Am I Still Ill?

Happy New Year

Hiya. Now facing the New Year’s holiday. Designed for those who work and have families I suppose.

I feel down today. Can’t believe there are two more days of this.

M is cooking. I can’t find much of anything to say. I have no insights to offer about New Years, resolutions or anything else.

I’m sorry folks. Sorry for all my psychotic excesses including the religious mania. Sorry my life is such a godawful mess.

I think my son is suffering from some kind of attachment disorder by the way. He wasn;t able to bond with a primary carer, which should really have been me, but I was in and out of psychosis before and after his conception. He fits the profile for this kind of condition. He seeks to control his environment at all costs because he feels his life depends on it. He perceives the world as a hostile place and cannot trust others to meet his needs. Defiance, argumentativeness, oppositional behaviour. That’s my boy.

I often feel like running a mile, or erecting a cast iron shutter between him and me. But that’s not in the nature of motherhood. We must persevere, day by day. The Sisyphean chalk face, where hope springs eternal to face off despair.

Love you folks. Z X

Feeling Festive?

Hi Peeps. Back at my Mum’s again, this time on the Christmas front line. Mum and I both determined not to let J’s shenanigans get us down too much. I frankly feel I’ve spent quite enough time in mourning mode thank you very much. It won’t last but I feel almost festive…

My Mum is amazing and I am so lucky to have her. She’s cooking a Nigel Slater veggie stew and the smell is amazing. J won’t eat it though…He’s still cloistered in his room. I sometimes feel filicidal if that’s the word.

The last two weeks things have looked a bit brighter than before. I’ve got a few interesting projects coming up for the New Year. One is a therapy/life skills group facilitated by a psychologist supported by a social worker, both of whom I know quite well and like. The other is believe it or not a theatre project which my dual diagnosis worker is organising. She’s a sparky, kind and positive person with a passion for drama therapy.

I’m aiming to also locate some voluntary work with the help of an organisation that helps ex addicts find work, training or education to get that all important structure in their lives.

As someone who was never sure that I was an addict, I am getting some good help that sometimes seems to be denied those who are ‘merely’ mentally ill.

M has been on best behaviour most of the time. He can be very attentive to my needs. We both caught a cold and he spent lots of time rubbing Vicks Vapour Rub into my back and chest and dosing me with Benilyn for my cough. Bless. Today he gave me a lift all the way to Charing Cross station to get the train down to Kent…

How are you dear reader, more to the point? Hope Christmas gives you a little break from the grim reality that has prevailed for me this year. But at least it was some kind of reality. This time last year I was away with the fairies and well on my way to another disastrous psychotic high.

Love you Peeps. Happy Christmas. XXX

Blimey

Hello folks. I’m blogging from my mum’s house. My son J has been staying with her for a couple of months after things hit the rocks when he stayed at my place.

My son J is in social work parlance ‘a looked after child’. However, at age 15 he took things into his own hands and returned to us, his birth family. He is still officially under a ‘full care order’.

My son J is a ‘troubled teen’. My son J is a ‘school refuser’. He is showing signs of nascent mental health problems. Withdrawing socially. Developing a nocturnal pattern whereby he sleeps all day and comes alive at night. My son is a bit of a mess. His mess has naturally become mine, and my mother’s.

My mother has been amazing. For possibly the first time in my entire life I give her full credit for all she has done and all she is still doing for those she loves. But she is visibly cracking under the strain of looking after a boy who just seems to reject pretty much everything life has to offer…

J is quite abusive to me, saying I am responsible for all his difficulties. He says he doesn’t like me, I depress him and so on. I am his personal scapegoat and I have taken that fully on board and pretty much believed it, feeling like the worst person imaginable.

That’s just what depression does.

Today his social worker came down from Haringey and spent the best part of a whole day here. We also had a lengthy visit from the local GP with whom J is now registered.

I was saddened to learn that this social worker is leaving (contract come to an end). I was really fond of him and he was so humane. Another change of social worker. The last thing any of us needs, especially J.

It’s J’s sixteenth tomorrow.

As for me and M. Well that seems to be limping toward a natural end with him becoming more and more demanding, almost hysterical with resentment toward me. He believes I should be paying him to look after me.

My ‘haters’ can at least get some satisfaction from that I suppose. I remember the guy who called my son ‘long-suffering’ and someone else who thought I was ‘just an awful person’. Of course I wanted to write loads up here when I was psychotic and behaving very badly indeed so I guess not surprising that some drew those conclusions. Just glad there were only two or three, but they stuck in my mind!

I can’t tolerate a load of abuse from M and continue to stay strong and focused for my mum and J, and they have to be the priority of course.

It might help me a bit if I can come here and let you guys know how things are going. I’m living half down here and half up there for now.

Lots of love everyone,

Zoe X