Am I Still Ill?

You’ve Got A Lotta Nerve…

Like Humpty Dumpty, I got put back together over the course of yesterday. Paul is history. No, he’s toast. My friend J was most instrumental of anyone in helping me over it. I went to his flat, sat on his sofa, looked at his beautiful collection of artefacts from various eastern religions and talked and talked.

He did not interject. He did not ask questions. He did not intervene. He just sat and listened. He did me more good than any therapist I’ve ever been to.  I guess this is because he knows me really, really well. While I was in hospital I compulsively sent texts to all my friends. J was the only one who unfailingly texted me back. Often he is the one to text me first.

He sends enigmatic, witty, hilarious, poetic and slightly off-key texts by turns. Sometimes I would sigh a little when I received yet another text, wanting it to be from someone else but then finding it was from him. I’ve changed though. I used to find J quite heavy going. When I was trying so hard to be positive and fighting my own negativity he seemed overwhelmingly pessimistic. I now feel completely different. I appreciate J for who he is and wouldn’t have him any other way.

I have another friend, a young woman in her late twenties called A. Today we exchanged a number of texts before she invited me round to her flat. I’ve never been there before. She rarely invites anyone there. She is quite paranoid and like me, is not long out of the hospital. We bonded with each other when we were both in the Crisis Unit. I found her very demanding at that time and was slightly dreading seeing her today as I was feeling rather drained.

However I came away fom her place today feeling quite honoured to have been asked round. She is an amazing person. I believe she is very powerfully psychic. She managed to freak me out a fair bit but kind of in a good way. I told her she was quite possibly the strangest person I have ever met. I meant it too. And I’ve met some oddballs in my time.

I spoke to my Mum on the phone for an hour today. Our relationship has changed too. You know that awful expression officey types like to use about ‘singing from the same hymn sheet?’ Ghastly isn’t it? Sorry to have mentioned it. But after years of singing dodgy off-key harmonies, my Mum and I are finally getting it together. We’ll be round at your gaff carol singing some Xmas soon…forewarned is forearmed and all that…

I also tried to help a lovely, talented, wonderful friend and neighbour, J, to sort out her head. I know that until she exorcises her own personal demons we will not be able to really enjoy each others’ company. The phone call and the texts left me feeling pretty drained but I knew I had tried my best.

I didn’t have time to blog after all these shenanigans. My Mum would seemingly have been happy to go on chatting at least another hour. Then I went to a really good art class at the local day centre. The prolific texter J is also a very talented artist and was my main reason for going. I managed to draw some wiggly shapes and colour them in. He thinks I’m talented which is encouraging, but I just get mildly irritated by the messy pastels getting under my fingernails.

R my partner was struck down by a knackered attack this afternoon. I wondered if he would make it over here at all at one point. But in the end he had some lentil stew made by his ex wife from a recipe by Gillian McKeith. That seemed to put enough lead in his pencil to get him on his bike and over here where he proceeded to do loads of work on the computer.

I forgot to buy the Saturday Guardian which departs from our usual routine, but it’s probably as well. It would just have irritated me. I was mildly pleased to note that Ireland beat England at rugby, while Richard was mildly disappointed. Out of the two of us, he’s the patriot.

Bob Dylan is currently expressing his ‘Other Side’ on the stereo. He has just declaimed ‘I’ve got a million friends’. I know how he feels…

But Paul isn’t one of them. In fact next time I play Bob’s ‘Positively 4th Street’, where he lays into every insincere so-called friend who ever wanted to see you ‘paralysed’, I will be thinking of him.

But not of any of you, folks. Thanks for reading my off the wall garbage. Love, Zoe.

Aborted Friendship…

Oh dear. Yesterday was a difficult day for me, for my best female friend and my partner. For different reasons. Their stuff is their stuff and is not my business to share on my blog. I will just share what happened to me.

Well I guess I wasn’t in the best of moods after WordPress decided to mess with my head by swallowing two paragraphs of the last blog entry.  It also squashed the text together and turned it green. R got on the case last night and sorted most of it but not the lost text. OK that is hardly a catastrophe of world-shattering proportions, agreed.

Then I met my friend S for coffee and new mate Paul turns up unexpectedly and unannounced. Which was kind of OK because S knows and likes him.

But the next bit was more problematic. At 6 in the evening I was meeting my best female friend A and another friend, J, in an Italian restaurant in Muswell Hill. The three of us have been meeting for coffees for ages pretty regularly. I was stunned when Paul showed up  plonked himself down opposite me and ordered a glass of wine! My friend A doesn’t even know him and J has met him only once.

Y’know what? I would find all of this easier to understand if his diagnosis was manic depression. Although to the best of my knowledge I have never behaved quite as insensitively as this or been such a right royal pain even at the height of mania. My long-suffering partner R might beg to differ.

It was just plain embarrassing and I was beginning to feel resentful. Then as is his wont he began to zero in on my friend A. Something he said annoyed me and I intervened. He took his glass of wine and just disappeared. Can’t say ‘he stomped off’ or anything like that. He was like a small fly. He just seemed to de-materialise. Up his own ass or something.

