Thursday 24 March 2011

what could have become me

i'm glad that people didn't like me when i was younger. it seems that there are certain infomative years that shape our personalities with the etchings of final detail and finishing touches. it seems normally to occur in the mid to late teenage years though i'm sure some are delayed or otherwise pre-emptive. at these times we are most informed and most easily led. we are like sponges for morals, outlooks and perceptions, or lack thereof. i think that in these years we become ourselves. i'm glad that people didn't like me then. i'm glad that i had to know the effort of hard work and the trials of goodness. or think of what i could have become...

Sunday 20 March 2011

dependence

I always used to be considered a strong person. People thought of me as emotionally tough, and independent. I think I was considered by most as closed off, or maybe they just didn't know me. I don't think until the age of eighteen that anyone really knew me, and I don't think I let anyone in until then.

My Mum said to me that she only realised that I wasn't infallible upon my panic attack and prozac induced flakey episode which left me emotionally shattered for months. (I'm being brutally up front here and it's hard. It's hard not to go back and delete that word). Until the point that my Mum and the rest of my world realised I wasn't so strong, I don't think I did too. That is to say I had built a wall.

I don't trust people, and yet I feel an overwhelming pressure from the world that I should. There have been very few occasions in my life when I have let someone new in and not found myself hypothetically drop kicked and winded, gasping on the ground and groping around still unsure of what even occurred. The older I get the more I feel as though I can't trust anyone new, but I trust my judgement enough now to know that that's okay.

As for me and my Mum, she was right. She didn't know me. And I didn't know me, because I was constantly building a facade and altering my behaviour and being someone for someone else. People say you can't know someone until they know themself, and in my case I know it to be true. When my Mum said that to me it was several months later and most wounds were healed and we had become so close. Not that we weren't close before, but it was a teenage-to-mother relationship and of course that's never fully exposed. She says often to me that she isn't clever compared to /me/jamie/dad/ but that's a lie, and I think she knows it. There's nothing clever about learning something by doing it, and there is nothing stupid in not having learned it. My Mum is so socially aware and able to pick up on the subtlties that 99% of the rest of the population miss. We can sit in the cafe of that odd barn type building at Garrion Bridge with the stenna stairlifts and bad art and know who every other person there is and what they're about at a look. It's like a social sixth sense I think I have picked up a little off her.

For a long time I felt that I would never get back to feeling strong and healthy and at ease but I did. And with those feelings of weakness and fragility I latched onto the few people I could trust. People who know me well know that I take after my Dad and people who know my Dad know that he never does things by halves. So it is understandable that when I felt I needed people to depend on I clung like a clam to my family, and my boyfriend. That's the way it's meant to be though? That's why things got better.

I remember going to see a man through Bupa health insurance my Dad had via his work. Someone to talk to I thought, someone who would help sort out all going on in my head and validate the fact that I had been royally fucked up by some incompetent doctor with too little time and a prescription pad near his right hand. My Mum and Dad drove me there in the car and I went up into the big - and likely extortionate to buy - west end townhouse on Great Western Road. I went in alone. They said they'd come in with me but I must have pulled out the very last of my mirage of toughness and walked in there alone to sit in a waiting room more akin to the palatial mansion of a rich sugar lord than a doctor's office. I remember the carpet reminded me of Seamill Hydro in it's royal deep hues and gold crested patterns, and the ceiling was so highly patterned it looked like Italian depictions of heaven with clouds and angels and gods. I went in to this new doctor and told him my tale. I cried. He looked. Once it was all out I expected him to reassure and reiterate and discuss, to plan and to instill me with quiet positivism and a foundation. He sat back in his big swivelly chair and sighed then looked at me. He was just like the kind of doctor you would meet in Madmen. "I'm going to prescribe you a new kind of antidepressant. And beta blockers for your panic attacks." I must have looked confused. "Your raised heart rate and anxiety is a panic attack." I told him I did not want any anti-depressants. Anti-depressants where was caused this whole mess, had he not just listened to me talk for half an hour about it at large? I must have delivered this timidly. "You will not get better without anti-depressants." He stated. Something inside me changed then I think. For one I don't like to be told what to do by someone I believe to be less competent than myself. He bullied me into the prescription for the Beta Blockers and an answer next week, at our next 'session' - i.e. intimidation 101 - about the anti-depressants. I booked at date with him I knew I couldn't make and stumbled out of the room and down the stairs and into the back seat of the car. Mum was on the right and Dad on the left infront of me. They looked at me with hope, assuming this was a godsend and everything would be okay now. I can't remember what I said to them exactly but I told them it wasn't going to work out. They took my hands and my Dad told me not to worry. "Your not going to go back. Your not going to get that prescription. We'll work this out together, you, us, your brother and Stuart". I think it was that parental care and vicious determination and anger at a wrong done to their own that changed something for me again that day. We did sort it out, and all it took was us.

