I wish I had a set of goals that I could look towards. Something to build my life up to. At the moment all I can manage is just to get up in the morning and keep my ass awake for the duration. I have started taking the Zopiclone at night to get me to sleep and keep me that way. I am only doing this so I don’t have to be awake any longer than is necessary. It’s not an ideal way of living life but it’s all I can muster at the moment.
I have two groups that I attend during the week and to be honest I don’t feel much like going to either. The first on a Monday is a discussion group. There are about 10 people in the group and the idea is that a topic is chosen each week and then for the next 90 minutes we discuss said topic. Last week was quite good. We discussed Law and Order (not the TV show). I had a fair shake of saying my piece when I had an original thought that didn’t involve just the words, “I agree”.
The second group is a repeat of the relaxation group from before Christmas. Everyone missed the first week and about 6 people showed up for week 2. So a more manageable group size. I guess it doesn’t help that the building these groups are held is not the largest of buildings. For one to one meetings the room sizes are perfect. Nice and cosy and not to oppressive (unless they have all the heaters on and then it’s like a sauna). It’s great to have somewhere I can go to let off a little steam a couple of times a week, as I don’t really have anything else in my life to call my own. I escape by putting headphones on while I am on the computer and that is about the extent of my escape.
Putting myself out there is proving to be harder than I thought it would. I could probably handle a smaller group but to be honest I think it could have something to do with my being the youngest of the group (or at least I think I am). The size of the group is a little intimidating and it got quite loud last week. Not that I mind a heated debate but it seemed that it was the same two people talking and getting more and more self agitated. The mood I am in right now I would probably put my foot in it and tell them to shut the fuck up. I think I will give Tomorrows meeting a miss. As the old saying goes…”If you don’t have anything good to say…. Say Nothing!!!”
(Skip forward a few hours)
I came clean with Mum and my wife about how I am feeling. Both came up with the same idea that I should phone the MHT tomorrow morning and see what they say. Mum and I are going into town at some point tomorrow, maybe I’ll be able to get an emergency appointment with the Pdoc. I’ll deal with that in the morning. My problem still remains, how do I explain how I am feeling when I can’t explain it to myself. I KNOW how I feel but putting it into words to some one else is a totally different proposition. The closest I came to it tonight was to try and explain that “there was a fire under my skin that can’t break through”. All very Jim Morrison like but the best I could do. I just want to rip the skin off of my bones and let it out that way. I guess that’s the Self Harmer in me trying to get out. It’s a struggle not to do it, the one thing stopping me is the feeling of letting everyone down when I do it. I get such sorrowful looks that it makes me feel ten times worse.
I am going to call it a night soon and just go hide away in my dark little room alone and hope the night passes quickly. Well I can always hope…
Until Next Time…
Currently Listening to: Planet Rock Current Mood: Rage Against Life
It’s uncontrollable. It’s from the very pit of my soul. It’s a rage that is burning hard and heavy. I wish I could douse the flames and not feel this overwhelming anger towards everything. I am doing myself no favours. I am doing no one else any favours. It’s just an ever turning spinning on an axis rage that can’t be sated.
It started about two weeks ago and to be honest that’s why I haven’t written much anywhere, Facebook, Twitter or here, mostly out of fear of pissing someone off. I don’t know if writing this now is going to upset some but I have to let it out or it’s gonna cripple me. I am not manic, I know that much. I am still obsessing over stuff. I have cut way back on my spending and have only spent about £20 on Doctor Who stuff this month. Mind you Mum has bought me a couple of things as well. I think it’s her way of not letting me spend the money out of my bank account. I got almost everything I planned on getting with th exception of the Specials DVD. But I guess I can wait for that for a couple more weeks.
Back to the rage. I am pissed at everything. My life (or lack of it). The people I interact with on-line, so much drama and crazies going on. I feel like screaming at some people just to get their shit together and live life for the now. I think that and then wonder how would it feel if I said those things to myself and what would my reaction be. I should take myself out of the equation and stop following so rabidly all the stiff that goes on. My twitter feed is getting clogged up by so much stuff I don’t know where to begin. I want to be there for the people on my list but I have no idea where to begin in NOT saying some thing assholeish (yeah I made that word up). What’s the right thing to say to someone who is hurting and you have only one reaction and that’s to tell them to S.T.F.U?
