I should have blocked you twenty years ago

Hey there, I’d ask how you are but you’d just start telling me at great length about your self inflicted illnesses and how unfair it is that your life is such a pile of crap so I won’t.

I should have blocked you in January 1999, but it wasn’t really such a thing back then, and you just would not bloody leave it at disowning me in a disgusting, horrendous, nightmarish letter that my Stepdad (via a phone call that I still believe saved my life) thankfully told me to rip to shreds and bin minutes after I received it.

By the time I was three years old you had had numerous affairs and Mum had quite rightly thrown you out (something I will always think was incredibly brave), and yet I still thought you were a lovely daddy and the sun shone and all that. Mum never spoke badly of you until I was older, and goodness knows you never explained yourself.

You married a woman who spent about two hours a day I spent with her telling me that she wasn’t a woman you’d had an affair with (I was six; I wasn’t stupid, I know she turned up after my step dad even did) and that it was a disgrace that by your paying your allotted (pathetic) amount of child support to mum for me and my brother’s UPBRINGING her own children were going without (their father was on the scene and from what I could gather was paying for his and her kids).

Your wife (for she is still legally your wife, a fact I now find amusing as it’s punishing you both and you both deserve it) then decided to indoctrinate her children, and so I regularly got advised it was my fault that they could not do anything or eat or whatever.

In both of these scenarios I served as a human shield to ensure my brother would never hear this crap, or at least would try to minimise his exposure to it. I like to think that though I have accomplished nothing in my life, I did this well. He is still speaking to you after all. I’d never make him choose… but if I did, I think we both know what he would do.

Years of having to visit during school holidays and being made to do chores (fair enough) like dusting daily (surfaces my brother was too small to even reach) and a stern timetable the fully brainwashed daughter of the wife would make us follow. I had a friend living round the corner and if I went to see her in the morning I would be greeted on my return with a grunt and told”you may have been having fun today but WE HAVE NOT” and told to wash up or whatever, regardless of whether I’d even been there to create said washing, because the ROTA WAS SACROSANCT. We were between the ages of 8 and 15.

A few times brother and I got to not go to you for half term. It was glorious. One time we had different holiday times to her kids, and one time I’m convinced to this day that we flat out lied. We still did our usual household chores – we always helped with washing up and so on and would have hoovered or dusted if asked, but there was no rigid rota and it all got done. Brother got to see his friends and I got to sit and write and pretend I was someone else.

Somehow I ended up living with your lot at 18. I very briefly fell out with Mum and Stepdad as i was, frankly, a self involved teenager.

After about a month, her daughter just stopped talking to me. We were living in the same house. She got my camp bed moved from her room – which actually had two additional single beds in it – to the dining room (fair enough, but no one spoke to me about it) and literally spoke about ten words to me from that day until I left.

The gas man came to inspect the gas heaters and told your wife that it was dangerous to have anyone sleeping in the dining room due to carbon monoxide or something. I only know this due to a series of post it notes she left for you that she didn’t know I would see.

“DO NOT TELL HER, YOU KNOW HOW SHE GETS”

was scrawled so hard on one post it that your wife had virtually ripped through the note.

I left them and they were gone when I really “came home”.

Years later the daughter admitted she had stopped talking to me due to jealousy, but it was so long afterwards and there was such a lack of belief in me at the time that it made no difference to me any more.

So I went to university. Ah yes, when I got in your wife’s response was “you’d better get a full time job then”. She later freely admitted she hated that me and my brother were academically “clever” and her children were not. (Her son didn’t make a big deal of it and I’m sure is very successful right now and I wish him well, but her daughter blamed her teachers for failing her A levels and also her GCSE maths twice. Somehow this was also my fault.)

Before I left, a lovely lady I worked with had offered to let me stay when I worked at the same place over Christmas (I’d made up with Mum and Stepdad by then; I was still going there for the actual holiday). I remember thinking she was very nice but I’d be fine and could ask you.

Mistake.

I stupidly mentioned to poor Mum that I was going to stay with you before I’d actually asked, because it never occurred to me that it would get back to you. For whatever reason you found out and yelled at Mum (who didn’t normally even speak to you on the phone, so I can only assume it was unfortunate that she picked up when you called my brother) who then warned me of your rage. I apologised profusely to her; she was incredibly understanding because let’s face it she had had your number for years by then.

I don’t think I ended up speaking to you about it; I received a one page furious letter from you shortly after, the kind of letter people write but do not post, telling me I needed to “take a look at myself” and young lady something or other. Again someone had nearly ripped through a page, such was their rage towards me. I agonised for hours and hours over what I could possibly have done to deserve this; I couldn’t believe it was anything but my fault.

I went to stay with the lovely lady from work whilst I worked. She didn’t seem surprised that I asked. I have no idea how much I shared with the older “surrogate mums” I had at work but something prompted her to offer to let me stay I guess. She only asked that I buy my own food. I will never forget her kindness. I wrote to her after my stay to thank her but never heard from her again, I know her ex-husband was trying to take her house so who knows what happened. Her son turned up over the holiday having split with his girlfriend, again he was very kind and I started to realise that the anger and shouting were not normal, something I had forgotten over my year with you, as well as all of the visits where I was blamed for many things, and told I was wrong and bad so often.

During the holiday period my brother stayed with you and I went for lunch purely for his sake. Your wife asked if I’d like to stay the night. I still can’t remember if I laughed in her face, but I wanted to. I didn’t want to make it awkward for my brother, who was blameless.

At some point you finished with your wife and moved out, but she still lurked around, like a shadow that threw darkness over everything.

Then in 1999 came the letter. I don’t really recall the contents; I just know it came after my media law exam, which I’d aced and received a first in, and caused me to fail my ethics exam the following week.

There was apparently a letter to my brother too; but who knows what that said. Carbon copies were apparently sent to my horrified mother. Stepdad told me to rip it to pieces. I did. I am forever grateful for this.

