Swings or Roundabouts?

When I awoke at about four this morning I might have known why and what was about to happen.

After a few days of depression I’m swinging back up.

But the depression was very mild. Relatively. No depression is ever pleasant. All depression is soul-crushing to some extent. I call it mild only to distinguish it from the suicidal hell I have experienced in the past.

I want to tell you about a couple of things that happened yesterday to illustrate that this ‘demonisation’ thing is not all in my head!

I received a letter by Special Delivery. I thought uh-oh. I wonder what that’s about. It crossed my mind it could be a letter from the police as a result of Equals’ complaint about me. I somehow knew it would be something unsavoury.

It was a letter from a project that I did some training for. The ‘WISE’ study, a substantial piece of user-led research being carried out by Camden and Islington Council. We were being taken on as service user researchers, to interview other service users who are receiving a particular type of help into work. While at Uni I actually did a presentation on this topic. Now I can’t even remember what it’s called!

The point is, the letter was to tell me that my CRB check had been found ‘unsatisfactory’ owing to a caution, the only blemish on my record, for ‘criminal damage’.

At the time I was ‘floridly’ manic, and receiving the usual inadequate ‘help’ from the Home Treatment Team, having been refused a bed in the hospital.

It was obvious even to the police that I was off my head. I don’t know why I was charged as a criminal. I had been to visit a crack user with whom I had a whole history of financial and other exploitation (by him, of me). Smoking crack is something I have only ever done while manic. The pain and pressure of mania I found could be relieved, however temporarily, by smoking crack.

I never became addicted. I didn’t have time to, and in any case, the kind of pain and pressure that I’m talking about is only ever fairly short-lived.

He had told me to come round that day at a certain time, with money for the drug. As so often this proved unreliable, though I showed up with money at the stated time.

When I found he did not respond to repeated knocking and calling, I did what, in my manic state, seemed a perfectly logical thing to do. I found an implement on the pavement and caved in the glass of the front door, so as to open it from the inside.

Irony upon irony, this ex-con crack user/dealer then phoned the police. Introduced himself as ‘James Bond’. The cops showed up, addressing him as ‘James’. I was carted off in the police van, thence to a cell in Hornsey Police Station.

This is the source of my ‘criminal’ record.

I was released later on, still manic and vulnerable as ever, having been fingerprinted and so on. No mental health professionals were contacted, even though I stripped off in my cell (is that ever a classic ‘mental’ piece of behaviour!)

Anyway, all that is just for the record. It wasn’t pleasant to be turned down, even for a job I had decided I didn’t want, on this basis. They advised me in the letter to always disclose convictions in advance in future, so they can be explained. I didn’t really know it counted as a conviction, but I guess that I was ‘charged’ and convicted, even though I got to go home with no further action taken.

Demonisation one.

Demonisation two. My son is in foster care. We are due to have contact, and it has been arranged for him to stay at my mother’s house for a few days. That’s OK. What is not OK, with Haringey Social Services, is for me to stay overnight with them.

I am mental. Dangerous. Beyond the pale of ordinary folk. A danger to my own son (in some strange, always unspecified way).

Demonisation is not good for the health. Human beings have an inherent need to belong, we are social animals. Feeling like outcasts will affect us physically, emotionally, spiritually. Duh.

Like I said in the previous post, all of that baggage is way worse for us than the ‘illness’ itself.

But, with that WISE letter in hand I reflected that I have now come to a point in my life where I no longer aspire to a ‘normal’ job. I am an artist. Words are my medium. There is no earthly reason why I should not exercise that skill and attempt to earn a living at it. I would have been useless on the WISE study, because I simply cannot plan ahead of time to be available to work on certain days.

Fuck the WISE study!

While I was undergoing my own ‘demonisation day’ (that’ll teach me to tell the world to ‘bring it on’!) a friend was struggling to access a certain facility which has been the subject of a critical post on this blog.

The team in charge of this facility (who are exhibiting paranoiac group dynamics) seemed to be doing everything they could to obstruct her admission, although she was at the end of her tether and very vulnerable indeed. They don’t like her, because she makes them feel uncomfortable about themselves and their own modus operandi.

Like me she has the unfortunate knack of ‘seeing through’ people and their strange behaviours. When people are engaged in something dodgy, and not standing on firm moral ground, they fear the light. They will not love the person who makes them feel exposed.

Equals did not love me for that self-same reason. I was not sure why I had to be the one with the most alert bullshit-detector in the whole group. I certainly was not the only one detecting a certain amount of bullshit. But I was commander-in-chief of the bullshit detectors. And still am. Bullshitters of Haringey, beware! Your number is legion, but Zoe will find you out. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

The sharper your radar, the worse the consequences for you. However, I was strong enough to weather the consequences and even grow from the experience. There is no question that none of the Equals Team will forget about me in a hurry. Maybe they’ll even be convinced that I have ruined their livelihood. Sadly they are more than capable of ruining it all by themselves.

Incompetent, inadequate people with little psychological insight into themselves and a sense that integrity is a moveable feast or may be dispensed with altogether when the situation requires. They get a little bit of power. Just a little. Then suddenly we see Stalinist tendencies emerging.

OK, total change of topic. When is it going to rain peeps? I mean proper rain? Not this ‘light showers’ shit? I’m missing the wealth of different sorts of English rain. And if it rains on your barbecue, meat-munchers…good!

I know, I’m a horrid person. It’s well documented…Lotsa love, Zoe xxx

Higher Power

Yesterday was a tough one. Having been low in energy and mood I went into a proper tailspin with depression.

Desperate for a bit of  help I texted a few friends and R. Naturally I suppose, R was the one I looked to for the most support. But instead I got the usual ‘you’re angry, stop taking it out on me’, inflammatory remarks. I responded with ‘I’m depressed, will you kindly stop telling me what I’m feeling? Concentrate on what you yourself are feeling, because half the time you don’t seem to know.’

I started several texts and then didn’t send them. I realised I now couldn’t openly voice my feelings to R, out of fear of his response. Having been ‘told’ for several months now by several people that I’m some kind of angry, aggressive and abusive monster my ‘demonisation’ radar is as sharp and sensitive as a razor.

Forget about the months. What about the years of stigmatisation as a lunatic? My human feelings pathologised? Being considered ‘beyond the pale’? Written off…dismissed…discarded…condemned to a marginal life?

Anyone who has been in the mental health system for a long time will know what I’m talking about. And here I am, in a situation where the two closest and most trusted people in my life turn around and appear to demonise me too.

And then I realised that in actual fact all that ex-friend A and the Equals Training experience had really done was highlight the dynamic between me and R, which had been going on for years.

It was a transaction, a trade-off. By my agreeing to be the ‘demon’, he got to be the ‘saint’.

Then with all the pressure of the Equals situation the worm decided to turn. I fought back against the demonisation and dehumanisation. I identified it as bullying and scapegoating, with a shedload of psychological projection from others.

I went through the proverbial wringer over this. But my Higher Power gave me the strength to stand up to the bullying. As if my life depended on it, I analysed the situation from my point of view and insisted on my right to have an opinion of my own.

I some ways my life DID depend on it.

As a result of this experience I felt myself put on a massive growth spurt. My perception of this so-called mental illness changed. I stopped pathologising myself. I recognised the potential of my condition to bring about great insight, vision and creativity.

What I said in the Equals Training course was essentially this. I believe that the experience of being at rock bottom in life is a strength and not a weakness. Far from a disability it can impart great ability.

I honestly and truly do not aspire to be ‘normal’. I do not look to the run of human beings with ‘normal’ lives…jobs, mortgages, children etc, as role models.

I look to myself. I have self-belief. I trust my own judgment, and I trust in the amazing experiences I have had in the course of my ‘illness’.

All illness, according to Caroline Myss and many other healers, teachers and writers on spirituality, is an opportunity for healing the human psyche and attaining spiritual growth.

