Posted in Welcome to my world

Tired of London, tired of life

Posted on by WeeGee

Hmm. In attempt not to do a flaky I am writing a post. Hey – I’m not promising great things.

I’m back in London after a super duper weekend away. I can’t help but wonder what on earth I’m doing back in London, since I only ever came here accidentally and the ‘accident’ that brought me here is long since over and done with. Samuel Johnson said ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’. Apart from the being a man bit, I think I might agree: I am in London. I am tired of life.

I’ve had a weekend full of people – and not just people, but people who care and people who know me (Mr Wise teased me mercilessly because of the jitters, which is good, because it actually is very funny) and now I’m home to a flat full of nothing and nobody to care*

Maybe I’m just lonely.

Maybe I need my bed.

Maybe though, I need to go home. Wherever the hell home is?

……I knew it would be a strange post.

xx

*Cue the violins

Posted in About today

I am angry

Posted on by WeeGee

If I knew my readers a little better I’d probably start off by swearing; really badly. But I really don’t want to offend anybody so I’ll keep the profanities for the cat (he doesn’t seem to mind). I don’t know what the matter with me is, apart from the fact that I’m grumpy – nothing has happened to make me particularly grumpy but then again I suppose even mentalists have normal off days. If you see what I mean.

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned the world can shut its mouth:

Apart from feeling a bit ‘boo to everything’ I’m doing pretty well  after the mahoosive ‘bit of a maddy’ on Wednesday. By the time I woke up on Thursday ‘no’ had quietened down and I was able to get myself through the motions once more. Fank gawd for that. Looking back there are a couple of reasons to be cheerful following my ‘moment’:

  1. I didn’t decide not to eat, despite being in hiding and feeling rotten
  2. I didn’t do myself a mischief, serious or otherwise
  3. It passed quite quickly
  4. I didn’t end up wandering around the outside world in my PJs raving at strangers

As is always the case with these things it could’ve been worse….

My appointment with the doctor today confirmed that the jitters are ‘almost certainly’ caused by the citalopram and that they should ‘pass in (an unspecified amount of) time’. That’s alright then. I’ll tell myself that next time I’m bouncing off the walls and considering jumping out the window*. Told you I was grumpy.

Meanwhile in other news, I sent an email today** and I’m off up to Nottingham for a few days with the folks tomorrow. It’ll be good to get out of London for a while and I’ve a few old friends to catch up with which is always cool.

Beyond that, I don’t have anything else to say for myself today but I wanted to make sure I posted something or it would have been the best part of a week before I did***.

That’s all from me folks.

Love (a rather grumpy but not in a mental way) Wee Gee x

* It’s okay. I only live on the first floor.

** I’ve been meaning to send it for ages – it’s a long story which I’ll no doubt tell in time

***If I left it that long I’d almost certainly give up and go all flaky.

Posted in About today

My brain is broken and I’d like to complain

Posted on by WeeGee

I’ve been in hiding today which, having survived the bank holiday weekend without once going into hiding, was a bit of a blow. It has made me think that I’d like to swap my brain – if nothing else I’d at least like one that has the decency to decide to go into hiding when I’m expecting it to.

In the end, the dreaded bank holiday weekend wasn’t particularly dreadful. Save a touch of the jitters on Saturday and a couple of wobbles on Sunday afternoon I was gainfully occupied with various tasks and activities and suitably distracted. Get this, I even left the flat more times than had I intended to. I met up with Mr Brave on Sunday for brunch – it was good fun and we spent most of the time talking about the merits and de-merits of online dating sites (his were the merits and mine were the other). I also caught up with Mr Friendly over lunch on Tuesday which was equally nice, even if we did spend a considerable amount of the time talking about how much of a nutter I’ve been for the past year or so. Two social outings without me going flaky and cancelling is quite an achievement for me at the moment.

