Tag: Self harm

Posted in About today

Eating Disorder Awareness Week, 2017

Posted on by WeeGee

Before we begin

This post marks Eating Disorder Awareness Week and, as such, it’s necessarily about eating disorders. It discusses my own experience of living with, and recovering from, an eating disorder. It also touches upon self-harm and the diet industry.

If you are recovering from an eating disorder, or are vulnerable to disordered eating you may prefer to sit this one out. No worries – I’ll see you in the next post xx

Oh – and it’s also a very LONG post. So now you’re armed with all of the facts, let us begin.

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I lived with an eating disorder from my teens until my mid-twenties and those years were, without any shadow of a doubt, the darkest I have lived through. It started, as I suppose these things often do, innocently enough: I was a teenager, I was growing and I didn’t like it. So I went on a diet.

Of course, now I know that it was a little more complicated than that. Thousands upon thousands of people go on diets every year and for most of them it doesn’t end in the horror and chaos that I brought to bear upon myself. For me, there were other factors in the mix. I was unhappy, I was angry, I felt I had no control. I was also quiet, conscientious and prone to perfectionism. Add to that the tendency to obsess and, well, safe to say, I was the perfect eating disorder storm.

It didn’t happen over night – it crept up on me, slowly but surely, until one day it was too big for me to stop: it was a juggernaut smashing its way through my whole life. On the face of it, it was a numbers game because I soon discovered that everything, including my own worth, could be counted. For the longest time, I valued myself in calories, pounds and ounces and BMI; the lower the better.

Beyond the numbers there was nothing but horror in my head. I hated myself with such conviction that I started to hurt myself – in part as punishment and in part to prove to myself that I was capable of feeling something. Of course, what I really wanted to prove was simply that I was still alive – because for years, I felt dead. I know how dramatic that sounds, but in the end that’s what it came down to – my eating disorder took the feelings that go with being alive and replaced them with an all encompassing sense of nothingness. When I think of myself back then the living dead is the thing that most vividly comes to mind.

living-dead

It took the best part of ten years to get that particular monkey off my back, although I would be lying if I said I don’t still struggle from time to time. Mostly it’s a fleeting thought that threatens to burn through everything before I stamp it out but I live in constant fear that one day, I won’t be able to extinguish it. To this day, I can still recite the calorific content of pretty much any food you can think of and find myself tallying up my meals as if its second nature. I still sometimes feel a little flutter of excitement when I realise I’m hungry because somewhere in my brain being hungry still equals good work. I still struggle to eat in front of strangers, and I still have the strong urge to a) always leave food on my plate and b) conceal what I leave. Habits, as they say, a minute to make, a lifetime to break….

Finding a path back to a healthy relationship with food is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. The urge to restrict my calorie intake was so powerful, the cycle of denial and reward so overwhelming, the desire to disappear so all encompassing, that there were many times I wondered if I was capable of swimming to the shore at all.

Above all else, I struggled with the conflicting messages from the people who were supporting me, and what I saw as the world at large. In every sphere of my life I came across people who were on calorie-controlled diets, and the biggest diet message at the time was low fat, low fat, low fat. There has been much debate about the role in the media in the prevalence of eating disorders, and it isn’t one I am going to be able to solve here. All I can say is that, for me personally, the never-ending dichotomy about how certain food groups are ‘bad’ (when they were the very food groups I was being encouraged to eat), and about certain body shapes being ‘beautiful’ (when I was – as I saw it – not allowed to pursue those body shapes) hindered my recovery.

In the end, of course, I made peace with myself. I came to understand that nutrition was a fairly straightforward balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals – and that the kinds of diets you find in lifestyle magazines were by and large, bullshit. I came to understand that healthy humans come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and that in the end, the size of other humans was really none of my concern. I made a promise to myself, a promise that I keep to this day. I promised that each day, I would do my best to nourish my body properly and, if I ever found myself unable to nourish my body properly, I would seek help.

