Category: About today

Posted in About today

This’ll do. For now….

Posted on by WeeGee

Things have changed since last I wrote because after a brief mental interlude we’re pretty much back in business here in WeeGee Land. By back in business I mean I don’t much feel like sitting on the floor with my knees gathered up to my chin, staring at the wall for hours on end any more. Sometimes that’s what progress feels like and I’ve learned that progress is one of those things that you just have to take wherever, and however you find it.

Most of the time I still hate myself from wherever it is I start right down to the bottom of my fingernails – I feel hopeless and wretched and desperate BUT, above all else I know that this will end, that life will intervene and that I’ll find a way back to myself. Again. Somehow.

Like I said – we’re back in business. I’m busy putting one foot in front of the other, and pretending like I’m some kind of normal person with some kind of normal life. I’m busy doing the necessary because I know that even though I’m not where I want to be I’m on my way there, by hook or by crook. You’re never going to get there unless you’re on your way there, right?

I’m trying to handle myself more gently and I’m doing my best to be kind to myself. I’ve realised that, when it comes to myself, I always come at it sharp side first and I’m trying to figure out what that’s all about, because I don’t really show my sharp side to anyone else. I’m trying to give myself the same breaks I think everyone ought to have. I suppose I’m trying to get bigger and better, because I’m trying to forgive myself – it takes the biggest and the best people of all to nail that kind of shit.

I suppose I’ve accepted that sometimes, I’m going to get lost. I’m going to be sad, and hopeless, and frightened. All the evidence suggests that I’m going to get lost time after time and after time again despite by best efforts. The reality is that every time I think I’ve got myself on an even keel, the sky will fall in all over again and you know what – I’m tired of raging against the natural order of things. I’m tired of heaping failure on myself for a self that I didn’t choose and which is way beyond anything I can choose.

Sometimes I get sad. Sometimes I get lost. Sometimes the sky falls in. Sometimes I hate myself down to the very bottom of my fingernails. And them’s just the breaks. Sure – there’s stuff I can do. I can take care of myself and I can find a softer place to fall and I can try and try and try. But sometimes I’m STILL going to be sad and my brain is going to misfire and I’m going to wish I didn’t have to live with myself anymore. Some brains are better than others, and some people know how to deal with this shit. My brain isn’t one of the better ones and, I don’t really know how to deal with this shit but I’m learning, and I’m holding on tight and, more than anything, I’m still on my way to that place I’m trying to get to – wherever that is.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make – if I’m trying to make one at all – is that it’s okay. It’s okay that I get sad, and it’s okay that I rage against the world, and it’s even okay that I hate myself down to the bottom of my fingernails. It’s okay because I only feel that way for some of the time, and because I ALWAYS find my way out of the mire, and because fuck it – nobody said it was going to be easy anyway.

Anyhow. I’m pretty much back on my feet and squaring up to the world again. Things aren’t all perfect and sunshiny but then again I never was going to morph into the kind of person who leaps out of bed cartwheeling around singing about the wonderful morning I’ve woken up into (it’s that thing about sharp edges) Still, I’m as up and at ‘em as I know how, and the mornings keep on coming around, and that’ll do. For now.

Love you all lots, like jelly tots,

WeeGee xoxoxoxo

Posted in About today

It isn’t easy being a WeeGee

Posted on by WeeGee

It isn’t always easy being a WeeGee. Sometimes, my brain gets mixed up and I feel sad in my heart, even though I have no good reason to feel sad in my heart. And it’s hard to go about being an ordinary little WeeGee when your brain is all mixed up and your heart is all sad and none of the sense you have been counting on makes sense anymore.

No sense

The past couple of months have been tough. I’ve been hurting, and I’ve been angry, and I’ve been perpetually awake. I’ve been confused, and unsure, and at times a little frightened. I’m not really any of those things anymore. Mostly I’m just tired. I feel washed up, like a shipwreck: scattered and broken – made up of pieces that used to fit together and amount to something.

Right now, I don’t feel like I add up to much mostly, I think, because I don’t care. I’m empty. I’m not doing the things I do, or thinking the things I think, or being the person I am and I can’t really bring myself to care. I keep thinking about who I used to be and how unattainable that person seems to me now: just another ship that sailed….

Ship has sailed

People change, and things move on, and nothing can stay the same. I know that but I wonder how other people manage it. How do you leave yourself behind, when yourself if the only thing you’ve been cultivating for your entire life? How do you go about getting older when you’re already an awful lot older than you intended to be by now? How does anyone make sense of this – day after day, month after month, year after year? How do you keep on doing it, when your brain is mixed up, and you feel sad in your heart, and nothing makes sense, and you are not who you used to be, or who you want to be, and you just keeping get older even though you need time to stop so you can think before everything changes again?

