Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Wonderful Day

The most glorious day weather-wise.  The sea - a bewitching blue green, sparkling in the sunlight.  All the daffodils bobbing in a gentle breeze and still snow on Ben Wyvis.  The warmest day of the year.  Nutmeg, our rabbit, has sensed Spring and the trees are showing the first hints of blossom.

Preparations underway for our Great Adventure South for our foster daughter's Wedding.  My partner is busy preparing our caravan - Edmund while I am feeling like Mr. Toad about to set out with everything including the kitchen sink!!!

Today we shopped for dog harnesses as the old ones were worn or chewed - so each dog will be secure in the car.  Also indulged in large raw hide bones for certain smaller dogs who get bored and some new discs for collars as one is lost - another 'bald' and unreadable and the other two do not give an up-to-date mobile number.  They will all look smart in matching blue bone discs!  I was tempted by a dog t-shirt with "Little Devil" on it for Mungo - the smallest, loudest and most extrovert - but decided that was an unwanted side effect from  my current medication.  A dog is a dog.  Felt a little broodie for a Newfoundland as I caught sight of the Giant Dog Puppy Food in store.  The time will come.

Started reading Waugh's Scoop! which is beautifully written and still speaks to media engagement today. 

Noted with huge sadness the death of Humphrey Lyttleton.  I am a fan of his Jazz playing and his humour.  His timing was impeccable and his humour has never failed to make me laugh even in the darkest of times.  A wonderfully generous artist to other performers and a massive loss to broadcasting.  Pure genius - absolute attention to rehearsal and presentation - which made his skill look effortless.  Barry Cryer paid tribute this morning on Radio Four, describing him as the only person he knew who could get a laugh from dead space - the pause before he either responded or gave a punch line.  A rare and timeless gift.  Gosh I will miss him.  When we get the Newfie I think he will have to be Humphrey Lyttleton Jethro (my partner's choice) W-G!

Myself?  Bubble like - desensitised quality to the day - but the weather and the signs of Spring are heartening at an almost subconscious level.

Tribute for Humph

Caught the rthymn,

Blast precision,

Made us laugh.

Word incision,

Hate derision,

Super fast.

Tap and tonguing.

Inuendo coming,

Clown,  rest atlast.

Humph RIP.

Temporarily Engaged

Out today.  Bought our son's wedding outfit(s) for his half-sister - our foster daughter's wedding.  We bought two contrasting outfits for him to choose from - one is a 'take' on Dr. Who and the other is a more formal suit.  He can mix and match whchever way and we will take back anything he doesn't wear.  Shocking to realise he is now a small man rather than a growing young person.  A message he has been giving us for a while but has become a reality in terms of sizing.  I think he will be chuffed with the choices. 

Wedding present purchased and I spent a token - so I did quite a lot really.  Felt special spending the token.  Generally felt very distanced from the activity of being out and shopping.  I felt as though I was watching a movie rather than actively participating.  Yet, at the same time, a part of me was fully engaged in organising something I hoped our son would enjoy.  I can do things for others still.  Just in a disassociated way.

Had a very powerful card from an old friend in Suffolk.  I was very moved.  It caught me deep in my psyche.

Have purchased Tommy, my father's ventriloquist dummy and an important part of my childhood.  He will be collected in July when I am South.  I suddenly thought that I might have a problem taking the doll back to the place I will be staying as security is high at the location.  I sent the strangest e-mail I have sent in ages to the co-ordinator asking what I should do about bringing a large doll, that might look a bit like a body, into the building in a suitcase on my day off!  Fortunately she took my enquiry entirely in her stride.  The hope is the police will do no more (probably) than check and move me on.  (I could imagine the headline:  Major Security Alert - Priest has small boy in suitcase! Priestess in strange sacrifice of wooden boy - ho hum!)

Not present - but a little more active and engaged.

Jane W-G writes:

An empty mind dazzled by retail therapy is distracted for a moment.  An empty mind cosseted and loved remains available even when it feels remote and distant from the places others stay.

Green Beret

I need to have my medication reviewed.

