I often wonder what other peoples minds are like.

In so many ways I feel I have a unique perspective on the world around me and how people relate to each other. Unique in the sense that this is how I see the world and no one else will see it/hear it through my eyes and ears. The strange part is that although I see myself just like everyone else I doubt that how I react is like everyone else. A long term mental health condition can skew you’re perceptions of what it is to be normal and when so many people are denying that there is such a thing as normal people tend to ask what makes you ill instead. To me normal is simply not being unwell, it is not different form how I am it is just not hurting everyone in the way that my mind/thoughts/deeds are. I find myself talking to many people with mental health conditions who are desperate to tell me that we are different. We are ill and although I agree in principle I still wonder if they are right. Are we fundamentally different or do we just do things differently and that causes the problems.

So this little piece is about one persons imagines, one persons questions about how peoples minds work.



I have often wondered what my place in this world is. Where do I fit and quite frankly I am none the wiser. I look around at the world, at people going through their daily lives and wonder, what are they saying to themselves? Are they berating themselves, do they tear themselves down when no one else is? Do they worry about things that no one has even noticed?

I see confident, outgoing, chatty, happy people and I wonder. They tell me about what they have achieved and talk about their kids or new job. They moan about their parents and the weather, how unfair this or that is, or how obnoxious a boss they have but really what is going on, on the inside?

I’m not exactly the shy and retiring type. I’m not the wall flower or the sad little creature. I’m not even the extrovert or the popular person trying to make up for my inadequacies by showing off. I’m just there. I turn up to things, I try things and then maybe never do them again, but hey at least I had a go. I guess to others I seem confident and outgoing and have done so much, but really on the inside there’s a little girl that’s terrified, her heart is racing, the adrenalin is making her cold and jittery, and she’s shrieking with all her might to just get the hell out of here. It’s not like you even wanted to do this, wanted to be here. So just bloody well go and be done with it. But I don’t go, I don’t leave, in fact I just take a deep breath and do what I am asked and occasionally I shake, or have to sit down and in most instances I just don’t agree to things I can’t face doing.

Okay so sometimes this doesn’t work out so well. I fail, I fall over myself either in words or in deeds, but when it comes down to it I guess I usually do okay and people believe...well what they want to I suppose, that I’m confident or good or I don’t know, maybe, arrogant given my shortcomings, but mostly they just don’t act like I expect them too. They just keep asking more and more and quite frankly MORE of me and I try to give it. I try to make them pleased with me and then they say, oh you’ve done everything, or you are a know it all you’ve got all the answers.

But really do they not get it. I’m scared, scared of failing, scared of not being good enough, scared of not being happy, of not having friends, scared of living. It would be so nice to have someone actually say thank you, or good job, well done. Nice to hear someone say that must have taken a lot of effort, thanks, couldn’t have done it without you. But really what I want to hear is so glad you’re alive, you’re a wonderful person to know. I spend all my time trying to be what you want, trying to say the right thing and really I just want to feel like I’m a good person and someone to be proud of, proud to know. But I don’t feel it. I feel I’m bad and wrong and there’s nothing I can do to make up for that but I try because what else is there. What else can I do? Die! No that’s just not me and it’s not about quitting or taking the cowards way out. No it’s about how good life can be, how fantastic it is to solve a problem or make someones’ life just that little bit better than it was because I said this or that. It’s about how great chocolate cake tastes, how mind blowing roller coasters are, it’s about how amazing the natural world is and that there is so much to see in this world that I don’t want to not be a part of it. But oh how it hurts, how hard it is to keep going day after day.


So I wonder, is everyones life full of doubt? Do they feel so wrong all the time or are they as happy as they seem? Do they ignore the shadows that appear and the voices that scream at them, do they put up with all the voices telling them they are no good or is it just me? Does everyone see things that disappear and feel the earth move even when it hasn’t? Do their emotions take their breath away or are they as unaffected as they seem. Or are they fighting their own internal battle to be who they want to be and do what they want to do.

A life not lived.

It seems to me that as children we start out getting much of what we want and desire and then as we get older far more gets in the way of those desires. The need for money, the need for a home and children and really as adult so many of us lose out on the things that we would like that don’t make it onto the necessary list of thing we need to achieve to keep the roof over our heads or food in our bellies and the kids in school etc. the thing is that so often I hear people bemoan the things that they haven’t done and how they woke up and found their lives had passed by without really realizing it and now want so much more than they had. So this comes in part from all the people I’ve met who have suffered just that bit more than average.



A life not lived



6/7/2012

I woke up to bright sunshine streaming in between a break in the curtains way before I wanted to. 4:30 for Petes’ sake who wants to be up at this time. I am so tired my sleep has been plagued with night mares of pain and suffering. Mine to be precise and really vivid and gruesome too I just can’t stand this anymore. Night after night running for my life, getting beaten or raped and why because life isn’t how I want it. I have a job and a home, a family, a loving partner and every night I am chased, beaten, often raped and killed. I just don’t get it.

Today I have a day off, a day just to myself and now I am awake at 4:30 feeling like my head hasn’t touched the pillow in years. The family will be getting up in a few hours and I was hoping for a lie in and some rest. Well really I was hoping to spend the day in bed sleeping off some of the bone weariness that is so much a part of my life right now. The fog that surrounds my mind is so numbing, the routine that I live in means I could do it in my sleep. Well really it feels like my whole life is done in my sleep.

My husband will be at work, the kids at school I can sleep all day well that was the plan. So what now, my eyes feel like they’ve be sucked back a little further into my skull, my body weights so much more and my muscles have wasted away and I can’t lift myself any more. I am just sinking through the mattress and rising above it all at the same time. Wide awake and in a deep slumber too. Oh to feel like I am really alive. Oh to feel like the blood is pumping through my veins and pushing me on to greater things.

But no I have things to do, places to be, children to sort out, problems to solve and all I want is to sleep and feel rested, to feel happy and content and alive. It’s all very well to have children and a family and good career but really what does any of it mean when I am fighting to feel alive, am I asleep or am I dreaming. I can’t even remember when I did something and enjoyed it, even before I felt so tired when did I ever do something purely because I wanted to?

I’m on 45 for Petes’ sake and I feel about 100, worn down and weary of living. So many chores, responsibilities: are the kids at school, the job, the chores, have I done the shopping, cooked a meal got the kids to clubs, taken some exercise, seen my friends, so much of my life feels like a big fat chore that I have do but would much rather not. Something I will be asked to do again and again and will not enjoy something that others want and say we all need but not something that I actually want.

How did my life get like this? Get to me taking a day off work so that I can sleep, so that I can do absolutely nothing and feeling that that will not be enough to revitalise me. I just want to feel...

And there we have it. I have no idea how I want to feel, I just don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to feel so dead to everything. And now I think about it, it’s not just doing something, it’s everything: things don’t taste nice, I never have any energy, I ache all the time, the world is talking about things but I am not really hearing any of it and the other day I swear I was seeing things. I just don’t feel like I know what is going on around me. My life is deadening and deafening and I don’t ‘feel that anyone is really hearing what I am saying, seeing what I do or even noticing what I achieve; I may as well not be here.

I mean really when was the last time I had any fun?

Well my friends would probably say last Fri when you were out with us, my work colleagues the day before yesterday when we celebrated the new contract, my husband the evening in we had, and the kids the last time I took them out or l joked at breakfast. But really I’m not sure any of this was fun. I don’t want to do this anymore; I just don’t want just this life, I want more. So why does it feel so bad, so wrong, it’s not like I’m bouncing around with energy doing things that I enjoy. Most of what I do is for everyone else. For the kids, my husband, my friends, because when is there any time for me in all this. When am I doing anything that I really want?

Maybe today!? But what do I want? And what can I do in a day that I really want?