That time....

Christmas crept up, and then went all too quickly. In Liverpool? Well the day was quiet, and pretty much perfect...just the two of us. 

It was the first year ever that it passed without blood being drawn, without violence and without bitter arguments. Was I surprised? You can bet I was...

A few times I caught myself panicking, my heart rate creeping up and tears forming behind my eyes - but I turned and saw Will and the falling stopped. 

No tears, no arguments, no pain... well fuck me this must be what Christmas is 'supposed' to be like.

And now we're stuck in this odd time between Christmas and New Year... do you get back to 'normal', do you carry on relaxing? Do you think over the year passed, or the year to come? Do you think of things to give up, or things to take up?

Will it be a New Years Resolution, or a New Years Revolution?

Let's hope it'll be better than last year... but I don't want to build up ideas of perfection or grandure... I hope 2009 will work on what I achieved last year, and instead of taking steps backwards... will move forwards. 

Of course there'll be a few bumps along the road...

... wouldn't be life otherwise, would it ;)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone... it may be uncertain, or you may not be ready. But it's here :)

Pills

I've a pill to make me happy
A pill to make me sad
A pill to make me wish
And a pill to make me dream
Plus a pill to just remind me
That I'll never be the same.
My pills make me sleep
Then perk me up,
They make me happy
Then tread me down.
You know what gets me most?
There's a pill
To make me human
To change my mind
When they said
All along
That
I could never be
Would never be
Enough.


Just a crappy little poem there as I was thinking over the issue of mental illness and therapy and so-called cures. I know that there is no cure for bipolar, or anything else. Why is this? Because, really, no-one knows what it is. A diagnosing doctor can't tell me how it feels, the nurse who frowns at my cuts can't say she's never thought about it, the HCA who mops up my blood can't scold me for bleeding...

We all bleed. Everyday. Not always blood or tears or sweat, but humankind. We bleed through injuries and hurts and cuts. We lose people and we fall in love, we sleep and we dream and we wake. We go through a million cycles everyday, just to be called alive... so what I do/did is just a visual for the world. It just says to people I am like you. It reminds them that everybody does hurt, everybody is hurting.

I am what all people feel, but refuse to look at.
I am called ugly for my scars.
I am called selfish for my illness.
I am called a freak for my feelings.
Well guess what?
We are all scarred.
1 in 4 people are mentally ill.
Everybody feels.

So this Christmas... hug a crazy person, we're just like you ;)

Love you

Christmas Season 2008

Gorgeous photo there of the the Guernsey Christmas lights... not mine of course!

I wanted to apologise for the lack of posts or comments, my laptop broke first and then it fixed itself, and then the Internet broke... Fortunately a few things came together, at last. So we still have no phone line to dial out on, but the Internet works - so that's all you blog lovers need to know ;)

So here's what happened today...

Will and I took our gifts round to his Nans house so that she can take them all up to Doncaster on Christmas Eve, then we decided it would be good to go to the big indoor market in Liverpool. We got about two miles outside town, and the car battery died. We called the RAC and they say since our membership runs out next month we'd need to buy another year before they came out. Yeah-fucking-right. 

So we called Highways Agency and they said for a couple hundred they'd gladly tow us to Preston and charge us for each day we leave it there.

Right.

So we called Aunty Gill... only her car wouldn't jump ours.

So we hailed a cab and took it back to Skelmersdale, and eventually got hold of Aunty Ang and she duly dispatched Uncle Rob in the people carrier to tow us home. At 30mph the automatic towed the manual with no brakes... we got home, and I started to breathe again.

But like Nan said - it woulnd't be Christmas without something going wrong.

And it made me think, it's often that crappy things happen this time of year... and we shrug a lot of it off, because of the festive season. We let people get away with it, we smile through near-bankrupcy, we block out old memories...

One Christmas I walked into town only to pick up my Dad from jail. I was 13.

One Christmas at my Dads house an argument erupted and things were thrown, blood was drawn and we were out on our ear walking into town in our jammies. I was 12.

One Christmas I attempted suicide, but every Christmas - at some point - I wish it worked.

None of this post is written in the 'correct' manner befitting the season. None of it is happy or optimistic. 

I'm sorry for this, but near the end of the year I start thinking back. I start feeling down. I ignore all the progress I have made, and I just think. 

Perhaps this season has a lot of soul-searching to answer for.

But perhaps it's just all about growth. Human growth. Maybe the more thinking we do, the more gifts we give, the more painful bridges we hold together... the more family contact we 'endure'... the more we grow.

Just in time for next year ;)

Wrong Way

Today on PostSecret (see my blogroll), a certain secret touched me...

"I've been using Manic Depression as an excuse to give up

I should be using it as a reason to try harder"

Have I been doing this? 

There are a lot of things I dismiss as being unreachable to be, beyond my mental capacity - too stressful and likely to cause an episode. But if there's anything I learnt writing my personal statement for the nursing degree it's that I have to work harder.

