The Funeral: Part One

 Important People in My Life, Life, Traumatic Stuff, Triggers  3 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

It was a day like no other.

Given her long-term health problems, I had often wondered what Aunt Maisie’s funeral would look like. For such an obstinate woman, she was remarkably popular – as, for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, the entire McFaul clan seem to similarly regarded. Perhaps it’s a rural thing; they seem to know everyone within at least a 10 mile radius, and know them well at that. Me, I’ve never even spoken to my next door neighbours.

Maisie’s funeral service was conducted at her home. Hotel California is situated along a dark and relatively quiet stretch of road a few miles outside a small town. As you approach, you crest a hill, which is about 1,000 feet from the house. As A and I rolled up said mount, with the unfamiliar-to-the-place Eimear following us, we were dumbstruck by the sight that greeted us.

Nearly an hour before the start of the service, a line of cars was parked from the entrance to the house right back to us. There were police cones on the other side of the road, in place to prevent mourners from parking there as well. I was stunned when I realised there was even a cop car, ensconced in which were two officers, waiting in preparation for the events about to transpire.

As I got out of my car, I shook my head in disbelief. Not that I care that much, since by that juncture I’ll be dead, but I wondered briefly if I could hope to have even a quarter of this turnout at my funeral. I concluded that this was, in technical terms, Not Bloody Likely.

We waited for Eimear, and as a trio duly proceeded towards the house. Strangely, the vast yard that surrounds it was mostly devoid of cars (save for those of the immediate family) – it turned out, of course, that this was to accommodate the hearse, and the mourners’ cars which would be arriving to cart Paedo, my mother and aunts, and Maisie’s vast entourage of descendants to the cemetery, its gaping six-foot hole for Maisie waiting patiently to be filled.

I made the initial mistake of trying to get in through the front door. There wasn’t even standing room in either of the two rooms onto which the small hall leads. Some random old git offered to try to shift people around in a bid to accommodate us, but I thanked him and demurred, deciding to go around the back. People were randomly standing about in the yard, most of whom could have been Lord fucking Lucan for all I knew them (or perhaps not, since Lord Lucan’s smug face is not exactly an image unfamiliar to the world). I ignored them, and shoved the back door open.

Fortunately for me, my mother was standing in the back hall. I was perturbed to observe Georgie, Aunt of Evil, standing in close proximity, but I ignored her and reached to embrace my mother. Praise merciful God/Allah/Dawkins/Flying Spaghetti Monster: my mother decided to come outside, and free me from the burden of having to stand in such a cramped and oppressive atmosphere.

Frankly, I remember few – if any – of the words spoken between us for some time. I think Eimear, who is what may be politely termed a ‘motormouth’, stepped in to speak of the various inanities of which she is usually full. I lit up a fag and stared at my (new) shoes (new shoes! NEW SHOOOOOES! Did anyone else like Twin Peaks?), desperately wishing the whole sorry thing would just be fucking over.

“Oh!” exclaimed my mother after 20,000 years. “It’s the ladies!”

I looked up, aghast. ‘The ladies’ is a euphemism for my mother’s golf club acquaintances. Aside from converse with Aunt of Evil, the last thing I wanted to deal with was these women. Some of them are nice, genuinely, but several conform perfectly to the traditional golfing stereotypes: gossipy, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, look-at-me-and-my-perfect-hair. There was one there in particular that, although admittedly she and my mother get on reasonably well, I felt was in attendance for the sole purpose of relaying events to her little cronies (Daniel: you know of whom I type).

Unusually, my mother was not horrified that these women had ‘caught’ me smoking (I’m nearly 30, for Christ’s sake!); not surprisingly, she had more important things on her mind. That said, we had been at a funeral of another member of the golf club – a good friend of my mother’s, actually – a few years ago when the subject of baptism curiously and inexplicably came up. As I went to proffer the view that this was a load of shit and that I was grateful that my parents had not presumptuously forced my infant self through the silly process, my mother kicked me under the table, and said, “oh yes, Pandora was christened in such-and-such a Church.” I remember shooting her a look of abject disgust and anger.

Anyway. As if this wasn’t going to be long enough without silly tangential musings. In the spirit of politeness and occasion, I made small-talk with a few of the assembled golfers (of whom, it turned out in the end, there were something like 10 or 12). When one, let’s call her Amy, pulled me aside and said, “Pandora. Congratulations!”, I felt the familiar tug of paranoid anxiety grip me.

“Congratulations?”

“Yes – you know, for your internet writing. You were nominated for an award for it, were you not?”

“Oh yes. That,” I said, feigning a casual shrug.

“Yes, that! Brilliant!”

“Thanks. I didn’t win it, mind you,” I lied. I looked into the woman’s fucking eyes and lied.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she returned, the cause for her emphasis of the word ‘matter’ being the source of some puzzlement to me. “Just being nominated…that’s amazing. Really well done,” she purred, continuing – as is her wont, to be fair – to overemphasise words of little import.

I smiled bashfully, and once again thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster when someone else just then butted in. I know it’s my fault that Mum found out about the awards ceremony, but in the name of retaining my anonymity – or, more accurately, in the name of protecting everyone else in this so-called life of mine from the sordid truths of said existence – I wished with a fervent passion that she’d not gone around telling everyone she knows. Even the fucking McFauls know about it, and half of this fucking blog is about them!

My relief was short-lived, however, as Aunt of Evil exited the back door and proceeded in the direction of our little splinter group.

She came up to my mother, and prodded her about something. Facing her – literally facing her – became unavoidable. I took a deep breath and nodded at her. “Georgie,” I acknowledged.

“Pandora,” she returned nervously. “A.” At least she had the grace to be embarrassed. A muttered some sort of equally-anxious response.

And, for then at least, that was that. I waited a few minutes in order to feign a politic exit, then told my mother that I wished to observe Maisie’s body.

She led me in, fighting her way through about 4,028,374 (living) bodies, all gathered in one sodding room. She tactfully opened the door to where Maisie lay, and let A and I squeeze through it.

I mentioned in my last post in this series that when Mum and I had seen Maisie’s body at the cuntspital that she looked surprisingly alive, as though she were merely sleeping. I also said that I don’t normally think that about corpses. Here is where my more standard thinking in this arena came back to reality, slapping me like a wet fish around the jowls as it did: Maisie looked fucking horrendous.

The undertakers had tried to do her make-up to exacting standards, but the biology of death dictated that they would fail in their noble endeavour. Her lips, even through her lipstick, were black. Her chin, rigid as it was in its deceased state, seemed to sag beyond her head like some rancid piece of meat. She had one of those expressions that elderly people in care homes who are devoid of teeth are often seen to sport. I won’t say that I was horrified, because I’ve had enough exposure to dead bodies to know what to expect. But, despite having that awareness on a sort of intellectual level, I was…disappointed, I suppose. She looked so fundamentally unlike herself that I couldn’t help but feel sorry that this was going to be everyone’s last image of her.

Like I had in the hospital, I kissed her(/the corpse – it really wasn’t her) on the forehead, and mumbled something or other. I think it was something like, “sleep well,” which is a fucking stupid thing to say. I had, however, said it many times: Alter Ego was fawning around her Facebook account (in between a myriad of deactivations of same) uttering such things and generally behaving like a normal person who’d been genuinely bereaved. Am I bereaved? Was I? Yes, Maisie was a constant in my life, and yes, she was never personally unpleasant to me…but it was so bloody complicated. Do I, will I, miss her – miss her as a niece would normally miss her previously omnipresent aunt? I truly don’t know the answer to that even now, a month after her demise.

By the time we left the body, the service was almost upon us. My mother negotiated her way through the preposterous crowd towards the living room, from which the same old prick of a minister we’d met on the Wednesday was to conduct the service. I tried to get away, but my mother insisted that she wanted me with her, which was fair enough. Pursuant to that, of course, I wanted A with me, which wasn’t entirely fair on the poor sod: I’m not the only one in the relationship that has a distinct and, at times, overwhelming crowd phobia.

I sort of stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. One of Aunt of Boredom’s (AKA Maureen’s) two sons stood to my right, with some geezer I didn’t know in front of him. My mother was directly in front of me; Georgie was to her right. Beyond my mother, Suzanne and Student – Maisie’s granddaughters – sat on the edge of the sofa. I couldn’t see any of my (first) cousins, nor did I observe Paedo. But then, the place was that packed that spotting a cunting elephant wouldn’t have been easy.

Somebody thrust an order of service into my hands. Initially askance at this – we had to fucking sing?! – I melted a bit when I saw the picture they’d placed on the front of the document. It was a good photo of Maisie, insofar as such things exist. She was not, in her latter years, an attractive woman – but she looked so happy in this picture. More than that, she looked maternal, loving and – and it pains me to use this word – sweet.

It reminded me of the good things about her: her generosity, her understanding of the many difficulties I’ve faced (well. That she knows of..!), her willingness to put herself out for me (and my abject failure to ever return that favour), the silly yet weirdly (in retrospect) endearing way she’d always insist on you having “another wee cup of tea” before you left Hotel California. I looked at it, and tears pricked my eyes. As they do as I type this.

I tried to avoid looking at the image for the rest of the day, but I failed miserably. Every time I fought to avoid it, my gaze seemed to involuntarily fall upon it. And every time that it did, I felt that little more sad, that little more regretful. I could have done more. I could have been less negative. Yes, my aunt had bad streaks – but, like I am wont to do with many people, it struck me each and every time I saw her smiling face on that silly piece of paper that I failed (and fail) to see the good that was virtually punching me in the face. And I could have done more.

The service began with a desultory warbling of some hymn or other. For whatever reason, I can’t remember what that was; I do remember that proceedings ended with Amazing Grace, apparently a favourite of Maisie’s, but whatever this was I’ve no idea. In fact, aside from a few instances which I shall henceforth relate, I don’t remember a great deal of the service. Frankly, I don’t think I was missing much, but perhaps it is churlish to say that.

The minister prattled on about how we should be comforted by God’s amazing love and all the usual shite that the clergy bring out verbatim at funerals. He even sounded like he was on stage – on stage, and acting poorly. They (whoever ‘they’ are – not They ‘They‘, thank fuck) say that the sign of a bad actor is knowing that he or she is acting, and so it was with our dear friend here. I do remember that I actively didn’t listen to most of this, because (a) I don’t agree with a single fucking word and (b) I’ve heard it all, so many times, before.

As I felt his predictable little voice evanesce away from my ears, an odd thing happened. For want of fixating on something that wasn’t him, my mind punished me by looking at that bloody picture. And I cried. Not “wah wah wah! *sob sob sob*!”, thank…well, thank whatever you damn well like – but tears were there, in a relatively constant stream. The strangest thing about this was that, for possibly the first time in my life – my entire life, not just my adulthood – I did absolutely nothing to fight them.

I remember thinking at one point, “at least they’ll know I’m genuinely grieving,” though (a) I don’t know who ‘they’ were supposed to be (again, not They ‘They’, who would have found the whole thing terribly entertaining had they been in situ), and (b) as discussed above, I don’t know that I am genuinely grieving. Further, the thinking of such thoughts shows clear manipulation. If that was my view, then I wasn’t exactly crying for my own benefit, was I? I was crying for appearances. That is reprehensible beyond any measurable scale. In my defence, the tears were involuntary, but it strikes me that perhaps my failure to do anything about them was a cynical ploy. And that – using someone’s death to appear more human (despite my recent rant about that usage of that word – see me and my bloody self-contradictions/hypocrisy?!) – that sickens even me. Maybe (Old)VCB was right when she diagnosed me with BPD.

Ballrootvicar bollocksed on for three more centuries during which I continued to ignore him with stubborn defiance – but when I heard my mother’s name mentioned somewhere on the periphery of my hearing, I turned my attention back to the man. In whatever eulogy he was attempting to perform, he was mentioning the grief of those family members closest to Maisie. When he got round to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I saw the shoulders of both Student and Suzanne shake piteously. I shed a tear for them, briefly, then watched in some perplexity as Suzanne supportively rubbed Student’s back.

Deep breath. This is hard for me to admit, but I’m going to do it. I felt something that I’ve almost never felt in this sort of context; I felt envy. I envied their closeness, and lamented my distance from it. They are not just cousins; they’re properly family, which to them trumps all. However, more importantly to me, is that they’re not just cousins/family; they’re friends. For those fleeting seconds, I longed so deeply for the comfort and unabated joy of friendship, for ordinary platonic love. I have no ‘real life’ female friends, something that has never bothered me in my life to date. I’m not even sure that it was their shared gender and its more-customary-than-mine female expression (#feminismfail there, Pan) that bothered me; it was simply that I had no friends there with me. Oh, yes, Mum and A were there – but Mum had her own grieving to do, and much as I love A and feel that he is a friend as well as a lover, the relationship is by necessity different from pure, simple friendship.

Daniel lives in England, and even though he left Northern Ireland nearly a decade ago, I miss him every day. Brian and Aaron do live here, but – and mainly through faults of my own, I confess – I rarely see them. Neither of them would have come to Maisie’s funeral even if I saw them every day anyway, and neither would I have expected it of them. If anything, I found it a little odd that so many of Mum’s friends attended, yet here I am whining about having had none of my own.

Whatever the case, I envied my cousins(-once-removed) and their innate understanding of how each other felt, and though I could probably not be good friends with either of them – whilst I like them, and believe that’s mutual, we are too different to ever be close – I desperately wanted a piece of what they had that day, and was briefly overcome with the greatest void of loneliness I’ve ever known. It is often said that it’s eminently possible to feel despairing, gut-wrenching loneliness whilst in a room full of people. I have never seen a more quintessential instance of that dictum.

This is turning into an epic self-pity-party. To get back to the logistics of the event, at some point the random bloke standing to my right was invited to speak. It turned out that he was the “Pastor” from Suzanne’s Church.

Suzanne, rather unfortunately, is a Presbyterian. Any of you familiar with the denomination will probably have guessed where this is going.

