Am I Still Ill?

Have you tried switching it off and on?

Anyone see the sitcom ‘The IT Crowd’? That was a catchphrase as I recall. My silly old mobile was playing up, but I’ve fixed it now by the terribly technical procedure of taking the battery out then replacing it…

My cold is still affecting me, and the cough is truly awful, so I decided on balance not to join my Women’s Group down at the leisure centre in Tottenham. Weather a lot more comfortable today after our mini heatwave.

It’s the Olympic Opening Ceremony tonight, I believe. My CPN went to a rehearsal on Monday and says it was spectacular. I’ll be watching it on telly of course.

Lots love, Z x

Day in the Life

Hi there. I’ve still got a terrible cough. I think I’m paying for the many months of relatively heavy smoking I was doing up until three months ago, when I quit and got an electronic cigarette.

I cough so much and with wheezing too which is horrible, that my head hurts and I retch or vomit. It isn’t good. What’s worse it tends to come on in crowded public spaces like on the bus for instance.

The Ollympic Torch Relay passed near me just yesterday (I live near Alexandra Palace). Could not quite be bothered to face the crowds. But I am looking forward to watching the Opening Ceremony on TV tomorrow. I am a little caught up in the excitement, it’s hard not to be, because enthusiasm is contagious.

On the agenda for today is meeting my dual diagnosis worker Katrina for a chat, then having my depot injection of Risperidone. After that I can pretty much do as I please, and I like it that way, especially when the weather’s hot like this. May meet a friend for a cuppa later if I have the energy.

Love Z X

Aw bless!

It’s ten past six in the morning and M is busy. He’s just given the kitchen a deep clean that was long overdue and now he’s set to with the hoover. I love to watch a man clean!

I’ve really become a bit of a slut, house-wise. Maybe it’s the effect of having a willing pair of hands like his around. Or maybe it’s that I never wear my contact lenses any more, and rarely put on my glasses even. Ignorance is bliss and the ostrich can’t see the dirt so it doesn’t bother them.

His eyesight is good and he is an excellent housekeeper. I slip him a tenner or so when he’s particularly active like now, I think that’s only fair and it saves me hiring a cleaner…

I had my hair cut and I like it. A big improvement and now the weather’s hotting up again it feels cooler with less of it.

Since he’s been back we’ve got along famously and his conpany has been delightful.

My peer support group (drugs and alcohol) are going on a trip today down to the cable cars near the O2 Arena. I’d quite like to go, and my cough is a bit better so maybe I actually will. Yesterday I skipped DRA and went with M to Trent Park. It’s a massive country park in Enfield. He’s grown to love it almost as much as me. I love to share nature with a partner. We sat in our favourite spot down by the lake near the University (where I used to study) and watched the play of the ripples and light on the leaves above us. It looked a bit like fire and M was completely fascinated by it, thinking it a sign from God! Aw, bless.

I’m always much happier when things are going well with him and me.

Lots love folks, and enjoy this taste of summer (if you’re British).

Z X

But he came back again…

I kicked him out!/But he came back again, to the tune of Chumbawumba’s ‘I get knocked down’.

I am one big softie sometimes folks. He somehow melts my heart. I know some of you will curse and spit (only metaphorically) and say C’MON Zoe! But what are you to do when you kick him out and he’s all on his own in the Big Bad World without you?

He said he didn’t want to leave me alone either, but I pointed out that objectively speaking I am not nearly so alone as him. I still have friends (a few) and plenty of associates too who I see regularly. I’m involved in quite a few groups etc. He never really ‘gets me’. He’s always worrying that I’m ‘getting high’ when actually I’m way down in the dumpster and vice versa. He really has very little idea who I am.

I’m fed up with my hair. It’s long and red with no style whatsoever, as the layers have long grown out. I’ve decided to visit the hairdresser today and have a fringe and bangs cut back into it. At age 50 we need a style that’s going to lift our face a bit, and I read somewhere that ‘bangs’ can make you look ten years younger!!