This caused us problems later on with the waitress telling us it’s against the law to order alcohol without food. She went on and on about it. I didn’t even understand why it was such an issue. We never used to go to this place, just to a cafe for coffee or tea, and A is the only one who eats there but this particular evening she didn’t. So potentially this idiot/maniac could have soured her relations with the restaurant.

Anyway, A told us all about her appalling day which also involved my bloke. I came away feeling well stressed out. It wasn’t so much her stuff, it was the encounter with Paul.

I spoke on the phone to R about the day he’d had when I got home. It was pretty nasty but he managed to retain a sense of perspective. No one had actually died…or even been physically hurt. It’s a work-related issue.

After that I was just fit for nothing. Because I’m on Seroquel at night I sleep at least one or two hours extra in the morning. So I decided to zonk myself out completely by taking a Clonazepam with the Seroquel, before 9pm. There was just no point in being awake any more! I certainly couldn’t face going back on the blog again and R was trying to sort that out anyway.

Then this morning, the nasty texts. Blaming me. Saying I need to live in the real world. Saying goodbye. Friendship aborted before it even had time to gestate…

What was all that about folks?

If I hadn’t liked the guy and valued his company, taking his offer of friendship at face value, if I hadn’t connected with him at quite a deep level – or so I thought – I would not feel so hurt and upset. Hmm so much for being a human robot eh?

But his actions in themselves demonstrate clearly that he cannot be serious about the friendship. Friendship is a delicate flower that needs space, time and RESPECT to germinate and begin to grow. He wasn’t prepared to give me that. Butting in on my friendships wth others demonstrates that.

R and others said maybe he just fancied you. But I didn’t ‘get’ that from him. If anything he was far too far up his own ass to fancy anyone else.

Anyway, the Home Treatment Team just came round. Two ex-psych nurses who know me and listened sympathetically to my tale of woe. Made supportive and constructive suggestions. I do feel a little better now. Who’d have thought they could have been so helpful.

And it’s a beautiful sunny day. R texted me saying he was glad to be able to ‘fix’ something last night after the diabolical day he’d had. I try to remind myself of all the good things and people I do have in my life and how, in many ways, I’m blessed.

Thanks for reading honeys. I am now quite addicted to blogging so rest assured you will hear from me again very soon. And this too will bloody pass… Lots of love, Zoe.

Big questions and slightly smaller answers….

To answer my own perpetual question, Am I Still Ill? maybe this is less an illness and more a state of sensitivity to the chaotic, mad world we find ourselves in. What you thinkin’ guys? I can’t help noticing there’s a number of us even just here on the Madosphere and also among my Real Life acquaintance who find ourselves with a nagging sense of What the feck is going on here?

C’mon guys, look how many amazing, talented, highly intelligent folks we got on this Madosphere of ours. And look how, when it comes down to it, we’re all asking the same basic questions. We all have our different, unique ways of asking and answering. There are no clones here! We’re finding our own coping mechanisms, and sometimes we are so immersed in the struggle to keep breathing that all we really get on the blogs is a prolonged yelp of pain. There is a missing piece of text here: am currently trying to retrieve it…Yes, these women, along with many others both on my blogroll and in real life are heroines and mentors to me. They are where I need to be myself. I recognise my own realised potential in what they are already doing.

This time around there was a qualitative difference to my manic episode. Now, in the supposed downswing, I see and feel how I have changed. Instead of plummetting down into the depths yet again I sense a level of awareness in myself that is altogether new.
It is time to stop trying so bloody hard to be something I’m not. Time to accept and even f****** celebrate who I actually am. One thing I will say that you may or may not relate to.

Freedom of choice has never been a positive thing for me. All that did was overwhelm me. How was I supposed to make a decision about who or what to be?

I want to KNOW what I am supposed to do at any given time. I want to regain all the energy I used to expend on worrying about whether I made the right f****** decision or not. I want to hold my head high, be graceful and confident, and, as the film title goes just Do The Right Thing.

I’m fully aware that some people might find this a little strange. I even talked to my friend Paul about wanting to become a human robot. He didn’t understand. Don’t we all go on a lot in the Western world about freedom? Ain’t choice, more and more of it, supposed to be some kind of Holy Grail?

I speak for no-one but myself when I say, in words from yet another song lyric (by Talk Talk), you can take my freedom. If freedom equals ever more choices I no longer have any use for it.

Annoyingly, WordPress has decided it prefers this blog entry in snot-green lettering and all shoved together with collapsed paragraphs. I can only apologise until I can get my geeky boyfriend onto the case! Lots of love, Zoe.

DRA, Ward Round and Total Futility…

Hi there. Yesterday I managed to get to my Dual Recovery Anonymous meeting at lunchtime. There was a good turnout and a sprinkling of new faces, good to see. I felt I could have ‘shared’ for half an hour rather than four minutes though. It’s been so long since I got to a meeting and I had to race through an update, bearing in mind that newcomers would know nothing about me.

As always it was also very helpful to hear what others had to say. One particular friend wept as she described the gross mistreatment and frank unprofessionalism she was currently receiving from assorted mental health professionals. Many of us frequently spontaneously remark during our ‘shares’ just how vital the DRA meetings are to our continued existence on this planet.

I have always found that ‘service user’-led initiatives, support groups etc are far more useful and effective than anything the professionals can ever put together for us, no matter how well-meaning they are.