I,of course, would never do that. I just want to know that I am not feeling alone in feeling these feelings and that others go through these phases. I wonder what would happen if I just deleted everything and started from scratch with a new identity? Not tell anyone who I am. Go back to using blogger and re-building the fragile network that I have built up. I have done it before and then came back once my head was straight. hell I lost about 6 months of my online life that way and still I end up back at square one.
Oh well sitting here moping about it isn’t going to solve anything.
Well we are 6 days into 2010 and it’s dilemma time already. For the past ten days or so I have been obsessing over stuff. It’s mostly Doctor Who, but there is other stuff to. I have spent about £100 on Doctor Who DVD’s and I want to spend more. It is taking some real strong will power to overcome this feeling. I have removed all of my payment details from Amazon so I can’t just log on without my card and buy willy nilly. I will give my card to my Mum when she gets home from work. I have had enough of feeling like this. I wish I knew which drug controls the mania side of my BP.
I would call the local MHT but what do I tell them…
“Excuse me but I am obsessing over a 47 year old TV show. Could you please help me?”
I am sure they would have something to say about my wasting their time. What I don’t understand is that apart from the obsessing I seem to be perfectly fine. I am sleeping better than I have in ages. No sleepers and sleeping through the night and staying up through the day without any real problems. I see no other signs of mania. The only conclusion I can come up with is that with being awake more I am drinking more coffee and that is leading me to a more anxious state. Coffee and cigarettes are my only two vices that i partake in on a habitual schedule. It has been suggested on my twitter feed that it could be beneficial to my health (other than the obvious) to quit smoking. But I know that I would be miserable if I did, and my family aren’t ready for a miserable me at the moment.
I don’t make resolutions at New Years as I never stick to them and change should come as a natural progression through life not at some arbitrary time of the year. But I do know that at some point this year I will try and quit smoking. I have been smoking now for 20 years and I think that’s enough. I know I’ll never get my full breathing capacity back but I have to give myself a better shot at making it to 60 without a breathing tube up my nose.
I am losing weight still. I am still not making a concious choice to lose weight, it’s just happening at it’s own pace, but again this year I am going to have to take up some kind of exercise to help shift it a bit quicker. In the next couple of weeks I expect to get a letter informing me to make an appointment to see the areas Diabetes consultant with the view to starting a drug called Byetta. Byetta is a drug that helps control blood sugars but has a side effect of weight loss. It does this by making you feel bloated when you eat thus making you think your fuller than you really are. Sounds like a win win situation to me. I get my blood sugars under control and I get a helping hand at losing the weight. I would like to be under 15 stones by the end of the year.. which means I have about 48 pounds to lose this year. Not an unreasonable goal I don’t think. I am going to start taking more control over the food in the house and start cooking more. We eat an unhealthy amount of take away food at the moment because none of us has the inclination to cook in the evening… that has to change… financially and health wise.
I just read this back and I realise that I MAY be showing slight signs of mania – The obsessing over things, the over spending , making plans that could be out of reach. It all adds up to something I don’t normally do. Whilst none of what I have written is particularly bad (overspending and obsessing aside). The rest is all good plans. But making them in an altered state of mind, I am setting myself up for a fall and a depressing time when/if I realise I can’t fulfil my goals. I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I am going around in circles.
Any way, I am going to stop wrapping myself up in knots and just get on with the day. Enjoy the snow if you got it and if you don’t revel in the sun because snow is coming your way… even if I have to hand deliver it myself.
Until Next Time…
Currently Listening to: Bon Jovi - Lost Highway Current Mood: Obsessed
So Christmas and New Years have come and gone and I made it through it. I spent my time watching loads of TV and not eating a great deal. My appetite for food has gone out of the window. I find myself going the whole day without anything to eat and still not being hungry when it comes to dinner time so I only eat a small meal. It’s bizarre because I used to eat like a pig….not in a trough but I used to eat everything I could lay my hands on. I am hoping to get onto a new diabetes drug in the new year that REQUIRES me to eat twice a day, It can’t be healthy for me not to eat and take all this chemical crap I throw down my throat every day.