As an aside, I’ve had a couple of attacks of ‘the jitters’ over the past few days. I’m prone to worrying – it’s usually quite endearing if a little frustrating – but the jitters are like my usual worrying multiplied by a million or two. I’m putting this down to the medication which we’re* working to increase so I’m hoping it will pass soon. There’s quite enough lunacy in my life without ‘the jitters’ thank you very much. (It’s also quite embarrassing to jump right out of your skin if someone so much as looks at you unexpectedly.)

Anyway, back to the hiding. When I’m well** I probably go into hiding about once every two months or so. When things aren’t so good, it’s closer to once a fortnight. This isn’t at all ideal when you are somehow managing to hold down a full time job no matter how understanding your employer is. Still, that’s by the by. It happens and you move on; that there is my brave face.

I wake up every day feeling like I can’t face it but I almost always do face it – and I try to see this as a positive. I try to be glad that it’s only on the smallest minority of mornings that I wake up with a giant ‘no’ surrounding me. When ‘no’ is upon me, it doesn’t matter what I try to think or what bargains I do with myself ‘no’ booms out in the background and keeps me where I am.

Today I kept telling myself that at X o’clock I would do a, b and c but before I knew it already was X o’clock and I was telling myself that at Y o’clock I would do d, e and f. In the end I gave up even trying to make plans and decided to go to sleep because going to sleep is still the best way I’ve found of avoiding myself when I’m sick of the sight and sound of me. I often sleep the time away. I tell myself that I wouldn’t be able to sleep that much if I didn’t need to but I know in my heart that isn’t quite true…

I eventually made it out of bed proper at about 6pm, still shattered, still low and still a bit jittery. Unfortunately, as I tried to force myself to go about the motions I found myself in the midst of ‘a bit of a maddy’. It was an unexpected ‘bit of a maddy’ and I actually began to think that it was going to be a This Is It Maddy. I was convinced that my brain had finally given up on me and I was either going to have a TV style breakdown and end up wandering around the outside world in my PJs raving at strangers or that I was going to do myself a serious mischief. It made me smile when I wrote the bit about the TV breakdown but at the time, it really wasn’t very funny at all.

Thankfully Mr Wise phoned at just the right moment, talked me down and helped me make a plan. The plan was that I would cook a meal, take a shower and write a blog post. If I still find myself feeling a bit This Is It when he phones me in a little while I’m going to go to A&E and tell them I’m having a mental health crisis**** and he’s going to pick me up and take me away from it all in the morning.

Anyway. I’m calm now and I think my This Is It moment has passed. I’ve got a phone call with a mate lined up before bed as well as another chat with Mr Wise and I’m going to do two lists for tomorrow – one for if I make it to work and a back up one in case the ‘no’ is upon me again. I’ll be on the sleeping tablets again tonight. I try not to take them unless it is absolutely essential, but I think today definitely falls under the essential banner.

Brains are rubbish aren’t they? I’d, really really like a new one that doesn’t pull such cruel stunts on me, so, as I like writing complaint letters here is my attempt to get an exchange….

Dear God****,

I’ve given the matter considerable thought and I would now like to return my brain to you and exchange it for a better one. It’s not in especially good working order but as I have not tampered with it or damaged it in any way it must have been faulty when I got it. It is still in its original packaging although this is a little worn around the edges.

Love and kisses Wee Gee xx

*I say we although I really mean ‘they’ but not because I’m paranoid.

**Oh how I laughed.

***This is the final step of the safety plan but I still can’t quite imagine myself actually saying it. Do you know what I mean?!

****Or whatever other supreme being is the one responsible for looking out for me.

Posted in Little things that made me smile

Aww you guys

Posted on by WeeGee

I’m feeling a nice warm glow today because two of my readers have nominated my blog for a reader appreciation award. I’m really chuffed about this because a) who wouldn’t be chuffed to get an award and b) when I first started my blog I didn’t think anyone would be remotely interested in reading it let alone find something in it to appreciate. Being appreciated is nice.

Anyway. Apparently I have to jump through some hoops to pick up this award, so without further ado: let the hoop jumping commence….