I stopped wearing make up pretty much completely when M came into my life a year and a half ago. He doesn’t like it and thought I looked like a tart. Isn’t that sexist, and silly of me I suppose to fall in with his wishes, but maybe I’ve just got a little lazy as well. No one ever stares at me in the street now. I don’t really miss it as I wasn’t keen on being ogled when I was young and nubile. I do like to look nice though, well I guess we all do…

I’m a failure as an independent woman!! Z X

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

I’m evil I know. And villains always laugh uproariously don’t they! They’ve got a ‘wicked’ sense of humour.

Just that I was chatting to R my ex today and he told me Equals Training have been locked out of their own website for several weeks now and they’re getting a little desperate! As their ex web manager he (apparently) has the wherewithal to gain re-entry for them, but it involves filling in a form and though he doesn’t want to go out of his way to annoy them he doesn’t see why he should help them either.

I never told you. They did the dirty on him some months after they sh*t all over me. Replaced him, kicked him out with no good reason, cut him entirely out of the loop which he had never been included in in the first place, no proper explanation and no communication … are these indeed Boudiccas, as one happy customer described them? Machiavelli or Macbeth’s three witches is more like it. Ex friend Angela appears to continue to take Babs as a role model – the same Babs who wrote poison pen hate mail on my blog using someone else’s email address without telling him…

Sorry R, Babs, Angela. I shouldn’t still care about what happens to you. Just ‘what goes around comes around’ my dears.

Who says there’s no such thing as karma?

Never want to be ‘high’ again

My psych has added in lamotrigine (Lamictal), an anticonvulsant mood stabiliser to my drug cocktail. I’m now on Citalopram (SSRI antidepressant) 40mg daily, a depot injection of Risperidone (atypical anti psychotic) 25mg once a fortnight, take 5mg Procyclidine most days for side effects of that, plus the Lamictal, 100mg daily. More different meds than ever before, but not in the highest doses.

The Risperidone has done what it says on the tin…kept me free of psychosis for a year and four months. Thank God folks.

People often say ‘you haven’t been ill for a while’ or suchlike and I catch myself doing it too, but in actual fact bipolar depression can be a quite literally a killer and I had that for well over a year as I said in a previous post.

I don’t miss the highs and I especially don’t miss laying waste to my own life and relationships as a result of disastrous judgment calls while manic and psychotic.

Psychs often don’t even prescribe anti depressants to bipolar people because of the fear of flipping them into mania. But I think many of them do actually know that the depression needs to be addressed with the same care. I believe the figure for suicides among bipolar folks is 15-30%…that’s way higher than in the general population, obviously. My psych (who doesn’t know me well) to his credit, took very seriously my suicidal ideation of a few weeks ago. He quizzed me about methods I’d been considering, and I admitted to ‘asphyxiation with inert gases’, in other words the ‘helium hood method’. He wouldn’t prescribe me any benzodiazepines which disappointed me as I find them a good sleep aid when I’m a little ‘buzzy’ but he did come up with the idea of Lamictal which has helped me before and is especially good for bipolar depression. So yay for him.

It might be my advancing age (well, I’m 50) that has caused me to be WAY more depressed than manic. I’ve also gone through menopause. The end of a close friendship and a long-term relationship in hugely upsetting circumstances a couple of years ago (see the Equals saga). Then there’s been the major emotional trigger of my son’s difficulties.

Now that I’m no longer depressed I don’t see that situation as being exceptionally difficult when placed alongside many other people’s issues. It’s my private ‘cross’ but we all have those.

Some bipolar folk do talk of ‘missing the highs’. I don’t miss them, and would rather be depressed even though it’s a condition I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

I never want to be ‘high’ again and hope I never am…

Z X

Reader, I kicked him out

He’s gone gone gone gone gone. Toast. History.

He relapsed onto cannabis a few months ago. That was the beginning of the end.

Being able to ‘make it stick’ this time depends on me not relapsing back into a deep depression and I guardedly say I don’t think that will happen.

It’s truly horrible being all alone dealing with clinical depression when it goes on for well over a year…like so many others I traded in a lot of stuff just to have another human being around me. Until the cons started outweighing the pros, but more importantly, till I began to feel human and hopeful again.

However, this hasn’t put me off relationships. More than ever I realise that I would love to have someone special in my life. But ‘someone’ doesn’t mean ‘anyone’. I’m not cut out to live alone, I’m really not, though I admire others who can find contentment and satisfaction that way.