As far as mantras go, I’m pretty pleased with it.

Pleased.gif

I still come across people who are dieting on a near daily basis, and that, as I’ve said, is none of my concern. Sometimes, though, it worries me. The diet industry seems so much more pervasive than it did twenty years ago, the messages so much more mainstream. The notion still persists that some food is good, and some food is bad. Fat is frowned upon and thin is the Holy Grail. More often than not, the nutritional science is sketchy at best, and to me, some of the advice seems to have been lifted straight from the eating disorder playbook (The 5:2 diet, for example). The constant pursuit of ‘thin’ over health makes less sense to me the further away from my eating disorder I get.

I can’t help wonder if the diet industry is designed to keep people on constant diets that don’t work, because they don’t work if you see what I mean. For some people, that will be endlessly frustrating. For others it will perpetuate negative messages about good food, bad food, sins, fat bodies, thin bodies, and fasting. And for some, it is more damaging than you can begin to imagine.

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Eating disorders are serious psychiatric conditions that are difficult to beat. Research suggests that 46% of anorexia patients make a full recovery, 33% improve and 20% remain chronically ill; for bulimia patients these figures are 45%, 27% and 23% respectively*. I find it so very sad that more than half of the people affected by the two most common eating disorders won’t be able to escape the terrible clutch it has over them. At the same time, it seems clear that it isn’t all bad: if you approach the research from a slightly different angle, it suggests that 80% of anorexia and bulimia patients go on to make a full, or at least a partial, recovery.

Recovering from an eating disorder is completely possible – I’m a living, breathing example of that – but it isn’t easy and for some, despite their best efforts, it remains beyond their reach. Eating disorders are complex conditions, with a varied range of contributory factors, issues and challenges for each patient. Against this backdrop it is difficult to fully understand why some people who are affected by eating disorders find recovery so difficult to achieve.

As with so many things, early intervention seems to be key. In that regard, I was incredibly fortunate. I received swift referral to specialist support services and, benefited from having a sympathetic and knowledgeable family doctor. Years later, when I found myself struggling to cope with some significant changes in my life I started to worry about relapsing, and again, the best support network the NHS had to offer seemed to swing into action around me again. Sadly, that isn’t always the case which is why B-eat, the eating disorder charity, are focusing on getting people into treatment as early as possible during Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

You can read more about the work B-eat do, and why early intervention is so important on their website at the following link:

https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-us/eating-disorder-awareness-week

If, like me, you understand how important this work is, you might like to consider signing the petition calling on government to ensure eating disorder patients are treated without delay:

https://campaigning.b-eat.co.uk/page/6557/petition/1

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That’s all from me folks. So long, and thanks for all the fish……

Love you lots like jelly tots,

WeeGee xoxox

 

* https://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/information-and-statistics-about-eating-disorders [accessed 02/03/2016]

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Posted in About today

Today came around. Again….

Posted on by WeeGee

It always rains in WeeGee land on 19th September.

To be fair, I don’t know if it actually always rains, or if my memory just thinks it always rains, but it very definitely rained today and since that fits with my pre-conceived notions of what today should feel like I’m going to go with it.

It’s been fifteen years since the 19th September first meant anything to me. Fifteen years is a long time. It’s so long that I can’t properly remember the person I was back then. It’s so long ago that my friends are different, that my life is different, and that whatever it was I hoped and dreamed of at the time is long forgotten and given up on. I’m a grown up now – it’s all behind me – none of what mattered then matters now. Life moves on, people change, you stop looking for the big answers and start dealing with the little questions one by one.

Today shouldn’t mean anything to me. It’s an anniversary of something that only I remember and that has no meaningful impact on my life now. Like I said, life moves on.

Every year, the 19th September comes around. I dread it for weeks, and then it comes around and before I know it, it’s over with. I try to mark it, but I never manage to mark it well enough because…. Well, because – how do you mark a thing you want to remember but don’t want to acknowledge out loud?