Nothing.

I am pleased my partner is representing carers of people living with BPD on an NHS group.  He will be good.

I am disinclined to go out; see people or do anything much just now.

Nothing inside.

I need to turn this around, but it is hard to be positive when I know that sooner or later there is a high chance of relapse.

I am holding on to painting - but can't paint yet. 

It is hard to be motivated.

I am happiest just now alone, in silence with dogs and my green hat on. 

I feel I need space.

The phone ringing is a massive 'invasion'.

I think some time back at the day hospital might help or as an in patient. 

But I don't think I qualify now.

I don't have the energy to think this through just now.

I am just so sorry for all the trouble I cause.

I just need a kick up the backside or a good shake to see some sense.

Thankyou to everyone who is supporting us.

St. Trinian's

Have just finished watching the DVD of St. Trinian's - released earlier this year.  Excellent.

Fun.  Full of laughter.

"Cool Man"

New drug regime - new personality facets emerge.  I need to check the new dosage I am experimenting with is OK - but at present I feel like Dylan in The Magic Roundabout - everything is "cool man".  New facets emerging - calmness inside and not just on the surface; a desire to have fun again; wider range of emotions; desire to be active.

At the moment I am trying to find out a little about how others see me.  I find it really helps - and 'places' me in my own mind in a reasonable place when I am very quick to reduce my personality, skills etc... to zero value.  I have noticed that when I am wearing my thinking hat - literally and/or metaphorically I often dwell on past experiences where I feel I have done something utterly reprehensible or unforgivable.  I never focus on my successes.  The priest in me tells me on the scale of reprehensible I rarely make it onto the nursery slopes - but I am interested as to why this conditioning occured or whether it is a pre-programmed predisposition.  Truth is it is probably a bit of both.  The important thing is that I have spotted it and I can see it for what it is - chill out Dude.  Extraordinary how a sense of shame can gain such a hold.  I think some of this is how the church conditions us to think about ourselves.

Talking of church - I quite shocked myself the other day.  I saw an advert for a job as a priest and my heart missed a beat.  This may well be an example of a delusional response but I was rather touched.  The institution I effectively married at nineteen - still has the power to rouse a warm rush of affection, interest and curiosity.  I am glad the church's power to move me hasn't died as I feared.  The job was a little one - part-time in Cambridge - at a church with a progressive, liberal style and with a lay training institute attached.  I know both reasonably well although I haven't been to either for a good number of years.  I know the answer the professionals caring for me will probably give is "not yet" - but I am thrilled the desire is still there at some level.  Goodo.

Quiet morning - sleeping.  Not a good night - so I caught up.  When I wasn't dosing I was planning my next couple of canvases.  Having done a few 'scapes' and had a tough week or so emotionally, I am going to sooth with a couple of abstracts.  I find I need to do a lot more thinking through with an abstract about how I will achieve what I want in technical terms.  I find it much harder to simply over paint because quite often the part I want to re-work is inextricably linked to something else.  This will certainly be so in the next couple of pieces - all the work will be in setting up the foundation of the paintings.  You know I am quite getting into this.

Inbetween daydreaming about wearing a dog collar again (I do hope this is a sign I am getting better not worse)  I am back on my hind legs and engaging with the world to some extent.  I went out shopping yesterday - short but meaningful trip!!!!  I also spent ages putting old family photographs onto my computer.  I have promised my brother copies - and I was - overall - delighted with the results.  I have scanned in four of my mother's photo albums.  It was very gentle and so rewarding.  I was watching my parents, my bother's and my life go by in a series of snaps.  Funny how often dogs have taken pride of place in the pictures.  No wonder I've ended up with such a menagerie!

Jane W-G writes:

When there is no light at the end of your tunnel do not refuse the offer of a torch.

Space Hopper

I think my nickname should be space hopper.  I am delighted to discover that I really do bounce!  The trick now will be to learn how to bounce not too high and not too low.

I used to help out ringside at Blackpool Tower Circus as a kid and I can remember that one of the acrobats always said if you think about what you are about to do too hard, you would never do it; best to imagine the thrill of flying and let reflexes take care of the business.

