it’s a car-crash life

Yesterday, after several months of research including various blood tests carried out through my GP, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia at our hospital’s Rheumatology Department.

The most common symptoms of this condition are:

• Pain and stiffness all over the body
• Fatigue
• Increased sensitivity to pain
• Tenderness to touch
• Difficulty sleeping/unrefreshed sleep – waking up tired and stiff
• Sexual dysfunction
• Mood disturbances
• Anxiety/psychological distress
• Problems with mental processes (known as “fibro-fog”) – cognitive problems including lack of concentration, temporary memory impairment and word mix-up
• Clumsiness and dizziness
• Dryness in mouth, eyes and nose
• Headaches – ranging from ordinary types to migraine
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) – a digestive condition alternating diarrhoea and constipation, sometimes accompanied by stomach pain, bloating or nausea
• Allergies and chemical sensitivities
• Hypersensitivity to cold/heat changes in the weather and to noise, bright lights, smoke and other environmental factors

And were it not for the fact that I was (very) late diagnosed with ADHD aged 58, and joined social media groups for support, advice and shoulders to lean on, I wouldn’t even have considered my ongoing aches and pains as anything but general ageing.

Or the way I slept. The way I sat. Even the ‘wrong’ footwear.

I must’ve spent a fortune in osteopath, chiropractor, acupuncture, hypnosis, inner soles and OTC pain meds, and the above list describes how I’ve felt to a tee. Not just now, but for many years.

Fibromyalgia can be triggered by trauma experiences such as sudden life changes including chronic illness, bereavement, divorce, redundancy, etc, and although I’ve experienced all of these, the one which stood out when I was researching it, was car accidents.

I even view my second marriage as a car crash.  

And, oddly enough, on our first wedding anniversary which we spent in Devon, my legs hurt so much that on one day we had to get a taxi back from a walk along a river. I remember feeling so embarrassed. A new wife who couldn’t walk. I had trouble sleeping because of the pain and it affected both our enjoyment of the break. When we got home, I was diagnosed with Trochanteric Bursitis which, over the course of 4 years, necessitated steroid injections in alternate legs every six months so I could get to work.

Then the following year I had two car crashes within the space of 16 weeks.

The first was a head-on, and to this day I can still smell my skin burning and feel the sensation of blood tickling my face as it slid from head to chin. I often believe my arms are covered with the white powder ejected with the airbags, and brush it needlessly away. 

The times that I drive (which are so rare I need to take a battery charger with me) I visualise it happening. I hear the sound of metal scraping against metal as the idiot teenager let his car careen into mine whilst texting his girlfriend with his head bowed.

I wish (now) I’d had the sense to have taken him to court to claim compensation. But I was in a state of extended shock. We ended up out of pocket due to our car being less than a year old, so lost the value of the loan we’d taken out for it.  Then we extended the loan for a second-hand car. My at-the-time-husband was practically useless and did nothing to look into any recourse we might have had to reclaim these financial losses. In fact, he expected me to be able to put the whole thing behind me after a month or so and move on.  

My daughter turned 16 three days after this crash, and my first thought as I stared at the smoke, the blood and the white powder (which had initially made me believe I was in heaven) was how I was going to pick up her cake now the car was wrecked. And in photographs of me at her party later that week, I’m standing with both my arms wrapped around my body (think straight-jacket but without the actual straightjacket), my mouth widened in a kind of smile-grimace. I look hollowed-out.

Afterwards I couldn’t drive to collect my daughter from places in the evenings, so my husband would, and I forced myself to go with him, hoping it might help overcome my fear of being in a car. But if I asked him to slow down because it was scaring me (in the dark, around unlit country roads) he’d laugh, tell me he wasn’t exceeding the speed limit and to just relax.

So I’d sit there, rigid with fear, my eyes clamped shut the entire time.

Sixteen weeks after the head-on, this car was also written-off…

…by a mother hurrying to the same school I’d just —thankfully—dropped my daughter off at. She sped out of a left-hand side-road and rammed into the passenger side of my car, crushing it and shunting me across the road into the path of oncoming traffic. A car thankfully braked before hitting me and I can still see the man’s face with his mouth open, staring at me through both his windscreen and mine, at what he’d just witnessed.

Now I’ve written that, it’s no bloody wonder I was a mess afterwards. Not just physically but mentally. And even though I had the regular 6-weeks NHS counselling for PTSD and my antidepressants kept being increased, nothing allayed the fear that this was going to happen again. That ‘things come in threes’ scenario played in my mind for a very long time.

I’d also only been married 2 years, and the aftermath of these crashes, I’m certain, were the largest nails in our matrimonial coffin. I think I even recognised this at the time but didn’t have the energy or conviction to say or do anything about it. All I knew was that I needed to keep going. For my daughter’s sake if not for the sake of this fledgling marriage which I really didn’t want to believe could be so easily broken.

I hadn’t felt any kind of strength or support from him following these crashes. If it hadn’t been for a one of my colleague’s suggestions, then the ‘No-Win-No-Fee’ compensation I got after the second crash wouldn’t have happened either. And I felt completely gutted when the No-Win-No-Fee solicitor told me the basic sum I could have been awarded for the first crash—a head-on, a speeding teen who’d just passed his test, who was texting and who’d subsequently had his license suspended—because it would’ve completely turned our financial losses around. I cried so hard when I heard the amount. It would have taken one phone call.

So, three car crashes in as many years might’ve gone some way towards the particular trauma event/s which could’ve triggered my Fibromyalgia onset. There’s no sure way of knowing, only of piecing together the past.

And there’s also the fact that it IS a comorbidity of ADHD, of course… the conditions of which exacerbate anxiety, tension, depression, cognitive impairment, fatigue, and the endless slew of other things which accompany neurodiversity.

I messaged a friend after I’d told my daughter that Fibromyalgia had been confirmed and she wanted to know what difference having a diagnosis would make. My response was the same as when I had my ADHD diagnosis: it’s good to be heard and to know I’m not going mad or making things up to get attention.

Because I never thought it was important, these pains and my suffering. Often, I actually believed I deserved it and didn’t think I’d be heard; I’d just be “making a fuss about nothing” and wasting a medical professional’s time. I have my parents to thank for instilling these terrible, damaging, automatic beliefs in myself.   

I Do. Well, I Did. Now I Don’t.

The older I get the less I understand why anyone would want to get married. Which of course I would say because I’ve done it twice, so I’m biased. But I’m also in that enviable–some might say ‘learned’ which rhymes with ‘burned’–position of seeing flaws in marriage from both a distance and with the benefit of hindsight. Come on up, the view is lovely.

Over the past 50 years, one third of UK marriages have ended in divorce. Which is 3 out of 10 and makes playing the lottery a much more attractive proposition if you bear in mind the humungous cost of weddings with all their whistles and bells. I don’t remember the exact cost of my first wedding in 1992, and both sets of parents were alive and contributing. But the second, in 2007–including the ridiculously expensive honeymoon–cost something in the region of £20-25k.

I know, right? But instead of getting my lace-trimmed satin cami-knickers in a twist, I thought I’d take a look at the history of this reverential communion.

The first recorded evidence of marriage ceremonies uniting one woman and one man dates from about 2350 B.C., in Mesopotamia over 4,000 years ago. For the thousands of years prior to this, anthropologists believe that families consisted of loosely organized groups of as many as 30 people comprising several male leaders, with multiple women shared by them, and children.

That Mesopotamian wedding might be the ‘first recorded’ but marriages could already have happened because unwritten rules would have been seen as just as sacrosanct. Gentlemen’s agreements and all that. However, as hunter-gatherers settled down into agrarian civilizations, society sought a need for more stable arrangements.

