Sometimes

Sometimes I reach out just because I need to know you're there.
Sometimes my feelings overwhelm me and I feel like drowning in them.
Sometimes I get so scared of silence and wish my life to be filled with noise.
Sometimes the noise makes me sad.
Sometimes I get so angry at the world, at it's cruelty, at injustice, at the belittling of those in need, at the selfishness, the unfairness, the hatred and the dark.
Sometimes an unlooked for flower, or the sound of carefree laughter ringing out shames me for my anger and I am a smaller man in a wider more wonderful world.
Sometimes I need you so much, and I don't know how to tell you.
Sometimes my feelings frighten me, at their intensity and sudden onset.
Sometimes the loneliness is unbearable.
Sometimes I will assure you I'm OK.
Sometimes I am lying.
Sometimes all I want is a hug.
Sometimes I am afraid to ask for it.
Sometimes I forget how wonderful you are.
Sometimes I wish you knew how much you mean to me.
Sometimes I would give you my world.
Sometimes I feel I cannot cope anymore.
Sometimes the words that hurt me wont stop replaying in my head.
Sometimes I am utterly lost.
Sometimes I want the world to be OK, so I can stop worrying for a little while.
Sometimes the loneliness, the loneliness, the loneliness, in a crowded room, on my own, all day and all night, the loneliness.
Sometimes I just want to talk, just talk and let words repair my heart.
Sometimes I'm so scared, so small, so hidden.
Sometimes I just want a moment, just one moment to tell you I care.
Sometimes my heart breaks, and no one knows.
Sometimes.....

A few words from me

As any regular reader of my blog will know, I use it as an outlet to discuss or vent my feelings about my struggles with mental illness. For a while I have wanted to revisit some of the emotions and issues around the concept of losing ones mind. I thought it best to wait until a day when I was feeling particularly level headed and focussed, for want of a better word. Today is such a day.

An easily thrown about comment in the modern world is 'you must be out of your mind'. What a perjorative phrase. The truth is, I have been out of my mind, and it is nothing like the state of affairs proposed by that oft used phrase. In fact, it is the most terrifying thing I have experienced and one I am on constant guard against. To find onesself in the middle of Tescos car park, reduced to a sobbing standstill with no real conception of how you are supposed to make it to the front doors of the shop, let alone the next day, or all the days to follow, and with no control of emotional responses is not something I would ever recommend. It felt so far from reality, and yet it was reality. It was being taken from the cushion of the preceeding weeks and months where I had been 'out of my mind', using false coping mechanisms and denial to being faced with reality, the reality of suffering with severe depression, and socially debilitating OCD, the knowledge that I didn't have days or weeks of struggle ahead, but a lifetime. I was, in an instant, become the definition of abnormal in our causally ignorant world.

Its what came immedaitely after this that I really wanted to write about. To understand it better myself, and to explain to anyone reading why things are the way they are and why I say and do so many of the things I say and do. It was never so much the fact that mental illness can be a lifelong burden, it was the changed reality of accepting it, and accepting what that means about me, about my state of mind.

Percpetions can be powerful, especially peoples perception of you. To present onesself as a mental illness sufferer can be to invite perception of weakness, to allow that perception of abnormality (in this world, could there be a more inapt word for it?) It makes it very hard to be open about it the way one would a broken leg or asthma for example. That in itself is a cruelty, part of coping with mental illness is sharing and taking comfort from that sharing. Having said that, part of the blame must be mine, and still is. I am scared of being seen as weak, I do not want there to be seen any blot or stain upon the essence of me. It horrifies me to think of my family worrying about me, it scares me to think of friends stuck for something to say to me. Mental illness becomes for me a monster stalking me and taunting me for all the things I will never be, all the loves I will not allow myself, all the social and family situations I will hide from as the monster may rear its head and tarnish something beautiful. How hard it is sometimes to remember that I am not the monster, but of course I am not.