My partner gently talked to me and listened this morning.  Time to get up, freshen up and fly.  I have showered and now smell very Evelyn & Crabtree - a sign of middle age!

My partner did a courageous thing - he challeneged my perception of what I needed and he was so right.  I said he reminded me of my guide dog, Rainbow, who now and again has to take a unilateral decision and cross my path because he has seen something and needs to halt me or change my direction rapidly for my safety.  In a sense that's what my partner did this morning - he changed my thought direction and challenged my reasoning that staying in bed was the safest option in this weird business called living.

I feel hugely better.  He was right, things do change perspective when I've done something as simple as take a shower wash my hair and put on some favourite clothes.  Tie dye today rather a slogan t-shirt.

No extra sleeping pill last night - and as predicted no hangover or need to sleep half the day away today.  I do feel that I need to get off the drugs as much as possible - I am beginning to feel a grim delight in taking them - the first signs of dependency.  The anti-anxiety drug is good - but the side effects on a higher dose leave me with a mushier brain than usual (no comments please).

Today I MUST finish Heat.  I refuse to be beaten by literary style.

I am going to walk today too.  Not far - as my back has been a problem since my June 2007 fall.  But somehow.  I have dug deep and now faced one of my greatest fears which is despiar.  I have had a chance to hear her call and understand where she is coming from.  I can face her again in a less guarded way.  She is a very significant part of me in that she holds immense power.  I now believe she is much more concerned with protecting me from more pain (mother voice) than she is in contemplating the ending of my life.  She does not want to terminate my life as I have always feared - but protect me from myself by removing the pain.  The outcome could have been the same if I had not listened attentively and risked going down deep inside.  Now I know from personal experience that if I listen and then take action which evidences I am protecting myself from desolation at the deepest, existentialist levels, she happily retreats.  I don't want to go back there too often, but I am beginning to understand the darker parts of my personality - in as much as any of us can.

Alot of the time during this present illness I have been told to work hard on destracting myself from the worst symptoms.  I have really struggled with this as a naturally contained and introverted personality.  This morning I came to a better understanding of distraction which is adding to my tool box or strategies for coping.  When I see going out for a walk as a destraction I immediately feel I would be much better sitting tight and thinking/feeling my way through the current emotional rift.  When I think of walking as fitting myself literally for purpose - it becomes a potential pleasure because I want more than anything else to be well - and I have a sneaking suspicion I can be a more honed and finely tuned version than I was before I became ill.  So although re-framing has always been an effective tool for me to utilise, for some reason I hadn't applied it to things like this.

Step forward.

Back talking.  Not chatty - but talking.  I feel I have been on an internal 'experience week', but like Moley I am now ready to put my nose above ground.

Jane W-G writes:

Hiding under the duvet of life can only take you so far - there comes a moment when you must learn the joy of filling your own water bottle.

Ps  One of the reasons I need to blog is as a writer this is the best way of bedding new ideas and ways of thinking into my psyche.  In this blog I've just planted my onions I guess.

Available for Short-term Let

I am feeling better.  Hell's teeth I do not want to go back to the place I was last night again in a hurry - that really was touching rock bottom.  I pulled myself up short by e-mailing The Samaritans.  It was brilliant - and I received the help I needed - so another downward turn has been grappled with and is beginning to bite the dust.

A wise soul in my life has suggested that blogging may be encouraging my introversion and self-analysis which makes a lot of sense to me.  I will try not to blog quite so much I think and see if instead I can stay with the moment more.  Although I would have to admit that last night blogging was a real life-saver.

I felt quite suddenly this afternoon as though I was being pulled upwards through clear, blue oxygenated water and hit the surface into fresh, warm air.  I came up as suddenly as I nose dived.

I am not chattery quite yet - but I am feeling much more energised.  The weird thing is that it coincided with an ear infection starting.  There's a lot in this mind over matter thing.  I have really intense ear ache - and suddenly I felt emotionally on much better form!  Deeply nuts but mildly endearing! 