As it goes, the best I can do is to withdraw into my own head for the day. All I can do is make today about today – I can let my thoughts rest on things I don’t otherwise let them rest on – I can stop for a moment and I can let everything that has happened in the last 15 years settle around me.

I’ll wake up tomorrow and today will be over with. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? Today doesn’t matter because tomorrow is on the way.

What you’ve lost is less important than what you have. Hope is important.

Love you all lots, like jelly tots,

WeeGee xxxxx

Posted in About today

And so I kept living

Posted on by WeeGee

I wrote this post to mark World Suicide Prevention Day 2016, and it perhaps unsurprisingly, discusses suicide. Please scroll on past if that might put you in a difficult position. If you need help right now – pick up the phone, send an email (feel free to use my contact me form – I’m here, I won’t judge) knock on a door, head to A&E (ER). Take care of yourself xoxox

 —- 

Four years ago, I wrote this post to mark World Suicide Prevention Day 2012. So many things have changed in the years that have intervened – for me, for the people I love, and in the world – but sadly, one thing hasn’t changed much at all: the figures on suicide around the world.

According to the World Health Organisation an estimated 800,000 people worldwide lose their lives to suicide every year. It’s difficult for me to imagine the human picture behind a figure like that so I tried to break it down – it averages at around 90 people every hour; or three people every two minutes. In the time it hasn’t taken me to write this post nearly 100 people have taken their own lives. For every person who dies by suicide, another three people make an attempt on their life. So, in the time it has taken me to write this post 400 people have found themselves willing themselves out of the world. Sometimes, there are no words for how awful the human picture actually is.

Here in the UK, the picture is no less discouraging. In 2014 (the most recent year for which figures from the Samaritans are available) some 6581 people lost their lives to suicide in the UK and ROI – the highest number of men since 2005 and of women since 2011. Whichever way you look at it, the number of people who die at their own hand in the UK has increased – I don’t know whether that makes me more sad or angry, but I don’t suppose it really matters right now. I am a suicide survivor, and as hard as it is to say THAT is what matters to me right now.

As a rule, we still find it difficult to talk about suicide and that’s a huge problem because one of the best means of defence we have is talking about it.

Here’s what I know:

  • Talking about suicidal feelings gives you the space to examine them, outside of your own head.
  • Talking about suicidal feelings helps to remind you that you are never alone with them.
  • Talking about suicidal feelings gives you a distraction from the actions that are gathering ever more momentum in your mind.
  • Talking about suicidal feelings helps us to remember – above all else – that it’s okay to talk about suicide.

So – at the risk of repeating myself: I am a suicide survivor, and I am not ashamed. There have been times in my life that I wished not to have life anymore – it wasn’t ever that I wanted to be dead, more that I didn’t want to be alive anymore. The two things have always been, and remain, very different to my mind. The feelings that I had at those times don’t make a lot of sense to me right now but I remember the desperation, and hopelessness, fear and pain. I remember those things in my bones and in my heart – I carry them with me and use them to remind me that whatever happens, and however I feel: my life is worth having. And so I choose to live. I choose it every single god damn day.

Suicide is complex – nobody knows that better than I. But suicide is also, almost always, preventable. There is work to be done and we need to look to each other – to our family and friends, to our politicians, our media, our healthcare professionals – to make it happen. Most importantly of all we need to keep on finding the courage to talk about it, until all the shame is banished and until every single person who thinks they are lost is  in no doubt that we are ALL here for them, and that we are here to get them through.

I end, as I did four years ago, with some words that mean the world to me – words that have lifted my heart and carried it for me, words that have comforted me, words that have saved my life:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

Lady Chatterley’s Lover. DH Lawrence

Keep your lights burning brightly, my friends. And remember, it’s good to talk.