Then came the pitiful call that my friend picked up at our third year house and brought the cordless receiver to me looking vaguely mortified: “it’s your dad?”

I forgave you because it was hopeless. You knew my landline number somehow and you still did right up until last year. I just loved the call telling me you’d been arrested for fraud, the text from my brother telling me you were hallucinating in hospital because you were withdrawing from alcohol even though you’d told us you were sober, the boasts of vast amounts of back payments in benefits whilst I was unemployed and struggling, the “you don’t really want a job do you?” When I had just been made redundant from a job I loved after nine years and two promotions. I loved that if I didn’t answer every Sunday you just rang and rang even if I wasn’t home. I began to dread the Sunday texts saying “when shall we talk?” My Mum didn’t do this; we spoke regularly but it was not insanely regulated because she understood me. I tried to explain it to you; you would agree and then just flat out ignore me. Now I don’t have a landline.

I last called you at Christmas and then you called me on New Years Day and it was as if you hadn’t heard me all over again.

I blocked you in February because I couldn’t take the anxiety and pain any more.

No more. And no you can’t get your “friend” who would be open mouthed to know all of this to call me and then what’s app me to ask to talk on your behalf. There’s a reason many of your other friends gave up on you. I’m not the only one.

This is over.

Why?

TW: The usual depression/suicide stuff.

So here are three photographs of three talented young men:

The first I have blogged about rather too much; the other two I have never mentioned on here.

Mum and I liked to watch TV together.  In the early 1990s, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was repeated on television. Much like the excitement that surrounded us when Reggie Perrin was shown again – so that I could finally see CJ and his “I didn’t get where I am today…” catchphrase that Mum had assured me was real and not one of her made up things, I was excited: Mum had always liked the programme about builders off to Germany to work due to (BOOOOO) Thatcher’s Britain. Or something.

Wayne was was immediately my favourite.  His hair, his lame woman chasing, the fact the others were from North and at the time they scared me a bit (my man is a Geordie so I got over that)… Within five seconds of declaring this my mum told me simply “oh he’s dead.”

The he other photo is the stunningly handsome Lee Thompson Young.  Sorry, but he’s dead too.  A bipolar sufferer, he took his own life last year.  I love the show Rizzoli and Isles and he was my favourite character.

The tragic death of Robin Williams has just added to this. In fairness he wasn’t my favourite actor but I really liked him and respected him so much for his openness on Mental Health issues.

There are loads of comments now under poor Mr Thompson Young’s IMDB page about how he has gone to hell or some such aggressive, nasty INCORRECT shit.  There had better not be under that of Mr Williams’ page.  I guess Mr Acland should be glad he died before the internet age.

It wasn’t up to any of these people or Robin Williams to overcome their demons.  It is not our job to do this.  It is only our job to try to fight it.

 

The only people going to hell are those who condemn the tormented.

 

REST IN PEACE ALL. XXX

 

Depression and How It Really Is.

 

 

I suffer from depression but that doesn’t just make me sad and cry and not be able to get out of bed.

It also makes me nigh on impossible to live with, very hard to understand, impulsive, prone to ridiculous, inexplicable mood swings and have no explanation for this.

In short, depression is fucking horrible and if I could kill it I would.

That is why I think so many depression and other mental health sufferers kill themselves. They are not the horrible thing. It is an insidious, symbiotic being that attaches itself from such a young age that in most cases we can’t remember who we were without it. It tells us we are it. We are not that frightened broken person screaming at it to leave us alone, we are it, the nasty, bile spouting, friend alienating, family upsetting horror and in the end for so many we cannot fight it any more. It drains us from sense, from love, from the rest of our being, from the world.

It only takes one moment, one leap or cut or jump or swallow… It can take us.

It was not us. We did not give up or want to upset people. It killed us, surely as a cancer or a virus. We did not ask for it.

I have survived so far and so have many of us.

But do not judge those who have not. It was not them. Their lives were taken from them and they wish it were not so.

 

picture by Sam Harrison x

Dawn Barry from Come Dine With Me – A Tribute.

I love Come Dine With Me (aka CDWM) very much.

I have two clear favourite weeks.  The first is the original Liverpool week, which brought us the amazing (and probably never to be bettered) 39/40 score of “everyman” Ian, Terry “Green Pancakes” losing his shopping list in the veg aisle, Nikki the “Vegon”, Dan the “Fishman,” clearly brought in to be an arse but who ended up being lovely, and royalist ponce Margaret, who scored 37 and still lost (ahahaha).

My other favourite is the legendary Preston week, first screened in January 2009.  I still remember getting home from work and watching it in my room (I was lodging with a family at the time, a place I adored) and I was open-mouthed by these five slightly strange people, only a few of whom seemed to be able to cook.  It was funny, it was never forgotten by those who love CDWM.  We told people who had never seen the show to watch it; they did.  Val gave us a new way to pronounce “PHEASAAANT” and we never looked at pole dancing in the same way (“this is for the young and the sexxxxy”), Nigel – the “lost Chuckle Brother” and all round lovely gent made us cry when *SPOILERS* he won and donated the £1000 to charity.  Bernard microwaved chicken and called it classic Jamaican (“never been there”), threw hissy fits and gave out disgusting pineapple adorned rugs, Paul -who bizarrely claimed not to be a nice person only to prove repeatedly that he was – finally fed poor Nigel edible food.

The crowning glory of the week was the inimitable Dawn Barry.  She was introduced with the Baywatch theme, and oh boy, did she deliver.

Here is Dawn with her shoe collection, in happier times.

She was filmed in the gym, on a sun bed and in her yellow Lotus, and was clearly set up to be the “bimbo” of the week, but I remember instantly being struck by her determination and positive attitude.

She wanted to be like Pamela Anderson and get a boob job and she did it.  She wanted her own beauty business (a nail salon, apparently,) she did it.  She wanted a bright yellow car – she got it.