A political element also enters in when you are dealing with mental illness, because we face additional stigmatisation and demonisation by society as a whole. The effects of this are probably more painful and worse for our overall health, than the ‘illness’ itself.

It’s not for me to know all the reasons why my views did not go down well with the Equals team. Though my guess would be this. They are telling us to aspire to something that I could never in a million years aspire to. Normality.

I am resonating to the sound of Scott Peck’s ‘different drum’ and travelling down his ‘road less travelled’.

I see my life as a spiritual journey. I have been offered the privilege of not having to live a normal ‘householder’s’ life, as the Hindus would put it. I have not had to bring up children, work in order to keep a roof over my head, worry about where the next meal is coming from. Those circumstances have come about for a reason. This is the life I chose.

What I haven’t been able to choose, is to accept the presence of a Higher Power in my life. He/She/It is there whether I like it or not.

And to return to the much-vexed subject of ‘demons’ (interesting that I mention them in the tagline to this blog!) I am putting my size eight foot down now, and refusing to tolerate any more demonisation, either by others or by myself.

I am claiming humanity. And that has naturally resulted in a change in the dynamic between me and R.

Yesterday I had to face the prospect of a split from R. In fact I’ve been looking at this prospect pretty much daily since the whole Equals saga, which, as I say, simply highlighted the roles we played in our relationship.

The insecurity has been excruciating. Of course most people fear just this kind of insight, growth and change! That is only human. We are an animal species, as well as having divine potential. We cling to our familiar human comforts. Central among these are our fellow human beings, our family and close friends.

But the thought of losing R was unbearable. Then I realised that there were three in this relationship, like Diana’s ‘crowded marriage’.

Me, R and the Higher Power.

I prayed for strength to release him if this was what I must do.

I did not want to face the rest of my life without an intimate relationship, and for some reason, R was and is my choice for that intimate relationship. I have had many other offers and opportunities, but I always come back to wanting R.

I saw R yesterday. We sat on a park bench together near his home. I prayed out loud, holding his hand. Prayed for the guidance to both of us to do the right thing and for us to have the strength to do the divine will…whatever that was.

The spiritual life is very hard. But once you have embarked on it there is no turning back, because the joys and glimpses of another world that it affords you become almost like an addiction that you can never put down.

You are in this together. Not you and your human partner. He or she will always be peripheral to some extent, however much loved. No. You and your Higher Power.

Just as I thought…

Have now met with my Mum’s friend C and the young Afghan. He is a lovely and quite impressive young man with about a ton more drive, ambition and general sorted-ness about him than I had at the same age.

I’d made a shedload of assumptions about him that were not borne out in reality. I just didn’t get ‘desperation’. What he has going in his favour is also that irrepressible youthful energy, dynamism and can-do optimism.

No doubt there is plenty vulnerability there. He wouldn’t be human otherwise, given what he’s been through. But he keeps it well hidden and seems to be coping well. He also knows what he wants to do! Menswear design. He’s quite focussed. They’ve gone off now to look at a few other possible places to live.

My Care Coordinator helped us out by giving us a ‘predestination form’ or some such. This is where the Housing Benefit will tell you how much they can pay,  so that you can then approach letting agencies etc.

I was very grateful for his help and so, I’m sure, were they.

After they all left I had a major feeling of anticlimax. It just wasn’t at all as I’d expected. Also considerable relief, because at the rate he’s going I very much doubt he will be with me for very long, indeed, if at all. He’s very driven and ambitious, and quite determined.

Another tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. And also very humbling.

Love x

Fear

I’ve been a little ‘down’ of late. No more benzos needed to sleep. No more racing mind. I’m aware of fear of the unknown trying to dominate my thinking patterns. I’m scared of this new ‘test’. I’m meeting the young refugee today who will be staying with me until he can get sorted with housing, benefits, occupation etc.

Probably I’m rushing into a sense of ‘total responsibility’. This is as illusory as the complete opposite. I’m basically going into a neurosis about it. Everything stands and falls on whether I can hack it. A young vulnerable person is depending completely on me.

I’m being silly. I think meeting him and my Mum’s friend C today (they are coming to my house) will probably kick my monkey mind into touch with the reality of the situation.

What hasn’t helped is an attack of fatigue, which is something I suffer from periodically. Thank God it never lasts too long…maybe a week or two tops usually.

Nothing looks that bright from ‘comatose on bed’ position. It’s hard to envisage having the emotional energy to cope with someone else’s issues. I’m also pretty scared about having someone living with me in my house.

Well there, I’ve ‘confessed’. Like everything else, it will pass.

At any rate, I got the housework done. I’m not being perfectionist about it. It only took a few hours but the sweat was pouring from my brow, what with the hoover belching out heat and the humid weather.

I’m going to see my son on Saturday. Tomorrow he goes to stay with my Mum in Kent, and on Saturday I go down to join them, and then bring him back to London. On Sunday his foster mum will pick him up and take him back.

I’m hoping he’ll agree to come with me and R to the HUN Family and Friends Picnic at Ally Pally. At least for a bit.

I’m reading ‘Anatomy of the Spirit’ by Caroline Myss. She’s an intuitive healer. Lotsa stuff ’bout chakras. I recommend her.

Quivering in my boots folks. Remembering what fear is. Next time I observe it in others I will be more humble and less judgmental.

Love, Zoe xxx

Housework Day

Today’s the day, folks. After weeks of procrastination the moment of truth arrives when I have to get the Hoover out, empty it, and set to with it. Have bought a new mop to replace the one that gave up the ghost. Housework blitz time.

Some good news and some not so good, this morning. After a few days of slight fear and trembling over the prospect of having a young man stay in my house with me, I received an email saying that he will just come for two hours to meet me tomorrow, in the first instance.

He didn’t want to arrive to a stranger with a suitcase. Totally understandable. Much better this way and I am grateful for it as I have been feeling so tired and quite daunted by what I’ve taken on.

I’ve also put a limited time frame on how long he will be staying with me. We will make it a priority to find him a place of this own. I simply cannot contemplate the idea of sharing my house long term. My need for quiet and privacy is huge.

Because he is a vulnerable young man with complex needs, I want to go on helping him for as long as he needs and continue to be a friend he can turn to for assistance. That will be way easier for me once he is settled in his own place.

And now the not-so-good news. Haringey User Network is being decommissioned. This does not come as a total shock in the current climate. A friend even said as much to me, whether on hunch or information I don’t know, some weeks ago.

Fellow service users. We do not need to depend on commissioners in order to build a solid network and be a force for change in our Borough. As I am always saying, the quality of our links and personal bonds with one another is way more important. I have not been impressed by the kind of people who think you need money for everything (that’s well documented!)

What you need is passion, creativity, friendship and the ability to follow through.

This is not the end of Haringey User Network. We may end up with a different name, but there are more than enough talented, creative people in this Borough to build our own organisation which won’t be so easily sidelined, patronised and generally belittled by those in ‘power’.

Real power comes from within folks.

Wish me luck with the housework! My refugee friend is coming with my Mum’s friend C tomorrow. I have to impress both of them that this is at least a place fit to live in!

Lots of love, Zoe xxx

The Shady Influence of Hip Hop

I wonder what y’all thought when I announced a couple of posts ago that I believe I am ‘way more intelligent than most people’?

I acknowledged in a comment in response to CBTish that, particularly in traditional British culture, this is simply not done. We are all programmed to seek approval by putting ourselves down, self-deprecating, even if we have to fake it (false modesty). In addition Britain is an anti-intellectual culture. We don’t like clever-clogs.

Today, as I was listening to Eminem’s ‘Recovery’, an almost religious ritual at the moment as I take my morning bath, it occurred to me that hip hop is pretty much all about bragging, one-upping, competing, dissing others and so on.

Aha, I thought to myself. This, way more than all the ripe language and political incorrectness it contains, could be what marks hop hop as a truly counter-culture, in fact deeply subversive form. Well, at least in the UK!

