Bubbling away behind the scenes is a deep seated and mostly undisclosed fear of mine. The fear that my mind is not strong enough to fight the demons that afflict it and will one day snap, leaving me as no longer me, but some unrecognisable version unable to relate to the people around me, the people I love, the way I do now.
The trouble is, what's normal and what's not? Everyone has their idiosyncracies, little things they say or do that help define them. There is no set series of actions and reactions that everyone follows that I can hang my hat on as normality. How would I know if what I do is (or will be) taking me down a path where the me of right now would no longer recognise the me that emerges? I guess that is the key to the fear, that I will not know, I will be part of the change, all the time thinking I am the same, constant as it were, when to all those around me my actions and reactions slip further and further from the reality of now.
Some things I do at the moment give me cause for concern on occasion. I sometimes stop and talk to pussy cats and I am forever anthropomorphising stuffed animals. Do either of these things hurt anyone? No. Do they make me a bit daft? Yes. Neither of these is the point though. The fact is i know that cats do not understand me and I know full well that teddy bears are not real, but it is comfortable to pretend, it is a compensation for some of the harshness of reality. And there is the rub. I know that neither of these actions make sense, and yet I crave the comfort of doing them. I normalise the actions in my mind, I convince myself its OK to be daft. And don't get me wrong, it is totally OK to be daft.
The problem is, however, this process of normalisation. It is not just harmless, daft, eccentricity that is normalised. As an OCD sufferer, there are complicated rituals and compulsions that my mind normalises without my say so, on the quiet. There are some things I simply cannot do without performing a ritual alongside it. No-one else will have a ritual quite like mine (or for most people, at all) associated with that action and yet sitting here in the cold light of day it is absolutely the normality for me. It is what I need to do to leave the house, or cross the street or even say goodbye to a friend.
You see where my problem lies? My mind is already normalising the abnormal. Already I am doing things that go against my pure understanding of normality and replacing that interpretation with a new paradigm of normal. When does it stop, where does it stop? My fear is losing the things about me that I love, and that make others love me. I don't want people to have to understand me, tolerate me or pity me. I want the things I do to make sense and to some be absolutely magnificent. I want someone to know me as wonderful and there not need to be a 'but....' The biggest fear of all, though? That I have already lost it, I am already down that dark path and the kindness of those around me means they haven't the heart to tell me. The fear that long, long ago I stopped being me and now noone will ever be able to love the me that came into the world because he is lost, forever.
Its not a comfortable fear, but I know enough of mental illness to know the dangers that beset me.
Monday 27 February 2012
Wednesday 22 February 2012
She turns away
At times she will decline from view
And hide in life's long grass,
Leaving me to muddle through
Towards the bottom of the class.
Yet just upon the lowest point,
From her hiding place she'll spring,
My make-it-up life to annoint
And her treasured warmth to bring.
So thus we play it, to and fro,
Once here, then far away.
Collapsing as she turns to go,
Ecstatic should she stay.
Too flighty is my flippant heart
To keep her here, ensnared.
I've not the means to play that part
And see this circle sqaured.
And hide in life's long grass,
Leaving me to muddle through
Towards the bottom of the class.
Yet just upon the lowest point,
From her hiding place she'll spring,
My make-it-up life to annoint
And her treasured warmth to bring.
So thus we play it, to and fro,
Once here, then far away.
Collapsing as she turns to go,
Ecstatic should she stay.
Too flighty is my flippant heart
To keep her here, ensnared.
I've not the means to play that part
And see this circle sqaured.
Sunday 5 February 2012
With no possibility of parole......
Another of the facets of mental illness, and one which I have become accutely aware of, is that it carries a life sentence. Now I do not mean mental illness cannot be treated, or that it cannot go into hiding, but that it has been, is, and will always remain a factor in my life.
