Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs

The colour of days...

Thoughts are physical things.  Each has its own shape and weight and texture.  They colour the day.  Filter perceptions, cast shadows or dazzle according to their nature.  Some days are like popping candy.  Citrus sharp thoughts that sting and stimulate. Orange and lemon and bright, bright green.  Concentration crumbles under the joyful, dizzy onslaught.  No time to hold on to a thought before it fragments, scatters, gets lost in something else. These are happy days.  Productive days.  Quick laughter and flaring temper days. Days of hidden dangers.

Then there are the cotton wool days. Filled with colourless, weightless thoughts that float and stick and suffocate.  You can drown in the fog of nothingness.  Loose oneself in hours, days, even weeks. Camouflaged, absorbed, dragged down until you become lost in the dark.  Invisible. Helpless. Without resistance.

The ball bearing days are the worst. Black and red and ice white thoughts thunder.  Pour.  Fling themselves.  Hundreds and thousands the size of your fist from every direction.  As creative as the popping candy days but dark, intense, unbearable.  They bruise, smash, destroy. Unless you find a way to escape, to hide from the torrent.

They know no boundaries, these thoughts. No master. They can squeeze themselves, popping candy, cotton wool and ball bearing, into one small span of twenty four hours. Or take turns over weeks, or months or even years.  Cotton wool days are the punctuation marks.  The pauses between drowning in the dark  and flying amongst rainbows. 

What colour will tomorrow's thoughts be?

Like Popping Candy

It has been a citrus bright week. Tangy orange and lime green. Lemon sharp and dazzling white. Days that vanish like popping candy almost before I can taste them.  Wide awake hours of surfing, planning, joining, doing. Little remembered, done or achieved.  Too much money spent on things I do not need.  Too much time spent in hectic activity and spinning thoughts that lead no where.

Talk, Talk, Talk

One of the reasons that The Independent is my newspaper of choice is the way it has campaigned on mental health issues.  Still very much a taboo subject, it is too often only mentioned in the press in connection with some terrible crime committed by someone who is mentally ill. The Independent, on the other hand, has run informative articles on all aspects of the subject, from the recently defeated bill to the experiences of service users.  And not just the kind of service users who hit the headlines but the every day people one rarely hears about.  The 1:4 who suffer some kind of mental illness during their life time or to quote a recent article, the 3.5 million Britons taking anti-depressants.

The two articles that have caught my attention lately both appeared in the Independent on Sunday, Madness: Britain's mental health time bomb  and Prozac nation. The first deals with proposed cuts in services to the tune of £20m in order to help cover the deficit in other parts of the health service and the second with a proposed expansion of 'talking therapies' as a better alternative to drugs.  Forgive me for being cynical but my reading of both translates as the Cinderella service is going to get even poorer.

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that it would be a mistake to improve the availability of so called 'talking therapies'.  On the contrary, I am all for it.  My argument has always been that I do not want to be medicated, kept on 'hold', but to find a way of either curing my depression or of learning to deal with it without drugs.  I will also admit that anti-depressants are often helpful and there are times when they are the only option for many people, including myself. It is just that it does not seem to me that the government is interested in offering an effective mental health service, but that it is more concerned with saving some of the £400m p/a bill for anti-depressants. I cannot see how improvements in choice can be made without investing more money in  mental health services, not less.  For a start, to recruit, train and employ the 10,000 new therapists it has been suggested are needed is not going to happen for free.

My own experience as a service user is not a happy one.  I get 15 minutes every 3 months or so at a clinic. Counselling is only available if I approach a charity. I cannot have a cpn because there is a shortage and my condition is not considered serious enough. It was not considered serious enough even on my discharge from hospital after taking an overdose. Twice over the years I have called the clinic during what was, for me, a crisis.  The first time I was put through to a member of the administrative staff as no one else was available and finally given an appointment for 3 days later and the second time I was told to go for a walk. Two or three times I have left the clinic extremely distressed. No one appeared to either notice or care very much if they did.  When I have tried to question both my diagnosis and treatment, to discuss symptoms, etc., I have been made to feel ridiculous and more or less told to stop reading or investigating and to accept what ever they say without question.  No treatment other than drugs has ever been either suggested or discussed. The only constructive and useful help I have received has been first of all through college and now university.