What, my gentle reader asks, could be the spiritual or political value of the ‘lyrical diss’ and the ‘art of brag’?

Not an easy problem to pick apart. But I will give you my take on it anyway.

Discernment comes into it. The use of the critical faculty to say, well ‘this is wack’ (crap), ‘this is dope’ (good). And then to elucidate somewhat in your rap lyrics as to why said hip hop tune or rapper is ‘wack’ or ‘dope’. And to demonstrate in said rap lyrics your own superiority.

Aggression is closely linked to creativity. You don’t get to be a major artist (whether commercially successful or not) of any sort, in any medium, without a very healthy dose of self-belief. Said self-belief often has to fly in the face of certain cultural taboos, such as the British one on ‘blowing your own trumpet’.

Truly great and innovative artists have learned not to be ‘people pleasers’. Their creative vision impels them onward, not primarily the approval of critics or fans.

Said creative vision doesn’t come from other people, but from the inner voice, the creative Muse or even what some term the ‘higher power’, or God.

Why do I love hip hop, even though I know better than to ever attempt to rap myself, as I have no talent for it?

It’s an outlet for my own rage at the world. It affirms my own emotions, not just aggression, but the whole range. Sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, passion, lust etc. It’s deeply energising and at the same time grounding as I stagger out of my house of a morning, often physically and mentally tired, struggling with an almost permanent sense of dislocation and even unreality, to listen to an inspired hip hop track.

Sometimes what I need is encouragement to keep battling on. Hip hop is all about battling. Traditionally you would quite literally have hip hop artists battling each other on stage, and the audience would largely decide who the winner was.

What makes hip hop such an intimate and deeply human, even transpersonal form, is that rappers spark off each other all the time. They constantly refer directly to other rappers in their lyrics, often to diss them, but also to show their appreciation of and debt to them. Most rappers will have a ‘list’ of some sort, of the hip hop artists whose shoulders they have stood on in building their own careers.

It’s a bit like a sibling rivalry. That’s how close and passionate it is. A hip hop artist or track can mean the world to the listener at a given time in their life. Young people (predominantly, I am hardly young!) worship their favourite rappers as demigods, and look to them as role models.

If I had to come back to this world (and I devoutly hope I won’t, I’m going full-tilt for full spiritual enlightenment this time around and not sure if I even believe in reincarnation in any case) I would come back as a superstar rapper.

Not because I particularly want to be a man! Certainly not because I want the ‘bling’ lifestyle and to be able to shag a shedload of women!

But because I believe it is very bliss itself to be able to ‘spit out a rhyme’ that will go out to millions of eager and attentive listeners and quite literally inspire them with the strength and courage they need to reach for the stars.

Hip hop is energy, hip hop is power. Hip hop is full of wisdom, hip hop connects you to a world wide family. Hip hop lets you know you are not alone, hip hop is ‘you and them against the world’. And best of all (if you’re me) hip hop at its best is deeply subversive, even revolutionary. It wants to turn the world upside down, and for the duration of the track you’re listening to, you can believe that it will happen, is even happening right now.

So next time you catch Zoe in the act of bragging (and then apologising for it) remember she may have no talent for rap whatsoever, but she’s hip hop to the core! Call it brainwashing if you like. My life is a battle, I have confidence and faith in my skills and my ability to win out, every single time.

Discernment. Passion. Honing a critical faculty. Deep spiritual wisdom. Energy. Power. Knowing you are never really alone. Inspiration. A healthy outlet for your natural human anger, aggression, even rage.

Just a few of the reasons you should give hip hop a listen if you don’t already. And if you have been ‘mentally interesting’ in your life (to quote Seaneen), all the more reason.

You’d better believe it that young people are growing up being thoroughly indoctrinated by hip hop culture in a way that would probably horrify their parents. To these young people, hip hop is better than God. It is God in Man (or Woman). The world is changing folks. And you’d better believe it.

Lots of love and happy listening! Zoe xxx

Ooer blimey gosh golly…

My mum texted me this morning saying she had ‘an important proposition’ to make! I thought this unusual and interesting. So I called her straight back.

My God folks. I may be taking into my home a young gay Afghan refugee. He is a protege of a good friend of hers who has been looking after him for years while he did an art degree in Rochester. He desperately needs a place to stay in London so he can look for work, and a bit of help and guidance as his written English is not good and he’ll need to be shown the ropes and introduced to people.

I found myself waxing enthusiastic about the idea, even while at the back of my head I was going ‘bloody hell my life will never be the same again!’ But it won’t anyway, so y’know, what do I have to lose?

I’ve got a lovely spare room, only small but all kitted out for a young person, as I had my son in mind when I got the wardrobe and put in a desk.

But, uh, wh wh wh what am I DOING!

It’s not all finalised yet as I have to speak to my Mum’s friend. She probably wants to check me out as much as anything, She doesn’t want her young protege to stay with a mad old bint who’ll mess with his head.

I told my Mum ‘I need a project!’ though, and it’s true enough. I also need someone to look after, a young vulnerable gay man sounds perfect.

But this means that all this talk about being ‘recovered’ or at the very least ‘recovering’ from my mental illness had better not be a load of old toss, because I’m about to take my first test of sanity. Can I share my house with someone who needs my help?

I believe I can. Let’s hope I’m not grandiose and deluded, for the poor boy’s sake.

Lots love and trepidation as I wait to be ‘interviewed’ for the job by my Mum’s friend. Zoe xxx

Tired

Y’see the trouble with me…

My head won’t stop. My body can’t keep up. I can’t stay in all the time, but going out, walking about and socialising knackers the fleshy vehicle.

And yesterday was not planned to be a massive party but that was how it turned out. Dropping in for a tea ‘n’ a smoke at the Day Centre I rapidly found myself surrounded by more friends old and new than I’ve had around me in years. Unbeknownst to me there was a Barbecue and send-off of a rather lovely staff member, an Occupational Therapist.

She is off to France to live with her French boyfriend and take some much-needed time out from the work treadmill. From what I can only call ‘an instant antipathy’ that I took to this poor lady when our paths first crossed I have developed huge respect for her as I’ve seen her change and grow, responding brilliantly to the steep learning curve she faced after training and starting work with mental health service users.

I was so pleased that by pure serendipity I managed not to miss her send-off. What you will always notice with these kind of events is the amount of sheer love and generosity that service users show toward those who have had the patience and staying power to work with them. We are hardly the easiest client group! But I would hazard a guess that what keeps the best staff in the job…often underpaid and underappreciated by society at large…is the human reward of love and appreciation that service users give in spades.

Service users are sensitive people and often get pissed off with ‘their’ workers. But we also feel a loyalty and even comradeship with those who, in a sense, voluntarily inhabit the chalk face with us. They don’t have to be there. They could have chosen a way less stressful job.

I’ve seen this even in the hellish hospital ward. No one in their right mind would want to work there. The environment is the same hellhole whether you’re staff or patient, with the exception that staff get to go home at the end of the day.

Some staff are there because they quite literally could not get a job anywhere else. Desperately poor performing with no vision or compassion for those they ‘care’ for. But many are wonderful, brave human beings, valiantly taking on a super human struggle every day of their lives. It’s basically a low-status job, and the sheer stress of trying to face down utter chaos every moment of every working day is often clearly visible in their faces, behaviour and body language.

I respect these chalk-face nurses. They do it for the love of the patients and the desperate desire to make their lives a little more bearable while they have to be there. And the patients repay all those tiny acts of kindness, fellow-feeling and compassion with a very deep love and gratitude.

I’ve never been a psych nurse. But this is my observation for what it’s worth. The job gets it’s hooks into them and they find that they cannot imagine working anywhere else. No one sees the pain and oppression of the psychiatric patient so close up as the nurses. That takes a certain type of guts…or else complete insensitivity. And make no mistake about it. Patients will always know which is which.

