Bear with me, this is likely to happen a lot over the next few days and weeks....
Augustana - Either Way I'll Break Your Heart Someday
Charlie Puth - Clarity (cover)
Boxcar Racer - There Is
Anberlin - A Day Late
Wednesday, 13 August 2014
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
The Other Guy
The selfish part of me needs for you to stay
'Cause boy you keep a smile stretched across my face
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now
The way your lips move when you say my name
The smell of your hair on my pillow case
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now
If I'd had it my way I'd never let you walk out the door
But my heart is heavy with something that I just can't ignore
Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby who am I to be that other guy?
This could be our home boy, a special place
Something much more than your great escape
Boy I would give anything now
If you didn't had everything now
It doesn't have to be that you feel the same
You're telling me your love for me would never change
Unless you change everything now
It doesn't mean anything now
If it's him that you've chosen, then we need to stop closing the door
'Cause while he's at home waiting, then we can't pretend there's something more
Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
Ooh oh, I know it's not an easy choice to make
Ooh, 'cause no matter what you do
A heart will break
Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby you decide who is that other guy?
'Cause baby, who am I to be that other guy?
Jesse McCartney - The Other Guy (with some gender edits)
Wednesday, 6 August 2014
Warning
Some of the more hilarious extracts from the diary I was asked to keep by the psych for the last two weeks:
"Lots of new people to meet today - stuck with my head constantly analyzing every thought and action wondering if it was correct. Should I stay and talk? They're not here to see me. It'd be rude to leave. I really want to go but now I have to talk to them. I don't know anything about this person. This is not a good time for me to he trying to make an impression on people. I never know what to say here. Oh sex, this is good, this I can do, sex is easy, I'm good at sex. Oh god they're going to want to sleep or talk after aren't they. I'm rubbish at both. I'll just lie here till they're asleep and then go to the bathroom and then back to playing my game."
"Everyone is dumb. Everyone annoys me. God why can't they all just fuck off and die, can't they see how much I hate them all ... I smashed 2 glasses. Threw them at the wall. Had to clear it up of course. Don't want to warn them."
Tuesday, 5 August 2014
Other Worlds
Whilst on blogs about dealing with mental health issues, I fully recommend my friends blog: Nervous Type
Honestly, until he started this I had no idea how good his writing style was. He describes the experience of hypomania far better than I ever could, and the syncopated nature to his writing manages to perfectly express both the overbearing, never-ending, demanding, increasingly fast runaway nature of depression, but also the distracted, blissful, wondrous ,amazed, boundlessly energetic nature of mania.
Honestly, until he started this I had no idea how good his writing style was. He describes the experience of hypomania far better than I ever could, and the syncopated nature to his writing manages to perfectly express both the overbearing, never-ending, demanding, increasingly fast runaway nature of depression, but also the distracted, blissful, wondrous ,amazed, boundlessly energetic nature of mania.
The jury in my head
I haven't really know what to do with this blog for ages.
Occasionally I have ideas, but I'm not near a PC to blog them, and by the time I am the idea is gone. The way my thoughts come out is far more random than my presentation of them suggests - a lot of reordering, and editing happens before I post that you don't see, and this means my writing doesn't lend itself to a pen and notepad format. Even for those ideas I do tend to get onto a screen, for most of them I get half way through before realizing that what I've written says nothing like what I want to communicate, I'm in no way happy with it or even willing to accept it as a good effort - again, behind the scenes of this blog is an endless set of draft posts that remain in an unfinished limbo that no matter how many times I return to I can never quite get what I want to say out.
So the blog lies here dead and quiet until something pivotal enough happens I'm compelled to commit something to binary form just to alleviate some of the pressure in my head.
Well tonight is one of those times....
Tonight I'm intentionally staying awake, because the thoughts in my head are so bad that sleeping would only grant them full-colour, stereoscopic natures.
