Bathing not Drowning

Today I found out how hard it is to deliberately drown in the bath. I also realised that my memory is about as much use as the first pancake from a batch that is full of holes and falling apart. To be honest I knew my memory was pretty rubbish before today. Not being able to recall a simple choice that I had made yesterday is quite frightening though and it seems to be getting worse. Regarding the bath – I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy but I had convinced myself that getting sedated enough before getting in a full tub might do the job relatively painlessly. I had visions of gently drifting off to sleep and letting the water finish the job. As I am writing this it can be assumed that method isn’t particularly effective. Maybe more pills or more water were needed? Who knows. But here we are, still alive. I don’t even have any feelings about it, I’m not happy it failed or sad that it didn’t. I’m completely indifferent to being alive, as though both states of life and death are one and the same to me. I’m sure a therapist would have plenty to say about that but as I don’t have one I’ll have to come to my own conclusions.

Life has been weird lately. The saga of being blocked by the old friend who fell out with me years ago but got back in touch a couple of years ago has really knocked me for six and I’m still struggling to deal with it. I’m trying not to think of it and when I do find my thoughts turning to her I try to acknowledge that not everyone will like me and that’s ok and that she is perfectly within her rights to cut contact with me. I just wish I knew why she cut me off and if there is something I could learn from for future relationships. I don’t think I will ever get answers though and my mind goes from trying to persuade me that I don’t even care to pondering whether I should send her a handwritten note explaining how I feel. Maybe in time I will be able to let it go but for some reason I feel inexplicably tied to her and at the moment it just really really hurts.

I had another blast from the past recently. My first husband needed me to fill some paperwork in for him and messaged me to ask via Facebook. I hadn’t seen him since 2006 and it was a massive shock to hear from him. I think all of these people from the past are stirring up memories and thoughts that had been forgotten about and I’m finding them hard to deal with. My dreams have been epic, ranging from truly horrific to actually quite amazing but all of them leave me feeling exhausted when I wake and haunted by their content for the following day or sometimes longer. I think I’m trying to process such a mixed up mess of feelings that the result is a mixed up mess too.

Anyway, here I am. Still alive. Sober for just over nine months and over two years without a cigarette. Looking back at photos from before I gave up these two vices I actually feel the urge to start again. Since stopping I have turned into a fat, acne covered slug whose hair is falling out and who can’t do anything without her whole body hurting. Maybe this is the penance I have to pay for the wrongs that I have done in my life? If that’s the case then I suppose I should bear it with serenity and grace. How heartbreaking to know that you are such an awful person that his is your punishment.

Down But Not Quite All Out

I’ve noticed during this period of depression and psychosis that I’ve been a lot more outspoken about what I’ve been going through. Here are a couple of posts I’ve made as an example of the sort of thing I’m referring to:

So basically they were a bunch of self-pitying, self-loathing, feeling pretty bad about being alive posts. I’m completely against the whole idea of Christmas this year and the whole festive thing is making me feel ill too, especially when our planet is dying and everyone is just looking on, laughing and drinking as they watch it burn. Also one picture is when I decided to smear acrylic paint all over myself and take pictures. I’m not sure that was the greatest thing for my eyelashes but it summed up my mania from that moment perfectly.

I began pondering whether I am actually doing the right thing by posting how I feel. After all, if I had a broken leg and was finding it hard to get around or I had cancer and was struggling with the side effects of the medication no one would bat an eyelid. I certainly wouldn’t. I would be thinking let that strong badass woman fight her battles however she wants to. Unfortunately I consider myself to be neither strong or a badass and prefer not to think about myself at all if I can help it. Just recently though I have started to accept that I AM unwell. I may have times when I am a bit better, times where I think everything will be ok after all, but the reality for me is that this IS my reality. I am on the best drug regime that my Doctors have found and it works in as much as I am more stable, I’m able to recognise when I need to add in an extra antipsychotic or anti-anxiety medication and although I still go through the periods of madness for the most part they are be shorter and less intense (touch-wood). So if I’m unwell and there is no way that I will ever be ‘cured’ why can’t I talk about it? Having Bipolar Disorder is bloody awful, it has turned my life up and down and up again and left me in a state of limbo that took years to free myself from.