Stop the worlf

I’m doing the best I can. I’m waking up in the morning and I’m just going with it. I’m taking the days as they present themselves to me. I’m investing myself when I get the tiniest little spark that suggests I might actually give a fuck. I’m putting one foot in front of the other until I find my way to bedtime and I fall asleep hoping that tomorrow will be better because I know that if I can hope for tomorrow, I can hold on until it comes.

Hope is the most important thing of all. Hope is the thing that carries your heart when it’s too heavy for you to bear; hope is tomorrow and every tomorrow after that; hope is why things change, and hope is why things get better.

Hope is where you get to when you have nowhere else to go and hope is the best thing to cling to on your way there. At least that’s what I hope, and that’s what I’m clinging to….

there-is-always-hope

Love you all like lots and lots of Jelly Tots,

 

WeeGee xxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in About today

What if you told the truth?

Posted on by WeeGee

Don’t you ever wonder what would happen if you told the truth? I mean if you really actually told it like it is in your head – if you didn’t sugar coat it, or make it palatable? What if you just came out and said it, as it is, whatever it is?

I spend a lot of my time wondering about that but in the end, I’m stuck with the way things are – polite conversation, behaving acceptably, not rocking the boat, and above all else not making people uncomfortable.

Nobody tells the truth because nobody wants to hear the truth.

If I were to tell the truth I’d say it hurts and that I’m angry and that I’m full of regret. I’d say that my nightmares aren’t full of abstract ideas but the one mistake I can’t live with, played out over and over and over again in all its gruesome reality. I’d say that’s why I can’t sleep – because every time I close me eyes THAT”S WHAT I SEE.

If I were to tell the truth I’d say I’m too old to put it right and that really, that’s what this is all about. Back then I thought I had so much time to make it better. I thought it was going to be different. I didn’t realise I was going to have to live with it, not like this. I thought there would be an ending. I thought I would put it all behind be and that would be the end.

If I were to tell the truth I’d say that for all the shame I feel that it wasn’t really my fault because I didn’t understand it – not like I do now. I’d also say that what I feel now is a just punishment, and that I deserve everything I get because WHY DIDN’T I MAKE MYSELF UNDERSTAND.

The truth can be contradictory.

Mostly, when you look at it, people do ordinary things with their lives. They find jobs and hobbies and people to love, and they buy houses, and fill them with things and children and pets and it’s all very ordinary.

When I was young I didn’t want ordinary, but now? Now I’d give everything and anything I could if I could have a tiny bit of ordinary in return. Everything and anything and whatever else it might take.

So yeah – If I were to tell the truth I would say that this person is not the person I was supposed to be, and this life was not the life I wanted to live. If I were to tell the truth I’d say that I’ve got it wrong – at every step, I’ve got it wrong.

If I were to tell the truth I’d say that I’m blessed with friends and family and love. And if I were to tell the truth I’d say that for everything I am blessed with, somehow I am cursed with more.

Posted in About today

Just some thoughts…..

Posted on by WeeGee

I don’t mean to be alarming, but I’m tired of this. I’m tired of how it goes, and what it all means and where this ends up. Where this ends up, by the way, is almost always me – wide awake while the rest of the world is sleeping – wondering why in the name of fuck I can’t just have one of those normal brains that behaves itself and gives itself peace and generally doesn’t do this shit 

By my reckoning it’s been about twenty days (or nights) since I last managed to get a decent night’s sleep under my belt. As a rule I can’t seem to get to sleep and even if I do I end up tossing and turning because I’m cursed by strange nightmares that wake me up way before I’ve had anything approaching enough sleep. Bottom line? I’m so very, very tired. And yet here I am: wide a fucking wake when by rights, I ought to be asleep. 

Insomnia isn’t new to me. I’ve been here, bought the t-shirt and come out the other side MANY TIMES before. Seriously. If the doomie gloomies think keeping me awake against my will FOR WEEKS AT A TIME is enough to beat me into submission? Well – the doomie gloomies never came up against a WeeGee like me before, I guess. 
This is a bad patch and that much is obvious. The fact that I can’t sleep is part of the bad patch and not sleeping makes the bad patch worse. On the surface it feels like a double injustice but at least I’m eating right because I LEARNED THAT LESSON and I’m not hurting myself BECAUSE I LEARNED THAT LESSON and I’m doing all I can to get through this BECAUSE I LEARNED THAT LESSON (Or, to be fair – I’m learning that last lesson as I go – it all counts)

In part – this post is what depression looks like. Something as straightforward as being awake when every fibre of your being wishes you were asleep. 
I’ve lived with depression, on and off, for more than half of my life. I’ve tried to talk about it, and write about it, and somehow make it real. I’ve lived with it, loved with it and lost with it. Sometimes it has been the biggest part of my life, and sometimes I’ve barely known it was there. 

