Ideas and/or Advice, Please!

I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SORT OUT MY BENEFITS STUFF TODAY. They paid me the grand total of £21 this week; I've no idea why. So now I know the correct number I have to ring back tomorrow when they're open. I also am meant to tell them I have schizoaffective disorder. I got a letter a while back that seemed irrelevant but it said underneath that any change in your medical condition must be notified. I don't think the name makes any difference but it might mean I get treated a bit different (if anything, better). They don't seem to quibble so much with severe mental illness whereas depression they subject you to a test to see how depressed you actually are. With this I don't see what test they can do, I just feel too confused a lot of the time to do a lot of basic things. Sad but true. I don't know how I'm going to rise above this one. Depression I fought against but mania you can't fight against it's too intense and also feels nice most of the time, so I don't know what to do. And the schizo-bit in schizo-affective just feels too weird for words so I don't know how to dea with it. Not very good I know but true. They might push me down a pit with people sword fighting like people on television now but I don't know how I'll survive. See I feel confused these thoughts come in my head and I push them out but I push out everything else too so I dont know what to keep in there. This is why I get ill, because I don't understand. I try. I do try. But I feel confused.

Does anybody out there know about schizoaffective disorder and what things I can do self-help wise? PLEASE. Anybody? If you can direct me to a good website or just a forum I'd be ever so grateful. I'm floundering about knowing I have "symptoms" of this "tripolar disorder" (because there are 3 things I get: mania, depression and schizophrenia) and knowing broadly which symptom and experience is flavoured with what, but I don't know what to DO. I want to know what to DO. And why I should do it? And what I might achieve... Please anybody who knows please answer. You don't need to be a fellow sufferer or an expert I'm just after ideas. Remember I have had depression for years and am glad I followed my inkling not to indulge in books that didn't mention Seasonal Affective (SAD) or bipolar. Because I've always thought my depression was partly psychological and partly biological. Even though I hadn't a clue I was schizoaffective until the dr told me so, I've followed the right path, where you accept your illness has a biological component. Purely herbal tea and counselling based stuff just ain't gonna cut it with my illness. I accept I need to take meds. I can feel when I haven't taken them, usually. Apart from Saturday night when I honestly forgot my pill (I'm on one pill now; 1x4mg risperidone rather than 2x2mg, which are too easy to get confused over) I wasn't messing about I really did forget to take it. And for once didn't get "a free coke binge" I just felt nothing bar a sluggish depression I've been in for days. Depression which now has a slight excited tinge in the background. I'm hoping this means a mood switch is occurring.

Yes I used HEROIN today but it did nothing. It was so weak. I wish I wouldn't do it. It doesn't take away "psychotic" things (which I don't really have today) and it doesn't dampen down my bad moods any more so I wish I'd get it THROUGH MY THICK HEAD THAT I'M WASTING MY TIME.

Im pissed off with NA because I shared even though it fucking hurt to do so I still shared something that is personal that I don't have to share and not one fucking person gave any response except the kind of response you get when they know you're using drugs still. I mean I told them I had bipolar mood swings and not one person could think of one faintly constructive thing to say about that.

I don't know what I was expecting. Certainly not "there there" type crap but something. I expected something and I don't think my expectations were unreasonable. Considering nearly ALL bipolar people use drugs which means there must be a lot of manic depression "in the rooms" as they say I expected more. So I was right when I realized NA was NOT for me. They cannot help me, they do not help me. Only seductive thing about NA is the attitude that taking medication is wrong, so I can "not use" my antipsychotics and have "a free coke binge" on them. That is a free manic episode, even a short one for a couple of days. But I'm trying to be grown up and responsible, I don't know why, but I am. Am trying.

I felt misunderstood by them when I took up going again and I still feel misunderstood and unappreciated.

Bear in mind I have been coming to NA for over 10 years, since I very first saw a problem developing, so I know NA, know their philosophy and their ways and feel let down, now that I genuinely want to be clean and serene I feel nobody has made any effort towards me, not genuine effort. All I get is "do a detox" (ie have a psychotic episode) and likeminded stuff in other words they're telling me to go crazy. I'm willing to go crazy as long as I can do it IN THEIR HOUSE. That will teach them to throw out platitude-ridden advice, when they see what happens when I "detox" and "go clean" as they believe clean is.

TIESTO/RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
when i went mad that time my shower kept saying "paradise paradise" after this song!



