Am I Still Ill?

Heartache.

We have contact with my son tomorrow. I talked to his foster mum on the phone today and it wasn’t a good conversation. I wanted to ask her opinion about whether J would be OK to come to the house, as he had expressed a desire to look through his old things. I also wanted to register with her my idea that instead of him phoning us we could be allowed to phone him (at specific times). None of it went down well, in fact she seemed put out from the first minute when I said we wanted him to come to London this time.

Previously we have always gone down there (to Hertfordshire), and it’s quite a long drive, plus the further drive to wherever we have decided to go. The foster mum did seem to emphasise when I spoke to her last week that it would be OK for him to come to London, one of them will bring him on the train. It’s a lot quicker by train. So I was a bit non-plussed when she sighed in an irritated kind of way. Then the conversation just went even further downhill.

It’s the first time she has been like this, and it came as a bit of a shock. What is more important is that we are not getting any phone contact and she seems to think that us phoning there will put more pressure on J, and that, as he is doing well lately, she doesn’t want to risk it. He basically finds it easier to keep us in a separate compartment. That is how he copes.

I felt that I was a) being a nuisance b) being unreasonable c) somehow a monster by implication, because my son feels better not contacting me. And I know those reactions are a little over the top, but I have been hurting all day. I’m recovering from a breakdown as well, and definitely more insecure as a result.

As I was blogging this I got a phone call from J’s social worker who is a nice chap, well-meaning. I asked if we could arrange to meet and we set it up for next week, also with his manager. I have written the manager a letter detailing the concerns I have. It seems though, that the manager has already decided to say no to any changes in the phoning arrangements. I will just have to say well what can we do then?

I am somewhat dreading my mum arriving, somewhat dreading the contact and the weekend in general. It will probably not be as bad as I fear just at this moment.

Psychosis as Wish Fulfilment

Today I’m going to try titling the blog AFTER I’ve written it. Gives me a chance to work up some inspiration and find out what I’m mainly thinking of today.

Today was a successful day. Cleaned my room, then went to yoga, then to my computer class, then a bit of shopping, chatted to a friend then caught the Tube to Covent Garden and went to see Marjane Sartrapi’s Persepolis. Absolutely brilliant…a cartoon (beautifully and movingly drawn) memoir of her life growing up under various Iranian regimes as well as a spell in Vienna and ending up in Paris when her parents more or less told her to leave Iran and never go back (for her own sake)…there was no upbeat, resolved ending, it ended very abruptly actually when she arrives in Paris. I’d been wanting to see that for ages, so I’m really glad I got myself there. It’s one of the joys of living in London that I can choose from a seemingly infinite number of films and different cinemas. Nothing better on a damp afternoon like today than disappearing into another world for a few hours.

Hmm, was actually reflecting on the reasons for my psychosis, if indeed there can be said to be reasons. I don’t mean triggers, I just mean the underlying psychological motivation for taking as it were a holiday from reality as she is commonly understood. I’ve got to talk personally, because I only know about me, but there is a lot about reality that I find very hard to stomach. One thing I find hard to stomach is old age and death (oh, don’t we all?) Another is the separate existence of all these other humanoids. Apparently just like me, with their own set of thoughts, feelings and impulses. And therefore, to me at any rate, threatening. Then there’s all the shit that goes on. People hurting and killing other people. So-called acts of God like earthquakes which hurt and kill thousands albeit in a purely impersonal manner.

The nature of my particular psychosis is that I have the delusion that I am (more or less) God, that therefore I have the power to end the cycle of birth, pain and death, bring Heaven on earth, see instantly into the depths of any human being’s soul, etc etc. It is one hell of a powerful wish fulfilment! At the time it feels very real and significant.

Up till now I was ashamed to state the nature of my psychosis so baldly but, I don’t know. If you see it as an escape from harsh reality, a prolonged waking dream, the ultimate wish fulfilment, maybe it’s not so hard to understand. There’s a lot of people outside the pub of an evening when I go past. A lot of them drink habitually to dull that ache. I don’t feel the need to do that, but maybe my periodic bouts of psychosis serve somewhat of the same function.

Take care all. Love, Zoe.

