Polar Opposite

I don't believe that I have ever experienced mania in the true sense of the word. All that I can describe is how it has seemingly presented to me. Aside from the soul crushing/chest explosion/gut wrenching anxiety, it really is quite wonderful. And as far as I'm concerned, Diazepam was invented for a reason.
Whilst being in this hyperactive and buzzy mindset, I managed to achieve more than I would have expected of myself in a month, in just 3 days. No task seemed too big or intimidating, I would take on as many projects that presented themselves, often never completing the previous simply because the desire had faded and my memory let the entire event disappear from existence in my mind.
I constantly felt as though I was on the verge of having 5 brilliant ideas all at the same time. Many never came to fruition, but the excitable energy of inspiration was enough to keep me charged. Some of my brilliant ideas where not actually brilliant at all, but no-one could have possibly convinced me otherwise in that moment - I Facetimed my mum at 11pm to show her how amazing my new shower caddy was. I couldn't understand when she wasn't as excited as me?
Sleep was a burden, in that I couldn't. I tried to maintain good 'sleep hygiene' but would often lay in bed wide awake with a hive of thoughts buzzing in my head. I would have an overwhelming desire to clean the bathroom ceiling at 2am, with the only thing stopping me being the idea of playing right into being crazy. Eating a full meal only slowed me down. I explained to my best friend Yass one day that I didn't need to eat, because I was feeding on pure awesomeness. I honestly believed it at the time.
I rediscovered my love for musical theatre and played Broadway soundtracks back-to-back. I would sing the carefully rehearsed lines at the top of my lungs, anywhere and everywhere - in the car, shower, whilst putting on makeup. I performed the entire Wicked score to my cat wearing only my underwear. 'I'm defying gravity, and you can't pull me down'.
Oh, but didn't they try? It seemed every health professional that I saw was worried about a problem that I couldn't see as existing. In my mind, I have been deeply and darkly depressed for so long, how could a switch in mood such as the one I had experienced be so unwelcome? Sure, some of my social interactions needed some filtering on my behalf, but the person I had become was surely a much better rounded and excitable individual than the melancholy and suicidal version of myself? Apparently I have a 'reputation to maintain', and my safety is imperative. Look, I get it. I just don't understand how safety is more of an issue when I am more elated compared to when I'm legitimately suicidal to start with?
There seems to be a fine line, and wherever it is, I have again crossed it. Getting out of bed requires copious amounts of energy, I find myself listening to any playing music with no desire to sing along despite knowing the words back-to-front. I am in tears all day, sometimes because a house is going to auction on the news and sometimes for no reason at all. I have an eerie awareness of all the weaknesses and voids in my life and a returning little voice in my head that is convincing me that those things will never change. For the first time, I am aware of all the hanging points in my house. What does that mean? It means just that - I am aware.
Charlotte Dawson died a week ago today. In the words of Alex Perry she was 'a beautiful, bright shining girl' who also suffered terrible depression. She took her own life last week, and aside from the devastation of a beautiful life lost, there is the confronting fact that if 'big, tough Charlotte' can lose her battle, then what hope do the rest of us have? RIP darling.

Who Am I?

Oddly enough, I've never really ever felt my age. At 14 I felt that time was moving too quickly, at 18 I never once felt 18, and now at 23 I am finding it hard to put all of the little parts of me together. My exterior apparently screams underage, my logic seemingly that of a 40 year old woman, and my emotional intelligence is still waiting for the jury to return the verdict on that one. When I put all of these pieces together I feel like such a mismatched freckle on the nose of my life's complexion.
I could just put it down as a unique mark of my own individuality, if I didn't feel that I needed to rotate the various pieces of me to suit the personality of whoever faces me at that particular moment.
Just when I think I can safely pack myself into a box labelled with some form of stereotype, the field to the left of my brain throws something into the game to prove me wrong. The thirty-something feminist in me is looking at real estate and applying for a mortgage, discussing strata fees and square metres whilst hanging out by the lockers at work. The single twenty-something year old will sit in a Kings Cross club with old school friends drinking cocktails poured from a teapot whilst wearing Chanel. The various characters in me can be clearly contradicted at a swift glance through my wardrobe; dresses with full tulle skirts, Spanish leather pumps, stockings and cardigans, blue sequined Converse sneakers and seasonal Sportsgirl jackets - and that's all before you get to the designer labels. Many of these items contradict one another, yet surprisingly they all play an integral part of finishing one of my soul-defining outfits. But even as I decode each one, it somehow manages to confuse me of the make up of my identity even further. I wonder if it will ever somehow make sense to me, and if not perhaps someone else who can rearrange the 'pick the face' enough for me to recognise enough of my own features to finally see it as an acceptable 'me'.