I'm not getting too wound up by Narcotics Anonymous and I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'm only doing one meeting per week at the moment. You have to bear in mind I have bad memories of coming to NA having heard voices all the way there on the bus, then locking myself up in a dark room with them in a psychotic state only for them all to believe I was high on crack when I was "high" yes, but on nothing! Just like you I have only a certain tolerance for such bullshit and then I start feeling genuinely upset. You see I know the name of my disorder now and it's not a good one. Now I have to tell the Social Security this crap, which I don't want to, but they need to know. They do say any change in your condition should be notified to us so fuckit I'll notify them. What on earth they'll do with that information I hesitate to think. You see I had symptoms and knew I wasn't right. Then this doctor tells me in these same words "I think you have a mental illness". I have never thought of myself as "mentally ill" before. Depression is supposedly a mental illness but it didn't make me feel mentally ill. Only the crash from mania into depression has truly made me feel injured and ill. Very very sick and ill. The crash I had in December counts as one of five all time worsts. The fact that there are FIVE not one probably says a lot but I'm not dwelling on that one. Do you understand why I disengage rather than wallow? If I wallowed I would never get out of self pity and it would destroy me. I'd rather pretend nothing is wrong than wallow in the wrongness. I don't care if I'm doing the wrong thing; life is so very difficult I don't know what else to do.

TRANCE VISIONS: PARADISE (KOMAKINO REMIX)



Well I hope I've been grown-up enough today I don't feel grown up. I feel like the parent of a 3 year old child ~ as per usual ~ saying "DO THIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and the recalcitrant child barely listens..!

And how was YOUR DAY? rsvp!


RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE (PUSH MIX)

Flight of the Blue Tits

DOES ANY OF MY WRITING ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE? Or is it just me reading it back wonky? It seems to be all biddybangingbong: all over the place. I don't judge other people's writing as good or bad; I just read it. Also, my attention span is all over the place. I'm having a bash at reading a fictionalized biog later on; it's in short sections with rotating perspective (ie one person speaks, then another does, so it's easier to stick with). I need to get my attention span back.

And what was I on about earlier? Akh, I was a bit hyper. I was playing the music you see in youtube screens below today's earlier post which brought back memories of love doves and mitsubishi ecstasy. My mood was up so the music took me higher into full-blown "euphoric recall". It was more than the tingly neck you get from dance music once you get into it, it was a reliving of the E-state. I think that's why I'm now called "bipolar".

Akh, how did me and words like bipolar and schizophrenia ever get together? I always knew there was something wrong and that it wasn't plain depression. Those nauseatingly repeated dsm diagnostic criteria that pop up whenever you google "depression" somehow never described me even when I felt hopeless and suicidal. Partly this was depression deluding me, partly it was having got so used to being in a negative mind-state I couldn't see the positive one required to make sense of diagnostic criteria.

I fit the manic ones far more easily than the depressed ones. Ukh. Me? Manic?? A maniac is a crazy person and crazy people are Somebody Else.

I have been trying to read up on my medical condition because apart from knowing what it is I didn't know anything about it. Now I know a little bit about it. The European and American versions of schizoaffective differ. I have the European version that is, in the language of psychiatrists, mood episodes with mood-incongruent psychotic features. I also do have symptoms of schizophrenia but didn't even know it. I never delved into schizophrenia before: you can't know if you've got it. Stuff like obsessive-compulsive or bipolar you could know about because the patterns are really clear. Schizophrenia just feels like extreme dissociation with everything taking huge effort, even simple things. That's schizophrenia. That's why schizophrenics seem lazy, they're actually stressed. It's a big thing to do a little thing. That's why things don't get done. That's why I'm in chaos. Now I get all these people helping me.

Ukh. People helping me. I just want to crawl away and hide.

I want a bird feeder for all these blue tits. I haven't actually seen a blue tit around here. They're so tiny, they're like blue sparrows only slightly smaller (more wren-like) and highly agile. They hang out more at bird-tables and are frequently seen feeding upside down. They form mixed flocks with great tits, according to Wikipedia.

I can't wait for tomorrow because tomorrow I can get some paints. Whether I actually will get them is anyone's guess. Usually I don't do anything I actually plan to. I know I should do it but get lost in the detail. There is too much gory detail in life. There is too much gore. That is why I hate life. That is why I have to win the euromillions lottery. It's £50 million next week. I need enough to get a house with high prison walls to keep the world OUT.