What’s nice is we don’t hold grudges against each other. He accepts it with weary resignation as being ‘the way of all things’. I don’t bother to recite for him a list of his shortcomings, which would be unnecessarily cruel as on some level he’s already painfully aware of them…I don’t feel angry with him. He’s too soft a target.

I’m also glad I’m not with R any more. Though we’re still friends our intimacy was played out to the max. We were deeply incompatible. Our conflicts were raw and wounding. With M there’s none of that lingering nastiness, just an ever-growing awareness of his intense vulnerability, sadness and loneliness. To recriminate would be like poking a puppy with a sharp stick. Unnecessary.

He came to pay me some money back this morning and at one point said ‘So do I get an apology then?’ I just had to laugh, because it really was funny.

I’ve got my Women’s Group this morning over at Wood Green. Still full of cold but a bit more energetic.

Lots love Z X

Saying a big ‘Thank You’

I’ve got a nasty cold so have largely grounded myself for the last few days. Yesterday I was a bit fed up that I had to miss my therapy group, but today I managed to get out and see my dual diagnosis worker Katrina who is one of those rare and special workers in mental health who thinks outside the box and is not afraid to cross the boundaries a little when the situation calls for it.

I genuinely like those kinds of workers. When you’re lumbered with a mental health diagnosis and the somewhat marginalised and isolated lifestyle that often accompanies it, it is good when you have a worker who shows you their human face. That you can build up a kind of friendship with, although always bearing in mind that there ARE boundaries (ie, when it’s time for you and them to move on). When you text them you don’t put kisses! You don’t in the normal run of things, hug them!

I’ve been blessed to have worked with a few of these over the years. As clients/patients I think on the whole we don’t need or want to see the smooth impassive face of the ‘perfect’ mental health worker. We’d rather see them flaws, frailties and all. It’s more humanising for us as well.

Thank you Katrina. You’ve been ace.

While I’m at it, thanks to Rigby (psychologist) and Alison(mental health social worker) who run my therapy group on a Wednesday, as well. You’ve been fantastic, both of you and you really work well together as a team.

Since Katrina came into my life last Autumn I haven’t missed Wayne so much but he was another one who deserves some kind of ‘client’s award’ for excellent practice. I was lucky enough to have him as my social worker for a couple of years and we would always meet in a cafe and I could have a really good natter and sometimes even a bit of a gossip with him! I got to hear what it’s like working for the ‘other side’ as it were.

Before him, I had Wendy who was every bit as wonderful as Wayne. She knew her stuff and helped me in practical ways (like filling out the all-important the DLA form) but I’d meet her for a coffee too and came to see her as a friend, but as a friend I knew I would only have for a limited time. One important difference with a ‘normal’ friendship would actually be that I knew it was really ‘my’ space to talk about whatever was concerning me. They would not necessarily expect to do the same. Whatever was going on in my life I knew I could talk about it to my ‘worker’. They were on my side.

Humanity, I would suggest, is the common denominator that makes all of these people so good at what they do. None of them pretended to be perfect. None of them ever patronised me. They have all been warm, funny and life-affirming people to be around.

Let’s hear it for our workers, the ones who get it right!

Lots love, Zoe X

Gave up the fags folks!

Folks, I’ve been a non-smoker for about three months now!!

How did I do it? I took up ‘vaping’. Electronic cigarette. Would recommend it to anyone who’s tried everything to quit but misses the hand to mouth inhale exhale action.

The pros are: it makes giving up the stinky cigarettes pretty much painless. For me, there was no craving at all. Second, you save money in the long run. Quite a lot. Obviously, it’s a blessed relief for your chest and lungs. Third, you can do it pretty much anywhere if you’re stealthy about it. Even in the rain or the bath! Fourth, you can pick it up and put it down when you want. Fifth, no nasty ashtrays, stinky clothes, hair and house. You no longer smell folks!

What finally made me switch? I had the flu and my chest was worse than it’s ever been. Wheezing, rattling and a graveyard cough. I could see COPD and emphysema beckoning, and life’s quite tough enough without adding a physical frailty to the list, and one that’s eminently avoidable and that would be entirely self-inflicted.

