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.

Little Things...

...that make you want to scream.

A few weeks ago I was at the leisure centre going swimming. Having locked my bags up I made my way towards the poolside. On the door of one of the showers was a sign. I cannot remember what it said verbatim, but here's the gist:

"Dear Ladies. On X date there will be male workmen in this shower."

Fair enough, I understand this and am grateful for the warning. Obviously in an ideal world we'd have a female plumber to come and do this but they're not exactly ten a penny. However, this seemingly innocuous if a little saddening poster had another blow to give:

"Please ensure that you are appropriately covered up whilst they are at work."

Not 'we apologise for the inconvenience' (though it probably said that somewhere as well) - instead we get instructed to not be naked when there are workmen in. There are several levels on which this makes me angry. Firstly, that it makes it sound like the idea of nudity is something that we should not expose the poor, innocent male plumbers to. Secondly is the more disturbing and underlying notion of: we do not trust our contractors not to succumb to primal urges if you display your naked flesh. Thirdly and perhaps most irritatingly the tone seems to suggest that usually, women go parading their naked bodies around the changing room.

There are three individual shower cubicles and one shower room that contains six or so showers. I have seen women in the communal shower who are naked. This didn't bother me, though I personally don't have the confidence in my body to do that, it's nice to see that other women do. On the few rare occasions I have seen this not once have these women been at all lewd or indecent or indeed, parading their bare skin around. They are simply trying to wash the chlorine and whatever chemicals are used to sanitise the water in our public swimming pools from their skin. And who can blame them, really.

On occasions like this I kind of find myself wishing I wasn't so hyper-aware of inequality and discrimination, because not only am I left frustrated and annoyed I somehow find myself feeling like my irritation at what was intended to be a helpful sign left out of courtesy is unjustified and an overreaction.

Oh well.

Standing in a Crowd

As will no doubt be obvious; I am not good with crowds. They make me feel claustrophobic, paranoid, tiny and insignificant, and any manner of other negative things. The dichotomy of being someone who believes passionately in the awesomeness of humankind, whilst also being terrified of said humans, is not lost on me. It's something that every now and then I sit back and laugh at because whilst it makes total sense - the more weight and importance you place on something, the more you will worry and care about it - it is, frankly, also kind of ironic.

So when I booked to go to and be part of just that - a crowd - I was unsurprisingly nervous. The list of things I knew I had to cope with on that day was not small: travelling alone into central London, spending the day alone amongst part of a crowd, taking part in workshops where I could potentially be called upon and have everyone look at me, and above all that trying to have a good time when I know all these things are difficult. Nonetheless I booked and made my way to Feminism in London.

I should add that I wasn't without support entirely - despite knowing no one there, I felt very comfortable in the knowledge that the event organisers had done a great deal to make sure I'd have a good day. Prior to the event I emailed them to find out whether there would be any quieter spaces available that I could retreat to. Not only were there many but if I put down on my registration form what my needs were, they'd direct me to them as soon as I'd arrived (sadly I'd already registered by this point but it turned out there were so many safe spaces for me to retreat to that they could have pointed in every direction).

So when I got there, after a journey that all things considered wasn't too bad especially considering I had to take the tube at 9am on a Saturday morning, I found myself a seat near a door at the back of the main hall and watched the room fill up. And it did - there were a thousand feminists in that room in the end and despite that it still felt quite spacious and, for me, surprisingly comfortable. I wasn't completely at rest of course, but I don't ever expect to be. But there was something about the knowledge that the 999 other people in the room were women (and men) who thought the same things I did, who wanted the world to be the same way I do, made me feel far safer in that crowd than I ever have done.

And so whilst I could spend this blog post talking about the fantastic panels, about how terrifying the statistics on natural births were or about how stunningly awesome Finn Mackay was, for me the single best thing about FIL10 was the crowd. This is such a weird thing for me to be saying I know, but I came out of the day not feeling drained like I expected to but feeling energised. Yes, I struggled through the day and yes, the journey home was horrible and yes, I did have to sit up on my own in the gallery sometimes because it was too noisy downstairs. But despite all those things I stood with 999 other feminists giving a standing ovation to the final panel and I felt safe and at home.

To me, that's worth more than anything - and I can't put into words how grateful I am that the event was so beautiful as to give me that.

Post-Terror

After writing that last post (whenever it was that I wrote it) I went to my psych appointment and talked to Jill about it. It was one of the hardest sessions I've had - though I seem to always find myself saying that, I wonder if that's a sign that we're getting there - because we had to go quite in depth as to why I have these thoughts. It was actually really interesting to see how things that I experienced in my childhood that seemed perfectly innocuous - or if not completely innocuous, the sort of stuff that happens in your childhood and you learn from it.

So that was good, and since then I've not had too many - or indeed any that come to mind. I have however felt really out of it. The best way I can think of to describe it is that I'm feeling very meta about life - if that makes sense! I feel a bit removed from it. Boyfriend came over yesterday, and whilst I'd thought that would snap me out of it, it didn't straight away and this really threw me. This morning though and for most of today I've felt much better. I've even got loads of stuff done, including amongst other things being angry (hoorah, I managed it) at the government for potentially ruining my income for the next ever.

However a nice vent on the phone with my dad soon helped that along, and since then I've been a buzz of productivity. Unfortunately all I've got left is the kitchen, and for some reason I really hate washing up. There is so much to do as well, since I've been without hot water for so long.

Perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and just do some. It's only the washing up! It's not that scary!