Monday 28 March 2011

Talk About Wasted Talent (But Not Quite)

Ten years ago I had massive potential. Massive potential. I was 17, nearly 18, looking at going to university to study literature and then move on to journalism, pissed off with my hometown and ridiculously under travelled, with a desire to go everywhere and experience everything, slightly shy but always willing to put myself out there, push myself forward for new experiences. The world was at my feet.

In the period of the next four years I would go on to completely unravel this in the most pitiful way. To quote Charles Dickens "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Loads of brilliant stuff happened in that time period, I experienced great things I am glad to have experienced but I also managed to damage myself massively which pretty much ruined any opportunities that could have been open to me. I'm talking about depression triggered by drug abuse. Since then I've found out that I am genetically predisposed to depression and that my family is fucked up in most senses, maybe if I had been aware of this before I would have been a little more cautious (or maybe I would have been worse), both my brother and sister have spent time on anti-depressants and been in therapy, my dad is a prime example of non-violent passive-aggression, my aunty and his mum were agrophobic, my mum came from an abusive home and never knew who her real father was and my gran is very eccentric, my cousins on my mums side all suffer from depression to some extent.

That was the cause of me leaving London. I went off the rails and didn't know how to get back on them, so I did the only thing I could, quit and run back home. I began experiencing anxiety symptoms around that point, although I did not know what that meant at the time, I just knew it as some offshoot of depression and some extention of comedowns that I could not handle. Depersonalisation was a symptom I found massively scarey, a feeling of just being cut off from everything and everyone. There was a point when I felt like a walking zombie, when I couldn't hold a conversation with my parents because I felt like a fraud as couldn't be honest with them as there was a big part of my life that I could never disclose to them. This was not apparent to me at the time though, I just felt a big brick wall was there between me and certain other people and I did not know why.

A guy did a psychiatric assessment on me at that time, the only time I have ever seen anyone remotely like a therapist, who asked me a bunch of questions and made me break down in tears, but because I was always completely and utterly shocked every time he asked me something relating to suicide and was therefore no real danger to myself I was not seen as of high importance. I was self harming at this point, I had been self harming since I was 14, and it did escalate at this period as well due to aforementioned drug abuse impacted self loathing, but I never intended to kill myself. Punish and torture myself, yes, but I am definitely not ready for death yet. I was given a box of citalopram and told to maybe go see a therapist if I wanted to and could afford to pay it off my own back.

It was at that point I went back to Devon and just shut everything out, that was what I wanted, to feel better again, I took the tablets, found a job in a supermarket and just carried on. At the time I was unaware but I was just completely numbing myself. There were five years there that I completely wasted. And it wasn't helping me either. I was completely numb, but I was also undergoing some kind of breakdown, I was drinking massively whilst being on a daily dose of anti-depressants. That entire period I was not me. During the day I was living a life I never wanted to live with the minimum of hassle, during the night I was getting drunk, getting into fights, acting like an arsehole. I was even being agressive and hateful to some of my best friends. Safe to say I was not myself anymore.

After around four years I came off the anti-depressants completely. This was when the anxiety really began. It had been present a bit during my time on the meds but it really came into it's own now. I experienced dreadful panic attacks. There were at least two or three instances where I could not go in to work because of the anxiety I was experiencing, physical symptoms as well, one morning I woke up and my back was in complete pain right down to my legs, within hours it had gone. Twice I woke up on a morning and felt like I could not face the world and ended up spending all morning crying my eyes out for no reason. My mum bore the brunt of all of this. One time I had been up to visit my brother in Cardiff. I was at the peak of my panic attacks, at this point I was scared to drink alcohol, and several nights through the week I had to tell him I could not deal with going outside and just wanted to stay in his room all evening. We went to the cinema at one point as well and I had to leave halfway through because I couldn't take being sat there. When I returned home that weekend on the train back I was fighting back tears. When my picked me up in the car I just burst out crying. She was always trying to ask me why I was so upset, why I was so down, but I didn't even know the answer myself so didn't have a clue what I could tell her. I just cried it out and got on with it.