It’s do-able. Consider it if any of you want to quit but have failed in the past and feel trapped with your habit. For me, electronic ciggies were a Godsend. I’m not talking about the ‘cigalikes’ that you can buy in the chemist, but about the proper equipment that you can buy online at places like Liberty Flights.

A blissfully smoke-free Zoe X

I get knocked down…but I get up again!

Yeah Chumbawumba, YEAH!

Thanks to Aethelread the Unread for reminding me of this wonderful band/track…

By some miracle I managed to locate my ‘Anthems’ album and find the track, played it and grooved around the lounge.

Don’t ever forget that maxim that I have had cause to quote here in the past. ‘The best revenge is living well’.

I thought about those ‘betes noires’ I had in the past…Equals Training and my ex-friend Angela. And reflected on the lucky escape I had from her. I don’t suppose for one moment that Equals Training have ever been or ever will be as important to anyone as they were to me at that time!! In all the wrong ways!

Don’t get me wrong. I still have my regretful, sad moments about the loss of an important person from my life. But we were probably well overdue for a parting of the ways. We just didn’t, at the end of the day, have the most important things in common. Values. Morals. Integrity. Stuff like that.

And I’ve been so low folks, so very low. For the longest time. I have a ‘kind of’ partner who I never know from one day to the next whether he will still be around. He’s so very off the wall. As I think I said before once, he’s more like an exotic, high-maintenance pet than a lover.

I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel dear ones. I really am.

Lots love Z X

The Suicide Project

Hi folks. I’m still doing well. I love being this way. I’m not remotely high or even buzzing. I’m just sensibly going about my daily tasks in quite a methodical way. Enjoying the company of friends but also liking my quiet time. Able to potter about doing a few light chores. I’m nicely balanced. How I wish I could be like this more, a lot more. Well, I will do my best, having observed that this is what i’m aiming for.

I’m still posting a fair bit on the Suicide Project. The link for you peeps is http://suicideproject.org Actually, while I think of it, I’m gonna go over there now and fetch back a piece I wrote today and post it right here!!

louise50 4:36 am on July 16th, 2012

Hello Louise50. I think you are taking too much responsibility on yourself. Mothers in this society get a bum rap because they are on the one hand idealised and on the other, how is any human being supposed to measure up? They are blamed disproportionately when things go wrong.

To be affected so deeply shows that without any doubt, you care about and love your son deeply. Look at the other ‘players’ in your story. Your Mother was unable to live up to her promises for whatever reason. The father was a dead loss and gave you no help and support whatsoever. You have Bipolar 1, quite severely by the sounds of it. This society so often leaves single parents isolated and alone, coping with the most difficult job in the world…you are not responsible, Louise50, for the advent of the nuclear family in Western civilisation.

Social services could have stepped up and given you the kind of practical help and emotional support which would have enabled you to keep your son (maybe). Instead they chose to leave you floundering until you inevitably cracked under the strain of being responsible for a young life when alone, unsupported and mentally ill, then came down upon you with the full force of the state in the name of ‘protecting’ children.

You are very far from being the worst mother that ever existed. There are many many contenders for that role as many of the posters on this site could testify. You were up against it and it didn’t work out. Please don’t keep blaming yourself so harshly Louise50.

You mention how you have searched everywhere for answers. You posting here shows that your search goes on, and how much energy you pour into this whole issue of your son. Does that indicate a mother who is uncaring, unfeeling and irresponsible? No! You are trying to do whatever you can to be of help to him, and that should be enough for anyone.

I predict that one day your relationship with your son will heal Louise50 and he will come to recognise that he has in you a mother who despite her difficulties has shown commitment, care and love. The way he came into the world was a difficult start by any standards, but you have done your very best to ‘step up’ and be a Mum despite that it was not a planned or wanted pregnancy.

So please, Louise50, give yourself some credit…

Very best wishes to you and your son, Louise50.

Do you see what I did there guys? I answered (or tried) to, my own post as if it were someone else’s.

It was my counsellor’s idea, not mine. I decided to go for it (one of the rare occasions when I’ve actually done the homework a counsellor or therapist has set me).

Lots of love, Zoe X

More Thoughts For You

Dammit folks I’ll break my recent habit of passively reading and lurking around other people’s words and write something myself.