Well I don't feel depressed any more. I felt depressed last night so I took a load of methadone and slept deeply. Then I woke up feeling fine. There are FAR worse things you can get diagnosed with than "elevated mood" (and my mood is elevated far more than it is low) so I'm not complaining. As Serious Illnesses go I think I got just about the best one. I keep hearing about, thinking about, seeing all sorts of physical injury and disease that scares the living shit out of me. Then I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that. I might be thinking that because I'm ill, but at least I am just thinking it not being it. (And I could get lost from here on in, as I get lost in what I think... ukkkk is that why my Dr thinks I'm crazy?)

O I have to go I don't know where I'm going now. Blue tits! There ya go. Left it on a positive note didn't I!!


Illustrated: tiny tits in various positions in British gardens

A Sense of Responsibility

08:54 I DIDN'T SLEEP at all well last night, but officially got up around 5 or 6 or 7, after surfing the net in bed (as a way of falling asleep without knowing it, I wasn't surfing intensely I was pottering about blogs I should have been but have not been, in a highly random fashion. Which means I probably never got to any of y'all actually reading! Sorry. Seriously poor attention span going on here. Imagine taking a sound recording, razor editing to cut/cu-/-t/b-/-its/out it's kind of like that. Which means pictures can actually be easier to deal with than words. The sudden accelerations I had a few days ago have mostly gone, at least they're nowhere near as intense. Whenever something stressed me, or just because it happened, I had a feeling of foot on the accelerator and me flying into a vortex hyper-whirlwind thing which you could imagine as rapidly swirling letters of the alphabet, where sound and thought were one and the same. Which is why if you saw me doing that you'd probably think I'd gone truly cuckoo because I know there were times I was saying it. The only bad one (in a social sense) was when this is going on and the phone rings... ukkk I think I explained that one before. It was not good, not pretty, I'm not proud. I was trying, trying to keep a lid on my behaviour. I'd love to see what someone else would have done. I'm sure a lot of people would have done more of the yelling and less of the deliberate, conscious calming down.

I could have compared it to losing your temper, as that is intense; and you can cool down over the course of a few hours (if you really badly lose it, which I only remember doing once) but this is way more intense, hyper intense, more out of it by a factor of thousands. So the calming down involves a kind of detachment from something that is still going on to a near-infinitesimal degree and eventually you drift further apart and IT calms down (in a sense) after you do. I don't know whether I'm explaining well at all.

Today is my clean day which means I'm cleaning my house. I hadn't the focus to do that before. Bear in mind I was utterly dishevelled with random braids going down one side of my hair, where I'd distractedly plaited it as something to do. Had no clean clothes (and still really don't what I do have is badly handwashed: the laundrette is either too slow and too much just too much stuff going on to do and remember when I'm too intense, or a paranoia headfuck. The paranoia is easier to get through because when I feel that way I tend to be going slower. In the fast zones I feel fantastic and fantastical. No drug has ever lifted me that high. Ever. They call amphetamines "speed"...? Why? Nobody on speed is any faster than by maybe a factor of two or three. And the euphoria of speed, cocaine etc is kind of concentrated, like a golf ball or a tennis ball of white light. This is a beachball with more light, but the light can be slightly more diffuse, which makes you think there's less of it when there's still more. This is the difference. And as for speed, I don't ever remember not following people. Not like this. This has gone way beyond the Can't Be Bothereds into the Just Can'ts.

If I don't write this down I'll start kidding myself, later, that it somehow wasn't quite like this, the way it was. That this is an exaggeration. When I can witness now, this is the truth. And I accept it's not all pretty. I know I have been falling apart. (Why do you think I've been trying to get help?

Main reason for seeking help is because housing problems are reaching a peak and I need somebody who can vouch for me, somebody who knows each professional I'm in touch with. That's all I'm asking. A bit of link up for someone who's lost the links. Nobody can cure me. Nobody can sort out my life bar me. I never ever said that and if you think you read that I suggest you read wrong. Why do you think I hated being addicted to drugs so very much? I'm an INdependent person. Yes I might have aspects of me, just as there are aspects of you, that occasionally like to depend. But in heart and in spirit I'm not motivated by others' evaluation of me (I just try and be nice) and I don't like having other people running my life like I'm a 3 year old. Just remember there is nobody alive who has no responsibility.

