Yet the confessional – a place to admit, possibly to seek redemption – is decidedly exclusionary. My mother, and a number of other pivotally important individuals in my life, haven’t the faintest idea that this even exists.

That feels incredibly fucked up to me. All children inevitably hide some things from their parents but they tend, in the grand scheme of things, to be relatively insignificant – that do you remember that night I was at “the cinema” with x and then “staying over at x‘s house” when I was 16? Yeah, I was actually at a club until 6am sort of thing that we all do – not things of key import, or things that have an enduring impact upon one’s psyche. Mum should know about a big issue in my life, and it feels so dirty and wrong and discriminatory that she does not.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell her or anything. There’s no point in ruining whatever years she has left in this world by her finding out about everything that is contained within these pages (my current obsessive mental intrusions - and I mean seriously obsessive, as in feeding into almost anything – is that she will suddenly die soon. I keep telling myself that her life expectancy can be reasonably estimated to be 80-something ((she’s 69)), given her relative health and our familial history, but reason never assuages my neurosis ((something I should well know from past experience)). Perhaps this latest manifestation of anxiety-driven batshitness is the reason for this very post). Yet, although the secrecy is necessary to spare her feelings – perhaps even her very sanity – it feels odd not to share some of the highs and lows with her. I remember when I won my first award for this blog; my first clumsy, elated instinct was to scream it at A, then to anyone on the internet that was willing to listen.

And I didn’t get to share that magical moment, and others like it, with my mother. It almost feels akin to her not seeing me going to school for the first day, or graduating from university, or having my first legal pint at the age of 18. OK, so these comparisons may sound a little bombastic, but I hope you know what I mean. My mother should (have) share(d) with me moments I considere(d) meaningful, yet in this shadowy part of my life, she has been utterly denied that opportunity.

Nevertheless, I know there are others out there that hide or have hidden their blogs and mentalist/internet alter egos from everyone in their real lives. I suppose in writing this entry I’m wondering how we can reconcile the openness and candour with which we speak on these blogs with the cladestineness that, ironically, said blogs represent in relation to certain personnel. What do you think about that? Is it a necessity for you, or do you like having a ‘secret’? And if you have managed to keep your blog private from ‘real life’ people, how have you managed it, logistically speaking? I’ve got myself in a few dangerous pickles in the past that could have revealed all to my Mum, so I know it’s not easy to keep schtum.

Just random thoughts, really.

—

I was going to write a ‘how things are’ scribble at this juncture of the post, but I can’t be arsed. I might try and do it tomorrow. I might not, however. Suffice to say, life is still shite but my death is unlikely to be imminent (day-long fantasies about long, sharp knives stabbing the living fuck out of my skull notwithstanding).

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Mind’s Book of the Year Award Review – and Thank You

 Blog News  10 Responses »
Aug 032011
 

Hello

I mentioned last night that I had written a review of a book for Mind, in respect of their 2011 Book of the Year Award. I just wanted to let those of you that haven’t seen it plastered over the social networking sites that the review is now online!

Check it out over on their blog. The book in question was a novel called Broken Places, by writer and teacher Wendy Perriam. It tells the story of librarian Eric Parkhill, and his struggle to find peace and contentment in the aftermath of a traumatic childhood – and it does it very, very well. See the review on Mind‘s blog for further details and opinion.

Also, please feel free to publicise the review (through Twitter, FB, G+, your own blogs, etc) – the book deserves the attention, in my view. You’re also very welcome to add comments to it. I’ll try for once and respond to them ;)

When I wrote yesterday I wondered why I had been afforded this wonderful opportunity on the basis of this silly blog, and I expressed my sincere thanks. To expand on that slightly, I should say that this journal is a major part of my life, mainly because of all the wonderful people I’ve had the good fortune to meet through it. As I said, ‘thank you’ seems wholly inadequate…but truly, every one of you that follows this blog or that interacts with me on the social networking sites – you really do mean a lot to me. I’m honoured, humbled and endlessly touched by your unwavering support and insight, and that applies to all of you, from the big organisations like Mind and Rethink, to the individuals that I know lurk here :) Thank you all, very, very much.

Anyway, enough sentimentality. If you want to read more, head over to the review!