Back then, marriage had little to do with love or religion, and more to do with combining households. Because forming an alliance between families meant they stood a greater chance of success once the two were united. You have only to take a look at the fussy Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice to see how seriously these marriages were taken. And Mrs B had five daughters to successfully ‘marry’ off’ – which seems a full-time occupation in itself.

However, the primary purpose of marriage pre-Pride and Prejudice (try saying that five times really fast) was to bind women to men, guaranteeing that a man’s children were his biological heirs. And through marriage, a woman became a man’s ‘property’ meaning anything she brought into the marriage was automatically his. For instance, in ancient Greece, during a betrothal ceremony, a father would hand over his daughter with the words: “I pledge my daughter for the purpose of producing legitimate offspring.” Hence the question during a marriage ceremony directed at the person giving the bride away: “who giveth this woman…?”… it’s a transaction like any other purchase from one owner to another.

Amongst ancient Hebrews, men were free to take several wives (of course). Greeks and Romans who were married were free to satisfy their sexual urges with concubines, prostitutes, and even teenage male lovers, whilst wives were required to stay home and tend to the household. And if a wife failed to produce offspring, their husbands could give them back and marry someone else… taking the importance of holding onto the receipt to a whole new level.

It’s worth mentioning here that although gay marriage is rare in history, it wasn’t unknown. The Roman emperor Nero (ruler from A.D. 54 to 68) twice married men in formal wedding ceremonies, forcing the Imperial Court to treat them as his wives. In 2nd and 3rd century Rome, homosexual weddings were so common that social commentator, Juvenal who was famous for his biting satire and savage wit, wrote: “Look—a man of family and fortune—being wed to a man!” He mocked same-sex unions, saying that male brides would never be able to “hold their husbands by having a baby,’ and in the year 342, Romans outlawed formal homosexual unions.

Nero, doing his best Gerard Depardieu impression. Ably accompanied by his trusty fiddle.

Centuries later, when the Roman Catholic Church became a powerful institution in Europe, the blessings of a priest became a necessary step for a marriage to be legally recognised, and by the 8th century, marriage was widely accepted in the Catholic church as a ceremony which bestowed God’s grace.

Until Henry VIII famously upended the sanctity of marriage in 1533, broke England’s ties with the Catholic Church, crowned himself the Head of the Church of England and changed the face of a nation forever. Although his divorce didn’t pave the way for further divorces. Not then, nor at any other time remotely close to this shocking turn of events. In fact before 1858, divorce was still rare and the Church of England was so resistant to the idea that the only route was via an act of Parliament requiring it be voted through by both Houses. As it was an expensive business, proof of adultery required, and the airing of a couple’s private grievances in public a social disgrace, the King’s footsteps were not something his subjects felt able to easily follow .

The first UK non-royal divorce occurred in 1670 where Parliament passed an act allowing John Manners–Lord Roos–to divorce his wife, Lady Anne Pierpon, leading to the creation of a precedent for parliamentary divorces on the grounds of a wife’s adultery. And when a divorce law was finally enacted in 1857, the number of divorces in English history totalled a mere 324 (four of these instigated by women).

But it’s not the divorce rate which makes me question the point of marriage –although that is a sticking point, and one which still leaves some in greater financial hardship than they entered–no, it’s more the expense, the expectations and the enormous pressure that staying married places on a couple. And actually it’s ironic that ending a marriage is so financially and emotionally damaging, because the wedding cost so much in the first place.

Personally, I’m not great with compromise and that’s one of the foundations of a good marriage so I’ve heard. All that giving and taking and giving some more–if your personality isn’t strong enough to withstand it (and mine really isn’t)– means that when I’m one half of a couple, 50% of me dissolves to allow the Couple to exist, and that in turn means that I loose sight of who I am. I become a part of a unit, a fraction of what I once was.

I didn’t know this, of course, until it was too late and had to play catch-up with my personality once the half-dissolved parts of me came back into focus. Both times. You’d think I’d have learnt a lesson from the first time around, wouldn’t you? but I’m great at handing out benefits of the doubt and believed in second chances. Whereas what I ought to have believed in was myself, and not that my life would only become good if I (again) became half of a unit.

I’ve seen marriages that ‘work’ (although apart from seeing how my own parents were, who knows what goes on behind closed doors?), and I’m sure the institution won’t die off anytime soon. The traditional fluff and nonsense that goes with organising a wedding still enchants people who aspire to be one half of a unit and throw what amounts to a lavish party to announce these aspirations but I think you have to be a certain type of person to endure.

Either you’re a confident enough person to know your character will not be eroded by allowing someone else to share your space–by which I mean you will firmly stand your ground on any future discussions/arguments and not let that part of you dissolve–or else you’re so trusting in the belief that by becoming half of a union, your character might become whole through it. And I am no longer either of these people.

I always wanted to meet a wise old woman. Now, by holding up a mirror to my life, I think I’m becoming one.

This is how I see my funeral shaping up

Objection!

Along with countless others around the globe, I’ve been watching the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial play out in real-time at the courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia USA via YouTube, and it has surprised, shocked and saddened me.

Because this very public spectacle needn’t have happened.

And before anyone says “oh but actors LOVE being in the limelight; any publicity is good publicity”, I personally believe both Depp and Heard are essentially two very nice people with neurodiverse personalities who got carried away on a rush of dopamine during a film-set, and because of the way their brains work, they assumed this was IT.

We’ve all been there.

When a neurodiverse brain is happy, it’s WILDLY happy. To the point it makes you feel invincible. But when it’s unhappy? my God the pain and distress is comparable only to that of childbirth. Look up Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. It’s a comorbidity of the neurodiverse condition, so I’m not surprised that the disappointment they must’ve felt following the realisation they weren’t great for one another, led to recrimination, rage and need to vilify one another

Dopamine takes its hits wherever it can.

Neurotypical couples who are not stars of the screen will generally have rows until they can’t take any more. Then they’ll separate and bitch behind one another’s backs, but without the full force of public scrutiny cataloguing and reporting their every move.

Therefore, it’s simpler in Jo Public’s world because we don’t wake up, see our latest arguments turned into headlines, then re-live them as fans on social media then spout their opinions, making things feel a thousand times worse.

I think I’d be in a tailspin and commend both Depp and Heard on having survived this. I would be self-medicating myself to the eyeballs.

I mean… they’re beautiful!

It was whilst researching the couple’s timeline to align dates and facts (many of these ‘alleged’ facts), that something started bothering me. Something which took me back to the hounding and eventual death of Princess Diana.

Because whichever way I looked at the timeline of this beautiful pair, focusing on the supposed catalyst which set this whole fiasco rolling (the op-ed in the Washington Post which Heard published in 2018 claiming she’d suffered physical abuse but not naming anyone) I kept being drawn back to an article published in The Sun (for which Johnny Depp took the newspaper to court in 2018) titled  GONE POTTY : How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film after assault claim?

Which gets WAY more defamatory the further you read. Obviously. It’s British gutter press.

Now I’m not sure who Dan Wootton is. I think I’ve seen him on British TV sofas chatting about entertainment news and the like, but this article—to me—seems to be the catalyst which led to the op-ed that Ms Heard wrote, and which resulted in the US trial we’ve all been glued to.

In The Sun article, Dan Wootton disparages J.K. Rowling for allowing Johnny Depp to be a part of the screen adaptation of her Fantastic Beasts empire. He says: “…the author will need to use every trick in Harry Potter’s magic book to handle the growing outrage in Hollywood over her decision to stand by the casting of Johnny Depp in the lead role in her precious Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them franchise.” He’s clearly not a fan of Ms Rowling’s work: “precious”? Condescending, much.