I had a 4hr long nightmare in a series of dreams this afternoon. It wasn't a nightmare in the sense of horror-movie elements of terror and suspense. It was a relatively 'normal' cinematic rendering of the thoughts plaguing my head. The worst thoughts I have, leaving with me the feeling of being trapped, of failing, of not having control, with no escape and being right back where I used to be. Frustrated and unable to make anyone understand how I'm dying inside. This was a nightmare in that it was a representation of my worst fears and experiences, that leaves you with those terrible sensations and feelings all day after waking, you can't shake them; the memories you'd suppressed and left behind, the scenarios you've imagined and suddenly had to live and experience in your dream. And the fact I couldn't wake myself up on it just serves to prove how much I'm struggling with mental control right now.
Right now I'm stone cold terrified of the concept of 12pm.
12pm is the the best culmination of years of trying to find something that can help the runaway trains of thought tearing through my head 24/7. A journey arguably started 6 years ago, and has been in it's most recent iteration for 18 months and counting now. I'm trying. REALLY trying to get some help. Because it's so bad it scares me.
It's hard to explain how much of trial just 1 appointment is in itself because it seems so trivial. There are barely a handful of people who actually understand how severely I have problems pursuing mental healthcare, by virtue of being the ones who have been around long enough, and close enough to me, to see the effects it has on me - the immediate suspicion of their questions, the manipulative line of my responses to test the psychiatrist's intelligence against mine, the violent shaking, sometimes retching, in the waiting room and making it worse by trying to suppress and control it so I can look 'normal' (which is clearly absurd given the entire reason why I'm there, but hell I don't want to actually appear like an uncontrolled raving loon to them do I?!), the hyperventilating on the bus to get to the doctors, the nausea and panic I feel for 3 days solid before my appointment, the bad dreams and insomnia I have for weeks before it, the anger at myself for each and every one of these sensations, that they exist, that they are so ridiculous and counter productive, that they are so necessary and obvious.
And at 12pm I have an appointment with the man who gets to decide whether I'm eligible for drugs to try and help this or now. Whether my symptoms are bad enough. After falling through the system or being refused without actually being told such 3 times recently.
It's not that I want to be on drugs. God, who WANTS to need anti-depressants, or anti-psychotics, or anxiety meds, or any of those options?! For years my healthcare providers and I both agreed that drugs were not the answer for me - the way my mind works and copes with my mood swings means things like anti-depressants and mood stabilizers are pretty much the worst possible option for me.
The reason I'm now asking to consider them, the reason I've pursued treatment repeatedly this time despite numerous setbacks and constantly falling through the gaps of the system, is my current coping mechanisms don't work anymore.
I get memory blanks, I have visual hallucinations that interfere with my ability to do things, I get inexplicably and uncontrollably angry - a kind of unprompted anger I haven't had since I was 17. I find myself so overloaded that the simplest additional stimuli - like a friend on a phone in the same room, makes it impossible for me to focus on the world around me.
These are all problems that developed since my current coping mechanisms stopped being effective in helping me to manage the various bits of crazy I experience.
And the fact of that scares me so badly I'm willing to say: "okay, I need help, I don't know what to do, I can't deal with this, when you're struggling this much with this kind of stuff you're supposed to go seek help so here I am, won't someone please help me do something about this, so slowly, bit by bit, I can maybe get back to a place where I can manage myself?"
But at 12pm, the answer may be no. I'm not saying drugs should be the answer. But I've never found counselling style therapy to be that useful, or CBT, because I tend to be quite aware of my own behaviors and how to recognize their incipient state and how to develop and instigate coping mechanisms to help alleviate them where necessary and by and large, I've already done that And they're not working. I've been told repeatedly I'm not eligible for them anyway. So at this point drugs to forcibly restore some kind of barriers in my mind seems like the option that's left.
And if I get told no, I'll understand. Because they have to draw the line somewhere, because I'll have gone through that process of assessment and the people qualified to make such a judgement will have done their jobs and appraised me accordingly.
But then, I'm habitually bad at emphasizing the severity of my medical situations. Digestive pain to me that I just accept and deal with because its a daily occurrence would probably have someone not used to it in tears and considering A&E. These mental symptoms have been there in increasingly worse states for approaching 2 years now. So even with the failing coping mechanisms, I've just got used to them.
And objectively, I go to work, I eat, I maintain social relationships, I didn't come to them through the A&E psych team, I haven't been sectioned, and they have to prioritize, so I understand.