Love

Pan <3 xxx

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Writing for the Rockstar CPN

 Christine, CPN, Moods, Recovery  5 Responses »
Aug 022011
 

Sorry for yesterday’s pathetic rant. I’d initially made it a private post, but then decided to go ahead and publish it; what’s the point of a blog but for people to read it? That said, despite its moderate success (and as I am always harping on), Confessions is still written primarily for my own benefit, so I do still occasionally write private material, if I want to keep track of particularly personal issues. But by and large I like to have things available for others to read and comment on, as it’s a huge source of support and insight. Anyway, thank you for having the kind diplomacy not to tell me what a silly bitch I was being :)

I’m feeling a good bit better today. The Everythinger is still here and the house is still a tip of epic proportions, but I’m a bit more rested than I was. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I suffer from relatively frequent migraines, and when I got up this morning I felt one coming on. I’m relatively fortunate compared to some thus maligned in that if I act quickly, I can sometimes prevent it developing into a full-blown, lie-in-a-darkened-room-for-three-days attack, so I threw 2,000mg of paracetamol down my throat (yeah, I know, I know) and told the Everythinger that I was going back to bed for a few hours. This I did, and though I still felt rough when I did get up, another dose of paracetamol (yeah, I know, I know x2) and a few minutes to myself seemed to curb the problem. Now the sun is shining, the cats are not being their usual indifferent, offhand selves and the Everythinger is working outside, so I’m feeling relatively OK.

Anyway, this was going to be about Christine, was it not? I saw her a few weeks ago, the day after I went completely doolally thinking that there were secret, governmental cameras all over the house etc etc. Frankly I was petrified of seeing Christine because I know she remains surprised that I’ve never been hospitalised for my psychotic difficulties. To be honest, to be sectioned in Northern Ireland it seems to me that you have to run at a psychiatrist with an axe and 13 AK47s (which is odd because so many of you in the rest of the UK and, indeed, other jurisdictions have written about how a mere idle mention of, say, suicidal ideation can see the quacks telling you to accept an informal admission or be forced into the bin), and since I am hopefully unlikely to ever do such a thing (I have no idea where to get an axe or even one AK47 anyway), I’m hopefully safe. Yet it was still a passing concern because Christine has mentioned it a few times in the past.

Anyway, as you can see from my continued bilging here, on Twitter, etc, I was not put away. In fact, I was very surprised by her reaction to my episode; yes, it was disturbing, she felt, and yes, it must have been very unpleasant for me (no shit), but given all that had been happening (the burglary, Aunt of Evil, not seeing my mother because of the presence of Aunt of Evil, etc), she felt that I was still doing remarkably well. She was of the opinion that because I had managed to retain some insight, however small that had actually been, and because the whole thing had been fairly short-lived, that it was probably a response to the stress I had been under, rather than a mentalist episode per se.

She did ask if I felt it was the start of something more, but I found myself rather inclined to agree with the sentiments she’d already expressed. Nevertheless, when she said that I was to contact her urgently should it develop into anything – even the following week, when she was on leave! – I was most reassured. I laughed lightly and said, “it’s nice to know there’s someone professional I can talk to if this all goes tits up.”

Christine cocked her head, and asked me if that had not always been the case. I wryly recounted a redacted version of a conversation I once had with C, my ex-psychologist (I’ve made reference to it here, though I can’t find the specific post on the session in question):

Pandora: Who am I supposed to contact in a crisis? I mean, no one has given me the number of the crisis team, no one has referred me to a CPN or social worker, my psychiatrist [OldVCB at the time; her successor is completely different] doesn’t want to know. So what am I meant to do when I can’t cope? Who do I contact?

C: The Samaritans.

Someone commenting in the afore-linked post aptly stated that “…The Samaritans comment was particularly wank.”

Christine laughed when I told her about this, as I did in memory of it. I don’t recall what she actually said (I don’t keep the in depth notes on appointments with her and NewVCB the way I do with therapy sessions), but there was a derisive (of C) quality to it which made me feel both dryly amused and smugly vindicated. Since I’ve been discharged from Psychology and have a proper, decent psychiatric team looking out for me, I’ve been surprised and pleased by how many times they’ve either directly criticised NHS mental health services, or delivered loaded, highly implicative statements about same with coy but suggestively raised eyebrows. It delights me no end.

Anyhow, that was the last appointment, and I didn’t go completely batshit in its wake, so didn’t need to contact her urgently. Perhaps this is a case of the stick in the drawer is the biggest stick of all, in the same way that having a stash of Zopiclone and Diazepam is. In other words, having the option there is reassurance in itself; with that very reassurance, one does not need to access the option. So instead of having to arrange an emergency appointment, I instead saw her as normal yesterday.