This week is depression awareness week. In an ideal world I’d have written something different, more meaningful – something better to mark it. As it stands I couldn’t write the post I wanted to – depression stopped me.

Instead I wrote this because it was the best that I could do. My name is WeeGee. I have depression. This is a little bit of what it feels like but only a little bit. I’m not ready to write the rest. Not just yet. 

Posted in About today

Down at the bottom of the garden….

Posted on by WeeGee

As far as I’m aware, I never did pack a bag and run away to the bottom of the garden when I was a kid – even although I was probably exactly the kind of kid you’d have expected to spend her time packing bags and running away to the bottom of the garden.  
Now I’m a grown up……

No, that’s not quite right. Wait, stick with me, I’ll get this…..

Now I can do a reasonable impression of being a grown up…..

That’s it, that’s much better.

Now I can do a reasonable impression of being a grown up and running away to the bottom of the garden isn’t an option anymore. Dammit, fuck, fuck and fuckity fuck. Running away to the bottom of the garden isn’t EVEN AN OPTION anymore. 

I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d done it while I had the chance.

  
It’s not so much that there is anything I want to escape from because everything is fine. (For the avoidance of doubt – everything is really, actually and properly FINE and yes, I’m taking my meds and did I mention that everything is FINE?). It’s just that I’d like a bit of peace and quiet without all of this ‘life’ going on around me, or at least without me having to take part in it. I just want to duck out for a bit, you know? Be by myself and with myself and most of all I don’t want to have to answer for the quiet I need right now.

  
It’s tough, isn’t it? I love the people in my life. I’m glad that they’re in my life and I know that I’m lucky to have them. But right now? I want to be alone and I need to be in charge. I know that I’m not making a lot of sense to people right now but that’s because I need time to make sense of myself first. This is only ever going to make sense if I have time to find the sense for myself. I have to do things in the right order, in my own way and in my own time. 

Thing is, I’ll get there, to wherever it is I have to get to, so long as I can get there on my terms. 

I don’t need to run away to the bottom of the garden. I just need a little time. That’s the way things roll here in WeeGee land. Ever it was thus.

All my love and lots and lots of jelly tots and here’s a song…..

WeeGee xoxoxo

Posted in About today

Only tomorrow knows

Posted on by WeeGee

There is nothing remarkable about my story.

I can tell it so that it’s funny, or sad, or boring, or hopeful, or desperate, or happy, or tragic. I can tell it like it’s all of those things at the same time, or I can tell it like it’s none of them at all. I can start my story anywhere – at the beginning, in the middle, or at any of the endings so far. I can tell it backwards, or forwards, or in no particular order at all. I can have one big story or lots of little stories. I can tell it differently depending on how I feel or who I’m telling it to.

There is nothing remarkable about my story and, in that regard, my story is no different from anyone else’s story. My story, like every single one of the millions of other stories is really nothing but a changing and changeable narrative that frames a life lived and forces it to make sense. That is what my blog has been about: a space for me to tell the story of myself to myself – a search for sense and meaning hiding in the madness I must live.

When I stopped blogging my story didn’t stop and I certainly didn’t stop longing for sense. And so I found different ways to tell my story and I found meaning in places I hadn’t looked before. Blogging gave me one kind of narrative; not blogging gave me another narrative entirely.

It would seem, that for today at least, my story is happening here even though it hasn’t happened here for the longest time. Today, this space feels like the right space – the only place I want to be. Tomorrow may feel different or it may feel the same. Only tomorrow can tell how tomorrow will feel. I have learned to wait for tomorrow patiently, and with hope in my heart. I have learned that tomorrow always comes to move the story on, although not always to the place I expected to end up.

It may be obvious to you, I don’t know. But today I am whimsical, and thoughtful, and maybe not terribly focused on what I’m trying to say or trying to do. As far as comeback posts go, this is may be a little confusing to those living outside my head. But this is my space, I carved it out of nothing at my lowest ebb and I wanted to come back today – to make it mine again and have a different voice and a different story to tell. I wanted to come here. I wanted to speak.

Maybe I’m just nostalgic – missing WordPress and missing the blogging buddies that I didn’t take out into the real world with me. Or maybe this is something new: a new chapter, or a sequel to the last story, or maybe even it will turn out to be the beginning of a new story altogether. Only tomorrow will tell….