Patients are like children. I wouldn’t get away with a statement like that if I hadn’t been one myself! But what I mean is…we instinctively know who is for us and who is against us. You simply cannot fake it to a patient in crisis on the ward. They have a razor-sharp radar. They will suss you out in no time at all. In fact, the patients are way better at ‘assessing’ the nurses than the other way around.

This brings me to one of my favourite theories. You could broadly call it ‘political psychology’. In this world there are the haves and the have nots. We all know that. There are rich and poor, powerful and powerless. None of it is based on intrinsic worth of a person, morality or even talent. Often quite the opposite. Killer instinct is often a must to succeed in the rat race.

What you will always find…what slaveowners found with their slaves, what masters found with their servants in the ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ scenario, what men find with women while we still inhabit a fundamentally patriarchal society, is this.

The underlings will know their ‘masters’ way way better than the ‘masters’ will know the underlings. We’re back to ‘the power of disempowerment’ of my previous post.

Just think about it. Will your pet cat not track your movements and even know before you do that it is feeding time? Behind that inscrutable feline face do you not often wonder what on earth is going through that little head of theirs, and even feel a little insecure and paranoid about it?

(Oh that’s just me then). If you know the quality of your life quite literally depends on that ‘superior’ social stratum (think politician, think psych nurse, whatever) of course you will study them. Of course you will ‘assess’ them. Of course you will ‘size them up’ according to how likely they are to give you what you want or need.

But those of the ‘superior’ stratum, who depend on you for precisely nothing and in fact are often painfully aware of the precariousness of thei own position as well as the blatant injustice that placed them above you…

They will often experience insecurity. Paranoia. Naked fear. What they won’t often be found doing is studying you. They are too busy trying to uphold their own power, and all too painfully aware that a thousand pairs of diesempowered eyes are studying them and finding them wanting.

I think you’ll find that almost uncontrovertible as an argument. But feel free to controvert it anyway folks! Lots of love, Zoe xxx

My Random Titles

See…that’s an example. I have a habit of typing a title in, then wildly deviating from the topic and ending up God knows where.

This, like my current inability to add categories and tags or comment anywhere else, is another way of ensuring that you don’t get so many hits on your blog. In fact I may shortly be renaming this blog ‘How not to blog successfully’, so that it may then be used to help others, a bit like those workplace training videos John Cleese starred in.

Or maybe it’s a demonstration of my total contempt for commercial values and the art of self-promotion. My mind is on higher things! (Add smiley of choice to allay fears of those who might consider me just a tad arrogant!)

Maybe I could be accused of arrogance. It’s in the eye of the beholder really. If you look it up the definition seems to suggest something like an overblown ego or ‘thinkin’ you’re the Biz’.

The kind of arrogance I can be accused of is this. My experience leads me to believe I am way more intelligent than most people.

There, I’ve said it, I’ve got it off my chest. And no, it ain’t endearing in cold hard print on the internet.

However, since said high intelligence is the source of so many of my so-called ‘problems’ including those of the mental health variety, and I think I am hardly alone in that, I will leave it there and hope that someone, somewhere will be pissed off with me enough to spark a comment…even an abusive one. Let’s face it, I’m hardly in a position to be fussy right now!

If I was the overweening bastard that it might suggest, I would doubtless have difficulty forming close, warm and loving relationships. I do not. I have more friends than I know what to do with half the time. T’was not always the case. But in the flesh I am very human, accepting, patient and even kind.

But I’m not going to fuck about with false modesty or fish for compliments by putting myself down. In this dumb and dumber culture we currently inhabit I am a rare bird indeed. Someone who thinks independently. Someone who ponders long and hard. Someone who doesn’t spit empty words into the air like they are going out of fashion, as if silence was their worst enemy.

Someone who has never watched Britain’s Got Talent, and in fact, never watches TV at all any more. Nor do I even listen to Radio Four. It’s too full of crap.

I wouldn’t have the blasted box in my living room at all except that R sometimes likes to watch it and I guess there might at some stage be a DVD I want to view. I loathe TV with a vengeance because I honestly believe it dulls, poisons and corrupts people’s minds. Not you gentle reader, when you watch BBC4 or the Discovery Channel or your favourite comedy. No, them out there, the addicts, those with brains more akin to a sponge than a cauliflower.

There I go again. How dare I etc, etc, etc. Well, dear hater, I dare because this is my private space where I can express myself freely. Just as you are free not to read it, and I am free not to watch Britain’s Got Talent. Free speech? I bet you maybe didn’t even realise that it was under threat in this modern Britain of ours?

This world suits the dullards right down to the ground. Everywhere they look they are catered for. The rest of us have slim pickings indeed. We also have to somehow tolerate their idiocy and cretinism, and meat-befuddled minds. We have to live in the mess they’ve made. Then start clearing it up, ’cause don’t count on them to lift a fat finger. It’s too busy fiddling with the remote.

And if you have a problem with that, feel free to shout all the abuse you like. I’ll even publish your comments, ’cause I like nothing better than to watch silly people show themselves up.

Silly people hate being shown up. It’s like you showed them a mirror and exposed all their pretences and fakery in one. Are they gonna love you for it? Hardly…

You can’t expect to pass through this world with integrity intact and not gather a few enemies along the way. Goes back to what I was saying about saints, how they don’t exist, and how I wouldn’t like them if they did.

I had a silly day yesterday and there is no question in my mind that I was not the source of it. I went to the most Godawful pointless so-called service user consultation meeting at St Ann’s Hospital Haringey (still naming, shaming and exposing!) It’s called the Acute Care Forum, and you might think that in that case someone who was on the bloody ward herself (that’s Acute Care) only two months ago might have something valuable to contribute. But instead we got a lot of professional and pseudo-professional wank.

It did my head in even more because there was another service user there who seemed to want to beat the professionals at their own wanky game. When I tried to speak she dismissed and talked down to me, tho’ she is probably less than half my age and has about one-fiftieth of my experience of the mental health system.

That…my dears…is arrogance. Certain young people just have no respect for their elders and betters. She was a young woman with an agenda of her own, and I was disappointed by that, because she is also way too intelligent to be lost to the Cause of service users.

So I trotted out of the meeting before my head exploded with frustration (gosh, it’s the Ward Community Meeting all over again!) and went and joined a poet friend and his fellow poet mate for lunch in the staff canteen. I’m an artist. I have a creative temperament. I am not cut out for the humdrum round of meetings that is the lot of the service user consultant.

I’ll go with Frank Sinatra and Do It My Way.

Lotsa love. Zoe xxx

It’s My Birthday!

Liar liar pants on fire, it’s not my birthday!

Hip hop fans may get the reference. If not, y’know what, it doesn’t matter!

But this IS a special post, and I AM in a mood to celebrate. It’s the 200th post on this blog.

How about some of you lurkers giving me a congratulatory comment! Especially those of you who have been around for a while, you know who you are!

There was a time not so long go when I couldn’t move or breathe for comments streaming in thick and fast. (I exaggerate wildly). I struggled to respond to them all.

But a gal doesn’t want to feel like she’s ‘talking to herself’ (Eminem, Recovery).

I know you’re out there…the stats give you away. So stop eavesdroppin’ and start communicating.

All that said, I no longer feel embarrassed when there is a prolonged dry spell with ‘0’ comments. It takes more than that to embarrass an old-timer like me these days.

I’m a happy lady today. Yesterday I napped for two hours in the evening with  ‘0’ mills of Clonazepam. I woke up disorientated but blissed-out.

I recommend regularly ‘venting’ your suicidal urges. That way you get them off your chest and outa your system where they can’t do any serious harm.

In fact, the more people ‘out’ themselves as potential suicides the better I like it. Call it Schadenfreude if you like…I prefer to think of it as knowing I am not the only one who feels that way. Forgive me that very human trait. No one likes to be all on their ownsome.

But folks…don’t do it. Look at me. The other day I wanted to off myself or get someone else to do it for me. Today, I’m happy. Ha!