Include the logo somewhere in your blog

Here is the logo somewhere in my blog:

Answer ten questions about yourself for fun

  1. What’s your favourite colour? Instinctively I’d say I don’t have a favourite colour, but I guess you just have to look around my flat to see that I’m obviously rather partial to purple albeit on a subconscious level.
  2. What’s your favourite animal? Generally speaking my favourite animals are cats. Specifically my favourite animal is my lovely little cat Gryff.
  3. What’s your favourite non-alcoholic drink? I drink a lot of white tea, so I suppose it must be that.
  4. What’s your favourite pattern? A nice, neat symmetrical one.
  5. Facebook or Twitter? Twitter. Facebook makes me despair of the human race.
  6. Do you prefer getting or giving presents? In truth I find both eventualities a bit awkward, but on balance I probably find giving gifts the least toe curling of the two.
  7. Favourite number? I do rather like it when things come in groups of three (I don’t know why) so three.
  8. Favourite day of the week? Monday – it’s a fresh start that comes around again and again.
  9. Favourite flower? I’ll say roses because I have a little daydream about a cottage in Oxfordshire where I grow roses and because they remind me of ‘roses in the hospital’ by the Manic Street Preachers.
  10. What’s your passion? Possibly music, possibly fiction, possibly justice. Is that cheating?

Nominate 10-12 blogs you enjoy. Or pick a number.

I’m going to ignore the first part of that instruction and pick three because I like things to come in groups of three. So, in no particular order here are the blogs I’d like to nominate.

  1. Hello Sailor: I’ll eat my hat if Hello Sailor hasn’t received this award, like, a zillion times over, but I really do enjoy reading it so I’m going to include it anyway. Put simply, there is nothing not to love about this blog.
  2. Trying to break free: The writer started this blog at around about the same time that I started writing mine and I’ve really enjoyed following her progress. Aside from that the writer is a total sweetheart – full of kindness, good advice and timely *hugs*.
  3. I only started following AdverseUniverse a few days ago but it really struck a chord with me so I’d like to nominate it. I love how articulate, brave and honest it is and I think it’s really important that blogs like this, which counter the whole ‘pro-ana’ thing, exist. The art work is awesome too.

Pay the love forward: Provide your nominee’s link in your post and comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been included and invited to participate.

Links above. I’ll swing past their sites any minute now….

Pay the love back with gratitude and a link to the blogger(s) who nominated you.

The first thing to say is that the two bloggers who nominated me are two of my favourites and by rights I would have nominated them. But if I nominate them back, they might feel obliged to re-nominate me back, and then I them. And so on and so forth ad infinitum until everyone gets very bored!

Sparrow in the snow is one of the first blogs I came across when I joined WordPress. It’s a sweet and enchanting blog – sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable but always worth a read.

Another battle is also one of my earliest discoveries. It’s a personal blog which captures the ups and downs that come with the illness perfectly; it’s honest and courageous, but most of all it’s determined.

So that’s it. All done.

Posted in Welcome to my world

Worry wart

Posted on by WeeGee

I’ve always been a bit of a worrier – it’s a hereditary thing, I think.

Sometimes I worry about sensible things – like whether I’ve left my hair straighteners plugged in, or have put the candle out properly or where my keys are: you know, normal stuff that normal people worry about.

The rest of the time I worry about stuff that I don’t think normal people worry about – like whether the post-it notes are stacked in the ‘correct’ order, or the angle the tins in the cupboard are at, or whether one of my friends has changed their minds about me and has decided that they now hate my guts, or whether the world really will end at midnight without me having said some important things to important people. Or that my cat Gryff will get sick and that if so that it’ll have been my fault.

Sometimes I worry that I’ve got too much to worry about and sometimes I worry that I don’t have enough on my plate. It gets out of hand quite quickly, worrying, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday.

I woke up. It was the dreaded Bank Holiday Weekend and I’d been worrying about that, so I suppose I woke up with a worried head on my shoulders. Then my worried head went and decided that something had happened (let’s keep it cryptic for now, the effect is the same anyway). It’s a thing that I’ve always known was going to happen, but for lots of complicated reasons I wasn’t expecting it to happen for a while.

