Where does the time go?

source

If ever there was a truism of life, its that time doesn't wait for you, it just keeps on ticking by. Cliched, yes, but then cliches are just uncomfortable truths wrapped up in a sarcastic bow, right?

The passage of time is on my mind for a few reasons lately, but none more so than because today marks the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Eleven years feels at once eons ago, yet like only yesterday, surely that much time hasn't passed? All the wars and death since that day far exceed in number those lost on the day itself, but somehow the emblem of crumbling towers makes their graveyard more poignant, more tragic. This injustice of people merely going about their day, showing up for work, and being the sitting ducks for aeroplane missiles, is pure, tragic theatre played out in the amphitheatre of life. Death always means a loss for someone, somewhere, but certain losses are harder to bear, and certain griefs made painfully public.

I was in New York visiting with family the year before the attacks, my parents the next summer just a month or so before, and I remember them so vividly both for the fact they occurred so close to my 20th birthday, but also because we had just flown home from visiting my sister in Germany. It was like waking up in a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, except it wasn't make-believe.

It gets me thinking about my own life since those events. Events such as these are supposed to challenge us, make us evaluate our lives and live each day as if it were, too, our last. I'd like to think I've achieved some great things in the last eleven years, and certainly I couldn't ask for a better fiance, family or friends, but the truth is, I'm nowhere near as developed, successful or solvent as I imagined I might be when I thought of what my future might look like years down the line. Does this mean I've failed at life, failed to grab it by the balls and make of it what I should have, what those poor souls didn't get a stab at? 

In contemplation I know now, much more fully than when I was twenty, that life is what you make of it, that you have to take those chances when the universe presents them to you, that you have to chase after what you want from life, not settle if you feel unfulfilled by the humdrum, else in years to come you'll wonder what on earth happened to your dreams.

For me, now in 2012, its time to dust myself off and move forward creatively. 

How about you?

But it isn't all bad...

source

If my life is shit, you can bet your arse there's someone out there having a rougher time of it. So here are some things that make me smile even when I'm at the bottom of the well:

My F

Somehow, after a more than slightly chequered relationship history, I've been thrown a curve ball by the universe in the shape of my fiance. Basically, I totally landed on my feet with this one: he's kind, funny, gorgeous, faithful, lovely and always has my back. We got engaged before we'd even known each other a year, and I had absolutely no doubts that it was, and is, just completely right. I don't know what I ever did to deserve a fella like him, but I'm bloody glad I've got him

Family

We've had our share of ups and downs, but ultimately, I'm incredibly lucky to have such a close, supportive family in my parents, sisters and nephews. Moving home has strengthened those bonds and being able to see them all so much more often and have their support when times are tough is invaluable

Friends

I've never been the popular girl surrounded by hoards of friends, but the few I do have are mint. I've actually managed to hold onto them over the years too, something I used to really struggle with when I was younger. I've accepted I don't need a load of satellite mates who just gravitate for the big occasions, or fair weather friends who aren't really interested in you because that takes up time they'd rather spend harping on about themselves. That's meant dumping a few along the way, but we all have to sort the wheat from the chaff sometimes

Home

Home has only been home for a couple of months, but the F and I are loving our gorgeous little house and the serenity, peace and privacy it gives us. Now if only we owned it...

Music

Blasting out everything from wrist-slitting ballads to ear-bleeding thrash metal and singing along can't be beaten in the grand scheme of life's simple pleasures. A good warble always soothes my soul a tiny bit

Art

Putting aside the fact that I haven't been inside a gallery for almost a year, there's little I love more than gazing at art in all its joyous guises, except maybe creating some myself. After a long hiatus, I've recently completed a little mixed media canvas that I'm chuffed with, even if it looks like its been painted by Finger Mouse on crack

Writing

When I was a journalist, I found writing or blogging for and about myself nigh on impossible. Why? Somehow it felt indulgent to waste time writing about that kind of nonsense than formulating and exectuing work I was getting paid for. Now I've taken a step back from that arena, I feel freer and more at peace with indulging my inner writer. Journalism isn't about being creative and letting the words spill out onto the page: its much more formulaic than that. Its a breath of fresh air being able to purge on the page, dear void

Dreams

No, not the sleep variety, but rather those little secret hopes and wishes of success, travel, happiness that bubble within me. Even after the rollercoaster ride of my life so far, its comforting to know I am still able to imagine and desire wonderful and special dreams. Now all I need to work on is making some more of them come true

Beauty

Wow, before this becomes any more of a cheese-fest, I'll finish on a beauty tip. By beauty I mean things like seeing swallows flying at dusk, celebratory bunting, cobbled streets, morning dew, crisp winter days, robins eating berries, unexplored paths...its everywhere

Bail Bail Bail...

source

I'm so predictable. After a terrible nights' sleep and a lot of tears I've gone and bailed on the new job, at least for the time being. The past few weeks have been pretty unhappy, save a lovely Birthday weekend thanks to my fantastic fiance, family and friends. It's in part to do with a medication change I mentioned in my  medication's what you need post, whereby I was taken off an antidepressant to see if I coped with being on just the one med; a psychotropic that's meant to work on both extremes of bipolar. Turns out I haven't been coping too well at all as I've taken a complete nosedive and am probably going to have to give in and go onto another anti-D in order to rescue my sanity.