Subjectively I'm just a good liar, who puts up a great front because most of my life involves appearing in complete control of any situation. Without a serious alternative, its saying "you're falling apart inside, you're hallucinating, you are probably going to get progressively worse or it might blow over in another few years, but we wont or can't help you. You are in fact, on your own, you have to deal with this without professional help." And that raises a further problem beyond the immediate repercussions in that it's likely to create an association in my mind of "okay, when you need help you ask for it, and you expect it to be given one way or another, but it wont, so there's no point in asking, no matter what happens in future."
I really wish I wasn't good at putting up a front. Because its one of those horrible situations where because I'm trying, and objectively having partial success, it in fact works against me. Did you ever wish you weren't the A-student, because then you wouldn't have to get A's all the time? If I could lose that constant holding back of the worst of it, if I attacked someone, or myself, or if I just ran off till someone came looking, or climbed into a dark comforting crawlspace and refused to come out, then they'd say "you're sick, you need help, come with us."
...But for the next 8 hours, I just have to hope that my sleep logs, the mood diaries, writing down all the voices in my head is enough to justify not having to be on my own
N.B. By 'on my own' I am not ignoring my support network of friends etc. I know you are there. You are part of the coping mechanisms that no longer fully function because things are worse than you can help me these days. By 'on my own' I mean without professional help. I mean stuck with the strategies and coping mechanisms I devise that certainly involve you, but are no longer sufficient.
Occasionally I have ideas, but I'm not near a PC to blog them, and by the time I am the idea is gone. The way my thoughts come out is far more random than my presentation of them suggests - a lot of reordering, and editing happens before I post that you don't see, and this means my writing doesn't lend itself to a pen and notepad format. Even for those ideas I do tend to get onto a screen, for most of them I get half way through before realizing that what I've written says nothing like what I want to communicate, I'm in no way happy with it or even willing to accept it as a good effort - again, behind the scenes of this blog is an endless set of draft posts that remain in an unfinished limbo that no matter how many times I return to I can never quite get what I want to say out.
So the blog lies here dead and quiet until something pivotal enough happens I'm compelled to commit something to binary form just to alleviate some of the pressure in my head.
Well tonight is one of those times....
Tonight I'm intentionally staying awake, because the thoughts in my head are so bad that sleeping would only grant them full-colour, stereoscopic natures.
I had a 4hr long nightmare in a series of dreams this afternoon. It wasn't a nightmare in the sense of horror-movie elements of terror and suspense. It was a relatively 'normal' cinematic rendering of the thoughts plaguing my head. The worst thoughts I have, leaving with me the feeling of being trapped, of failing, of not having control, with no escape and being right back where I used to be. Frustrated and unable to make anyone understand how I'm dying inside. This was a nightmare in that it was a representation of my worst fears and experiences, that leaves you with those terrible sensations and feelings all day after waking, you can't shake them; the memories you'd suppressed and left behind, the scenarios you've imagined and suddenly had to live and experience in your dream. And the fact I couldn't wake myself up on it just serves to prove how much I'm struggling with mental control right now.
Right now I'm stone cold terrified of the concept of 12pm.
12pm is the the best culmination of years of trying to find something that can help the runaway trains of thought tearing through my head 24/7. A journey arguably started 6 years ago, and has been in it's most recent iteration for 18 months and counting now. I'm trying. REALLY trying to get some help. Because it's so bad it scares me.
It's hard to explain how much of trial just 1 appointment is in itself because it seems so trivial. There are barely a handful of people who actually understand how severely I have problems pursuing mental healthcare, by virtue of being the ones who have been around long enough, and close enough to me, to see the effects it has on me - the immediate suspicion of their questions, the manipulative line of my responses to test the psychiatrist's intelligence against mine, the violent shaking, sometimes retching, in the waiting room and making it worse by trying to suppress and control it so I can look 'normal' (which is clearly absurd given the entire reason why I'm there, but hell I don't want to actually appear like an uncontrolled raving loon to them do I?!), the hyperventilating on the bus to get to the doctors, the nausea and panic I feel for 3 days solid before my appointment, the bad dreams and insomnia I have for weeks before it, the anger at myself for each and every one of these sensations, that they exist, that they are so ridiculous and counter productive, that they are so necessary and obvious.