He goes on to say: “Today I reveal a significant backlash from within the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement because the Scot is hellbent on backing her famous pal – despite his clearly inexcusable behaviour towards ex-wife Amber Heard.

Rowling is proving herself to be the worst type of Hollywood Hypocrite here.”

And whilst this kind of ire doubtless generates conversation for millions of Sun readers, it also casts doubts on J.K. Rowling’s professional capability, not to mention kicking Mr Depp’s career into the gutter and although I know I shouldn’t be, I’m shocked at the depths these journalists are allowed to sink; this particular stone aimed squarely at two glittering birds. The pats on the back he must’ve given himself.  Blimey.

I seriously don’t know how Dan Wootton can sleep. Perhaps journos like this don’t need to. Maybe they sold their soul. They weave vitriol without any clear evidence, basing their claims on whatever will ignite public furore the most and sell more papers/elevate website traffic.

And THIS is where I believe it all went ‘Pete Tong’.

If Dan Wootton hadn’t jumped lemming-like on the J.K. Rowling bandwagon and decided to lynch her for Depp making an ideal wizard in the guise of Gellert Grindelwald, then I doubt the furore of backlash would have continued to snowball the way it did.

His piece in The Sun ends with: “While Rowling has an inability to ever admit she’s made a mistake, it’s not too late for a last-minute re-cast. It would cost millions, but Rowling has the money.” As though he is somehow counsel to Ms Rowling and she would do well to heed him. Eurgh. The audacity.

Following the UK court ruling that Mr Wootton’s piece was allowable (I’m ashamed to be a British citizen, and not because our law IS an ass… but now is not the time), the BBC continued to decry Depp’s future, with Ian Youngs, BBC News arts & entertainment reporter, asking: What next for Johnny Depp? then answering his own question with more questions: “Will film fans want to watch him play the heavy-drinking US photojournalist W. Eugene Smith in his next movie, Minamata, which is due for release in February? Will it still come out?

“Will viewers want to see him in the new Fantastic Beasts movie – or, given that it started filming relatively recently, might Warner Bros decide he should be dropped? Those are his only two new credits listed on IMDB – will there be any more?”

Surely a person who writes these things has no shame; no moral compass; no heart. After the constant hounding—to one (known) person’s death—why doesn’t the mainstream media NOW understand the duty of care they should consider? Because once incendiary queries like these are espoused and settled in the minds of readers… there they sit… the damage escalating even further as public speculation grows. Meghan Markle is another example of the media forcing their ideas on the general public. Acting as judge, jury and executioner over the lives of anybody they see as headline-grabbing. It’s as though they want every human being in the world to feel constantly riled, taking sides, screaming and tweeting obscenities at one another. Gladiatorial almost. And we all know how that ended.

The neurodiverse mind is easily affected, easily flattered. We’re incredibly trusting types. And Ms Heard, recognising her testimony in the UK trial had swayed the judge’s decision, must’ve felt a huge surge of dopamine which perhaps gave her the impetus to write the op-ed in the Washington Post later that year. She was in the right, after all; the survivor. The judge had said so. It had been ruled that her ex-husband was a wife-beater, therefore she was perfectly entitled to declare herself an ambassador for domestic violence and write the article (despite an NDA clause in their divorce agreement preventing this).

And Mr Depp might’ve simply ignored this (after all, it didn’t name him) but for the tweets from his (then) lawyer, Adam Waldman who took umbrage at what he perceived was clearly a defamatory piece aimed at his client, and tweeted his displeasure.

Giving everyone a field-day as speculation grew and anger mounted. And the rest, as they say, is history (and herstory) which has been at the heart of the trial these past few weeks.

From where I’ve been watching, these two people’s lives—who’d simply believed they might have a future together based on feelings which flamed during a film-set shower scene; who’d since realised they actually brought out the worst in one another; who’d already stated they were happy to move on without one another, who’d agreed their divorce settlement—have been entirely manipulated by the MSM, social media included.

A shower is a dangerous place

Media orchestrated this. They conducted this, they designed the sets, they edited the scripts, sold tickets, then sat back and watched as two perfectly lovely actors played out roles they’d  been cast in for our gratuitous viewing pleasure.

I don’t know who I’m angrier with: the media for their incessant blood-sucking manipulation, or the general public for being so easily and willingly manipulated.

p.s. whilst looking up Mr Wootton ‘credentials’, I came across this: “In 2015, Wootton and The Sun received widespread criticism for an article he penned for the tabloid titled “Hollywood HIV Panic”. Writing in The Independent, Tom Hayes referred to the piece as an “insidious piece of stigma-reinforcing” journalism, HIV policy adviser Lisa Power, who was quoted in the article, called it “vile” and expressed “disappointment” …..

I rest my case.

Anadin for the Amygdala

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the clinical psychologist I began seeing when I moved to Bath five years ago. Back then I saw this person because—bravely, and out of character, but as I’d just left a second marriage, my home and my friends and had no shits left to give—I’d mentioned to someone I’d started working with that I suffered with anxiety and depression. (Not that anyone ever noticed I had this unless I told them, and then I was hardly ever believed because of my outgoing personality). This person said they knew someone who’d had success with this psychologist, so passed me their details.

She was expensive. Very. I daresay she still is, and I remember feeling slightly overawed at her specialised credentials when I first met her, but I was also curious as to how her treatment of me might differ from the dozens of other therapists and counsellors I’ve had from the age of nineteen to the present day.

I discovered things during my time with—let’s call her Julie, that led me to want to return to her. Despite the expense and despite the fact that now I don’t work and can only afford one session a fortnight as opposed to our previous weekly meetings.

She’s the only professional therapist who’s ever given me a smile. A genuine one. And laughed. With me I mean; because if it’d been at me then I’d have been out of there like a shot and reporting her to all kinds of medical boards once I’d overcome the delayed panic attack. I’m nothing if not an uptight Brit when it comes to voicing my concerns.

Her room wasn’t fifty shades of beige unlike most other places I’d sat in. It housed colourful things; the rug was especially beautiful, and the chair I sat in faced a broad, tall window which framed lush, leafy trees outside. In summer months the window was cranked open and a warm, gentle scent trickled through like a balm.  

Julie had a white board and wasn’t afraid to stand up and use it. I liked that she’d welcome me with affection and a breezy “right, let’s decide what to focus on today” and write it down. And although we often strayed from these points, it was good to have there with us, knowing we could pull back round if necessary.

She interrupted me. I especially liked this, I think, because I’m a great interrupter; it’s an ADHD trait.

Or maybe it was more interjecting than interrupting. Well, whatever it was called, if I was off on a ramble and this ramble had lost its self-depreciating quality which can sometimes be endearing (on other people, of course, not me. I’m anything but endearing) then she’d say something like “that’s because you’re depressed” which would bring me up like a teacher taking hold of my collar, and I’d feel seen. Properly seen. The way we’d want a parent to see us. The way we’d want to be as a parent.

It shocked me I think, the first time it happened. Had it been at any other time with any other person (or therapist) I might have waved this suggestion of my depression away flippantly, wanting to defuse a potentially awkward situation. Because that’s the way I’ve usually handled it. Like it’s an irritation. It’s not real. At worst, temporary, and nothing anyone need worry about or hold against me. That is, of course, my mother talking, who instilled in me the firm belief that depression was something only the idle and rich ‘caught’ and she had no time for it.

So when I first ‘caught’ it, and then began to catch it with increasing regularity, I’d pretend whatever tablets I was prescribed, had cured me, or were well on the way to curing me. Anadin for the amygdala. Because I’d read all about faking it and making it, turning this into the foundation on which most of my life has been built. And although I’m sure this mantra works for some people, it has never worked for me; it simply added to an ever-growing list of failures.