Over Christmas and New Years I have had a few drinks. Nothing to much, nothing to heavy just a bottle of red wine spread out over Christmas Day and New Years Day and a couple of glasses of cheap Bucks Fizz we bought last year and never got around to drinking (I think it fermented sat in our kitchen to be honest). I don’t feel any real side effects from drinking like I have done in the past. Maybe because in the past I have been drinking beer and the odd spirit and this time I avoided them and stuck with the fruity stuff. If I have no major mood swings in the next couple of days maybe my dry days are behind me and I can join the human race in enjoying the odd glass of something alcoholic in the future, just as long as I know my limits.
The Doctor looking a little battered
The highlight of the holidays for me was the Finale of David Tennants Doctor Who tenure. It was rounded off with two very epic specials. The first on Christmas day was roundly turned on by raving fanboys and girls for being to sporadic and not having much of a cohesive storyline. But if you sat back and saw it for what it was and took it as advertised Part 1 of a 2 part story then you would (in my mind) have gotten better mileage from the story. The second part that was aired on New Years Day (Last Night) was by far and away the most moving Doctor Who episode I have ever seen. I welled up with a lump in my throat a few times. I think I got away with it.. but knowing my luck Mum and Linda were looking just as that bloody great lump in my throat erupted and saw me swallowing it down.
All in all, I thought the story was very strong, yes there were little niggles in Part one where you were left wondering why this was happening and what possibly be the point in the two spiky headed aliens. They seemed to be thrown in there for comedic effect and in the grand scheme of Part One they were, but they were there for Part two. As I said it’s a story of two halves and should be looked at that way.
The Maniacal Master
It was great to see so much (and I mean MUCH) of John Simm as The Master. He was spellbinding as the maniacal raving cannibalistic TimeLord gone wrong. I think that it takes a writer with MASSIVE balls to pony up and write a fulfilling back story for a well established character like The Master. Russell T Davies did this and answered all thequestions I ever had about The Master but never knew I wanted to know. I guess when Roger Delgardo was playing the master opposite Jon Pertwee back in the early 70’s it wasn’t even considered that the two of them were childhood friends that romped across the red paddocks of Gallifrey.
Another big Christmas present for me was the return of the TimeLords. If you only knew of the new Who and hadn’t ventured back into the classic mythology you needn’t have worried as it was all explained for the new Who time line. The only shout out to the old Who crowd was naming the Timothy Dalton character Rassilon (which is a name from the old show if you don’t know). I was a little sad that the TimeLords weren’t used as much as they could have been. Ideally that whole storyline could have taken up a special set of shows on there own. It added a fix to the Master Race storyline and that is all they seemed to do. I know that sounds like a put down and I guess if I am honest it is, but it was still good to see them back. I hope Steven Moffat sees the need to use them again in Matt Smiths era of Doctor Who. Talkiing of Matt Smith we got our very first look at the new and (not quite sure if he is) improved Doctor. Far to little seen of him to tell if he is going to be a good replacement. But he has the enrgy that seems to be lacking from the spolier pictures that have leaked out over the past 6 or 7 months since they have been filming in Cardiff. But the lines about not being a girl and not being Ginger made me smile and I’ll be damned if that guy didn’t bring his whole scrwney knee right up to his lips and kiss his own leg.
Anyway that’s my review of the Christmas Specials. I hope you got to see them or are going to get to see them. It’s a great and fitting way to say goodbye to an Actor who has made the part his own and bought Doctor Who back to the kids again. Bless Ya David Tennant
Currently Listening to: Murray Golds Doctor Who Soundtracks Current Mood: Wired
I am a moody buggar. There I said it. I don’t enjoy this fact of my life, it’s downright depressing in it’s own right Bipolar not withstanding. But this morning I woke up laughing. Who knows I could have spent the night chuckling to myself. I usually listen to the BBC World Service at night as the monotonous droning of business analysts and foreign correspondents lulls me off into a deep sleep. Last night I tried something different. I put a whole series of an old radio programme called The Navy Lark onto a memory card and whacked that into my bedside radio and laid back and drifted off… well I say drifted off I spent the first 40 minutes of being in bed laughing at the show. It’s probably not the best thing to do when your trying for good sleep hygiene but I needed something different last night.