So when I post a picture of myself with my hair tangled into what can only be described as a bird’s nest or share an Instagram story in my PJ’s complaining about whatever physical or mental symptom I’m suffering with, (yep, lots of physical symptoms are part of Bipolar too) it isn’t me looking for sympathy or a reaction. It certainly isn’t me boasting about being at home all day and not being able to work (I would give anything to be well enough to earn a wage and contribute). It’s me posting my life, as it is for me. There may be photo’s of me all dressed up but again these just show a snap-shot of my life. A single second in a day of 86400. Sometimes I’ll get all dressed and be about to leave but then my anxiety kicks in so I end up stay at home, feeling defeated. Sometimes I can be crying and raving, seeing monsters and hearing voices and then an hour or so later I can gather myself together enough to maybe get a coffee of take the dog for a walk. Sometimes I wont leave the house or wash or brush me teeth for a week.

What I’m try to say is that this is my new normal. My new normal is abnormal and I never know what is going to tip it one way or the other although I am getting better at recognising triggers all the time.

I miss my old normal, even if my old normal was littered with episodes of mania which were the most exhilarating and destructive times in my life and the deepest suicidal depressions. At the time I fumbled along as best as I could, seeking advice from friends and being told ‘it is what it is’. What does that even mean? It is what it is? I didn’t know so I carried on stumbling along in the dark until I found the light in my life and my saviour and began to recognise that maybe it wasn’t just that I was a reckless, unemotional wild thing on a mission to self destruct but someone who actually had a medical condition which could be helped. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for my soulmate, I certainly don’t think I’d be here anyway.

So that’s it for today. My meds make my brain slow and this has taken me an absolute age to type. Apologies also for typos and grammatical errors. I’m normally so fastidious but even sending a quick text is taxing at the moment so I doubt my proof-reading is up to much. If you know me in real life feel free to reach out to me. In fact PLEASE reach out to me. Long term illness, especially psychiatric illness, is a very lonely place to be and lets face it I haven’t got many friends after my last big manic blow out. So maybe just say Hi, I’m just trying to be a strong, badass Woman beneath all the tangled hair and dirty pyjamas and trying to find my way in this ‘new ‘normal’

Angel or Demon

There are two types of people in this world, those who have been touched by madness and those who are still immune to its relative charms. I fall firmly into the first camp, aware that even as a young child the things I saw and felt weren’t the same as those experienced by the other pupils in my class.

Today, 30 years on, madness grips me in the worst kind of way. The kind where I don’t know what to believe or what is the truth. Is the Devil really visiting me, showing me images of horror and fire and death? Or is it my mental illness? Bipolar Disorder short-circuiting something in my brain that creates these facades? Logically I try to focus on the most realistic cause for my terror but the grip of Him is so strong. I close my eyes and all is golden and gleaming and light. There is the glow of the early morning suns rays as they shine through the magnificent stained glass window. The candles are ablaze, burning unnaturally high on the alter of pure which cloth before which I kneel in supplication. I know that if he wanted to take me now that I would be powerless to stop him. I would be his creature. He shows me murder. Murder at my own hand. And I don’t know whether I would be able to resist the things he wants me to do. Horror and fire and death and Him and, for some reason that I can’t understand, lots of red feathers.

I take my medication. Then I take another dose and another and add in a couple of different medications for good measure. Anything to block this out of my head. No, not just my head because I feel this within me. A part of me as much as the part that loves to draw and sing and paint and be in nature. This darkness has penetrated me again. It has done so before but always I hope it will be for the last time. The medications help, if only to make me so sedated that I can obtain the sweet relief of sleep. I awaken and for a fleeting second forget about my demons but then as I try to stand I jolt and nearly fall as the disorientating effects of the medicine remind me that all is not well. Motor and mental skills are the price I am paying to hold off this Devil and it is a heavy price. My body feels old and weak and my mind is so slow that I can’t find words for things that I know so well. I have fleeting glimpses of freedom which I seize with both hands and I paint my naked body with abandon, determined to reclaim ME. This is ME and I will not be yours. Then after all too brief a respite He returns and so begins the cycle of medication and sedation and sleep.