Love you all lots, like a million and one jelly tots – WeeGee xoxoxo

wsp
Burning my very special little candle, in support and solidarity and hope
Posted in About today

On where I am now

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote a whole lot of time has passed. Some of it has been happy and some of it has been sad and some of it has been other things – things I don’t have a name for yet – things that don’t quite fit into the ready made categories we’ve got set out for them.

Also – I haven’t been eating right. It’s a difficult subject to tackle, and I’ve thought long and hard about how to write about it. I don’t want to end up with some kind of ‘pro ana’ blog on my hands because even at my worst I was never about encouraging that kind of shit. Even at my worst, and most poorly all I really ever wanted to do was leave that nonsense behind.

Still. YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE. Of all the lessons I’ve learned, that’s the most valuable and important. You can only ever deal with what’s in front of you.

Okay – so what’s in front of me? Lots of meals that I don’t want to eat for reasons that I couldn’t explain to you if I wanted to. But, by the way, I don’t want to explain myself anyway. Take it all with a pinch of salt but I mostly couldn’t give a fuck one way or the other.

Here’s the truth. I’m not as ‘thin’ as I used to be. The trouble is that ‘thin’ is the only thing I’ve ever achieved. The thinnest I was? That was the best I was. The thinnest I was – that was the person I want to be, the person I should be. The thinnest I was – that was the best I ever was.

In so many ways I know that everything I’ve said is nonsense. It’s nonsense and bullshit and airy-fairy rubbish. At the same time I AM WHERE I AM.

And I don’t know where to go from here.

Love you lots like jelly tots xoxox

Posted in About today

Let’s have a bit of a chinwag, eh?

Posted on by WeeGee

Hello, good evening and welcome to my world. My world isn’t exactly awesome but I’ve got tea, a comfy chair, and plenty of hugs if you’d care to stick around for a little chat…..

How’re you doing? How’ve you been? Milk and sugar? Please, have a seat. Me? Oh – well I haven’t been too well lately but there’s no point getting my knickers in a knot about it now, is there?

All things must pass and these things are sent to try us and – I get knocked down but I ALWAYS get up again. I’m fine now. Well no. That’s not quite it – I’m not completely fine but the end is in sight and I’ve just about figured out how to get there. If in doubt, walk towards the light. That’s what I say.

Am I talking too fast? I’ve been doing that lately. I don’t really know why unless maybe I’ve been trying to make up for how slow it all feels on the inside. That would make sense, right? I mean that makes sense in your head as well as my head doesn’t it? I’m not sure I can completely trust my own head yet.

Work’s fine thanks. I’ve been lucky there really. It took me a while, after my last proper job, to find something I could settle into but now I have. I like what I do, and I’m good at it and I can split my time between home and the office which means I get to be useful AND have the doomy gloomies all at the same time. Sometimes it’s hard because my work puts me into contact with a lot of very angry people and it can be difficult to understand why people are so upset about the things they’re upset about when the whole sky is falling down around you. Still, I try not to take it personally and to be honest in reminds me that things could be worse. I mean, the sky could be falling down around me AND I could be very VERY angry about drains as well . Silver linings, you see. There’s always one.

silver lining.png

More tea vicar? I’m sorry. I’m incapable of offering a second cup of tea without saying that. Think yourself lucky I didn’t make a pot because then I’d be forced to do the ‘high tea, low tea’ thing while pouring and I’m yet to meet another person who finds that nearly as hilarious as I do……

Mr Awesome Thing Number Five is, well, awesome. Can you believe he’s been part of my life for three whole years?! The guy’s got the patience of a saint, really. I don’t know how he puts up with me but he does and I’m glad he does. When I look back, I think the past three years have been the steadiest and best I’ve had. That’s his influence because he keeps me more grounded than I’ve ever been or thought I could be. It isn’t the kind of thing I say, because you know, I’m not a squishy kinda person, but he is the best thing that could’ve happened to me and I love him for so many different reasons. Most of all I love him because he had the time and patience to let me be me.

