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

 

On those that say “it was before my time…”

When I was fifteen I thought I knew loads about music.  One day at school we had a pop quiz and I well and truly learned the lesson that knowing loads about a topic means knowing more than just “stuff I happen to know cos I was there and stuff.”

I still remember the first question I was faced with.

“Who is the lead singer of the Stranglers?”

A million things raced through my mind (“they did some great songs, I must add their greatest hits cd to my collection”, “why didn’t they ask who the lead singer of Queen was?”,) but the main one was “how the flip am I supposed to know that, they were famous mostly when I was a baby!”

I didn’t say anything, and the opposing team’s teacher, who apparently knew everything about music ever, it later transpired, gave the correct answer (Hugh Cornwell, I have never forgotten you again man!).

There was a round on Queen which I happily rattled through with ease, but that day as we lost the quiz, I realised that you can’t claim to be any good at a topic if you only focus your attentions on things that happened when you were old enough to be aware of them.

It’s quite hard to explain, but I am going to try here.  Luckily I can’t see anybody reading this!

It’s fine to not know things. I know hardly anything about any kind of politics, though rather terrifyingly I know more than some people who aren’t even aware of who our current Prime Minister is.  However this isn’t because for most of the time political things were happening I wasn’t born.  It’s because I’m pretty disillusioned with politics generally and frankly I’d rather learn about other things.

It’s no shock that on a recent episode of “Pointless” when the final topic was “The Nineties” I got pointless answers on two topics (England 96 squad members and er, Spice Girls debut album tracks) but didn’t even attempt an answer for “members of John Major’s first cabinet”. Christ, I didn’t even know the guy had been knighted until ages after it happened.

I’ve lost count of the rounds where I’ve gone “erm, nah” and have become suspiciously quiet on the Twitter #pointless feed, because I’ve simply got no idea what is going on.  This happens a lot on scientific topics and classic literature, unless I can use “mendelevium” (thanks Ross from “Friends”) or Beatrix Potter books to fudge an answer.

It’s completely normal not to know things.  “I don’t know” is arguably the most honest thing most people can say.  I say it about forty times an hour.

What is not on is going onto a quiz show, saying “my best subject is xyz” then proceeding to claim you don’t in fact know any of the answers because “it’s before my time”.  It’s basically the height of arrogance, as if even though the xyz topic, whatever it may be, has existed for tens,hundreds, thousands of years, because you didn’t exist at the time it’s suddenly not important for you to know, as a supposedly knowledgable person about xyz.  The particular topic of xyz existed long before you did and will exist many years after you have gone, so show it some respect and learn about it before you go on a quiz show and make yourself look like a fool.

It seems to mainly be younger people (generally about 20) who do this.  You don’t get some fifty year old bloke going “nah sorry, I don’t know jack about WW2 because I was born in the 50s man.”

One thing I do agree with is that if you’re 20 and not 40 you have had 20 years less to learn about events and facts, which is why people who are older usually are better at quizzes – they’ve had more practice!  However it’s not because it’s any more likely they lived through something, they’ve just had longer to read up on it.

I’ve lived through 35 Superbowls, and I still don’t know anything about them.  I’ve been around for the past 35 years of music but don’t ask me anything about the last five years of music, I will not have a clue. I’ll have a good go at anything BEFORE 1978 though.  It’s about what you’re interested in.  When I was 13 I knew more about Anne Frank, Buddy Holly and Henry VIII than I did about current films.  These days I spend hours reading about old film stars on Wiki and know some odd stuff about them, but couldn’t pick out the cast of “Glee” from a line up.

Fine, don’t know stuff, I know shockingly little about the world around me, and no I have no idea what happened on August 23rd 1962, but I know what happened earlier that month, as I have read extensively about Marilyn Monroe’s life and death.  I don’t know what happened this time last year either, even though I lived through it.

Be as arrogant about your importance in the world as you like, and believe hardly anything of any importance happened before you were born all you like, but don’t then go on a quiz show, say “oh no these questions are too hard I was only born in 1990 and this is about 1984” and expect me not to call you on it.  Just say you don’t know because you don’t know.  It’s really not that difficult.

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.

I seem to be missing a glittering career…

Just a quick post about this glorious bollocks, published as ever on my secretly beloved self-trolling horrorfest, the Mailonline.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2317937/Why-middle-class-arent-breeding-Its-profound-social-shift-talks–transform-face-Britain.html

Yeah, I couldn’t even get past the first paragraph.  Because, yet again, we are being TOLD THAT WOMEN ARE EITHER MOTHERS (their rightful path) OR CAREER BITCHES (who regret their empty womb-wasting lives FOOORRRREVEEEEER).

I have never been either, and I am sick of justifying my existence to myself, never mind to some bastards who do not even know me.  I am fucking mental, and an alcoholic.  I love the idea of children but the idea of trying to raise one terrifies me; I can hardly deal with myself most of the time.  I have numerous issues, at least four of which are genetic – My father’s depression and alcoholism, my late Grandpa’s terrible eyesight (to the point we get free eye tests and pay hundreds of pounds for “thin lenses” in our glasses, that are still too thick to fit into standard frames), my father’s horrendous acne (all over, had to take Roaccutane to finally be rid of the soul-sucking spots), the fact that there was no doubt I’d fuck off the father of potential babies with my hideousness.  Oh and the fact that I just didn’t think I could do it for the rest of my life.

As women with no kids, we are told we are selfish for not wanting them.  Now don’t ever get me wrong.  I have so many friends who have kids and they are bloody AMAZING mothers and they frankly need medals for being such wonderful people inside and out.

I am selfish.  I don’t want a child I bear to be without a stable, mentally capable mother.  I don’t want the child to be “mental”, or virtually blind, to be ripped apart at school for having horrendous acne or terrible depression or thick glasses or for wanting everyone to just leave them the fuck alone so they can write a story.

I don’t want any child I have to be sad that they were born because they perceive that they messed up my life.  I don’t want them to hope they were adopted because their parents are “so fucking awful and unlike me”…  I don’t want them to grow up angry I didn’t think about their every need, their future wants and desires, the fact that because of my genes they had bad skin/eyes/brains/past/present/future.

I have bloody thought it through.  There is no way I will inflict my own shit and madness on any kids.  It’s not just a baby, it’s a life that you are responsible for forever.  My poor parents are still trying to deal with me!

So go on then, tell me I am selfish.  Tell me I am letting the side down. I DARE YOU.