And I’ve got every reason to be. I’m recovering from a very serious mental illness. I can look forward to years of complete and total sanity and stability. New opportunities will open up to me as others recognise what I’ve known for some time. This was never gonna be a ‘forever’ thing.

What’s more I see at as a massive achievement and I’m beyond proud of myself. It’s better than a PhD. In fact, in a way, it IS a PhD.

A PhD in Manic Depression. My ‘illness’ has taught me all I need to know. It was a teacher. A professor in fact. And I was a willing student.

Wouldn’t you be happy?

If that wasn’t enough I learned from the Five-Day Forecast that it’s going to rain today here in London Town. It’s been very hot and dry lately. And I love good old-fashioned English summer rain! If you were planning a Barbecue today well, stuff you, I bet you were gonna cook meat on it and I’m an out and proud vegan (well, almost).

‘So why did you become a vegan?’ I hear the standard, slightly-retarded carnivorous voice. To which I retort ‘none of your damn business, go away I can smell the blood on your breath!’

For anyone genuinely interested in the vegan lifestyle, that’s a whole other post. But I’ll just say here…I became a vegan because I needed plenty love, plenty good karma, plenty courage and the support and gratitude of all the other animal species just to survive this cursed and blessed life of mine.

A lesser-known secret about the vegan lifestyle is that it is full of hedonistic delights. We enjoy our food to the max, all the more so because of said good karma and the knowledge that our food harms as few beings as humanly possible. A spiritual thang, ya get me.

It is also my belief that vegans maximise their own intelligence by their food choices. I’m not talking ‘high IQ’. I’m talking a higher sort of intelligence. It comes from God, the Higher Power, it could also be called divine inspiration. If you place yourself firmly on the side of the angels, those same angels will come and help you out. And angels are not dullards.

Intelligence and spirituality go together like the proverbial horse and carriage. Intelligence is also closely connected to wisdom, love and compassion. Give yourself a fighting chance in this school of hard knocks people.  Go vegan, or at least ease up on the meat-eating.

I guess it all comes back to my perennial obsession about being accountable for what we do. I have no ‘beef’ with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (Brit reference) and even have a slight crush on him despite his meat-eating, because he teaches people valuable lessons. If you can’t kill the animal don’t bloody eat the meat!

Morrissey and the Smiths put it well in their track ‘Meat is Murder’. ‘And the flesh that you fancifully fry/is not succulent tasty or kind/it’s sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder.’

Hey, you know it makes sense! Lots love, Zoe xxx

The Power of Disempowerment

Disempower away, world! Do your worst! Y’see, I’m immune to your efforts. Did I not tell you in a previous post that I never lose? I was brought up that way…blame the parents!

Keep it up world. Stigmatise me just as hard as you possibly can. Exclude me from whatever you want to. Have another go at making the demon horns stick!

Every time you do it, God knows how, I feel a ‘rush of blood to the head’, resulting in more powerful thought, greater inspiration and an even more impressive flood of creativity.

OK, in the last post at a particularly low point I asked you to attempt murder. The offer’s still there. But the reality is, I don’t move in the sort of circles where anyone even knows anyone who owns a gun, let alone the will to mow me down with it!

You see I live in a leafy, middle-class neighbourhood of London Town, where the gun laws have still resolutely remained the same, even while the rest of our culture and politics is irresistibly attracted to playing the monkey to America’s organ grinder.

And why do I bang on endlessly on that clapped-out feminist drum of ‘the personal is political’?

Because my worst enemies have become my closest friends…or vice versa, if you prefer.

And it won’t do any more, it just won’t do to keep telling me to ‘put myself first’ and ‘look after myself’. Of course I appreciate the sentiment. But not what lurks behind it…the implication that I have ever done anything else!

At the end of the day the fact remains that I had the misfortune to develop a deep and abiding love, affection and even fascination, for the two people who currently hate me most.

And no, I ain’t gonna apologise for that. Do I have bad taste in people? Certainly not. Both of my loved ones are genuinely fascinating, beautiful, magical, wonderful and worthy of the very deepest love. I have many other clever, talented and beautiful friends. But these two were the Chosen.

So it’s just no use telling me ‘he’s bad for you girlfriend, walk away!’ ‘She’s a bitch, let it go, she isn’t worth it’.

They have given me more than any other human beings alive. I quite literally would not be here now, writing this, if it were not for best friend A and partner of eleven years R.

My turn to be a stubborn bastard.

But to round this off before I trot off to see my gorgeous Care Coordinator. Keep up the demonising. Keep up the bullying. In the immortal words of Dizzee Rascal ‘you’re just challenging yourself. So if you’re feeling brave, go ahead and hurt yourself.’

I am there within you. No desperate effort on your part will free you of that part of you which is me. You will simply flush yourself down the pan more effectively, the longer this goes on.

I don’t like to use the word ‘retard’: it’s somehow unworthy of me, but I am human, I have a temper which can only take so much. Only I and my Higher Power know the superhuman patience I have had to exercise pretty much all my life, as I was subjected to indignity on humiliation on degradation by people I knew weren’t fit to lick my shoe.

Disempowerment rules OK! Fuck equality. Fuck inclusion. My experience of it has been a bunch of brazen and sickening hypocrisy.

You are not my equal. So let’s just stop pretending shall we?

For my gentle-hearted readers…this is not directed at you. I like people who are comfortable with their own and others’ humanity. To the rest…Please stop harming yourselves!

With much love as ever. Zoe xxx

What you might call a Vent.

More of my stream of consciousness…

My headache is gone. The absence of plastic horns from being demonised could explain it.

Let me explain me. This wouldn’t go down well as a CV, but then, I am not currently looking for a job.

Forty-eight year old female. Been labelled ‘bipolar’ for nineteen years. In that time, have ‘achieved’ twenty-five sectioniings under the Mental Health Act. In addition, about four or five voluntary admissions.

Drugs taken include: Lithium, Sodium Valproate, Carbemazepine, Quetiapine, Stellazine, Haloperidol, Droperidol, Zopiclone, Diazepam, Lorazepam, Clonazepam, Lamotrogine, Risperidone, Prozac, Venlafaxine, Citalopram. OK you get the picture, so I won’t tax my memory any more.

Acquired during that time (in between admissions) loss of my only child to state care, one First Class Honours Degree in French, Italian and Race and Culture, one European Computer Driving Licence, a Diploma qualifying me to practise Aromatherapy, an NVQ Level 1 in Catering and Hospitality.

Plenty knowledge of the mental health system.

But my greatest achievement of the lot?

Hold your breath folks. Complete and total recovery from a major, supposedly incurable mental illness.

We’re not talking a little bout of the blues. We’re talking full-blown psychosis. Visions, hallucinations, grandiose delusions, and all kinds of life-wrecking behaviours. Never self-harmed in my life. Not once. Been at the bottom of a very dark and deep pit when depression struck. But somehow never followed through with any kind of action.

I’m still here folks and I ain’t going anywhere. So if anyone out there sees me as a major threat to themselves or to society in general, feel free to come round to my house and put a bullet through my brain, but please do a thorough job. I don’t want to wake up a vegetable:  much as I like to eat them I don’t want to become one.

See I got to admit this. I’m not keen on life. It’s an awful lot of hard work and the endurance of great pain does not strike me as a recommendation of any sort.

And yeah, I know ‘people would be upset’. ‘Suicide is a terrible legacy to leave to your family and friends’. Agreed. Plus why at the end of the day should I harm someone that I love?

That’s why I want all you demon-haters out there, the ones who insisted on making me wear these ridiculous horns for so long, to see if you can’t come up with some sort of Zoe-assassination plot…you know, to go along with the character-assassination one?

That’s right folks. I’m asking you to remove all karmic consequences from me by doing the job for me? Sure you would then be lumbered with karmic consequences of your own…But in my humble opinion, you would actually be doing me a favour. See it as a merciful act, akin to putting a sick dog out of its misery?