Am probably moving to WordPress…

…that is if I can work out all the tecchie bits and bobs over there. Have set up a blog there and imported all my posts from here, but then noticed that my blogroll there was empty and also that I couldn’t figure out how to add a new post! I know…pathetic!

Well had quite a nice weekend with Richard. He stayed over two nights as it was Bank Holiday. It’s been pissing down yesterday and today. Yesterday had a bit of a mood wobble a propos of nothing in particular. Suddenly felt really low, needy and desperate for reassurance. It lasted approx two hours. It just went away by itself.

In the old days I was classic Bipolar 1. After maybe six or eight weeks of out of control mania I would slowly but surely descend into at least two or three months solid depression featuring suicidal ideation.

This time has been very different. Yeah, I have been prey to deluded thinking. Yeah I have done a few things I now regret. However none of them was dangerous or really destructive, I didn’t become promiscuous or have any inclination to. I didn’t really enjoy the mania. Actually I noticed very many physical symptoms which often eclipsed the mental stuff. I was a lot more aware of what was going on.

And now that I am very much touching down back where I was before all this kicked off I note a so far complete absence of the kind of protracted severe depression I used to succumb to. Frankly I am amazed and exhilarated by this realisation. However I am still subject, as always to unpredictable moodswings, witness my wobble yesterday.

Next on the agenda: give up this appalling smoking. I give myself no more than a week to do that but hope I can kick it in the next few days. I want to have finished with the Weed by next weekend when I see my boy. He hates me smoking. Hell, I hate me smoking.

Then, item by item, I will reinstate all the things I was doing before back into my life. Take care all. Love, Zoe.

Domestic mortality…

…as opposed to Nigella’s Goddess. Been cleaning, cooking, baking bread, shopping, washing, oh you know the drill. Saw the Crisis Team this morning and tried not to wind them up too much. Bit tired. Still not got gym-energy back.

Back to my pernnial moan: waah, everyone has more readers than me, and right now do not have the energy or the ingenuity to do anything much about it.

Listening to James Bond on BBC Radio 4. It’s a clevering-up treatment of a genre that usually leaves me cold, which I’ve found quite listenable.

Looking forward to Richard coming over. Run dry of ideas for now…Love, Z.

Hello lovelies!

I can hardly contain my probably unseemly delight that no less a personage than Jane has linked to me. It feels as if I have suddenly and unexpectedly achieved a lifetime’s ambition after years of poorly-rewarded effort. Watch out Zoe, she linked to you, but probably got you mixed up with someone else! She can unlink when she reads your shameless grovelling comment on her blog, that let’s face it, is only there because she linked to you!

Oh hell, I know how ridiculous I am! Now I feel I have something to live up to, and I have that feeling that apparently a lot of people in high-powered jobs have, that it’s only a matter of time before ‘they’ find out.

I’m no good at being something I’m not so I just have to gulp, bite the bullet and carry on with the usual ravings my mostly non-existent readers have come to know ( if not love) me for. Anyway, as I noted on my Moodgarden blog (yes, there’s more of this over there under username ‘Stricken’ for anyone who just can’t get enough! You have to have a mood disorder and join first though!) I am narcissistic in the extreme. I am so ‘up’ myself that probably people are just struck dumb or incorrectly deduce that I don’t require their reflections or comments.

Anyway, back on Planet Earth…I am quite perky today (even more so now of course!) As I might have said before, this episode is nothing like previous ones. I have got to say it, all my efforts to treat the illness holistically, by means of yoga, meditation, careful diet (and veganism), exercise and a highly structured lifestyle HAVE paid dividends. I am really a transformed person. Listening to Mary J Blige ‘No More Drama’ on my Ipod and she is pretty much mirroring where I feel I’m at in my life. Soap operas, even real-life ones, have very limited appeal for me. They are just not nearly real enough. The kind of blogs that drivel on about MIL’s visit (Mother-in-Law for the uninitiated), OK, I’m sorry, they often seem to garner a lot more readers than I can muster, but, in Morrissey’s words ‘I was bored before I even began’.

The Soap of Zoe and her phantasmagorical inner and outer life is what fascinates me. OK I might have a job persuading anyone else to be equally interested but at least I’m levelling with you dear and most cherished readers.