I think that explains my dependence on these people specifically. These are the only people I would trust everything with. But I can't help and worry. I worry about being so dependant on this handful of people that I won't function without them. What if I don't have them anymore? And what if I can't manage without? I had an argument with Stuart last year and decided I was being too clingy to him and too needy and that I should be more independent and stop needing him so damn much. I am trying to do it but it's really hard when basically your whole world is but a few people and two cats. Maybe it's the same for everyone, all these people with their friends and extended networks, surely they only really depend on the few as well? I've travelled a full circle - ka is a wheel - from stolid indepedence to complete reliance and I don't feel any safer at either end. I'm sure you are realising this with me that safety of this sort is non-existent. If that's so then may it be, and if that is the case then I will hold on tight for the moment, for otherwise it would be just me.

Monday 14 March 2011

what you want more than anything right now

30 day challenge - day 13 - what you want more than anything right now

what i want more than anything right now? what i need more than anything right now is for someone to prove me wrong about people. i want someone to show me that there are actually properly good people out there. the kind of people who would help someone when they had no reason at all to do so. the kind of people who would make it their day’s aim to make someone else’s day. the kind of people who could love you for who you are, and never challenge it. the kind of people who had a loyalty knowing no bounds, who wouldn’t let their ideas of themselves over-run their friendships. the kind of people who don’t lie, or cheat, or act, or mislead.

it is sad that i don’t really think people like this exist out there. is it sad for me for believing this? or sad for the rest of the world that i am correct? i see people everywhere, people walking up the street, people walking past those who need help, people pushing others out the way, people physically and emotionally hurting other people for no reason other than their own outstanding flaws.

what i want more than anything right now - what i really need - is for someone to give me a little bit of faith. proof that i am wrong, and faith in the existence of good.

Thursday 10 March 2011

i'm illiterate

I've been trying to blog here and everytime I think of doing it or feel I should the inspiration just vapourises and I start rambling about how it's spring now and I want to swim in a river. Yawn. I mean, seriously, that last one was just typing to fill a gap. What did I used to type about? Maybe I've exhausted my literacy. Possibly, it seems that I'm stuck when it comes to typing things for university too. Do you ever feel like you can't tell if you are stressed and have too much to do or just happily busy? I feel like I should be stressed. I don't know if I am and just have been for so many weeks that it feels normal now.