God will no doubt see your point of view.

I quite genuinely and honestly do not want to live.

And putting yourself in my shoes, do you think you would either?

I’m not remotely depressed. I’m looking forward to my dinner! But my life is simply way too full of pain not to mention drama to be considered in any humane sense ‘worth living’.

I want to go. And I want to go now.

In case my son is reading this, I am going nowhere. I am just expressing how it feels to live with this degree of agony. Before you accuse me of theatricality or histrionics, try stepping into my shoes. I give you five minutes.

There is a MASSIVE difference between thought and action. I will never harm myself in any way shape or form. I just want all my haters to gang up together, and instead of endlessly torturing me, simply get the job done. Quick, clean, leaving a reasonably presentable corpse. All my trials Lord, over.

Sorry to offend, if I have.  But I am simply exercising my right to free speech and I am telling you simply, clearly, honestly, that I have no vested interest in living.

Not a cry for attention. I don’t need or want your attention. Just a statement of the harsh, sad facts. If you’ve been through what I have, you may have a right to judge me. Otherwise keep your silly thoughts to yourself.

Uncategorised or Uncategorisable?

Hi folks. I well know the benefits to the number of hits you get if you add categories and tags. Indeed I have been known so to do in the past. It isn’t laziness or apathy about my ‘hits’ that stops me. I simply lacked sufficient geek-factor on this occasion to work out how to do it, and believe me it wasn’t for the want of trying!

Please don’t think either folks, that I don’t want comments. It’s a bone of contention between me and my good pal Seaneen at The Secret Life (look on my blog roll, haven’t time or patience to link here) that she gets a zillion comments and I get barely any (at least at the moment).

Seaneen babe! Only a bone of contention in my silly head! I owe most of my hits to you from you being kind and patient enough to include me on your blog roll. Love you and owe you lots.

Gianna at Beyond Meds is another source of great inspiration. She fired me up to start this blog in the first place so plaudits to her.

I am into the art of writing at the moment, but the art of blogging is another matter,  more complex and requiring skills and facility that escape me right now. If I had my sweetheart R on board no doubt I could reach more people. But if you read the last entry (ies) you’ll understand why that is just not gonna be happening right now.

And to those who have read and even the few who respond…all the above does not mean you go in any way unappreciated. I read my stats and reassure myself that many more people read than respond. That is always the case with blogging. In addition, I have not been reading much or responding at all to others’ blogs right now. Again, this will not always be the case. But I am needing to closely track my muse.

OK folks. I want to discuss one topic with you here today. Demonisation.

Demonisation=dehumanisation. Neither is pleasant. All those of us who have been mental health service users have experienced it to some degree, whether they know it or not.

How can I make so bold a sweeping statement? Let me explain.

What is mental illness? A defective brain? Moral weakness? An organic chemical reaction, comparable to many genetic diseases?

Bollocks it is, excuse me.

Mental illness, like laughter,  like the spiritual impulse that has prompted man/woman to invent and worship gods and religions, like anger, yes, like anger – is unique to human beings. You don’t see these, or creative activities such as music and the other arts, in other species.

For this reason I would contend that it is worthy of our respect. If we genuinely respect our own species and what it is capable of, then we must pay close attention to the meaning contained in human madness.

Sadly, respect is a lot more talked about than it is genuinely practised in today’s world. I am a vegan, or try to be most of the time. I respect other species. I also respect and even venerate my own. I see no contradiction there. I am not animal-lover, people-hater. We are all animals. But humans come with extra applications, as modern tecchie-speak would have it.

But what I am trying to get around to is demonisation, a hot topic for me in my life.

I have used the word fairly frequently in the posts leading up to this one, particularly the long collection of emails that I sent to an organisation called Equals Training.

They are a social firm, dedicated to empowering service users and other disabled people and breaking down the barriers they face to mainstream environments such as the workplace.

Sadly they scored a spectacular own goal by, on the very first course they ran, excluding one of these same disabled, disadvantaged people. Me.

As if this was not enough injury in itself, they then went ahead with a prolonged campaign of character assassination, calling me abusive, aggressive, pathologising my behaviour, ostracising and sending me to Coventry. This, dear readers, is demonisation. It is dehumanising to the recipient, and it hurts like hell.

My partner R is a member of their firm. He found it way more convenient to tow their party line even if it meant joining in with the bullying, than to support the woman he loves. I might add that he witnessed the whole incident from start to finish, as well as the effect on me.

But the workings of Karma are indeed wonderful. Hot on the heels of the latest Equals tactic – a complaint to the police about me – R and I had our very own brush with the law on Saturday night.

I was in a position where I could have pressed charges for assault against him. Three times the two coppers asked if I wanted to do that, in which case he would have been accompanying them to the station right there and then.

R is a man with a completely clean criminal record. He has no addictions or obvious vices. He barely even swears. He is shaping up to be a saint…but unfortunately, I don’t believe in saints or even like them very much.

And here is where the political gets personal. For eleven years he and I have struggled with the saint-demon dynamic that surfaces again and again in our relationship.

Equals have obligingly highlighted this dynamic by joining in. What they don’t seem to have noticed, is that this is precisely what the mental health system does to human beings.

We are not demons. We are not despicable or morally weak. Our behaviour, deemed ‘deviant’ by hardly-objective parties, is a human response to the sick world that we are living in. OK, you’re trying to tell me that most psychiatric patients have not been abused in their lives prior to developing an ‘illness’?

I can tell you that I certainly have.  Most of it, ironically, has been at the hands of that very mental health system itself…the strong arm of coercive psychiatry,  the violence inflicted on me and my fellow humans which they have the nerve to call ‘care’.

If you see an angry or stressed-out person, what are you going to do? Deny your own and their humanity by condemning them for it? Or are you going to find out what it is that they are angry or stressed-out about?

And all these would-be saints who simply cannot tolerate the sight of human emotion in others. What about the effect on them? Are they not going to suffer the karmic consequences, if you believe in karma, or at the very least find their own creativity blocked and stymied by their denial of their own and others’ full humanity?

I can see the superficial appeal of  ‘sainthood’. Of scapegoating others in order to feel better about yourself. But it is a slippery path from that to outright denial of reality, and then you have the precipice drop into insanity itself.

My argument then is this. By demonising others, you become insane. Cherish and treasure the full range of human experience, and treat gently, sensitively and compassionately those who are going through any kind of mental distress.

Is it surprising that we find, over and over again, that the mental health services are more insane than we are?

Enough for today, though I have so much more to say. But I’m meeting a cherished friend by the boating lake at Ally Pally. Care to join us (in spirit at least!)?

With much love to all my fellow ‘demons’. Zoe xxx

Endless Drama

This time, of the boyfriend variety. Most of my dramas are connected to him in some way.

R and I had a full-blown domestic on Saturday night. The neighbours called the police at about three thirty in the morning, understandably enough as it probably sounded like a murder might be taking place.

I’m just glad I currently have no fragile old ladies living either side of me. One died and is replaced by a family…nice people, thank God. They have grown used to the sound of rasping voices from this address (mainly mine) not to mention the endless hip-hop floating out of my bedroom window of a morning. The other one I learned from her son has had the awful misfortune of being placed in the ‘geriatric’ (lovely word that huh?) ward at St Ann’s Hospital.

Anyway to get back to the Drama. Two coppers arrive, one with half a brain plus his fresh-faced moron sidekick.

At first R wanted to use the occasion to run away to the safety of home  (a tried and tested tactic which invariably ends up backfiring on his arse because it winds me up and upsets me no end).

However, as the coppers attempted to facilitate his getaway I whispered in his ear that I was in danger of being dragged off to the ward again if he left, and also that coppers now terrify me since the last time they arrived at my house intent on incarcerating a perfectly sane woman for the crime of non-compliance with the Home Treatment Team.