It was then that I went to my doctor. He tried to put me back on meds but I refused. He put me on a CBT course and gave me some propranolol. The propanolol was weird, beta blockers are definitely not for me, they make me go light headed and my blood literally turns cold with them which just makes me even more anxious inside of my head when my body is completely chilled out, terrible terrible experience, I tried Kalms too which did the same, and also St Johns Wort. The CBT I did find helpful though. It wasn't really geared toward me as such, it was more geared toward people who were scared of something, agrophobics and like. I was given a computer program to do which was all about pushing your boundaries, taking baby steps, but that was never really my issue. Even though I did have physical reactions to things and situations I still pushed through and did them.

What was really helpful for me though was the therapy I received though. I lied earlier and said I hadn't been in touch with a therapist. I actually had, but as part of this CBT it was all done over the phone. I was given a few hour long sessions to go with the fearfighter computer programs where a therapist would talk over my symptoms, how I was feeling, where I thought the feelings were coming from. Several times yet again she had me in floods and floods of tears but I definitely found tools from that to deal with how I was feeling and to get through it.

Those sessions didn't last long, again I think I was considered a low priority because I was no risk to myself and my condition wasn't having a considerable impact to my ability to live life. I had issues but they were literally all in my head and were only serving to torture my thoughts and inhibit myself. What they did inspire me to do though was to research anxiety disorders more, tool myself up against it, learn to not be afraid of it. It was only at this point that I really began to make progress.

A little after this I moved up to Manchester, still with the anxiety symptoms heavy over me. They are still there now in fact, greatly diminished but still there. But when I walked down a street and felt like my skull was caving in because my muscles were so tight and tense or when I felt like my heart was going to stop beating, or I could not breathe I now knew for sure that it was all in my mind. Even to this day I still feel those things but I know why.

The next stage is possibly the hardest bit though, dealing with the things that causes all of this. Again I am much more familiar with them now, lack of self worth, lack of self belief, I don't think much of myself, any aspect of myself. Yet I'm aware that I can do a lot of stuff well. That's the inner conflict I have to deal with. It makes no logical sense at all. But it makes the gap between my ambitions and acheiving them so very hard to bridge. I can see the life I want to lead and person I want to be because I know that that is what I'm capable of and what I can do, but then my lack of self worth and self belief is there saying that I can't do it. I am aware that anyone reading this would read that and just think it's stupid and they'd be right but it is this very thing that completely inhibits me.

I never let it stop me, I moved from Devon to Manchester because I needed to do it. I just need to now keep pushing myself. I'm not sure what my next move is really, I've got an alright job on a comfortable wage right now but I'm still not in the right place yet. I guess I just need to keep on healing. Give myself some goals to work toward. This month is set to be the busiest I've had in a long time, then heading off to Ibiza in June, fitting as much as I can into the summer. I just need to embrace life again, embrace what I've always enjoyed doing. I started off by saying I wasted my talent and opportunities that I had, but waste was the wrong word to use, I have never ever written myself off and that's what's important. There is always tomorrow. People say putting things off until tomorrow is bad, which is true, but what is also true is that tomorrow is always there, it's always going to be an opportunity and a new start. No matter what's happened today, there will always be a new tomorrow.

Sunday 20 March 2011

The Wonderful World Of Lonerdom

The last couple days have been pretty standard. Yesterday was work from 9am through to 5pm, then to the pub for literally one single coca cola before heading back to work for evening manning phones for Comic Relief. That was a bizarre experience in itself. There were around 250 people from my workplace there, big screens showing the Comic Relief tv show at the front of the room, various donated fast foods such as Dominos pizza, KFC and Burger King being passed around to munch on and calls coming through sporadicly all night from 6.30pm til midnight. I took £1003 worth of calls myself, people donating from £5-£200. Some people took calls from people donating £1000. I personally have issues with Comic Relief but all cynicism aside it was actually a fun night.