Interesting Read.

Stop Minimising Mental Illness

True that.

Inception

Eventually, she tells me the truth that she was possessed by an idea, just one simple idea that changed everything, that our world wasn't real and in order to get back to the reality, we'll have to kill ourselves.

It starts with a thought, and if it lingers a second longer becomes an idea. It is this idea that burrows itself into the subconscious so that the light bulb remains on, even when the sparks from every other thought process disguises it. With perseverance, this idea can become an obsession, and obsessions always win.

Am I intolerable? Am I the person that everyone avoids until caught out and pleasantries take over that I, foolishly, mistake for genuine acceptance? Ironically, people are ignorant when they think that I don't notice when I am ignored. My mind is over-analytical; I know when you don't call me back or reply to messages. I see when you change direction in the hall or walk away when you see me coming. Should I be surprised? I'm not that unintelligent - surely I should be able to pre-warn myself that people are fake, misleading and give me false hope that perhaps I mean something to someone; anyone really.
Perhaps with the added year today brings I have made a revelation; I have a constant uphill battle with myself and have already lost to the world. Maybe now is the time to forfeit.

You've come this far. You may as well dedicate the next 8 minutes to watching this.

Election 2010

All the money in the world won't stop people from wanting to kill themselves. Not too many people get it.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/election2010/7935525/277m-for-suicide-prevention-gillard

Provisional Diagnosis

When you're already deemed as one kind of crazy, what's to stop you adding to it?
Provisional Diagnosis. What does that even mean? Provisional... serving for the time being only. Subject to change.
What's to stop you telling me one theory before changing your mind entirely? That's such a cop-out. No-one else can get away with it so why should they?
Yes I'll have cracked pepper on my salad. Oh hang on, I don't like pepper. Take it back please.

Everything is one big contradiction: it's chemical, it's biological, it's a defence mechanism, it's a learnt response. They say it's not my fault, it's something that just happens. Then why do I have to change everything to make it go away? Not just my outfit or hobbies or favourite food, but things from deep within myself that I didn't even know where there. How can I change something that I'm still not convinced exists?

Someone always manages to say it will get better, and then something somehow manages to make it all worse.

There are times when I don't feel quite like myself. Granted, I don't really know myself yet. I tell myself I do. I paint out my dreams and aspirations, my fears and favourite colours and musicals and actors. Sometimes I wonder if it's all just a trick? As if these things that I think are pieces of me are really just a cover created by my soul to hide the truth of what I think I want to see but really don't have the courage or strength or maturity or maybe even the sanity to accept.
Perhaps I'm only aware of this when I have moments like now; when I don't feel like myself. As if I'm to know how I should feel anyway?

Vogue

My past 48 hours have primarily been spent shopping. As the new winter collections have just been released into the stores, I was able to peruse and ponder this season's looks. Perhaps not such a good idea the day after payday.
So after 2 days, numerous blisters and hundreds of shops (and dollars - shh!), these are my observations of the must-haves this winter:

• Cropped jackets
• Long cardigans/knitwear
• Animal print
• Leggings
• The colour purple
• Fingerless biker gloves
• Studs
• Silk scarves
• Hounds tooth print (I am a little excited by this actually)

So I wait for the colder weather to set in so I can trial my new outfits on everyone else's judgemental eyes. Until then, I will admire the beauty of Yves Saint Laurent's new wallet. It is so Parisienne Chic:

We succeed to make up for our failures. We love to cover the hate. We lie to hide from the truth. We create to destroy and smile to disguise the tears. We ultimately live to die.