I said I was waiting until I was level headed and yet even today, at my most level headed, the tears are rolling down my cheeks. My life is a contradiction, to fight illness I have to be as tough as old leather and yet I am as soft as butter on a summers afternoon. The head tells me to fight silently and dilligently, but the heart screams at me to burn brightly. I feel like I will understand it all when I am old and, at the same time, that I knew it all instinctively from birth. The one thing I want to promise to myself, and to everyone I love is that my mind will stay whole and never again will the wheels start to come off, and thats the one thing I can't promise.

These entries are never easy reading, but I would have you know me better. And for that, they are a start.

The Song of the Drinker (reworked)

Messy mind, it tortures him, thoughts stretched to ruin on the rack,
Hopes, contentment crucified, the future hides in black.
Just live for now, or perish here, the drink decides your fate;
Mortal man, undignified,  filled with spite and rage and hate.

Back over shoulder, mesmerised, the lies of years ago,
Downfall brought to memory, reliving blow by blow.
Trapped mind will wilt in feedback loop, the shattered mirror falls,
In pieces for another night, ‘To Oblivion!’ he calls.

And grasping now the bottle neck, to incapacity he’ll sink,
Swill it back, erase the pain, become one with the drink.
And so to wake another day, regretful and ashamed,
On shadow men, and broken heart, is all his folly blamed.

Another evening, another day

Its the slow intake of breath and it's regretful expulsion through the nose that gives it away. The semblance of calm breath when inside there is utter turmoil. Right now I am not sure how many days I have been passing it all off as tickety boo, but it feels like it has been forever. The only option is to write about it, hope that the process of delivering words to paper (or rather their HTMLisation) will help force me out of this funk. I want to run from now. Now is bad, now is the wrong place and the wrong time. I want to flee to beauty, I want to see beauty, feel it, hold it in my arms. Things here are not beautiful. The world is grey and I find myself reading poems I have written of muses or otherwise and I cannot bring those feelings to being, they seem alien, as if I have never experienced love, gentleness or wonder. I know that I have, I was after all there, but it is as if a screen is between me and the memory, the sensations of the memories. I've loved, I know I have. And what's more, I meant it, but now there is no love, there is helplessness. There is need and there is regret that I am so. And guilt....guilt at being a net drag rather than a net gain. And where did this timidity come from? I am afraid to ask for help, for love, for affection, wary that I am an anchor threatening to halt your progress through the tempestuous seas we sail. So I write it all down, in the hope it will make sense, but, in truth, it never does. I have never fitted in with any world view I can conceive. I have always been an enigma to myself. Capable of emotions that literally rip me apart at their intensity, and yet incapable of placing them correctly in my timeline that the results make sense. Too early,too late, I have been both in my time and I have been both at the same time. I'm tired. I've seen a lot, and experienced a lot, I have done things that no one knows about but me and some of them shame me. I've lived in squalor and splendour emotionally, but I am no closer to resolution or becoming complete. Perhaps for me there are no answers, merely questions and my life will be all quest and no rest. Thanks for listening.

Wishing it was different

First of all, I should apologise. I haven't been in a blogging frenzy lately, so updates have been few and far between. I have also been busy. However that is not the point, the point is I have been trying to pretend everything is OK, when everything is patently not OK. So I am back in the blog, and there are lots of things I want to say, quite a few I need to say and somewhere between the two, things I will say.

On the plus side, I achieved one of my life goals last week in that I did a stand up comedy routine in front of an audience (albeit a small audience). I just want to say that I am extremely pleased with how it went, it is definitely something I will be doing more of and, importantly, nothing I am about to say alters that, or diminishes my enjoyment of and pride in that box being ticked.

Having said that, I have been trying to use the high from that event to cover up the disturbing realisation that I am not OK, but today the tide broke over it, washing away any pretence of OKness. I guess it has always been this way for me, pulsating highs and crushing lows coming one after the other. I have been telling myself that I SHOULD be content, happy, on a high and therefore that I must be on a high. All evidence of my heart however was telling me otherwise. There's a terrible feeling of emptiness in me at the moment, a dread of each day being hollow, purposeless, aimless, wandering. I guess I have come here to talk about it because that is what I do, write about things. Here I can type the words out and know that you will read them and I don't have to subject you to the mess I am in as I press each key, living out the misery I am typing, wincing as I draw the words out of myself, crying as I read it back.