In case any of you are interested in coming along to a meeting to try it for size, this particular meeting takes place at the Methodist Church in Hinde Street at the corner with Thayer Street, nearest tube Bond Street, at 1pm every Monday. The criteria for attending DRA is that you have some kind of addiction alongside a mental health problem. Addictions could be behavioural or related to substances…in my case for instance, it’s compulsive overeating.

I had to leave straightaway after the meeting to get to the ward round. Saw a couple of my friends on the ward, that was nice. The meeting with psych and only a few odd-bods, all of whom I knew, went very well. Couldn’t have asked for better, except of course that dream meeting where the psych agrees with me that I’m not really ill and takes me off all medication for ever…(hey, I’m joking!)

She was as nice as pie to me, even listened to some of my self-diagnosis and insights quite patiently and not at all dismissively. You will note that I don’t go in with high expectations! That is the first cardinal mistake people tend to make with M.H. professionals. I’ve been around too long and been too badly burned to go that route.

She suggested we reduce the Seroquel, I asked to just have it at night before I go to bed. She felt I could be trusted to take it myself henceforth, and that the Home Treatment team need only visit me every other day. Better still, she is now on the Home Treatment Team herself, so she can come and visit me instead of me having to go to her. We decided I did not need the Clonazepam any more. I complained mildly about the Sodium Valproate seeming completely ineffectual, and she asked me to stay on it until things have completely settled down, then we would look at swapping it for another mood stabiliser.

No more enforced medication! No more Cinderella, having to get home to take meds that zonk me out at a ridiculously unsocial hour. All good.

After that I met up with Paul, my new mate who seems to like me as a platonic friend. We went for tea and toast in the greasy spoon, then for a drink at the pub. He seems to want to see me a lot. This takes some getting used to. He is very proactive, seeking my company, and paying for me in the cafes and so on. Sometimes I don’t know what to make of it. I feel myself changing, but at the same time am slightly fearful of ‘the other shoe dropping’.

Have one more module of the ECDL computer course to go at Learn Direct. I guess it’s time to get back to that. Am in two minds about my gym membership. I put on the customary amount of weight during the episode, plus the smoking affecting my fitness levels and lung capacity.

But I still have no proper identifiable role in this life of ours, peeps. And I defy anyone to say that’s nice. If I could leave the planet now with no mess or pain involved I would. It just ain’t fair.

Love as always peeps…thanks for reading. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi darlings…

OK now, you were with me through the high. Now is the test of Bloggie Friendship. The depressed phase.

It’s also the test of little old me. As I shared with you previously I had some what seemed like valuable insights during this episode of mania and hypomania. I realised that it’s not a chemical imbalance that is making me ill. Not a lack of Sodium Valproate, Seroquel or any other bloody thing that causes the roller coaster pattern of my life. It isn’t for want of trying all of these substances.

One definition of insanity is keeping on doing the same thing and expecting different results. Well I’ve tried a lot of different things. Many of them chemical, because the nature of the beast is that I have been thoroughly caught in the psychiatric system for about seventeen years now. I’ve also gone the holistic route.

I do think that the amount of meditation I did over the ten day retreat over Xmas, while it might have had a role in tipping me into mania, also helped me be more self-aware during the episode, hence the new insight.

To recapitulate what I think I have said before…it is the way I’m living my life that is precipitating the manic depression. I am living against my own nature. My nature is gregarious, sociable, loving to communicate and commune with others. Much of the time I cut myself off from others and from my own nature out of fear.

Fear of being swamped by the weight of others’ personalities and needs. Fear of the demands they might make on me. It’s essentially a boundaries issue.

I look around and notice that the happiest people I see do not seem to behave like this. With them, you don’t see this barrier. They are secure within their own healthy ego boundaries, and are therefore free to enjoy others’ company. It doesn’t have the power to pull them down.

What I need to do right now, in the depressed phase of the episode, is to allow others to lift me up, but to do my best to screen out anything that can pull me down.

What I don’t need is to allow the fear and shame most depressives feel to prevent me from enjoying others’ company. I need to proactively seek the company of people who are positive and who make me laugh. Failing that I just need to be with people. On my own life quickly seems meaningless.

Anyway it’s the ward round today. I’m going to go to my Dual Recovery Anonymous meeting first. I’ve already squared that with the nurses. I’ve said I will be there around 3.30. Can see no earthly reason why that should be a problem for them in any case. And I need the DRA meeting.

Contact with my son on Saturday was a bit of a downer to be honest. We’ve had a lot of lovely ones lately, but this wasn’t. J seemed a bit tired and distant. It was very hard to draw him out.

The paintballing, which I had been convinced he would like even if I hated it, was frankly quite scary. A lot of men in their late teens early twenties…a quasi military exercise. Paintballs, when they hit you, and I got one squarely on the top of the head, hurt. J my son is a sensible boy who doesn’t like getting hurt, so he hung back defensively. No women of my age, and only one girl. I was about as far out of my comfort zone as I could possibly be.

But at least the weather was beautiful and after we had exhausted our ammunition we left and found a very quaint old-fashioned tea shop for a comforting afternoon tea.