I used to think it was me.  That I was either failing to communicate or that the way I feel is so insignificant that I should really stop wasting every ones time and deal with it myself. It is only during the last couple of years that I have come to realise that this is not true.  Many truly caring people work within the mental health services, unfortunately they are overstretched, underfunded and the resources to do their jobs properly simply do not exist.

Maybe the sheer scale of mental illness in this country will finally jolt the authorities into real action. Maybe a service will evolve that truly offers choice.  Perhaps one day effective 'talking therapies'  will be available to all service users who want or need them as well as support, drugs, cognative behavior therapy and whatever other useful alternatives there may be.

Maybe, but I am not going to hold my breath.

When the Darkness Won

Photo Album

I have finally got around to putting some of my art work in a photo album, 'occupying my mind'.  The title comes from something a physchologist once said to me.  As I was about to embark on this degree course, I had some concerns about whether or not I would be able to cope. His reply was to tell me that it didn't really matter whether I was able to or not.  That if I dropped out, well, it wasn't as though I was young with a career ahead of me.  It was only something to occupy my mind....

The weight that I had lost is back. I am smoking more than ever.  Getting out of bed in the morning is a battle.  I dread each day.  Arguments with my children flare out of my short temper.  Self doubt is  a scab that I constantly pick.

My ability to persist is, shall we say faulty?  I begin with rocket fired enthusiasm and detailed lists then come to a stuttering stop well short of my destination.  I have begun dozens of journals, blogs, morning pages, call them what you will, over the years.  Written thousands of words that suddenly come to a stop for no reason.  I join things only to forget about them within days. 

I spent hours just after Christmas planning a budget for the coming semester. Set up all kinds of ways to monitor my progress.  Then simply put all that work aside as though it had never been done.  I am a world class organizer in short bursts.  No wonder I have never achieved anything.

University is a struggle.  I am keeping up with the work even though I have not been into the studio since last Wednesday. n The dark is pulling at my mind and unraveling my will.  Most days I am so tired that the simplest activities are beyond me.  When I wake in the mornings the thought of getting out of bed fills me with dread.  It requires an enormous effort of will to wash my hair, have a bath, get dressed.  I dread leaving the house or even the sofa.

Ridiculously small things play endlessly in my  head as though they were insurmountable problems.  For example.  Contextual studies.  The introduction to the module was given last week.  The essay and the presentation connected with it are all to do with an analysis of our own work.  We are to work in pairs.  One to present their artists statement, the other to curate and explain a selection of the first persons work.  Either role terrifies me.  The thought of giving a presentation before the whole group or the vulnerability of exposing my thinking.  Even worse is the humiliation of having to admit that I have no partner.  The students I know reasonably well have already paired up.  I have not been able to add my name to the list as required because there is just me.

I do not know what to do.  How can I go to the lecturer and explain my predicament?  It would be like asking that someone be forced to partner me.  That so familiar feeling of isolation is very strong.  But if I do nothing I risk failing the course and thereby threatening my degree.  I want this time to study art so badly.  Whether I have talent or not is irrelevant.  It makes me happy.  Wrong word.  Some times my art makes me miserable and frustrated.  What it does is make me feel real, purposeful.  As though this is what I am meant to do.  When I am painting or making I feel so alive.  The problems are always within my own mind and I have to find a way to defeat the enemies of my own creation.

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I sit frozen.  While all the chores of normal every day life crowd around me.  Shouting and tugging in an attempt to get my attention.

Two years ago I attempted to take a certain path.  Some times I think that smoking too much, neglect and paralysis are no more than a longer route to the same destination.

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1am

Another wasted day.  Little done.  My new cooker arrived and I told H that yet again I will not be going into university tomorrow.  I have to go on Thursday come what may.  MJ phoned which made me feel both happy and wistful. A reminder of that which ws never mine adn of what I doubt I will ever find.  I am not even sure I could go back, even if it were possible.  Something in me has changed too much.  Yet ...

