Passive Aggressive

This morning upon going out to the doctors, my boyfriend and I found a Christmas card that had been posted crudely through my letterbox. It hadn't come out the other side properly so I hadn't seen it before, but I remembered hearing someone come downstairs and post something through there the night before. Wondering what it could be, I opened it. The envelope wasn't addressed, it just said "Merry Xmas".

Inside, it said "Buy a fucking new bed. From [building name]".

Obviously it did actually have the name of my building, rather than some weird bracket thing. I just don't really feel like advertising my location on the internet for all and sundry. So anyway, I found this and immediately thought - hm, were the boyfriend and I especially noisy when he was there two nights ago? Both of us didn't remember being especially so - and if there was noise then the source was certainly not the bed. Unlike Kochanski (blast from the TV past here), I do not make noises like a creaky gate. Or indeed a bed.

This upset me. I already don't feel safe in the building and knowing that there's only one locked door between me and a threat is not helpful - previously of course I could count the door on our building too. Now I don't feel that I can. I don't feel bad about the noise; frankly, it's nothing compared to the constantly barking dog, the people that stamp up and down the stairs and the obnoxiously loud music played by the flat above me punctuated by blazing rows.

What gets me is the rudeness, and the fact that it feels like such a big threat to me. I called my housing support worker and spoke to her; she offered to send a formal letter to the rest of the building but I really don't want her to do that. It would make me feel even more unsafe. I have however promised that if a similar incident ever happens then I will tell her and she will do something about it. As it happens she's going to use it to help prove to the homelessness unit that I'm really in need of moving.

But when your housing advisor says to you "you know what, I think the best thing for you to do is to go to your boyfriend's"...you know that really, things aren't quite right. I am now at my boyfriend's and feel a good deal safer, not to mention warmer and less lonely, but the knowledge that eventually I will have to go back to that flat is like a ten-ton weight on my shoulders.

Before I move onto other things: I think the conclusion from the last post is that venting does indeed help. Especially where it feels like I'm doing it without an audience but with an audience all at the same time.

The past few days have been a bit up and down. I say a bit; quite considerably. Last night I went with some friends to see Tim Minchin which was beyond amazing - not only his performance, but also realising that I was able to sit in an arena with 10,000 people and not feel anxious. The only bit I had trouble with was the crushing crowd as everyone tried to get out at the end - which I think is perfectly normal, all things considered.

However, on Monday I got the bad news that if I moved out of here and into my friends' house, I would lose all of my housing eligibility. It's much more complex than that, but it does come down to 'would not be able to get social housing' - and whilst I love my friends dearly and would enjoy living with them, the location is not where I want to be permanently and so I don't think I'm prepared to move there what would be permanently. I've not made the final decision yet and won't properly do so until after Christmas, but I think I'm leaning towards staying here and working to make it better.

Alternatively I also have the potential option of going into fully supported housing (I have "remote" supported housing at the moment, as it were - my support worker comes over regularly and acts as my contact for everything that goes on with my housing so that I don't have to speak to random strangers all the time). It would be a move from temporary housing to temporary housing though, which the council aren't too keen on doing - plus spaces are quite thin on the ground there. However it would make me feel a lot safer, it's in the place I want to be living and it would give me much much better transport links to my friends' houses - which would I hope make me feel less isolated.

When I found out what the situation was on Monday, I told people and then literally just crawled into bed. I couldn't handle being awake anymore. This morning - er, afternoon really - I also had the same thing. At around half past two I got out of bed and have been moderately productive since, but I have had an underlying lowness for most of the past few days. Barring yesterday evening! Which I am clinging to the memory of because I felt so happy. To me, sharing in peoples' creations and enjoyment of them is basically a spiritual experience. Plus I spent hours laughing, which is always good for me and I should do things like that more often.

For now, time to resume attempting to be productive.

Order in Chaos

Right now there are so many things that I'm thinking about, that are burning up inside me and screaming to get out. I could write them all here; I'd be writing for a very long time. Beneath the tumult of thoughts and feelings I know that if I felt like I could talk to people about these things that maybe they wouldn't build up. I know that talking to people helps, that it helps to vent and come to a greater understanding of things by talking it out. Somehow though there's always a catch; I don't want to bother people, I think that the things I am complaining about are too petty, I think that I should just shut up and deal with things myself.

But I can't deal with things on my own. I just can't - and I shouldn't have to, and I know all of these things but that doesn't make it any the less hard to say 'hi, I need help' or 'I can't stop worrying about X, Y and Z'. Often I'll put up a negative tweet or Facebook status, but I'm so hyper-aware of what I'm doing all the time and I don't just see that I need to vent - instead I remember the time that one of my friends let me know that people had been getting annoyed when I complained about benefits/homelessness/mental health on my FB status. For what it's worth, that friend was completely well-meaning and didn't think that I was being out of order at all but that sometimes it was just easier to avoid confrontation. She totally understood the validity and depth of what I was feeling. It was one of those confusingly painful but good conversations.

Anyway. So you know what, maybe I can write everything at once, because if I can think it all at once then surely I can write it all out. It won't make sense and it'll be incoherent and all manner of other things. However, I have the advantage that by writing things here, I'm telling people and I'm not telling people. Because it's in the public domain - but as far as I know no one actually reads this. If I was posting on, say, Livejournal then I'd be aware that people might read it and who those people were. I'd temper things accordingly. Here, I won't. So, here I go: depositing the contents of my brain.