J hung back when it was time to say goodbye. The hug he gave me was half-hearted. I don’t know, maybe he was feeling a little down. Because I have so little time with him, this stuff makes a huge difference to how I feel. I have to undertand though, that he lives much more in the present and does not have the same need for my demonstrated affection as I do for his. Especially in the downward swing of an episode…

Yeah it’s sad. No way around that. Sadness is distinct from depression though.

Much love peeps. I won’t apologise for having been manic. It isn’t my fault. But thank you for the act of affirmation you give me by reading. It means more to me than you can know. Zoe.

A better day…

After successfully completing a few chores (the dread post office, cancelling my gym membership, changing the sheets on the bed, shopping for our picnic tomorrow) had very nice tea and chat with my old friend S round at his house. That was cool.

Also Paul returned my messages and it is all cool between us again. Thank Christmas for that.

to find on the Go Ballistic paintballing website that there are vacancies at the (place name deleted) site so we don’t even have to go to Royston. I will call them first thing in the morning to see if we can transfer the booking. It was the telephone bookings guy’s fault as I asked for the nearest place to (place name deleted) and Hertfordshire. Fingers crossed folks. Love, Zoe

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back…

Hi peeps. Here is my corner of relative sanity in this mad old world. I had my Seroquel about an hour ago and am now drinking black coffee to counter it.

Yesterday was a bit of a debacle. Stuff that I was looking forward to (seeing my friend, going to the Laughter Therapy thing at the hospital) turned out to be underwhelming in the extreme.

Why? I dunno. It was my mood I guess. At least partly. I am so dependent on others to lift me up and it ain’t their fault if they’re just not up to the task I suppose.

Also Paul the new potential squeeze didn’t turn up to Laughter Therapy. I had to take the blasted pills at 7.30 and was good for nothing an hour later. Went to bed and found six messages from him on my mobile in the morning demanding to know why I wasn’t answering, and coming on all melodramatic about it.

This morning I texted him four messages back trying to make peace, but still haven’t heard from him. It’s all more than a little mad. He is half-living in another world completely, a jetsetting, actor/comedian world. He probably can’t get his head around the fact that I am newly out of the mental ward and on a rigid regime of enforced psych drugs which tend to scupper any kind of a conventional social life.

As for the guy I was grooming to be my Bit on the Side well he’s blotted his copybook pretty badly as well. He borrowed money from me the other day which he was meant to pay back yesterday and didn’t, and is generally acting like a prize tosser. Don’t think I’m that interested any more. Certainly not gonna waste any heartache over him. If he wasn’t a vegetarian I wouldn’t even give him a second glance.

Aargh, men though. I’m now waiting on a call, anxious that it will never come. He’s probably still in bed/lost his mobile/got no credit. These are the types I attract. Feckless losers. Thing is he threatened not to contact me again if I didn’t answer last night so maybe he’s still mad and punishing me. Though I actually think that’s most unlikely.

He’s simply disorganised, a bad timekeeper and unreliable. Which in itself is a bit of a downer. I’m the opposite of all three.

Anyway my tea date for today is an old old friend and ex-lover. We were the very closest and best of friends for five years after the affair but then the friendship soured after I told him some rather brutal home truths. During this last episode of mine I bumped into him at the Patient’s Council, got chatting again and now we’ve both let bygones be bygones. So that’s good as far as it goes.

The booking for paintballing with my son at Royston near Cambridge is all sorted now at any rate. Seeing him always cheers me up. Watching me trying to wield a gun would be funny at the best of times. The Seroquel will probably render it hilarious. Frankly wish I didn’t have to do it but paintballing isn’t much of a spectator sport apparently. The important thing is, J will love it. And the weather forecast for tomorrow is dry with sunny spells.

Have to get out of the house to buy groceries so I can make a picnic for us. Mundane chores still not coming that easily to me as yet. For instance I need to go pay my rent at the post office. Type A Personality has a tendency to kick in when I have to stand in any kind of queue.

Thank God I will be seeing my baby tomorrow…yeah J, but I meant my other baby. Nookie is surely guaranteed, at least for one night/day of the week.

Why can’t the past just die? Why am I in permanent limbo? Why are relationship difficulties so boringly persistent? When I can see such a pretty picture, and know so well how it’s supposed to be? Love, a slightly wistful Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

No one gives a crap about Zoe, that’s Why I’m Acting Nasty…

Hello my darlings. Well I did feel terribly down yesterday. Even had myself a little bit of a crying fit. In private of course. God forbid anyone else should see me at it. Or catch sight of me with my make-up smeared for that matter.

Then a new person walked, or rather ran, into my life. No it ain’t what you think. Not a new romance nor nothing. Just a guy who made me laugh my socks off and completely forget about being lonely and dreading another bout of months-long suicidal depression like the last.

Have to say it’s as well I’m not beyond making new friends, cause my old ones are a fuck of a lot of use. I have to steer clear of a fair proportion of them at these times cause they have so many problems of their own which they insist on unloading that I simply can’t be depressed around them.

This covers the vast majority of my female friends. Men are a different story. Like yesterday, when I met this new character, Paul, I was in the Patient’s Council which is basically like an all-male club. God only knows why.

I don’t have a problem with that though. I am quite happy to be the team mascot, the token woman, or whatever you want to call it. Basically I get something from men, especially a group of men, that I can’t get from women. I’m not a hen night kind of gal. It isn’t sexual attention either. I just find them a heck of a lot easier and less demanding to be around.

