Fantasy...

First let me acknowledge this beautiful and tranquil image from Angelwave 06 at Deviant Art:
http://angelwaveo6.deviantart.com/art/The-Runaway-Bride-129637313

Pity she's a bride... I just like the long flowing gown and saddle-less stead. After last week I have so many of those fantasy moments... you know...
How did Tony Mokbel gate a false passport?
How did ONJ's ex create a new identity?
How can I just become someone else from now on and live elsewhere?

I know I will miss my home place, this beach suburb, but really I grieve for its older self, with less development, pristine and wild coves, shellfish and wildlife everywhere the eye could see, not raped and pilaged by generations of humans, and poluted by fossil fueled play toys. I hate the houses that have left such large footprints that the water table has dropped so far that I would have to sink a new bore to get access to the groundwater. And what of the massess of cut down scraggly ti-trees and willful gum trees dropping branches as nature decides. Not now. We have indigenous gardens, not in themselves a bad thing all, but they have a sameness. The native grasses and conrolled native flowering plants. Where are the wild crazy coloured banksia species and native parrots?

No this is beach house landscape as determined by "Better Homes and Gardens" and when looking beyond the architecturally designed angles and false stonework, the houses are basically upper middle class kit homes built on spec by very canny tradie business people laughing all the way to the bank whilst living in the really expensive seaside vista homes. It is no longer my wild place yet my heart is here, indelibly.

Yet every-time I have the choice to turn north towards the City from the Beleura Hospital in Mornington, it is only ever the low level of petrol in my tank that forces me to make the u-turn south. Same when I drive away from home just on a shopping expedition, the house is shrouded when I see either of the two other residents cars. My heart skips a beat when there is no-one home except the cats. I have those brief moments of respite without which I just could not keep up the battle.

I also know that I must seek fulfilment and happiness from within and acceptance of my own illness and flaws but it is all so self-help manual and they never hint that it is a lifelong journey and battle. I could virtually write the CBT manuals myself by now, and psychologists and social workers wonder why those of us in psychiatric care absolutely dismiss their 'advice' and pseudo science.

Perhaps I should have taken to fictio writing as a younger woman and gone the fantasy genre, or the highly marketable Barbara Cartland romance fiction, but alas I am too old and scarred from failed romance to suspend belief long enough for a full novel of this genre... perhaps that's why I am more into Nanna lit... these old birds like me have been through it all and survived, usually without Prince Charming holding the reigns of the partner stead for the escaping 'bride'... also shouldn't prince Charming have long flowing golden locks and enough money for Ashley and Martin in true Warnie/Hurleystyle?

Tough Week... some of you will understand.

Read on if you really wish to understand the darker side, otherwise ignore blog... look at the pretty Royal Wedding Blogs

Some readers will understand these thoughts... others will not. Such is the life of a person with BMD. I do not know how to chart the last seven days, my moods have been so labile, ranging from -4 through to possible +1 on the highest level.

Such small things to some people but huge for me. I cannot, no matter how hard I try, shut out the sort of aura generated by people around me. On one of my wellness clinic days there is one woman who is like a black cloud of maudlin self pity. I can empathise with her yet she makes me so angry that her attention seeking poor me behaviour virtually destroys the whole point of the wellness group, to actually get our feelings aired and cleansed without the need for words or tissue boxes. Why does she have to be so needy? She is 'acting out' for admission to an inpatients ward, and I know how desperate one can become for this respite. I know I SHOULD (there's that problematic word again) have a more caring and supportive attitude but bugger that, she makes me and others there feel worse. She is a black cloud! I used to think it was autism spectrum and so self isolated and gave her the benefit of kind thoughts... but now I am just angry and turning it inwards... as I always do, and feeling guilty I cannot express my anger in any positive way. I can't even have the confidence to say "It would help me to have some ambient background music... so we all struggle on victims of her deathly silence".

On another day, I attended a wellness talk fest and it just happened to be after a 'fight with my son'. I saw it as a fight. I had just gone to bed to read peacefully IN MY SAFE SPACE... my bedroom, my sancturary before embarking on my yoga session to wind down. I was having good old laughter therapy with QI, Adam Hills, Spicks and Specks ... and confessionally lusting after the actor who plays crime writer Rick Castle. My son felt he had the right to enter my bedroom, no knocking of course and berate me for being a Telstra client because HIS internet connection had dropped out. I am always being blamed that Telstra is not a good enough ISP (to his liking) yet I am of gthe opinion if Telstra owns the hardware and the whole family is gaining advantage through Tesltra via bundling and options that save over $100 per month... that's a positive despite a four month battle with the TIO and their billing system (which is also wearing me down).

Apparently the storming into my room was to see what I was doing either on my laptop or streaming via my T-box that could be causing his drop outs and latency whilst gaming online. I was doing neither. My laptop in my study where it stays... it does not come into my bedroom sanctuary unless I am very ill. The T-box was simply replaying already taped programs... yet he felt he could enter and abuse me for my choice of ISP and virtually demand I divide up everything again, without even offering to pay the difference... with him twice before having caused $900 and $500 excess charges without any offer of repaying! The he becomes more abusive and he tells me to "get fucked". I say I am in my bedroom "You Fuck Off... how dare you". Doors slam. I am a mess and yoga is totally useless after that.

