Cut out my tongue
tear out my hair
cut off my limbs
but leave me my love
I would rather have lost my legs
pulled out my teeth
gouged out my eyes
than lost my love
That’s it. It’s over. I still love you but you no longer dominate my thoughts and life.
I never wanted to hate you and never will. I never wanted to stop loving and didn’t.
But it’s over now and I’m so relieved.
things are grim regarding my family and I’m pissed off!
This weekend I was determined to go to a Red Tent event over in Glasgow and I simply couldn’t move and just fell asleep.
I then decided to go and visit my dad in hospital and again, I couldn’t make it.
I actually don’t want to visit Dad. I’m trying to be compassionate as he is old but I’ve had enough. I’m trying to support my niece but I really couldn’t care less. Everyone in Fife has turned against my sister and I’m dreading bumping into my mouthy step-brother cos, quite frankly, I hate them all.
My priority is my sister and I’m not even getting that right. I’m paralysed with not knowing how to move forward with this. She is drinking again and asking for money.
What do I do?
It’s triggered a lot of bad memories, primarily, that of,I wish I hadn’t been born.And that I am evil as I just cause nothing but distress. And I need to punish myself. When sis was really ill she told me ”If I go down you’re coming with me” and I appear to be complying with this.
I miss my therapist Marie. I need to sort this out.
‘sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you and I cannot go fucking on without expressing this terrible so fucking awful physical aching fucking longing I have for you.
And I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing’
I’m fight the battle not to miss Shitpot too.
I have been feeling shite all weekend.
I guess it’s the culmunation of being in a family who suffer from mental health problems all my life. It’s tiring.
My beloved sister came to stay on Wednesday. The kids were delighted. And it’s Euro 2012. As we are both hooked on football, it gives us something to focus on.
Sis is not psychotic anymore. When she was, she was basically terrorising the family, including my fragile niece. It was horrible, and I think I’m still having problems forgiving her. I ‘know’ it’s the illness but…
She is drinking again. And has no money. She got her taxi through her on ‘tick’ but I had to give her £50 to get back home on Friday as she cannot go by bus as she is incontinent and her piles had burst.
When she was here I bought her cider and ciggies. V. expensive! I saw her go through the D.T’s. She is like a wounded baby animal.Hurt and humiliated by a bastard society. My (evil) dad phoned when she was here just to put the boot in. Cunt.
The kids are with their dad this weekend and all I’ve done is sit on my bed and use my lap-top. I’m shattered.
I just want someone to tell me that it’s okay to give her the money.
My sister completely cracked up again over a year ago. It was horrible and much worse than the first time.It has been a long-drawn out process to get her better and quite frankly I’m surprised she is still alive.She has had a horrific life, including being raped and I’m not sure how she lives with the memories.The only person who is ‘helping’ her is my Dad, who has schizo-affective personality and has caused her most of the pain.Having a dad with this problem is not nice.
So she has gotten ‘better’. What does the future hold for her? Well she loves my kids although I find it hard to get over to see her. And now she has stopped drinking she can see her grand-daughter.That’s it.
One of the things she can ‘look forward too’ is changes in the Welfare State. I’ve tried broaching the subject but she couldn’t comprehend what I was saying. My sister, you see, lives in a 3 bedroom house. When we were homeless we stayed in one room as my niece, her baby and her boyfriend were in another. They have left now. This house is in the scheme I was brought up in and is a total shit-hole. No-one wants these houses. But she will now have to pay a bedroom tax. This will freak her out. Just as she’s trying to get better.
Fuck you David Freud.
This will be a straightforward account of my atos visit. Although I may start waffling on about the nature of psychosis. Lets see.
I’ve actually had a positive experience of ATOS. So much so, I sometimes think my interviewer was an angel.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel my first appointment as I ended up in hospital. It was some sort of dissociative fugue thingie and the police and social work were involved. My main memory was arguing, and winning, an arguement about how staff should talk to people who are in A&E because of sexual trauma. That issue is for another blog.
Anyway, I had to cancel so phoned ATOS. She was lovely! And eventually another appointment came through.
This appointment I made. I phoned beforehand and asked what would happen if I walked out. Again, she was lovely but couldn’t give me any specific advice.
The only thing I did that morning that was different was that I put no make-up on. When I went in I was in a heightened state of agitation. The waiting room was one of the saddest places imaginable. I’m prone to something called ‘hyper-sexuality’ which means when I’m stressed I want to have sex. Usually I can depress this need with wine but I didn’t think turning up drunk would be a good idea. I had to leave the room as there were men there and this was confusing my stress levels.
I spent the next 30 mins pacing, chewing my cheek and when I went to the loo, banging my head a bit. Back in the corridor I kept pacing.