But Julie spoke about depression as though it was part of my persona and not an annoying ailment requiring a simple salve for it go away again. Which might sound as though I’d wanted my depression to be a part of my life (I really didn’t. I don’t) but actually I’d just really, really wanted someone to believe I had it. And not only believe I had it, but to treat it like an important element of my character which needed understanding, acceptance and gently unwrapping to see how it might become less damaging to me.

I think when I was diagnosed ADHD last year and recognised that the majority of my depression must’ve stemmed from the fact I’ve struggled to fit in all my life—‘masking’—and attempting to behave in ways that are accepted and neurotypical, that my depression would somehow lift; not disappear completely of course, because it’s so ingrained. And when I started my meds, I did feel something shift, though that has more to do with a dopamine kick than a relieving of decades of suffocating thoughts.

I even stopped taking my antidepressants. Partly because if taken alongside ADHD meds, it can adversely affect the heart, but mainly because I wanted to give my body a break after 40 years of swallowing chemically-produced sweets that I still can’t find the ingredients for anywhere, to see how I felt free from them. As me. For once.

However, the depression remains. It’s not as bad on the days I remember to take my ADHD meds, because they give me some motivation to get up see what happens. But on days when I haven’t slept properly (if at all) and I wake up in chronic pain, that alone is enough to make me think ‘what’s the point?’ especially as I don’t have any real focus in my life anymore. Hell, I don’t even have a house anymore; just my room and my cat.

These are the things that I think Julie will write on the board tomorrow after we’ve both smiled genuinely at one another.

• purpose
• belief
• connection
• momentum

Or similar.  Because everything feels so very ‘nothing’ right now.

Rugs & Towels

Maybe it’s because I turned sixty this year. Maybe it’s because an ADHD diagnosis has afforded me greater realisation. Maybe it’s because I’ve discovered that the aches and pains I always put down to sleeping/sitting/ standing weirdly are actually undiagnosed Fibromyalgia – a comorbidity of ADHD and equally undiagnosed – for which I’ve self-medicated my entire life.

Maybe it’s because my current counsellor has said the same thing countless other therapists have told me over the years which is a variation of: “It does seem that the rug is pulled from under your feet quite a lot”.

Yes, that’s precisely how it seems. And maybe it’s just time to admit this. Time also, to admit that I don’t believe -don’t have the strength of mind or body to believe, actually – that this will ever change. Not now.

Maybe it’s a combination of all these things which has led me to a slow-burn belief that it’s time to start being kinder to myself and stop beating myself up. Because I beat myself up a lot. I was trained in the art of self-flagellation from an early age, so it’s instinctive. Something happens (bad) and immediately I know it’s my fault. Even if I’m nowhere near The Thing. Even if there’s no clear connection to me and The Thing. And if there isn’t a clear indication that I am to blame, then I will find a way to make it be my fault. Because it makes The Thing easier to handle.

A lot of people over the years have called me pessimistic; the original Debbie Downer. And I always countered that I’m not a Pessimist, I’m a Realist. These are two entirely different beasts. A Pessimist expects Bad Things to happen and sees negativity in any given situation, and a Realist knows Bad Things happen, so runs through every possible scenario in their head to ensure that when it does, it doesn’t impact too greatly on those they care about.

That’s the difference.

Before being diagnosed ADHD, I assumed this was one of my weird personality traits, something else that alienated me from people who thought positively and believed in Good Things happening. But now I know that my brain is simply wired to scramble (as in ‘action stations!’, not a mess of eggs) scenarios in the space of a few seconds to make sure every eventuality is considered, and ready for good or bad. It’s my Amygdala bracing itself in Fight or Flight, and has nothing to do with only seeing a negative. It’s my survival mode. It’s prehistoric. Instinctive.

Proving this point is the very real fact that I have, from a very young age, aspired to be a proper, published writer. From when the story I wrote about my best friend was accepted by the local newspaper as their story of the week and I had my photo taken and was paid £5.00 for it. I honestly believed this was the first step on the path of my life. How’s that for optimism?

A year or so before, I’d co-written a script for Fawlty Towers (still on its initial airing at the time) and sent it to the BBC, who returned it with a compliments slip suggesting I took a degree in English or an apprenticeship in scriptwriting, which wasn’t going to happen if I wasn’t allowed to go to art school. But I remained utterly convinced that writing was my future. Writing was my friend.

I’d kept a diary from the age of 13, recording daily events, and separately I’d write about things had happened at school which had affected me. I’d write about it without restriction and hide it away. Which was how I came to write the story that the newspaper published. It was a celebration of the friendship I’d had with my best friend, and the gaping hole that his absence since going to university had left me with. It released burning emotions and placed them in a recognisable black-and-white form.

With the success in the local newspaper, I sent the story to magazines, although I hadn’t considered their demographics. I’d naively assumed that all short stories were equal, so when the rejections came back – by royal mail in those days – I felt felt sorely disappointed.

Although one editor sent me something else, and I wish to this day that I’d held onto his letter, because it’s the One Thing my mind returns to when I consider my early days of believing things might happen. He wrote that although he’d enjoyed my story and could see humour and talent, it wasn’t the right ‘fit’ for his publication however…. however... because he liked my style, he said he’d like to chat about future commissions should I ever find myself in London EC4… he wrote his telephone extension number at the magazine.

I knew that this was an opportunity; it fizzed in my veins and filled me with unparalleled joy. But my parents didn’t see it the same way and refused to let me go. *sound of rug-pulling*. I was weeks away from leaving school, finishing my A-levels, and I’d already been told I couldn’t go to art college. *more rug-pulling*

Now they were telling me I couldn’t pursue another ambition. My mother, believing London was a den of iniquity, insisted that this editor was only after “one thing” (because that was all they thought I was good for), telling me “you’ll have plenty of opportunities to go gallivanting around London once you’ve grown up and left home.”

I don’t remember sending the editor a reply. What would I have said? My mum and dad won’t let me?

And I believed them. Why wouldn’t I? I did believe that more opportunities like this would come my way, so I carried on writing stories and sending them to magazines. I borrowed money to enrol on the London School of Writing correspondence course to further my writing education, and continued believing I was doing the right thing whilst working jobs that depressed me and exploited me, writing well into the night once I was home, to dispel the grubbiness I felt from my days.

I held onto this belief for another forty years, through shitty jobs, failed marriages (a successful stint at single-motherhood, however) and rubbish relationships, all the time self-medicating a brain disorder I never knew I had. I joined writing groups, submitted every novel I wrote to agents with a pause for two years when I came so close to representation that the eventual rejection physically hurt. A student loan gave me a BA(Hons), I threw divorce settlement finances at a writing mentor who promised things that didn’t materialize. I took out another loan out for a Masters where I gained a distinction and my manuscript tutor convinced me this novel was The One which reminded me of the way my last husband fed me superlatives, whipping my mind into a frenzy of sky-high beliefs which always came crashing down around my ears.

I feel I’ve done so, SO much to stay on the damned rug to realise this long-held dream of writing to be published, that I’m actually winded by it all.

I joined all the social media platforms, followed all the right accounts in a bid to make connections; entered every competition I could afford (some I’ve been ‘listed’ in), inveigled my way into conversations and signed up to writing group subscriptions hoping to further my path. When I stopped working I signed up to LinkedIn, hoping I might find a route to paid writing there, but every application I’ve made has been ghosted (that’s ‘ignored’, right?) and now I’m exhausted. Nearly as exhausted as I used to get waiting for my parents, employers, hell, anyone, to say something positive about me.