Seriously ill people in hospital do fight for their lives. Fighting to stay alive, that is a responsibility. But you could look at somebody stretched out full of tubes and not there and secretly in some tiny way envy them because they're not subject to the stresses you are. Actually they might be subject to more.

Here endeth the Morning Proclamation!

Crack/Addiction/Doctor Rant

Diagnose diagnose shove it up your nose. Here's my suggestion to anyone working in mental health apart from Lizzie. Do some coke, read this, get a life http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/459
Yeah my thoughts are all mixed up. And I know it.
They say I have "good insight" "good reality testing" those things. [Well I hope I do!] That's what keeps me out not in. Otherwise I would have been committed to psychocentral long ago. I don't want to be in Braodmoor that is a prison for the criminally insane. I used to think I was gonna get set up falsely accused. Happened to me enough when I was younger. Accuse anybody of anything and yeah they will "look guilty". do me a favour. i was going to come up with a string of links but really cant be bothered now i had osme point i have gone past the point Talking Past the Point. Remember that one from somewhere. Know something about something. PSYCHOLOGY did you know I once wanted to be a psychologist. Not Abnormal Psychology which is half-brained psychiatry (wanna be a psychiatrist BE a psychiatrist, not a psychologist it means you're too thick to do a medical degree, in essence) what I wanted to explore was "individual differences" which means Personality and what distinguishes one person from another person. Their ways. Their means. Their Power. Their powerlessness (learned helplessness is when you torture someone, torture a rat every time it tries to eat and it'll starve itself to death ~ big wow yeah a lot of SYMPATHY goes on in psychology so if you ever think DOCTORS ARE BASTARDS think of what went on to get them where they are today re what they know and where they go. Their attitude to addicts I will not get into. Read Sids blog re him as junkie speaking to medical students. They didn't know fuck all. One TRAINED DOCTOR didn't know what DIAMORPHINE was diamorph as used in actue and chronic pain management, diamorphine as in street heroin, diamorphine as in addictive drug diamorphine as in medicine, diamorphine how the hell can you be a doctor and not understand the difference betweeen [morphine and] acetylated morphine which is diacetylmorphine aka diamorphine (the deacetylation is said to be a lot of the heroin rush) how can you not know that that is utterly inconcievably stupid sorry to say it. Brainy as you get and utterly thick. Typical doctor. In America they're even worse. Anna Grace has been treated so shockingly I wouldn't want to meet the people who did it to her. I think I'm very self restrained but I don't .... what about Silk Taffeta in an American detox clinic detoxing off benzos watching fellow patients FITTING OUT that's utterly stupid. Let someone have one fit they're likely to have seizures again, to become epileptic. Different drug, parallel situation: CRACK COCAINE. In my day (when I started smoking it) the crack was most definitely better than now, stronger and better and I'm talking about how it vaporizes (should melt easily), how long it smokes (shorter the better) etc etc + fact that we weren't breaking rocks up we piped the whole £10 0.2g rock which gave me chest pains and earringing, echoing noises and one time at least a blinding white light into which i vanished into Crack Land zooming out down a Loony Tunes tunnel with My Big Issue (homeless magazine) selling friend at the end of it that was Proper Crack that's what I thought of as Piping. You can literally KILL YOURSELF smoking like this. That's why my heart flapped against my chest like a trapped pigeon. You can GO INTO SEIZURES which my ex had done. Then, years later, she was seeing a neurologist for fitting out. Petit mal in her case. I remember her just blanking, eyes rolling back. I was high but not too high to be bothered. I yelled look at me and held her head and made a drastic V right to her eyes yes I do have self control to Stop At The Right Point I didn't and had no intention of harming her. Point was she didn't flinch. Wasn't acting. Didn't look there. Wasn't there. BECAUSE OF CRACK. It is evil nasty stuff. The vibe surrounding it is nasty. The people surrounding it are patently nasty and if you don't see that take a step or two back. Part of the process of de-addicting yourself involves perspective. If you have no handle on normality or morality or whatever else you'll have no other seat to sit on bar the Addicts' Chair.
Crack is the absolute last thing I want or need that's why I was yelling aobut it down the phone to psycho stone-throwing friend. When he did actually throw a stone at my window even though he'd said he'd do it it was SO LOUD I YELLED AT THE VERY TOP OF MY VOICE YEAH I'M COMING I'M COMING OUT ONE SECOND!!! and i was TRYING to calm down for this magical mystery tour that involved four of us. I was merely passenger. I don't care whether they bought Brown or White (heroin or crack) I didn't ask, didn't even wonder [which is why i note this down: first time ever i've been in a car, someone's got out, i knew it was to score drugs once id got my head round the idea he wasn't running away, and didn't think about, wonder, want what/when/why/any part of it. and if you cannot believe that that's your problem not mine]. This is why NA piss me off, tell a story like that they'll assume it's a tale half told they DON'T GET IT. HIGHER POWER. That's what keeps you off drugs. a Higher Power. They say it themselves. There are 3 Higher Powers: the Power in the Room at an NA meeting, God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all of us (I think God is the original meaning of Higher Power but wasn't there so how do I know?) and lastly the POWER IN ME, THE POWER IN YOU. That's my Higher Power and that is more Powerful than Me and more Powerful than You and More Powerful than Heroin or Crack or any other Drug.
I find it hard to believe a reforming addict, "Recovering" as they say. How can they not get that. But they don't. And they don't get me. I'll keep coming back but I'm telling the truth next time. Have had enough of being misunderstood.