Having decided that the thing had happened worry gave in to anxiety which moved quite quickly onto panic followed by an internal rage. I started to feel like I wanted to smash the whole world up because this thing had happened and there was nothing I could do to make it un-happen.

And then the rage started to subside. I didn’t actually know whether the thing had happened. It probably hadn’t. Then again, I know that the thing is going to happen and that when it does I’ll be very worried about it, and I might get anxious and…. before I knew it I was dealing with the internal rage that comes from worrying about how worried you’ll be when something you’re worried about happens at an unspecified point in the future.

So far, the only thing I’ve come up with for managing the worry/anxiety/rage cycle is telling myself, repeatedly that it will pass. I know that I’m supposed to find a way to challenge the thoughts but I don’t seem to be able to get there at the moment. Waiting it out does seem to work, because I only spent a few hours of yesterday dealing with the rage, rather than the whole day.

Anyway, back to the thing that’s going to happen. It occurred to me today that maybe I should take some kind of pre-emptive action to cushion myself from the blow it will strike when it does occur; maybe it’ll be better if I make the thing happen rather than wait for it to happen?  The thing is, this idea is just another thing to worry about.

So now I’m worrying about how worried I’ll be if I take action to stop myself worrying about how worried I’ll be when something I’m worrying about happens. Told you it gets out of hand!

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

A cunning plan

Posted on by WeeGee

I can be a bit flakey about keeping things up so today I’m feeling really rather pleased with myself because I’ve managed to keep writing my blog, reasonably regularly, for five whole weeks. Although five weeks isn’t the longest of times, it is definitely long enough to give me a little lift heading into the dreaded Bank Holiday weekend.

I’ve spent a little bit of time trying to work out what I want my blog to be when it grows up. Sometimes I think I want to use it to record my progress, sometimes I think I want to use it to set out how I feel, and sometimes I think I want to use it to write down what’s been going in my world.

And then it occurred to me that it can be all of those things as well as anything else I decide I want it to be in the future – it is my blog after all!

If I’m going to be writing about the things that go on in my world, I’ll probably have to mention my friends and family from time to time and since I don’t even use my own name when blogging it didn’t feel right to be referring to those people by name. At the same time ‘my friend’ and ‘another friend’ and a ‘different friend’ might get a little tiresome and confusing in the fullness of time.

Anyway, I’d already written about a few of my nearest of dearest giving each one an alias along the lines of a Mr Men character so I thought I’d revive that naming convention just in case I wanted to distinguish between the people who are part of my story. What a cunning plan! I posted a list here, but if and when I use them I’ll give the person a suitable introduction the first time round*.

*Actually, it’ll be the next time round because I’m off to the pub with Mr Hungry, Mr Hilarious, Mr Brave, Mr Nice and Mrs Sparkle shortly and I haven’t got time to do the full into bit right now!

Posted in Welcome to my world

Long live the Queen

Posted on by WeeGee

Okay. First things first. The title* of my post gives me the perfect opportunity to include Frank Turner song #2 in my blog. Exciting!

Now that’s out of the way I can get down to business.

Not even a dyed in the wool republican** like me could fail to notice that there’s something to do with the Queen going on this weekend. Something about diamonds, a concert and some boats. There’ll probably be fireworks. In fact, if there aren’t fireworks, I’ll eat my hat.

I try not to be cynical about these things, I really do. But a) pomp and ceremony just isn’t my thing and b) an ambivalence towards ‘big events’ seems to run in my blood. Generally speaking, the bigger the event, the more underwhelming I manage to find it.

I’m not writing to complain about the monarchy, or about pomp and ceremony, or even about the amount of money that we’re spending on having a national party for some old bird who could wipe out third world debt with her personal fortune and could therefore afford to buy her own sausage rolls.