I have been taking too big a dose of sleeping pill.  A real pain that I have to drop the dosage I love the feeling of sleeping most of the day and night away.  Alas I have now been found out and must take more of the anxiety reducing drug.  I don't think that drug works any more.

So tonight I am in a different place.  Still a bit fragile but holding out in front of me the thought of our foster daughter's wedding.  I am determined to enjoy - and seeing our son - doing something together as a family.  I also very much want to visit an old friend who has been under the weather of late - just a quick - 'love you' visit - not a long, drawn out thing.  If I can I want to see something of Cambridge - my third home.  South London born and bred via Lancashire - Cambridge is a favourite out of the places I have lived.  I want to hit a bookshop and we have to put the finishing touches to our son's wedding outfit.  This will be fun.  I am thinking we may get him two outfits to choose from or mix and match.  One which is a sort of mini Dr. Who as he is a great fan and now wears the glasses and the other is a bog standard suit, tie etc...  I am sorted.  Simon - pretty much.

If I am well enough we even have a family invitation to go out to lunch on the Sunday after the wedding.  So much to look forward to.  I can do this.  I have it worked out in gentle, easy steps.  I will take far too many photos that's for sure.  I can't wait to see our son's choice.  The last suit he had was bought for the cruise I took him on after he had spent a while in hospital.  He looked very smart indeed.

For now I am floating gently - bobbing along, singing a song...  The great news about an ear infection is I can be a painkiller junkie for a few days!  It hurts rather like a tooth abcess - so I shouldn't really make light - but it doesn't hurt as much as being emotionally at a dead end.  However, Ibruprofen and Cocodamol are almost as good as a sleeping pill!

I have ploughed on with Heat and it still reads like something from The Daily Telegraph.  I was giving the author the benefit of the doubt until he started to take pot shots at aromatherapists - what have they ever done to hurt him?

They may not be carbon neutral - but they're not exactly high consumers of fossil fuels unlike witches!!!!

I do find writing blogs cathartic.  Sometimes I'm sure they can stir and reinforce my negativity - but more often as a writer I find I can lay some things to rest, particularly emotions by writing - even indirectly.  I am not someone who often shares much of herself with anyone other than spiritual mentor or therapist - and so this is as much an exercise in believing that even my inner most thoughts are acceptable as it is a record of how things are.  The last time I relapsed I was teaching in Cardiff - and I have, effectively, no memory of three months of my life.  Now I can at least re-call something - and know friends will understand more by hearing how things are.  Maybe less is more when I am emotionally particularly fragile though.  Wise people are not wise for nothing.

Vacant Possession

I've been promising myself that if I do one thing today, I will blog.  Now I don't quite know what to say.  Still seem happiest in bed with my woolly hat and layers of bedclothes.  Dogs.  Not TV.  Can't concentrate on the stories.  Unusually, don't want to see the News. 

Emptiness has no edges in the way that fullness and contentment have.  I tried to find an edge lying in darkness.  No sounds.  Nothing - just more of the same.  Last throes of twilight before the darkness sets in.  People have told me about stars.  I can't see stars even when I'm well.  Emptiness might have them.  Mine doesn't but it may be I just can't see them.

Less going on in head.  All I want is relief from emptiness.  Sleep.  Helps me escape.  Dogs love it.  Someone to sleep against.  Must look like a mother pig with her piggie babies.

I did have a good idea late last night though.  Can't remember what it was - but I did feel enthusiastic for a bit at the time - and I was talking.

Partner needs encouragement and support.  I am in vacant possession.  Nothing to say.  I haven't energy to be worried about it.

Am very sorry I am causing worry.  Love my partner at the deepest level of a soul friend and lover - but I haven't the emotional space to be any use.  Trust is harder than love - love needs to be understood - it is so much more than giving and receiving; it scars and marks as well as giving unbounded joy and hope.  Love my children - grown step children who have their loyalties stretched, credulity challenged and patience tested.  Love my foster daughter - just stabilising her life and marrying - proud; bursting with pride.  Love my son - so brave, vulnerable, wonderfully loving and deliciously free-thinking.  I couldn't be more proud of him too.  He is a survivor.  Love my animals - dogs who follow me around like ducklings; my cats who sleep by my head; my rabbit who knows the TV and will still sit on a cushion comfortably watching it.  Love the amazing opportunities life has given me.  Most of them I would not have missed for the world.