On the first night she and Nigel got on like the proverbial house ablaze, only for whiny Bernard to kick off and make her cry.  It was obvious that there had been a lot of alcohol consumed, but not just by Dawn.  Also my understanding (having watched every episode of the show at least once) is that apart from teetotallers (be it for religious or other reasons) and a handful of others, most people on the programme end up drunk most nights. The week that just finished is a good example, one contestant in particular was slurring by the main course every night including her own.  Filming (and therefore drinking) apparently lasts from 6pm to 2am, four or five nights in a row.  Most of us would be pretty tired and emotional after that.  (In fact, even I, as an alcoholic, am confused as to why some of the contestants get so upset when say, a Muslim doesn’t want alcohol on their night and offers a variety of juice.  I’d be gagging for some vitamins by the halfway mark. I don’t know if that makes me a rubbish alky or that most people who appear have bigger problems than they thought.)

On Val’s night, Dawn was sick (having made a successful dash for the downstairs bathroom followed by a panicking Val) during the main course, but returned triumphantly to finish it, declaring the “pheaaassaaannt” skin was “like Kentucky [Fried Chicken]” and launching into what sounded like a genuinely interesting story about her travels to the USA.  Unfortunately Bernard (who it seemed had made her queasy in the first place with talk of eating scorpions) got pissed off and shouted at her again.  I do wonder about the editing as it seemed to come out of nowhere.  Maybe she had taken over the night.  Val seemed far more annoyed with him than Dawn though, and the poor love didn’t get to put her cheese board out or anything.  I felt very sorry for Val that night, her food looked horrible but she was a lovely hostess.

Nobody even wanted to go to Bernard’s house the following evening, particularly a still peeved Val, but everyone turned up for his supposedly Jamaican night (real people of Caribbean origin would have been horrified I am sure) full of microwaved chicken, more microwaved chicken and a vile poached pear that he’d decided to serve in a pineapple.  Dawn disappeared before the latter concoction was served (rather sensible I thought, as Paul described it in the taxi as “rancid”).  She said she was really tired and got her bloke to whizz by in the yellow motor, but didn’t escape pudding as it was served to her the following morning, when one can only assume the rancid quotient had rather increased.  Bernard thought she was stressed about topping his night, which really says more about his own lack of self-awareness than anything else, as his score was woeful.

By this point in the week I was wondering why Dawn was always so tired, and (even as I swigged at my Strongbow) I did consider that she might have the same problem as me.  It seemed so unlikely though.  She was a successful business woman, I worked in insurance in a role laughably called a “consultant”, lodging in a room.  As well as her own business, she had a lovely house and a car that I knew from my stepdad working at Lotus was worth a fair whack of cash.  Goodness knows most Lotus workers couldn’t afford one.  I guess I naively thought that somebody with these outward trappings couldn’t possibly be the same internal mess as I was.  Sadly I was wrong.

Dawn’s night quickly entered the annals of CDWM history, and rightly so.  Whilst it can be argued that the dreadful fella that threw creme brules out of his window, gave away the unmade asparagus starter as a “present” and insulted his poor guests repeatedly was a way way worse host, Dawn is rightly remembered more.  (My GOD he was an arsehole.  I’ve happily forgotten his name and the location of his four-day week.)  It wasn’t really so much that she was a bad host…  It was obvious that she wasn’t right even as she prepared the ill-fated meringues and managed to rip through a plastic sieve with a hand-held blender.

“She can’t be drunk though,” I thought to myself, hating myself for laughing.  I’ve since seen scenes on a DVD that were never shown on television and it became painfully obvious from seeing them that she was.  I could only watch them once even before the sad news this week.  Dawn went up to bed after the “you’ve got your ‘air in your avocado” incident during the starter, much to the bemusement of her guests.

Both Nigel and “I’m not a nice person” Paul proved themselves lovely caring people by cooking Dawn’s main (an Old El Paso feast of chicken fajitas and a hastily binned refried beans) and dessert (the aforementioned meringues topped with fruit) respectively.  Nigel’s declaration that he opened the cupboard “went like that” then opened a packet and “went like that” is still genius.

By all accounts the meal was a disaster (starter aside, even Bernard liked it) the pool party section of the night was abandoned and Dawn fell asleep again on the sofa.  A vacuum cleaner was beside her, which gave me the impression she’d decided to tidy up.  I’d been there whilst drunk that was for sure.  It’s a cliché that people with alcohol problems are messy.  I am more likely to clean and hoover under the influence than sober to be honest.

Friday night came and poor Nigel hadn’t eaten anything decent since his night on Monday, and his face on seeing Paul’s lovely menu was adorable.  Dawn arrived at the party full of apologies about her evening and carrying five “thank you” balloons (she was unsure why she’d got one for herself) and I recognised myself in her guilty demeanour, her profuse “sorrysorrysorry”, the way the fun seemed to have been sucked out of her.  Appearing on the programme had been her dream (she had been trying to find fame on reality tv shows for years) and now it had used her up and spat her out, had become something to be endured until the taxi took her home in the early hours of the following morning.

Paul’s night was good foodwise, Nigel was thrilled and ate not only his meal but most of Val’s. (“I tend to eat little and offfften” said the bird-like Val, in her bizarre faux posh voice.) However as Val observed, the atmosphere was flat.  They all seemed exhausted.  When Paul announced the results, Dawn thumped the table and that was the last I recall seeing her on camera, which is unusual as normally all contestants get a “last word”.  Nigel won and cried, and frankly I nearly did too.  (I actually did, OK?)

So ended Preston week.

I found out yesterday that Dawn had died, apparently a suicide, having been rushed to hospital in the early hours of Tuesday 1st October.  She died later that day.  Family and friends said that she had been very ill for some time with depression and alcoholism, culminating in her father selling her business to a friend of Dawn’s as she could no longer work.