And at 12pm I have an appointment with the man who gets to decide whether I'm eligible for drugs to try and help this or now. Whether my symptoms are bad enough. After falling through the system or being refused without actually being told such 3 times recently.
It's not that I want to be on drugs. God, who WANTS to need anti-depressants, or anti-psychotics, or anxiety meds, or any of those options?! For years my healthcare providers and I both agreed that drugs were not the answer for me - the way my mind works and copes with my mood swings means things like anti-depressants and mood stabilizers are pretty much the worst possible option for me.
The reason I'm now asking to consider them, the reason I've pursued treatment repeatedly this time despite numerous setbacks and constantly falling through the gaps of the system, is my current coping mechanisms don't work anymore.
I get memory blanks, I have visual hallucinations that interfere with my ability to do things, I get inexplicably and uncontrollably angry - a kind of unprompted anger I haven't had since I was 17. I find myself so overloaded that the simplest additional stimuli - like a friend on a phone in the same room, makes it impossible for me to focus on the world around me.
These are all problems that developed since my current coping mechanisms stopped being effective in helping me to manage the various bits of crazy I experience.
And the fact of that scares me so badly I'm willing to say: "okay, I need help, I don't know what to do, I can't deal with this, when you're struggling this much with this kind of stuff you're supposed to go seek help so here I am, won't someone please help me do something about this, so slowly, bit by bit, I can maybe get back to a place where I can manage myself?"
But at 12pm, the answer may be no. I'm not saying drugs should be the answer. But I've never found counselling style therapy to be that useful, or CBT, because I tend to be quite aware of my own behaviors and how to recognize their incipient state and how to develop and instigate coping mechanisms to help alleviate them where necessary and by and large, I've already done that And they're not working. I've been told repeatedly I'm not eligible for them anyway. So at this point drugs to forcibly restore some kind of barriers in my mind seems like the option that's left.
And if I get told no, I'll understand. Because they have to draw the line somewhere, because I'll have gone through that process of assessment and the people qualified to make such a judgement will have done their jobs and appraised me accordingly.
But then, I'm habitually bad at emphasizing the severity of my medical situations. Digestive pain to me that I just accept and deal with because its a daily occurrence would probably have someone not used to it in tears and considering A&E. These mental symptoms have been there in increasingly worse states for approaching 2 years now. So even with the failing coping mechanisms, I've just got used to them.
And objectively, I go to work, I eat, I maintain social relationships, I didn't come to them through the A&E psych team, I haven't been sectioned, and they have to prioritize, so I understand.
Subjectively I'm just a good liar, who puts up a great front because most of my life involves appearing in complete control of any situation. Without a serious alternative, its saying "you're falling apart inside, you're hallucinating, you are probably going to get progressively worse or it might blow over in another few years, but we wont or can't help you. You are in fact, on your own, you have to deal with this without professional help." And that raises a further problem beyond the immediate repercussions in that it's likely to create an association in my mind of "okay, when you need help you ask for it, and you expect it to be given one way or another, but it wont, so there's no point in asking, no matter what happens in future."
I really wish I wasn't good at putting up a front. Because its one of those horrible situations where because I'm trying, and objectively having partial success, it in fact works against me. Did you ever wish you weren't the A-student, because then you wouldn't have to get A's all the time? If I could lose that constant holding back of the worst of it, if I attacked someone, or myself, or if I just ran off till someone came looking, or climbed into a dark comforting crawlspace and refused to come out, then they'd say "you're sick, you need help, come with us."
...But for the next 8 hours, I just have to hope that my sleep logs, the mood diaries, writing down all the voices in my head is enough to justify not having to be on my own
N.B. By 'on my own' I am not ignoring my support network of friends etc. I know you are there. You are part of the coping mechanisms that no longer fully function because things are worse than you can help me these days. By 'on my own' I mean without professional help. I mean stuck with the strategies and coping mechanisms I devise that certainly involve you, but are no longer sufficient.