I leave you with a song, much love, and lots and lots of jelly tots xoxoxo

Posted in About today, Welcome to my world

The stars look very different today

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote I can’t help feeling that the world has shifted slightly – that somehow it is different than it was before.

Like many people of my age and musical persuasion I spent a happy chunk of my early twenties exploring the David Bowie back catalogue and in the years that have followed I’ve returned to some of the treasures I discovered from time to time. That’s the extent of my David Bowie story – which is really just to say that his music found its way into the corners of my soul and stayed there with all the rest of the music I’ve taken to my heart.

Of course there’s no reason that what WeeGee has to say about Bowie’s passing matters, save I suppose that it matters to WeeGee because, as far as anything goes, music matters.

If my blog has only one consistent theme it’s that music matters. Music is about hope, and despair, and belonging, and meaning, and happiness, and grief. Music is about life and death and everything in between. It’s what keeps my chin up and helps me make sense of the things that hurt. David Bowie’s music was, and will remain, part of that.

The stars look very different today, no less beautiful, but different nevertheless. Perhaps there’s another one up there tonight, shining just a little brighter than the rest…..

Farewell Starman. Over and out.

 

Posted in About today

Hello. It’s WeeGee

Posted on by WeeGee

It’s been far too long since my last post for me to begin with my usual ‘since last I wrote’ update. I thought about looking back over 2015 and writing some kind of ‘year in review’ piece, but in the end I decided that it all boiled down to pretty much the same thing: there has been life and some bits have been better than the rest. If that sounds a little pessimistic, it really isn’t intended to: when all’s been said and done, it’s only the better bits that count anyway.

Hello, by the way and happy new year (I realise now that would have made for a better beginning than the rambling paragraph I decided to go with. What can I say? You live. You learn). Welcome to the 2016 edition of How do you eat an elephant? I hope you’re all fine and dandy and filled full of the optimism and hope that a Brand New Year usually brings with it?

You may or may not be pleased to learn that I’m hoping to fit in a lot more blogging in 2016 but, at this stage and for the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever I need to make it clear that I have NOT made it a new year’s resolution. I’m not well known for finishing things at the best of times and the chances of me saying I’ll do something on the 1st January and still giving a flying fuck three days later, let alone a WHOLE year later are slim to say the least. The fact that it is January and I am (sorta) promising to do more of something in the coming year does NOT mean I’ve gone and made a new year’s resolution. Okay, so I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up…..

I may DEFINITELY NOT have made any new year’s resolutions but I am, nevertheless, pretty optimistic about the year to come. I quite like being at this end of the year looking forward before any of the time has run out. It feels shiny and new and there are endless possibilities. For example, winning the Booker prize for my first (as yet unwritten) novel only ever feels possible in the first few days of January – of each new year. I expect it will be ever thus, but I’m glad that the possibility remains, and indeed returns, no matter how many times the world has turned beneath my feet.

I head into 2016 in better shape than I headed into 2015, of that I am sure. I’m also sure that I headed into 2015 in better shape than I headed into 2014 so I’m marking the past few years down as a victory for progress. I’m still getting used to living with myself a little more, and a little better every day. The ebbs and flows of my brain don’t engulf me the way they once did – I’m safer in my own skin somehow. I catch myself when I start to fall and make running repairs as I go. Of course there are still grey days, and obstacles, and challenges and heartache. I know that these are things that will never be far from my side; I know that knowing is a large part of the battle fought.

Anyway. I just stopped by to share what’s in my head today. Now you know and I’ve achieved what I set out to. There is news – of course there’s news, there’s always news. I’ll save that for another day though and leave you instead with a song of old just for the sake of a song of old:

Love you all lots like Jelly tots,

With smiles, or hugs, or hope or whatever else you need, WeeGee xoxo

Posted in About today

Enough time

Posted on by WeeGee

Now that August is almost over, I’m considering lifting the self-imposed media blackout that’s been in force here in WeeGee Land for the past few weeks. I got tired of reading about the ‘migrant crisis’, which, in days gone by might have instead (and indeed more accurately) been described as a ‘humanitarian crisis’. And please don’t get me started on the omnishambles that is the Labour Party leadership contest. As a general rule I consider it my duty as a citizen of planet Earth to keep up to date with the news of the day but there’s something about the news during August in general and this August in particular that makes me want to punch faces…. lots of faces.

An ode to Tony Blair

Other than a growing sense of unease I don’t have a lot to show for August – it just sort of came and went in a haze of thoughts and ideas. It was my birthday at the start of month and that, I think, has been the most significant thing to happen because there’s something about turning 36 that makes you realise you really are stuck on a slippery slope: destination GROWN UP.