Still chirpier than of late. Well that’s a low bar to set. I wanted to die so badly folks. I really wanted to die. Not so much cause death sounds like a piece of piss or even something I wanna experience NOWWW. No, for the more humdrum, common and understandable reason. I just didn’t want to face the daily pain of Being Zoe any more.

What has actually helped me? Well, dozens of things now I think about it. Among them cups of tea, the kindness of strangers, kittens (my Mum’s newly acquired pair) cuddles from my partner, taking meds (well, I’ll have to take that one largely on faith), caring professionals, my loving Mum, the day’s regular tendency to turn into night and the promise of a few blessed hours of oblivion…you know the score folks.

But one of the things that has helped me most in this grim struggle with my own mind is actually a kind of reality check thang that I do. This consists of regular exposure to Other People who are Also Going Through Stuff. This can be real life, person to person/group contact. I don’t tend to do quite as much of that when I’m as deeply stuck in the mental mire as happened lately, but I still do put myself out there quite a lot. I go to Dual Recovery Anonymous (see the links at the side of this blog), to group therapy midweek, to a Peer Support Group for recovering addicts on a Tuesday morning, and to a Poetry Workshop once a fortnight.

I’m also a keen Interwebber and I discovered through one of my many googlings containing the word suicide, something called The Suicide Project. Well I know I already mentioned it in my last post but I’m not gonna put you a link here cause this is where I write and if you just type Suicide Project into google you will get it up right away.

This, along with something called The Experience Project has helped keep me going. Why? Because I sometimes need constant reminders that far from being most alone when we are suffering we are really not…that it is the most universal human experience there can be.

For the longest time I would just read and lurk. Then I would summon up all the strength and courage I could and actually write something and post it. Maybe even risk a comment or two on someone else’s story. Next I would begin to be a part of an online community of sorts. And community is what it’s really all about.

We’re social animals guys. I don’t need to point this out to my intelligent and informed readership. Maybe I need to keep pointing it out to myself though. And I often starve myself of that simple human contact that we all need.

The gifted-to-the- point-of-genius psychologist who runs my therapy group which I attended today said something (many things) which resounded profoundly for me. Something to this effect. That no one  human being is worth more than another. He wasn’t paying lip service. He really meant it and was totally sincere. This is how he lives and does his work. I have enormous respect for him, but, I realised today and spoke up and said so, I actually respect and admire all the other people in my therapy group. I too, was sincere and meant it from the bottom of my heart. The group is the indisputed highlight of my week. And when I started out I had doubts and wondered how it would work if people were too shy/ tongue tied/medicated to talk, and whether I really wanted to be in a group with others diagnosed as having mental health problems.

This has got to be a very important key, for me. Because, see here. If no one is intrinsically worth more than someone else folks…you’ve guessed it, THAT INCLUDES ME!

My Eureka moment of the day, week, month year or quite possibly lifetime.

Love you folks. Bear with my slowness on the uptake. I’m quite sure many of you already knew that, but there may be others who will benefit from a little reminder. XXX

Hey guys.

Hiya peeps. I can’t help noticing (she says disingenuously) that my stats rose stratospherically to 141 views today!

How can one explain this? Given notable lack of posting by this sporadic and lamentably lazy blogger?

Well it’s the suicide project. Not my personal one, though I’ve been there quite recently as I think I mentioned in my last post. The blog. It’s on wordpress, it’s a sort of public blog where anyone can post their stories and comment on others’.

I’ve noticed that because I already have a blog on wordpress (with my piccy of a brighter more smiley Zoe than of late) my profile there is linked to this blog, and the pic published there as an avatar next to my comments which hardly anyone else there seems to do.

For obvious reasons. We don’t want the whole world connecting our mugshot with the subject of suicide.

Having said that I don’t have a lot to lose. Hell it might be me striking a blow against stigma, going bravely public and all that.

It wasn’t me, it was wordpress yer honour.

Anyway that alone could explain the sudden stats hike which I have to say made my day. Suicide project (NOT a suicide promotion website) is a busy and successful blog with tons of stories and comments appearing daily.

I don’t actually know of any suicide promotion websites.

Anyway I feel happier these last few days honeyz. Guess I’m not finished yet!

Thanks for reading if you did.