And right there we have one of the major problems. I cannot bear the thought of being burdensome on loved ones, on my friends. I hate the thought of being weak, of being a net 'need' upon people I care about. I have only ever wanted to make you proud of me, proud of knowing me, relaxed around me, happy to be with me. I want to be a giver, for my friendship and my love to come with benefits, not costs. Totally irrational of course, for everyone comes with both benefit and emotional cost, but that is how it is with me. Because I struggle with mental illness, I am determined it shall not affect outside of me, that I contain the negative aspects inside, so that none have to pay in any way for my suffering.

It is a literal insanity, because I am ill-equipped to nurture myself, and nurture surely is a natural thing to expect or hope for from friendship and love? The bleakness I struggle with will not allow me to believe I am capable of giving you the love and tenderness you deserve, and therefore that it would be selfish of me to expect it in return. The ridiculous thing is that however logical it all seems to see it in words, the experience is very different. The actual wrench I feel all the time, in every way, that I would rather rip out my heart and throw it away than let it poison someone else's life. The sheer terror of reaching out, of being in need, of expecting you to meet that need.

What has hit me, and why everything is not OK, is that I have realised I am only ever giving a part of myself to you, only the part I like to think of as relaxed, happy, loving, fun. It means you don't know what it is to be loved by me in totality, and that is an awful thing to realise. Perhaps writing this is the start of a different approach, certainly something needs to change. Perhaps what I am saying is that soon, somehow, I will need to reach out. Because it cannot go on like this, it has done so for far too long.

All the things I'd do for you (second rewrite)

I'd call you in the morning,
Because I miss your voice,
Or whisk you, without warning,
To destinations of your choice.

When I come, I'd bring you flowers,
And a book about Peru,
Y'know we could be there in twelve hours,
Give or taking one or two.

At weekends we would wander
Under blue and sun-kissed skies,
Or I'd gaze at you and ponder
The depth and beauty of your eyes.

I'd take you out, carousing,
And wake with cloudy head.
Which is in itself arousing,
Our excuse to stay in bed.

Of course I'd very often,
Turn up with a grin,
And watch you laugh and soften
At the foolish mood I'm in.

Oh, if only I could find the way
To tell you to your face,
That when I see you, any day,
My heart begins to race.

Sometimes

Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. It's a word I often think of. Sometimes I feel that I am losing the war against depression. Right now is one of those times. I promised myself I would blog from inside depression, let the words flood out, so that in the future it will remind me what I am fighting and why I must carry on fighting, every minute of every day, no matter how tired or hopeless I feel. Fighting is sometimes all I have left. So here is my blog entry, from inside a bout of depression, a list of all the sometimes that are buzzing around in my head.

Sometimes I reach out because I need to know you are still there.
Sometimes it is so dark the blackness eats the light.
Sometimes I just want someone to hold me.
Sometimes I despair because the road is so long, and I am so tired.
Sometimes I am ashamed of me.
Sometimes, in a room full of laughter and smiles, I feel utterly alone.
Sometimes it hurts so much, I cannot express it in words.
Sometimes I spurn love because I am scared.
Sometimes, when I tell you I am OK, I am lying.
Sometimes the man in the mirror laughs at me.
Sometimes I think no good comes from any of my endeavours.
Sometimes I disgust myself.
Sometimes I envy you, and hate myself for doing so.
Sometimes I don't have the answer, and it scares me.
Sometimes I do, but pretend I don't.
Sometimes the loneliness haunts me.
Sometimes I forget who I am.
Sometimes I want to know where the bottom is, to feel the lowest point, to know it.
Sometimes I lie to protect you, sometimes I lie to protect me.
Sometimes I want to tell you how it feels, but I can't.
Sometimes I cry and I don't know why.
Sometimes the silence hurts my ears.
Sometimes you won't be able to help me.
Sometimes I'm exhausted.
Sometimes the alternative terrifies me.
Sometimes I retreat from the world and compound my problems.
Sometimes I wish I had the words to express how much I care, and yet find myself dumbstruck.
Sometimes I want to start again.
Sometimes I want to run.