They are far less likely to be depressed and demanding. I don’t have to be on my best behaviour. I feel I can let it all hang out…up to a point.

But this depression of mine. That is something I just have to try and keep in to the best of my ability. It scares off everyone. There is no knight on shining armour. So if some folks wonder why I feel the need to be relentlessly upbeat and positive at times…well that would be why.

Folks can’t cope with me. I fuck everyone off.

This time around with my manic episode, I’ve insisted on keeping all my Real Life friends, plus you lot on the Internet informed of every development in Zoe’s adventures in the psychiatric system. Look at it as my political rant. Proper political rants are not my bag. I am the politic. My life is political to the core.

I’ll give you an example. At the moment I find myself in a position with the Home Treatment of being forced to take mind-altering substances against my will. Yes, they come to my house, and a propos of nothing, hand me some pills and watch me take them. Little conversation is possible in such a scenario. What have I got to say to them except I wish you’d just fuck off out of my life and leave me alone? What have they to say to me except, sorry love, it’s the bleddy doctor’s orders. This hurts us more than it hurts you.

But at the end of the day it’s a tiny handful of mind-altering substances, one of which I know to be utterly ineffectual (Sodium Valproate), another Seroquel, which makes me a little dozier than usual (so I can become more like them perhaps?) and another Clonazepam, a friendly minor trank which can surely only help me chill out?

Couldn’t it be a lot worse?

Anyone recognise the origin of the title of this entry? It’s from The Streets. Makes me think this scenario of having no mates when the shit hits the fan is not unique to me…sigh!

So for now peeps, I’m gonna get out and be with folks who make me laugh. My very life may depend on it. I’ve also been invited to the Salisbury pub in Green Lanes where they have music, dancing and suchlike. Never been a pubby kinda girl. Don’t plan on drinking any alcohol. It’s a depressant. Also gotta get back to my Dual Recovery Anonymous meetings. And make these psychiatric ho’s, yeah I said ho’s, fit around my plans instead of the other way round. They’ve been amenable in that respect so far.

My boyfriend says he’s the Messiah and then turns around and calls me grandiose for thinking I know how everyone feels. Though it’s kinda reassuring to know I’m with the Messiah…even if he was joking.

Enough for now. This is more therapy for me than you lot. You don’t give a crap about me, that’s obvious but I beg to differ. I’m bent on survival at all costs. Lots of love, Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ps Hey Peeps, listen out for that monumental wanker/saint, Morrissey’s appearance on Front Row on BBC Radio 4! He doesn’t give many interviews as you should know. Find your own link you lazy sods! Z xxx

At Last…Freedom!

Hi Peeps. I had a monumentally stressful time getting released yesterday. Honestly it was enough to give you another nervous breakdown. Had to wait so long to go into the ward round. Felt the pressure of all the eyes upon me and the dreaded questions and was starting to lose it again, then thankfully the psych (not my psych, her underling) asked if I would prefer to see her alone. So we went into another room and things progressed OK after that.

By this point my only sense of paranoia was the thought that she might sentence me to stay there another week. I had thought this was most unlikely, as there wasn’t even room for me on the ward, but you just never know with them, do you?

Then there was stress on stress as I had to see the Home Treatment person. It took ages to get hold of him. He seemed like quite a hip young bloke. Not that I’ll probably ever see him again. One of the problems with the Home Treatment Team is you never know who you’re going to see from one day to the next. He didn’t leave me with any clear impression of when they were going to come round today. I haven’t rung them yet and it’s now nearly eleven and they haven’t been in touch.

It was all such a terrible muddle. Then there was a mix-up over my TTA’s. That, for the uninitiated, means ‘to take away’ medication. They called a cab before sorting out the meds, so the cab driver ended up having to wait and charged me two extra quid for the journey home.

A combination of being incarcerated and my illness has depleted my funds a lot. But I’m not overdrawn, and thank the Lord I didn’t get ripped off mercilessly by any crack smoking types this time. The guy who now resides in prison thanks to me (no, actually, thanks to him) has been in touch asking me to send him some cash. My first response was (ever the soft touch) to send him fifty squids. A few days went by and now I don’t feel nearly so generous. I must be better! But the mood may change and he might get lucky.

Last night when I finally arrived home I was stressed out TO THE NINES! I made myself some pasta and sauce with salad, then while I was unpacking ate a whole bag of toffee and a load of Richard’s Valentine’s chocs. It was the nearest I’ve come to a binge for a very long time. I texted R to say I needed some time alone to de-stress. He struggles to understand my ever-changing  moods and just how much of a state I can get into. I was exhausted by the afternoon on the ward so went to bed at eight without taking my meds and slept for ten hours solid.

I am so utterly convinced these meds are doing nothing for me, that I am now unwilling to take them.

I woke in the morning feeling a little deflated. In every way except physically. Maybe I’m developing Body Dysmorphia now but I keep anxiously checking my reflection in the mirror and noticing how fat and ugly I look.

I guess once everything calms down and I can go back to sensible, vegan eating plus proper exercise the weight will go.