Dreams

I have complained of being tired for weeks now. So many nights I lay watching the clock, counting down the hours until daybreak, until eventually I dropped off only to wake to a screaming alarm a few short hours later. Recently, with thanks to a pharmaceutical company I can now get to sleep without a second thought. Waking up is harder though, as my body struggles to function and my eyes rebel against the daylight.
It has to be a positive that I can sleep a full night away though? Then why can't I operate as efficiently as I did when I lay awake throughout the night? It is as if my increasing hours of sleep are directly proportional to my escalating exhaustion.
I go to bed tired, wake up tired, and am living every breath of my life tired. Last night I excitedly went to bed early, eagerly awaiting the Saturday morning sleep-in. Well, that I got. I slept for over 13 hours but couldn't bring myself to get up. Perhaps just one more hour?
So as I lay contemplating my options, I had a sudden flashback of my mid-sleep thoughts. The more I think about it now, the more I can remember from the nights over the past week and the dreams that have possessed me.
They are so vivid and intense that I think maybe they are the excuse for my weariness. Last night I was chased by friends possessed by the enemy. I have dreamt of the people around me turning into witches and deceiving me in the depths of the night. I have been held hostage in a haunted house despite my tearful pleads to be set free. I have re-lived events from the past with others filling in for the missing characters. I have run, flown, screamed and cried my way through the darkened hours and it makes me wonder if perhaps that is why I feel so haggard?
Perhaps things weren't as bad as I had thought they were? It is the nights that are worse.

A Step Away from the Wrong Direction

What do we do? What do we do in this life to make it worthwhile? Or to even just pass the time?
For the first time in weeks my head finally feels screwed on, perhaps not correctly adjusted, but it's on. I can manage a smile, the thought of potential curry puffs for dinner excites me, and I don't feel like I want to die. Not that I think I ever really wanted to die in the conventional sense, but perhaps more literally as death suggests a termination of ones thoughts and processes.
It made me wonder how one seemingly regular Friday could bring about such a change? I woke beyond exhausted, snoozed a few too many times and prevented being late for work by about 3 seconds. I felt sick to my core for the better part of the morning, became frustrated when my colleagues made pointless comments about my mood as if they really gave a shit anyway, and sat through morning tea listening to some random carry on about how she thought psych patients were worse than them all put together and that you can still be crazy beneath a seemingly 'normal' exterior. Seriously, shut the fuck up. So at lunchtime, which I was actually ready for today, I dragged my feet and my massive water bottle outside to avoid the mind-numbing superficial chatter of the tea room.
Mrs Boss said she thought I seemed better. I wasn't sure how she could tell. Could she see inside my head? I wasn't sure if she was right or if I'm just getting better at living it. Perhaps sometimes I am better? When Mr T called last night I felt my heart lift, and it remained suspended for a full half hour. That's got to count for something, right?
But lunchtime today, it made me feel a little lighter. Confessing my love for Chanel and all things classic made me smile inside and thoughts of tomorrow's potential sleep-in reminded me what I have to look forward to. How is it that I suddenly became aware of myself, and not this pseudo-me that I have become?
I have always thought of myself as an introvert, because I could pass the time with the words of Plath or my blog, but lunchtime suggested otherwise. I don't think I am extroverted as people have come to know the term, but I think I rely on the thoughts and opinions of others to confirm what I see in myself. I think the social exchanges of day-to-day life keep me grounded and make me forget about the universe of insanity swimming around in my head. Even if it is only for an afternoon.
I left work feeling closer to normal than previous days, and keep telling myself that I will have curry puffs for dinner and everything will be okay. So in the time between then and now I have paced. I don't feel the need to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty, I don't have to shut my door to avoid the lives of others or make up events to be excused to the local park in an attempt to avoid eating dinner. I can just be. But what is it that we do in those hours of just existing? I can't remember. So I'm back to being bored.