Comments on the news articles about Dawn have been generally very kind and sympathetic, but there have as always been the people who come out and compare depression (and mental illness generally) with cancer and so on, as if there is a “good” way to be ill and die, like Brass Eye’s observation of “Good AIDS” and “Bad AIDS”.

Here are some facts:

If an illness of any kind leads to somebody dying, it’s not their fault.  It is the fault of that illness.

Mental health services, despite improving since my first diagnosis in 1995, are still woeful.  Many people with a variety of mental health issues find that because of a lack of help, they turn to something to self medicate.  This can be many things.  It could be prescription drugs, illegal drugs, sex, food… Or alcohol.  Or a combination of these.  Not all excessive use of these things is abuse.  Sometimes it is the only thing that gets people through the day.  Yes, it may well kill them. They don’t do it lightly, or for fun.  They do it because they are hurting and people don’t understand.

It may kill us.  We know this.  The thing is, in my experience the mental health professionals were not interested in helping me with my depression until I had stopped drinking.  But I started drinking to excess because of the depression.  If I stopped drinking, I feared I would give up on life and kill myself.  It goes round and round and sadly it feels as if unless you die, nobody will help you. even though that makes no sense. Luckily for me, I am being helped and have people being ridiculously patient with me, but there were far too many close calls to get me to this point.

Dawn Barry, you were a lovely person and I am so sorry that you were failed.  I hope you are at peace now, nobody can hurt you any more. Xxx

October 1995 – Do you believe me?

I’m going to do this because I am sick and tired of pretending it didn’t happen.

I still don’t know if my brother or sister know it happened.  I just can’t shield them.

There was a day in October 1995 where I wasn’t at college.  I had one day off a week and I think it was Tuesday that year.

My stepdad was on late shifts and he was in the house, this didn’t bother me as I rose from my bed and decided to take a shower.

There was nobody else around… Apart from Brucie, our lovely dog, though to be honest he doesn’t feature in my recollections.

I was crippled by shyness and self loathing.  I felt ugly in every sense.  It made me feel sick that anybody would ever want to go near me.  I honestly saw myself as covered in boils, as a girl with almost lizard skin.

I grabbed the largest towel from the bannister and wrapped myself in it.

As usual I shuddered at my own disgusting skin, full of painful pus filled spots and filling my every waking moment.

I don’t really remember him appearing on the stairs and landing.  I just remember that he was there.

Suddenly the one decent father figure I had (my father was at that point fucking up in quite some style with a woman who would shortly be disowned by her own family – but he never did this) was a predator.  His hands were upon my under-developed breasts.

“Stop…”

“We live in the same house, how can you expect me not to…”

I ran to the bathroom clutching my towel around me and turned the shower on so hard. I wanted the water to beat me clean.

I stood in under the water, terrified he’d break the lock and burst in any way, as he had when I was younger and I had “spent too much time” in the shower.  I told myself the following:

“Fucking pull yourself together.  Women are raped all the time.  Way worse stuff happens. This was nothing.  Have a shower and calm the fuck down.”

After the shower I raced to my room and got dressed and he was clearly traumatised by what he had done.  He apologised and he meant it.

Months later my mother told me to “get over it”.  I do not know when he told her what had happened.  She apologised many years after; I still felt that I was blamed.

If you ask me about my parents I will say “they’re awesome”. They are not.

If you ask me, between them it’s lucky they didn’t fucking kill me.

The Cliff

It’s taking a lot of effort not to go back to those cliffs and jump off.

I feel as if I am physically holding myself down.

All I can think about is that that guy did it and I can do it and its ok but then after my dream last night I am so angry. My favourite band, my only favourite band, were destroyed by this. So why do I want it so much?? It makes no sense.

Why did I just have a cigarette? I’m not a smoker, I’m crap at it and it stinks. It’s cool; but not for me.

I did what I was supposed to; and when I didn’t I was punished or ignored. When I went mad my own mother didn’t come to save me. She could have done; she just didn’t want to.

I was right to want to die at seventeen and I’ve lived nearly twenty years too long and it hurts and I can’t do it any more. I’m sorry that this hurts people but I can’t do this any more. I tried for 18 years. My trying is
Old.
I am done.
Bye.

I wrote this last week; it seems a lifetime ago. I wish I knew how to stop my mind doing this.

Dear Giles Fraser – Depression and Unhappiness are NOT the Same.

They’re not happy pills. Stop saying they are.

 

Hello.

I haven’t blogged for ages despite having numerous posts saved as drafts.  However, something has come to my attention which I simply must respond to.

I’ll link to it grudgingly, as it is, to quote a twitter friend @MsTick68 “all the stupid you can imagine”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/aug/09/pills-unhappiness-reinforces-sad-human

So, to sum up, Mr Fraser believes that people are “pathologising” their unhappiness, which he says is understandable given the current state of the economy and so on, and should somehow accept that they are unhappy because of their external circumstances.  Use of medication is criticised as people “insisting on compulsory happiness”.

I take issue with that on almost every level.  It may be easier for me to just explain my lifelong struggle with my supposed “unhappiness”, which has spanned four decades (eighties to now) and every possible outside influence that one would usually experience, being a white, cis, straight, physically able, arguably middle-class, woman with divorced parents born in the very late 1970s.

When I was eight years old, life was pretty good.  My parents were divorced but both had remarried, happily as far as my young eyes could see, after a bit of a difficult time settling in to a new school having moved from a town in Essex near to London to a Norfolk village full of people who feared outsiders, I was thriving.

I was a precocious child; usually ahead of much of my class in reading, writing and spelling, though not particularly good at anything else.  I had already decided I wanted to be a writer, and that nothing else would do.  I went to Sunday School and fearlessly read Bible passages out in front of adults at Church.  I wrote “novels” furiously. For reasons I have never quite ascertained, I was popular with boys, and had an official “boyfriend” and at least two other admirers that I knew of.  It was all very chaste and lovely and I look back on this time as the last time in my life that I was completely happy.