Rather than shying away from things, I need to gravitate towards them... things people wouldn't expect me to do, I want to do. 

Bipolar may be my decision maker... but it needn't be a restriction.

What an epiphany.

How often do we all do this though? Shrug off a suggestion or ignore an opportunity... only to beat ourselves up about it.

Perhaps the lesson here is not to let anything limit you.

Perhaps we should all try it on the edge for a while... it might just lift you higher than you've ever been.

Love

I am in love

With a boy

He loves me too

I am in love

With you

I need you

To love me too.

I need you

To see my eyes

To feel my scars

To touch my soul.

I am in love

With pain

With hurt

I am in love

With band-aids

And steri-strips.

I love to hate

A cure 

For bad

A healing

For cold,

I love to hate

That you just...

... don't understand.

Quick Turnaround

I know I only just blogged a few hours ago but I'm sitting in bed watching music television waiting for Will to come home from town. I can't go to sleep without him at least in the house.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the image I project to the world at large. Of course this time of year I am fully sleeved - so the scars aren't the problem. 

Today for example. I dressed in black jeans, black patent flats, a navy Edinburgh hoody, a green pashmina and of course a sling. (Why are they such yucky yellow/brown colours?)

On my face I wore a smile for the most part, but no make up - I wore my hair loose, long and curly and brown with a side parting and a lot over my eyes, just as Will likes.

Today I took a bath first thing and combed my hair in the lounge (a recent trip to IKEA meant that we have gone from no mirrors in the house, to two of the things). My skin was pretty clear, my eyes really dark and my hair much longer than I remembered. 

I feel like I have emerged, that I've been wrapped in a bin bag for a few weeks. Nothing has changed - same clothes which really need replacements, same hair colour, same scarves... but today? I wore it all with confidence - and for the first time felt that it doesn't matter ultimately what you wear, so long as you do it with a little confidence.

This is the most recent photo of me I like... one whole year ago. 

Next step on my road to health? Take a new photo...

Angel of the North

This picture was taken standing just next to the structure named above... the best kind of sunset. Not perfect, not the trademark colours, not the perfect clouds... but the light, well that could warm anyone up surely?

The last few weeks of late have been less than festive, the house looks beautiful and Will had a fabulous birthday - but as ever my heart wasn't in it. I always strive so much to be perfect, so much in fact that I don't take any notice of whether the people around me actually think there's a need for me to do better. I do ok.

I tore my trapezius muscle the other day - not badly, (in the shoulder) and since have been wandering around in a dumb sling which I try to ignore and go without but I just can't be stubborn this time - it hurts too much not to wear it! Since this injury it seems that my mental state has been a lot better.

I can't help wondering though... is this the best I will let myself get? Will it be a case of me not acheiving anything more than this? Is it best to admit defeat now?

Such depressing talk... my apologies.

4 Years...

... since I raised that fateful blade!

No idea how I've made it this far

Connie

Yesterday I received a Christmas card. Not a card from a family member I never met, or a friend I lost touch with... but a woman I have not seen since I spent the night at her B&B in May.

I went to her freezing cold and alone, fresh out of a police cell in the South of England. She welcomed me into her home and gave me her ear to listen, not asking what I had done, what the scars on my arms were or what on earth I planned to do with myself. She made me okay.

I want to say thank you to her.

All because of Pop Tarts

Yes, as I stood there over the toaster making our morning treat for this week... Pop Tarts, I started to think.

To be honest it wasn't the morning, because I am getting up later and later these days... people comment on my weight loss - well the secret is sleep - if you don't get up till tea time, then you don't eat until tea time.

I feel guiltier by the day, I know it is the meds but everything seems so dull. I am a lot more aware of myself than I used to be - on the train home this evening I couldn't even eat for fear of other passengers watching me. I don't really phone my Mum unless I have to, because I can feel in every word she says the utter disappointment, the confusion - the wondering how her daughter could have messed up so much.

She doesn't know the half of it, that's what gets me.

If she's judging me by what she knows then what about the rest? She has no idea I've been on benefits... that I live off Will instead of a job... that I turned that 'nice boy' against me all by myself. Her tone cuts me right down into my soul - because if she thinks that what she knows is bad, then what on earth would she think of the rest?

I find myself less and less concerned for the people I have left behind, after all it was being in that environment that put me in hospital after hospital... wasn't it? I don't even know anymore... perhaps the bipolar wasn't from past trauma, perhaps it wasn't from extreme stress...

Maybe it is all I am, and all I have ever been.

And then the toaster goes and all of a sudden all my thoughts are channeled into how on earth I'm going to get it out...

You haven't lived...until you've cried

Then my darlings, I can safely say that I have lived. So have all of you. 

All together we are living and we are alive...we cry and we feel.

Tonight I am crying...but it's okay right? Because I am living.

This is what they call living.

Right.