Your Secret

I saved this image from www.postsecret.com a few years ago. At the time I had felt inspired by this person's secret. Now I am trying to believe it.

Boredom

Boredom is no excuse. Lazing on my bed staring at the imperfections of the ceiling, justifying my immobility with boredom. It's not that there isn't anything that needs to be done; no trivial tasks that have been put off for weeks due to my lack of motivation. Today adds to the list; my hair needs straightening, my legs need moisturising, my brain needs stimulation. But what if I choose to go back to sleep; to bank up a few more hours in addition to the long awaited ten I got last night? I was making up for the countless sleepless nights I spent imagining the ceiling through the darkness.
The city skyline never sleeps. Even the suburbs that appear on the horizon flicker as if the sleeping sun is sparkling on the gentle tidal movement of families snoring lightly in their slumber.
So what consequence would I pay by sleeping away this textbook summer's day? It's my day to do as I please. The only person it will ultimately affect is me. By avoiding life for just one day will that really matter in ten years time? Will I even remember? Perhaps not. But what if this is how I chose to live, and now is the catalyst for something deeper? Can I find peace by avoiding life?

Missing Pages

Do you ever get the feeling like something's missing? Not in the way of misplaced car keys or one's virginity but something from deep inside that self destructs into its own hole of nothingness, trying to fill that spot where the missing piece belongs.
How to describe it? Tell the girl at the lost property office or God on your knees in church. No, best to bury it further as an ostrich does in the sand. Afterall, how is anyone else to comprehend if it's nothing more than an inkling, a suggestion of poison to yourself?
As I grow older I learn more about myself that I have always known, just never had the sense or the maturity to realise or accept. My acting experience has blessed me with the ability to change masks, personas, often on command as though playing all 6 parts of the Commedia Dell'Arte. I can be a well-adjusted socialite, just one of the gang, a shoulder to cry on and prop you up when you fall. I become all of these things in fear of my own inadequacies. Because I've never been good with change, never popular or had a copious amount of friends and never felt as I could truly be saved if I fell (again).
But those metaphorical masks, they seem to reduce the force. The weight swinging from my heart, pulling myself down lessens, until I let down my guard.
I become so affected by things. By what people say, this season's clothes and what happens to characters on my favourite TV shows. I let these things in so they bother my nights, eating themselves into my subconscious.
There is everything wrong with the dark. It is the most revealing thing I know. You cannot hide from your mind, yet the terrors hide themselves. I believe in the supernatural and the living dead. I believe people can come back as ghosts, or as babies. Some people have been here before. These are the deep thinkers, the worldly and cultural people who don't have a passport. Sometimes they know, sometimes not, that they have walked the planet before this life.
Me? I always felt so naive and empty that I couldn't possibly lived earlier than 1987. All of those holes of nothingness within my soul are waiting to be imprinted in this life. It is up to me if I have the strength or the courage to inscribe on my heart.
But today, an ordinary midweek working day I felt (not even thought) that perhaps I have lived another life. I have mistaken those empty pages as a lack of history. Rather they represent what has been stolen. My troubled existence is spelt out clearly in invisible ink, for it is those weakened links and lost fragments that show just that - they are lost. The missing pieces of me have disintegrated into the past, each time stealing a part of my 21st century well being. And the biggest space of all is vacated by the catalyst for the hurt. What mothers and fathers all over the world break up their marriages and live a life of misery for. And I don't know if I can ever be able to replace it.