Now I have to face my life. The insights I’ve had during this episode are one thing. Do I have the courage to follow them through, that’s another. It means being a lot more open to people than I was. I have a naturally gregarious sociable nature and love to communicate. That was suppressed a lot before, out of fear of being swamped by others’ personalities and needs. A boundaries issue, basically. I believe that it is basically this way of life that caused my illness.

Got to admit folks, I’m scared stiff at the prospect of such a radical change. And I feel a little down. But at the end of the day, my highs are far from enjoyable these days. No aspect of them is fun. All kinds of shit happens. I constantly lose things. All manner of physical ailments plague me. Confrontational situations with others. Becoming bankrupted by my own generosity. And of course being vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation.

At least this last didn’t really happen this time because I was safely incarcerated, plus I had the sense to cut myself off from dodgy types and stick with people I could trust.

Enough for now I guess. Lots of love as ever peeps, Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chillin’ With The Willin’…

…Just me and Richard plus assorted felines at the homestead. We spent a happy Valentine’s evening yesterday eating a slightly over-spiced potato and cauliflour curry with brown basmati rice and all the trimmings (cooked by me, who else?), followed by Sainbury’s tiramisu.  We then proceeded to demolish half of the first layer of the Thornton’s chocs I bought ‘for him’. He got me a big bunch of beautiful dark pink carnations. All in all, then, he has been the Perfect Boyfriend. Must have exhausted his demonic side last week I guess…

Forgot to mention that I had two plus glasses of Cava with the meal and he did his best to keep up. Don’t try this at home folks! He is virtually a non-drinker and I am on Seroquel! So we were both pie-eyed what with all the food and alcohol too…

By the way honeys, WordPress seems to have created a muddle by mixing up the order of my last two blog entries. For the record, ‘New Developments’ is the older post, as the dates demonstrate. Update: R has now sorted it.

Another nice and thoughtful thing he has done is to bring the car over and ask if I wanted to invite a friend or two to come with us for a walk on Hampstead Heath. One at least has said he will come and the other is a possible. Most of my goddamn friends are far too busy, self-willed and egotistical to be distracted from their own all-important plans. Mini-rant over. I gave a few of them a telling-off by text this week for repeatedly not replying to my texts during the week when I was really going through it at the hosp.

Seroquel in the morning is horrible for me. I feel heavy, doped-up and dozy on it. At night that doesn’t matter too much.

Yesterday I went on an extensive shopping trip. Bought two new pairs of somewhat more capacious jeans. Had my hair cut and restyled. No more scrunch drying for the time being. The matted, uncombed look may not be the best when trying to persuade assorted odd-bods at the ward round tomorrow of my sanity. I’ve had what the Yanks call ‘bangs’ cut into it, so that it softly frames my face. Only quibble that I have with it now is that the colour is not dramatic enough. The highlights she put in last week give an impression of light ginger, and I feel I prefer my hair to make more of a f***-you statement than that. Is that terribly bad of me?

So I may well re-dye it myself at home this week with a colour called ‘terre de feu’…earth of fire? It’s a ‘natural’ hair dye I get from the health food store. I do like the style though, and it’s real nice to be able to comb it again of a morning.

I’ll leave it there. Obviously I am ‘better’ because I can feel myself starting to bore everyone to tears. Lots of love folks, Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Aaaah! The Homestead…

What a relief to be free of that crazy place for a couple days. Truth to tell I look around and I kinda understand why some of the other women need to be there. But me, frankly, I just don’t. I am not a danger to myself or others. I don’t hear voices. I ain’t (very) deluded. I’m not manic or depressed.

Anyway peeps, pray for me at the Monday afternoon ward round that they will finally see sense and let me go home with the Home Treatment Team.

OK it’s confession time. I simply didn’t take my meds at all last weekend, and that was three days med-free. Maybe they picked up on that at the ward round and that was part of the reason why things went so badly pear-shaped.

I have learned my lesson and realise now that I simply have to cooperate with them. It’s a two-way, give and take, compromise thang. They’ll start being all caring and cute when I do as I’m told and not before. I can’t fight their ministrations even if I consider them misguided and unwanted. At the end of the day, they do care and are well-meaning.

Plus the Seroquel side fx have largely worn off. I can climb stairs again and the morning hangover isn’t nearly so severe. Many of my friends have been or are on Seroquel and I was myself, for a couple of years. It’s one of the less obnoxious anti-psychotics in my experience.

So what’s goin’ down here at home? Had a gorgeous bath in my own bathroom, listening to Talk Talk. Ate breakfast of my own spelt bread with vegan margarine and Richard’s homemade Seville orange marmalade with real coffee with soya milk. I drink that in a bowl in the morning, a habit I picked up in France. It somehow makes it taste better.

Got dressed, realising that I seem to have (again) virtually nothing I can fit into except trackie bottoms. Another reason to get back into my disciplined lifestyle ASAP. Have also lost a couple of items of clothing inexplicably in the course of this latest crisis.

Received a cheque from my mum for 200 squids (pounds for American readers). Most welcome. Some of it is for stuff that I get for her from a company called ‘Forever Living Products’. They major in Aloe Vera which has an amazing range of healing properties.

Also got a letter from a bloke in jail. He was caught on the street in possession of crack cocaine, which I had asked him to get for me. Should I feel guilty folks? I’m guessing not, given the history of our relationship. He burgled my house once and got clean away with that so I guess his karma is catching up with him. Still I find it painful to face reading his letter. It’s so sad. I hate the thought of anyone being incarcerated, let alone on my account.