A Diet Coke Entry...

A Diet Coke entry. A phrase that will only make sense to those who have read my previous blogging incarnations.  I used to keep a second blog, parallel to 'Pushing an Elephant...' to contain my darker moods and my thoughts on mental health services.  When I began to build this new home, I thought, hoped, that I would have no need for those Diet Coke entries. It seems I was wrong.  I am good at that - being wrong.

This time I have deceided to keep my journal as one blog but to 'flag' some posts as Diet Coke Entries.  I have come to the conclusion that there is no point in seperation.  They are not the diaries of two different individuals.  The dark is part of me.  A facet of my personality that will not disappear simply because I want to cut it off from the rest.  To isolate it.

This is a Diet Coke entry and this is where the title comes from:

My life is like a diet coke.

It looks like the real thing.

Smells like the real thing.

It is not until you taste it that the difference becomes clear. Artificial sweetness with an
aftertaste of chemicals.


Citalopram is my additive.                                                                         (30mg daily)

                                        It stops me from screaming.

Except I don't scream.                                                                                  or cry.

I stripe my arms

                           with frustration

                                                    labelled

                                                                 'superficial'.

The blade, brand new and shining, calls with a seductive voice

                                                                   that I must ignore.

                                                                   Today.

The hot weather traps me.

Sleeveless tops and short skirts make it impossible to hide from the prying eyes of children.

Too warm to cover up and still avoid their questions.

                                                                             I do not scream

                                                                                      Or cry.

                                                                                       I wait.

                                                                        For the weather to break.

(@Francesca Gray)

I Thought....

When I was a little girl my grandmother used to ask 'You know what thought did?' and when I shook my head would reply 'it followed a muck cart, thought it was a wedding!'  A Silly expression that used to make me laugh.  I do not laugh now, but smile, a wry kind of smile.  I have followed an awful lot of muck carts over the years.

Getting a place at university, beginning an art degree, this was the impossible metamorphised into reality.  I am an art student!  Me!  I should be dancing on the stars and sliding down rainbows.  Instead I sleep for 16 hours a day and stare at the walls when I am awake. 

When the semester began I was strong and confident.  Aware of the possibility of problems I was determined to be open and honest.  I spoke to Disability Services and my tutor.  Made contact with the mentor offered to me ( a lovely lady who has given me support, some one to talk to and been a real friend). I have found the work interesting and stimulating if exhausting. At the end of most days I have felt desperately tired, but thats ok.

Then last week, for no easily definable reason, the dark began to move in.  First my confidence began to waver.  Then the that awful sense of confusion and difficulty when trying to deal with ordinairy matters such as form filling, bills, etc.  I became overly anxious about a group presentation to be given this week.  I began to feel unwell, a sore throat, stomach pains and to worry about each ache and pain. Then the crying began.  News items, tv programmes, even adverts, trigger tears. Sitting alone at lunch time or during a coffee break, I feel so alone, so isolated, with no idea how to change things and no belief that they can be changed.

I try to be sociable.  Talk to much and then analyse every word spoken over and over and over again.  I am an alien living in an alien world, confused and afraid.  A family argument has only heightened my sense of uselessness.

Energy is leaking out of every pore.  How to get myself out of bed? Dressed? Presentable? When I am working, painting, I am happy.  I have done nothing since Tuesday. Not been to class.  Not been near the university.  I emailed my tutor and told her that I have a sore throat.  I do.  But that is not why I have been absent.

I want this so much.  It has been so hard, taken so much effort to get this far.  I cannot, will not throw it all away so quickly.

Monday is the start of a new week.  My goal is to get to university that day.  Just to get up, get dressed, catch a bus and arrive. I am not thinking or planning further than that.

The trouble is, at this moment, it all seems so pointless.

I am chasing a dream and dreams are just that.

Only dreams.

The Madness of Art

I remember my grandmother telling me that 'most' comic geniuses were 'terribly unhappy' people in  private and that other famously 'mad' artists, actors, etc., had 'tragic' lives or were 'eccentric'. Words like 'mental health'. 'insanity'' or 'madness' were never used. Her own depression and agrophobia (so obvious to me in hindsight), were 'nerves' and my own  sometimes strangeness merely the result of being 'hightly strung'.  Many years later my then  husband insisted on telling people that I was suffering from 'stress' when the darkness finally came rolling out of the cupboard and engulfed me.