Those of you that read the nonsense I wrote yesterday will know that I was absolutely fed up, so I just went into the appointment and told her so.

Stress and Routine

“It’s ordinary fed up, having said that,” I added. “About normal life, and the challenges it brings.” Yet again I find myself reminded of Sigmund Freud’s dictum that recovery from “hysterical misery” means an advancement into mere “common unhappiness”. I am finding the vicissitudes of “common unhappiness” more and more starkly present in my life as I find myself to be relatively symptom-free. There’s a small part of me that rejoices in that – she’d rejoice even more if I could be symptom-free (thanks, overpowering anxiety) enough to go back to work, mind you – it’s ordinary, it’s real, it’s a part of a proper life. The larger part of me sneers at this saccharine idealist, and laughs a bitter “fuck away off” in her general direction.

In any event, I moaned and moaned about my stress pertaining to the Everythinger and the state of the house in much the same way as I did here yesterday and in the post before that, citing the unmitigated exhaustion I was feeling pursuant to my defiance of the instructions of my demanding custodian, Seroquel. I left a very important detail out until the end of the appointment, however, which I will leave out until of the end of the review of this appointment, however. However, however, however. It’s a nice word.

We also discussed how I have hardly seen my mother at all over the last few weeks, initially due to the presence of Aunt of Evil and secondarily thanks to my having to be about A’s house so frequently to accommodate the Everythinger. She asked me how I felt about that, and I felt guilty saying that it was a probably a good thing – but, all things considered, it is.

Christine asked if my levels of irritability had gone up, and I admitted that they were at an all-time high. The thing is, little things my Mum does – perhaps unfairly – wind me up to the point where my entire body seizes up in a red-blooded, silent scream. By the same token, she loses it with me quite a bit (and doesn’t try to hide it) for reasons that are rarely clear to me – a tone of voice she has (in my view) misinterpreted, or something inane like that. And at present, I’m not the only one that is stressed and irritable as a result of circumstance; my mother pretty much hated every second of Aunt of Evil’s visit, and is only beginning to recover from the stress of it.

Aunt of Evil Visitations

One of the few times I have seen her in the last few weeks was when Aunt of Evil was still in the country. I met my mother one Friday afternoon and spent about three hours listening to her ranting about what a cunt AoE is (which was a bit of a failed conversion really; she was already preaching to the choir on that one). To cut a very long story short, AoE lashed out at everyone except her offspring, his bitch, and their young offspring. Everything was someone else’s fault; she demanded service and opportunities that should only be available to someone staying in a five star hotel with spa facilities; she complained when something wasn’t up to her perfect USian standards; she patronised anyone that she perceived as being less intelligent or interesting than her and her twats; etc blah yadda. Even her husband, of whom I’m not the biggest fan but whom I also don’t utterly loathe, was apparently not exempt from her fuckery – I was interested to learn that he was even heard to complain about his wife to my mother.

They all fucked off again back to America last Tuesday, to my mother’s, the McFauls’ and even Aunt and Uncle of Boredoms’ evident and expressed relief.

(Aside: in one of her less ranting moments, Mum advised me that despite all the Amazonian-scale water under the biggest bridge in the multiverse between AoE and me, AoE considers me “the daughter she never had.” I responded cruelly: “her attachment to me makes my hatred of her all the more amusing,” or some such. I mentioned this conversation briefly on Twitter, to which @bourach expertly replied, “next time she says that say, ‘well, she’s the aunt I never wanted’.” PLUS ONE, Ms bourach :D ).

So in short what I’m saying is that, thanks to my aunt’s pavonine exploits, my mother is stressed too. Putting her and I together in such a potentially double-charged situation could lead to a few sparks flying in the heat of an ill-thought-out moment. I don’t like arguing with anyone, and least of all her, so it’s for the best.

Even so, Christine argued, I have an established routine of seeing her regularly, and that’s being broken. I do feel regretful of this, but more from my mother’s point of view than my own; she is getting on in years now, and lives alone. Yes, she has the golf club and the family to visit, but of course it’s not the same as living with someone and having the comfort of coming home to them. So I feel guilty about not seeing more of her, but there’s not a hell of a lot I can reasonably do about it when I have to keep to the schedule of the Everythinger.

Depression?

I must have seemed down to Christine, because she seemed concerned that my mood had dropped (overall, in her estimation, since the burglary). I think it has, in her defence – not like the body of the condemned dropping suddenly and sharply from the gallows (sounds like fun!), but slowly and insidiously trickling and meandering its way down a mountain. I’d say I’m only a little bit down that particular hill as of yet, but the fact that this is a concern to Christine in turn concerns me. I thought I was Almost Proper Well, Like.