Mid flight ponderings

There are odd moments. Not every day and barely every week, that you remember things from the past and the feeling that joins it is so vivid you transport yourself there. To that time and location.
I can hear my mother's voice correcting my "yep" as she drove my brother and I to primary school; the both of us in the backseat of the car.
As I listen to Missy Higgins songs I remember sitting as a senior in the school library struggling to devise a drama performance. My journal was full of clippings, pictures, lyrics and poems. As I listen to her sing them I remember the page as I glue it in, reading them back to myself.
Flying makes me nervous; not because of the journey but anxiety about the destination. Often the initial departure is bound for somewhere far from home, but after a near 1000 kilometre move flying home, and I mean really home, brings on the usual feelings based on pure habit rather than actual worry.
I makes me think that we don't change at all. Not really. We are born as a tiny version of our present minds, and if we're lucky will add some cognitive degeneration before we die to soothe the life long pressure we have built upon.
Leopards can't change their spots. Nor Kitty her freckles.

Without the Human Community, One Single Human Being Cannot Survive

I honestly don't know how people can exist without friendship. People share their secrets, hopes and dreams. Also people who will share humiliation, shame and loss.
People who will laugh with us over nothing, sing the same songs, read the same books or tell us what the rest of the world will not tell: that the new hair colour was a sad, sad mistake.
How do they live - the people who are happy and proud to be so independent that they claim they don't need a friend? Is it an act, and something born of necessity because they have found themselves friendless? Is it a fear of confiding, of opening up? A fear of being unashamedly natural in a world that seems to insist on role playing and acting as if it all was going well even when it obviously is far from well? Is there any dignity at all in being able to manage alone, in trying to be an island that doesn't touch anything or anyone else?

Maeve Binchy

What a Sorry Lot of Rot

The following article What a Sorry Lot of Rot, written by Robyn Wuth was in the Weekend Edition of the Gold Coast Bulletin.
I have an opinion - what's yours?

$orry, but I’m not $orry.
I don’t want anyone to apologise on my behalf, or for my relatives for that matter.
Crown me queen of the politically incorrect, but I have nothing to apologise for.
I’m with Wilson Tuckey.
Old Ironbar walked out of Parliament before the apology, saying it would do little for the Aborigines.
“Tomorrow there’ll be no petrol sniffing, tomorrow little girls can sleep in their beds without any concern – it’s all fixed, the Rudd spin will fix it all,” Tuckey quipped.
He’s right. It’s insincere, it solves nothing but it was a lovely photo opportunity.
We said it to make you feel better… did it work?
As P.G. Wodehouse said: “It is a good rule in this life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”
To be honest, I’m sick of all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about bloody saying sorry.
How much of this is hype and how much of it actually happened? Perception and reality have blurred.
For every Aboriginal child who was stolen, another was saved, some were given a chance to change their lives.
It’s a shame they refused to take it.
How many terrified white teenagers paid the price for their sins with babies ripped from their arms in the name of religion and political correctness?
But I have to say sorry.
Sorry for giving you free medical care, for giving you money, for building you homes which you vandalised and destroyed and treated with contempt and we paid to fix.
Sorry for developing large farms and properties, which today feed your people.
Sorry for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric to replace the animal skins you used before.
Sorry for building roads and railway tracks between cities and building cars so that you no longer have to walk over harsh terrain.
The fact is, we won.
All right?
We came in and we killed lots of them and we took their land and we’re not giving it back, unless the High Court makes us and then, frankly, the High Court will have to go.
They weren’t using the land for much. They’re still not, to tell the truth. This is what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did and he’s not going around saying, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.’ The history of the world isn’t about people making friends, it’s about cultures conquering other cultures, usually by force of arms. We had better weapons – end of story.
We built cities, roads, we made our homes here and we created a nation.
Can we move on now please?
This stance is not proving popular and led to a huge argument with my brother. This in itself is not unusual, because he’s wrong a lot of the time and as his brilliant, talented younger sister, I consider it my right, nay my duty, to enlighten him.
El Crazy, as I have come to call him, is what we might call one of this diehard political fanatics who prefers it when all people think the way he does.
I’m much more of your ‘what’s in it for me’ kind of girl – and there’s nothing for me in saying sorry except a giant payout my taxes will fund.
He’s all in favour of saying sorry for the wrongs of the past if it helps our nation move forward. I say why stop there? If we’re going to have this pointless political posturing of a National $orry Day, then let’s widen it – let’s take it international.
The British can say sorry to the Irish for that pesky ‘invasion’ and the IRA can apologise for blowing people up and shooting them in the kneecaps.
While we’re at it, the Brits should have stayed home instead of colonising the globe.
And the Romans – who did they think they were? Someone find me a Roman descendent and get him to apologise to someone.
The Americans – they’d better get started, there’s a lot to apologise for – for that whole revolution? That was just rude. Poor form, chaps.
The Boston Tea Party, a complete waste of perfectly good tea.
The treatment of Native Americans and slavery? Sorry about that.
The wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq? Sorry, sorry, sorry.
South Africa. The whole apartheid thing was probably just a misunderstanding.
The French should apologise for just being French.
The Russians? They should apologise for the pointless exercise of communism.
Check under every rock, there’s something to apologise for everywhere you look.
The tribal war in Rwanda, the atrocities in Cambodia, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan.
The Middle East. Uh-oh. For all we know, Mohammed and Jesus played together as kids.
But Jesus would have been the cool kid. Well, it’s true.
If we decide to keep up this grovelling, honestly, where does it end?
How far back do you want to go?
Harden up people and let’s just get on with it.