R relented and stayed to face the music. I made us a cup of proper Rosy Lee (R now has a herbal tea habit) and put sugar in it…the well known remedy for shock.

The jovial coppers insisted on remaining in our living room for a good half hour. I ‘shared’ with them my dislike of the authoritarian state, confided my habit of sneaking up behind police officers’ backs and giving them the finger, and pointed out my partner’s environmental credentials, as evidenced by the bike in the hall.

They addressed R as ‘fella’ and ‘young man’ which prompted both of us to request a modicum of respect. I pulled rank on the moron sidekick by telling him I was old enough to be his mother.

I skated my usual fine line between outright rudeness and avoidance of arrest or worse…sectioning. Toward the end of their visit the older one told us to ‘go to bed’, to which my rejoinder was to express my wish to tell him to ‘go to hell’. I get away with a lot by simply speaking a lot faster and a lot more articulately than they are accustomed to.

When I referred to the fact that my partner had hit me the coppers wanted to know if I wanted to allege assault, in which case it would be R’s turn to accompany them to the Pig Sty. I told them that a punch on the arm was as nothing compared to the mental torture I have recently endured at the hands of him and certain equals of his.  He had simply lost it and no one is better placed than I to understand why that might be the case.

Finally they left, with us under a strict warning that if there was any more noise one of us would be arrested.  I told them they were mad if they thought we would risk that in a million years. We just didn’t enjoy their company enough.

So it was goodbye Pigs, hello bed, but we were both utterly and completely shell-shocked and it was about four thirty by this time.

Exhausted by a night of sheer torture (and that was before the Pigs arrived) I fell asleep, and woke at about eight to find the bed empty. R had gone.  He was convinced that if he stayed that threat of arrest might become a reality.

I was panicked and grief-stricken by his disappearance and looked in vain for any note. I rang him and he answered: he had just got home. Amidst all the Sturm und Drang he had somehow thought to take the home-grown raspberries from the fridge (a gift to me the previous evening) and take them home with him, as he rightly thought they would not be eaten, and as he later explained they are ‘his babies’.

Thoughts went through my head, all-too-familiar but more intense than ever before. This is it. We are killing each other. I am going to have to split from the love of my life because this relationship is making me ill. And I owe it to myself and everyone who loves me to put my health first.

After the initial awful panic and sky-fallen dread, a bath and a hair wash, I found a text from him saying he wanted to support me but he didn’t want to see me.

We sent a number of texts back and forth and he was engaging fully with the situation. A good sign. Yes, he had done his usual runner, but here he was recognising his responsibility to see me through however he could.

I took a Benzo and the panic and grief melted away. And no, half a mill of Clonazepam is not that powerful. I just had a total change of mind and mood. This was not the end of anything, and it might just be the wake up call that we both so badly needed.

I had quite a good day. Saw a few friends at a Sustainable Haringey picnic at the Town Hall in Hornsey. Texted merrily away, mainly to R. He told me at first he needed a few days to ‘wallow in self-pity’. Later, after not one but TWO long walks in Firs Lane Fields with his dog, he amended that he no longer felt the self-pity but was now merely ‘numb and fragile’.

I thought it a great sign that he decided to fast forward from self-pity to punch-drunk numbness. He even texted me a couple of humourous rhymes at the end of the day.

Problem for you reader, for all those slightly sad types out there who love a brain-teaser.

What do you do when you both love each other deeply and passionately, but find yourselves unaccountably wanting to kill each other?

People in normal, boring, only half-hearted relationships need not apply. You simply won’t get it. But if you’ve been anywhere near where I’m talking about, answers on a postcard please. We need help!

Lotsa love peeps. Zoe xxx

And the Winner is…

Mental Health Activism

Hi Peeps.

Lesson 1: Be creative

Lesson 2: Don’t fight the wrong people

Lesson 3: Wise up and access your bullshit-detector…we all have one!

Lesson 4: Form strong, close and affectionate bonds with your comrades-in-arms

Lesson 5: Be on your guard for wolves in sheeps’ clothing

Lesson 6: Be open-minded

Enough lessons. The only reason I’m using this shorthand is because I’m knackered, in an internet caff cos my ‘puter is on strike, and all talked-out for today after an intense coffee session with a close friend and fellow local service user activist.

Personal relationships are not a side issue and are not petty. Work locally, think globally, but go one further. Recognise that particularly for those of us with mental health problems our ability to recover and work productively depends primarily on the quality of our personal relationships.

Never underestimate the value or significance of that seemingly innocuous coffee-and-chat.

Fine to be on a mission. Not fine to have a Messiah complex.

I can’t do this without you my fellow service users and readers. Without you I am a burnt out case, washed up on the litter-strewn beach of life.

Don’t do that to me! Be there. We need each other. Lotsa love, Zoe xxx

Mission Search and Destroy Goes Ahead As Planned…

Revenge is sweet honey…

Alexandra Crisis What Crisis?

Look, if you leave me with nothing else to do the Devil will make work for idle hands…

Alexandra Road Crisis Unit Haringey. A misnomer of the most misleading kind.

You’re in a crisis? Wait a couple of weeks until we may have a bed free. Then arrive for your appointment with the Spanish Inquisition.

You want to come here? Then you are current Suspect Number One.

Woe betide you if you are psychotic, especially if you’re in a manic phase. I can guarantee it won’t go down well with The Team.

What you need to understand is that they are a highly moral bunch. They believe themselves to be our Moral Exemplars. By daring to have a crisis and ask for help you have already admitted to some sort of crime.

The French cook Pierre (name, shame and EXPOSE!) is the maddest person in the house and The Team are all locked into an enabling relationship with his illness.

His food is as mad as he is. I give you puddings with no sugar in them and rice and peas cooked in the French style with plenty of double cream… If you’re a vegan forget it. His poor mad brain doth not compute and never count on The Team to enlighten him. They have Way More Important Things To Do.

I was in a manic phase. Naturally the elephant in the room is the one thing all manic people want to talk about. And the sheer insanity of Pierre’s cooking (and reaction to the merest hint of criticism) was that for me, on this occasion.

Suffice to say, it didn’t go down well.

Kicked out while floridly manic and vulnerable with a phony ‘warning letter’ which gave no warning whatsoever.

Branded a racist. I am supposed to have told this white Frenchman to ‘go back to his own country’.

I attempt to complain to their line management at the Sainted Haringey Council some time later, after I see a close friend and very vulnerable suicidal bipolar lady get similar treatment. I get a letter back from a lady called Yvette Husbands at the Sainted Haringey Council which manages to offend on so many levels it’s dizzying.

I won’t bore you with it, just to say that I can only complain on my own behalf, no one else’s. Uh. How very convenient when this place caters essentially for vulnerable and ill people who are unlikely to be able to speak up for themselves. She then goes on to state that since I am a convicted racist my complaint is clearly invalid…

Do you see how they work? You can’t get at Alexandra Road, not no way no how. Unless you want to give them a ‘Wow’ award. I give them a massive ‘Wow’ for brazen hypocrisy, sanctimony, incestuous, unhealthy ‘teamwork’ and bullying and ostracising vulnerable people in their care. Oh, and being IN NO WAY QUALIFIED to deal with psychotic patients.

Alexandra Road, you suck. Racist indeed. Fuck right off right now. And I hope you all choke on one of Pierre’s sugar-free puddings…

Lots of love, sweetness and light to all the mental health services in Haringey. We love you to bits…and that’s the way we want you. xxx

Uninspired to F***

London one massive Downhills Ward at St Ann’s Hospital (name, shame and expose!!) It’s way too hot and what’s even worse than the heat is the retards crowing about the ‘beautiful weather’.

I long to wipe the silly grins off their faces with a cold snap followed by a monsoon…

So why is today Downhills Ward, St Ann’s Hospital, Haringey, London (name and shame, expose expose expose) writ large? Let me explain.

You wake up out of a beautiful dream of being someone who matters to a living soul. You wash, brush your teeth, make your silly hospital bed with it’s incontinence-proof mattress.