It is now nearly 03:15 and I am wide awake. I’m lucid. I went to bed at 17:00 – collapsed under the mental pressure of the medication which is supposed to be making me better – but now this is time for me to be myself for a while. There are enough drugs in my system to hold off the Demon but not enough to completely tie me to sleep. So I am up, a candle is lit, I have a pot of loose leaf chamomile tea and I am trying to pour out some of the jumble that is inside my head. There is so much inside me that is trying to get out. Imagine picture after picture after sketch after painting after photograph after poem after song after dance and more and more and more pictures. I see everyone one completely vividly but I either can’t get them out quickly enough to capture them or the Demon comes and takes them away from me and I have to numb myself with the tablets again.

Tomorrow I am going to get up early and go the The Eucharist at the Cathedral. I was raised as a member of The Church Of England but have drifted away and back again several times during my life. Although I wouldn’t class myself as a confirmed believer in any one thing over another I do believe that there is Something out there, whatever name we choose to give it. I often visit the Cathedral and light candles for my loved ones, for my past, my present and my future and I always feel like a weight has been lifted after I have been inside the glory of a building built purely for praise. I don’t think anyone who has entered the greatness of one of England’s Cathedrals can fail to appreciate that magical feeling. I am hoping that I can be purified by the experience and try to convince myself that this Devil is all in my head and I’m not actually being groomed by the Antichrist. I know that sounds ridiculous. Please believe me, I know. But if you had seen what I had seen and heard the things that I had heard and watched your own hands commit murder than perhaps just making sure you aren’t actually possessed by the Devil wouldn’t seem quite so foolish.

Now I’ve written all that I’m going to get out of my brain before it shuts down on me again so I’ll finish my tea and attempt to get back to sleep – a sleep that isn’t completely drugged.

I’ll let you know if I burst into flames when I cross the Cathedral threshold….

Visitations

Ah, here comes my old faithful. The companion who visits every year – sometimes more often – whether I want them to or not.

I prepare myself for their arrival, knowing without needing to be told that they approach. No letter or message required to foretell their advance.

I steel myself, promising that this time will be different. I am stronger now, more knowledgeable. It won’t happen again.

I set out my tools to welcome them. Physical and mental weaponry to defend myself from their intrusions. I cannot simply turn them away, say ‘not today’ and bar the door. They are too resilient for that and I must be resilient too.

As they grow nearer they increase in size. The atmosphere becomes dark and heavy, oppression heralding them and laying down a dark carpet on which they tread.

I use my tools. Sometimes this is enough and a short, unpleasant but tolerable encounter is all I am granted. Today though I must brandish my weapons with intent as I say NO. I draw upon all of the knowledge and experience garnered through their past visits and I fight and I fight and I fight.

But now I grow tired and weak. The tools I had so carefully forged are not enough to defeat them this time. Another failure in a long line of failures.

I cannot surmount this darkness. When it comes I struggle and lash out, writhing to escape its clutches but there is nothing left. I am empty and broken and I submit to its will. I surrender to the blackness that surrounds me and allow it to do as it wishes. I know at this point that resistance is futile.

The dark, heavy clouds, dense with rain and thunder surround me and I am cloaked in a grief that has no name.

Lost in a Game of Nightmare

What does it mean to be alive? Is it simply to have the necessary physiology of a living system? Or is there more to it. Is being alive the same as living and vice versa? Plants are alive but do they truly live? Do they experience life as humans and other mammals do. As I do? Do I experience life as other humans do? This is where my dreams and subsequent musings have led me to today.

I’m going to start by clarifying what I mean by ‘living’ and ‘alive’. This is not a scientific definition, just the labels I have attributed to each word to try to make it a bit easier to understand what it is that I’m trying to say.

ALIVE – The existence of a living organism.

LIVING – the events which occur through the course of an individual’s life

I have come to realise that as time is passing me by I am spending more time trying to stay alive than I am actually living. Being alive, existing, trying not to fall down the black hole that will lead to darkness. Almost everything I do is for the purpose of fighting the urge, to prevent myself from being led down the path of no return. This really isn’t fun at all and I find myself feeling stifled and in need of a way to live again.