More than cheese

Ahem. This is getting a bit serious, no? Why don’t I put some music on… Any requests?

I LOVE that song. I can’t remember how I came across it but it’s on pretty much every play list I make because it makes me feel happy in my heart. Anyway…..

No gossip to impart I’m afraid. I think the biggest thing on my radar at the moment is the forthcoming EU Referendum. Has anyone outside the UK even heard of the EU referendum? I don’t know, but it’s a pretty big deal in UK politics and that makes it a pretty big deal for me. Sadly – I am contractually and legislatively bound not to express an opinion on the EU referendum until polls close, what with purdah and all. That’s the worse thing about my new job – although maybe some people are glad to have been spared my usual political rants on various social media platforms. (There’s no need to agree quite so readily, really) This, I guess is the reality of being a civil servant in 2016: the pensions aren’t what they used to be and you can’t be a keyboard warrior when you want to be a keyboard warrior more than at any other time in your life.

Someone is wrong

Oh – I didn’t mention Gryff, my cat, hasn’t been very well. Nothing major as far as anyone can tell but he did lose an awful lot of weight for a while there which completely gave me the creeps and made me want to put him in my handbag and take him with me everywhere I went and feed him cheese and tuna and crisps (which he loves almost as much as I do). I didn’t put him in my handbag at any point – not least because that would have meant taking my life in my hands to get him in there. Nevertheless I did feed him crisps and cheese and tuna at every possible opportunity and he’s almost, but not quite, back to his usual grumpy self. What do you mean he’s getting old? I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship but …how very dare you?! And anyway, even if he is getting old that cat is going to live forever because I’ve decided. Let’s change the subject.

More tea vicar? Shit. I’ve done that joke already – haven’t I?

sorry no joke

Our shower is playing up. Total pain in the arse and way beyond our considerable combined intelligence to fix… anyhow, I thought I’d mention it because if I wind up dead in the shower with either hypothermia or third degree burns you’ll be able to attest to the fact that it really was just a horrible accident and not the result of some kind of foul-play. I’ve been watching Line of Duty recently, you see, and I’m on my guard against fit ups and double bluffs and horrible deaths that may, or may not have been an accident.

This is just getting weird now, isn’t it? And boring. I’m sorry. Let’s wind this shit up.

I’m glad you stopped by. It’s been nice to talk about my life without getting lost in all the nonsense that goes on in my head. Sometimes I forget that no matter where I get to, my life keeps on going and that there is ALWAYS more to me than the mental shit I contend with. Onwards and upwards eh? Onwards and upwards….

which way you look.gif

Take it easy, chicken. And stop by again soon. It’s good to talk.

Love you all lots like loads and loads of jelly tots,

WeeGee xoxoxox

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

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 Recovery?

Whatever is in front of me

Posted on by WeeGee

Hello. It’s me, WeeGee. You remember me, right? 
I’ve been away for a while and, I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t entirely sure I was ever coming back. Everything had changed, you see, and this little corner of the Internet didn’t feel like it belonged to the new world order. This was about the me that was, back then, when the fabric of things was altogether different. 
  
I suppose, what I’m saying is that I’ve been busy being the me that is now – carving out a new space and getting used to spending time in it. It’s taken me until now to figure where my blog fitted in The All New (not exactly singing and dancing) WeeGee Land. I suppose, what I’m also saying is – I’M BACK , although exactly what the fuck that is going to mean remains unclear.

At the moment, life is very much about whatever it is that’s in front of me at any given time. It’s more than just going through the motions but it’s less than living life in full technicolour. As has often been the case, I’m stuck somewhere between two extremes – I’m sitting in the middle waiting although I have no idea what it is I’m waiting for. 