But I’ve harassed you enough for one day. Take great care until the next time…Zoe.

Hello oh thankless blog!

Yes blog, you are a little thankless. All the literary efforts I pour out here and they are apparently hardly read let alone appreciated! It’s almost embarrassing how few readers I seem to have. What is more, blog, while we’re at it, sometimes you don’t even let potential readers access you. Why blog, why?

I seem destined to struggle on in almost total obscurity. And never to meet that Perfect Partner that I raved so psychotically about in my last entry.

Heard the song that goes ‘If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’? Well that is the story of my life. However I’m feeling a little old for that philosophy, and getting pickier all the time. My so-called psychosis doesn’t help. I daren’t tell you in bald terms what my biggest and most grandiose delusion is. Any readers that I’ve accidentally garnered would no doubt scuttle off in fright if I did. Let’s draw a veil.

I’ve developed a sort of tunnel vision in the course of this episode. I hardly look to left or right. There is very little pleasure in my life. OK, that’s part of depression. But the mania wasn’t any fun either. I’m pretty much completely anhedonic. I enjoy (sometimes) smoking a roll-up, eating and sleeping. The last, only because there is no consciousness. I don’t wake up depressed. I am still a morning person.

This episode has resulted in an almost complete personality change in many other ways though. I mean, smoking! After three years ‘clean’! Eating shedloads of sugar! After being Patrick Holford’s Number One disciple. Drinking coffee again…ooh how lovely it is to have the license to do that!

Still have my gym membership but not the physical or mental strength to get down there just yet. My life is still struggling to right itself, like one of those toys with weight in the bottom. However I did get to my yoga class yesterday and managed to do the whole practice which I was pleased about.

Still have the Crisis Team coming round which feels more like a duty I have to perform than something I actively take spiritual sustenance from. But they have acted in good faith throughout so I must return the compliment.

Am attending Dual Recovery Anonymous meetings which are more than a duty. However, do find going all the way into central London a bit of a trial to the nerves. Try to shelter behind the armour of my Ipod as best I can. Am simply overwhelmed by the utter futility of most people’s lives. Which is sort of a reversal of the usual depressive story…where it’s your own futility that overwhelms you most. I am still meekly waiting to inherit the earth…’if that’s all right with the rest of you’.

I know, I’m grandiose, psychotic, lacking in insight. There’s nothing you can tell me about that that I don’t know and worse, have to live with every day. Pity me, don’t judge I beg you! I have given up on fitting in. I never will. I’m not normal and believe me I really have given it my best shot.

Take care dear peeps. Love, Zoe.

Mama’s got a brand new bag…

Yeah, I spilt orange juice all over my last one (brown leather). This one suits me better so ‘bye-bye’. What can I tell you? Been sleeping a lot better.  Am cooking, eating better. My Ipod still helps me get through the days. Whivh are far too long. Only really happy when I’m asleep, hey, you know the drill.

This episode is different, so very different from previous ones. Still addicted to listening to music, whereas usually once I’m depressed I don’t want to know. Can laugh and smile with the right people. Don’t feel ugly and worthless most of the time.

I feel powerful. I know I am powerful. They say that’s the biggest aphrodisiac but maybe that’s just men because I’m finding it has the opposite effect. Can’t get a new man in my life for love or money. In the meantime Richard is a treasure. It’s just he’s only with me twice a week. When he leaves I plummet down again.

Tocay I plan on going to the Farmer’s Market to get some fresh local produce. Generally getting back into the old routine but minus the self-pressure to get a job etc. It doesn’t matter a tuppenny damn whether I work or not. Get back into my spiritual practice too. My fellowships. Keep lighting the candles, burning the incense and hope that Higher Power will have pity on me eventually and bring that new man into my life. The one who will be powerless to resist!

Love you…Zoe.

Mood check on a scale of 1 to 10…

Hi peeps. Yesterday was pretty shit as I felt myself start to plummet down. However Richard was here and that cheered me up. This morning I feel a bit better. Still generally despairing about my single status. In answer to your question Jana, yeah for sure I want and need a life partner. I’m 46 for God’s sake. And menopausal! That’s a lot of years to be on your own.

Have upped the ante on the healthy diet. Now have much fewere sweets. No need, as I no longer have that permanent awful taste in my mouth.