To look at it another way, it is not impossible to change my face or my body - not that I can conceive of any reason I should want to mind you! Any changes that are made under the knife of a surgeon or via intensive workout and the like are merely amendments to the core however, additions or changes to something whole and distinct. If I beef up my biceps, they still remain the arms that once held you, nothing can alter that fact. They remain the arms I fondly hope will wrap around a loved one once again. So it is with mental illness, any change to my behaviour or way of thinking is against a backdrop of the core me. OCD and depression alongside the heightened state of anxiety they bring are as much a part of Dave as my ridiculous face.
When I think about my state of mind, it is through the prism of past illness and experience. If I slip into a depressed state, I compare it to previous bouts of depression to see how deep, how troubling, how sustained it is likely to be. If I act on a compulsion, I do it in the knowledge of what it is, a need or compulsion within me that is always there, waiting to assert itself, waiting to fire up the anxiety and shoot that metallic taste into my mouth as adrenalin kicks in. My mood is set firmly against previous moods and feelings, it is the only way to make sense of, or understand it.
The hardest thing about this awareness is the bitter taste it leaves. Disability, whether it be physical or mental, can feel like a curse. Life can be terrbily unfair - unfair to those born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or unfair in the prevailing conditions of any given individual. For me, it is mental illness that defines much of my life. Whether that be joy at the symptoms losing their grip over me, or despair at a laspe into bleakness. What I am saying is that it remains a factor, always; I was born with it, I fought it, at times I defeated it, it is quiet, it is active, it is simply there - asleep or awake it makes no difference. It is. Terribly unfair, but awfully true.
So, I am left with but one conclusion - I have to accept mental illness as being as much an integral part of who I am as my hammer toes, the funny twisted bit of cartilege in my ear or my impressive Roman nose. Only by accepting it can I ever fully understand and deal with it. I cannot be me without accepting and understanding all of me. I have not been me for far too long, and it comes at its own price - happiness will always be false happiness when one is failing to accept the whole. It is the happiness of a fraction of the self, not a happiness of the totality.
And so it is, without any glee, I am Dave, I am 40 and mental illness is much a part of me as anything else. We start from acceptance, we move from there.
To look at it another way, it is not impossible to change my face or my body - not that I can conceive of any reason I should want to mind you! Any changes that are made under the knife of a surgeon or via intensive workout and the like are merely amendments to the core however, additions or changes to something whole and distinct. If I beef up my biceps, they still remain the arms that once held you, nothing can alter that fact. They remain the arms I fondly hope will wrap around a loved one once again. So it is with mental illness, any change to my behaviour or way of thinking is against a backdrop of the core me. OCD and depression alongside the heightened state of anxiety they bring are as much a part of Dave as my ridiculous face.
When I think about my state of mind, it is through the prism of past illness and experience. If I slip into a depressed state, I compare it to previous bouts of depression to see how deep, how troubling, how sustained it is likely to be. If I act on a compulsion, I do it in the knowledge of what it is, a need or compulsion within me that is always there, waiting to assert itself, waiting to fire up the anxiety and shoot that metallic taste into my mouth as adrenalin kicks in. My mood is set firmly against previous moods and feelings, it is the only way to make sense of, or understand it.
The hardest thing about this awareness is the bitter taste it leaves. Disability, whether it be physical or mental, can feel like a curse. Life can be terrbily unfair - unfair to those born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or unfair in the prevailing conditions of any given individual. For me, it is mental illness that defines much of my life. Whether that be joy at the symptoms losing their grip over me, or despair at a laspe into bleakness. What I am saying is that it remains a factor, always; I was born with it, I fought it, at times I defeated it, it is quiet, it is active, it is simply there - asleep or awake it makes no difference. It is. Terribly unfair, but awfully true.
So, I am left with but one conclusion - I have to accept mental illness as being as much an integral part of who I am as my hammer toes, the funny twisted bit of cartilege in my ear or my impressive Roman nose. Only by accepting it can I ever fully understand and deal with it. I cannot be me without accepting and understanding all of me. I have not been me for far too long, and it comes at its own price - happiness will always be false happiness when one is failing to accept the whole. It is the happiness of a fraction of the self, not a happiness of the totality.
And so it is, without any glee, I am Dave, I am 40 and mental illness is much a part of me as anything else. We start from acceptance, we move from there.
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