After all there are few things that scare me more than that.

I’m having my hair done by my good friend and hairdresser Jill in half an hour and have decided to move away from the messy, bed-hair scrunch-dry effect and go for a sleeker, shinier look, possibly with what the Yanks call ‘bangs’, that’s if my somewhat depleted hair can take it.

And it’s Valentine’s day and Richard is coming over tonight. So got to get some token of my deep affection. I’m happy folks. Bob Dylan is showing his ‘Other Side’ on my phonograph. Is that what they used to call it?

Tons of love and keep those comments coming dahlings…Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Too Drugged to Write…So What’s Your Excuse?

Hi darlings. Seroquel, like any other anti-psychotic in the BMF, is not my bag. Not my bag at all.

I might indeed sleep for hours on it which MAY be the good side of it. But it’s the only benefit. I also wake up with a hideously dry mouth feeling ready to die if I can’t persiade one of the nurses to make me a cup of tea.

I can hardly see through my gummy and closed-up eyelids. It feels like they’ve been nailed to my eyeballs. I’m woozier than a portful of drunken sailors and a lot less horny. I can hardly make it up the stairs from the breakfast canteen where I have partaken of my tasteless, machine ‘cappuccino’. I never eat any of the patient food. I would rather starve myself to death than concede defeat on that point of principle.

Thanks to the only wonder pill that I know of, procyclidine, I was this morning able to make my way home on two buses (no, not at the same time, even if I was seeing double).

Rotten tastes in the mouth are also par for the course on any psych med. All the side fx, or should that be side-fucks, are far better documented in those innocuous little leaflets they give you with the poisons they peddle.

All with the surely entirely good and pure intention of ‘making you better’. Sorry but this ain’t doin’ shit for me. ‘Fraid if you want to make me better it might be you who needs to change. Ooh la la, there’s a truly revlutionary idea.

See while I understand my psych’s et al fascination with me, it simply isn’t returned. If she seriously believes I want to become more like her, she has another think coming. There is simply no logic, scientific or otherwise, to any of this. I’ve already been through most of the medical options available to me. None of them have worked and now I realise (Eureka moment) that it’s actually my dysfunctional relationship with my boyfriend/love of life that is messing me up, over and over again, forcing me back to this hellish space/place.

And yeah, before any of you helpfully suggest anything (nah, you’re right, I don’t like good advice and will never take it) yes I did try my level best to explain the relationship difficulty in the ward round (in front of numberless strangers). Psych promptly ignored it and continued on her customary course of pushing yet more drugs on to me.

Consider this my political rant, my soap box moment. And ask yourself if you could do this with a headful of seroquel and as a psych inpatient. I rest my case. Love, a very firm and boundaried, Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

New developments…

Oh dear peeps. Yesterday it was quite simply, a nightmare. I ended up getting put on a three day section, which thank God was rescinded this morning, when I saw my psych. Lesson to self: don’t go ballistic on ward even if they do mess you about to the max.

Good news, and how I do like to concentrate on that, is that the nurses all seemed to be on my side and rooting for me. They felt the injustice of locking me up for what was essentially, their cock-up.

Not so fbulous news is that I now have to take Seroquel whether I like it or not. And needless to say, I’m not keen. It makes my eyelids droop, makes it hard to climb stairs, and makes things that were previously only mildly dfficult seem like climbing Everest.

Ah well, never mind eh? At least I have a free body to go with my free spirit once again.

By the way, even though my bf explained to me how to get rid of the obscuring box issue, I still can’t seem to do it, so excuse any unforgiveable errors pets.

Things became difficult with the two of us towards the end of the weekend and have still not righted themselves again. Not helped by me phoning him in the midst of yesterday’s psychodrama on the ward and screaming and crying full-tilt into the phone.

So is the Age of Chivalry completely dead folks? Is it really down to little old me to get myself out of the mess I find myself in?

Ending on a question is supposed to be a good move when you are trying to garner more comments so I’ll leave it right there…Lots of love, a drugged-up-to-the-eyeballs Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A Dreaded Sunny Day…

Hi peeps, and Smiths fans. Shall we go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates? All those people, all those lives, where are they now? With loves, and hates, and passions just like mine…seems so unfair….I want to cry.

No, no tears just now. Can’t remember when the last tear slid down my downy cheek. Most probably I would have been crying tears of frustration when encountering yet another obstacle in my effort at total internet and then world domination…

Goddamn those delusions! They are giving me terrible gip today, Seaneen at The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive, alias Pole to Polar, alias mentallyinteresting.com.

I too have been offered my own domain now (yah boo sucks to you Seaneen) at the mere snip of fifteen dollars a day.

Can’t decide though, whether in these credit crunched times that would be appropriate action to take.

Most manic depressives know that episodes of mania tend to drain the financial resources like nothing else and I am no exception. But as I was safely coddled in St Ann’s Hospital for most of the duration, I managed not to get too out of pocket this time.

So what you really want to know readers, if I know my readers, is not ‘how are we doing in the Middle East’ or even ‘What about the freaky British weather?’ but ‘what am I doing right now?’