Thanks to Richard’s son I’ve now got a recharged mobile phone so hopefully some of my friends (so-called!) will rally round. I can absolutely never depend on that though. When depressed I have the effect on people of a magnet in reverse. They are repelled without even realising it. And when high, oh don’t they all love to crowd around and have a good laugh.

Moodgardeners who make it here, I tried to blog at Moodgarden just now and was told in no uncertain terms that I could not blog there. Wonder what that was about? Am I considered a dangerous subversive in those parts for being part of the withdrawal community? Doubt it. The MGers are far too nice to engage in that kind of exclusion. Anyone who comes here can access the blog at MG, but you have to be bipolar or depressed, and join first. My user name is Stricken.

Good thing I’ve got this place anyway. Thanks to Gianna at Bipolar Blast for her very kind and helpful message of support by email. Love you all folks…Zoe.

Calling Interwebbers anonymous…

Hi there. Checking in for the day. Had a much better night’s sleep thanks to the doc’s advice yesterday to take my Zyprexa last thing. Consequently feel much fresher, and have had a nice bath and breakfasted on wheat-free toast and black coffee. Still Ipodding away. Determined not to let any of youse fuck up my day!

Admittedly it’s lonely in my little house all alone. Even the Crisis Team come as a welcome relief, especially now they’ve decided to actually start helping me instead of firing off irrelevant and inane questions. An Occupational Therapist even came yesterday and helped me a great deal by making constructive suggestions about how to best pass the time. I followed his advice to go for a walk in my local park, Alexandra Palace. Enjoyed nature, seeing happy mothers with their babes and an orange ice lolly in the shade when I got to the top, at the boating lake. He also sensibly told me to leave my fags at home, and I did that too.

What do I have to complain of? I am sure you can hear that ‘but’ coming! Well same old same old. I’m lonely. I would like a full-time partner, and would even consider trading in Richard for a new model, as neither he nor I wants to live together. Everyone needs someone! I ain’t no nun!

Don’t get me wrong. Richard is an absolute treasure, and without him I quite simply would not have made it thus far. He’s kind and decent to a fault. But my friend Angie says ‘he is Immanence and I am Transcendence. He is stronger than I am and squashes me flat in any dispute. Plus he has the trump card of being able to leave me with equanimity. he loves me to bits but we both know that we are not life partners. And he has a roving eye!

Angie also gave me a new phrase to conjure with. She said that she has ‘Gemini Status’. Made being born in June seem like a disease! I thought that was very funny and clever and immediately started to talk about having Gemini Status myself despite being born in unlucky old Pisces! What it implies first and foremost is the feling that you are a two for the price of one. Also, that you have a twin who you may or may not know. In Peter Cook’s words, ‘Tragically I was an only twin’.

Waxing philosophical here. Well it makes a change from talking about the blasted laundry. I have aspirations to develop a reputation for reliability, dependability and being ultimately a very down to earth person. Coulfd have my work cut out, ’cause none of the planets in my horoscope are in Earth signs, not one. Correction, my Pluto is in Virgo, but so is that of millions of other, because Pluto moves exceeding slowly. Oh Zoe I hear you groan, you don’t believe all that stuff do you? Put it this way, I’d like to. Astrology makes life seem so simple. I devour astrology books in the same way other women devour Mills and Boon romances.

Enough Thoughts for the Day for now. I’m off to smoke another skinny roll-up. I now look pregnant by the way from all the sweeties. God make me whole and healthy again. Amen. Love you! Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Well hello Internet!

All these secure web pages would make a lesser person impatient if not frankly honicidal but we vegans are made of stronger stuff! Did you know? That vegans make good body builders and marathon runners? Zoe’s Thought for the Day.

How am I today? I’m really f****** good actually since you ask! I feel fucking amazing. See if that one makes it on to the Net. The Man can’t ban me, the waves can’t silence me, I’m out of the motherfucking closet screaming Hi honeys I’m home! And the policemen in England are my friends, har har har!

Scuse the dodgy cackling but what do you expect of a menopausal minx living in Horny Hornsey North London? Listening to hard core hip-hop fresh from the ghetto until her shell-like ears bleed?