Then, as is your wont, you think, right what now?

Picture this. A TV lounge with a fucked-up TV that will now only transmit Magic FM. Picture, assorted drugged-up females ensconced on the squashy leather, somehow-still-uncomfortable sofas.

Wish you were way more drugged up than you are in order to endure this.

That’s your day folks. Unless you want to count…

The Community Meeting. Want your head done in to set you up for the day? You could do no better.

Cue an inept-but-well-meaning professional or six, who will ask us all to introduce ourselves with today’s ‘task’.

Task Monday. If you died and were reborn, what would you come back as? I kid you not folks.

Task Tuesday. What’s your lucky number and why?

Task Wednesday. What advice would you give your sixteen-year-old self (in the light of experience and hindsight).

If you think the ‘task’ is not enough to send you right over the edge you should then hear the response of the roomful of drugged-up females.

No one appears to have taken part in any meetings before, so they keep jumping in randomly and obdurately refusing to stick to the script.

Head clutched between hands you run screaming from the room to the astroturf smoking area, where a lone pigeon hobbles around, starving since it snuck in through the net and now can’t get out again…

That pigeon reminds me of me. I roll a fag. I cry on the phone to my social worker. This is the cue for several of the other patients to launch into a tirade of verbal abuse against me, and for a particularly brave one to snatch my tobacco off me.

They brought me here for non-compliance with the full force of the law of strong-armed psychiatry. I was recovering well without meds and simply wanted the Home Treatment to butt out and leave me alone, but I was nevertheless deemed somehow a danger to myself or someone else…at least potentially.

They lied to get me here without violence, saying I would be released later that day. What’s to stop them continuing in the same vein? How sane does a lady have to be before she’s deemed capable of making up her own mind? I’m upset about being here…I’m terrified frankly, I’m in fear of my life from some of the other patients who are like something out of Broadmoor. What’s to stop them finding that sufficient evidence of psychosis to keep me here indefinitely?

What the heck, these drugs are not sufficient to dull my mind sufficiently to sit on one of the squashy sofas for longer than five minutes. What’s wrong with me! They seem to work for the others…

I hear the howling of souls in torment all day in Downhills Ward (name, shame, expose to the power of 20). There’s fuck all I can do. I can’t even hand out fags, because I’m too shit-scared of running out myself, and I feel selfish and guilty.

I see violence, demon-possession, and fights break out like little fires in a forest blaze. I see the Black Sisterhood of mainly African nurses chattering and laughing their heads off while Downhills burns.

And then, five days on, I am released as randomly as I was brought here. Ironically, I am now a lot iller. This little adventure has set my recovery back by weeks.

Ach, St Ann’s Hospital Haringey why should I put in the effort of exposing you when you are doing such a fine job of it all by yourselves?

Gotta hot one for ya…

Hi folks.  We have heatwave alert in London Town today. Bad news for those of us who are old fashioned enough to like a breeze… I’m up in the cool of the morning wondering what to do today. I am in almost zero-plan mode. But yesterday I managed to wheedle some benzodiazepines out of the doc (what? No Mood Stabilisers?) so failing all else I can lull myself into a false sense of security.

The phase of fear-and -trembling about what A might do to me now we are no longer friends (heavens look at what she did when we were!!) has actually passed rather quickly, and I dreamt of the two of us on a train together laughing. I sometimes feel that her main failing is an inability to take anything seriously enough! Like it’s all a bit of a game… Alternatively that she’s just playing out her allotted role in this particular drama. And she is a bit of a soap addict.

A doesn’t want to hurt me. She isn’t after my blood. She’s just as mad as all Hell…and I can’t say I blame her given what she’s gone through in her life.

Folks, what shall I do? Get on a train to the Kent coast (where my Mum lives?) Loll on the bed with the fan trained on my semi-naked form?

I’m still tired. Speak later! Lots love, Zoe xxx

Showdown

Hello my dears.  Update time. The Equals/best friend/partner/service user politics saga (see last several entries) has reached some kind of resolution. Let me explain.

After the sectioning and a short period of depression/grieving I attempted once again to mend my friendship with my best friend of ten years, A. She appeared to want to pick it up again as if nothing whatsoever had happened. I realised it was now a husk of a friendship, I had nothing left to say to her unless there was some kind of discussion or progress over what happened between her organisation and me.

I asked her to correspond with me by email. She was unwilling to do that and was hard pressed to even text. So it had to be another meeting. My heart sank at the prospect because she is frighteningly manipulative and clever in any discussion at creating confusion in people’s mind and pretending to be something she isn’t.

I had the (I thought) brainwave of arranging a meeting between us with mutual friends present. She however, insisted on bringing her partner with her. This was her stipulation, she would not do it without him.

He is not a service user, is an active addict, has known her only three years (they now have a baby together) and it is clear to me that almost from day one they have been unhealthily codependent. I knew it would be bad news, but I still had hope, and a vision in my mind of us all working things out.

I arranged the meeting, time, place, other people present. Brought nibbles, drinks and a CD player so that I could play them some of my beloved hip hop (Eminem’s new album Recovery).

They came in and took over. Started pulling the tables around (we were in the office of Haringey User Network, her partner had never even been there before and didn’t know anyone, nor was he interested in introductions). He began bellowing that there should be ‘ground rules’. I protested that since we were all friends that shouldn’t be necessary.

Then A launched into her tried and tested schtick. You have been so aggressive to me Zoe, you are so aggressive, so abusive. Hardly pausing for breath.

Her partner started yelling across the table that I had been ‘bullying’ A non-stop for the last six months.

It is easy to sum up what was said at this hour and a half meeting. ‘You are a terrible bully Zoe, and it’s got to stop.’

I was stymied for an intelligent response but merely kept repeating that the demand was meaningless and ‘what’s got to stop?’

They dumped a sheaf of papers on the table with an air of  ‘here’s the damning evidence’. They had printed out all my emails and texts, every one. A told me I had ’embarrassed myself’. I countered that since I had already disseminated the emails widely to various professionals and even displayed them on my blog, the implication would actually be that I wasn’t in the least embarrassed.

The two others present at the meeting were almost visibly flattened by the rush of power coming off the two of them. One of them began yelling at me too, demanding that I ‘stop’. Once again I had to ask what on earth they meant. No one supported me. I am used to that though. My other friend had been caught up in a medication hassle and had not been able to show. Just as well. She is vulnerable, and it would have made no difference. They hadn’t come to sort out anything, only to try one more time to assassinate my character.

Eventually they exited the building like a tornado. We had got precisely nowhere, eaten no nibbles, and my lovely olives, home made hummus and crudites were doused in vitriol and inedible.

Shell shocked I made my lonely way home, laden with vitriol-laced nibbles and the barely-used CD player.

But fear not, dear readers. You know Zoe may be down but is never defeated.

My partner Richard, is more solidly on my team than before. Don’t asked me how that semi-miracle came about, because he is still an official minion of Equals Training. All I know is, I am now a welcome guest at his house and accepted by his family. I eat dinner with them.

He declares himself committed to ‘making this relationship work’. For the first time ever he reeled off a list of my positive qualities, the ones he appreciates about me and that keep us together. My passion. My vibrancy. My affectionate nature. My intelligence.

The meeting with A did provide a kind of closure. I was able to draw a clear line under our friendship. I have written her one last (three line) email to her saying goodbye and wishing her health and happiness. I emailed the aforesaid professionals to update them that I had finally had closure with this toxic relationship and conflict that saw me sectioned in the hospital for thirteen days.

Gavin Eastley, manager of the Clarendon Day Centre is one of their biggest allies. And I have stated clearly that I believe them to be ‘enemies of free speech’ and that they are working ‘against the interests of service users’. Clearly he will not be my number one fan, then again I have never been his.

The battle’s not over even when it’s won…Take care peeps. Lots love, Zoe xxx