Friday, 14 February 2014
VD (might wanna be careful with that)
Honestly 90% of the stuff I see concerning Valentines is from single people bemoaning that they’re single/how insufferable couples around this time are /how fake it all is/how they hate it/etc I see very few posts from people in relationships relative to the amount of sickly stuff you’d think they were posting.
I’m not a fan of Valentine’s, but I don’t hate it. Even when I have a boyfriend more often than not I’m not in the same country as him to celebrate even if we wanted to. I don’t need a day to remind me to do something nice for my partner, if I take them out or cook something special or whatever for them I’ll do it because I want to see them smile, I don’t need any more reason than that.
I have only a handful of issues with Valentine’s and these could quite fairly be applied to any holiday
¨ The colour scheme. Don’t get me wrong, I like red, especially deep reds, but RED EVERYWHERE is oppressive. Like the blue/pink split you can get in Disney stores or the like to say boys/girls, it’s just a horrible onslaught on the eyes more than anything else.
¨ It’s busy. I avoid going out on Valentines simply because EVERYONE is going out on Valentines. It’s hard to get a booking anywhere, places sell out weeks in advance. Places overcharge for whatever valentines package their offering, or else offer those last minute cheap deals that are oversubscribed by people who forgot to organise anything and they’re inevitably grossly subpar. Restaurants are terrible, the wait staff are understandably sick of demanding couples who want to know why their perfect evening isn’t the sole focus of the venue, as previously stated, you’re usually paying over and above the odds, it’s not special because every other person in the place is there for the same reason and probably dressed up too, and most restaurants are eager to rush you because the more sittings they can get in the more money they can make. I’m not blaming the restaurants or the staff for this, it makes perfect sense, I just don’t want to be in that environment.
¨ The complaining. There are two types of complaining. One is from the couples, who are upset that their valentines didn’t match up with their perfect fantasy vision they had in their head. To be honest the people that make these complaints normally make them throughout the relationship, they’re just those kind of people so I ignore them fairly easily. But most of the complaining comes from single people who start bitching sometime before Christmas when the winter boy/girlfriend season kicks off, and usually don’t stop until at least the end of February when Easter merchandising and Spring menus finally kill the tail end of the Valentines ‘period’. Also it’s acceptable to be single then because it’s the interim between the winter-partner and summer fling seasons
In my mind, there are 3 acceptable ways to spend Valentines Day and these are great ways to spend any evening or weekend regardless of what time of the year it is
¨ With friends, watching movies. The staple of bitter single people everywhere, but misery loves company and friends love bad movies. Put on Bridget Jones’ Diary and sing out ALL BY MYSELF with full pride while devouring pints of ice cream. Try not to make blue soup. R E S P E C T.
¨ With your boy/girl, curled up on the sofa at home, watching dumb movies. Cook something that takes a little bit effort but isn’t stand out special. Put on your most oversized hoodies and grab the blanket or strip down to your skivvies and wrap your arms around each other for a nice quiet night in where you don’t have to do anything
¨ Spend a fortune and go to one of those period costume balls the likes of which you only see in movies. They’re limited in terms of people, it’s different to 99% of people’s plans, they last all night so you don’t feel rushed, and you get to dress up in a really fun way. Even if you hate dressing up it’s something quirky and different and a good bucket list item for most people. But this option usually has a price tag of several grand if you’re going to do it properly, so stick with option one or two
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Why I'm smiling
Everyone knows it's when I'm smiling you really need to worry, and here's why.
If I'm angry, or upset, sure I might do something terrible. Because at that moment in time I won't care about the repercussions. I've disassociated myself from my normal emotions on the matter. That's not to say the shock of those won't hit me later and even though I'll know why I committed those actions at the time, I may actually come to feel guilty about them once whatever blinding extreme emotional state has passed.
If I'm smiling, that's the dangerous time, because then I am acting out of calculated premediated thought. I have considered the consequences of my actions, I am well aware of what I might bring down upon myself or those around me. I have weighed them in the balance and I have not found them wanting. I am perfectly settled on whatever course I have set me on and I have already prepared myself to face the fallout.
That is why just because I am smiling does not mean everything is okay, or you should ever let down your guard. When I smile I am acutely conscious of both myself and what is going on around me, and you forget that at your peril.
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