I have run out of money. The gas and electricity are both about to go into emergency credit and I won't be able to add to them until Tuesday. That might actually happen later because I only just got a new sick note yesterday, so if it doesn't arrive by Monday then they might stop my payment. I sent it off yesterday but the post is horrendous at the moment. Two things that I ordered haven't arrived yet. I really wanted that book and I need those jeans because I don't have enough clothes that fit anymore because I've put on so much weight. I'm not even losing weight by living off 12p packets of dehydrated pasta.

On top of that I have a cold, which is not only debilitating and downright miserable but it's stopped me from doing things I wanted to and had promised to do. I haven't seen anyone since Tuesday morning when my boyfriend went home after staying over. I couldn't go to the cinema with my friends today because I felt so sick, I couldn't go see my psychiatrist today because I felt so sick, and because in both cases I couldn't afford to go anywhere. I can't even afford to buy some damn lemsip so that I could get over this cold a bit sooner. I'm really ungrateful and lazy and totally useless. I have so much going for me but I keep ignoring it and just sitting here feeling awful. Why do I just sit here feeling awful and playing computer games when I could be fixing things. But what else could I be doing? It's not like I can go out and get a job and be 100% fine.

One day I want to go to my GP to get a sick note and not be asked "so you'll be going back to work soon" in a way that really isn't a question. I'm sorry I have a mental illness. It's not my fault. I'm sorry that the concept of work is so terrifying that it makes me freeze up and panic. I'm sorry that I am forced to rely on a welfare system that fundamentally does not care about my welfare or health, only about my ability to "function as a contributing member of society". I didn't make the appointment to get my sick note early enough because every time I called the surgery phone would be busy and I'd either get fed up or forget or worry that phoning would cost too much money.

Can I please, please just go FIVE minutes without thinking about money?

Can I have a life where I have some control over things, and when I do try and take back some control like with moving not have a hundred other things knock me over in my attempt to get up out of this hole I'm living in?

Can I please have just a single moment now and then to stop and appreciate all the amazing, beautiful, wonderful, caring and loving people who are in my life and are the reason I'm alive and can't I just love them back without being terrified that they'll leave me or unable to talk to them because I think they'll hate me just like I hate myself.

I don't want to stop being all the different things that I am, I just want them to stop rubbing up against each other so badly. Can't I be confident and intelligent and creative and loving and all the things that I want to be without feeling guilty and ashamed and embarrassed and ungrateful and ugly and wretched.

(It is too soon to know if this has helped or not. Because it kind of hurts. No not kind of. I feel heavy.)

A Well-Meaning Hiatus

Uncertain as I am that anyone even reads this, it comes to my attention that it's a good month and a bit since I last posted here. There is a single main reason for this to be honest, and it comes in the form of Nanowrimo. Yes, I took part in the challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. For me, this was huge for several reasons. Firstly, I have very little (often no) self confidence in my writing ability, but despite this I'm also subconsciously aware that it's one of those things that I'm not just good at - I'm really, really good at. It's my talent, the thing that  I just innately have a knack for. Secondly, I'm impatient and terrible at persevering. Projects don't generally get started by me let alone finished, so the idea of producing a novel out of nowhere was a bit terrifying.

I'll be honest; there were a lot of days where I got fed up and angry and frustrated. I started and hated the 5,000 words I'd written so I started again. Most days I made the required 1,667 words - but the weekends, where I was busy with LRP, would go by without a single word being written. However somehow every week I pulled the catching up out of nowhere and kept on track. The most I ever fell behind was 5,000 words and this was always done within a few days of the mark being missed. It became habit to me, sitting down and writing; I'd usually do about half of it when I first got up and then the rest after dinner. I enjoyed it some days, and was hyper critical on others.

Somehow through all that, at the end of the month I had 50,000 words. 50,007 to be exact; and I wasn't even halfway through the plot that had begun spinning around in my head. I haven't touched it since, which is only actually 9 days though it feels like a great deal longer. I know there's a lot of it that's pretty badly written - let's be honest, it's not even a first draft - but despite all my hang ups I've managed to come out of the other side feeling pretty good about what I wrote. When I finished, it didn't quite click with me what I'd done. I sat there slightly stunned. I think it was the next day or maybe the day after that I was telling someone about it and admitted, for the first time, that I was proud of myself. I started crying.

I don't remember ever being proud of myself before.

So much has happened and continues to happen since then, including a series of days where I've felt truly terrible because living on my own is just not something that I can cope with. My loneliness has become not just that but more of an acute, physical ache in the middle of my chest. It actually physically hurts. This, however, is something that I've taken control of and I'm getting out of. I'm absolutely terrified of course, but then who wouldn't be - moving house is a pretty big upheaval. But every time the friends that I'm moving in with do something else that's so incredibly kind and generous, I feel more and more certain that it's where I want to be.

I might have a bitch of a cold, I might be freezing in a small and lonely flat, I might be living off 12p packets of pasta from Tesco - but you know what, underneath all of that, I've never ever been happier.