I don’t exactly remember waking up this morning. The first thing i realised was that I was laughing out loud to the radio show that was on. I looked at the clock and realised I had only been asleep for a little over 4 hours and by all rights i should just turn over and go back to sleep. Instead I laid there for 20 minutes listening to the end of the show that was on at that time. It’s a great feeling to wake up with a smile on your face.
My mum said that she could hear me laughing through the wall last night and it made a nice change to hear as it doesn’t happen very often. Waking up in a good mood has led me to have a pretty upbeat day. I have kept up with my Twitter feed and have been listening to Planet Rock all day. I will probably cook dinner tonight and be back to keep up with the days events. It’s good to not be a moody buggar once in a while.
I finally got to bed at about 11am this morning. I slept for about three hours and then went back for three more. My head is still racing but It’s a little quieter in their at the moment. As I have mentioned before I hear voices. These get agitated when my head gets all messed up. I get ranting screaming torrents of abuse at times like this. At one point at about 6 am I came very close to talking back to the voices in a vain hope that they would just shut up if they knew I acknowledged them.
As you can probably imagine, if your told something often enough you start to believe it. It’s how the government work after all. When I went to bed it was mostly out of desperation at just wanting a little time where I didn’t hear the voices and they would quieten down to let me sleep. I was tired enough but it was a gamble, one that, luckily, paid off.
Now I am just kicking back and trying to let my head sort itself out. It’s goinig to take a couple of days to get back to “normal“. It’s going to be tough but I have been there before and I’ll no doubt be there again some time soon. If you hear me screaming at about 3am you know the voices are still playing up.
It’s been a long day and it’s not ending yet. It’s not as if my life amounts to much. I do do a great deal each day. But I survive the best I can and make do with what I have. I took sleepers last night as I have been doing for the past few weeks and the normal course of things is that I go to bed I sleep and if i wake up before 11 I get up have a cigarette and go back to bed to get rid of the residual side effects. This morning I thought I would try something new and get up at 7.30 and have breakfast and see if that helped my day along any. Well by 9am I was asleep again and I didn’t wake up till gone noon. When I woke up I had the most amazing rush of agitation going on in my head.
It was as if everything was running two times as fast as it should, and I felt as if I was about to fall off. Off of what I don’t know but I was definitely not a steady chap this morning. I had taken my pills last night and I took my morning does when I had breakfast (a habit I have gotten into after being diagnosed with Diabetes), so I knew that it wasn’t a meds problem. I muddled through the day being very restless and smoking more than usual. I was continually up and down out of my seat.
I think this is part of a manic phase that doesn’t fully manifest itself. I get so far and then it backs off. Mind you it’s now 3am nearly and I am still wide awake and cognisant enough to write this. If I go to bed I will just lay there and bang leg legs against the matress as though I am running a marathon. So here I sit listening to anything fast and loud. Stuff to take my mind of the racing thoughts and the lack of sleep. So far tonight I have listened to a Rob Zombie Bootleg, a Whitesnake bootleg and now I am listening to Iron Maiden’s Live after Death. It’s amazing how intense music gets when the world is spinning so bloody fast.
Monty Pythons Galaxy Song (click here for a breakdown of how factual this song really is)
That’s a bit how it feels when I get like this (also any reason to throw in a Monty Python song). I really wish I could get off this crazy Bipolar ride. I feel so drained of emotion sometimes and it hurts me not to feel the same way two days running. I crave stability. I don’t know if this manic phase is going to last, I am just going to have to ride it out and see where it takes me.