Regrets: not giving more fully in every sense; not always trusting the process; allowing myself to be hurt.

Where Grief Begins

Back at my blogs surprises me.  I still don't want to talk but I want to feel something.  I think this is distraction - but I have succumbed.

I am thinking.  Much about nothing much.  Vacant.  Sometimes I catch a waylaid thought about the future.  Try to imagine it and fall asleep or lose it in a few moments.  I know somewhere deep that it is a risky strategy to let myself go in - but I know I am being monitored.  Mostly I am just relaxing and not making any kind of effort to conform.  Letting myself be.  I think I am pretty ill.  I wonder if I need to be re-admitted to the Day Hospital or become an in-patient.  I don't seem to get better for long and feel worse when I go down.  I can't seem to shake off the desolation.  I can't see how to make hopes happen.  I hate this. Who am I?  Usually this all goes as quickly as it comes - but this time it is sticking - maybe I am allowing it to when I should fight.  I haven't that much energy left to be bothered.

I am struggling with the truth.  Hard to believe that I don't want to go out or see folk.  Oddly counter me.

Still determined to go to my foster daughter's wedding at the beginning of next month but fear I may slip in and out of the ceremony.  I feel so ill.  Like a physical illness.  Rawness.  Pain.

I am a bit shocked.  I didn't know I felt as I do.  Denial.  Avoidance. I thought I was in a better place deep down.  Clearly not.  I don't like being there.  Want to scramble out. Claim a bit of ordinariness.  Hard to when I haven't washed for ages.  Am wearing a plum coloured thermal beanie and just want to curl up in bed.  No TV.  Book - for a few pages.  Nothing there inside and no feeling I want anything there - just fear that I shouldn't be feeling like this making me want to make a run for it and see if I can get a better view.  Can't.  Must stick with it.  Hurts whatever I do just.  Pain travels well.  Feel I am not a part of me.  I am watching not inhabiting self.  Can't even conjure the voices of criticism although I hear them - too distant for now to make out the words.  Or be certain what they have to say.

Know this is for now.  Tomorrow is then.  For now not good.  Hope to stay safe with bed close by and hat - keeps my thoughts in and voices out.  Can feel I still have a head with a hat on.

Bonkers yes.  Being myself - yes.  Sorry - very.  For myself?  No.  Sorry I cause so much trouble and worry.  Inside just numbness.  I needed to get here.  I recognise some of the terrain.  Grief can begin.

Enter the Dragon

Mute.  That's how I  have been.  Not sure how many days.  I can say single words or a few.  Not good with questions.  Partner has been a saint.

Feel much less anxious when I am silent.  I am reading.

Finished Mr Golightly's Holiday which I have to review.  Mmmm.  Not sure if I didn't like it because of my illness or because it attempts to fix the unfixable.  Golightly is God.  The book ends with a bump and a lot of Christian apologetic.  Probably my illness.  Normally sympathetic to happy endings.  Always preferred outcome.

Arrow of God (Achebe) read yesterday.  Much about purity and taboo; progress and tradition; the place of religion; colonialism.  Enjoyed it as a morality story and it is beautifully written.  Simplicity.

Today - Heat (Monbiot).  Global warming.  I sense a comrade in Borderline Personality Disorder!  So far he is too zealous for my literary taste.  Reminded of C.S. Lewis who said "Beware a woman with a mission".

No painting today.  Need to be in one place for now.

I know where I am going with this next canvas - but don't want to start just yet.  I need space.  Inside head.  I want to know why I am so empty.  So I am going to the emptiness and staying there.  See if anything turns up or alters.  If I distract all the time I will live with a great fear of the emptiness.  Now is the time to face it and see what it can do.

Time to face the dargons even if I cannot slay them.