He spoke with the casual but wholly palpable arrogance that I’ve always associated with plane hijackers about hell, fire, brimstone – and how an all-loving God will burn you in agony for an eternity if you don’t submit to his narcissism. Now, let me clear something up here: I know there are Christians that read this blog, and I apologise for any offence I’m causing in this rant. Despite not agreeing with you, I have nothing per se against religion, Christianity included: it is this warped, horrible version of it that grates on me so. I don’t believe in God, obviously, but if He does exist, I can’t believe that the fuckwittery of this brand of Presbyterianism can be true. A loving, benevolent force as exemplified through Christ is not the God of which these people speak. I wished, not for the first time, that I came from a Catholic background.

You know, that’s kind of amusing in a dark way. Factions of the McFaul dynasty are viciously (and contemptibly) sectarian – notably ScumFan, but not just him. I have attempted on innumerate occasions to convince the boy that this whole Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland is an absolute load of bollocks, and whilst he hears the words and occasionally makes vague gestures of agreement, he doesn’t listen. And that brings me to what I find funny about the whole thing: if, say, ScumFan happened upon this blog and read about what his grandfather had done to me as a kid, I don’t know what he’d do. However, if he happened upon it and saw the words, “I wish I’d been born a Catholic”, I can almost guarantee that he’d disown me. Pathetic, isn’t it? I love this little country, truly I do – but I detest that that will always be an entrenched part of its heritage.

Anyway, this knobhead Pastor wanked on and on with his bigoted bile, to the point where he annoyed me so much that I started making various small noises or fidgety gestures in a bid to get his attention fixated my expression of sheer disgust. He was so self-absorbed in his vile little world, however, that if I’d kicked him squarely in the nuts and screamed, “you’re a fucking wanker, you cunt!” into his face, I doubt he’d have even batted an eyelid in recognition.

During the so-called prayer that he conducted, I actually started muttering bitchy comments at him. You may recall that a million miles up the page I stated that one of Maureen’s sons, my cousin Marvin, was standing beside me, just behind this pastortwat. Although neither my mother nor the pastortwat seemed to hear any of my misgivings, evidently Marvin did; he looked up at me, caught my eye, and – gesturing to the pastortwat – rolled his eyes. I shot him a knowing grin, which he was quick to reciprocate. I knew that A, behind me, would be seething with boiling rage too, but I was so hemmed in by others’ bodies that trying to turn to him would have been like conducted an ugly 4×4′s three-point turn in a danky bedsit. In any case, due to his visual impairment, A can’t ‘do’ body language, so I had to settle on non-verbal vicar-bashing with Marvin.

After this particular twatbag had finally shut the fuck up, it was time for one more bloody prayer, this time with the bald-headed first bloke. I gazed wistfully into nothing in particular, making a pronounced point not to close my eyes nor bow my head. I never do, incidentally, but I made a concerted effort to make it obvious that day. To no avail, obviously, because the very actions in which I was not partaking were the very actions in which those whose attention I sought were.

Finally, the assembled congregation – all of whom I hope are non-choristers – ‘sang’ a tuneless rendition of Amazing Grace, and the service was over. 10,000 people milled their way out of Hotel California, and into the yard to await the next move.

Maisie’s children and grandchildren went to the coffin for one final look at their (grand)mother, and then her coffin was closed forever, and wheeled out the back door – the door she’d always used to access that house that she’d so loved so well.

—

This post has been exhausting to write, and – I’m sure – to read. Sorry for the heavy emphasis on introspection, but then, if I can’t navel-gazingly reflect on my own blog, where can I? To be continued as soon as I am able.

Fuck the Welfare Reform Bill!

 Finances, Moods, Traumatic Stuff, Triggers, Work  4 Responses »
Feb 042012
 

I’ve deliberately stayed away from the politics of welfare “reform” on this blog for quite some time, because it’s such a nasty fucking business. But given the heinous, subterfugal, undemocratic fucking bullshit that has permeated all circumstances pertaining to the Welfare Reform Bill, recently and regrettably passed by the House of Cunts Commons, I can stay silent no longer.

A constitutionally and legally aware individual may well, at this point, cry, “but you’re in Northern Ireland! What the hell does this have to do with you?”

A reasonable query, since the WRB applies to Great Britain, not the UK in its entirety (does anyone know if it applies to Scotland? I really can’t find a definitive source telling me one way or another). However, I have a vested interest for a variety of reasons:

  1. Principle. This is fucked. The Coalition government are sending out a message of “we don’t give a flying rat’s arse what happens to the ill and/or disabled of this country”. More importantly, however, benefit claimants – who, according to the government’s own statistics, are 99 – 99.5% genuine in their claims – will be forced into poverty, homelessness and even death by the fuckwittery inherent in this steaming, fetid pile of bollocks. Who in their right mind can reasonably stand by, watch that happen and say nothing, regardless of how much it does or doesn’t affect them?
  2. I have dozens of friends – some online, some offline, some both – that will be directly affected by this. At least one of them has spoken tragically of how she would rather end her life peacefully than suffer the indignity of all that comes with being completely impoverished, as she would likely be if major amendments are made to UK social security. Obviously, I sincerely hope that she doesn’t kill herself, but I can certainly understand the rationale that has led to that line of thinking. In fact, the spectre of the WRB has already caused suicides. Or, should we say, murders?
  3. You’ll have heard the old adage that “when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold.” What you may not have heard is that whatever happens in Great Britain generally leads to the same happening in Northern Ireland. We’ll catch this pox: be in no doubt about that. My partner A works in drafting legislation (albeit in an entirely different arena than this), and some of his work involves adapting statutes from GB into workable legislation for NI. On most such occasions, this is simply revision, rather than significant modification. One might argue that as the Assembly starts to assert itself, this may start to change, but this is unlikely to be the case in terms of social security – and that’s even with the fucking Barnett formula! An independent Northern Ireland (whether officially or by extended devolution) could not afford to uphold its current finances, never mind better them. So, they will do what they’ve always done; they will copy Britain’s “welfare” laws, and the sick and/or disabled in Northern Ireland will be fucked, just like they will be on the mainland.

Why the Bill is a Steaming Pile of Horse Manure

Short answer: it will strip a very sizeable number of genuinely ill and disabled people of their only meaningful income – the money that keeps food in their stomachs, roofs above their heads and breath in their lungs.

Longer answer: there is so much. I would strongly recommend reading the blogs Diary of a Benefit Scrounger and Benefit Scrounging Scum for detailed, well-researched critiques and information. Sue and Kaliya (respective authors of the aforementioned journals) are two disability activist stalwarts who, despite their own profoundly disabling conditions, have fought steadfastly against this shit, even co-authoring the Spartacus Report - which firmly shows the WRB up for the demeaning and threatening bollocks that it is.

In brief (ha!), and personally, though, here are a few issues.

  1. Benefits will be capped at £26,000. That seems like a lot – and to many, myself included (my benefit income is circa £10,500), it is. However, on a national scale, this could be An Issue. London has some of the most expensive housing in the UK, and arguably in Western Europe. If benefits are arbitrarily capped for claimants in that city, the place will be completely ghettoised, a la the 19th century and (backwardly-chronologically) beyond. This is because claimants will either have to leave London entirely, or move into geographically-determined social housing. Social housing becomes “council estate”-ish. People lack opportunities. The cycle of life on the line continues ad nauseum. Poverty, sickness, degradation and a slow, lonely wait for death abound. (Incidentally, this argument could have applied to Northern Ireland until relatively recently too; until the arse fell out of the housing market, we had ((after London)) some of the highest house prices in the UK. Things have come down a bit, and according to Ian Paisley Junior, only one person in Northern Ireland will now be affected by the benefits cap. But still; there are other people out there that this will affect, and affect horrendously. It demands our opposition for them alone).
  2. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) will become “Personal Independence Payment” (PIP). On the face of it, that’s no big deal – a change of name, yes? No more and no less (despite the fact it’ll cost hundreds of thousands to re-brand the fucking thing, but let’s not split financial hairs, eh? It’s only people’s lives that could be saved, after all). Except that it’s not that simple. For one, there will be no ‘automatic’ entitlement for people with life-long conditions – say, folks who’ve had amputations, or people like A who have visual impairments. Clearly these are disabilities that one can overcome so easily, aren’t they?! They’ll all be fine in a year or two! On a related note, two: every claimant, existing or new, will have to undergo an examination by either the insidious, sinister ATOS (on the mainland) or the Social Security Agency (here). This will, despite an illness’s variation or otherwise, include re-assessments at regular junctures. I have already discussed why this is A Very Bad Idea Indeed, so see that post if you need further explanation (short answer: it will fuck people up). Three: DLA currently includes components pertaining to ‘supervision’. If, for example, you are too mental to take your medication as required, or to refrain from killing yourself during the night, you are considered to need supervision. This works in the realm of physical health too; let’s say you’re newly blind and need to climb the stairs to the bog or some such – you’ll understandably need guidance. Well, PIP will abolish any consideration of ‘supervision’, meaning that severely mentally ill people, or others with major disabilities, will strongly lose out.
  3. Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) will no longer be paid to young people with disabilities. Further, non-means-tested ESA will only be available for one year to any claimant (regardless of whether or not they’re still sick/disabled) – after which they can, presumably, go and top themselves to save the Cuntalition some money for fine dining in the Common’s restaurant(s). Of course, they claim that this is all fair and just, because people claiming this form of ESA are considered fit for work after a period of recuperation. Which leads me to my next point…
  4. Oh really? Assessments by ATOS and the SSA? Yeah. These fuckers really know how ill or incapacitated you are. After they (don’t) listen to you for 10 minutes, they throw some shite onto a keyboard, which, when processed by a computer that probably runs fucking Windows, then tells them that YOU’RE FINE. Seriously. This is the way these pricks operate. Again, I’ve ranted about this elsewhere – indeed, I’ve detailed my own personal experience of being shafted by a “medical assessment”, and how I had to fucking well fight, cunting my precarious sanity in the process, to be recognised as being ill – and to disprove the myriad of lies that the so-called doctor at the SSA had written about me, or told by omission. Furthermore, as noted in those posts, none of the medical “professionals” employed by the SSA/ATOS are specialists. So, effectively, they know shit all about psychiatry, gynaecology, gastroenterology, oncology, whatever. Yet they’re allowed to judge every aspect of your illness or disability to the point where it could affect the continuance of your very existence.
  5. This is perhaps tangential, but fuck it. Why is it that tax evasion is allegedly going on all over the show and glanced over, serving the usual gravy train of ludicrously well-off people, when all benefit claimants really want is a modicum of a life and a tiny dollop of dignity afforded in their general direction? And, at the risk of turning this entire post into a fucking cliché – what about the gargantuan minuscule salaries and bonuses of the wbankers that twatted the economies of an entire half-hemisphere? I don’t see the Cuntalition demanding capital returns from, nor demonising, anyone from these demographics for failing to do their jobs or do things by the fucking book…never mind for simply existing.

Aside From All That, The Government are Arseholes Because…

…the House of Lords hated the fucking Bill, and consistently modified many of its proposals. The reality of modern British politics is such that eventually, the House of Commons would probably have got the Bill through Parliament anyway – but why wait when you can be backhanded bellends about it?

The Lords is an institution with many, many faults. I could go into them here, but I can’t be arsed – and in this context, it’s not entirely relevant anyway. One positive thing about the chamber, however, is that unlike the Commons, it has a fuck of a lot more members that are (at least ostensibly) independent of any one party (people known as cross-benchers). The alleged reason for the chamber’s very existence is that, as appointees rather than elected officials, the members are often considered to be “experts” in their field: business, religion, law, and so on. Now, in practice, that may no longer be the case – but regardless, it remains true that the chamber is the upper house of the UK Parliament, and still has a significant role in the scrutiny of our laws. If its amendments/revisions/whatever to a proposed statute are completely ignored, it means that Commons’ members are effectively sticking two fingers up to a long established and constitutionally proper protocol.

And, vis a vis the WRB, stick two fingers up they did. In fact, as observed above, ignoring things at the Lords’ last possible reading wasn’t even good enough, oh no. They had to pass the WRB now. So, in an epic piece of subterfugal, self-serving, ethically diabolical cuntery, they used a little known and desperately archaic little device – “financial privilege” – to tell the House of Lords, effectively, to fuck off.

Ah, such efficiency. Such respect for the legislature. Such respect for fucking democracy, for the fucking country, for that country’s people. NOT.

—

I could go on and on.

But I won’t. The Welfare Reform Bill is unjust, degrading, completely unhelpful and downright dangerous, and if it goes ahead, lives of vulnerable, genuine people will at best be made desperately difficult, and at worst ended.

But advocates for the ill and disabled, such as Sue and Kaliya to whom I alluded above, said they would do anything and everything to fight this. The only possible way to stop this fuckwittery now is to stop its Royal Assent (ie. where the Queen signs the Bill off into law). You and I both know that’s never going to happen; even if the Queen thought seriously thought about it for more than three seconds, she would correctly anticipate the constitutional crisis it would create, and put her name to it anyway. Even so, call on her to withhold assent anyway by signing this petition. It won’t change a thing, but we must exhaust every single possibility – and one never knows. Her Majesty might impart some words of wisdom onto these bastards that are meant to be her “subjects” and our representatives – not modern fucking dictators.

I feel ashamed to be British. If the Irish Republic wasn’t such a financial fuckhole itself (lovely in every other way, of course), I’d be banging on Enda Kenny’s door right now, begging for citizenship.

In short: FUCK THE WELFARE REFORM BILL.

Initial Side Effects of Lamictal…and a Long Overdue Rant

 Life, Medications, Moods, Psychiatry  16 Responses »
Nov 182011
 

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have been the unfortunate recipient of a number of tweets yesterday evening that contained almost epic levels of ranting. I had written an entire post for this blog on A’s iPad, which, whilst better for typing than our iPhones, is not as conducive to creating lengthy prosaic lamentations as a proper keyboard. Unfortunately for me, I’m in my laptop-phobia zone this week, and to that end only the iPad and the iPhone are safe for use (don’t ask for an explanation of this fatuity, because I don’t have one. Maybe I’ve simply grown to hate Windross so much that I fear even seeing it. Time to put Debian on the laptop, perchance).