How is it possible that a child can comprehend such a deep, seemingly unwarranted unhappiness and despair about to come over her?

I have no idea, but I did.

One the eve of my ninth birthday, I could sense a strange feeling within me.  A feeling that something was not right; that life was going to change, but not for the better.

It didn’t at first; life went on as it had been, and everything was fine.  I didn’t at any point stop being cheerful on the outside.  Gradually though, other children reacted differently to me, for reasons I didn’t understand.

I had always worn glasses; however these were just for distances. When I was nine I changed classes and also needed to start wearing my spectacles full-time.  This did not worry me; it didn’t make any difference as far as I was concerned.  I was still the same person looking out.

The trouble was, I wasn’t the same to look at. Other girls had started to develop breasts and were suddenly towering over me.  I remained resolutely scrawny and short.  (No breasts appeared until I was fifteen, when they became comically huge and stayed that way, and I became at least five foot six, as if my body were playing a nasty trick on me.) The boys not only no longer liked me, they were openly hostile.  The girls followed suit.

I tried to remain cheerful, but inside I was already feeling powerless as the low mood and negative thoughts became more and more frequent.  Not just because of the external forces at work – Because life suddenly felt incredibly hard.  One day we were doing Art and I had spent ages painting a picture of a man’s face.  It was crap; but I had worked on it and made it a lot better than it had been earlier.  Somehow a pot of water was tipped over and went all over it.  Suddenly all the negative, strange feelings poured out of me in the form of hot, angry tears.  The others – including our infamously scary teacher – looked at me as if I was insane.  It was a look I would become very used to.

Even the teacher could see I was in no fit state to paint a new picture.  I was done.  I was called a “baby” and sneered at by my classmates,but I didn’t care. I could feel a deep ache, a pain inside, and I couldn’t be worrying about what others thought.  I was scared.

Once I got to high school my self-esteem was completely through the floor.  I treated myself as the joke I was, and assumed the clichéd position of “class clown” which is usually reserved for awkward boys.  Despite my best efforts to isolate myself from classmates, I still occasionally had to be friendly, which I was, with limits.  I never saw anybody outside school or school events, and with good reason, as it turned out.

At about 13 I was given a lesson in trust.  The lesson was to trust nobody.  We had an “Activity Week” during the summer in the first three years of our high school, during which the higher years had either left or were on work experience.  I enjoyed the first and third years very much; I stayed at school and made puppets for our school production of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (I know!) and also did some drama group with younger kids which I recall involving listening to Madness a lot. Which was of course awesome. Suggs: I still love you.

I was going to York in the middle of the three Activity Weeks.  We were to stay in a youth hostel with various supervising teachers and had arranged to stay in rooms of three. I recall feeling rather uneasy about the arrangement I had made with two other girls; we were friends at school but they spent a lot of time slagging off people who were arguably much less geeky and awkward than me.  One of the girls was ill and couldn’t go, so there were just two of us.  On the coach on the way to York, I was sitting in the seat directly in front of the back seat, easily within earshot of my potential room-mate behind me.  They were trying to whisper but it was laughable.

“So you’re going to share with someone else?” Another friend was asking her, when said girl had told her she was staying in a room with somebody completely different.  I had heard the entire exchange, and was not remotely surprised.

“Yeah,” replied my no longer future room-mate.  She sounded completely uninterested.

“But what about Jenny?” Asked the other friend, who to her credit sounded quite incredulous.

There was no reply.  I could almost hear the shrug behind me.

I decided then and there that this was NOT going to affect me.  I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.  My mum and stepdad had paid for this trip for me and it was a lot of money, so I was going to damn well have a good time.

Slightly impeding the plan was the fact that this was the first time I realised my mum was a lot more relaxed about calling home to say I was ok than other parents (one girl said her parents would “freak out” if she didn’t call home as soon as she arrived, something that was completely alien to me) but then mum trusted me to work hard at school too (which I did… well I got good grades), so in retrospect she had the right idea.  It did feel a bit strange when I called her and she wasn’t sure why though.

To my surprise, two very popular, pretty girls from the year below mine were happy for me to room with them.  I had fun for the rest of the trip and although I will never forget the conversation, I will always remember the kindness of these gorgeous creatures and the “my parents will freak out” girl, who was a bit of an awesome terror and also stuck up for me when an obnoxious boy tried to bully me one dinner time.  The thing is, my perennial low mood meant I was astonished that I had made it through the entire experience without crying.  I cried at less daily.

By the time I was doing my GCSEs I had isolated myself from everybody to the extent that I could blend seamlessly into a group of girls from the “popular crowd” to the “outright outsider rejects”.  I listened to “dead blokes” on my Walkman.  I decided to go to college rather than sixth form to escape the people who knew me.

However, the isolation of two hours plus on a rusty bus four days a week proved my undoing.  I would think about everything over and over on the boring journey through the flat fields of South Norfolk.  I became increasingly paranoid about anything and everything.

Eventually a Thursday in October 1995 came around that I used as a part of my first book “Lit Up”.  It all really happened.

I had what I think in retrospect was a panic attack at lunchtime, and ended up racing across the (busy) road that the college was on to reach the pay phones. I called my mum and breathlessly informed her I’d be on an earlier bus; one she needed to pick me up from, as it terminated three miles from our village.  She already knew this; it had been going on for around a month, every Thursday.  She sounded worried.

After a bizarre Creative Writing class, I boarded the bus home.  Suddenly I could not stop crying.  I cried pretty much all of the way home.  I didn’t care that people could see me, because all I kept thinking was “WHY AM I CRYING?” I hadn’t cried when my father’s parents had died, I hadn’t cried on the York trip or when my “boyfriend” as an eight year old had unceremoniously dumped me for being “ugly with glasses”.  I hadn’t cried when boys had done the “frigid test” on me in public at school, or when that boy had said “how would you get that bra top off Jenny? Ha, who would want to?” (I told both to “fuck off” in no uncertain terms, and recall being respected by some witnesses.)