Apologies if I badly misjudge my readership but y’know, y’all can fuck off elsewhere if you don’t like it here! I’m not nailing your eyes to my blog, after all!

Well, sillies, I’m typing this. And my beloved One and Only is sitting on the sofa twanging as tunelessly as ever on the Gee-tar. He  would appear to have about as much talent for the instrument as I have at, say, pool-playing.

You will all, I’m sure, be rubbing your hands with glee to hear, that our relationship is not only surviving the credit crunch but really thriving.

Please, someone. Have pity and tell me how to get rid of the box that appears and obscures half the box where I’m attempting to draft this! Ooh, I know! Just had the genius idea of letting him sort it out. My beloved supergeek. Well I’ll post it, then I’ll get him on the case.

Lots of love, Zoe xxx

Weird or what?

That time WordPress let me enter my blog without even asking for a password!

So what’s new, readers? I’m home from hospital, on weekend leave. If all goes well this weekend, I will very likely be discharged from hospital on Monday morning. I don’t have to show my face there till 9.30 am, which will probably be a great relief to all concerned.

How lovely it is to be back in my functional life. I’ve spent today cleaning, performing a few important acts of feng shui (or exhibiting Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, however you want to look at it), and have just returned from the all-important shopping trip. I tried to get everything I needed at the most local shops possible but in the event had to board a bus and ride into Crouch End, to visit a hardware shop.

The incredible ‘Snow Event’ that made such an impression earlier in the week has now all but been washed away by a good dose of rain, and as a result it’s warmed up a bit.

Cats are both well, and happy to have me back. Though Merlin requires regular firm shouts of ‘No’ as he is over-curious about all my bits and pieces, from cups of tea to roll-ups. Much as I love my cats, there is a limit to how much I want their bodily fluids to mix with mine. Now then! Your minds, readers, are like the proverbial sewer!

I am now chilling to the sound of Nick Drake, I will shortly take a bath with special bath soak plus essential oils lavender and geranium. Did I never tell you I am a qualified aromatherapist among my ridiculous list of other qualifications?

And tonight? Well it’s Friday. I’m gonna see the River Man. Gonna tell him all I can. If he tells me all he knows. About the way the river flows…well who knows? I am just taking dictation from Nick Drake.

Good to be once more free to speak here on my own blog. But as always I am far more interested to hear from my lovely little bloggie friends. So I will go visit them and any shout outs (or whispers) here will be most welcome, as ever. I see no-one has still emailed me! I guess I have to accept that no-one gives a fuck anymore…

Which, surely, can only be a good thing.

Lots of love to all of you, and have a cracking Friday night! I intend to! Zoe xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi World…

I haven’t a lot of further news to impart. Except I have thoroughly enjoyed what BBC Radio 4 likes to call the ‘Snow Event’ we have experienced in London and the South East of England. Bring on the snowballs! Get playful, people!

Ms La…

If you wanted a shout out La here is one just for you to let you know that your blog is so damn protected that I can’t get into it!

I have now reset my password but it’s still a no-go area. Maybe it takes a few minutes but oh how this internet rage takes hold of one at times…                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Just to let you know anyways that I appreciate your many faithful comments on my blog and hence am dedicating this entry just to you.

Amazing isn;t it that despite your ‘protected’ status your blog has managed to garner precisely 28 times the amount of readers that mine has. We’re back to Aethelread the Unread territory again. Except that he is far from unread, and despite anonymity even managed a mention on the illustrious Radio 4. Life justgets more and more unfair.

If you have trouble deciphering any of this please bear in mind that my Luddite head cannot master the new improved WordPress and therefore I am typing virtually blindfolded.

Still in hospital, though I come and go, astral travelling all over the damn place. Getting buses and sometimes cabs. Holding a heavy billiard ball on my shoulders and walking with both hands tied behind my back. Etc.

Last night was fun on the ward. Me and my broken-backed and crippled gangsta girlfriend staged a stick-up and she declared she was going to mow down something called G-Unit singlehanded with something called an Oozie. Or should that be an Ouzi. I really know very little about firearms. I have also never knowingly spoken to a crack dealer.

I’m a good girl I am. It’s just my crippled Kurdish friend who is a little mad and reckless. I am the sensible one who goes to bed (still) at eleven, sleeps a solid six or seven hours, has a bath, coeats three (that should be eats) meals a day just like they tell you in Overeaters Anonymous (work that program!) comes home to feed the cats and pick up the laundry, goes to meetings about her son in care and only very occasionally attempts to rap. My efforts are predictably feeble and I have to tell you I also cannot hold a tune.

No wonder I have no readers! None of youse can understand what the fuck iI is chattin’ about! Well let’s just say that the girl’s still a little hypomanic despite her best efforts to appear more normal than the average Norm.

Any other news? Have progressed to smoking roll ups with FILTER TIPS! Seaneen please take note! And no more nasty-tasting Holloway Specials please…

The cats, Merlin and Amber meow out a hearty hello to you all…they’ve had their tuna and a cuddle and are now ready to take on the world. Amber’s purr sounds like the whirring of that chainsaw you mentioned La.

Which is my cue to stop wittering, send out yet more clothing and feeding vibes to any passing demons and say…not tonight thanx, I’ve got a banging headache. Lots of love, Zoe. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx