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?

What is normal for me?

It seems an age since I've actually had anything ready to post but believe me when I say it isn't from a lack of ideas. Life has been somewhat busy recently and much as I have been writing none of it has really made the grade and I'm not even sure that  this one is up to it. I am not sure if the tenses are quite correct but I'm going with it for now and may edit it later. As you might note most of what I write comes from my experiences although totally fictional and this one is no different. As with many people who experience mental distress there are good days and bad ones and what you do to get by is often not quite what others might choose. This is a little story about how it can feel to have found something that works that appears to only be done in movies or by children.

What is normal for me?

It is a pleasant Sunday afternoon around my friends, playing with her two children, but oh my, there comes a point when they’ve had enough. The youngest is only two and like all two year olds is somewhat demonstrative with her emotions. I wouldn’t say she was a drama queen with attitude but there are times when I look at her and wonder what is going on in her head.

I can see the stomping down of her feet, just so, and the increased tension in her arms and then her body. Her face changes subtly, her eyes narrow slightly and then she throws up her arms, screams and screws up her face as the tears flow freely and in variably after what seems like only a few seconds she slumps to the floor or into a chair and great wracking sobs shake her frame. Her arms become lose and flail as the howling bubbles up from her belly in fits and starts that judder out through her mouth. Touch her and she might just throw an arm your way but it is a sight to see. The temper tantrums of the young are amazing and as she succumbs I am transfixed with fear as I watch her abandon herself to everything that she feels without a care for what might happen to her while she is like this. To be so oblivious to your surroundings, so in the thrall of what is going on for you is incomprehensible for me, but then she is not an adult and now as the howling begins her mother moves forward to intervene. I am rooted to my seat so scared of what this little flailing monster is going through to move. I am not a parent and quite frankly am very pleased about that the tumult of life with a child seems too far removed from my quiet life for me to contemplate. The raucous goings on scare me, root me to the spot and generally make me want to run and hide rather than go to the screaming mass that is the child and although my friends tell me you get used to it and learn to deal with it I sincerely doubt that I would. I feel it is much more likely that I would want to join in.

As I watch my friend pick up the dead weight of crying child I wonder if this tantrum is really about. It was as sudden as a guest of wind and as all encompassing as epileptic fit and now it is beginning to pass I do not understand how. Little Charlotte is starting to respond to her mum and very quickly she’s wiping her eyes, dusting off her clothes and is back smiling like nothing happened. Another toy is found and she’s back to playing in the garden without a care in the world. But what really happened and is it really alright?

‘She’s fine.’

Yeah sure she is. Me on the other hand not so much.

‘She’s fine really...it’s quite normal.’

I raise my eyebrows. I really wish people wouldn’t say things like that. Quite normal what the hell does that mean.

She turns around and looks at Charlotte.

She’s playing quite happily, bit smile on her face. She looks fine, quite happy even but still my gut is taught and the adrenalin is only just subsiding. Is she really alright? I look at my friend who after a quick glance in Charlottes direction is pouring tea and offering biscuits and cakes to the other mums who are here with their children. How can they be so calm.

‘It passes you know’

Huh!

‘The terrible twos, they pass.’ The lady points to Charlotte. ‘The temper tantrums, the expansive outbursts, they all pass as they get older. They settle down.’

I smile and nod.

‘You don’t have kids do you?’

Like she really needs to ask. ‘No’

‘You get used to it, they just want to feel you’re around and everything’s going to be okay and then they’re fine again. You just reassure them a bit and distract them and then their back to normal again.’

I sigh as I recall how fast Charlotte recovered. ‘Yes I see that. It’s just so...’ so what, noisy, expansive, demonstrative, physical. So what, so damned scared to watch and feel like the end of the world is coming for her.

She pats my arm a few times. ‘You’ll see, they grow out of it real quick. In a few years you won’t even remember she was like this.’

I smile and look at Charlotte, playing with her friends like nothing happened and I know she’s right. Well mostly I feel she’s right but still there’s a little deep dark part of me that’s scared that she won’t. Scared that this is how she will be for the rest of her life. It’s obviously not a fear that is shared by the parents in the room and one you would think I would be able to dispel really easily as the world is full of people who don’t react like that to the world. Well you might think that but I know different.

The fear comes from deep down, a place that I have sequestered away from the world, a place I only go when I am alone. The place that knows when things get bad I do exactly what Charlotte does and just like her after I have flailed and cried and collapsed into a heap I can pick myself up and get on with life. I’m nearly thirty and I am ashamed that my emotional handling amounts to a two year olds tantrum but in all my years I have found no better way to cope with what I feel than to let it out in such a physical and noisy manner.

What I feel wells up and takes a hold of my heart rate, my breathing, my temperature, it is heavy on my chest and leaden in my body. It raises the hairs on my scalp and my arms and causes pain in my limbs. It gives me great racking sobs that feel like I am physically pushing it out when I breathe, it makes me sick. The world goes dark around my fear and lowers my blood pressure so that I am faint. I gasp for breath and sink to the floor but it is not panic it is just how I feel and I feel like this all the time. When I am upset it is so physical I am not aware of anything other than what is going on in my mind and body and it is why I push it away. It is so encompassing that I am vulnerable to the world and the people in it. So I hide it, I keep it safe until I am safe to be that vulnerable because much as it is normal for a two year old at twenty seven I feel the world with judge. I world will crucify me and lock me up in a mental ward but it is just how I feel. It is how I have always felt, so strongly, so acutely, so physically that it takes up my consciousness and I know no other way but I fear the world and its ideas of normal. I fear its ideas of how I should be and the intolerance of my differences but what am I to do. I have always been like this, I just learnt to hide it and despite the problems it causes me I do a damn good job but I feel alone.

I feel so different to the rest of the world, to everyone who is in it. Oh and don’t get me wrong there are people who have similar problems to me but somehow it really doesn’t feel all that great to know that someone else has the same diagnosis as me because what does that really mean. I cannot be myself and let my emotions out as I need and really when the entire medical profession is exerting so much time and effort into making me like everyone else it just doesn’t feel so good. I am not a criminal, I am not addicted to anything, and I am not even that dysfunctional in the world. I have small job and some friends. I take responsibility and have my own home but still it feels bad because unlike the rest of the world I am not like them. But what is so damned different about me? Nothing, I just feel a lot.

The Crowd Pleaser

We all have these moments, where everyone else seems to be happy and we're fighting back the tears as something hits a sore memory but what do you do? I guess for most of us the simple answer is we sit through it. We try not to cry or upset anyone else and sometimes people notice and comment and sometimes they don't it just depends on how good an actor/actress you are. But there are times when I wonder if people really do have any idea of what it feels like for someone who's depressed or who has suffered from a past that most people cant' even imagine. In fact I feel most people don't think about it they assume that peoples lives are going to be quite similar to their own. Well this is a little story about that assumption and how it can impact peoples decisions about wanting to be around people.




The crowd pleaser

Oh yes there have been many moments in my life where the world has seemed like a very distant and cruel place and none more so than now. It’s an ordinary night out with friends, the pub we’re in is quite full and despite the background music we can still hear each other speak. A rarity I’ll grant you and one that I would much rather forego right now for my friends are talking about their childhoods. The happy times that they had and they are reminiscing about the wonderful toys they were given and the enjoyment they got from them. And here I am cold as ice, trying desperately not to cry, not able to move or smile or join in and certainly not able to run away and hide like I would very much like to.

I cannot look at them and although I cannot move I wish most fervently that this topic of conversation will pass swiftly. The men liked the macarno, the lego sets, and board games. The women played with dolls and doll houses, rode bikes and even occasionally chemistry sets. And then there’s me. I don’t remember what I had, well one or two things but even then I’m not sure and I certainly don’t remember what I enjoyed. In fact truth be told, I still don’t know what I enjoy. They talk of their mothers and fathers, friends and family who gave them the toys or played with them and again I am frozen.

They don’t notice me at the end of the table quietly sipping my drink and casting my eyes anywhere but into their eyes. They don’t notice that I haven’t spoken for a good 15 mins since they started talking about their pasts and even then it was a very short ‘Oh yeah I remember that,’ and I am glad. I’m also quite bored and as mentioned quite tearful. My heart rate is elevated and I can feel the icy spikes of adrenalin and cold sweats of fear. In checking the mirror behind the bar I can see that to the rest of the world I seem fine; normal in fact, although maybe a little bored. Just need to work on that smile and the slightly glazed look to my eyes and no one would ever guess. I look at my hands gripping the arm of the chair I’m sitting on and feel the taught fiery stress of my overly tense legs and wonder what good this is doing me.

Get out they said, meet new people and enjoy yourself they said and you’ll feel much better. Little did they know how it would affect me. I want to be happy and enjoy being with the friends that I have made but there is so much that is so painful and who would have thought that talking about what toys were available when we were young would cause me so much stress and pain. They certainly didn’t, don’t as their animated faces and much joking around proves. They have completely missed what is going on for me and why should they not. Their childhoods were not like mine and they have no idea what mine was like as it has never been something I have talked about. I have pretty much avoided thinking about it to for the most part: I can’t change it so why upset myself.

I want what they had. I want to have felt loved and wanted, deserving of those toys and attention and I don’t, and hearing about their childhood and how good they were cuts to my heart, strips it bare and yanks it painfully in my chest taking my breath away. They may as well be stabbing me with every joyful laugh and excited exclamation and their desire for me to join in with them.

I can see their affront when I say little and without enthusiasm. I can see the way they deflate in front of me and I wish I could explain but they look so happy and excited, and I don’t want to see that change; but I can’t change my past or how I feel about it. I can only keep it to myself. I look around watching them and the rest of the pub and I want to be away from here. Far, far away where there is no one watching and I can let the tears flow and the anguish out. Where I can scream and shout and sob theatrically like a child and throw a tantrum, like I never did then. But I can’t, I can only sit and listen and grasp at my chair or my leg until they have finished. They are my friends and I don’t want them to be unhappy like I am and I definitely don’t want them to feel that they can’t talk about their past because I am with them.

“Drink?!” Pete holds up a glass and looks around the table.

I smile briefly. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

He smiles back with far more feeling and genuine warmth.

I sigh and my eyes prick with tears. I blink. “Just a J2O, I’m driving.”

He nods and looks at Rosa next to me.

“So what’ve you been up to?” Sarahs looking at me.

I shrug. “Not much.” And I tell her what little I have been up to and the conversation moves on. I take a deep breath and sigh. It has passed and I am okay. I can begin to relax: to breath a  little easier but it will be a while before my heart rate is really steady.

Torn apart

I guess more than many I have doubted the reality in which I find myself.. never really sure what is or isn't real and the hallucinations made it much worse but still despite or maybe because of their brevity of duration I find myself doubting that I have heard or seen what is really happening around me. For how can anyone really be sure that what they perceive is there, actually is, because as we all know people lie, are not very observant and are in many ways completely unaware of what they themselves are doing.Torn apart is about how the doubt, about how what can be appearing to be anything other than reality.

Torn apart

The world seems fractured, broken, showing opposing views

but what is real, there is no sign they segue together

yet so different. The brutal and the loving milliseconds apart

to blink and everything is changed.

A flickering milieu of human nature in a single breath;

To see, to hear, to feel at once what is, what was and what could be.

At odds they tear me apart, desperate, despairing, lonely yet happy, hopeful, at peace

people caring for each other and so cruel as well.

It contradicts and overlaps not one thing or the other.

A waking dream of fitful sleep, with cries of fear

that are uttered but not heard, where tears have flowed

and the rivulets are unnoticed, unfelt and left to dry

Where limbs that move too much and ache are not given rest;

For though the pain is felt the reason is not known

But what to do, for did the person really mean the words that were heard

And was resentment seen where only kindness was meant

Was that flicker really there or am I sleeping still.

Will I wake and find that life is not this hell that I am living in.

Carried away

There are moments when things seems less stable than before and external stimuli cause big internal battles. It is at these moments that i feel carried away. I seem to zone out as I try to cope with what is going on in side of me and lose track of the world. Some would say a panic attack but it is never that simple.

Carried Away

In that split second after, I am paralysed

and washed away from the present.

Now just flashes of light, snippets of sound, the odd word

and anger, despair, resentment and pain.

Weightless buffeted and bashed

I tumble headlong uncontrolled without falling

confused by a dizzying assault on my senses.

Panicked and scared I try to understand what’s around me

I cannot keep up, I cannot even pretend as I spiral out of control

I know not where or what is going to happen.

It changes so fast without stimulus;

I am lost yet some things still seem known

The turmoil it drags at me, pulling in all directions

I feel the impending loss of cohesion and will it to happen.

Escaping the friction and strife that connects me

then each part would be free to be as it wants

The balance is tipped I am free

yet still I am here not calm and serene but alive

I know not how or why this world has pulled me apart

nor how I still live but I am here.

The heavy heart

There are times when life gets you down and it feels like you're walking around reacting like normal but still feel dead on the inside. All the time we are asked to put aside how we feel, to be professional, and deal with what is going on now but it can be very difficult and can leave people feeling very alone. So the heavy heart is the unseen problem.



The heavy heart it walks amongst us
it passes by unnoticed
it smiles and laughs
takes part in life like nothing’s wrong
then hides away to cry alone
to moan in pain, to try and heal the wounds
than never seem to fade.


The heavy heart it yearns to feel light
to dance and sing and reach the sky
where the warming sun shines
but for now it does not feel the heat
it senses more of what might be
and hopes for better times to come.


The heavy heart endures
it beats, slow and laboured
it’s painful rhythm pushing life to places
that long since abandoned hope
reminding that life might change and sometime soon
the light will come, the sun will shine
and it will skip and race again.