Its funny how it creeps up on you, this being an adult thing. All the way through my twenties I was completely oblivious to the fact that time was passing because it didn’t seem to matter. I suppose, looking back, I enjoyed the time I spent being old enough to know better but young enough to go ahead and do it anyway. Now I find myself confronted by a growing body of evidence that, not only am I not young anymore – at least not in that optimistic, oblivious way I once was – I am actually a proper, bona fide GROWN UP. I mean, I own a gravy boat, it matches my dinner service AND I inhabit a life that necessitates gravy boat ownership. If that doesn’t make me a grown up, I don’t what does.

Of course, there’s humour in realising that you’ve turned into a grown up – mostly I suspect because you have to laugh at yourself if you hope to get by. And so listening to radio four, and acquiring a skincare REGIME, and reading the care labels on clothes before you buy them, and worrying about the dexterity of your joints, and realising that all of your favourite albums are so old that they’re either considered seminal or have been forgotten by everyone save those who share your age and musical persuasion becomes the subject of those knowing ‘in-jokes’ you share with your peers over mid price French wine that you bought by the caseload because it got five stars in the Waitrose Weekend Magazine.

At the same time, being a grown up has been bothering me of late. Its not a vanity thing because getting old is inevitable and I have every intention of doing it completely disgracefully. More I think, it’s about sadness: sadness for the time that has passed and the things I won’t have time to do.

Recently, I’ve been struck by the fact that there are things that, for one reason or another, I will never do again – like spending my wages in a record shop on pay day and then having to borrow my bus fare to work the rest of the month. You know, important stuff like that.

Funny adult

And then I think about how the more time that passes, the less time there is. I’ll always remember realising that even if I’d started reading books the very moment I was born and had never stopped until the day I died that I wouldn’t even have managed to have read all the books that were published in my lifetime, let alone any of the books that had come before. It feels like a heavy realisation to me and I guess it applies to life in general. There just isn’t going to be enough time.

I suppose it occurred to me that I don’t have all the time in the world and that I can’t do it all. Which means, I think, that you have to take the time you have and keep on filling it with as many of the things as you want to. And that is what I’ve worked out in the August that I didn’t watch the news, turned 36 and realised I am a grown up: you can’t do it all, but you will do some of it. You have plenty enough time for some of it and that is just AWESOME enough for anyone.

Life is short

Meanwhile in other news I was left alone with a television for one night and managed to grow it into a brand new obsession with a certain TV chef. Nothing else to report save that I discovered today that Amazon deliver to the UK on BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY and as a result I am quite happily working my way through the Rick Stein back catalogue as I write.

That’s all from me for today. I hope you’re all fabulous and fantastic and full of awesomeness. Here’s a song to match the title of the post just to tie the whole thing up.

Love you all lots like jelly tots

WeeGee xoxox

Posted in About today

Things not to do…..

Posted on by WeeGee

I’ve learned an awful lot of valuable lessons in my time but none more valuable than the lesson I learned recently about not accidentally taking anti-histamine pills instead of broken brain meds for almost a week.

It’s an easy enough mistake to make, especially if you’ve got things on your mind and your focus is on keeping up the early morning routine that goes ‘open drawer, take meds, close drawer’. It’s also an incredibly stupid mistake to make not least because when you start getting mild withdrawal symptoms when you’ve got no reason to expect them it’s really rather easy to convince yourself that you are, for once and for all, going slowly but surely off your not-so-jolly little rocker.

Thankfully it’s an easy enough mistake to put right so my little rocker is starting to get back to its jolly self. That said, I’m trying to take myself with a ginormous pinch of salt at the moment, at least until the chemicals are back on an even keel.

Aside from the anti-histamine affair things are fairly standard here in WeeGee land. By and large I’m well by which I mean that even though I’m a little bit wobbly I’ve got no plans to jump off any tall things any time soon. One or two rugs have been yanked out from under my feet in the past month or so. On the one hand the fact that there are so many changes afoot feels like rough justice but on the other hand I know that change is inevitable. I also know that sometimes you don’t get to choose what the changes will be or when they’ll arrive. I’m doing my best to take everything in my stride….

That’s about it from me. This post wasn’t really about saying anything – I just wanted to take the time to write something. I guess I wanted to see how it felt to write again, and to figure out if there was still a space for me here, and to understand whether or not this was a routine I could get myself back in to. Needless to say, I don’t know the answer to any of those questions yet.

I hope you’re all doing well. I miss you all tonnes and of course – I love you all lots like jelly tots.

WeeGee xoxox