OK Crack/other rant over.
Delightful comments please!

Link click Silk Taffeta above, you get the full Xanax Withdrawal story, click this one and it's to Anna and me re Trainspotting

ukk i only read over this enough to find highlight and do the links no i don't hate America I only hate certain aspects of their legal system and medical system and some aspects of their system re drug addiction, it's not like here and here isn't like other places
one reason i wanted to go abroad is because i'm Sick To Death of the British Govt and feel when you're in a foreign country that is Their Government and Their Way of Doing Things you focus on the positives not the negatives. Unless you ARE RANTING ABOUT DRUG ADDICTION where my small irritation becomes explosively relevant. Plus I'm really pissed off at how my friend was abused and mistreated. She is American. She is my friend. Anna. My Best Friend.

AUDIO BULLYS DRUMS (ON WITH THE STORY)
Thanks LIzzie
i love this tune, it's amazing, this is the best one so far. it doesn't start dancing till about 2 mins in



AS YOU CAN SEE FROM THIS I THINK COCAINE IS SUCH A WONDERFUL GOOD IDEA, TAKING A DRUG THAT FITS YOU OUT, GIVES YOU HEART ATTACKS, ADDICTS, MAKES HOMELESS, RUINS MARRIAGES, LIVES ETC. WHICH IS WHY I WAS SO OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY SERIOUS WHEN i SAID "DO SOME COKE"
KKKKKHHHHHHHHHH
i have to be so careful

i don't want some kid to read this and think "drugs are a good idea"

yeah right yeah so bang on yeah yeah look what they did to me

i'm so........... (fill in the blank ya self, lazy fucker!)

14:00 ha! i just linked up Broadmoor Hospital should i read not read cant be bothered reading something so boring. imagine that the absolute pits. got nuff of me own mate dont need yours. someone else read it

Healing leg

I KNOW THESE aren't exactly my legs pictured, but mine are as clean as this woman's jeans are white and tight fitting.

The abscess on the right leg is going down nicely. No longer does the calf look like a red bowling pin with an erupting volcano upon it. It looks mildly pink with a post-eruption Mount Saint Helens (minus flattened pine trees for miles around...)

I'm feeling much better in some ways. But of course I'm still depressed, so I'm really enjoying that. Drinking lots of hot cups of tea in front of morning television, dreading going outside and pigging out on Mr Kiplings mixed fruit selection cakes and vanilla ice cream...

I really miss not having internet at home (thank you, cable-nibbling goblin) and I miss y'all. Sorry to make everyone worry. (What's new.) I really am better...

... BUT I have a medical question. This is serious and real:

Does anybody know what it means if you have splitting migraine-style headaches for weeks on end, accompanied by severe double vision and one of your eyes becomes mis-aligned, so instead of looking directly at me, it's looking down and to the right. While the other eye functions as normal.

This isn't my problem, but a 65 year old friend of mine has it and I keep telling her to go to the doctor, not to waste her time at Opticians (the optician she did see deserves to be shot). As far as I know she STILL hasn't been to her doctor or to Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is quite easy to get too from here (remember I had to go a few months ago when I had a smut in my eye all night and all the next morning and it just would not wash out...)

I have tried not to mention things like "brain tumour", but I'm dead worried about her. And she's one of these people who the more she worries the LESS she's likely actually to go in and get it looked at (who does that remind you of?)