  

Every once in a while I still seem to find my way to the very edge of the universe; truth told, I think that this is just the way things will be for me. Mrs Mountain tells me I should accept and forgive myself and I know she has a point so I’m trying to figure out what the edge of the universe can teach me about finding ways to live the life that is in front of me. The edge of the universe is nowhere near as terrifying as I once thought it was: I used to go there and think about jumping but now I peer over the edge and know that there are softer places for me to fall. 

  
Recently it has struck me that its easy to romanticise mental health difficulties – to make it all about noble battles fought by brave warriors who are somehow stronger, more worthy, than the three in four of us who are lucky enough to remain untouched. I seem to see it all the time and, you know what? I’m calling bullshit on that bullshit. 

  
There is nothing romantic about the cruel tricks your brain can play on you. NOTHING. N. O. T. H. I. N. G. Living your life whilst your brain implodes, and meaning leaves you, and everything hurts, and hope disappears? That’s not romantic. That’s an awful reality that won’t leave you alone and that colours everything you are and everything you thought you could be. 

The bottom line is that my life is not a battle and I am not a warrior. My life is just my life and I want to live it, whatever the reality might be. So what if my brain is imploding, or meaning has left, or everything hurts, or hope has disappeared? That’s just what’s in front of me – a set of facts, not at all unique. No heroics, nothing special – just what’s in front of me. End of story. 

I needed to get that off my chest. I’m glad I did. 

Meanwhile in other news I’ve been wondering how you guys are all doing. I can see things have changed here on WordPress and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Give me a week and I’ll be right on top of this….. Nothing else to report today save that would you care for a song to wrap this thing up:

Love you all lots, like jelly tots

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 Welcome to my world

If I could talk I’d tell you 

Posted on by WeeGee

Since last I wrote it’s all been coming up WeeGee. I love the way that happens – you know, the way that even though it all seems arid and bare, green shoots manage to appear and suddenly, it all feels okay again. Life shuffles along, things get better, hope is important………

Last month was hard. It was hard on my brain but it was way harder on my heart. So often I’m told that my ‘problems’ live in my head but you know, the more the more I think about it and the more I feel it, the more I think that really the problem has more to do with my heart than anything else. Every time September comes around the thing that I have to deal with is a broken heart, not a broken head.

I’ve thought long and hard about whether I have any words for the heartbreak that September brought. I don’t. Not because the pain doesn’t deserve words, but because none of the words are good enough and because I can’t bring myself to say them and because somehow, even after all this time, I just can’t. If I could talk I’d tell you. But I can’t.

Of course, all of that matters because the things you don’t say matter even more than the things you do say. Fine. I’m going to leave it at that. There are things that I don’t, or won’t (or can’t) say out loud. Those are the most important things of all and they become no less important if I stay quiet.

I don’t have to shout about it for it to be important. The opposite of shame is NOT pride. It still matters if the whole world doesn’t know about it. Most of my heartbreak is quiet and introverted and none of any other fucker’s business. Still. My heartbreak, or the pain in my heart, or the pain in my head – adds up to an illness, in the same way that any other illness does.

I write about it because it makes me feel better, and because it allows me to connect. I don’t write about it because I want to be a spokesperson, or an ambassador or because I think that my experience of ill mental health ought to serve as anything other than one girl writing her life, if anyone cares to read it.

Here’s the thing, at least as I see it. Sometimes it’s hard, and sometimes I love it. I feel responsible for the life I have, to make the most I can of it. But sometimes I can barely find my way through it. I want to survive and I want to do it quietly. I want it to be okay to feel depressed or a little manic, or separated from the world. I want to feel okay but I want to know that my place in the world is the same if I don’t feel okay.

I didn’t choose poor mental health.

I didn’t choose depression. I didn’t choose hypomania. I didn’t choose an eating disorder. I didn’t choose any of the things I got, but I got them. And I live with them.

If I could talk I’d tell you all about the life that I’ve had. But I can’t.

I’m not ready to talk yet….

Meanwhile in other news there really is nothing I can add. Nothing else to report save that I love you all lots, like jelly tots

WeeGee xoxoxo