Every morning when I open my emails I find invitations to join writing groups, to read about another debut author’s path to publication and how tough it was getting twenty (yes, 20!) rejections before securing their dream agent. I get offers to take myself off on writing retreats where the magic will happen, which I can’t afford even if I did have the mental and physical ability to attend. Twitter announces proud publishers and agents advertising their latest signed author, the authors themselves unbridled with joy, and my already shattered soul breaks into ever-tinier pieces.

I now feel more removed from the world of writing than I ever have. I suppose from having tried so hard to get precisely nowhere. My age isn’t in my favour either, despite all the links I see about successful authors debuting in the twilight of their years. Holding onto hope now feels more like clutching at straws, and I’m done.

I’ve cancelled subscriptions, I’m unfollowing agents, publishers, editors, authors. Anything I see that that presses fingers into my bruised soul, I’m letting go. Because I think it’s about time I did let it go, and I can’t say I didn’t try. Which seems a fitting note to end on, because teachers always wrote: “Deborah really must try harder”, despite that undiagnosed kid trying so hard it left wounds.

Groundhog Life

Wait…

wasn’t it tomorrow yesterday as well?

Everyone knows that the film Groundhog Day is all about being back where you know you’ve already been before and having to repeat it on an endless loop whilst being able to do nothing whatsoever about it.

How ever hard you try.

It’s one of my favourite films*. And it’s only just dawned on me why it might be so.

It’s a near-perfect representation of how my life has gone. Goes. Is seemingly destined to forever go. I always imagined my headstone would read: Bored Now… but I’m beginning to wonder whether it should read: Tomorrow Never Comes, or similar. Because that’s precisely how it feels.

Today I handed in my 40,000 word manuscript to be assessed for the Bath Spa University MA final which I’ve been studying for the past year (Class of Covid). It’s the end of an era. Another era. An era that I never imagined I would undertake, and one which just happened to present itself at the right time in terms of geography and student finance upper-age-limits.

But tomorrow I’ll wake up to Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe” because I’ll be back where I was this time last year and all the years prior to that: back in the Land of Limbo – or the Land of Punxsutawney – with no idea where I’m meant to be or what I’m supposed to be doing.

I know what I’d like to be and what I’d like to be doing. I’ve always known this. I want to write. I want to be a writer. I don’t even want a six-figure publishing deal. I’d just like to earn enough that I can buy some independence and not have to rely on my daughter anymore. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, enjoyed or persevered with; motherhood excluded. But it never happened, no matter how hard I tried. And, truthfully, the MA is the last thing I’m actually able to do in order to further this goal. There’s nothing else l can study on an income of £0.00. I’m at the end of my available resources and facing an interview (tomorrow at 2.30pm with Pauline) at the Bath Job Centre Plus to see if I can claim Universal Credit because I’ve exhausted my means.

I was here aged 17 – whilst writing. I was here between the ages of 18 and 30 – whilst writing – with about fifteen jobs by then, to my shame and name. Then I took maternity leave – wrote a screenplay amongst other things – and didn’t go back to work until I became a single mother aged 38 – all the time, whilst writing. When I stupidly married again I stopped writing for a good (bad) three years or so, because he thought I was online dating and not in Word writing. But I did manage to convince him I could study for a degree in writing. It didn’t involve suitors, after all.

I graduated from that degree last year, after 6 years part-time study. During which I left the only job I was ever half-good at and loved because of sliding mental health issues (now known to have been ADHD-related) then left the husband I stupidly married. Now I’m about as qualified as I’m ever likely to get in the art of stringing a sentence together and cooking up a rollicking yarn with which to entertain a reader. But, in order to convince the government (via Pauline) that I’m serious about requiring paid employment, my time will now be spent online searching for local jobs suiting my skills.

I have been honest about my skills, however. I don’t see the point in being anything else at this stage. On the forms, where it asks to explain things I’ve done in a job-seeking capacity, I’ve explained that I’ve submitted to free-to-enter monetary prize-giving writing competitions (or ones which have offered me a sponsored entry due to limited means); that I have an alert through various job sites online for any writing opportunities; and that I have plans to update this blog so that it becomes more writer-focussed, enabling me to widen my scope and advertise my experience, in case anyone with a writerly-type opening might know of something suitable I could apply for.

What I haven’t mentioned is that once I have the feedback from this final assessment (having an MA will be lovely, but the comments are the only thing it can improve with), then I can edit the manuscript and make it as enticing as possible for when I begin approaching literary agents with it. Then, maybe I’ll find that elusive ‘yes’ I’ve been waiting so long for, and I can start living the life I’ve always wanted.

Of course, Pauline might appreciate hearing this. Maybe she’ll be a frustrated poet or musician and we’ll have a good old laugh about our failed lives thus far, and arrange lunch sometime and become the best of friends. Oh, how we’ll laugh looking back at our grey and gloomy pasts before we stumbled into one another’s lives. Oh, how we’ll pop another champagne cork and fill our goblets to the brim with anecdotes to amuse our new circle of bohemian friends while message alerts fall like spent fireworks from agents begging us to invite their clients on Debz ‘n’ Paulinz Saturday Night Takeout.

I don’t know what else I can do.

Whenever I’ve looked at the regular part-time local jobs, my heart deflates so much that I feel physically sick with it. Because all my life I’ve put writing aside to try and do what’s expected of me: earn money, pay bills, write in my own time, if I have the energy to, and it’s made me as miserable as I can be. The thought of doing something for somebody else, be it entering stuff on a screen, answering emails, organising their working life, stacking their shelves, wiping their arse, whatever; fills me with such desperate sadness that I wonder what on earth my life was meant to be if this is where I’ve ended up.

Oh dear, this wasn’t meant to become such a dirge of despondency!

*see also: Back to the Future which is also about going back to try and make things better than they were first time round. Funny that.

Why do it?

Since I started my MA in Creative Writing (Bath Spa Uni: Class of Covid) the status of being a full-time student has given me the ‘permission’ I’ve needed to write more. To take my writing seriously. Because during the previous forty five or so years that I wrote, I always had the sense that it didn’t matter much; it was a hobby. Something I did alongside reading or drawing; something that filled in the gaps between more important things like school/work/friends/family.

The fact that for the past twenty five years I’ve been approaching agents with books I’ve written–all roundly rejected–I took to mean they–therefore I–wasn’t good enough. That maybe I shouldn’t have approached them in the first place, because I wasn’t qualified to do so. I didn’t have the right background. I didn’t have a degree. I needed to take a course–or three. Join a group. Or two. Enrol on a BA(Hons). Give my savings to the most expensive mentor I could find rather than “throw it away” on an MA.

Then actually do an MA.

The last therapist I had asked me to view myself as I would a stranger–a simple thing to do, because I have no idea who I am most of the time–and tell her (my therapist) what I thought of this stranger (still me). I didn’t know where to begin. Did I start with her hair and work down? Did I start with the breech birth and grow up? Did I……? it was suggested I start with what I felt this stranger had achieved in her life.

Easy. She’d given birth to an amazing daughter who’d grown up to become a self-sufficient, clever, beautiful, wise and loving person who was achieving her dreams…. she was…

*record scratch* She hadn’t asked me to tell her what this strangers’ daughter was like.

Right. So this stranger *ahem, me* had survived parental mental and emotional neglect (we’d covered this before, so now I didn’t feel I was bad-mouthing my parents; it was simply a fact). She’d survived bullying, depression, anorexia, bereavement, self-harm, betrayal, car crashes, divorce. Twice. She’d survived…

*record scratch*

Survival, apparently isn’t an achievement. It’s more a testament of skill and endurance. (The stranger might disagree with this). The therapist suggested trying more ‘obvious’ achievements; things that this stranger *waves* had done which another person might look on and think they’d quite like to have achieved these things too…

*tumbleweed drifted across a deserted landscape*

‘Let’s start with this person’s writing,’ the therapist said. Okay. I could do that.