Judy Moody

Yes, a distinct change in mood has been noted. Not just by me it seems, but also by others and there is some proof in my bank balance (or lack of).
Over the duration of the past week I have found myself spending hundreds of dollars on materialistic things that I really do not need, and at times emptying my purse with absolutely nothing to show for it at the end of the day ???
Yesterday I found myself killing time at Pacific Fair, so I anticipated a lengthy walk around the shops and possibly grabbing a few Christmas presents. Yes well, some purchasing did take place but the only person who will be receiving any of these gifts is me! Yes, I bought new shoes (!) and accessories as well as some new Chanel mascara.
So as I have floated through the past few days (and I chose that word as I have found myself not taking direction, rather flowing with it) and there are only two things that I have felt.
The first one is guilt. Although I really couldn't give a toss what I spend my money on, an element of guilt sets in when I can longer afford those shoes, that dress, those earrings... Yeah, I'm a bloody idiot but my taste restricts me to stores with a no returns policy.
The second, is feeling as though I can't breathe. I can no longer restrict it to a few instances, rather that I believe myself to have lost the ability to breathe deeply. I feel laboured with a tight feeling beneath my sternum as though I may never feel at ease again. At night as I am courting sleep, I wake up gasping for breath.
Sometimes I try and fight it. I tell myself that it's all in my head - that my lungs are fine and I can breathe as deeply as I wish. I resist the urge to gasp, and continue with my tidal breathing until I think I'm going to die and give in. (It's much like holding your head under water and trying so hard not to think about drowning or how badly you need to take a breath - until you cannot take it a second longer and emerge from what may have become a watery grave.)
So no matter how much I try and convince myself that everything's ok, it still turns out not to be. No matter how much I try and save, I still manage to spend. I tell myself that I will never know the person I was last weekend again, but I plan on misbehaving this coming Saturday night. And so I am torn as to whether I am actually my alter ego in disguise, and it is not until now that I have really surfaced?
I know this is not just in my imagination. I have had comments from those around me as to my shift in mood and outlook. It was only today that my manager asked me to have a sit down conversation with her in which she demanded to know what was happening. Apparently my previously effective "Nothing" is wearing a bit thin, so when she did not accept this I walked away mumbling to myself to cover the sound of her frustrated tone.
It was after this that I finally realised the abnormality of my behaviour. If my seemingly emotionless boss sensed a change of personality, the fact is that there is one. I hate that she's right and I hate that there's nothing I can do about it but most of all I hate that I'm even in this bother.
I just wish sometimes you could tear a page out of your diary and make it go away. Tear out a day to make that argument disappear, tear out a week to get rid of those appointments, or dare I remove a fistful in the hopes of finding the person I used to be? Or at least the person who was oblivious to everything that she's aware of now.