Why was I crying when everything was so much better? I had friends, a (very occasional) social life, at least three boys had actually kissed me…

I ended up at the doctors, and that was the first time I was officially diagnosed with depression.

It never really ended after that.  Despite a generally fun year living in Southend with my father and step mother (which admittedly fell apart due to their marriage collapsing and her being horrendously cruel – something I didn’t actually fully believe until her own family all disowned her on learning of her treatment of me) my diaries from the time betray the fact that my mind was actually disintegrating.  I was paranoid about anything and everything, my drinking problem began, despite having lovely friends and a perfectly nice boyfriend I believed the world was against me.  It could be argued that this was typical “teenage behaviour” but it was so far from that.  I scared pretty much everybody I came into contact with, and some of them never fully forgave me.

The years afterwards total 15.  Which is scary for many reasons.  There were so many times I should have been upset, feeling down:  The year I was dumped, made redundant, lost my Grandpa and my football team were relegated (OK the latter was pretty inconsequential). Instead I was relentlessly cheerful, very occasionally felt a little low, but ultimately was (in retrospect) annoyingly positive.  Previously, I had just got on with life when my boyfriend of four years and I called it a day and I moved out, back to the wilds of South Norfolk.  I not only felt generally fine, with only “normal” moments of sadness, but I threw myself into my job so well that I was promoted within a few months, something that I had never come close to before.

There were happy places, living in a house with a guy I adored, but I went completely and totally batshit insane and ended up in hospital a few times after overdosing, It was like I wasn’t even myself; my mind was being eaten alive by some sort of evil, strange force that I couldn’t control.  I lied, I stole, I lied again. I harassed completely innocent, unrelated people on the phone.  I am still ashamed.

More recently there have been the events detailed in my previous post, “The Day I Almost Didn’t See” from October last year.  After that completely unforseen crisis, I finally made my strange but accurate “Spiderman black stuff” diagnosis of myself.  I finally separated the depression and anxiety from myself.  I realised that I was still the woman that eight year old would have become had I not been so ill.  Slightly annoying, but confident.  Slightly strange at times, but generally cheerful and hopeful and quite good to be around.  I could still be that person, but the “black stuff” had made it almost impossible without help.

I am currently using a combination of exercise, voluntary work, counselling and generally trying very hard to battle the depression and anxiety that still threatens to consume me.  Oh, and the most important thing.  The medication that stabilises my mood enough to be able to do all of those things in the first place.  Without the tablets, I know I could hardly even get out of bed.  I have experienced it over nearly twenty years.  I will not be told what to take and how I feel by somebody who is not within my own mind – that is, ME.

I think the key to this rather (VERY) long-winded post is that there were external factors, good, bad and incredibly ugly, and my mood was generally not affected by this.  I was strong when childishly betrayed as a teenager – a huge thing at that age – but weak when I had the job I had always wanted and a nice place to live.  I was happy when everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, but distraught when I was safe and loved.  Ultimately I have taken tablets on and off since the incident when I was 17, and the times I fell apart were the times I wasn’t taking them.  The times everything should have been fine.

Actually, I’m not sure I need to say much more, except that I would like to quote another Twitter friend and fellow sufferer @thisisamy_ who managed to sum up in 140 characters what I have just taken 1000s of words to say: “To me, antidepressants don’t make me happy, they don’t make me less sad, they just enable to think more clearly & therefore function.”

So Giles and the people who support his views, do you still believe I shouldn’t take tablets? That Amy should not take tablets?  This is not about “false happiness”, this is about survival.  About being able to get up and do the other things that make one’s mood improve. About not having every waking moment filled with the depths of despair and the fear of life.

Tl; dr: Giles Fraser has no idea whatsoever about treating depression and anxiety. Read @thisisamy_ twitter feed for quick, intelligent thoughts on his terrible, ill-informed article.

RIP the Purple Tights. Part One: Before.

TRIGGER WARNING: Addiction, teen angst shite, depression, you know the drill.  Also very tl;dr but that’s probably about what you expect.

I am planning to expand these blogs into a book (not sure how long it will be) depending on the feedback I get.  Or I might just do it as a kind of therapy!

The photo above used to be the background of this blog.  I used a close up of the pint glass as the cover of my first book, as it seemed to suit it.  The characters spent a lot of time drinking in pubs, as they were in their early twenties.  It was appropriate.

It’s a picture of me with my supposed “best friend”, taken in about 2008 by a former colleague James on his mobile phone in the pub.  I don’t think there was a special reason for either being in the pub or the photo – though I do know that James and I had been left in charge of all of the other people’s drinks whilst they went out in a large group for a cigarette and we were a bit bored.

The thing is, that by the time this photograph was taken, going to the pub was not my issue any more.

My “best friend” had become such an intrinsic part of my life that it filled my every waking hour.  When I wasn’t waking up feeling hung over, a faux-apple stink pouring from every pore, I was at work thinking about the evening ahead, how much to buy, if I should go to the same shop, the one with the special offer, or if that would make me look bad to the staff.  Did I have any in the fridge already?  If I didn’t should I get some that were in the fridge in the shop?

Then I’d be on my walk home, almost high and buzzing, anticipating opening the first can, of the huge release of breath as my day really began.

It had happened so gradually I hardly noticed until it was a huge issue that I could somehow justify to myself.

• It’s only cider! Not gin or whisky or – like on tv – vodka.  I hate most alcoholic drinks!
• I have a job, so it’s obviously not affecting me that badly.
• I can stop if I want; I just don’t want to, to paraphrase Sugar Kane from Some Like It Hot.
• I’m not out on the street causing trouble; I’m just staying in, not harming anybody.
• Loads of people drink far more than me.  Plus they smoke and do drugs too.  I don’t.