While I was lying in bed in the early hours of this morning an analogy came to me. You probably wont understand this unless you were a child of the early 80’s and had the good fortune to watch the most amazing programme on kids TV ever – Nightmare. If you never watched it I suggest you get on Youtube and have a look. Pure perfection in an after-school show.

Anyway, the purpose of the game is for a team of players to guide one of their number through the dungeon while solving puzzles and avoiding the hazards and monsters within. This is made more difficult by the fact that the solo player is wearing a helmet which covers their eyes so they are reliant on directions from the rest of their team( who are safely looked after by The Dungeon Master)

Sometimes the rooms will be ‘safe’, maybe with a table laid with food for sustenance (if the player doesn’t eat often enough a disintegrating face appears in the corner of the screen along with the sound of blood pounding faster and faster until they either eat something or die. This is quite possibly one of the reasons that I ended up loving horror films) Sometimes the rooms will have traps which need to be negotiated with the help of the rest of the team. Side step left, forwards, STOP etc etc. Then there were the rooms with monsters or enemies which had to be avoided or beaten using items collected from earlier in the dungeon. Overall it was my favourite program as a child, even though I think I only ever saw one team actually beat the dungeon and win, but I suppose it’s fitting now that it seems to sum up my life.

I am the player with my eyes obscured. I am being directed by my husband, my family, my friends and my medical team. They tell me where to go and what I need to do in each of the dungeon rooms.

In the ‘safe rooms’ I can be left to myself for the most part. I don’t feel like there is anything that is going to harm me but I can’t experience the comfort of being safe because of the helmet covering my eyes. I am just grateful to be away from the danger and the fear and the terrifying thoughts. Sometimes in the safe rooms there are other characters: musicians, jesters, dancers and I want to experience more. I want to remove the helmet and see what is around me, who I can interact with. But taking off the helmet isn’t allowed so I carry on with my eyes shielded until I can take it no more. I rip it off and consume everything I possibly can, faster and faster and faster, greedily guzzling it all down, taking everything in, insatiable for life. And then comes the crash and the helmet goes back on and I’m too afraid to see for myself as I can’t be trusted with my own eyes.

Puzzle rooms are where we all work together to try to figure things out. What can I do differently, how do I get though this dungeon safely, do I need someone to step in beside me to help me through? Mostly I appreciate the input of my dungeon team but sometimes I just want to be left alone to figure things out for myself. Occasionally I get tired of trying to solve the problem and resort to drinking a flagon of wine I found on a table in one of the other rooms. At least then I don’t have to think about it for a while. Sometimes medication is the Elastoplast and I send myself to sleep for a day or two in the hope that the game has reset when I wake up.

Worst of all are the enemy rooms. I can’t escape them and I can’t defeat them and I am on my own with my eyes blindfolded so I can only hear their moans and shrieks as they lure me away from the light into the darkness of insanity. I try to run and hide for a time but eventually they draw me in with comforting words of how it can all be over if I just give in. There will be no more pain or suffering or being a burden on anyone. Just peace. And that sounds so good after fighting to live for so long but only really managing to stay alive.

So that’s the ‘Nightmare’ analogy of how my brain is working at the moment. I am surviving, I am alive but I don’t feel like I’m doing an awful lot of living. Don’t get me wrong, there is a bit more living going on then there used to be. I can actually drive a few minutes down the road to go to my training classes. I have signed up to go out on the class night-out (this is a MASSIVE deal for me and if I’m honest I’m bricking it already). I go out for the day with hubby sometimes. But all of this still doesn’t feel right. I had a panic attack taking the dog for a walk on Tuesday. I walk that way every single day but now I’ve got ‘the fear’ and it’s come out of nowhere. I’ve missed two training classes this week, I slept most of the weekend and pretty much all of this week so far. I’ve had to take my ’emergency’ meds because of the darkness of my thoughts and they make me like a bloody zombie and I’m just fed up. I’m fed up of crying and fed up of being sad and fed up of feeling completely alone even though I’m not. It feels like I got lost in that dungeon and I can’t find the way out.