Until Next Time…
Currently Listening to: Dream Theater - Black Clouds & Silver Linings Current Mood: Buzzing
Back in the day, many years ago, I put my illness down rather jokingly as my having an Evil Twin. My evil Twin would be the outlandish and vibrant person that the real me wasn’t. My Evil Twin would be the one stood up half drunk singing Meat Loaf songs on the Karaoke at 1am in a crowded bar (I have no singing voice to speak of…but he got a few free beers out of it). My Evil Twin was the one that worked in the theatre for days in a row with only a few hours sleep and a pack of Pro-Plus to keep him going. He in effect burnt me out and when I used to crash from the Evil Twin highs it was awful. I would rage against everything. I would become a screaming tantrum filled child. If I didn’t get my way, god help whoever was in the way of me.
Looking back on those years I do regret my Evil Twins existence. I regret the hurt I laid onto others around me. The releatinships that crumbled as my sanity was flaking away. If I could go back and change things, or even speak to my younger self I would make sure that I told myself that I needed help and taking a flame thrower to the candle was not the best way to go. It would have been more preferable to burn the candle at both ends and have it peter out gradually but blazing the whole bloody thing at once was no way to go.
It’s been close to 20 years since it all kicked off and during that time I have probably had two maybe three years combined of good mental health. I can say this now looking back at all the stuff I got up to and all the history is there to be seen. The mistakes I made and the risks I took. The bad feelings that were left due to a manic high that got me rushing from one project to the next, to being so full of myself that I thought I was the only one who mattered. There are people I should apologise to and repay, but they are no longer available or around for me to do that. People who put up withmy shit and never said a word. If they had any insight into what was going on the never showed it. Maybe in hindsight if they had I wouldn’t be here writing this now.
There were times of depression during the manic times. When work stopped for the summer or the build up to Christmas where i would have to scrape together bus fare to get to my Family. I begged lifts of some people to get me where i needed to go and they all took care of me. Did I repay them enough?
My life is one big jumble and it would take a long time to unravel it and set it straight, but there are those of us who have fallen either literally or figuratively that will never get there dues owed them. The best I can say to them is Thank You and Sorry I didn’t see the problem before it was too late.
I used to quote the Love/Hate song Evil twin by saying.
“It wasn’t me… it was my evil twin”
Now I realise, there just isn’t any separating the two… me myself and I.
Well hello there… nice to meet you again. Did you miss me?.. didn’t think so…but anyway onto the news.
Not much to say really. My mood is all over the place. I really don’t know what to do with myself most of the time. I spent Monday and Tuesday moping around and Wednesday… well I’ll come to Wednesday in a minute. Thursday was residual highs of Wednesday but by lunch time I was back to where I was on Tuesday and today I am just blasé about everything. The only thing that is keeping my spirits up today is the thought of seeing a couple of minutes sneak peek at the first Christmas Doctor Who special on Children in Need. Oh how easily I am amused.
Anyway Wednesday. Wednesday is my usual day for relaxation group. This week I had my anxiety meeting too Anxiety first the relaxation… It worked for me, it saved me going out twice in one week to the same place. Anyway I enjoyed my time at the Bungalow I always do. It seems a very relaxing place.
I came home at about 3.30ish and sat down at my computer to check emails and at about 4pm I got a phone call from one of the people organizing the Art Show I entered some digital doodles in. She had some weird news for me, well it was weird to me. It turns out that someone liked the Blue Image that i had thrown together and they wanted to buy it… GET THAT… SOMEONE WANTED TO BUY IT..
If you don’t remember which one I am talking about you can take another squizz here.
I was asked what I would charge for it and I just started stammering and blurted out…
“Tell them to make me an offer”
That got a bit of a giggle. So I don’t know if my indecisiveness on Price will put them off but hey someone showed some interest. The Sour Puss piece is going to be shown at the local MHT building that has just been refurbed. So in theory my art is being shown and sold all over the shop. I have probably put a jinx on the whole thing by talking about it before it’s a done deal but I am kinda excited about it all. I’ll keep you informed.
I found a cool live rendition of Roger Waters Amused to Death. It’s just over 9 minutes long but worth it… and no quips about good ol Rog looking like Richard Gere.