Anyhow, I was a complete moron and decided to use the Blogpress iOS app to aid me in this ignoble endeavour. Just as I had finished, with the usual laughably stupid length of post completed, and went to save the entry – the cunting, fucking, shitting bastard of an application died on me. I lost every single word. I tried all the usual wank in an attempt to save it – close the app, turn device off and back on, etc – but circa 2,000 words and just over an hour of my time were lost to the dark realms of the e-ther (geddit?!) and try as I might to continue the rescue effort, the bloody thing just crashed, crashed and crashed a-fucking-gain. Shitting fuckery hell and bollocks.

So, iOS V users – don’t use Blogpress, OK? Not, at least, it’s been thoroughly updated and tested. It used to be a great wee app – it is, ostensibly, a much more fully featured blogging program than WordPress’s own. But at least (eventually) the latter fucking works. So that is where I find myself as I type this attempt at a re-write.

First though…

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST BUT I AM SO ANGRY. THE POST WAS ACTUALLY NOT BAD, UNLIKE FUCKING EVERYTHING I’VE WRITTEN FOR MONTHS. I WOULD HAVE BEEN FUCKING CUNTED THE FUCK OFF IF THE BASTARDING PIECE OF FUCKWITTAGE LOST A MORE CHARACTERISTIC LOAD OF FUCKING SHITEY CUNTFLAPPED BELLENDERY, BUT THE FACT IT LOST SOMETHING VAGUELY NOT COMPLETELY BLOODY AWFUL MAKES ME WANT TO SMASH THE LIVING BECHRIST OUT OF EVERYTHING. YOU CAN NEVER BASTARDING WELL REWRITE SOMETHING TOLERABLY BLOODY PASSABLE TO THE SAME PSEUDO-ALRIGHT LEVEL AS IT WAS THE FIRST SHITHEAD OF A TIME YOU FIRST BLOODY WROTE THE BOLLOCKFIST OF A FUCKING THING, SO WHAT FOLLOWS HERE WILL BE BACK TO MY USUAL DICKHEAD STANDARD OF UTTER COCK. FUCK TO THE ENDS OF ALL THE KNOWN BALLWIPED DIMENSIONS. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

Well, it’s been a while since there was a proper rant here, hasn’t it? And lo, I used to be the Queen of Rants in the Madosophere. But anyway, now that we’ve got that out of the way…

I’m having some difficulty adjusting to Lamictal. Don’t worry, if you’re one of those odd people that may in some way give a flying arse about my existence, there’s no “FUCK I’M DYING” rash or anything. But the drug has brought me an insane level of fatigue (for example, I nearly fell asleep yesterday afternoon whilst playing Saints Row: The Third, which had delightfully arrived here early. I mean seriously, what the actual fuck? No one with even five per cent of a pulse falls asleep whilst playing Saints fucking Row!!!), my eyes have gone cross-eyed, my levels of forgetfulness that began with Venlafaxine (curse it) are amplified to objectively hilarious points of pseudo-dementia (cf. in people’s company a few days ago: “A, what’s my name again? Oh yeah. And, old chap, should you be so obliging as to advise me on the word one uses to intimate the device used to take a crap? Yes! ‘Toilet’. That’s it.”) and my regular migraine-level headaches are now even more frequent. The last point is especially irritating as, in off-label indications at least, Lamictal is used to treat headaches. Go figure, eh?

The exhaustion is not simply that frustrating but familiar kind of languorous weariness to which we are all often slaves – oh no, this is hardcore stuff, even by my own insomniac standards. It’s that kind of exhaustion that is like an gaping vault of oppressive darkness, sucking you in, dominating you entirely, screwing with your mind until it hurts but rendering you useless to do anything about it. It’s that kind of interminable, preponderant bleak tiredness normally wedded to the very worst of depressions – you know the ones I mean. That old familiar hangdog horror in which rising from your bed is not just a difficulty, but an impossibility. The old foe that leaves you helplessly staring at the wall, willing it with whatever mental faculties you have remaining to somehow show you some mercy and let you die. The old knocking on the door of the mind that reminds you that you have no escape, because you are utterly devoid of enough motivation to even end things yourself. The old living hell that seems unresolvable.

Normally such exhaustion and a depressive hell are thus united – but not in this case. It would be a lie to say that the tiredness does not impact upon my mood in some fashion, but for someone whose mental agility and body alike are so heavily enervated, I actually feel pretty stable in this regard. Indeed, Null thinks I’m high. As I was trying to write the original of this post last night (RIP), I must confess that I did wonder that myself; the style of my prose, whilst slightly better than my shitty norm, did have something of a manic quality to it (perhaps that’s exactly why it was slightly less rubbish than as is typical!).

Allow me to exemplify how OK I am, despite Lamictal’s nefarious side effects. I have exactly £1.06 to my name right now, and even that’s part of my overdraft – yet I am not panicking like an old lady denied her copy of her all-important Bella magazine like I normally would; instead, I’m tolerably riding the wave of patience until I get paid next week. It’s November, and I don’t want to run out and throw myself off the nearest bridge or towerblock. Indeed, even bastarding, fuckwitted, hateful, cunting Shitmas has been surprisingly kind to me this year: the hackneyed and improbably dainty ads for the accursed capitalist nonsense only began registering on my radar about six weeks in advance of 25 December, rather than the 12 or 13 weeks to which I am normally frustratingly used. And, next week, off I go to London, where I am short-listed for a Mind Media Award. I am excited, rather than entirely petrified, by this. I mean, of course I should be excited – but as someone with social anxiety issues which are, at times, very severe, it’s a surprisingly gratifying thing that being faced with being in such a busy venue with – dun-dun-DUN! – famous people does not scare the living bejesus out of me right now.

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Lest anyone think I’m in the midst of a narcissistic delusion of grandeur regarding the awards ceremony, no, I do not – not for half a second – entertain the notion that I could possibly win the award. No way. But it doesn’t matter; what matters is being there. It is enough to have the opportunity to meet some incredibly interesting and highly influential individuals operating in the arena of mental health; it is enough that someone, somewhere has considered this silly blog even worthy of mentioning in the same breath as some truly excellent anti-stigma and exploratory material; it is enough that I dare to see my name listed in honour of the late Mark Hanson, a stalwart of the social media world who suffered from horrendous depression; and it is enough that I have the opportunity to see some of my wonderful old friends and, indeed, to meet one of my oldest and most supportive online friends for the first time (so excited, bourach! :D ). Although it would be beyond absolutely incredible to win, to be in the position I already am is more than enough.

So, although I’m fighting medication side effects from every angle, I’m doing relatively well. As for the side effects themselves – well, according to most of the literature on Lamictal, they will pass. Indeed, I already feel them abate, ever so slightly. As the days pass, my eyes will blur things a little less, my energy levels will increase a little more, and my headaches will revert to the mediocre but liveable standards to which I’ve long been accustomed. Maybe the current drug cocktail will, in the end, work for me after all.

What’s that you say, fair reader? “Oh dear God, Pan’s defining characteristic of cynicism has been lost?” No, fear not – I have not become so washed away by some sort of bright absolution that I have become an optimist. Christmas still sucks, the world is still a cunthole, I’m still an infernal misanthrope and I still can’t stand the sight of happy couples frolicking around the shops like some sort of silly vapid bunnies. I’m just a misanthrope that can’t stand the sight of happy couples frolicking around the shops like some sort of silly vapid bunnies who happens not to feel opprobriously atrocious for once.

If you don’t like that…suck it up ;)

(NB. I haven’t proof-read the above folks, sorry. I humbly beg your forgiveness for any poor turn of phrase, grammar, spelling etc, and I shall endeavour to correct such issues at my next available opportunity. Toodle-pip!).

Rant: London Riots

 Off-Topic Non-Mentalist Ramblings  22 Responses »
Aug 092011
 

Slightly off-topic, since this is a mental health blog, but sod it. This situation cannot be ignored by me. I am fucking disgusted beyond description.

As if the riots themselves were not bad enough, I am beyond appalled to see some people defending the actions of those responsible. Sorry, but WHAT?!

I can not express how offensive such sentiments are to me. As someone who has lived through riots, through bombings, shootings and other forms of “civil unrest”, I cannot fathom how anyone can think the fear, danger and destruction that is evoked in these circumstances is justified in any way. Do you know what it’s like to live with this every fucking night? How do you think ordinary, non-rioting people in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham and Liverpool must’ve felt…and must still feel? Do you care? If you don’t, then your opinion is worthless to begin with, and you should go and fuck yourselves, you selfish, sadistic fucking dickheads. If you do, how you can reconcile that sense of giving a shit about the rest of the human race with supporting those involved in this scandal is a mystery to me.

Let me get a few things clear. The Metropolitan Police certainly have a lot of questions to answer, and I utterly condemn the killing of Mark Duggan; regardless of the man’s background, killing an unarmed man is a reprehensible act for any state agency (or anyone else for that matter) to engage in. Of course you should have the right to protest if your police service is behaving in a brutal fashion. I support the point that the original protesters in Tottenham were trying to make.

Furthermore, the government is indubitably guilty of marginalising a large number of societal groups, as were many governments before them. I loathe the present administration, as previous posts on this blog will testify, and I think every single one of them should be ashamed of themselves for the way they have consistently allowed an arguable form of oppression of a number of different demographic groups within this country. Again, of course protests are justified when there is such a sense of disenfranchisement.

Protests are not riots, however. Protests are not looting and theft. Protests are not arson. Protests are not inhibiting the work of fire-fighters and the ambulance service. Protests are not attacking people, throwing firebombs at people, mugging people. All of those things? They’re crime. They’re violence.

And just while we’re at it: whilst politics in the United Kingdom is a pathetic joke that will ruin lives, at least we have the right to peacefully protest, unlike quite a few I could name. These knobs have taken that right, and twisted the living shit out of it.

You know, much as I would continue to condemn it and find it utterly repugnant, if people stuck to attacking governmental and police premises, at least I could begin to understand their horrendous actions. Let me repeat, though, that that would still be reprehensible. I remember here, during the Troubles, in many instances the Provisional IRA spread their brand of terrorism by targeting the (overwhelmingly Protestant) police and British government buildings/employees, whereas the various loyalist terrorists often sought out Catholic civilians. Neither kind of actions are forgiveable – no terrorism is – because whether you’re an agent of the state or an ordinary person, you’re still someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister, friend, colleague, whatever. So this would still be beyond preposterous, let me assure you – but at least there would be a very tenuous and weak attempt at an excuse.

As things stand, that doesn’t apply at all. Local businesses are being burnt to the ground – not just even big economic targets, but small, family traders doing their best just to survive. How would these thuggy little twats feel if poor Maurice Reeves was their grandfather? Don’t they care anything for the historical context of the shop he ran? Or about the fact that they’ve just effectively ruined his family’s livelihood? (Apparently not – silly questions, Pan). Don’t they realise that by burning London to the ground, by opportunistically and cravenly stealing from shops despite the alleged nobility of their cause, they are going to fuck the already fucked economy further? Don’t they realise that this will affect them? If they feel economically disenfranchised now, they’re going to feel a hell of a lot worse if they destroy half of the working premises of the world’s fucking capital. The FTSE hasn’t exactly been stable since this whole fuckstainism kicked off.

Even more disturbing again is the fact that people are being made homeless because of the riots. One woman had to risk her life by jumping from a burning building that would otherwise certainly have ended it. Jesus Christ, people, wake up! If they really care so much about social inclusion, how can it be acceptable to burn normal, civilian people out of their houses? It doesn’t compute in my head as to how that’s anything other than diametrically opposed to what the rioters claim to stand for.

Northern Ireland proves that political violence doesn’t work. When the Troubles ended, it was not because either side had achieved their aims; it was because the community at large had had enough of living in a constant state of superveillance and stoic but omnipresent terror, and we wanted representatives from each ‘side’ to work together for a brighter future for this country – for peace (a grass-roots desire has been largely successful, save for some thankfully isolated incidents). I wonder, if any of the people rioting in England in the last few days were actually alive during the Troubles, did they look upon Northern Ireland as a shithole in those days? Most people external to the province did. And yet that’s what they’re doing to their own towns and areas right now. I suppose they haven’t considered how pathetic they look on the international stage, but whether they care or not, the reality is that international relations is highly important, perhaps even crucial, in modern times, and ergo fucking up the PR of the country isn’t the most intelligent idea in the history of time.

(By the way you might, at this point, very well point out to me that both the current First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland both have ((respectively)) loyalist-related and republican-related convictions to their names ((the former for a loyalist ‘invasion’ of a town over the Eire/NI border, the latter for IRA arms charges)). Yeah. You’re right. But consider this: Peter Robinson’s charge was in the mid-1980s, Martin McGuinness’s in the early ’70s. That was a minimum of 25 years ago. It was only when they renounced violence that they got into respected ((insofar as it can be!)), serious politics).

Please. Stop this madness. People get it – you’re pissed off, and arguably with justification. But this is not the way to make your point, and to be absolutely frank, I’m not convinced that everyone involved in this even has a point (otherwise why mug people and commit acts of theft?). You are ruining beautiful, historical, cultural cities and boroughs. You are ruining ordinary people’s lives. You are ruining your very own communities – how nice will it be for you to live in a burnt-out shell for the next few years, particularly if you already feel that you live in a ghetto?

Someone is going to die if this continues. People started protesting, in part, for the very reason that someone was needlessly killed. Now they’re responding by endangering other lives – and fighting (alleged) brutality with brutality is idiotic, spectacularly counter-intuitive and, yeah, to echo pretty much everyone else – simply bloody criminal.

Stop it, you stupid, selfish philistines.

EDIT: I’ve just heard someone else has died. I don’t know who is responsible, but whatever the case, it shouldn’t have to be this way.

EDIT II: Just heard two teenage girls interviewed on the news. “Don’t you mind that you’re ruining the lives of people in your own communities?” the reporter asked. “No,” this silly little cow replied, “they’re only rich people. They need to see that we can do what we want.”

No, you fucking can’t do what you want. With rights come fucking responsibilities. You are childish and disgusting, regardless of your socio-economic class. Fuck.