Answers please! I'm dead worried...

I'm "back"

BUT I STILL HAVEN'T GOT THE POWER CABLE. I've not been well enough to go anywhere. I can barely walk the length of my own road. It hurts to do anything. I feel 105. I take rests on neighbours' garden walls with their moggie circling my legs and purring. I don't know what I've done but I've done my back in and I feel like an old pensioner. One of these days I'm going to drop and not be able to get up... that day is closer and closer. On a brighter note that wound on my leg is healing, having pussed up every pair of jeans I own. I cannot cover it as it's impossible to remove any kind of dressing without ripping it open. Blood and pus and the reek of dead flesh are everywhere. I am exhausted. The only good thing is I lost my appetite, which is saving money on food. I have a dr's appointment on Monday. Hopefully I will make it out alive again..(!) Akh! I've got to do, else I will get terminated yet again...

Oriental Style Chicken Curry £1 etc

ICELAND "ORIENTAL STYLE CHICKEN CURRY" tonight. Boil int' bag (but of course). And only £1. Much nicer than yesterday's noodles, which were a bit "school dinners". Very pleasant indeed.

The me-shaped hole yesterday means not only that I felt I had a place on the shelves, but (and this really surprised me) I could find nobody else writing like me. Most extraordinary.

I deleted a big rant about the state of modern publishing, but I deleted so much of it, I deleted my main point too, ha-har!

Well the Goods Train of Entertainment trundles on, I can't go on about it. Writing's for writing. Not writing about..!

Well this is a nonpost. Tomorrow I'll tell you a true furry story about Pandable my old hammy, which is really entertaining.

The mysterious illness I have had for over a fortnight is still diarrhoeaing out, intermittently and unpredictably (as I'm sure you wanted to know). I'm so tired. I'm not in my sick bed but a sick armchair. I slept in the sick armchair, like a pensioner, all day. Ukh.



MUSICAL INTERLUDE

In the VIP. It's not called "clubbing" for nothing. A club really is a club. Like any other social group you have inner and outer circles. Nightlife is hierarchical and full of snobbery. Do you stand in the endless line, or swan right in? Do you pay? Get a comp? Or best of all, are you on the Guest List?

Then once you get in, are you just one of the common, vulgar herd, or in the "proper" room ~ the VIP room.

I avoided such clubs like the plague!

In the VIP:
WIDEBOYS & MAJESTIC (IN THE VIP REMIX) FEAT B-LIVE and BOY BETTER KNOW



The Streets: Fit (But You Know It)
He wrote an entire album about Ibiza party isle memories. Kicking off with this track ~

Me-Shaped Hole

I HAD a £1 Chinese chicken and noodles from Iceland. Boil int' bag. Hubble-bubbled away for 40 mins. Considering even a lunchtime combination box, a cheapie, is £3 minimum, for £1 this was amazing.

I checked out my nearest bookshop and found a glaring me-shaped hole where my books should be. Books plural, because I have a wealth of ideas.

Yes the project is moving at last! Like a creaky old goods train, it has shuddered to a start. The hoary old locomotive is belching diesel smoke and trundling wearily onwards ~ bringing cartloads of entertainment to the world!

Sorry I've not been visiting any of you very much at all. Nothing personal. But I must focus. I'm still not feeling too fantastic. My energy reserves are low and must be wisely invested. Talent ~ as I was banging on the other day ~ is not to be wasted!

Got to run. I hope you're all keeping well. Take care of yourselves. Just for a change, I'm trying to take care of me!

Who knows? One day this Me-Shaped Hole might be overflowing with amazing tales!

Rip van Gledwood II

STILL UNWELL... yes, Rip van Gledwood II. Yesterday, I slept literally 20 hours with only piss-breaks.

I can't even talk about going to bed last night, because it wasn't last night, it was yesterday daytime and I wasn't in bed. I slumped in an armchair at 11am and slept all afternoon and evening through and stirred myself at some point in the early hours around 2am, when I peed like Niagara falls. Then immediately back to sleep. And sleep. And deeper sleep. My phone was full of missed calls so I know I slept very deeply indeed. Finally, around 5am I woke up. Urinated again. Slept two hours more.

Then, after 7am Friday morn, I considered myself "up", so I wandered to my bedroom and lay down in bed, where I slept "properly" (ie not hunched over) till after 8:30.