I’d enjoyed a drink since I was eighteen; I can’t say I did before that as on the rare occasions I drank I was usually violently sick.  My family (Dmac, who I didn’t live with, aside – more on him in the next installment) were not big drinkers at all.  They’d have a glass of wine with Sunday lunch, maybe the occasional half of cider with dinner on a weekday.  Grandma enjoyed the odd G&T.  As kids we were introduced to booze in a very sensible way.  We’d be offered a sip of wine (not when we were tiny; but once we were teenagers). There was a funny story of my brother having something by accident when he was quite small and falling off his chair.  Needless to say he now hardly touches the stuff, despite as a child always being far more interested than me in the small amounts of the adult’s drinks.

I couldn’t stand the taste of any of the alcohol I had ever encountered; it wasn’t a patch on tea, water, squash, juice.  Mind you, I hated fizzy drinks too.  I was rather peculiar to be honest.  At school discos the odd person would inevitably turn up drunk and seemed to spend the entire time either throwing up or lolling about stupidly in the changing rooms and toilets, missing out on the dancing, which I loved.  I used to feel a bit sorry for them, and would carry on enjoying far too many chewy yellow refresher sweets, which made me far more energetic and outgoing than my normally slouchy, shy self.  I do still like a few (dozen) refreshers.

When  I was 16 I finally got contact lenses, and I thought my life would immediately change.  Instead, I realised that all of the hatred I had poured onto my thick glasses had been rather unfairly apportioned; I also seemed to have a much wider face than I had expected, my eyebrows were so bushy, and wow my skin was even worse than I had feared!

This probably didn’t help the low mood that had dogged me since I was about nine, which I had resigned myself to until I was rid of the specs.  I grew increasingly desperate to “fix” my appearance.  I plucked my eyebrows until they had virtually disappeared (this didn’t last, and now they’re pretty much au naturel, albeit tidied up), obsessed over clothes I could never pull off (despite being so skinny that in retrospect I may have been underweight) and as for my skin…  Oh my goodness, my skin. It actually got WORSE after I’d got the lenses, as if it was taunting me.  As I have said before, this was level 11 acne on a scale of 1-10.  It hurt, it was everywhere, it became my new most hated thing about myself, replacing the unfortunate glasses (which were worn as little as possible).  Two years of antibiotic and cream and steaming ritual trials ensued, during which I gradually lost the will to live, and somehow bleached a lot of t-shirts with said cream.

I was rather angry to be honest.  I’d been the ugly one for YEARS, had no boys interested, girls mocked me, I’d retreated into myself and thickened my paper-thin skin because I was supposed to get lenses and it would all be ok!  I was supposed to blossom now, to get all of the things that had been denied me!  Instead I felt worse than ever.  My self-esteem fell through the floor.  I had no idea how I would ever be this awesome person I felt I deserved to be after my perceived suffering.

Enter my new “best friend”.

As I was at College and not at Sixth Form, I was on a course with people ranging in age from sixteen (like me, in 1994) to thirty-five (which I will be this year), with the majority being around eighteen.  This meant that we would sometimes go en masse to the nearby Trowel and Hammer pub.

The first time we went there, I was nervous but excited.  Would I get IDed?  I was only 16.  If I did I could have an orange juice, it would be ok.  What the hell should I drink if I wasn’t IDed?  Everybody seemed to be ordering Holsten. (Ironically a lager I have seen very rarely on draft since.) As with the other girls, I ordered a half.  The bartender didn’t even glance at me once, never mind twice, and I remember feeling elated.  My first illegal drink in a pub!

We were only there for one that day.  I still wasn’t keen on the taste, but it made me feel part of something.  I also experimented with smoking at college, though at first I just wanted to try it because legally I could (at the time, sixteen was the age at which you could first buy fags).  There was honestly no peer pressure at all, and I certainly didn’t need or want to lose weight.

The first time I was drunk was just before Christmas.  I don’t recall if it was 1994 or 1995, but logic tells me it was 1994.  Even our lecturers couldn’t be arsed with afternoon classes on the final Friday before the holidays, so we all decamped to the Trowel.

We drank and smoked all afternoon, and I was surprised to find I could bear to imbibe a bit more lager than I had expected.  It was fun! I was chatting with everyone, feeling sooooo relaxed.  The worries I had about my spots, my wide face, my virgin status (could people tell?) – hell, the fact no boy had ever even “properly” kissed me by this point – seemed to melt away in the smoky bar, each new drink representing more confidence, more fitting in, more happiness.  We moved to another pub – it was only years later I realised which one, and where it was – and carried on until sadly, it was time for us to board our various buses and trains out into the wilds of Norfolk.

A friend, who I will call L, and I walked back to College to catch our buses, going in opposite directions (North and South respectively).  She was my age but in terms of life experience she was light years ahead.  She’d had sex, like loads of times, and had been getting drunk since her early teens.  If I hadn’t have been with her I sincerely doubt that I would have managed to find College, never mind my bus stop.

The bus journey, always a soul-destroying seventy minutes of winding country roads in almost pitch darkness, now became a nightmarish test of endurance for me.  The bus was packed; the only seat I could find was upstairs near the front.

All I can recall is being swung violently from side to side, being hardly aware of the people around me as I tried desperately not to throw up.

I failed.

For the next hour, I threw up as quietly as possible (probably not very) trying to use a solitary tissue to catch the vomit.  I must have looked a very sorry state.  I actually thought that I might just die.  All I could smell was lager and cigarette smoke, all I could taste was sick, and I could hardly see anything as my contact lenses made a break for freedom.

Finally, we were in my village.  It was, as usual, nearly seven pm.  I stumbled back to the house in the dark, the air feeling good on my battered body but also making me feel incredibly sleepy.

I crept in and sneaked upstairs to bed.  Unfortunately for me, my Mum and Step Dad became worried and found me upstairs.

“You smell like a brewery!  Are you drunk?”

I think I actually tried to lie at first, but the extent my inebriation was painfully obvious.