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Personal Points

  • Worried about Daniel and CVM, both residents of London. I’ve tried to contact them but haven’t heard anything back yet. If either of you are reading this, please fucking contact me!
  • Worried also about Seaneen, Titflasher, Magic Plum, UselessCPN and all my other lovely Twitter/blogging friends, though know from the social networks that they’re safe at present.
  • I’m thinking of all the people in the affected cities and wishing them peace and safety.
  • I hope those organising and participating in these riots are brought to justice. Violence, no matter what ideology it’s in the name of, is completely unreasonable.
  • Social media may have been used to mobilise a lot of this shittery, but it’s also being used for good causes in response to it.
  • I lay awake last night in growing unease until about 5am, listening to distant sirens and constantly-circling overhead helicopters, keeping up-to-date with news of the riots as I did. I awoke after 7 to hear that some minor trouble had kicked off here in NI, though I’ll not be surprised if it gets worse. The hoods on both sides of the divide here are always looking for an excuse.
  • Disclaimer: alleged, own opinion, not reflective of anyone else’s, not a lawyer, not a social commentator, attempted to be balanced because I see the reasons for this but not the actions involved, etc etc. See last night’s look at Anders Breivik and, indeed, the entertainingly-titled ‘Disclaimer‘ page for more information if you really care.

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Anders Breivik: Mad or Bad?

 Off-Topic Non-Mentalist Ramblings, Psychiatry, Random Mental Health Related Philosophising  7 Responses »
Aug 082011
 

First rant of the week.

I’ve just watched a speculative documentary on the repugnant Anders Breivik, the man responsible for the horrific attacks on Oslo and Utøya Island last month. Before continuing, for the little it’s worth, I’d like to extend my sympathy and solidarity to anyone from Norway reading this. Living in Northern Ireland, I have not been a stranger to terrorism. It is a truly despicable thing, that someone could think politics (or more specifically, in the Norwegian case, reactionary extremist racism) could be worthy of ending even one – never mind multiple – human lives. One of the survivors of the shooting attack on the island, who was attending a summer camp on what the documentary described as “left-wing” politics, stated at the end of the programme that he was sure his ideals rather than Breivik’s would, in the end, be the political victors. It is my fervent hope and belief that this will indeed be the case.

I commend the survivors in the programme for their bravery and determination in the face of such horrible, senseless adversity; I hope that in time all of the survivors can heal from both their physical and psychological injuries; and I send sincere sympathies to the loved ones of those that died.

In the sense of the survivor and eye-witness accounts, the documentary was interesting, informative and very powerful and tragic. I am not the nicest person on this Earth, let’s face it, but even I will never, ever understand how someone can be filled with so much loathing for other cultures and different demographic groups that doing something like this would ever cross their minds.

And herein comes the rant. Inexplicably renowned criminologist David Wilson, a supercilious little man that I’ve come across dozens of times both in an academic context and in my more amateur investigations into criminality, was employed by the film-makers as an ‘expert’ witness on Breivik’s psychology. Can you guess where we’re going with this, readers?

According to Wilson (who, to the best of my knowledge, has no more insider knowledge of Breivik than you or I do), Breivik has a “classic cluster B personality disorder”; Wilson exemplifies this point by highlighting the sensationalism of the attacks, and of Breivik’s apparent at-easeness, even his thrills, with the media frenzy after his arrest. Wilson also contends that Breivik is a psychological splitter (ie. a black and white thinker), presuambly in reference to his “MUSLIMS BAD! LEFT WING BAD! KNIGHTS TEMPLAR GOOD!” kind of thinking. Also, he’s a classic narcissist – look at the “manifesto” and the ridiculous pictures the man posted of himself online the day before he embarked on his awful plan.

I can’t argue with any of that, but neither can I see how it took Wilson years of training and work experience to come to these frankly blindingly obvious conclusions. (Also, he contradicts himself on the histrionic thesis at a couple of points by then pointing out how much of a loner and how reclusive Breivik generally was before this all took place, though to be fair that doesn’t exactly mitigate the gruesome exhibitionism the man demonstrated when he enacted his plans). Given that Wilson fails to explain his hypothesis further (or at least that any further explanation was not shown in the programme), I also don’t get how exhibiting a few (admittedly extreme) traits of cluster B pathology makes the man a “classic” example of same. Yeah, he’s probably a narcissist – but being narcissistic does not necessarily mean having narcissistic personality disorder.

Breivik is certainly a classic example of a cunt, but that is far from always the same thing as being someone with a personality disorder. Look. Maybe he has a one, and maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he has some other form of mental illness (the whole Knights Templar thing sounds vaguely fantastical to me), and maybe he doesn’t. What I object to is the programme’s, and Wilson’s in particular, testimony to these possibilities without any qualification.

OK, so they shouldn’t have to point out that just because one exceptionally extreme (possible) example behaves in this heinous way that the overwhelming majority of people with allegedly similar disorders do not – but let’s be honest here; the public love the morbid sensationalism of reporting on supposed madness, and that – and personality disorders in particular, stigmatised as they often are – is (are) often the perfect scapegoat(s) for outrageous behaviour that decent people have difficulty understanding.

I think, as an unfortunate consequence of things like this, that each examination in the media of a criminal that may or does have a mental health problem should carry a clear disclaimer with it: that people with mental illness are generally no more violent than the general population, and are in fact much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it (if memory serves me, schizophrenics in the community are about seven times more likely to be affected by violent offending than other members of the populace, but I could have the specifics of that wrong). It shouldn’t have to be that way, that we need to qualify every generality, but I’m a pragmatic person. I’d rather that than have everyone outside the mental health community demonising those within it, because the consequences of the latter are potentially devastating.

Anyhow, as far as I can see Breivik was mostly sane anyhow. Null made a very good point on TWIM the other day – no one with a serious and active mental health problem could honestly have spent so much time* meticulously researching and planning a major ‘event’ in the fashion that he apparently did (except, arguably, a sociopath, the more organised version of the psychopath ((depending on which textbook you read))). We just don’t have the concentration, the calculated calmness and, more practically, in all probability we don’t have the economic and physical resources to engage in anything so necessarily complex. That sounds like a cold statement, maybe, but the point is that mentally ill people who kill because of (as opposed to in spite of) their illness tend to do it on impulse (because of a false sense of feeling persecuted or threatened, perhaps) or because they genuinely have no rational conception of what they’re doing (eg. because hallucinations compel them towards the crime).

* Null’s comment suggests that Breivik was planning the operation for nine years, though the documentary claimed it was three. I’ve heard different reports from other sources too, so don’t know what to believe. Either way, it’s a long time and was, by all accounts, a complicated process.

Further, in September 2001, did we start hearing speculation on whether Marwan al-Shehhi, Mohamed Atta, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Ahmed al-Haznawi et al, and – presumably – Osama bin Laden himself, had cluster B personality disorders? Did we spend any significant amount of time discussing whether they had folie à x? No? Didn’t we just accept that they were representing a particularly extreme and reactionary version of Islam (which, I would add, in no way represents the vast majority of people that belong to that faith)?

It’s not an entirely fair comparison, granted, because as far as we know Breivik worked alone – whether or not the two supportive ‘cells’ to which he referred were somehow involved in the attacks is at present unknown, but either way the bomb and the shootings specifically were carried out by him alone. The 11th September attacks were organised by a huge, world-wide cult of extremists.

But therein lies the point. Breivik, by his own delighted admission, is a racist that loathes Islam and wants to wage a war to drive Muslims from (Western) Europe. He claims to be a “cultural Christian”, which I think in effect means that the man is not particularly religious, but supports whatever continuing influence Christianity has on an increasingly secular and culturally inclusive continent. But although Breivik is probably not a religious extremist, he is certainly a political one.

To further exemplify, when the Troubles here were ongoing, we didn’t try to examine whether or not Johnny Adair or Thomas Murphy were personality disordered. Do we debate the state of Nick Griffin’s mental health? Was that the first thing on people’s mind when London was attacked in July 2005? Indeed, is it the lead speculative headline as regards the current ongoing rioting in London?

No. Because we used to be able to, and still can on occasion, accept that some people are just twisted fucking dickheads. People have always committed unspeakable acts in the name of religion, politics or other fucked-up ideologies. Anders Breivik is one such example. He may be mad after a fashion, but he knew what he was doing. So, ultimately, he was just fucking bad. Very, very bad.

RIP to all those that were killed as a result of the attacks on Norway on 22 July 2011.

Disclaimer: author of the above is not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, not a criminologist, not a political scientist, not a sociologist, doesn’t know Anders Breivik, doesn’t know David Wilson, doesn’t know anyone from the Discovery Channel, could be wrong on all counts, could be wrong on everything she’s ever written, it’s all merely alleged, she’s only speculating just like the programme was, is not a member of any organisation, believes in free speech. Author of the above is a provincial nobody who apparently can’t stop her vociferous gob (fingers) when presented with a topical story and a laptop. Author means no harm in voicing opinions, welcomes sensible and reasoned debate, wishes most people well, though doesn’t wish Anders Breivik well.

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Pointless Rant of Utter Pointlessness

 Life, Meh, Moods, Triggers  8 Responses »
Aug 012011
 

Will to live = - 465,927 Life Points.

Abilities of written communication as of this moment in time = - 2,852,937,563,828,445,643 Writing Points.

Decision to go ahead and write a post anyway = + 28,426,384,722,044 Stupid Points.

Wrote the below in the midst of an exhaustive fit of pique:

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WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

The Everythinger is a really decent man, and it’s not his fault that I am completely and utterly fed up, but this whole house decoration business is doing my head in. If I have to see B&fuckingQ one more time, I will scream. No, literally: I will actually scream. My formerly held ambivalence towards the place has transmogrified into a demon of bitter resentment.

I know of people who have their houses decorated every year or so. How is this possible? There are no circumstances under which the alleged feasibility of that could compute in my brain. How could you do this on an even occasional basis without putting a bullet in your head? The disruption of routine (such as it is, in my case), the constant presence of someone in your house, the constant trips to the aforementioned shop of doom and woe, the movement of furniture and its intrusion into places of comfort, the fucking smell (admittedly faint in these days of modern technology), the constant “would you like another coffee?”s…gah. Even writing about it makes me shudder. For someone who is mentally healthy, surely this a stress that hardly seems worth it (and yes, for what it’s worth, the apparently sane A is cracking up too). For someone with as much batshittery in her belfry as me, it’s remarkably demanding.

I dissociated a bit on the way back from B&Q this evening. That’s the first time in a very long time, and isn’t a particularly good sign. It didn’t develop into a full-on how the fuck did I get here mode, like it has so many times in the past, but I did notice myself losing a few seconds here and there (or rather I didn’t, but you know what I mean). I know we all do from time to time when driving, but this was different from normal ‘highway hypnosis’ – my experiences of both that phenomenon and more atypical dissociation have taught me the difference between the two, though it’s hard to quantify the distinction in words. Perhaps mentalists develop a sixth sense for mentalist issues over time? Perhaps I am just doing my usual thing of making something out of nothing, or over-pathologising, or any of the other lovely things I could easily be accused of.

People will no doubt read this and say, “get a grip – this is a normal and ordinary life event! God, you are so frightfully immature!” I suppose it is and I suppose I am, and it’s quite probable that I am suffering from a normal, if (I would wager) severe, form of everyday stress. I think, and hope, that’s all it is. But, as noted, everyday stress in those with pre-existing insanity is at best a dubious state.

Ah well. That’s all terribly boring, but then you must be used to that from this blog by now, surely? I don’t think I’m about to be binned or anything. I’m fed up, unspeakably tired and really rather irritable, but I think that’s all reactive to circumstance, rather thank some sort of mental health crisis.

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Actually, now (half an hour or so after the above) I’m feeling a little less bollocks, which is particularly curious given that we have just had to move a nightmare amount of stuff out of and around the over-cluttered kitchen. I have an apparent phobia of reorganising things, let’s not forget – and yet I feel more energised and slightly less irritable than I did.

One of the tidier bits of my kitchen right now.

One of the tidier bits of my kitchen right now. It is upside down.

That could be very, very temporary, however. A new family have moved in next door and they have a child, who is – I would guess – about 18 months old. Now, as well you know good readers, I’m not a huge fan of those to whom I will diplomatically refer as little people – however, were they to adequately modulate the noise that they emit, then even I can be tolerant. That, alas, is not the nature of young children (and yeah, I know it’s not their fault, I know I was that age once, yadda yadda yadda. I’ve heard it all before and I have all the childfree responses, so…). Anyway, as I type the wee boy is screeching the entire street of houses down. It’s one of those high-pitched, guttural, throat-agonising screams that children seem capable of producing with gay abandon, yet which would leave someone over five with a 10 week long case of laryngitis. These walls are paper thin. There is no way I can cope with this in the short-term, never mind for anything longer than that.

Will we have to stop swearing for fear of offending the parents’ sensibilities? Are we still allowed to have sex in case we wake the child? Will the Everythinger pottering about cause him upset? What if he gets a scratch and the cats are blamed and have to be put to sleep?

Paul thought that I didn’t like kids because I was forced to grow up too quickly, or whatever it was that was related to my experiences of child sex abuse. I think I don’t like kids because I don’t like kids.

And yeah, the irony of my having thrown all my fucking toys out of the pram in the preceding paragraphs whilst then moaning about children crying is not lost on me. I’m a hypocrite. I’ve never denied it, have I? So meh. My blog, my rants.

(Of course, there is a deeper issue here. I’ve often considered posting my views on whether it would be wise for me to procreate, even if I did like children, even if I loved everything about them, even if they brought me unparalleled joy. Does anyone care or would I be wasting my time?)

Anyway, A has just said, “thank Christ we’re leaving.” Though earlier he said, “if we’re this stressed over getting the house, how can we even contemplate moving?” And, as I continue to type, we are having a conversation about it in which he’s just reminded me that moving is the second most stressful thing a person can do in their life (after divorce, I believe), and that maybe it’s the wrong time to seriously consider it. Plus he’s not in the best frame of mind himself at the minute; he’s under a lot of stress at work, and is suffering from that general life disillusionment which befalls us all at some point in our existences, to greater or lesser extents. Maybe the burglary affected us both more than we realised. Maybe it’s just life, which is often a sucky thing in general. Who knows. Who cares. It is.

The original point of this post was to update the blog with reference to the my most recent meetings with Christine, but it’s nearly 800 words long and I’ve decided to make a conscious effort not to write 4,000 words every time I put fingers to keys, so even though this is nothing but a meandering, idiotic, probably offensive and irritating pile of pointless, ranting, steaming manure, it is getting published now. I’ll write about Christine tomorrow whilst the Everythinger does everything.