The Devil on my back

Darkness hangs upon me once again and I can no longer fight him off. He’s been stalking me for a while now and I had managed to evaded capture, shrugging off his long, dark fingers as they entwined themselves in my hair. Until now. When his claws are well and truly embedded in my flesh. The tears roll down my face in an endless stream with no reason for the flood other than the all consuming sadness which hangs over me like a heavy black cloak. I am grieving but no one has died, I feel abandoned but no one has left me. My heart is screaming and clenching and I just want to give in and let the darkness envelop me entirely so I can stop feeling like this. I just want to stop feeling like this.

Sadness is a lonely place

I’m sad. I’ve been sad for a few days now but it seems to be getting worse. It started last week with a horrendous migraine on Monday and another one which lasted all of Thursday until Friday morning. Things weren’t helped by me crying my eyes out in the cinema watching A Star Is Born either. So that was a shit week, both in terms of being in a lot of pain (which is always crap) and also because I couldn’t train or eat properly. When I started to feel a bit better on Friday afternoon I was so so pleased. I went to the pub and met friends for a couple of hours and was looking forward to getting back to training on Saturday morning and having a fun weekend. Unfortunately this was not to be. Some arsehole has infected me with a horrendous lurgy which has left me feeling like death. I’ve spent the last four days alternating between lying in bed or on the sofa in a nest made of my duvet, pillows and my favourite pusheen. Oh and the pup of course. He’s very much enjoying snuggling in my nest. I’m crying at everything, films, photographs, Instagram posts, Facebook videos, dog memes. You name it I’ll cry at it. I just feel so so so so sad. It’s like I’m grieving for something but I don’t know what. My brain is fuzzy and I’m finding it hard to concentrate but most worrying of all is that I’ve started to see faces where there actually aren’t any again. This is my big cue that things are not going well and I need to do something to prevent the almost inevitable descent into full-blown psychosis again. I have an appointment with a different psychiatrist next week because my Lithium blood levels are too low so maybe that’s the reason why things are wobbly and once I get my meds sorted I’ll be ok. I’ve also thought it could be that I’ve not been exercising because I’ve been ill and that it’s having an effect on my mental health. Or it could simply be because I’m physically unwell. The last and most unpalatable explanation is that stopping my antipsychotic medication was a mistake and I do actually need to take it forever. I really hope this isn’t true. I’ve just started making progress with my health and fitness and if I have to go back on Quetiapine it will break my heart. 

Here are some of the pictures that have made me cry today

Words to live by

I miss my two rainbow bridge babies

This sums up how I feel right now (except I’m not in New York)

Hubby sent me a nurse pusheen to tend me until he’s home

 

Ditching the drugs

I’m writing tonight in the hope that I’ll be able to expel whatever it is that is tormenting me. I feel so unsettled, I don’t know what to do with myself but I’m too tired to do anything anyway. I haven’t left the house for 10 days except to call at the local pub for a couple of hours on Friday and nip into the shop. I managed to drag my bones into the bath this afternoon after spending hours psyching myself up and not having washed, brushed my hair or changed my pyjamas since Friday. This is the reality of how my weeks are spent, grubby and smelly but not caring enough to do anything about it. If I do actually go out I can make myself so presentable that no-one would know the ‘real’ me. Seems like I’m just lazy and can’t be bothered getting ready unless it’s for something I like? I wish that were the case. Many many times I want to do things but the thought of showering, drying my hair and choosing clothes to wear causes me so much panic that I simply can’t do it. Even if I do get to the point of trying to choose clothes it’s likely I’ll end up in tears as nothing fits/looks right/doesn’t look stupid. Add this to the fear of being in busy places, having to speak to people I don’t know and generalised anxiety about everything else actually getting out of the house is a pretty massive achievement, even if it is only once a week.