So I responded to her apparent worry by insisting that even if things were slipping, that that was all they were doing. No avalanche, no impending disaster. “Indeed,” I continued, “I think today’s particular frustrations relate to being so overwhelmingly exhausted. I think it’s normal – or at least normal on 600mgs of Seroquel – to feel this bad as a result of this exhaustion and stress.”

“OK,” she said cautiously. “But I want you to call me if this gets any worse, OK?”

I casually nodded my apparent assent whilst averting my eyes from her cross-examining gaze. Despite my witterings earlier about knowing she’s there for me being a reassurance, realistically I have no intention of calling anybody. I don’t do phones. Why the fuck can’t they give out email addresses?! I would, happily, contact her then.

She later commented that she didn’t notice any other deteriorations, and I assume she was referring to hallucinations and delusions. Barring what I’d told her at the previous meeting, there have been none for a long time. This is undoubtedly positive, but it was never psychosis that put me in danger. Well, it was, but not in the chronic, soul-crushing fashion that the true black treacle of depression was, can do and – let’s fucking face it – probably will (though hopefully not any time soon..?). So, if my ‘mood is slipping’, I see that as a greater problem right now than the odd voice or delusion-induced panic, cruel and heavy as those of course are.

Non-Confessions Writing Projects

Bah. This is turning into an introspective examination of my mental health problems, rather than a report of yesterday’s meeting with Christine. What followed the above was a discussion about writing, and I told her that I had completed and submitted my piece on recovery from BPD to Rethink. For those interested, by the way, I’m not sure when it will be appearing in the members’ magazine, Your Voice, but it won’t be the Autumn edition because the editorial committee had something already lined up for that. The Editor – a lovely, helpful and supportive lady called Natasha (Tash) – will advise me of its publication date, and so I’ll keep you apprised. Tash was even nice enough to tell me to keep in touch with her and send her other interesting (as if anything I write could be termed ‘interesting’!) articles, which I thought was a really delightful parting gift :)

Christine was all smiles about this. In a moment of madness – that, thank God(s)/Nagi/Vishnu/Allah/Morrigun/Xuan Wu/some pantheon combination of the lot of them/common sense, I managed to keep silent – I wondered should I take her in a copy of the magazine so that she can see her little writing protégée in action. This would be what is known in the trade as A Very Bad Idea. The article links to this blog…do I want the professionals reading it? Nope; no matter how much they help me, no matter how much I feel I owe them (and I do have a strong sense of recompense towards her and NewVCB ((and, of course, Paul)), despite the many previous vacillations of the Health Service when it came to my care), I don’t think it a particularly wise idea for them to come across this nonsense.

Anyhow, what Christine didn’t know about – because it had all happened very quickly, and took place after I’d last seen her – was about how it wasn’t just Rethink that contacted me. The evening after I’d previously seen her, I was checking Twitter and found a direct message from @MindCharity, which is the account of that other big UK mental health charity, Mind (incidentally, they and Rethink co-run the Time to Change programme – if you haven’t already done so, you should follow the link and sign their pledge to end discrimination against mental illnesses). The tweet asked me if I’d be interested in reviewing one of the books Mind have short-listed for their 2011 Book of the Year Award. Um…yeah?!!

I wrote back and expressed enthusiasm, which was rewarded with an offer to send out an advance review copy of my choice of one of four (out of a full eight) titles. After a bit of dithering, I elected my tome, and it arrived the following Tuesday. I finished it on Wednesday last week, and sent the review off back to Mind, who will later publish it on their blog. I’m not giving any details away until then, however ;)

This impressed Christine greatly – she seemed genuinely thrilled that I had been contacted in a completely unsolicited fashion by a major organisation about a fairly major event in their calendar. I have to say that I was similarly pleased – not to mention rather stunned. Why do you like this blog? What have I done to garner (potentially influential) people’s respect with my blatherings here? I don’t get it, but it’s flattering, humbling and exhilarating in equal measure. Thank you. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem enough, but it’s all I have.

On a roll of positivity, I then told her something that I’ve not really mentioned to anyone but A yet. I’ve actually decided to pull my finger out and look into a voluntary placement somewhere. I have a position in mind, but I haven’t applied for it yet, so won’t give out any details, suffice to say that it’s in this same general arena – writing about and awareness raising of mental health issues. I’ve no idea at all if I’ll get it, but the two projects detailed above must surely stand me in good stead, as must my current editorship of TWIM (yeah, I don’t know how that happened either!).