I’m writing because I don’t like weekends too much and I’m dreading this one –  with all its ‘coming together of a nation’ and enforced jollification – even more than normal. I’ve got myself braced for a lonely one. Depression is a lonely illness and I find myself lonely at the best of times so I’m a bit worried about how I’m going to feel when it seems, to all intents and purposes, that I’m the only person in the UK who isn’t having any fun this weekend….

I’m meeting a friend for brunch on Sunday so that’s a few hours taken care of but for the rest of the time a plan is required and a good one at that. The first part of Saturday has therefore  been given over to making that plan. As is often the case, it’ll involve an extensive and elaborate list of distractions and challenges and a spot of ‘hanging on in there’.

Four days is a long time, isn’t it? Maybe one day I’ll start looking forward to the weekends and bank holidays again. But for now I’m battening down the hatches and readying myself to spend a longer time than usual avoiding the edge of the cliff by myself. Wish me luck.

* I considered calling it ‘the Queen is dead’ so that I could squeeze something by The Smiths in too, but I thought better of it in the end.

** For the avoidance of doubt I mean republican in the sense that I oppose the monarchy, not that I’m a US Republican type…

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

All shapes and sizes

Posted on by WeeGee

I’m not a very big person (I mean in stature, but sometimes I feel small in other ways too).

I’ve always been a not very big person – in part that’s just the way I’m built and in part that’s because I struggle with food.  I struggle with food because I spent a fair few years of my life on a starvation diet in the misguided belief that I rather wanted to disappear completely. Thankfully, I don’t struggle with food nearly as much as I used to and I nearly always eat enough of it every day. In essence I’ve come to an understanding with myself about food and about my weight which, for the most part, works pretty well. I say for the most part because my weight is still susceptible to go up and down a little. Right now I’m hovering around the ‘telling off mark’ which is the point at which my nearest and dearest step in and ask, in so many words, if I’m struggling more than I’m letting on. I can’t tell you how important it is to me that people are looking out for me in case I stop looking out for myself and I am incredibly grateful to have those kind of people in my life. The worst case scenario for me is going back to the dreaded days of the starvation diet – I think it scares me more than anything in the world*

One of my mantras is that being too thin is bad for you in much the same way that being too fat is bad for you. Which kinda brings me neatly on to the point of my ramblings today. When you’re thin people (and by ‘people’ I mean complete strangers) feel the need to tell you you’re thin. Quite aside from this being a major case of stating the bleeding obvious** it’s none of their business and is, in my outraged opinion, incredibly rude. I know beyond all shadow of a doubt that if I was overweight people at bus stops wouldn’t say “My god, you’re soooo fat”. Shop assistants wouldn’t say “Size 24 – that’s MASSIVE”. Waiters wouldn’t say “I’d skip the pudding if I were you”. Yet the opposite of all of these things in a great many variations have been said to me. And I really don’t think it’s okay – in fact, it’s one of my bug bears.

Sometimes, comments like that hit me at the wrong time and can make me ‘go a bit wobbly’ because I’m a bit sensitive about my weight. In some ways, the fact that I’m a bit sensitive about my weight is my problem – random strangers can’t be expected to know about it can they? Then again, even normal people (I use the phrase with my tongue firmly in cheek by the way) can be a bit sensitive about their weight and I think that might be the reason most people wouldn’t dream of pointing out to a stranger that they’re on the large side. We seem to recognise that when people are overweight there might be all kinds of reasons for that fact (illness, medication, eating distress, poor diet etc) and also make the (perhaps wrong***) assumption that they’re not over the moon about it. And so we generally don’t point out to people that we think they’re too large – It’s about knowing it’s none of your business, it’s about common courtesy and it’s about recognising that rightly or wrongly quite a lot of us are a bit sensitive about the size of our bodies.

My point? In a nutshell it’s that a bit of common courtesy for those people we think are too small wouldn’t go amiss either: manners, surely, are for people of all shapes and sizes.

Rant over. The end.

* It scares me even more than moths which, for the record, scare the absolute shit out of me.

