We've all been in places that initially seemed normal but difficult when contacting the outside world from.
We've then looked back and realised 'oh dear, I was not very happy then' - if you are an English middle-aged voice in my head, or felt a generally 'ruffled', dusty and upside-down shame-like feeling about this now-past transition period -if you're the voice of my tidying freak obsessed with neatness - we may have come close to admitting it. This time of being off, of consistently failing at life, of not calling your dad out of lack of anything good to share, of not - just not.A firmly-lodged and completely naturally sprouting discrepancy between an ideal self and a real, one that lasts enough to warrant genuine complaints. And sighs. i hope you agree that sighs in sadness come free and legit.
and here, in this mess of brain and chewed nail clippings and occasionally a bit of dribble on the pen i'm biting with anger, is my attempt to trivially fun-size bite off, chew and spit out my view of the world of humans vs Mental Health Services Professionals and others affiliated.
Mental is anything that happens in you not caused by observable causal links.
A cough to echo inside your ears and your hair. One that slides up through the forest of follicles all ragged and rough, and meets the soft fleshy pod of the hair route. It enters by squeezing between the hair and the pod, sliding like a mouse, between cracks and enters a stream of blood or puss or both.
By itchy blood that stumbles upon particles and cells and changes direction, it is your destiny to believe what you feel. You're so attuned to recognising your body, you can reverse-control it and order it around. You are too attuned perhaps. or
- Perhaps a thought is proof of a sensation.
out of tune,
an echo of you,
eternally,
gracefully, out of tune. always. (whispering:)
your droopy eyes have decided to droop lower than usual today.
they have arranged to meet up with your shoulders,
but they are burnt from the sunlight,
from your 10 minute-long break in the sun.
the happiness hot mess
that makes everyone act so much more different than you
and you hate
and you fight off.
with. conviction.
your shoulders,
they droop along too.
burnt and droopy to match your disposition.
that of a person with nothing more than other things.
vague feelings of unworthiness.
general, vague, persistent.
it's almost as if..
it's almost as if you're making it up.
trying
to be unwell,
for some awful infliction of suffering worn as the only thing you are comfortable with.
your black day shoes.
and of course, it is so vague and debilitating it is almost obviously appealing.
but this is really not the case.
and you are not in any way faking it,
or your hands would have returned their normal size
and your mouth would have lifted from forceful drooping
and would have said something better than
'how's it going'-
the most meaningless and rude,
effectively hurtful,
awful expression
you swore never to use,
since that wanker on friends
but for some
fucking reason
you hear yourself
say.
again.
and again,
every day.
you are not a failure.
for this, i forgive you. don't cry
-------
--this is a piece of medical research feedback i gave today. i repeat my sob story and progress through the many iterations. i evolve and it evolves with me and it is a way of monitoring my progress as a human being.
I am now 'recovered' and have been for over 5 years - physically I've been a stable weight in the last 3 years, following a period of adjustment, fluctuation and 'dark times' of weekend drug abuse - to maintain body-weight.
Despite a 'healthy' weight and look, energy, and limited rituals and fear of food, emotionally I maintain an 'auto-pilot' of guilt and shame, which i have to fight off and consciously ignore on a daily basis, with most mouthfuls consumed. I was denied treatment due to my bmi being 17.5 when i plucked up the courage to go to my gp, despite suffering from depression, generalised anxiety disorder and having reduced in over half my weight over 2 years. As a tall person with a narrow bone structure, bmi means nothing to describe what shape i should be acceptable at - clinically- , when alarm bells should ring - socially-, or when i should and should not feel conscious of my eating - emotionally. bmi also did nothing in terms of a healthy guidance, as it became a new number to fixate on and worry sick and stay up all night about, when i was advised to adjust from a number of kilos, to a number that's over a bmi of 18, at my year-long outpatient treatment at Nelson Hospital (in Merton, which I believe has now closed).
i had to get sicker to qualify for nhs treatment, at a time of unemployment and severe isolation. i was advised to go private and had to wait 6 months to finally be seen, due to a psychiatrist who took it in her stride to get me help. i was initially assessed by an incompetent (and sadly a professor at Imperial) GP in Wimbledon, who told me i 'looked' fine 'darling' and 'go home and forget about it' and i can 'come in and be weighed once a month' if i want to. Apart from an unprofessional attitude in ignoring long-term health impact, potential future cost to the NHS, complications and comorbidity with other disorders, emotional distress and quality of life in patients not deemed as 'severe', it is outrageous to use statistical averages as means for deciding when mental health treatment is made available. I fight every day that each person that gets seen with a mental health concern is respected as an individual, rather than one of many in a long list of complaining hordes of numbers.
I am a mental health patient, a psychology postgraduate, a mental health mentor and work in science communications. Like everyone else, i demand to be taken seriously and not fobbed off with bullshit about numbers, space, and worse - severity. If it wasn't severe i wouldn't be asking for help, I'd have not needed it, in the first place.