I think I might be feeling a bit more delicate recently as I’ve started to decrease my antipsychotic medication as I’m sick to death of being such a fat cow. This could be a tricky period, the last couple of times I tried to reduce my dose I ended up in hospital after attempting suicide and I know hubby is anxious about it. These tablets have completely screwed up my metabolism and in the 28 months that I’ve been taking them I’ve put on over 2 stone in weight. That might not sound like loads but considering I’m only 5’’ 2’ and I was 8 stone before taking them it’s a hefty amount and I feel like a blob. I’ve tried low calorie diets and exercising but nothing works because the meds change the way the body metabolises and stores fat which basically means it’s impossible to lose weight. I’ve had to start taking Metformin which is usually given to overweight diabetic people but all that has done is stopped the scales from creeping up any further. So I’ve decided enough is enough and I’m coming off the bloody things. I reckon I can deal with a few hallucinations here and there if I’m back to my post-med weight. Obviously I’ll still be taking the Lithium, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds so it’s not like I’m going to be flying completely solo.

So at the same time as tapering off the devil drug I’m starting to count my calories again and be more mindful about what I eat. Unfortunately because I’m only short I only have a small daily calorie allowance but although I’ll be hungry I should lose at least 2lbs a week. I know it’s worked for me in the past anyway so I’m hoping and praying that once the antipsychotics are completely out of my system I can get back to being me or, to be exact, less of me.

The past has been concerning me again and I can’t help but be paranoid. The ‘blast from the past’ I’ve spoken out before is now my friend on Facebook and we follow each other on Instagram. I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t such a good idea. They said that they were happy to keep in contact but I haven’t heard anything from them for weeks and I don’t feel like it’s my place to get back in touch, I don’t want them to think I’m harassing them. I know last time (a couple of years ago) I tried to write to them my message was shared around all of their friends who found it hilarious and discussed it all over Facebook including one mocking the fact that I self-harmed. To be honest if I thought that anything like this was happening now it would break me completely and utterly. I try to be a good person, I made some shitty mistakes when I was younger and reckless (thanks undiagnosed bipolar for that) but I have never set out to hurt anyone intentionally. I suppose I’m just overly concerned because I’m insecure and what people think really does matter to me.

God I could really do with a fag and a good cry right now. I’m having to make do with an alcohol free beer. I was so tempted to go to the pub this afternoon and just drink to make all of this go away but I couldn’t be bothered to get showered and by the time I’d finally had a bath hubby was home and there was no way he was going to let me go. Sometimes I feel so alone even when other people are around. My mind is so full of stuff it almost doesn’t have any room to deal with anyone else. It’s lonely and it’s cold and somehow it feels good to be left to manage my thoughts on my own.

Falling off the wagon again

It’s been over four months since I’ve had a ‘proper’ drink but now I’ve well and truly fallen off the wagon. I’ve had the odd drink every now and then but definitely had a fair few more than that on Thursday last week and now it seems like I’m right back where I started from. Hubby says that maybe I’m getting drunk to make things easier but it’s really not easier, not easier at all. Drinking seems to those who love me to be the thing that facilitates me hurting myself. This is so so so so so wrong. I drink to try to STOP hurting myself. To try to resist the voices and the urges wanting me to slash, stab and kill myself. I spent the entire day yesterday in bed trying to figure out how not to hurt myself, taking as many meds as I could to try to numb the imaginings but I was still left with an over-riding sense that I had to destroy myself. I want to die but I don’t know why.

Today I’ve saw a friend I hadn’t caught up with for ages. But you know what? As much as I love her and I always enjoy seeing her I can’t help but feel that I’m not really the kind of person anyone would want as a friend. I feel like a burden to everyone around me. I cannot possibly imagine bringing any sort of joy to anyone.

I’m in the pub on my own now with instructions to phone when I want to go home (it’s literally two minutes away) but what if I don’t want to go home? Or I want to go home but then leave again carrying the dog’s lead towards the tree I picked for hanging myself from years ago? Or I go home, go to the shed, get the hatchet and chop my hand off? Or maybe use a hacksaw to chop a finger off or two? What if I’m going to go straight into the kitchen and sharpen my favourite kitchen knife (everyone has a favourite right?) and then stab it into my heart? No one realises how hard it is to actually stab yourself with a kitchen knife though. It is SO FUCKING HARD!!!!! Believe me when I say I’ve tried. I’ve tried so. bloody. hard. It is not an easy way to die. Maybe if the knife has been sharpened to fuck beforehand that could help. Maybe not. Perhaps it’s the angle of insertion that makes it difficult? Either way it’s a shitty way to try to top yourself compared with say overdosing or gassing yourself in a shitty old Citroen 2CV.