Completely shattered by the end of it all though, I got home at 12.30, sat up and watched tv til 3am and then just crashed until around 2pm this afternoon. Wallowed in my pit for a couple hours and then left the house around 5pm. As usual on a Saturday I completely forgot that the trip into town would be torturous due to matchday traffic, living in Old Trafford is completely wasted on me, all matchday means to me is overfilled buses and craploads of traffic.

Eventually got into town and stuffed my face with fast food. Then went down to the cinema in the Printworks and watched The Adjustment Bureau. Well I say watched, I managed to chip half of a tooth off just before the film started whilst eating said fast food. The tooth fully chipped during the film so I spent more time running my tongue along the back of my teeth trying to assess the damage than paying attention to the movie.

The damage isn't too bad, a dentist appointment will need to be booked sometime soon though as it looks a bit gappy. And there was my eventful day. You're welcome.

Tuesday 15 March 2011

blue

You know, I don't even think I know how to write anymore. It's the weirdest thing. I've always written, since the age of around five or six. At first I was an incredibly slow starter. At around the age of five or six even the kids who would later turn out to be massively less intelligent than me were leaving me far behind, I could not read and I could not write. I wholeheartedly blame this on the fact that I was born deaf, with holes in both my eardrums. Until the age of ten I attended speech therapy and used to pronounce the word 'flag' as 'slag', much to my elder brother's amusement. Apparently before we broke up for school one summer my teacher took my mum to one side and told her that if I did not catch up with the rest of the class soon she would recommend I be taken out of school and put into special education.

That summer mum sat me down with some notepads and pencils and basically taught me how to read and write. From that point I just ran with it. Within two years I was second to top of the school reading group, second only to Becki Daniels and Carly Avery (the former who is now a primary school teacher herself, the latter a travel agent). Also I would write books, massively inspired by/ripping off 90s CITV kids show Knightmare, which I was obsessed with, and my teacher would print them off page by page, then put them in the school library.

Since then I have always written. But lately I have stopped. Not only have I stopped but I swear I've forgotten how to do it. Maybe I'm just more aware now, definitely I am more self critical about almost every aspect of myself, this is probably a knock on effect of that. It's just very sad that I've sacrificed one of the few things that used to define me for mediocrity.

Saturday 12 March 2011

Leaving Winter.

This year I seemed to get the winter blues really bad. Like terribly bad! In the past it's always been a term I've heard, even used myself to talk about being a bit down. This winter though it has been awful! Partly home sickness I think, age maybe coming into it too? Being in a new situation definitely. At one point, halfway through January, I was actually on the phone to Mum saying I was considering packing it all up and moving back to Devon again, which she was more than happy for me to do, but she told me to take some time to think it over before making any decisions, that January is a low month for everyone, that thinks may pick up.

And sure as sure can be they did. The post-Christmas blues passed, I'm properly into my work at the moment, getting along with my workmates fine, getting along with my housemates alright, locking myself in my room for hours on end still, aimlessly flicking through music and cinema blogs, jumping on the train to go visiting people, blowing up the airbed to host others, yes this is my life and, y'know, it's alright.

So yes, winter 2010/2011, farewell, I shan't miss you. 2011, you have the potential to be a fucking good one.

Current plans already happening - London on 2nd-3rd April for the Special Needs gig, I have train and coach tickets booked, my cousins wedding on 14th April in Chichester. Jump forward a few months and I then have Parklife Festival in Manchester sometime in July I believe. We can also slot another festival or so in there. Maybe a trip overseas? In the meantime I will work as hard as possible to earn enough cash to play even harder.

The time is 12.35am, Saturday morning. I have work at 9am, which means I have to wake up for 7am. So if I fall asleep as soon as I put this laptop down I will get 6hrs and 25 mins. Time to do just that. Actually I have to write a facebook message first, then sleep.

Goodnight.