And while we’re at it, Public Enemy Number One. If I’m to be demonised, I might as well do it in style, what!
Here’s a pome what I wrote (on the train).
You just don’t get it, do you?
Tho’ richly recompensed
The more complacent you become
The more you sit on the fence
The more the funds in your account
The greater your offence
You just don’t get it, do you?
Total indifference.
You just don’t get it, do you?
Don’t hear the cry of pain
Don’t see the haunted visage
Don’t witness stress and strain
Looking away as you evade
Accountability
As you watch the clock you’re out of touch
With the needs of those like me.
Richard’s fear of my poetry is palpable, as he cringes away from my every ‘beep beep’. Let’s name the guy. Richard is a common enough name, and this Richard an obscure enough guy, for him to continue as he started and evade the ‘walk of shame’ along with his ‘Equals‘ mentors.
Why in God’s name should I keep protecting these people?
And can I find it in my heart to even pity them? No. Their complete lack of feeling for me, evinced in their every action, has extinguished every last twinge of compassion in my normally highly empathic heart.
I’m at my Mum’s, guys. And I’m happy, warm and cosy, with a cup of tea at my side.
And on the menu for tonight is mushroom and madeira pie from Waitrose, with roast tatties, gravy, and the works.
I think I’ve discovered my vocation. Possibly even two or three. I’m a writer, An observer from the wings. A warrior in the fray. A victim of the jackboot of ‘mental health care’. A mistress of psychology. An aspiring mystic. An advocate for the voiceless. An advisor for the professional seeking guidance from the grassroots. An avenger of the meek. A whistleblower. A poet.
Is that enough vocations to be going on with, think you? Let’s add in, budding comedian and satirist shall we, as I’m on a roll?
And it’s inexpressible joy, folks, to take something as dire and desperate as a bullying situation, and turn it around with the skilful use of words and all the outlets at my disposal. And my Mum and I have drawn closer than for a long long time, over this. Also a massive bonus.
While I have my outlets, and the strength to write, I will continue to survive and thrive. And no one can take this away from me, folks, no one.
Because I dream of the day when my reputation will go before me into the mental health professionals’ office.
I dream of the day when they handle me with as much care and love on the mental health ward as, say Adam Ant!
Not because I pranced around in a pirate costume thirty years ago. But because they know that if they cross me, patronise or otherwise offend me, they will be written about here. And that though I often won’t name them…I actually could.
Mum gave me a good idea today. She’s full of them! Write an article for the Guardian, Zoe, on the subject of ‘My child in care’. I knew instantly that idea had serious legs. How many mums of kids in foster care can write like me? It’s just the sort of thing the Guardian would jump at. Maybe I’ll even be paid!
Laugh away, haters (not you, gentle reader!) If you don’t have a vision, you will never create jack shit. And I have vision a-plenty, thanks very much.
How many of you are prepared to come and critique my prose style in a comment? None. Because I’m a bloody good writer, and you know it.
I write to elucidate, and not to baffle. I write to illuminate, and not to waffle. I am not self-indulgent. And I don’t give you the creeps. I am not weird, I am not nuts, and I don’t send you to sleep.
This blog is value added. This blog repays a glance. This blog speaks of the human. And the anti-human dance. This blog won’t cause a headache. Or put you in a trance. Unless of course you’re Equals! Or in Gavin Eastley’s pants!
Gavin, fair Gavin, you are a favourite Muse of mine. Gavin, you are up there, with the greatest a-holes of all time. Gavin I shoulda warned you. Though I really think I did. You messa with Zo, she breaka your legs. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!
Love, peace and blessings folks. Z xxx
Am I Still Ill? 
Comments on: "The Worm Turns Nemesis" (7)
wooooo go mum, write for the guardian!!!!
y did i put my name is lol now evry1s gunna think im dumb 😦 i shouldnt be commenting, should i??? Considering half of the words u wrote i didnt understand lol 🙂 oh yh and FUCK YOU GAVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You hear that people? My own boy coming into bat on my team!
J, I am at Mum’s, and we both laughed our socks off reading your comments, hon!
Y’know, for the first time in my entire life I understand the saying ‘blood is thicker than water’. That expression basically means, J, that sometimes you can count on your family’s support when all friends (and ‘professionals’) let you down!
Utterly priceless. And let me tell you, I needed cheering up today!
Love you so much. And please go to school hon. It may be more fun than you think?
Tho’ I have to say, I sorta understand why you don’t like your school that much. You and Russell Brand both, darling!
Ever proud and loving, Mum xxx
Hi Zoe,
Thanks, J, for letting your heart speak…:)
This borough (Haringey) has a lot to answer for concerning its abuse of vulnerable people and your experience, Zoe, illustrates not only the fact that the personal has become political but that the ‘essence of the thing’ ie. mental health problems and the activist’s role is also such (political).
Thankyou, Zoe, for all the things that you have done for others and the courage shown here. You give people like me hope and would I like you to have legal support with this. I agree that it would be a good idea for Lynne Featherstone to be informed.
Gavin and others’ trying to be ‘neutral’ is a reaction to the idea of sides…and while this remains a feature ‘we’ will always be divided from eachother as people.
“Love has no opposite” (Krishnamurti)
This so called society lets the the DSM be its bible and trashes our humanity (in my honest opinion). It has certainly alienated me and I don’t attend any of its day centres etcetera…I visited The Clarendon once and Haringey Mind’s day centre once – I did not return!
Before I had the misfortune of being treated horrifically as a patient (in St. Ann’s) years ago, I worked very happily for/with vulnerable people for several years in a variety of roles.
I was always guided by the view as a worker that the people experiencing the problems were ‘the professionals’/authority – not me!
(I appreciate the arrival of ‘community care’ and changes made to that hospital in recent years but the trauma, itself led me to live in fear and has created a ‘recidivist’ scenario).
“My heart is my temple, my philosophy is kindness” (the Dalai Lama)
You are most certainly not alone, Zoe! I have written the above about my own position to let the rest of your readers know this. I do not usually say anything to people about my experience because it has frightened me into silence. I prefer to spend these days to spend most of my time in solitude/virtual exile…
A project aimed at social inclusion and simultaneously excluding one of its members and close friends with no clear idea as to why is bound to be all at sea!
Peace, Katy X
Yeah go for it Zoe – I read the Guardian and you are very good writer, wish I was able to express myself in the way that you do. The snow has near enough gone from my part of Kent now, bet it comes back with a vengence this week – p.s have you ever seen ‘V for Vendetta?’ lol x
Thanks so much for that Katy. I have felt such a lonely voice at times, over the last nine months. And you give me tangible proof that I probably (without knowing it) speak for many.
Sir Bob, didn’t know you were a Kent man. Yeah, probably time to start setting my sights on higher things than the ‘crumbliest, flakiest Equals’! Movin’ on up! Love and thanks for commenting. Zoe xxx
p.s. I use the word ‘recidivism’ – usually reserved for criminals – to denote that St. Ann’s hospital was more like a badly-run prison when I first went there… I have never broken the law!
The fear of the place caused me to have numerous subsequent breakdowns – to ‘reoffend’. Best not to look back in anger, eh?
One day ‘I’ll remember to forget’…and happiness is being in the present.
I hope that soon, Zoe, you will be free to concentrate on other things.
You are, indeed, an excellent writer 🙂