All in all that's past 20 hours' sleep. 22 hours perhaps.

This is what I hate about my sleep: it strikes me down like some manner of disease and I wake up not refreshed but sluggish and unwell and wishing I had not bothered getting up at all.

Well I'm awake now. And I survived. And a new day dawned 16 hours ago, meaning I missed Chogstable's dawn chirping, though a bird whose chirrups and trills bore striking resemblance to Chogstable's melodic twirly-whirling was trilling its head off earlier when I went off for methadone and sweet chili chicken pizza. Chogstable is my personal nightingale. He's not, of course, my pet, because he doesn't live with me. But he chirps his feathery little head off just for me every night, the tiny entertainer!

Now I'm weary once more and for lack of anything more inspiring to post thought I'd brocade you with this dullardly tale. I hope your last couple of days were a little more inspiring plus ~ of course ~ I wish THE CHEERIEST WEEKEND TO Y'ALL..!

OK just a very quick post ~ and no little birdies either!
I've spent most of today asleep with the usual exhaustion.
I was asked whether I think it's just a question of lost sleep catch-up or whether I feel ill. Really, I feel ill. It doesn't feel right.
I get the patronizing response from druggieservice and healthcare professionals that this is some kind of inertia manifesting (ie "if you don't use it you lose it" and I'm tired bc I never do anything) ~ well how do they know?
As I said, I'm just as likely to sleep in a public place as at home. I only get to a public place by exerting myself. It makes no difference how much "effort" I put into life. Whatever I do, I end up paying the for it. My body goes "no. Too much!"
There's no great mystery to all this. I'll tell you what it is. It's depression with chronic fatigue syndrome/CFS traces on top. Plus of course opiates prescribed and otherwise only exaggerate things... So that's what it is and I'm not too worried about it. If I had a fatal illness, I would have died years ago.
Wherever you are, I hope your weekends were more restorative!

No German today. I'm too erschöpft. If you are reading this somewhere German-speaking these are the keywords/Schlüsselwörter: to patronize sb jdm gönnerhaft behandeln; druggieservice (mein eigene umg) die Drogensuchtklinik; inertia Trägheit; to exert oneself sich anstrengen; effort die Mühe; CFS=chronisches Erschöpfungssyndrom; traces die Spur; to exaggerate übertreiben; fatal lebensgefährlich; restorative stärkend

Not too tired to tell you...

I SLEPT FOR NEARLY FOUR HOURS, from late morning into early afternoon slumped in a chair at the back of the public library today. What the staff thought of me, I've no idea. But I wasn't drugged or drunk, so who cares what they thought. I was exhausted.
I slept most of yesterday through. And the day before.
I had an appointment at the druggieservice which I dragged myself down for. My worker, who is a mental health nurse, noticed the change in me at once. All I could think was: how am I to fill half a gaping hour of blank blank time?
The Personality Disorders Specialist has offered me an appointment for assessment. Being as I do not consider myself personality-disordered, especially on "axis C" as Nursey was suggesting (the anxious-avoidant-dependent axis ~ full of snivelling, simpering shy types, burdened by terror of social situations and irrational worries. This is not me.) I thought I would go 1 for a laugh and 2 because I am desperate and it's an untrodden avenue.
If I did have some such disorder, I actually have more in common with type A, the schizotypal personality, with their off-the-wall view of things coupled with a linguistic jamboree of trotterdonkey self-coined phrases, pinging like the tiny tits on the trees when they spot tubby roborovski hamsters scurrying near their nests (ahem...)
Yeah so anyway... I've got schizophrenia, not.
The other personality disorder I could be shoved towards would be the borderline type. Two of my friends had this condition. I say had because one threw himself under a tube train and is now dead... I don't really think I'm borderline at all.
The nurse did admit there's "definitely a mood thing going on". I didn't tell her my "not sleeping" had basically involved not bothering to go to bed for days on end, feeling pretty wonderful ~ I had an amazing perspective on life. I was refreshed as a granny smith apple is refreshing to a desert explorer's palate. I didn't want Nursey to assume I might have been "hypomanic", which it is my position that I am not. I am just prone to mood swings that occasionally sweep up high only to plummet me down. And I felt so so down yesterday. People kept asking what was wrong. Today I am avoiding human company and have had excessive hours of sleep so I feel sour on my own. But as you can see I'm chatty enough with my important friends... ha-har!
Now, you English speakers, let me probe you with a question: is all this German getting too annoying and should I post it in another blog?
I haven't the energy to post exhaustively in German every single day. On the other hand, I do need to practise my language otherwise it'll become as rusty as it was during the 20-year "hiatus" from study. You wouldn't believe the amount of courage it took to rustle up, having said I would like to do a BA degree in translation into and out of German, with French and Dutch on top ~ then to show how flabby my German had actually become it's humiliating. And if it does look impressive, trust me that is the lure of the exotic. If you only can sees how many I much not good grammar make, trust I would you know excellently how much very I not good can do it. See?
Now I've got to go. One last PS on the birds: I've yet to mention the SPARROWS who have returned in chirrupsome profusion to my neighbour's bush. There seem to be about twenty of them cheeping endlessly away to some more sparrows across the road (perhaps they are deadly sparrow rivals, having a rapper-style showdown about whose porch roof is theirs~?!) Sparrows had been largely absent from our towns for nearly twenty years. Sparrows and pigeons it always used to be. Pecking about in vast numbers in our parks and squares. The BBC shot an excellent documentary: The Sparrows of St James's (the park behind Downing Street and Parliament). Then they disappeared!
O and one last PS regarding my leaving the country. I know Britain has looked after me very patiently for too many years, but Britain is tinged with bad memories now I expended such a lot of time and effort trying to learn German and French and yet I've spent not spent even a month in a pays francophone and I've yet even to set foot on German-speaking soil! (German-speaking soil, die kleine Wurmchen sagen "Guten Tag!" und "Auf wiedersehen!"!) So you see, having been trapped here with an addiction for far too long, the very first thing I wish to do, if I ever CAN break free ~ is to flee!