The child has shut up. And I think I feel better for ranting.

Maybe it will all be OK.

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Agoraphobic Persecutory Delusions of Familial Evil and Seroquel. Etc.

 Christine, CPN, Life, NewVCB, Psychiatry  11 Responses »
Jul 082011
 

In the absence of Paul – I know I’m still catching up on writing about my final few sessions with him, but they did in fact finish about three weeks ago – I’ve been seeing Christine at fortnightly intervals. The last appointment was last week.

Although things have been generally going OK, as testified by this blog throughout recent months, over the last week or so they’ve taken a slight downwards turn. As things stand, I can manage it;I suppose it could perhaps be a mild depression (by my standards – I think that probably equates to moderate by official scales? [EDIT: I am correct, apparently. I just took this test again and scored 52, which is within the bracket of 'moderate to severe' depression. Well, it's better than having gotten 82 back in February, I suppose..!]), but we’ll see.

I guessed that the whitecoats would claim that my mood dip was reactive, for the following reasons:

  1. the cessation of the treatment with Paul;
  2. the burglary; and
  3. the fact (as yet unmentioned on this journal) that FuckBitch Queen of All Levels of Hell Aunt of Evil arrived in the country on Wednesday morning (more on this anon).

Appointment With Christine

I guessed correctly. It didn’t come as massive shock to the system when Christine carefully opined that it was “hardly surprising” that I “wasn’t at” myself. In my view, my moods are, by and large, non-reactive (I’ve always maintained, and I continue to maintain, that my particular blend of clinical depression is melancholic rather than atypical), but I can see why she came to the conclusion she did. I’m not saying the above has not affected my mental status at all, but I think this goes in cycles too. Interestingly, NewVCB seemed to primarily agree with me, but I’ll get to her later.

I was with Christine for quite a while, though not quite as long as the last time I saw her. In a supposedly surreptitious fashion, she kept glancing at her watch, which mildly irritated me, but I do appreciate that she has other people to see. Anyhow. We discussed how I’m feeling in the wake of the end of therapy (fine, though I’m not sure she was convinced of that, given that she kept bleating on what a “big deal” it apparently was for me), how I’d dealt with the burglary (relatively well) and medication.

Seroquel has been a wonderful drug for me. It really has made my life a lot better. However, predictably for an anti-psychotic, it has sent my appetite completely out of control, and a lot of weight I’d lost has piled right back on. It wasn’t always like this, though; I’ve been taking Seroquel for about a year and a half now, and it’s only since the dosage was increased to 600mg daily that this has happened. I did a fair bit of whinging about it to Christine.

The long and the short of it was that I should discuss the issue with NewVCB (well, I’d never have thought of that…), but – reasonably enough – Christine thinks that this would be the wrong time to reduce my dose of the stuff. I agreed that I’d like to retain this level of relative stability for several more months before I’d seriously consider reducing it, particularly if there are likely to be stressful events hovering about.

She kept emphasising how important it was that I remained free from psychosis. In light of our last meeting, where she said that NewVCB was reconsidering my previous diagnosis of BPD, I am now wondering if they think that I actually have some sort of specifically psychotic illness – Christine, at least, puts very heavy emphasis on that side of things. She’s worried that if I started reducing my intake of Seroquel that all the voices and visions would come flooding back. Her concern troubles me, because when she heard that I had suffered from command hallucinations and hadn’t been sectioned (or voluntarily admitted) at any point in my life, she was utterly stunned. So if I go mental again, if ‘They‘ come back or some other(s) turn up, will she recommend the bin for me?

Am I Still Proper Mental?

She asked me if I was still free from the voices, and I was pleased to respond in the affirmative. But then she asked me about possible delusional thinking. I denied any, but I must have shifted my eyes suspiciously because she kept probing me about it. I admitted, then, that yeah – I might just have a little bit of paranoia hovering about. Might. Just maybe. Perhaps.

In an admission of narcissism that shocks even me, I blathered on about how GCHQ read this blog, and about how people still have cameras up watching me. The funny thing about the cameras is that they go wherever I go. Yeah, I am really that important!

Naturally, Christine enquired as to the strength of these alleged delusions. I said that I rationally knew they were a load of bollocks, but that…well, that I still had the fear that the “paranoia” was grounded in at least some truth. For example, I have a friend, William, who’s a policeman. None of us know exactly what it is that he does, because it’s some shady, cloak-and-dagger, national security-esque thing that requires his utmost discretion and a solemn vow never to speak about it in detail to anyone. What he has told us, though, is that the amount the security services know about people, their movements, their online habits, etc is truly shocking. He also confirmed that yes, they probably are scouring insignificant online bullshit like this blog – though he contends that it’s probably based on keyword searches, patterns and the like, rather than some agent sitting in a dimly-lit room in Cheltenham reading every word that people like me are typing.

You see? As the old adage goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.

I told Christine about all this, and of course she pointed out that, given that this is a public blog, it probably could be read by GCHQ and their kin. However, she picked up on William’s point that it’s unlikely to be in any detail, unless something suspect comes up. She laughingly asked if I had somehow threatened national security in my writing of this blog, and I had to concede that I haven’t. She sorted of tilted her head as if to say “I told you so,” and then started quizzing me about the cameras.

“I know the cameras aren’t there,” I said, exasperated with myself, “but I just can’t shake off this stupid irrational belief that they are.” I’m a walking conta-fucking-diction.

As I said to her, in a way having this kind of insight is almost worse than being completely under the control of a delusion. Not that I’m saying the latter is nice – far fucking from it. But when you know that your beliefs are (potentially) psychotic (is it even psychotic at all in that case?), then you have the added pressure of arguing with yourself about the damn thing all the time. You might as well have one of those tossers that doesn’t believe in mental illness with you at all times, telling you to “wise up” and “pull yourself together”. The rational, ‘well’ side of my mind isn’t particularly sympathetic to the sicker part.

The upshot of the conversation, though, was that the “paranoia” isn’t too intrusive. It doesn’t stop me from doing things I want to do (no, anhedonia, avolition and agoraphobia are the culprits there), and most of the time it’s operating at a fairly peripheral level rather than being right in the middle of my conscious mind. Christine seemed mostly satisfied with this, though I suspect she’ll be coming back to this issue at each session for the next foreseeable future.

Rant: Aunt of Evil is on this Landmass!

We then moved on to an issue about which I was, according to her, “very angry”. I thought I’d been speaking perfectly reasonably and rationally, but Christine did not concur. The topic in question was the arrival of Aunt of Evil in this country. Those of you that have been reading this in the long term may realise that this means that this is the third time the stupid fucking bitch has been here in less than two and a half years. If you’re not so intimately acquainted with this blog, or indeed if you’re a normal human being who doesn’t have a photographic memory for bullshit, I have a long running dispute with the woman and her immediate family. They reside in the USA, and frankly their existence in Ireland makes me wish that air travel had never been invented (other than for the flight that sent them across the pond in the first place, that is).

The story of my feud with Aunt of Evil, Georgie, is a protracted and convoluted one that I’ve never discussed fully here – not because I have a problem with any of you knowing about it, but simply because other people’s familial dramas are really not that interesting. Indeed, most of it is not that interesting even to me, so I’m not going to waste my time or bandwidth or put myself at even greater risk of repetitive strain injury by detailing it all. You can see contextual posts here, here, here and here. There’s probably more, but those links should give enough information, and I can’t be arsed going through any more archives.

Now, of course given my history with Aunt of Evil and her spawn, I am not going anywhere near any of them. In that way, their presence doesn’t particularly bother me – but what does is that I know that (a) Aunt of Evil (AoE) has a skewed perception of why it is that I loathe her, and have no time for her family and (b) I will be talked about between them all, behind my back, despite my express fucking instructions to my mother – and to AoE herself – that I am not a suitable subject for their conversation.

My ma told me the other week that AoE has been going around whinging that V, the deceased lump of shite that forcefully donated his sperm in order to facilitate my conception, “has achieved something in death that he didn’t in life – the breaking up of the family.”

This fucking enraged me. AoE has always been a wanker, and I’ve never liked her. However, given that she purports to be a Christian and should therefore have a corresponding set of morals, I did expect her to at least behave honourably when V snuffed it. I did not expect V himself to behave thus, in life or in death, so her contention is completely erroneous. V was a cunt. I expected him to behave like a cunt. I did not expect her, her offspring and her offspring’s mate, to be have like cunts. And they did.

What is so fucking difficult to understand about that? It’s not fucking about V. It’s about them. Simple.

I advised my mother in no uncertain terms to appraise AoE of the above – but I don’t think that she will. My mother is lovely, but she is, in this instance, also a hypocrite. She agrees with my position on AoE and her twatpack, yet she has quite happily arranged to see them, have them stay with her, etc etc. In fairness to her, she has this idea that [cue best EastEnders-esque put-on accent] faaaahhhmmmlaayyy is one of the most important things that an individual can have on this Earth. I respect her view, but I fundamentally disagree with it. One of our friends, G (of intellectual fame, waaaaaaaay back in 2009), put it best:

Family is genetics; friendship is earned.

Quite. I don’t get this societal obsession with family for its own sake. If the people concerned are nice, if you have something in common with them, if they’re a laugh, whatever – fine. If not, why bother? Seriously. I don’t understand it. What ties do you have to such people other than DNA?

I so wish I could show you my cousin’s wife’s blog, so that you could have a laugh (or, indeed, recoil in repulsion) at her utterly nauseating nice-middle-class-ism, and pictures of the nice house that they bought with the money that should have gone to my mother and me (tangential point of amusement: she has 23 blog ‘fans’ on Fuckbook. I’m not exactly some bigshot on the hateful service myself, but at least I have over 670. Mwhahahahaha! :D ). I see from said blog that she’s up the duff again. I wonder how they’re funding that brat Gift from God?

No, no, no – I’m not bitter or anything ;)

Aaaaaaaanyway, I gave Christine a redacted version of the story, and as I said, I thought I’d been fairly calm and reasonable in my narration thereof. It certainly wasn’t a rant like the last few paragraphs here were! However, when I’d finished, she said, “you’re clearly angry about this.”

Well…yeah. I sort of am. I then proceeded to rant a good bit about V, justifying my view that he was a knobend of Rupert Murdoch proportions by referencing his actions towards my mother during the joke that was their marriage. I said that I was furious with AoE for believing that my problem with her and her family was about him because, as noted, no one expected V not to be a dick.

She was curious as to why I care about what someone I can’t stand thinks of me, which was a fair question. The answer is that it’s not so much about what AoE thinks of me – she still “loves” me according to My Mother the Messenger, but I really couldn’t care less whether she adored or despised me – but, rather, about her consistent and unwavering failure to accept responsibility for her actions. She still thinks that what she and her family did is right. It was legally permissible, I’ll give her that. It was, however, ethically repugnant.

None of this, of course, even acknowledges my more general, more long-lasting disdain for AoE. She is self-righteous, patronising and a Queen proselythiser (she’s one of the key reasons that I had such a profound and blanket hatred of Christians until I met lovely people like Phil Groom and bourach). Once, when she asked Mum why I didn’t like her, my mother – bless her – was honest, and told her exactly that. AoE affected to be shocked by this information, but honestly – on this side of the Atlantic there is no one in this shittily sprawling dynasty of mine, including my mother and the other Bible bashers like Suzanne, that strongly disagrees with my stance on that.

Back to the Fucking Point, Pan…

To get back to the original point of this post, Christine feels that it is a positive thing that I am avoiding these people; I know my limits, apparently, and “not everybody does, you know.” Nevertheless, given my levels of resentment, anger and general frustration towards them, she also thinks that this is a massive stressor for me. Perhaps it must seem that way – the rant above would appear to be clear and present testament to that – but I actually don’t think it is. I’m staying out of their way, and as long as my mother does not provide me with a running commentary on all the inevitable back-biting, I am happy to sit here at A’s in my blissful ignorance until they all sod away off again.

The appointment was basically left with her saying that if my mood dips any further before I see her again (next Friday), I can contact her, presumably to arrange an emergency appointment. NewVCB (after this week) is off for about 408 years – Christine says that all the consultants just disappear over the summer – so it’s good to at least have some professional support, especially when I don’t have Paul to bleat to. I better not go really mental though, because if it were to come to the bit and some SHO or other had to assess me, he or she would inevitably take advice from Christine as the only present person within the CMHT that knows me. And as I noted above, Christine is stunned I’ve never been binned.

So. I must retain a modicum of sanity at least until NewVCB is back from her summer gallivanting.

Speaking of her…

Appointment with NewVCB

This is Friday (albeit only into its early hours). I saw NewVCB first thing on Wednesday morning (9.30am) and felt that the appointment went fairly well. I told her that things weren’t quite as positive as the last time I’d seen her (which I didn’t record here at all, because I was in and out within minutes, and all was deemed to be well), but also said that I was happy to leave my medication as it was, and that if the downer got worse or, indeed, if it lengthily prevailed, then we could possibly reconsider this at a future appointment. She seemed to think this was a fairly sensible course of action.

I did raise the weight gain on my current dosage of Seroquel issue with her however, whilst stressing that I didn’t want to reduce the dose right now. She agreed that this was something we could think about over the coming months; according to her, a standard maintenance dose of the stuff is usually 300mg. That said, I wouldn’t like to whack the dose in half at any point, even if life was absolutely fucking amazing, so if that’s where we ultimately want to return to, then I’d have to insist that we slowly taper it down. She’s not stupid, though, so I’m sure she’d agree with that.

I told her that I was worried that, if we go ahead and do this at some point, the voices would return. “At the end of the day,” I said, “I’d rather carry some extra weight that be persecuted by ‘They’.” She nodded her assent to this, and added that in a case like mine – where the mental illness may remit at times, but usually returns in some fashion – it would be fine to have xmg as a maintenance dose, but that it would at times be necessary to whack it back up.