I had such a good sleep last night. There are a lot of people out there who love sleep, the kind of people who wake up at 11am for an early rise. The kind of people who wouldn't wake up if a train crashed into the side of their house. The kind of people you'd know and see sleeping when you stayed over at theirs and their smug sleep face and lack of stirring when you dunt some object in faux clumsiness to try and wake them up and save you from the awkward 'well, i'm in someone elses house with nothing to do' feeling in the morning. Well last night I can only assume was a sleep like they have every night, like the kind of sleep you could fall in love with, because what else would possess you to waste half your life greedily sleeping your day away til 2 in the afternoon? It was good though, it was blowing an absolute gale out last night - infact I looked out at the back court today and noticed that our table had managed to move about 5 feet to the left from where it stands. The building that's going up across the road from us has scaffolding all around it right now and they had covered the scaffolding in this white fabricy-tarp type stuff almost like thick netting. Anyway this stuff is tied to the scaffold in a way that gusts of wind blow against it and through it and it becomes like parachutes. They all ripped through the wind yesterday and broke off into ribbon strips flapping wildly and all last night you could here the twack flap smack noises of it spanking the side of the scaffold like a maniac with a wet towel. It kept Stuart up, yet it made me sleep better. Much like playing on a rug as a raft in an ocean when I was young, I like the feeling of braving it against the elements - only when it's not actually braving it but being all wrapped up warm in the house when crazy weather is happening outside. I got this big waffle type white bed spread to put on top of the duvet on the bed so I was in there with Stuart and a hotwater bottle and and pillows and it was totally warm yet the room was cool due to it being like 2 degrees out. I kept waking up in the night but not in the annoying toss and turn way but in the mmmmmmmmmmmm sleeepysleep way where you curl from a comfy position into a new fresh and even more cosy one over and over. This almost never happens for me so I felt like I needed to bore anyone reading this to death with these details.

Tonight Stuart is out to rehearsal and I'm in with the kitchicks. Mais is beside me now rubbing her chin against my right hand as I type. She's sucking up because she scratched Molly's eye earlier and got told off a lot. I'm now going to have one of those wonderful evenings where you have a bath and watch the tv shows you only watch when there's no man in the house (One Tree Hill). I'm going to make a pear facemask and then I might read in bed and maybe even paint my nails or something similarly girly. I feel I need to max out my one evening when I'm not totally busy by doing trivial things. Going to Edinburgh again tomorrow for National Archives, I complement these visits to archives with visits to fudge shops to sweeten the deal.

Sunday 6 March 2011

progress

It's hard to beleive that it's March already. There are easter eggs bursting out of shops in town and daffodils in blue elastic bands cluttering buckets at the tills of super markets. You get out of bed in the morning and the first thing to do can be put the kettle on or brush your teeth because you no longer need to find two jumpers, socks, slippers and hot water bottles to prevent feeling hypothermic on your way to the bathroom. The sun has returned too which is welcome. I think the sun makes you sort of bi-polar in these moving times. If it appears everyone is infected, moods miraculously rise, people ill-advisedly don 3/4 length trousers and tank tops and the roofs of convertables creak down for the first time since September last. Then a cloud comes though and it feels like a tease as you are thrown back into the doom and gloom and snow and salt and eternal grey of winter. You want your coat and to put the lights on and bury yourself in books or television rather than go for a walk. Then it returns and you start to casually wonder where your frizbee is.

I always feel incredibly impatient with spring. Yes bulbs and flowers are pretty and birds tweeting feels hopeful but as soon as the sun graces the sky and the de-icer is back in the boot images of beaches and bikinis and barbecues and bathing flood my mind. I imagine swimming in clean rivers and camping all night with fire and stars and grass. Taking a jaunt to a beach becomes imperative and I start to try on swim suits in my wardrobe. I pass the suncream and beach towels in boots and my eye draws to them, surely our suncream from last year is now past it's best? I think about grabbing a book and going to the green to read, and wearing skirts with no tights, converse with no rising damp, dresses with no cover up jumper,cardigan,hat,coat,scarf and gloves. I pick the brightest things I can and I make salads and drink limocello, I grab my shades and put on the beach boys and step outside the door in a haze of bright warm yellow, hopeful, neurotic glee.
And then reality hits me. Reality is 9 degrees celcius and no matter how warm a shade of yellow your clothes are the wind chill factor rips right through turning them to grey. After being out for an hour you come home full of regret and sorrys to hot chocolate, fluffy blankets, baggy jumpers and central heating. Old friends shunned for a mirage!

Spring is a tease and it's very hard to not get dragged away, especially when trips are being planned to go to Sicily for a conference in September where it'll be all white stone, lemonade and mosqito bites. I'm going to my gran's today for her birthday party which always reminds me of spring in full flow. It's grey today and not a single bulb is up in my garden though. I'm going to try and focus on other things for another month of so and then consider my sandals in April. It will be hard though because I'm reading Rebecca for book group (my choice) and it won't let me stop imagining the sun.