Although mental health issues are now far more openly discussed in the press and other public  forums; although the originally insensitive handling of Frank Bruno's breakdown  by some newspapers could cause an   outcry of  disgust and an  outpouring of public sympathy; 'madness'  is still  'the other'.  Something to be viewed with sympathy laced with fear and embaressment from a distance .  Better still, to be ignored or made light of in the hope that it will  not prove contagious. Perhaps fear of the mentally ill is really the fear that our own demons will be awoken by proximity?

What has all this to do with art? 

Despite  the fact that society is far more open about all  kinds of things than it was in the past. despite far more widespread acceptance of difference, we still live in a world  defined by conformity.  In  the 21st  century there is far more room for individuality than there was fifty, forty, thirty years ago.  But we still educate our children to 'fit in'.  The boxes are still there, they have merely become larger.

Creativity is not top of the list of skills to be taught in schools and originality is often  drowned in the need to pass exams and to meet accepted  criteria.  Art is taught as yet another subject to be passed by those who are 'good at it'.  Yet creativity is a fundamental part of our humanity.  Take a closer look at the person  who maintains that they have no artistic talent, at the one  who maintains that they have not a creative bone in their body.   Some where you will see their art shining through.

The  one who spends hours in the shed building models, tying flys, rebuilding an engine, a  car, a motorbike. The one who effortlessly  turns a building into a home, who can place a cushion or a flower in just the right place to take your breath away.  Open your eyes and see the same dress on a dozen girls, yet each one made somehow different.  Walk   into a  craft fair or wander the internet and  catch your breath at the sheer volume and diversity of skills and artistry that surround you.

If art requires madness, then we are all mad. But does madness require art? Yes.  In the same way that all  of us, the one and the three in four, require a voice. Those of us lost in the shadows are so often voiceless.  Silenced by by pain, by memories, by lives lived upside down and inside out.  We  are still only human. Creative beings with a  need to join  our song to the symphany around us.  So like  so many others, the  sane, the bad, the good, the mad, the young, the old, we lift our paint brushes and our pens  and  sing our stories into the world.

Sanity Fayre

My head aches and exhaustion is a heavy blanket stifling the day. Every day pain spreads like a slow burning coal; drawing hips, knees, wrists and even fingers into the fire.  Breathing is merely the remnant of an almost forgotten habit.

Sleep hovers with monstrous mouth wide open waiting to devour when last struggles cease.  The day already swallowed it waits for more.

I awoke this morning with a headache and fear lurking around the edges of my lungs.  I chose to ignore the whispered warnings and to build defences of careful make-up and favorite clothes. A bus ride that seemed hours long and I was there.  Town on a busy, sunny Saturday.  long planned and anticipated.

Too many people.  Too much noise.  I circled my destination, wary as an animal who senses danger.  Retreat to familiar territory and £30 disappears in exchange for a skirt and a pretty shrug.  Then back to where I want to be. Stalls and music and scarily over-sized creatures that make children smile. 

I walk a little. Look a little. Read information leaflets.  Exchange a few words.

Fear moves closer, spreads, infects my breathing and pounds my heart.  I know this. Know how to deal with it. Slow. Calm. Keep walking.

My hands shake and I fear I may faint.  Humiliated in a crowd.  As though under water, I hear her ask if I am alright and answer yes. No.  Then gratefully accept a seat away from painful brushing bodies and assaulting sounds. 

Suffocation that only exists in my head and embarrassment at my foolishness, spit self-mocking tears.

I say too much. Unable to grasp the threads of control and my mind focuses only on escape.

So much kindness.

A wasted day mugged by weakness.

What hope is there for a future?

Letter Box Monsters

I did not fill in the forms,

or pay the bills,

or check my statement.

Nor because I am lazy,

or inept,

or even stupid.

But because the envelopes

have claws,

and sharp teeth.