When it comes to the job, I could have totally rocked up and done it, but the ability to suck it up when just last night I couldn't stop gut-wrenchingly sobbing for longer than five minutes, scares me, quite frankly. The way I can switch between "end of the world" and "top of the morning" is terrifying sometimes. And I don't think its in anybody's interest for me to be starting a job with a fair amount of responsibility for others' welfare when I'm secretly drowning inside. Hell, the thought of leaving the house is enough of a gladiatorial challenge at the minute.

But what now? The F and I have our wedding to pay for next year, our benefit stopped the second he got his new job, and I'm sat at home on my own, wondering why the fuck my brain is wired like this. 

Cue wallowing like a hippo in my self-built pile of shit and shame...

Medication's what you need...

source

Despite suffering from mental health ishoos for years, I was totally against being medicated up until spring this year. I'd had doctors trying to prescribe me various antidepressants, anti-psychotics and even the odd beta blocker over the years, but I either reacted badly to them, felt more depressed, or went manic when under their influence. The fact that no medical professionals felt these reactions deemed it important enough to reassess what exactly was going on with me only compounded my hatred for doping myself up.

When I compare this attitude with the one I hold now, its almost funny just how different they are. Its not that I've suddenly started pill hugging, but more that I'd reached the point early this year at which I was screaming internally at myself that enough was enough, I couldn't keep putting myself through the wringer like that, just passively accepting that oh, here's another "funny turn", time to baton down the hatches and watch my life fall apart for yet another six months. Instead I demanded to be referred a psychiatrist. I say demanded, in actual fact I had a pretty wonderful GP who was more than helpful in referring me on to the local mental health team for a proper assessment, the first I'd had when not under the influence of an overdose and thus wildly more based in facts, rather than assumptions about me.

This ultimately led me to a new diagnosis of mixed state bipolar affective disorder, or manic depression for the old skool amongst the void out there. Rightly, or more likely wrongly, bipolar isn't a condition that'll see you shuffled to the bottom of the pile like many other types of mental illness or disorder. No condition should see that happen to you, but thems the breaks, whether the mental health community like to admit it or not. Unlike when I was rubber stamped as having 'emotionally unstable personality disorder' and labelled a manipulative drunk by a fairly universally unpopular 1-to-1 therapist in the East London CMHT, this time round I've been provided with a community mental health social worker, regular meetings with a psychiatrist, and a speedy referral for focused psychotherapy.

Medication has had a bigger role to play this time round, too. I haven't just been put on antidepressants and left to my own devices. In fact, after being put on them and then a psychotropic medication designed to stabilise mood and work on both bipolar depression and hypo/mania, I was then taken off antidepressants in the hope a single lot of meds would do the trick in stabilising me. I'd love to say this had worked, but I've had to have my dose increased, be prescribed with benzodiazepine to help with a crushing bout of anxiety, and have the safety net of starting another type of antidepressant in a week if those measures fail. A year ago I would've been running for the hills at mere suggestion of the aforementioned regime, but when I think back to that 'me', I wonder at how I ever got through the day, let alone a week without any kind of meds.

As much as I'd like to say the drugs don't work, they just make it worse...I can't. Fact is, despite my recent tumble off the sanity wagon, I've felt better generally than I have in years.

Fight or flight?

source

One of the more shitty side effects of periods of poor mental health is the lack of confidence and commitment it can instill. Sure, we're all self-conscious at times, but trust me when I say, my depressive episodes have had a massive impact and have taken little chunks of me with them each time.

The major way this manifests itself is through my seeming inability to hold down a job. Work is important for all kinds of reasons beyond the obvious paying of rent and covering the bills. Most importantly for those with mental health ishoos, it adds routine to our existence, time spent actually doing stuff and interacting with other people, rather than stagnating at home watching daytime TV, feeling sorry for oneself and dreaming about dreams that you think can't come true because you're never bloody well enough for long enough to put the wheels in motion...or is that just me, then?

It's not that I haven't ever worked, in fact I've had a few brilliant jobs, and one in particular as a journalist that was amazing, both in having the chance to write for a national magazine, and to get to experience all the perks of said job, which, by the way were awesome. The job paid atrociously but it was only part time anyway. I could have worked harder in building a better freelance career for myself so that I was actually making a survivable living for myself, but my lack of confidence in myself and my abilities, coupled with hideous what I now know to be bipolar cycles, meant that was another chance squandered. 