She wrote her first published story aged 18. She’s written four teenage books, four adult books, she’s had stories shortlisted, longlisted, been runner-up in a major literary prize, won short story competitions; had poems and stories published in anthologies, was about to graduate with a first class honour BA degree which she’d studied for six years…could I stop now please?

Stop why?

Because I knew what she was doing; this was a reverse-psychology thing; I wasn’t stupid.

And because I knew this stranger I’d been talking about was *really* me, it had suddenly felt like the worst kind of bragging I’ve never felt able to do. I hated it. It actually made me feel nauseous.

This isn’t called bragging, it turns out. And certainly shouldn’t be viewed negatively. It’s more a reinforcement of self-worth and other psychoanalytical Instagram-induced bollocks which I’ve never felt comfortable extolling. Therefore, plan thwarted, therapist lady!

Although this exercise did stay with me. Clearly. I’m posting about it right now. And I have to admit that if I came across someone who had achieved (not survived) these writerly things, I’d be as envious as heck of her. Probably of her stamina more than anything; in the face of endless rounds of submissions and rejections; in the face of never being in the right place at the right time, but still persisting with her dreams; in the face of knowing how easy it is just to throw in a towel then lie on it in a darkened corner and let the world carry on… in the face of watching daily as other real, published, successful writers delightedly announce the arrival of their next book; of their place in the charts; of their five-star reviews; of the fact they can’t believe that at the grand old age of *anything from 24 to 39* their debut is now in the world… that she continues… and continues… and continues…

… although why does she carry on in the face of such adversity?

I would joke that it’s masochism; self-flagellation. Or I’m aiming to be the best failed writer in the world (which might still come to pass) but, honestly?

I can’t not write. I simply can’t. I’ve said before that not writing is like not breathing; it’s always been the first thing I want to do, the last thing I want to do, and the thing I fill all the spaces with in between.

I will die with either a book or a pen in my hand (laptop optional, depending on the type of death).

Getting to Know Me

“The line forms to the right. And please don’t crowd. There may not be enough Pisces women for every man, but that’s no reason to be unruly. You’ll have to take your turn, and hope for the best.” (Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs p.507: 1970)

As a teen I used to read and re-read these opening lines over and over again, trying to work out what they actually meant. Because I hadn’t a clue what I was, who I was or where I was most of the time. This book—one of my parents’—I thought at least offered some clue as to what I might be, along with the remaining 12 percent of the world’s population who belonged to the same star sign as me.  The description goes on to say:

“The Neptune woman seldom tries to overshadow her man, married or single. She hasn’t the slightest hidden, neurotic desire to dominate him in any way. He can pull out her chair, put on her coat, whistle for a taxi, light her cigarette and talk about how wonderful he is to his heart’s content. All she wants is that he should protect her and care for her.” (p.508)

It used to reassure me what a lovely person this Pisces woman must be. She’s gentle, feminine and simply wants to be loved. That was me. It said so, right there. And, because nobody in real life ever said I was any of these nice things, I held onto these printed words like a charm or talisman because somebody had written it down so it must somehow be true. I just hadn’t got the hang of it.

I used to try and persuade myself that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be this elusive Neptune woman; I wasn’t being girly enough; I wasn’t demonstrating how much I needed to be cared for and protected and have my cigarette lit for me or the taxi hailed. All I needed to become this Flake-Girl-being for whom men queued was to just try harder.  

It also said this in my school reports, so there was more proof. It was also something my parents used to insist I needed to do on a daily basis; in fact affirmation that I wasn’t trying hard enough positively abounded. And then there were the telly adverts with painted ladies simpering over hirsute men who initially ignored these delightfully feminine creatures (of which I was one, because it said so in the book) and then somehow fell under their spell and wanted to protect them and be with them for ever more. The Happily Ever After we all read about growing up.

But—and I suppose, just like Peter Pan—some children never grow up. Because their growing up years were so overshadowed by the feeling of not knowing who they were or what they were meant to do, or even if anybody liked them. Surely a person can’t qualify as an adult until they’ve successfully passed the apprenticeship?

“A Pisces woman thinks her mate, lover, boyfriend, brother, father—in fact, any man—can lick the whole world with one hand tied behind his back [….] In the winter she wears fluffy angora mittens. In the spring she wears dainty, full skirts. Summer will find her in a brief bikini. In the autumn she’ll look adorable sitting beside you at football games, with her hands in your pockets to keep them warm, and asking you the score.”

I know what you’re thinking. She sounds like a vacuous doof-brain. And I’m only really recognising this now, as I type it. At the time of reading and re-reading this account back in the day, I believed every word. This was how I was meant to act because I was born at the time these personality behaviours were allocated and it was immutable. I just had to turn them into a reality—find them first, obviously—and see how they worked. I actually had to read this so many times, so frequently, because every time I felt I was losing at life or confused at life or uncertain that what I was doing was the right thing in life, I felt as though I was failing. I feel as though I’ve worn this sweeping cloak of failure most of my life and I don’t say this to garner sympathy; it’s true.

For a lot of my life; certainly from the 30s on, I came to believe that I am the way I am because of the way I was brought up; so my parents’ fault, essentially, because who else is there to blame? Teachers were only nicer because they didn’t have to spend as much time with me as my parents did, so they had more patience, were more able to encourage and support—but still only to a degree—and degrees of which were limited and unknown within the education system in the70s.

Support and encouragement was scant in our household. My mother supported my father inasmuch as she prepared his food, his clothes, his personal wellbeing (haircuts, mending clothes, running his bath, private matters etc) and kept house. They were a typical 50/60s married couple who ‘had it better’ than their own parents and could still remember the second world war, so of course their own children (of which there was myself and my brother) ought to be bloody grateful more than anything that their childhood didn’t come with such devastating things. Yes, Grateful (not Grease) was ‘the word’ in our house. If we were upset about something, didn’t like something, felt sad about something then we were told to just be grateful it wasn’t worse, because in their day… etc.

And this is a hard thing to come to terms with as a part of a new generation. Our parents remembered WWII bombs as children. Their own parents—our grandparents—were either conscripted, recalling war first hand, or else had stories of relative and friends who’d suffered because of it and therefore spoke about it at length or else couldn’t speak about it at all. So it was quite a complicated time to be a newly-birthed, growing-up human.

I always had the sense that my mother held her breath a lot; in case something happened. She expected things (bad usually) to happen and needed to be prepared for it. If she got through a day without this ‘thing’ happening then she’d have a sherry and go to bed satisfied. Which I think was probably where she felt the most at ease. Asleep. In fact I’m beginning to feel something of an affinity with her these days because that’s generally where I am most comfortable. Or less anxious, anyway. There’s nothing more to ‘prepare for’. This isn’t to say I wake with an impending sense of doom, but I don’t feel entirely ready for days when they arrive and I think my mother felt the same way. And yet instead of vocalising this, she’d pretend everything was fine (grateful it wasn’t worse) and looked forward to the end of the ten o’clock news so that she could safely say she’d endured another day intact.

I never thought I’d ever understand my mother but I am slowly beginning to see how she was, and perhaps working out why she was the way she was, coming to a gradual realisation that we might have shared a lot of similar anxieties and personality traits which we simply didn’t’ discuss.