It sounds odd, but I was quite pleased by this statement. I took it as recognition on NewVCB’s part that my mental health problems are chronic and recurrent, and not necessarily the reactive issues that Christine had perhaps suggested (though I’d add that I don’t think that Christine thinks it’s all reactive – just that that, to her, is probably part of it, and maybe it is). This isn’t me saying, “yay, it’s all biological,” because clearly it isn’t (even if it was then that would be pretty shit – therapy would be an utter waste of time, would it not?); would I be so fucked up were it not for the ‘trauma’ I experienced? Probably not to this degree. But I’ve always maintained that I hold to a biopsychosocial model of mentalism, and she seems to concur with that.

Of course, therapy has helped me a lot, hence the ‘psychosocial’ bit. But, as I am forever banging on, I don’t believe in cures. Therapy – and medication for that matter – may help to reduce both the severity and frequency of episodes, but that doesn’t mean that the whole sorry business is dead and buried.

Anyhow, this led onto a conversation about suicidal ideation. Christine is usually concerned when I say something like, “but of course I still have suicidal thoughts, how could I not?” NewVCB, on the other hand, says she wouldn’t even believe me if I went in one day and said that I absolutely wasn’t suicidal in the least. As she says, the horrific intensity of my preoccupation with ending my life that I’ve often experienced will not always be present, but she believes – in the short to medium term, at least – that there will be probably always be some level of it.

That’s a pretty poor prognosis, I suppose, but I’d rather she was honest with me. I’ve always respected her for her candour, and even if she’s not painting the rosiest picture in creation, better that than false hope and lies.

She said that I should use this period of relative stability to think about what I can do when things go tits up again. Well, I’ve thought about it, and I haven’t a fucking clue. One thing NewVCB suggested was that I should keep the idea with me, for the next time I’m standing on the edge of some cliff with a bottle of gin and 20 packets of Zopiclone, that I have come back from the absolute brink (remember the 4th October plan, anyone?) and that therefore I don’t need to take the jump. “Use this period as a reminder when you’re that low again,” she instructed. “You can, and you have, recovered from very severe suicidality.”

Spot on: I have. However, I know from bitter experience that the mind of a person at that kind of hideously low ebb does not think like this. Well, the omni-present rational narrator in my head would certainly say, “but look, remember how well you did in mid-2011?” but the depressed side is always going to dominate that with responses such as, “yeah, but that was then, this is different. I can’t recover this time,” or even “so what? I don’t want to recover anyway.” You might very well think that both of these (and other possible) responses are thoroughly illogical, but that’s how severe depression works I’m afraid. Indeed, continuing my standing-at-the-abyss scenario, I could look down over the cliff, knowing that The Rational Narrator was right and that everything else was a crock of shit. And it wouldn’t make an iota of bloody difference.

Still, she has a point, and I’ll try to do as she says. One thing I have now that I didn’t have when I had a major crash-and-burn in the past is this blog; one crucial thing about it is that for the first time I have a proper record of something that approximates recovery, or at least a road to relative wellness. Perhaps those positive words, penned (typed) by my very own hand, could make a difference? I’m not convinced of it, but you never know.

We spent some time discussing this journal actually. NewVCB alluded to it in the context of it being one of the things that had helped me when I felt at my worst, but was careful to remind me of the dangers of becoming too immersed in the online and mentalist world, rather than in the supposedly real and sane one.

I laughed, and told her that since I’ve been feeling better, the amount of visitors here has gone way down. I still get about 200 hits on days on which I don’t post and often over double that when I do. This is far more than I ever could have expected when I embarked on this narcissistic but cathartic pursuit, and don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful to and for every person that takes an interest in this bollocks. Compared to my hits when I was posting my most morbid, morose material, though, things are definitely much less popular. I don’t mind that – I just thing it’s an interesting statistic.

In any case, I assured her that I think I’ve achieved a good balance between being here, being Pandora, and being there, being me, in the “real world”. She asked me if I was getting out much.

Ha! As if. I’ll go out alone for little errands, such as buying milk or something, if I’m feeling game. Otherwise I won’t leave the house without A, or at least without the promise of meeting someone I know well. Even then, there’s some difficulties.

I was due to meet Brian, one of my close friends, on Monday evening. Realising, however, that I would actually have to go out and, shock horror, talk to Brian, I backed out and made a frankly idiotic excuse to avoid him. (Contrast this with my intended meeting with Aaron on Wednesday, which I was going to until fate intervened. I bring this up because never, never, never ever ever ever, have Aaron and I been able meet based on our original arrangements. Something always comes up. Famine or feast, eh?).

I admitted to NewVCB that I’m sometimes genuinely scared of seeing my/our friends. Naturally she asked why, and naturally I said that I didn’t know.

She said, to paraphrase, that I need to really take some time to work out the specifics of this social and agoraphobia. I agree that the roots of it need to be uncovered, but I thought that was what therapy was for. Oh, wait. The NHS won’t fucking give me therapy, and Nexus deals with sexual abuse issues rather than this sort of fuckwittery. So basically I’m screwed.

Maybe I’ll try and look at this through writing in a future post here. I can’t seem to get the thoughts that need to be…er…thought…into my my head with any modicum of coherence, and sometimes writing about thoughts can be more revelatory than thoughts in themselves.

And that was pretty much it. Since NewVCB is on holiday now for a good while, she said she’d see me again towards the end of August or start of September. That’s a little longer a gap than I usually have between my appointments with her, but not too much so. And it’s still a fuck of a lot better than the erratic scheduling her predecessor afforded me.

Meh and Blah and Yadda and Etc and Such

If you’re still reading this, you really must have a strong interest in self-flagellatory pursuits  - but seriously, thank you. I don’t know if anyone has the lack of wit to care about me, but if you are thus afflicted, please don’t worry. I’m OK. Really, I’m mostly OK. People have downers, whether they’re mental or not. It could be a mild ‘episode’, it could be the start of something more serious, or it could be just one of those things that happens from time to time. Indeed, I’m feeling a good bit better than I was on, say, Wednesday, so it’s probably nothing much – I mentioned it to Christine and NewVCB on a ‘just in case’ basis, I suppose. I’ll be fine.

As you might imagine, sleep is an issue for someone whose blog is entitled Confessions of a Serial Insomniac. Generally, one of the most positive side effects of Seroquel has been its soporific effects, but the downside of same is the hangover the stuff gives you the following day.

The fact, therefore, that I’d been up really early from Monday to Thursday inclusive is probably not insignificant. After the burglary, we had to replace the two doors that the robbing cunts smashed through; one was in a room that has a second (undamaged) door that we also decided to change for the sake of aesthetic consistency. The bloke we got to to do the work arrived each morning bright and early, and I had to be up to greet him, make the obligatory cups of tea and share the obligatory cigarettes. It hasn’t been a particularly unpleasant effort – he’s a nice man – but it has resulted in severe fatigue. That, in turn, can be a major issue vis a vis mentalism.

Next week sees Northern Ireland’s Lovely Loyalist Love-in, the Twelfth (or, as one council is trying to politically correctly re-market it, “Orangefest”), come to pass. I have nothing particularly against the occasion despite my unionist-nationalist ambivalence (although, of course, I do loathe the contingent of wankers that set about causing trouble around this time of year – utter cunts), but neither do I care for it either. There are two days’ holidays, though, which from a practical point of view means that our door-hanger – soon-to-be our painter and decorator – can’t come out next week. So, in this way, Orangeism has done me a favour. It will allow me and my Seroquel-addled mind to rest.

Anyway, this is the abrupt end of this stupidly but predictably long post. Cheerio.

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Philip Davies, Mental Health and the Minimum Wage

 Finances, Random Mental Health Related Philosophising, Triggers, Work  9 Responses »
Jun 222011
 

This is an expanded, more opinionated version of an article I wrote elsewhere.

—

Unless you’ve been living under a stone since Thursday night, you’ve probably heard about the controversy caused on Friday by a hitherto pretty much unknown Conservative backbencher. Philip Davies stated, in a debate on opportunities for employment in the House of Commons, that people with mental health problems (or learning disabilities, as he inaccurately referred to us on several occasions) should be “allowed” to work for the minimum wage. I shall come to that main crux anon.

Firstly, though, did you know that he also regards young people who are unemployed – without, apparently, any particular qualification to his comments – as braindead layabouts, who spend their money on childish versions of gambling? Well, you probably did – it wouldn’t be difficult to guess that I suppose, given other things he’s said – but let’s have it documented here anyway. This may not be the most popular blog since the beginning of time, but it may well have more popular appeal than the fairly turgid transcripts of words said in the House of Commons:

It is bizarre that the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) [Labour] thinks that it is appalling for young people to be going out to work for low wages, and that he would therefore prefer them to be sat at home watching Jeremy Kyle and “This Morning” and visiting their local amusement arcades, rather than having gainful employment.

(Source: Parliamentary Hansard)

Good to know, Mr Davies, thanks. I was under the impression that the majority of people without jobs – whether young or otherwise – were sick, disabled or trying to get work. Now I know better. Cheers!

Seriously, yeah – we all know there are some unemployed people out there like those he describes, but the stats show time and time again that they distinctly are in the minority. But if Mr Davies wants to ignore findings from (of all sources) The Daily Mail, with whom I would imagine he would get on with quite nicely, who are we lowly dolescums to protest?

So, onto the minimum wage/mental health issues. Mr Davies has accused several people who emailed him in disgust of not properly reading what he said (see below), so let me, as promised above, dissect his commentary by going through the Hansard record of the debate in question.

I went to visit a charity called Mind in Bradford a few years ago. One of the great scandals that the Labour party would like to sweep under the carpet is that in this country only about 16%—I stand to be corrected on the figure—of people with learning difficulties and learning disabilities have a job.

(Source: Parliamentary Hansard)

I can’t correct him on that figure, mainly because – as someone who does not have a learning disability – I have not done an awful lot of research into that arena. But wait…doesn’t he say that he went to Mind? Why yes – yes he does. Mind are, as many of you will know, a mental health charity. Could Mr Davies possibly be equating learning disabilities with mental health problems?

Nah, he must just have made a slip-up…

I spoke to people at Mind who were using the service offered by that charity, and they were completely up front with me about things. They described what would happen when someone with mental health problems went for a job and other people without these problems had also applied. They asked me, “Who would you take on?” They accepted that it was inevitable that the employer would take on the person who had no mental health problems, as all would have to be paid the same rate.

(Source: Parliamentary Hansard)

Oh, good. ‘Mental health problems’, he says – that’s more accurate. Now, I think very few of us would deny that Mr Davies and the people with learning disabilities mental health difficulties that he met at Mind have a point here: as things stand, yes – the employer is likely to employ the non-disabled but otherwise like-for-like candidate in a competition against a mentalist. I get that. I think we all do.

Mr Davies makes clear in the debate that he opposes the minimum wage in principle. That is his perfect entitlement, and as far as I’m concerned he can go about and campaign for reform of it all he likes. The specific problem in this instance lies, in my view, in deliberately dressing up his ideology in false (or even erroneously perceived genuine) sympathy for what he at one point terms society’s “most vulnerable”. The assumption made in his spinning of this is that the “most vulnerable” are less worthy than the “less vulnerable”.

To get a foot into the job market, we are supposed to work for less than other people doing the same job?! We should be “allowed” this supposed right, rather than be allowed the right to compete on an equal platform based on relevant occupational merit? All this despite the fact that many people with mental illness(es) are educated, experienced, intelligent people – and that they and many others within this sphere have other skills, demonstrable creativity, and/or potentially lucrative or strategic ideas?

No, Mr Davies – that is unacceptable. We are not lesser people than others, and as such we do not make lesser employees. Ergo, we should not work for less than the legal minimum.

I noted the following on a blog post that initially complained about the furore surrounding Mr Davies’ remarks:

Racism [for example] is still rife amongst certain people; if Davies had met a group of black or Asian people who said that they’d expect the nice British Aryan to be chosen over them at an interview and subsequently suggested that they should be grateful to work for less than the minimum wage, there would have been uproar (and quite rightly so). I fail to see how the demographic to which he did refer should be any different.

And I don’t. The problem is stigma and inequality, not who pays who what. Here (not sure about the rest of the UK?), the law has recently been changed so that potential employees don’t have to declare that they have an illness before an offer of employment is made; this is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t go far enough in my humble-ish opinion. Greater reform of employment law is needed – for example, it being entirely voluntary for an employee to declare periods of work absence.

But meh. It would be easier just to continue to stigmatise the mentally ill, to make them ‘live’ off a pittance, rather than perhaps putting our dear friends in business out a teensy-weensy bit. Plus, it saves money too – YAY! (Of course, Mr Davies working for less than the minimum wage would also save a hell of a lot of money. Maybe he should consider that as a viable proposition.).

And the ‘learning disability = mental illness’ thing? Not a mere slip-up after all, as it turns out:

…[t]he situation was doing the people with learning difficulties [that he apparently met at Mind] a huge disservice.

(Source: Parliamentary Hansard)

[in the wake of the horrified response to what he said] Left wing hysteria now dictates that you can’t even repeat what people with learning disabilities tell you if it questions their shibboleths

(Source: Twitter)

Good to know he’s informed on what mental health and learning disabilities are, then. I find such touching comfort in the fact that he can therefore ably speak for both groups!

I mentioned above that Mr Davies accused complainants of not reading his speech accurately. Even if that were true, which is patently wasn’t, his responses left a lot to be desired:

One

I am extremely sorry but I am afraid that you clearly have no idea at all about what I actually said as I did not say any of the things that you have accused me of saying in your email [she pointed out the laws on equality and disability discrimination and stated that his comments "disintegrated" them, then said that his comments suggested that people with disabilities should be treated as second class citizens]. Please can I suggest you read what I actually said in Parliament.

Two

Thank you for confirming that you have not in fact read my whole speech.

If you had you would have known that I was merely repeating what people with mental health problems had said to me!

I am sorry you feel their views shouldn’t be aired just because you happen to find them unpalatable.

Three

[to the same woman as 'two', who had by this point read his speech in full]

If you have read my speech then I am unsure why you would want to distort what I said and misrepresent it so badly.

Clearly in those circumstances it is impossible to have a sensible debate.

There are very many people with disabilities who have congratulated me for what I said. I am sorry you feel their views shouldn’t be aired just because you happen to disagree with them.

That is what I consider to be intolerant.

Etc etc etc.