Revealing myself to myself seems to be the order of the day and as I believe in focusing on the job in hand that’s what I’m gonna do. Delusions of grandeur are a thing of the past. If I ever get that stack of ironing done though, just nail my head to the ironing board because my effing life is short too iron!

Emptying ash-trays, making black coffee, cooking dinner from raw veggies, shopping for provisions and upping the ante on my healthy diet are mainly what I’m about ‘Just for Today’. A also mindfully light incense and candles but rarely get round to any meditation. I’m more of a contemplative by nature. Sometimes my own reflection tells me just what I need to know, and if that makes me guilty of ‘Narcissitic Personality Disorder’ then it’s a fair cop Guv. I’m on the money and in England that’s the Queen’s head we see.

I love you all dear readers but better ‘fess up. I love myself even more.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It’s just all moan moan moan….

Poor me! Can’t sleep and personality appears to change by the hour if not by the minute. Takes absolutely forever to get connected to this internet thingy and all. But suppose I should check in with you lot anyway. If only to have a bit of a rant.

Y’see, sometimes the battle’s not over even when it’s won. Sometimes it gets worse AFTER it gets better. That is truly soul-destroying. Sometimes you seem to be taking one step forward and two back. Sometimes…

Me boyfriend is puzzled. I can’t explain myself to myself let alone to him. Expecting a rational explanation…well frankly he should know me bettr than that by now, but I appear to have just contradicted myself.

Doctor doctor, no-one understands me! I think I’m a pair of curtains… ‘Pull yourself together’.

I am up at half two in the bloody morning and getting uglier by the minute as I dismally fail to get the required beauty sleep. Still they expect me to listen to all the pop music din with equanimity. I ask you…how can anyone? My disguise is just not cunning enough and I just might be the real slim shady.

But Zoe, NO-ONE listens to Eminem anymore. We have so moved on! He’s cold product.

How about bourgeois bohemians living in Hornsey North London practising yoga, meditation and partaking in twelve-step fellowships? With a kid’s future to think of, vegan to boot (though at the moment I am stuffing sweets down my gullet like there’s no tomorrow). Well? How many of them listen to Eminem? Oh and I’m forty-six and menopausal, that ups the weirdness stakes even more.

Admittedly my life has become unaccountably more colourful of late. Have spent the afternoon in a police cell in Hornsey after smashing a pane of glass in the front door of a friend of mine who I was smoking crack with. Next day I collapsed in the street and had to be ambulanced to the local hospital (physical this time). All tests came back normal. BUT I’M NOT NORMAL!

And then there’s this blog. On the rare occasions when the internet condescends to let me access it I notice the phenomenal level of silence here…With all my literary gifts I can only capture a small handful of kind readers who probably feel more sorry for me than anything else. But if you are good at reading between the words, you will notice I have a fuck of a lot to say! Other people go all around the houses. I get to the point! Is that the problem we ask ourselves? Well it’s probably the same one Eminem had. Or whatever he calls himself these days.

Have now joined the Ipod generation thanks to the strenuous efforts of my beloved Richard. Intend getting into my bubble and refusing to let anyone bother me very much at all in the next few weeks. If that’s alright with the rest of you.

Love and hugs…despite everything…and all comments welcomed. Even the dodgy ones will probably tell me something. Zoe.

Here at last!

Wherever the on the road back leads to folks…

Hello dear peeps!

Although actually you are in disgrace and persona non grata with me because you haven’t been commenting again. How very dare you as we say in England!

I have been admitted to psych ward in the intervening coupla weeks since we last spoke. Managed to do only a single solitary hellish week before getting sprung out of the goddamn place. Pretty good huh?

I live not just a charmed life but a pretty funky one and one that simply demands to be shared with you lot and the world in gerneral. You would not believe some of my adventures, fact is stranger than fiction and the biggest miracle of all is that I am sat here typing away at my blog after literally yesterday being banged up in a psych ward.

How are all my mythical readers anyway? Please let me know I am not typing all of this in vain. Have pity? Even a Smartphones blogger from Brazil is better than nothing and beggars can’t be choosers.

Please my honeys. Email me if you know my email. I daren’t give it out though. Love you… a recuperating, Zoe. xxx