Because discussion wasn’t a ‘thing’ either. We spoke more about what was on the telly or in the oven than what was going on with any of our lives – hence Linda Goodman’s ‘guide I guess – Dad said stuff. Mum said stuff (usually an opposing opinion about whoever was speaking on the telly, or who they’d seen during the day) and my brother and I had to either nod agreeably or go to bed for ‘answering back’ (joining in, you might call it). No wonder I went for my father’s throat once; 18 years of pent-up frustration at not being allowed to say or do or have an opinion on anything is a pressure valve waiting to burst.

My mother’s way of dealing with anything that I found upsetting (many things) was to tell me not to be so silly and to go to my room until I‘d calmed down. I can’t remember one time I ever reached out for comforting arms (I must have done once) because they wouldn’t be there. There’s even photographic suggestion of this: the night my parents were told I was pregnant there’s a photo of all of us in the garden; my brother making rabbit ears behind me, my dad standing with crossed arms to one side and me with my arms round mum’s waist beaming like a first trimester loon. Mum’s arms, however, are set rigidly straight at both her sides, so it looks like I’m embracing a statue with a perm. And this was after we’d told them the ‘good news’.

These days I don’t ‘blame’ my parents quite as much. I presume they did what they considered ‘their best’ under whatever difficult circumstances they believed they endured. My mother was not a natural mother; she had a natural mother herself who was warm and loving and fiercely protective and hugely supportive, but my mum clearly didn’t believe this was a trait worth perpetuating. I saw how my friends’ parents behaved, I saw on the telly, I read books (so many books) so I knew we weren’t atypical. Which I think is why I held on to family holidays and Christmas so fervently; it was never about the season or the gifts, or the snow, it was the feeling of family being smilier and more parent-y  than they were at any other time of the year.  Alcoholically assisted, of course, which is a whole other story.

And today I find—since doing so much research I could probably write a book about it—that I am someone with undiagnosed ADHD. I had ADHD growing up, when I was at school, when I took an overdose, when I got sexually harassed in my first job, became unemployed and changed jobs a million times. I had it when I got married, when I had my darling daughter, when I aced every job interview I ever had then hated them all. I had it when I got divorced, when my mother died, when my father died, when I remarried, when I had car crashes and had more jobs and moved house again and got divorced again, and it’s only now I‘m able to look back and understand better why I felt the way I felt during each episode and not consider I was an utter failure at everything I’ve ever done.

Because it’s not in the stars. It’s—if anything—in my genes. It’s in the way my brain sees things, analyses things, reacts to, tries to comprehend them and finally attempts to behave the way neurotypical people behave. I’ve been trying to do the right thing my entire life and it’s been bloody exhausting.

Hello? Is anybody REALLY listening?

It was this picture below, flashed across the television screen this morning and its accompanying simpering smile from the newsreader which inflamed me.  Tagged onto the end of the (inevitable) reporting on last night’s BoyBand-style lineup of the five numpties vying for prime position in the UK, notwithstanding Brexit of course, this pretty little scene of what appears to be a boat being pulled along a lovely blue river by some dogs, was the ‘and finally…’ part of the News. Only it’s not. Pretty OR lovely. But it was what the newsroom clearly decided would be the best interpretation of global warming/climate change/environmental catastrophe they could use, complete with a cheery little ‘see you later’ smile from the pleasant lady.

What the picture actually depicts is what the New York Times online calls “The average sea ice extent in May [which] is nearly half a million square miles below the average for 1981-2010, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Parts of the Arctic, including the Bering Sea off western Alaska, have had exceptionally low ice cover for months.”

THIS IS what GLOBAL WARMING looks like! And it’s happening RIGHT NOW as we sit and stare at mobile devices or stationary devices or pound our way to so-called health through the park or on a treadmill or stand and wait in line for a lazy, easy-to-grab fast food fix for a quick lunch before making some more stock-market kills or sweeping the floor of a supermarket for the minimum wage or whatever you’re all doing right now which is NOT SAVING THE PLANET. And it’s Yours, did you know that, or are you expecting somebody else to constantly pick up your dropped litter as well as bring a bottle on your behalf to this lovely party you’re enjoying with the rest of us?

Russell T Davies, through Anne Reid in last night’s final of ‘Years and Years’ summed it up perfectly.  It is All Your Fault (and by Your, I also mean My, of course).

Since becoming Vegan (oh God, she’s not going to start on about saving animals and  the planet again, is she?) I have seen, heard and read many more things than I ever gave credence to when I was eating meat.  Some of the things I wish I’d never seen but equally I wish I’d seen them a hell of a lot earlier in my life so I knew precisely what part I was playing in the world.  Because, as a child I must have been the usual inquisitive soul that children generally are, but I came from that age where parents were always right and if they didn’t have an answer for my “Why?” then I’d get a short shrift of “Because I said so” which as we all know doesn’t help educate man nor beast in the ways of the world.

So I grew up naturally believing everything adults told me; parents, grandparents, teachers, newsreaders, news writers, bosses, boyfriends, friends, husbands, the lot. I was a kind of social sponge, soaking everything up and hanging on every word so I might become more like them, these people who knew so much and whom I held in complete awe. And because I don’t like confrontation because I don’t have the strength of conviction to say how I feel about something (anything) I therefore avoid any unnecessary discomfort by saying nothing, nodding politely and ploughing on.

But there must come a time when a constant plodder/nodder notices themselves in the looking glass of time and understands there ARE questions we want an answer to; there ARE things that upset us and make us want to talk about; there IS stuff happening locally as well as globally which we feel INCREDIBLY uneasy about and surely the time to admit to and say these things is while we still have the mental and physical capacity to vocalise them.

While we still breathe.

Greta Thunberg has done more in her short sixteen years and spoken more eloquently and passionately than I could have ever hoped to aspire to in all of mine. She has fast-become THE voice of Planet/Mother Earth. And the way that she is standing up and speaking out for things she believes in doesn’t make her any less credible than anyone older than she is. She speaks from her heart and we should be listening with our own hearts well and truly open to receive.

A lot of things make me despair these days. I think that becoming an ‘over-50’ probably had something to do with it; realising I had another failed marriage in my catalogue of life material; noticing that I didn’t get published at the age of 38 as a fortune-teller assured me I would be, and to all intents was effectively ‘homeless’ before retirement as opposed to the Grand Plan of having paid off a mortgage and enjoying fun weekends away with the grandchildren.

Hey curve-ball; can’t say I ever truly expected you, but pull up a chair and help yourself to a cuppa.

The farce of five on the telly-box last night with Bo-Jo, Gove, Hunt et al made me cross. Actually it made me angry. Oh alright then, furious, there, I’ve said it. FUCKING furious as it happens.  Because these are ultimately the dregs we’re left with to take over from Theresa May’s unholy shit-fest of a leadership experience. I have never. Ever. In my entire life spent so much time staring at the news about politics than I have since Cameron did that strange little hum and danced off into his particular sunset of choice after leaving the UK like a beached whale on his ministerial shores.

And I thought I wouldn’t understand it. These politicians. I still don’t really get what Right/Left/Extreme/ Marginalism etc means so these words soar over my head, and I never voted before because I always worried what if I did it wrong and my vote was the ‘reason’ for the pear-shaped country we were left with? (I couldn’t shoulder that kind of responsibility) So I’d remained a Nodder/Plodder in elections as well. Until Cameron buggered off. Now I pay attention. I WANT to know what’s happening and I want to know how and why and especially WHY things are NOT happening.

But there still aren’t answers. Where are the reassurances from those in power who we’re meant to trust to make decisions on our behalf and allay our fears?