Then she appeared. Okay, she wasn’t an angel but she was bloody good. Yes, news-flash, ATOS were great. The first thing she said was she could see how upset I was. And she seemed to assure me that she was going to make it as quick as possible so I can go home.It’s a bit of a blur after that. Quite frankly I was so suicidal that I couldn’t give a shit about benefits. She did ask me about suicide and I was honest. Also said I was homicidal too! She asked me how I got there and I said I walked and if she could get me a job walking manically all day I would take it. At this stage of my PTSD I couldn’t sit still/relax/sleep I was so dissociated. For some reason, I ended up telling her about the worst of my symptoms. I used to think devils and angels lived in my bank account and thats where the worlds problems played itself out. My bank account. She asked me if I still felt like that and was genuinely relieved that was no longer the case. I told her about self-harming. I used to bite myself. The last thing I said was ”Please don’t tell social work this, they know anyway” and I walked away worried she’d phone social work.
Anyway, I passed. Not that I knew about points systems at this point or WRAG or support groups.
The point of this blog is the fact she was a complete angel who obviously knew about mental illness. She really was lovely. She wanted me out that room as soon as possible so I didn’t have to disclose too much of my trauma.Good for her. My concern is the ethics of these interviews. Nobody should go through them and the state should listen to NHS professionals. The system is ripe for retraumatising traumatised people.
This my first attempt at blogging.
The first thing I would like to do is write about childhood under Mrs Thatcher. This was inspired by a blog by Darkest Angel on Twitter. So I may just mimic her style!
What strikes me, as I use Twitter for my news, is the fear and anger amongst many people who remember the 80′s vividly. Especially more fragile people. In fact I still belong to a support group for people who have experienced a certain kind of abuse. Last year, most of the talk was about the government. And the distress was palpable.
How the media is responding to this vile Coalition is one of the things freaking me out and I think this is do with my experiences as a vulnerable child through the war-zone that was the UK under Thatcher. I’m going to attempt to explain here. For myself at least.
Unfortunately, after I was born, my mum ended up in a psychiatric hospital called Stratheden when I was 6months. She stayed there for 4 years(!) and when she finally returned home things were very difficult for her. Between Valium and my Dad she didn’t get a lot of support. The biggest impact this had on my family was the effect it had on my big brother, who became a bit wild and ended up going to a school for mal-adjusted children in his teens. He then graduated to Borstal. This was very painful for mum, as a bit like my own son, my brother is hyper intelligent, good looking and charming but a total recidivist. I suspect the separation when mum was ill played a huge part.
Just before mum died things were okay-ish. Ok Dad was having an affair with the local barmaid and we all new about it and Bill was going to kill my Dad, etc. But we were hanging in there.
Bill, that’s my brother, had got a job as a miner. Which was great as the money was good and he loved his clothes and his ‘sounds’ and I do remember it being a positive time for him. Obviously he had become a bit institutionalised so having a job that meant hard graft was good for him. He was in a Union and there was routine and he had a laugh with his co-workers.
One innocuous Sunday I had to run and get my sister at her pals. Mum was found dead in her bed. Bill had been at the pub and when he came home everyone was just in shock. As ever, it was up to Bill to attend to my emotional needs.
This was 1981. Dad left the house to move in with his girlfriend and left the three of us to run wild. Although the most wild thing about me was I liked Duran Duran.
Things went downhill pretty quickly. Bill worked at the Seafield Colliery and it closed. Dad had a good job welding at the RGC but having a job in the 80′s when unemployment was rampant, he turned into some kind of nutter. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see why. He was one of the lucky ones with a good job. Nothing else mattered.
After the two local mines closed and Bill lost his job, he cracked up and ended up in a high-security psychiatric unit. He was very violent and his behaviour was terrifying. Later on, he became catatonic and didn’t leave his room for a year.
He smoked a lot of hash and the smell of grass was always winding me up. I left for Uni….to graduate in alcoholism…..and I got a lovely letter from him. He was in London in a squat and wanted me to go down.
A couple of weeks later I got a letter from my, now, step-mum saying he was in a hyper-secure unit in London after being arrested for saying he was a member of the IRA. It was one of the saddest letters I ever read.
Fast forward to today. He is a big time herion user. One of the best looking men in Scotland looks like shit. (he was always the looker in the family)
Why am I writing all this? Because all this happened under a government who took conscious decisions to undermine the kind of area I was brought up in. Me and my sibs were fodder, human collateral, in many ways. I can assure you, as a motherless child there is no big society. Nobody gave a shit about us in the neighbourhood. Luckily for me, my teachers loved me and the feeling was mutual. My, very little, self esteem comes from their respect.
The area I was brought up in is a herion blackspot now. Basically when the mines closed, the drugs moved in. This frightens me.
What is going to happen this time round with a more sociopathic government?