If you want to see some good birdie-videos have a look at my tiny tits, the cutest of all British birds, posted earlier today in German (English translation below)... and these:

BTW, the quotation, by the Swiss writer Alfred Polgar, across those other tiny tits says: "I command the German language, but she doesn't always obey..."

VIDEO 1
HERE'S some chirpybirds, rather than songbirs: SPARROWS!



VIDEO 2
ON WITH THE SONGBIRDS THEME ~ HUMAN SONGBIRDS...
... this Jewish girl, I think, has one of the best voices ever recorded.
I mean, can you think of anybody at all whose vocal timbre sounds "like Barbra Streisand"..?
This performance of Evergreen from the 1976 remake of A Star is Born (Chris Kristofferson adding minimal harmonies) was shot in one take and it's one of the best vocal performances of any Hollywood film from any time:



Her sister, Roslyn Kind, has a deeper (some might say richer) version of the same voice. I posted her up on Sunday, but I don't think anyone heard her ...

Down with the OSPCA

According to my Toronto Correspondent, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have slaughtered 99 of their own rescue pets! And another 250 are waiting to be killed!




All of the animals were up for adoption; some had been reserved by happy families who had scheduled dates to take their new pets home.




According to the OSPCA, which is only too happy to step in and prosecute what IT considers cruel, the reason for this "cull" is... (wait for it)... an outbreak of RINGWORM! And even healthy animals are scheduled to be put down.




OSPCA's loyal staff and volunteers have kidnapped and purloined 15 doggies and cats... but the fate of the other 236 hangs in the balance. A temporary stop on the slaughter has been ordained while the organization try to solve the PR nightmare they've brought down on themselves...




Ringworm, apparently, is too serious a disease to bother treating in a humane way.




Well that being so, let's hope the OSPCA's director catches it, then someone can chop her head off and see how she likes it!






Toronto Star report
Toronto Sun report
OSPCA's website

Jittery

I DON'T KNOW what to say today. I feel tired and shaky and weird. Last night I had endless sinister nightmares. All about getting wrapped up in the consequences of someone else's misdeeds (nothing to do with my drugs ~ I don't often dream about drugs) ~ and all night I was running from false accusations. As per usual.

I don't really think I've got the DTs; I just don't feel very well. I noticed the chemist looking funny at me as she handed over the methadone today. Then I thought: Oh no. It shows. Usually I could be feeling so bad I'm dripping green slime and nobody notices. But odd and weird with no possible diagnosis and the world has to notice. How typical.

I'm hacking at my chapter one on a computer so I apologize to everyone for never being in touch. As soon as my mind turns to the subject I'm being timed out yet again ~ story of my life.

Anyway gotta run. Else I'll get timed out yet again!!