**A bit like the famous “you’ve had your hair cut” Good spot Sherlock; I’d never have known ‘cos I wasn’t there at the time.

***But that’s a whole other post.

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

After the storm

Posted on by WeeGee

I had a bit of a blip this week.Thankfully it didn’t last too long and with a little help along the way normal service was resumed sometime during Thursday morning. The ‘blip’ is done with, and I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it. That said, I should be honest and say that I hurt some people who care about me and I hurt myself too – whilst I’m trying very hard not to feel guilt, I certainly feel regret and it’s right and proper that I should.

When I have an episode like that it’s very loud and it’s very chaotic, and the period that follows tends to be very quiet and very still. That’s how things are now – quiet, still and mostly calm. I’m content with that.

The storm has passed – it’s safe to deal with some of the debris and important to remember that:

“Storms make oaks take root” George Herbert

Posted in Moving forwards

Down but not out

Posted on by WeeGee

I haven’t been ‘myself’ for the last couple of days. In fact, I’ve been having what I affectionately refer to as ‘a bit of a maddy’. A bit of a maddy is what happens when I get too close to the metaphorical cliff edge* I talk about so frequently. A bit of a maddy feels a lot like unravelling and can strike at any time, often without warning. It’s my world at its most violent and chaotic. It’s the worst of me and usually isn’t too far ahead of ‘the bottom of the pit’.

Of course, this wasn’t supposed to happen, not this time or at least not so soon. Still. You are where you are and all that, and it’s time for me to work out how I got here and then go about starting to put it right. Here goes….

Problem 1 – I’m starving hungry, which in turn makes me paranoid and even more miserable. It also stops me sleeping – see problem number 2. I don’t not eat deliberately (I think that’s the correct double negative)  I just forget to notice I’m hungry. I know this is a hangover from days gone past and I also know the only remedy is to eat!

Solution 1 – Easy. Today has to be 3000 calories day whether I like it or not. Pass the double cream and Mars Bars… (n.b. other high calorie chocolate snacks are available)

Problem 2 – I’m exhausted. It’s not just that I’m not sleeping, although that’s a large part of it – I’m emotionally exhausted too. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the things I’m not very good thinking about. The diversionary tactics have gone out the window.

Solution 2 – Easier said than done, but not optional. I need to find somewhere to put the thoughts. I’ve got a list of tasks for the day and can focus on that, I’ve got work to be at and I’ve got a really good book (the Alchemist – I can’t believe I haven’t read it before now). I’ve also got my trusty elastic band to snap the thoughts away. When I’m calmer, I’ll be able to grab a few hours of much needed sleep.

Problem 3 – I hadn’t left the flat for a few days resulting in something akin to cabin fever setting in on top of everything else. There was also quite a lot of guilt associated with not being at work**

Solution 3 – Solved reasonably easily by going into work, albeit a little on the late side. On the upside, I can stay late leaving less evening to get rid of at the other end.

Problem 4 – I decided I didn’t need the pills after all. Not the smartest of moves, but a characteristic one. Thing is, I started to feel better and came to the conclusion that if I was better there was no need for the chemicals. Epic fail as the kids say***

Solution 4 – Easy as popping a pill. I’ve only missed four tablets so all is not lost. I just need to take them and accept that if I feel better it’s probably because of them not in spite of them. Dose of realism also required.

The most important thing now is to take some action quickly rather than heading into the weekend in this state and (in a return to something approaching optimism) I think I’ve already made a good start in attempting to deal with some of the problems today. By tomorrow I’ll be nourished and well rested (how’s that for determination?!) and ready to make a nice safe weekend plan. On which note – in an attempt to find some kind of bright side – I can say with absolute certainty that the Safety Plan works, because here I am safe and sound(ish)

 

 

*I picked this up from Ruby Wax who I once heard saying “when you’re depressed you don’t know whether to jump of a cliff or get a manicure” and thought it summed it up quite neatly.

**I’m incredibly lucky to have an employer who understands and supports me

*** I felt incredibly old writing that but I’ve gone and done it now.