(Source: Facebook Page – Reduce Philip Davies’ Salary to Less than the Minimum Wage)

Even if you agreed with every word the man spoke, even if you were thrilled with his claims of mere repetition, the brusque, condescending and simply bloody rude tone of his correspondences with members of the above page is not something people should have to put up with an elected MP, whether he agrees with their outlooks or not.

Also, he keeps stating that he was merely repeating what Mind’s clients said to him. What he actually said in the Parliamentary debate was that the folks he spoke to knew there was a much greater likelihood of a non-disabled applicant getting the job for which they’d also applied (see above). As I said before, I think we all know this to be true. Accepting that this is a real situation does not equate to a willingness to derogate from our right to basic equality, to being treated like human fucking beings. So, I’d challenge Mr Davies to state whether or not the people to whom he spoke specifically and unequivocally stated that they would be willing to accept less than the minimum wage in order to get some sort of employment. If so, can this be backed up? Mind don’t seem to think so – they appear pretty outraged that their clients were being referred to in this manner.

A, who is registered blind, was furious when he heard about all this on Friday evening. He asked, rhetorically, if he should be paid less than the minimum wage because of his disability. I should certainly be interested to hear Philip Davies’ views on this.

In the end, whinging about this here isn’t a particularly good use of my time, because Downing Street have already stated that they “reject” the ideas espoused in Mr Davies’ remarks. Still and withall, this bollocks really riled me. Not only does Mr Davies clearly not fully understand mental illness or learning disability, he has twisted – and apparently continues to twist – the innocent and justified lamentations of unwell but otherwise ordinary people into a reactionary, macro-political discourse.

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On Sectarian Hatred and Dissidents

 Off-Topic Non-Mentalist Ramblings  11 Responses »
Apr 102011
 

Last weekend a young man was murdered in this country. A young policeman. He was 25. He was killed doing the job that, by all accounts, he loved, and that he fervently thought was worthwhile. He was a Catholic, but who gives a flying rat’s arsehole what religion he was? I don’t, and you shouldn’t either. The long and the short of it is that he didn’t deserve to die. Who does, especially in the context of their own innocence?

I wish I could say that Mr Kerr’s murder was an isolated incident – one tragic blemish on an otherwise improving record. I wish I could say that, but if I did, I would be lying. After several years of uncertain but relatively stable peace, out of the blue it seemed to start again in March 2009. It certainly hasn’t been on the hideous scale of decades gone by, but one death in such a ’cause’ is still one death too many. Fuck the union and fuck Irish unification both. Neither are worth people’s deaths.

I grew up in the context of ‘The Troubles‘. Not as much as my mother or even A did, admittedly, but it affected my childhood nevertheless. Every day or two there was something new – a bomb scare, a murder, a patrol. Our bags, even mine as a fucking five year old, were searched as we went into shops. Our cars were searched if we went to the airport or attempted to cross the border into the Republic. People died. Paramiliaties ruled. That was life. We lived with it – we didn’t just tolerate it, we accepted it. We had no other choice.

However, when I was about nine years old, the IRA announced a ceasefire. The majority of the ‘loyalist’ terrorist units promptly followed suit and things finally began to look up; there were still horrible sectarian divisions, but at least we were moving forward, hopefully without the threat of violence. The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), the one solitary domestic issue for which Tony Blair and his cronies deserve credit, seemed to seal the Province’s/Six Counties’ willingness to move on. Peace was what the vast majority of us wanted.

Peace

I remember so well the day that I learnt that the GFA had been passed by referendum, which was voted on both by us here and by folks down south. It was an iconic moment in Northern Irish history…and I was there! Mum, Daniel and I had, for some reason, made the trip over to Belfast to see the Lord Mayor’s Show that year (1998) – and in the middle of it, a Belfast Telegraph seller walked down the (then-predestrianised) road, papers on show for all to see, showing the headline that 78% of us had voted in favour of the Agreement. This was greeted was a massive round of relieved and delighted applause, all-round genuine smiles, and pretty much abject arm-throwing joy from the assembled crowd. I remember feeling a rare but profound pride in this little country – I was overwhelmed and thrilled that we had, finally, put our sectarian politics to one side, and that we’d embraced one of the few things that could possibly bring us from a warring country to a transitional state, even if the peace that came with that was imperfect. There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ peace anyway. This was the closest we could get, and it brought tears to my cynical eyes to know that the vast majority of us were willing to support that, rather than stoically continuing to tolerate the sectarian bigotry that could have continued to permeate our everyday lives. I still hold that same sense of pride, almost 13 years later.

I could write a screed on how the GFA was the least worst option, rather than the ideal solution to Northern Ireland’s problems. I could discuss at length how some of the paramilitaries have made the transition from terrorism to ‘ordinary’ crime. I could tell you in droves about how this little country has morphed from largely being a filthy, dangerous shithole into (for the most part) a bright, welcoming, dynamic place to be. But rather than bother saying any of those things, I just want to say this.

To the dissidents that are trying to take us back to the dark days of the ’70s and ’80s. Fuck you. You have no support, beyond the cock-sucking sycophancy you find in your own insular little dens. Even then people probably only allow you to think that they agree with you, because the poor fuckers are scared shitless that you’ll kneecap them or put a bullet in their heads. Everyone else thinks you’re cunts. And you are.

You do not represent the overwhelming majority of people here. You have no mandate. No one fucking likes you – nationalist, unionist or otherwise. You are pathetic – you resort to outdated and sickening means to prove a point that has already been made thousands of times, simply because you find it fucking easier to do so rather than to engage in meaningful, useful and inclusive debate and discussion. It is easier for you to be driven by hatred. It’s in a cause, you say? Fuck you. It’s not. Those who really have a cause have abandoned violent means and tried to embrace other methods of making their points. Not, it’s not in a ’cause’. You do this because you hate. Hate is your fuel.

How dare you romanticise murder and hatred, you flaccid-dicked fuckshafts? Would you like to be Ronan Kerr’s mother tonight? Are you even capable of understanding basic human feeling?

Whatever the case, whatever gruesome brand of sociopathy you come from, we don’t support you. We think you’re cunts. Now do the fucking world a fucking favour and fuck right off.

—

Random dictum to try to somehow relate this to mental health: when I was writing my series last year on the NI parties’ manifestos on mental health, I read that, owing to Troubles-related traumas, we have a substantially higher rate of depression and PTSD here than in other NHS areas (plus we also have possibly the shittest mental health services compared to said other NHS areas. Go figure).

A and I once met a man who had been in the middle of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987; the poor sod was half-crazed with PTSD-induced psychosis, and he still walked with crutches. I remember a bomb going off outside what was the local copshop when I was a kid. No one died, mercifully, but I remember the wide-eyed, terrorised trauma of one of the old ladies whose rooves had fallen in upon her as she slept. I remember my mother’s horrified face when a policeman came to our door to tell us there was a bomb right across the road, meaning that we had to evacuate our own fucking house right then and there. I remember all this and more, much more, and I was relatively unaffected.

Seriously. Is it worth it? For the sake of some unseen fucking line that is only ever actually visible on a map*?

(* Yeah, I know, I know – the reasons for the conflict, in historical terms, run far deeper than such simplicity. I do know that. But I’m not convinced that our current batch of neighbourhood dissidents share that knowledge. As far as I can see, their only awareness is of how much they hate others).

The Sad Story – Paul: Week 18

 Important People in My Life, Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Traumatic Stuff  14 Responses »
Mar 252011
 

Beware. There is a lot of ranting in this post. My ire is mainly the rage I usually harbour on the relevant matters, but the particularly belligerent style of some of the following is also partly attributable to the fact that I’m listening to Metallica as I write this.

So, if you’re averse to cursing or aggressive outbursts, then you’d better fuck off now.

Triggers: domestic violence, sexual abuse (including the idea of a resulting pregnancy), self-harm, suicide (vaguely), religion (loosely and rantishly, sorry), parental violence, general un-karmic unfairness.

I felt that Monday’s session was extremely productive, if extraordinarily difficult in retrospect. After the usual initial ‘what do I say now’ questions, I found myself on a sort of discursive roll, and talked openly and honestly for quite a while. When he inevitably had to end the session, I was frustrated rather than my usual relieved.

The truth is that very little of the more meaningful work centred around sexual abuse. I spent the vast majority of the useful part of the session discussing my parents, their relationship, and my relationship with them. A lot of the stuff discussed has already been covered elsewhere on this blog already, so forgive me for any repetitiveness.

I’ll warn you again of triggers – revisiting this material as I have been writing it up caused me to end up in tears. Perhaps it’s not particularly triggering to outsiders – I think my upset comes from my closeness to it – but consider yourselves cautioned nevertheless. [LATER: I've just tried to proof-read this post, and I can't help but feel that I've been overly histrionic in my trigger warnings, expressions of harrowment (yes, it is a word) and various breakdowns in the course of this post. The material certainly isn't all fluffy and dainty, but still - if I've been OTT I'm sorry. I feel like a bit of a twat, but the stuff herein is both close and important to me.]

The session opened with a rant about how shit NHS mental health services are. What a surprise! The short version of this conversation is that Paul thinks I’ve been treated like utter shite by them. Yeah – tell me something I don’t know, mate.

The conversation arose due to my telling him that I was meeting my new CPN the following day (and shitting myself regarding same) and further, that NewVCB had requested a surprise encounter on Wednesday. Paul asked why I felt they were “upping the ante” (have we heard that phrase anywhere recently, readers?) by suddenly throwing all this extra ‘care’ at me.

I proffered the opinion that they were running scared, as when I’d last seen NewVCB, I was on the verge of exit-bagging myself to death. (I later retracted this criticism a little. I am a cynic, pessimist and misanthrope by nature, and until I have definite proof that people aren’t out to get me, I both choose to believe and innately feel that they are. In reality, NewVCB is not a bad person to have as a consultant ((despite her (((inherited))) nickname on this blog)), and I don’t necessarily believe that she is acting to cover her, or indeed the Trust’s, arse).

I told Paul about how his ‘upping the ante’ phrase reminded me of that two-faced whore from last January. I also added that she had apparently told C that she had “no concerns about my mental health” (I still can’t get over that one – how offensive and disgustingly inaccurate!).

Paul said, “it’s like they only care if you die. They don’t care how much you suffer, as long as you’re still alive and they don’t have to justify themselves to anyone.”

Nails on heads there, Paul. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think NewVCB does (and perhaps Christine will) give a flying shite about my actual welfare as opposed to my mere continued existence, but as a bureaucratic entity, I distinctly feel that the NHS does not – and as long-term readers will know, that is hardly a new opinion. (Though having said that, the deeper I go into mental health services, the more I see how much my care lacked over the past 13/14 years. I touched on that a little on Wednesday, and may elaborate in a future post).

I assume that my continued rage is palpable from the tone of this narrative. It certainly was to Paul, though I tried my best to remain measured. The reality was I wanted to kick the living shit out of the poor, innocent shelf on my left, imagining it was Mr Director-Person‘s smug, elfish face. I wanted to take the phone on said shelf and use it to smash his management-wrinkled cheeks into smithereens.

This inevitably led to a conversation on transference. I would make clear at this point, again, that Paul agrees that the Trust have treated me like some turd they stood in, and believes my anger towards them to be fair and absolutely just. Yet he also has a theory about the sheer strength of it. Essentially, he wonders if I unconsciously see the Trust in loco parentis – is my hateful anger displaced towards them instead of being focused on my parents?

Of late, I have become completely obsessed with the idea that my mother is going to die. Well, of course she’s going to die – aren’t we all? But you know what I mean; I’m terrified she’s going to drop dead in the next few years, which is something with which I do not think I could cope. I’m both advantaged and disadvantaged by the fact that my parents were in their 40s when I was born – on the one hand, I had a mother that had lived already (insofar as my father allowed, at least), with all the knowledge and education that that brings. On the other, of course, that means that I’m statistically more likely than my peers to lose her when I’m fairly young. As you know, my father has already snuffed it, not that I care about him.

Anyway, when Paul asked me about my apparent anger towards the two of them, I told him that I was not allowed to criticise my mother for the above reason. Furthermore, she is on holiday this week. If I am in any way critical of her before her flight on Saturday, then the plane will crash and I will have killed her through my horrible words.

He raised his eyebrow incredulously and said, “you’re very bloody powerful.”

I laughed bitterly. “You should have seen me last week,” I sneered. “I was responsible for Colonel Gadafi’s evil and have caused a potential mass genocide in Libya.”

I watched his face carefully. He may claim he’s not an intellectual, but when he furrows his brow in a certain way, you know he’s processing, analysing, computing. Had his skull been transparent, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a full system of cogs turning in there. Cogs that say things like ‘magical thinking’, ‘delusions’ or ‘psychosis’.

Of course, Paul does not like “labels” (I word I still abhor in this context), so rather than merely accuse me of any of these things, he was evidently trying to work out why Colonel Gadafi is my fault (perhaps I was his mother in a past life? Who knows). However, he surprised me when he didn’t quiz me on that particular supposition.

Instead, he said, “in that great psychological tradition, tell me about your mother.”

Ah, I see. He thinks Gadafi is a deflection. It probably was, to be fair.

“How do you feel about your mother right now?” he continued.

“I feel sorry for her,” I told him.

“Why?”

“Because my father was such an epic wanker. She deserved better from him…and probably from me too.”

Talk about opening the fucking floodgates.

“She deserved better than me because I was very difficult for her to deal with as a teenager,” I went on. “In my defence, I was clinically ill – but how does a person with no frame of reference [I'm an only child] distinguish severe depression from ‘mere’ teenage angst?”

Paul asked for more detail. That detail is something I’ve shirked from on this blog, because I can’t bear thinking about those horrible days. I hated my first five years at grammar school; they remain, quite steadfastly, the most dark and bleak of my life (even though these last three have sort of been more mental, if you get the distinction). Just thinking about my complete desolation back then can bring a tear to my eye.

How is this linked to my Mum? Well, as noted, not only did I hate school, but I was utterly crippled by major depressive illness. These issues conspired together and rendered me completely incapable of even getting out of bed for virtually weeks on end. There were times I didn’t even rise to take a piss, which I know is repulsive, but there you have it. It was that bad. Mum, in part acting on manipulative information fed to her by my Head of Year (a grotesque, vile little man), assumed that my behaviour was standard jadedness and sloth.