I was escorted downstairs, and told off (quite bloody rightly!) for what seemed like ages, as all the while I murmured, “I’m so sorry I don’t ever want to drink again ever please can I got to bed please?”

Unfortunately, my “best friend” and I were only just getting started.

The Relapse, part two (hundred)

I really don’t know what is going on, and I have no way to justify myself.

Maybe I was trying to cut down too fast; maybe something inside me is infuriated with the fact that despite two suicide attempts within four months, one particularly serious, that the only thing that I am getting help with is my problem with alcohol (specifically cider; as I’ve said many times, I could be drowning in, for example, gin and not want to drink it) and NOT the root cause of all of the issues, that is, the soul-crushing, life-wasting depression that has plagued me since I was nine years old.

I am trying to think of an equivalent problem, without belittling the many other horrible illnesses out there.  It feels a bit like giving somebody with cancer who is having chemotherapy a hat to cover their hair loss, and then expecting them to recover.  It’s like telling somebody with chronic back pain to stop taking painkillers without fixing their back.  It doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t fix the root problem.  It doesn’t actually make me a better person, it just makes me more depressed and despondent with my situation.

It makes me feel as if they, as in the people who are trying to help me, are not actually listening to what I say.

I have been having some counselling with a very nice man I will call Bob (next session is Tuesday after the long weekend) and I know his hands are tied.  He is going through everything he does with all of his clients (I’m not sure that is the right term, but that’ll do) and I think he likes that I don’t turn up drunk or late or high or whatever else he has inferred the “others” seem to do.  The alcohol star we have been looking at is really interesting; it deals with all areas of life including mental health.  The thing is that it’s all about the booze, and somehow this makes it all I can think about.

It’s started to feel as if my entire life is focussed on whether I drink or not, and my brain as a result is shifting uneasily, knowing that it’s issues are being ignored in order to fit my problem inside a convenient box.

The last time this happened I had nobody to challenge me, lied about cutting down my drinking and stopped seeing the counsellor.  I have warned Bob about this.  I have pretty much told him not to trust me; however he doesn’t have much choice if the Black Stuff From Spiderman 3 is in charge and I am lying my arse off.

Luckily I know Carl won’t stand for this.  The good me won’t stand for it either, but I can never be sure which me will turn up in the morning. or in the afternoon.  I am actually quite afraid.

I’m apparently still on the waiting list for the therapy I had started before it was stopped.  I don’t know if they will have me back.  I’m taking my tablets, I’m trying to stay in control, but it all feels so precarious; so close to falling over again.

I am supposed to be taking vitamin B and thiamine but this would mean the total tablets I take in a day is seven and I just can’t deal with that…  Plus they taste so disgusting I’ve nearly thrown up all of my tablets when I’ve taken them, which I feel is counter-productive.

I think this week will be a good week.  I am nothing if not hopeful.  I won’t be able to drink unsupervised, I won’t be alone a lot.  The thing is, I am a 34-year-old woman.  I am old enough to deal with this on my own…  But I still feel as helpless and lost as I did when, aged 17, I burst into tears one afternoon and couldn’t stop.

I was sober then, as I am today.

Trains Versus Brains… The Same But Somehow Different.

So last Monday was successful. Having put counselling on hold as agreed with therapist to focus on quitting drinking (properly this time) so the IPT (Interpersonal Therapy) will be more successful and my meds will work to their full capacity, I went to On Track. On Track were good for a few weeks and I spoke to a nice guy called Asim about cutting down (drink diary etc) then I asked to see about the medication to stop cravings.

So then I went to see the doctor, a female, if she is indeed human, about this. She didn’t appear to have read my file, told me her name (and showed me her badge) three times as if I were…I dunno, drunk? (I wasn’t.) She then wrote down what I was saying only to completely confuse what I had said. After wittering about love and being a mother and how “everyone is abused, be it physical, sexual, whatever, we must move on” (I had not mentioned any abuse at all I must emphasise, apart from my abuse of cider,) she gave me a prescription for vitamins and then suggested it would be best to do the IPT THEN the On Track.

I went into shock around this point and physically could not speak.

I think she may have told me to pull myself together but I have blocked it out.

Then I left in a bewildered state, having made no appointment and having no idea whether I should go back or not, and knowing all the while that I had enough cash on me to buy alcohol.

No. No. I thought.  I will get on the train, go home and speak to Carl about this ridiculous business.  He’ll kick off at them and it’ll all get sorted.

Then Carl called and let me know that due to some numpty further up the line deciding to drive onto the train tracks, the trains were cancelled. An announcement then confirmed this and I dutifully walked off the platform and across the tracks at the crossing and stood at the replacement bus stop.  About fifteen minutes on, and the crossing started flashing as a train was coming. I realised that despite announcements and claims online that the train home was cancelled, it was not, and I sprinted as fast as I could…

I ended up agonisingly close to the platform as the train pulled away.

The next thing I knew I was sobbing, slumped on a wall next to the platform.  A lady with a child asked if I was ok.  I said yes, even though I knew how obvious it was that I was not.

So, the counsellor doesn’t want me, the alcohol place won’t help me quit the booze and now even the train announcement and the internet timetables are LYING to me…  I’m flat out fucked now. 

I am DONE.

In that moment, I really felt as though I was trapped in limbo in every sense of the word.

I couldn’t do anything to further my issues with booze as the doctor there was clearly batshit crazy, worse than me.  The counselling was off limits until my drinking was controlled, even though I had never hidden my drinking levels and the therapy people were fully aware of them right from the beginning.

I was stuck in the middle, just as I was stuck between the platform and the bus stop of the railway station in the most depressing town in the North East.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think; all I could do was weep.  I seriously considered throwing myself in front of the next train.

That is not how my story will end.

I managed to get onto the next train (just), and I am going to a session with the alcohol place tomorrow.  The therapy people are also calling me on Monday.  I have caught the train in every way.  Let us just hope that my brain can be fixed too.