So what does actually help when life seems like a shitty stick? To be honest nothing that I can say will be of any use what so ever. Well, maybe some things will be helpful to SOME people and maybe some things won’t.  What IS helpful is talking to those close to you (as hard as it may seem) even though it feels like it’s the end of the world. It IS the approach of the end of our world. But maybe, just maybe, it’s might not be the COMPLETE end of the world. Perhaps there is something out there to hold on for and that has to be worth a trying?

 

EDIT: I had to make a couple of minor edits to this post the following morning due to drunken mistakes and typos but here is my written-in-the-pub-under-the-influence effort. And just for the record I didn’t go home and chop off any body parts of hang myself so I guess I’m actually winning.

---

 

Feral Facebook

It’s done. I finally bit the bullet and deleted the soul-destroying, mental-health ruining, life-wrecking app that is Facebook.  On the surface it sounds like such a fantastic idea. Catch up with your old friends! Stay in touch with family who have moved away! Send that lad you used to fancy back in high school a cheeky ‘nudge’! But what started out as a glossier version of friends reunited has grown and grown (FEEEED me Seymour) into something very different that is now seeking your soul. Want to join an online group of like-minded individuals? I guarantee there will be one for whatever your particular quirk, kink or interest. Whatever floats your boat there will be an unending queue of individuals who will think nothing of providing unwanted advice about your hair/face/makeup/physique/grammar/profile photo and how you like to live your life. Oh and that’s if they’re not hitting on you or sending unsolicited dick-pics via the connected messenger app. Apparently this is what passes for normal behaviour now and it isn’t just the guys who seem to have gone feral on Facebook. The sheer amount of anger, hostility and venom unleashed by seemingly regular girls/chicks/women/ladies whatever you wanna call them absolutely shocked me. I don’t for one minute believe that these people, or at least the majority of these people, would act like this in a real-life encounter. It seems that hiding behind a computer screen actually reduces human decency in some individuals which is quite concerning in itself. What I’m REALLY worried about though is how many people are carrying these online behaviours over into the real world. How many Permit Pattys, BBQ Beckys and ID Adams exhibit the same type of aggressive, hate-filled and just plain nasty behaviour when sitting behind their desks? Surely any platform which allows this kind of negative, rude and hateful conversation to occur not just openly but as A MATTER OF COURSE has to take some responsibility. I’m aware that some folks are just, well, arseholes, but it appears that Facebook is breeding baby arseholes on an industrial scale like a huge, twisted arsehole puppy-farm. Some might stay as purely online arseholes, some might venture outside and try their new found wrath on the general public at large. Frightening.

The reason I quit the arsehole factory is that my mental health hasn’t been doing too great lately and it’s becoming increasingly hard to switch off from all the negativity and I’m finding myself getting angry at other users lack of tolerance, discrimination or whatever has pissed them off so royally. I’ve got more than enough anger as it is so ditching the extra which has no use to me just makes good sense. One of my warning signs that things aren’t going well is that I also get really paranoid. There’s so much stuff/shit on there from the past and at the moment I’m not strong enough to stop myself from looking at it. I know it’s ridiculous but seeing someone who is part of my life now ‘liking’ or commenting on a picture from someone who isn’t anymore actually feels like my heart is breaking. The worst of it all is that I KNOW IT’S NOT RATIONAL. Why should I care about something that happened over 5 years ago? Maybe I’m subconsciously punishing myself by comparing myself less favourably to the other person? Maybe I feel like I shouldn’t have a nice life as I pretty comprehensively screwed theirs over. Who knows. I certainly don’t and no Psychologist or Psychiatrist has been able to pick it apart yet despite the fact that I could not be more sorry for how things turned out. So Facebook has gone. I’ve deleted the app from my phone and there seems to be a gaping hole. I actually feel a bit panicked. Thats what this bloody social network has done to me. I’m leaving my account open for the time being so that if anyone wants to follow my blog they can find me. Next stop Instagram…..