We've then looked back and realised 'oh dear, I was not very happy then' - if you are an English middle-aged voice in my head, or felt a generally 'ruffled', dusty and upside-down shame-like feeling about this now-past transition period -if you're the voice of my tidying freak obsessed with neatness - we may have come close to admitting it. This time of being off, of consistently failing at life, of not calling your dad out of lack of anything good to share, of not - just not.A firmly-lodged and completely naturally sprouting discrepancy between an ideal self and a real, one that lasts enough to warrant genuine complaints. And sighs. i hope you agree that sighs in sadness come free and legit.
and here, in this mess of brain and chewed nail clippings and occasionally a bit of dribble on the pen i'm biting with anger, is my attempt to trivially fun-size bite off, chew and spit out my view of the world of humans vs Mental Health Services Professionals and others affiliated.
Mental is anything that happens in you not caused by observable causal links.
A cough to echo inside your ears and your hair. One that slides up through the forest of follicles all ragged and rough, and meets the soft fleshy pod of the hair route. It enters by squeezing between the hair and the pod, sliding like a mouse, between cracks and enters a stream of blood or puss or both.
By itchy blood that stumbles upon particles and cells and changes direction, it is your destiny to believe what you feel. You're so attuned to recognising your body, you can reverse-control it and order it around. You are too attuned perhaps. or
- Perhaps a thought is proof of a sensation.
out of tune,
an echo of you,
eternally,
gracefully, out of tune. always. (whispering:)
your droopy eyes have decided to droop lower than usual today.
they have arranged to meet up with your shoulders,
but they are burnt from the sunlight,
from your 10 minute-long break in the sun.
the happiness hot mess
that makes everyone act so much more different than you
and you hate
and you fight off.
with. conviction.
your shoulders,
they droop along too.
burnt and droopy to match your disposition.
that of a person with nothing more than other things.
vague feelings of unworthiness.
general, vague, persistent.
it's almost as if..
it's almost as if you're making it up.
trying
to be unwell,
for some awful infliction of suffering worn as the only thing you are comfortable with.
your black day shoes.
and of course, it is so vague and debilitating it is almost obviously appealing.
but this is really not the case.
and you are not in any way faking it,
or your hands would have returned their normal size
and your mouth would have lifted from forceful drooping
and would have said something better than
'how's it going'-
the most meaningless and rude,
effectively hurtful,
awful expression
you swore never to use,
since that wanker on friends
but for some
fucking reason
you hear yourself
say.
again.
and again,
every day.
you are not a failure.
for this, i forgive you. don't cry
-------
--this is a piece of medical research feedback i gave today. i repeat my sob story and progress through the many iterations. i evolve and it evolves with me and it is a way of monitoring my progress as a human being.
I am now 'recovered' and have been for over 5 years - physically I've been a stable weight in the last 3 years, following a period of adjustment, fluctuation and 'dark times' of weekend drug abuse - to maintain body-weight.
Despite a 'healthy' weight and look, energy, and limited rituals and fear of food, emotionally I maintain an 'auto-pilot' of guilt and shame, which i have to fight off and consciously ignore on a daily basis, with most mouthfuls consumed. I was denied treatment due to my bmi being 17.5 when i plucked up the courage to go to my gp, despite suffering from depression, generalised anxiety disorder and having reduced in over half my weight over 2 years. As a tall person with a narrow bone structure, bmi means nothing to describe what shape i should be acceptable at - clinically- , when alarm bells should ring - socially-, or when i should and should not feel conscious of my eating - emotionally. bmi also did nothing in terms of a healthy guidance, as it became a new number to fixate on and worry sick and stay up all night about, when i was advised to adjust from a number of kilos, to a number that's over a bmi of 18, at my year-long outpatient treatment at Nelson Hospital (in Merton, which I believe has now closed).
i had to get sicker to qualify for nhs treatment, at a time of unemployment and severe isolation. i was advised to go private and had to wait 6 months to finally be seen, due to a psychiatrist who took it in her stride to get me help. i was initially assessed by an incompetent (and sadly a professor at Imperial) GP in Wimbledon, who told me i 'looked' fine 'darling' and 'go home and forget about it' and i can 'come in and be weighed once a month' if i want to. Apart from an unprofessional attitude in ignoring long-term health impact, potential future cost to the NHS, complications and comorbidity with other disorders, emotional distress and quality of life in patients not deemed as 'severe', it is outrageous to use statistical averages as means for deciding when mental health treatment is made available. I fight every day that each person that gets seen with a mental health concern is respected as an individual, rather than one of many in a long list of complaining hordes of numbers.
I am a mental health patient, a psychology postgraduate, a mental health mentor and work in science communications. Like everyone else, i demand to be taken seriously and not fobbed off with bullshit about numbers, space, and worse - severity. If it wasn't severe i wouldn't be asking for help, I'd have not needed it, in the first place.