The ‘candidates’ last night had clearly been primed with questions they were going to be faced with because there wasn’t ONE answer for one single person in the whole hour. Everything; all the concerns, all the struggles, all the plights their public (who they’e paid to protect and serve-aren’t they?) queried of them was cleverly, neatly, with practised-perfection, skirted around and blustered aimlessly through. Even the query about the climate emergency. Which Donald Trump has already flapped away as nothing more concerning than “extreme weather”. False news, probably.

I am a naturally nervous person. I have mental health issues. I don’t use Twitter or Facebook to get shouty about these issues because I don’t believe anyone’s really all that interested and I know I’m the only one who can help myself, so I use the only ‘F’ word that always detracts from the screaming terror: “Fine”.  I try not to say too much about being Vegan because people look at me oddly, as if being kind and compassionate and NOT wishing to harm animals is something to get defensive about (what?), I have had more panic attacks in the last five days than I’ve had in a month and I am scared as hell for the future of this world, for the children (my daughter and her partner) who are still being delivered into it by parents who aren’t hearing or reading or noticing anything amiss, and I now completely understand what Octogenarians mean when they say “ah, I won’t mind when my time comes”, because you know what? I get it.  I’ve had it.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I haven’t posted anything here of a personal nature for a-a-a-a-ges, I know, but I have been doing (sporadically, and really there is no other way I’m going to do anything, ever, period) what some people in the community I belong to–writers, students of writing, poets… those kind of people–‘freewriting’. Which means that you sit down and write whatever the hell first comes into your mind. It also means (in my case) that a lot of it is ranting of a very precious order and blethering on about all kinds of things that have no meaning to anyone other than myself, and yet, for all its inanity, it does have the effect of releasing rubbish from my head and out onto the page/screen and leaves a nicely cleaned-out place in my skull for other-less crazy notions to take form and breathe.

I’ve also discovered a particularly brilliant (and expensive, but hey… can’t take it with you, can’t kill yourself without at least trying not to, right?) Clinical Psychologist who I am seeing on a semi-regular basis (see previous ‘expensive’ ref) and who is quite unlike any counsellor I have ever seen. Mainly, I guess, because she’s a proper, qualified, Dr of Clinical Psychology and challenges me in more productive ways other than “… so how does that make you feel?” I leave her sessions feeling a good deal chirpier and lighter and if only for these reasons, I will continue to see her because slight changes even in the chirpy department, are change enough for me to recognise as Good Things. I think I like that she’s super qualified in her field and hasn’t once induced within me feelings of inferiority and wasting-her-timeness. Yes, even if I’m paying people to counsel me, I have still, historically, sat across from them and thought “god, they could be treating a properly sick person right now and not miserable malingering me who should have found a way of shaking herself out of it by now. I’m getting in the way of a genuine sufferer; who knows, they might already be leaping off of the town bridge as we sit here.” I know. And that’s my brain in a supposed state of calm and safety.

I have learnt things that I kind of already thought I knew, but now that I’ve heard it from her – a proper qualified Dr … did I say she’s a Clinical Psychologist?… – I feel more able to accept them as being true. Normal even. Things like:

a. I never properly appreciated that alcohol is a crutch to a lot (most, the majority, maybe all) people. I know how I treat it, and it’s never been in the connoisseur Oh-A-Nice-Merlot-Would-Complement-This-Dish kind of a way, either. But rather The-More-I-Kneck-The-Sooner-I-Can-Blame-Whatever-Foolishness-I-May-Speak/Act-On-Its-Effects kind of a way, and those who’ve known me for a v-e-r-y long time (Mr Shorley, I’m looking at you) will know this as simple fact of truth. I just never thought I needed to recognise it as such. I do. I have.

b. I’m a great performer. I like to make people laugh. I always thought it was because I grew up with a father who loved Monty Python, Spike Milligan, The Ronnies, the Morecambe and Wise, The Ab Fabs, but in reality (and my dad is still a close connection here) it’s because in my head I imagine that if I make somebody laugh/smile, then there’s more chance they’ll like me. And more chance they’ll like me, equals more chance they might want to be my friend, more chance of that and there’s a greater chance of me having somebody I can relate to and talk to and turn to, ergo, I might finally find somebody (other than my amazing daughter probably because we share genes) who ‘gets me’ and who finds me a good person to know and be with. Someone who will trust me the way only I have ever known I can be trusted and rely on me to be there even before they know assistance may be required.  Because in my heart I know I’m the best friend any person could have, it’s just I’ve never had cause to tear the buttons off my blouse to reveal the ‘BFF’ logo on my tee-shirt beneath. I’ve never felt able, confident or trusted somebody else enough to be able to do it. So I make a joke of things instead. I’ve always imagined that my ‘friends’ already have (real) best friends in their lives; I’m merely one in their ‘circle’. Yep, of course I’m fine *insert quip*…Ta-dah.

c.  If the first teachers in my life (parents) never gave me reason to feel justified in doing or saying anything unless it was in total agreement with their own thoughts or actions, then there is every chance I will carry an ingrained sense of self-worthlessness through my life. I have. I do. I’m beginning to recognise it now, though, and feel like staring it down until it slinks off like the useless piece of slimy negativity that it ultimately is and always has been. Ridiculously, cleverly, this came about after I dismissed the fact  I’ve written 9 books, that I’m doing a degree in Creative Writing, that I abandoned a beautiful house and miserable marriage to move hundreds of miles away and live in a bedroom in my daughter and her boyfriend’s house. As if all these things are Nothing (because to me, everything I do IS nothing; everyone else does it better, larger, louder, brighter; why should I feel as though these things are worth anything? What gives ME the right?).  And the clever Dr of Clinical Psychology that she is, turned the tables and said “so what would you think of ME if I said I’d written nine books, that I was doing a degree, that I left a miserable marriage, a beautiful house and moved hundreds of miles away to live in a bedroom in my daughter’s house?” and even while she was saying these words I was thinking to myself “crikey, what a brave, clever, strong woman she is for doing all these amazing things” so WHY CAN’T I THINK THAT OF MYSELF? (answer: not sure, but I’m sure as heck working on it).

d. I’m a future-thinker. Something I never even considered myself to be. Effectively it means I pre-empt, look ahead, not in a positive way, but in a kind of protective way: in the same way I avoid the feeling of panic which I know will overcome me if I used the last tin of whatever I’ve just taken from the pantry by ensuring there’s always a back-up. If you ask my daughter what’s the house motto? You’d get the answer “WE NEVER RUN OUT” (which is kind of funny, if you’re looking for a joke, bearing in mind my running-away-from-it-allness. See c. above). And I think my future-thinking got an extra kick into next century following the two car crashes I had in quick succession (as an aside, but also very importantly Dr C.Psych doesn’t think I got the right PTSD therapy I needed at the time and it’s something which needs addressing. She’s right, obvs.) so I not only metaphorically need to check what’s round the next corner, I need a scale drawing map, complete with annotated risk assessment possibilites. In triplicate. Oh go on then, make that quadrupled. And then I still need to know there’s back-up. This is why I don’t sleep well. It takes a l-o-n-g time for my head to finally give the go-ahead and sign off the little thought that began ‘what shall I make for dinner tomorrow night?’ – because a whole day of possible ramifications have to have been thoroughly investigated before I’ve even checked the damned pantry situation. Seriously. This is why I smile so much at work. It’s easier that trying to work out if there are two tins of beans or one waiting to trip me up when I get home.

e. We haven’t even touched on that. The ‘out-to-get-me’ thing. I’m always waiting to be found out; uncovered, revealed to be the imposterI believe myself to be. Of what, or of whom I have not the first clue. Or even why.

It’s been a long time coming and I have a feeling it’s going to get very interesting.

So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker

David Bowie – ‘Hunky Dory’ album 1971