Clouds

However, all those silver linings belong to clouds. They don’t just shiver and shimmer around a perfect blue sky by themselves, much as that would be desirable. The following issue pertains to a friend of mine, so I don’t want to discuss the details here, but I will state that her difficulty is directly affecting me too – and could, in a peripheral but still intrusive sort of way, be contributing to any whisperings of depression on the wind that is my life. However, Christine was extremely supportive and reassuring in relation to this matter, so I mostly feel assured that I can cope with my friend’s problem.

So, all in all, it was (as usual) a good appointment. “But!” I hear the eagle-eyed amongst you mutter. “You said there was a very important detail to share, Pan! Do tell, or we’ll spam your inbox from here to eternity.” I’m very wary of any so-called meat put into cans – a feeling surely shared by anyone else who played GTA III – so I shall, indeed, oblige.

As things were drawing to a close, she said, “so, is there anything else we need to discuss?”

I shrugged ambivalently, and looked away.

#lyingfail

Unfortunately for me, I must have looked away in the wrong manner, because she picked up on some sort of vibe of dissent. Examine the following scene from L A Noire:

LIAR!!!

LIAR!!!

Observe how our suspects angularly holds his jaw and avoids the gaze of the interrogator. Moreover, observe how he directs his eyes upwards. (This is actually a bad example, because he’s looking up and to the left, whereas I understand that looking up and to the right is more indicative of falsifying statements). Do you press Truth, Doubt or Lie?

I do have a vague recollection of looking up, to the right, whilst sort of biting my upper lip, at which point Christine had licence to hit the figurative ‘Doubt‘ option. (She can’t press ‘Lie‘ unless she has clear and present evidence to back it up, mwhahahaha! Oh, how I wish life were as simple as gaming).

I am absolutely disgusted with myself. I used to be a fucking excellent liar – what the shit has happened to me?! OK, so that’s an admission not to be proud of, but let’s be (ironically?) honest for a minute here: lying does come in useful when dealing with certain individuals and certain circumstances. How many times have you lied to a mental health professional? How many times have you told a so-called white lie to avoid hurting someone? How many times have you lied by default? Yes, just like that time your boss came in and said, “here’s 50,000 pages of turgid fuckwittery to proof-read and edit. Can you do that by yesterday, please?” and you merely smiled in response, leading him or her to believe that that was absolutely hunky-dory.

Seroquel Manipulation

Right, right, OK, I’ll get to the point. Christine realised that my shrug meant that there was something else I had to bring to the fore, even though I didn’t want to. I screwed up my face in an expression of embarrassed expectation and said, “I’ve decided I’m a consultant. I’ve cut back on the Seroquel.”

I waited for her to wince, or to bollock me, but instead she said, “by how much?”

I bowed my head and looked up at her meekly. “By half,” I admitted.

Then she winced.

In the end, she had mixed feelings about it. She said that it’s not always the worst thing to decrease a dose of something, particularly something that so potently affects one’s ability to do anything, but by the same token she did (reasonably enough) opine that to cut a dose of an anti-psychotic in half is potentially conducting playgroup in an incinerator.

She instructed me to call her “the second anything happens”. In this case, assuming I’m not …told… not to, then I actually will. I asked her should I just start taking the higher dose again if anything happens. Curiously, she said no – again, I was to call her first. I reluctantly agreed to this (reluctantly because it’s the cunting, fucking, shitting, bastarding phone), and also agreed to discuss it in full with NewVCB next month. I’ll see Christine before that though, on 22nd August.

And that was really that. I have to admit that, generally speaking, things have so far been fine since I cut my dose of Seroquel. No voices, paranoia, no significant mood drops other than that which has been already discussed and accounted for. What I’ve noticed, though, is that whilst I’m still stuffing my fat face, I’m slightly less out-of-control on that front than I was, and I’m slightly less lethargic than I was, say, last week. It’s not a huge difference, but (a) it’s a start and (b) it’s very early days.

Bye

Anyway, well done to anyone who got this far. It’s after 11.30pm now and I’ve been writing this on and off since about 4pm – in between bouts of reading, examining the crimes of H H Holmes and random mysterious disappearances, plus other silly, mostly self-inflicted intrusions. But I’m still in relatively good form, all things considered, so I’ll depart on that hopefully-non-shit-for-you note. Goodnight x

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