This resulted in Some Bad Stuff. Only she, I (having been there) and A (as I told him) know of this, but here goes. In order, I assume, to ruse me out of my pit of despair, she used to beat the living shite out of me. I have very distinct memories of lying, staring at my purple bedroom wall, my back to her, as she brought her clenched fists down – on my arms, abdomen, legs. Even my head and face at times. She would do this in blind fits of seeing-red-rage, meaning, of course, that the fist/me impact was all the greater. One side of my body would end up being as purple from bruising as the wall that I non-reactively fixated my eyes upon.

“Of course,” I said to Paul, “it’s not her fault; not really. She didn’t know what was normal teen moodiness, and what was serious, raw suffering.”

He pursed his lips slightly and asked if my teenage self had realised that.

To be honest, my teenage self hadn’t realised anything much. A lot of the time I didn’t even feel the agony with which I should have been faced after such violence. Depression was all I was. It was all I felt, physically, psychologically, every -ally. I didn’t register anything else for the majority of the time.

“Where was your father when all this was happening?” he queried, carefully.

Cue another scornful laugh. “You tell me,” I said, my bitter spite hardly curbed.

But I thought for a minute. Where was my father? Yeah, probably drunk in a ditch after trying to rape some woman then beating her up because she fought him – but, on a wider level, where was he? He died in 2007 (I think), which would have made me 23 or 24. So we would have been talking about nine or 10 years previously.

That’s where he was, I thought, having one of those rare ‘aha’ moments of existence. He was in a nursing home.

I’m sure I’ve alluded to this before, but for the initiated or those that don’t have photographic memories, V (father) developed MS, and was placed in a home as the illness progressed. I have always resented this with more bitterness than I can describe, even with all the pejorative words and expletives of the English language at my grand disposal.

Aside from raping and beating my mother, cuckolding her, trying to kill her, throwing her out windows etc, he also completely fucked her financially. He took every spare penny she had, and spent it on alcohol. When she divorced him – which was done to protect me, the final straw for same being after he (accidentally, but drunkenly) dropped my few-weeks-old self onto the hearth one day – she even agreed to his demands to pay the remainder of the mortgage, just so as she could get rid of him.

Then. Then! He gets his nice benefits, and they pay for him to have a nice room in a nice home with nice staff treating him to nice things, like nice papers in the morning and nice trips to the football in the afterfuckingnoon. I’m sorry (especially to Christian readers), but there can be no God in this despicable universe. If there was, how would – how could - He allow such outrageously unjust acts to permeate this gruesome species that He created? How in anyone’s estimation can that be considered a reasonable way to conduct the universe You own? (And please, please, no ‘God works in mysterious ways’ shit. I know most of you would never condescend me in that fashion, but avoidance of doubt is always a good thing).

I remembered Georgie and Merv, the fucking cunts, who went to see V when he was in this home. I remembered whatever their son and his bitch are called doing the same, and said bitch feeling sorry for the nasty cunting fucker. For those that don’t know the fucked-up dynamics of my family, Georgie is my mother’s sister, and is married to Merv, my father’s brother. Nice bit of pseudo-incest going on there, oh yes.

My mother’s sister. MY MOTHER’S FUCKING SISTER. She spent 20 years idly listening to tales of my mother’s horrible life from the other side of the Atlantic, and then – then – just because that FAT FUCK became ill, he is somehow worthy of her flying eight hours to come and fucking see him?! FUCKING CUNTWHOREBITCH. I hate her. I fucking despise the fucking nasty, hypocritical, self-righteous CUNT. (Much as I love it, sometimes I wish I didn’t use the word cunt with such frequency, because it loses its impact in this circumstance. But rest assured, dearest readers, I despise her with a passion almost unrivalled. HATE HATE HATE).

Then they took all the money when V died, despite the rightful entitlement to same lying with my mother, after the financial rape he inflicted upon her. But this has never been about money; just indescribable injustice.

Something randomly occurred to me at this point in the session. I met Paul, and indeed first went to Nexus, last August. A good half-year since I changed my name.

“Are you aware that [Pandora Serial-Insomniac] is not my born name?” I asked Paul. “I wasn’t born with this surname. I changed it to dissociate myself from V and his family.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” he returned thoughtfully. “Did it work?”

“I feel better for having done it,” I nodded. And I do.

[An aside - he got the reference vis a vis my new name. I am most impressed ;) ]

So, my anger towards V was abundantly clear by this point. My earlier sweet, sweet fantasy of battering Mr D-P’s face in with a phone was superseded by an uncomfortable but viscerally murderous rage towards my father and his pack of cunts. That was not enough to satisfy Paul, however.

“Where’s the anger at your mother in all this?” he asked again, looking over his glasses intently at me.

Part of me wanted to say there that wasn’t – there isn’t – any. Whatever she, in her at-the-time ignorance, did to me as an adolescent, pales into abject insignificance when compared to what he did to her (and by extension to me). She didn’t do any of it because she’s evil, or because she hated me or something. She did it borne out of frustration and ignorance. She is better informed now.

But that denial wouldn’t be entirely true, would it? Any of you that have read the archives here or follow me on Twitter will have seen me rant about her with not-inconsiderable frequency. I know, I know – all daughters find themselves irritated at their mothers from time to time. Often, though, minor instances of irritation between us blow up into screeching, blazing rows (again, I know that happens to the rest of the world on occasion, but it seems to be frequent within our relationship). Having learnt the dynamics, I sometimes have to try really hard to bite my tongue rather than express even the most basic opinion to my mother. It may well be the same from her angle – I have no idea.

I relayed the information to Paul. “And when I rant about her online, then either she’s nice to me, or I catch a glimpse of her wedding photo, and I burst into tears of both guilt over my actions and of sorrow for the shit life she’s been given.”

The wedding photo one is the worst. She was only 21, and she was educated, attractive, personable and smart. Life, and the future it brought, should have been so encouraging and bright for her. Instead there was nothing but pain and bitter anguish throughout. She deserved better than that.

“You said your father raped your mother,” Paul said, interrupting my introspective musing. “Did you ever witness one of those incidents?”

I’m amazed that I was able to answer this. How can I speak to a virtual stranger about something I’ve never spoken to anyone else about before? (Well, technically I spoke to one person before him, which I shall explain forthwith).

I’ve had a picture of one particular evening in my mind for virtually all my life. V had left our home at the time, but it was before I was at school (I think), so I must have been three or four. I got out of bed for some reason – possibly simply because I knew V was still there, or maybe because I heard something – and, apparently surreptitiously, made my way downstairs. When I opened the door into what was then the living room, I was confronted with a…scene.

My mother turned her head in horror and ordered me back upstairs. My father just sort of…I don’t know…hung (?) there, trying to avoid my gaze. I retreated, though, as I was told.

The next day, when V had fucked off again, I confronted my mother about what I had seen.

She looked confused (which I’m fairly certain was an act, given the context, but what do I know) and said, “but your Dad wasn’t even here after you went to bed last night. You must have been dreaming.” [LOL, Mum. Yeah. Pre-school children really dream about their parents fucking].

“I wasn’t dreaming,” I protested assuredly.

“Now, now, Pandora, you must have been,” she replied nonchalantly. “He wasn’t here! Now then, let’s do…[end of conversation].”

I never raised it with her (or anyone else, obviously) again, though I’ve thought about it often enough. There are a number of possible explanations for it:

  1. I did witness them engaged in sex, but it was consensual.
  2. I did witness them engaged in sex, but it was rape (more likely, given their estrangement).
  3. I genuinely was dreaming.
  4. It is a phantom memory.

(4) has been the one I’ve always tried to convince myself of, because I remember so clearly that I was absolutely adamant (to myself as well as Mum) that I wasn’t dreaming. As noted, what small kid dreams of such things anyway? If it is real, then I hope (1) is the applicable explanation…but my mother has always been governed by morals when it comes to sex. I really can’t see her willingly engaging in so-called ‘ex-sex’ in any circumstance.

It does get worse. Sorry. My mother has advised me that raped her a lot, inflicted physical violence on her on an almost daily basis, he threw her out a window “a couple” of times, and he tried to kill her on several occasions. Smothering, strangling, crushing – asphyxia mostly, but there were other methods too. However, the worst comes in the untold stories. She has admitted all this indescribably terrible stuff to me – but, she also tells me, there is a fuck of a lot more that she will “take to her grave and never share with anyone.”

How can it get any worse? Seriously? How unimaginable must the rest be, given how really-quite-a-bit-unimaginable the stuff I do know is?!

They had been married, if you can call such a violent sham a ‘marriage’, 20 years when I was born. I presume that violence of every conceivable manner was the staple of my mother’s existence at the time. There’s no evidence that I have ever been party to, and no reason to presume that any even exists, to suggest that they had any good times together by that point. Well – ostensibly they occasionally did; they wore their dainty little masks of smug-married-ness to the golf club and so on, even though the vast majority of those they knew were aware of the reality – but in real terms, no. She stuck with him because, she claims, she had “meant her marriage vows”. He stuck with her, I’d surmise, because she brought in most of the household income, and was an easy scapegoat for his repugnant aggression.

I’m rambling now, but there is a point to this. By the early ’80s, after 20 years of this, there can’t have been much love between them. So…how did I come into the world?

My mother has denied that I am a product of rape. I have confronted her on the issue twice, and though I’d like the truth, I’ll forgive her for lying to me on this occasion. One characteristic I inherited from my father (not a particularly appealing one, but then what genes from him would be?) was the ability to lie to someone with great skill. My mother, coming from a differing bloodline (though with the Georgie/Merv thing, one could be forgiven for getting confused on that!), has not got that particular attribute.

Is the line the lady doth protest too much from Hamlet? I think so. Clearly my mother hadn’t read the play on the occasions on which I asked her about my conception. If it wasn’t so tragic it would actually be funny – here’s an example of what she gushed on one occasion:

Of course you were not conceived by a rape! Not at all, no! No, it was lovely [incidentally, I don't want to think about the mechanics of it either way, but meh]. I knew right away that I was pregnant [yes, of course you did, Mum - reproduction is instant after all ***cough***], and I was so happy, it was the one such incident at the time where we were actually really happy together!

Even assuming that were true (it’s not utterly impossible, but it does seem unlikely), how can she be so sure which incident resulted in her pregnancy? If he was sexually assaulting her as frequently as he was inflicting grievous bodily harm on her person, then she could have had virtually no way of determining that.

After I’d finally concluded my verbal narrative on this issue to Paul, he said, “you were born out of a toxic, horrible place…and all too soon you were forced back [by Paedo] to a toxic horrible place.”

“The thing is,” I said flatly, “I connect all the dots. Once again, I’m the common denominator in all of this. It’s about me, something I’ve somehow brought about, not others. It’s all my fault.”

[When I first re-read my notes on this session, I completely collapsed at this point with a raw, profound, overwhelming sadness, the like of which I have not experienced in years - perhaps since my grandfather died].

Paul said, “you take on the burden of being the ‘common denominator’ too easily. The common denominator is not you – it’s an abusive family.”

Actually, it isn’t – my father and Paedo are completely unrelated, other than by their respective marriages. Nevertheless, writing this, I find myself struck dumb by Paul’s statement. I detest V with every fibre of my being, and I know this is an irrational thing to say, but I’ve never seen my family in this way. They just are. They might be freaks, they might be dull, they might irritate the living fuck out of me – but abusive? They’re not abusive! And yet – two of them are. Two of them were. V and Paedo. Paedo and V.

Abusive. It’s a strong word.

I conceded that my family were/are “not the bastions of moral upstanding” (typical Pandorian deflective-response there) and added that if all of them – Mum most assuredly excepted, though – sunk into the Irish Sea tomorrow, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid nor shed a tear. Perhaps that’s not entirely true, but it’s a reasonable reflection of my ambivalence.

And then…

“We’re going to have to finish there,” he said, apologetically. Actually, I think he was almost embarrassed. For my part, I was profoundly frustrated. I’d got into a sort of rhythm where all this stuff just seemed to roll off my tongue without any real cerebral planning, and now it was being cruelly broken.

I tried to play it down, but my annoyance was pretty obvious. It wasn’t directed at Paul in the least, but at the whole arbitrary 50-minute-hour bullshit. Therapy is such a weird construct.

He asked how the session had been for me.

I said that I was bad.

“Why?!” Paul queried, apparently genuinely confused. “I actually thought we just did some really good work.”

Thank fuck for that, then. “Actually, me too,” I admitted. “I’m just aware that I’m here to discuss one type of traumatic incident with you, and here I am blathering about my parents. I can’t help but think it’s still very relevant, though.”

He nodded. “It’s all inter-connected, all part of the system that you’re now dealing with. Inevitably this informed your childhood a lot, so it’s definitely relevant. And going over gory details of your abuse every week isn’t necessarily therapeutic.”

So. That was Monday’s meeting. Now, this is the weird thing. Apart from the two instances of anger I described in the foregoing prose, I sat there and spoke quite matter-of-factly as I detailed all the sordid, horrible truths to Paul. I left the building and went to the shop as I often do, returning to house to start writing Monday’s post. I went to see Christine on Tuesday and the only thing that concerned me at the time was my unfamiliarity with her.

On Tuesday night, I read the notes I’d taken pertaining to this session, and at the ‘common denominator’ point, a mental paradigm shift starting slapping me around the face. I broke down and wept…proper wailing, sobbing, snot, the horrible works. I wept for my mother, and her undeservedly horrible, shit life. And I wept for myself. And as I’ve typed this up, I’ve broken down several times. In fact, in the nearly two years I’ve been blogging here, this has been the most harrowing post I’ve ever written. Harrowing. Another big word. But the only one that fits.

When A inevitably noticed my upset on Tuesday and asked what was wrong, I said, “it’s just such a sad story.”

“What is?” he asked gently.

“My life!” I sobbed. “No child should ever have to go through any of that!”

What’s that you say, lovely reader? Compassion? Moreover…a little self-compassion? Acceptance? Grief?

I don’t know. I really don’t. I do know, though, that I don’t think I have any meaningful secrets left to tell you. All of this material was the last major batch of Stuff You Didn’t Yet Know About Pandora. So there you go, readers. You know, to all intents and purposes, everything about me. Everything about my life.

My life, the sad story.

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