I've had other chances in life too: to be an actress, an academic, a senior press officer for a prestigious international agency...and yet, I've never achieved my full potential at any of them, and have often simply found them too stressful to continue with, or have lacked the self-belief, guts and guile to really go for them. 

So as of right now, whilst still having a few writing irons in the fire, I have found myself yet another "new job" working at the local college helping disabled students. I'm due to start tomorrow in a role that has had to be tailored down to a part time position for me because I'm still coming out of my latest descent into the abyss. I'm vastly over-qualified for the job yet I'm toying with the idea of bailing on it altogether. Why? Because I feel tortured, and hopeless, and utterly useless. And, of course, because I have a history of bailing.

The fact is, I'd like to fight, but I usually take flight.

You're sooo Bipolar!!

                                                                         source

I had to preface this post with one of the most hideous and hilarious of google images' finest for your entertainment. Wow, so that's what shows up when you image-search 'bipolar disorder'. So that's what we look like, the heinous bipolar tribe; happy and glowing with smiles that light up the room, and on the flip-side, miserable, po-faced harridans of the lowest order. Hotness!

Bipolar disorder is quite the trendy illness of the mental variety right now. The media likes to make us aware that the bipolar gremlins amongst us are actually friendly, overachieving success stories that you'd like to have at your dinner party. I'm looking at you, Stephen Fry. And actually, this is no bad thing, it certainly beats the outrageous stigma surrounding less tasteful conditions such as schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.

I've suffered with depressive episodes and periods of outrageous judgement and recklessness throughout my life. Most people could attest to the same: making bad decisions and feeling totally fed-up are nothing new in life. But its when it encroaches on your ability to make it through the week, and at worst the day, or you are living in a total dream land where the repercussions of your actions are as meaningless as the proverbial water off the duck's back, that something more could be going on.

When I was a teenager I hated everyone and everything, most of all myself, much like most other teenagers. The problems arose when the erratic behaviour began, like truanting, but not with friends having a laugh. Instead I was hiding my stuff in the park and instead of walking to catch the bus, I was stripping off naked out of my school uniform in the woods and then putting my own clothes on and hanging out there on my own all day. I was developing an eating disorder that saw me lose a massive amount of weight in just several weeks, that found me going for naps after school so I didn't have to pay attention to the screaming hunger pangs in my stomach. I was involved in a relationship with an older boy who thought, for the whole year we went out, that I was a year older than I was, and that I had sat my GCSE's just a couple of months after we started going out, when in fact I would be sitting them the following year (he never did find out the truth). I found myself, one day after school, throwing myself down the stairs, twice, in a bid to injure myself. On a similar occasion, I numbed my ankle with a bag of frozen peas and then attempted to break my leg by furiously bashing my sister's metal keyboard stand against myself. I didn't, by the way, succeed, as it turns out I have pretty strong bones. Shit like that needs attention. But for one reason or another it didn't receive it. And I developed the life-long  and hugely successful habit of masking my true feelings and turmoil from the wider world.

The problem, as it turns out, with having such a useful skill in your arsenal is that people don't realise you're in grave need of help. Usually until its too late. The endless cycle of highs and lows, of crazed, relentless cravings for 'excitement', 'escapism' and 'partying', or of wishing I was dead so I didn't have to talk to anyone that day, went on for the next ten years, when, aged 25 I found I had run out of coping strategies. After being dismissed by my local GP and sent on my way with a prescription for fluoxitine (or Prozac, kids), I ended up, perhaps unsurprisingly, taking an overdose one drunken night, alone in my room in my latest student house share. I popped everything I had. Luckily for me, a slurred phone call led to a kindly woman from the Samaritans urging me to call for an ambulance. I ended up hanging up on her in a pissed up fug of booze and pills, but I did call that ambulance. I'd love to let her know she saved my life.

Plenty more went on between that time and today, including more overdoses and a diagnoses of borderline personality disorder. This is not a great thing to have folks, mainly because of the stigma and a general misunderstanding of the condition. Jeez, my own sister asked if that meant I had "multiple personalities". It didn't, of course, but this veiled what was probably going on the whole time in the background - bipolar affective disorder. I got this diagnosis after moving to a new area, suffering yet another serious bout of depression and demanding to be reassessed by a psychiatrist. Suddenly I had a name and a set of symptoms that matched my experience over the last 30 years of my life. And for the first time in my life, it all made a bit more sense.

Guilty face...

                                                                         source

Oh dear. Not doing very well at this blogging lark, am I? Having to apologise to the void after only a single post three months ago is a bit of a fail...but hey, I'm back now.

The last few months have had more than a few massive highs and several low-down lows. The truth is I've been too busy trying to live to make time for blogging. Or something like that. I totally get now how hard it is to blog, especially if its about your own life. Even blogging fairly anonymously gives me the shivers, but there is just no one out there telling it like it is about mental health, and I'm sick of it. So I'm going to make myself blog from now on. No excuses.

Honest.