So bright and sparky along I go to yoga next day after dredging up semblance of 'normal person' then find younger inpatients who are at that very early hopeful stage of parenting attempt to tell me that my son should grow up and own his own shit.... Really tell me something I don't know! Also walk in my shoes first. I walk on eggshells with both people I live with. the older 80 year old only sees and complains about the emotional damage being done to him by said son, whilst being unwilling/unable to cut purse strings as he knows that is his only connection AT ALL with son, then he bitches at me that the son won't/doesn't ever say thanks or ask after his health.

I cracked it and said... it's not just about you.... two parents are being hurt here but you only care about yourself. I was then told by older one to "fuck off and get a job" in other words stop being a bludger bringing in not enough income for household... this with me on DSP and paying off my own car, the family health insurance, and old ones funeral plan and not costing a cent to feed as i get my meal replacements via the health insurance.... then to have a young Mum claim how she is able to 'break cycle of domestic abuse'for her daughter by just growing up and being an adult. I saw red.... ever heard of frontal lobe development occasionally delayed in young men... I still believe generally that before age 25 damaged young men CANNOT act rationally and see consequences of their actions... hey girl know the full story before passing judgement... then I disintegrated in boxes of tissues and tears. Post script... she latter shows me phone pics of her bruising by her partner as result of domestic violence... yep definitely breaking cycle for her child! Angry again and turning it inwards.

I should have made a weekly appointment with my psychiatrist but no... I am strong, I am on leave from my studies, I am free to get well.... yeah sure.

Last week it all began with me underestimating the impact it would have on me attending my University work space and packing five years of research material (and personal memorabilia) into three very large suitcases as a form of separation. Well boy did I underestimate that sense of loss of belonging after doing this.

So together they all came out in one explosive crying session which almost began at yoga. It suddenly occurred to me that when we lay in savasna (repose) I noticed that the soft comfy blankets are square and I always have to decide to have shoulders out or arms palms up covered. Often my feet fall out, and the yogi comes around and tucks the soft blanket under my toes. I am immediately transported back to childhood, like when a Mum tucks in a child at night. These two sessions are the only times a week I feel ANY HUMAN CONTACT.... it so overwhelmingly alone'ness'.

The day of this realisation I learn that another acquaintance with child same age as mine could no longer stand the chronic pain (or that's how the normal people described it) and suicided. I know the pain he was in and it is more than physically chronic it is beyond that and once it has gripped it is unstoppable. Even his passion for the arts could not counterbalance this 'black dog'. Please dearest W I hope you have found peace at last.

http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2011/04/self-control-makes-us-angry.html

Aiode speaks again

Today I will work on my artefact. After mapping her narrative structure with Glenice last week, I see I need to be less a free writer and take on the hard stuff, the actual structuring and plotting. But as usual procrastination... a re-read to remove unnecessary/inadequate adjectives and replace with more metaphorical and illustrative phrases or words... should be fun BUT OH SO TIME CONSUMING. I cannot possibly judge progress via word count.


Today I need to work both sides of my brain... the analytical with all the mind maps and narrative graphing, and the creative... just playing with words, ideas and forms of showing not telling.

I am almost ready to begin playing with the very difficult second person narration of one protagonist.. she is calling out to speak at last after all these months of authorial unwellness and turbulence.

Is the Muse possibly returning and could it possibly have anything to do with the fact I am now spending cash (I really haven't got spare in my budget) to frame my own artworks as I learn to play with different vis arts media? Are they connected?

Perhaps I have rreconnected with colour and have finally accepted that the beauty out there is real, and what normal people see and the much lamented intensive tones and shades of my mania are really only 'dreamstates'and hallucinations. These colours are perhaps not real after all, so why have I spent over twenty years mourning their loss. My other senses seem to be sharpening now and I am definitely having more common moments of synaesthesia. I never query that my dreams are in colour... they just are. I hear sounds as colours. I feel the very air around me as electric charged or pulsating. I love this new 'me'.

Could yoga be doing this or is it new meds and another form of man-made bio-chemical brain inbalance.

Hey, I'm just going to enjoy it while its lasts. I can't believe this can be mine forever... but if this is the plus 3 to plus 4 state just before hypomania... role along.

Am I allowed to position this rating as 'normal happiness' and not a clinical sign of mood lability?
When can I stop judging my moods as abnormal? When will THOSE OTHERS (you know who you are) allow me the freedom to be both sad and happy... and not always position me as 'mad' or in a dangerous space?

Just a little about the image... supposedly Hesiod ( a male poet.. why do the blokes always think they are in a story... even image... is it Hesiod's anima?) and 'a' Muse, hopefully Aiode???

Now the wikipedia entry for Plutarch's original three Muses (Boeotian):

In Greek mythology, Aoide (Ἀοιδή) (or in Latin Aoede) was one of the three original (Boeotian) Muses, though there were later nine. Her sisters were Melete and Mneme. She was the muse of song. According to Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Zeus, the King of the Gods, and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. She lends her name to the moon Jupiter XLI, also called Aoede, which orbits the planet Jupiter.

Long, long restful blogging break but only electronically.

I have not forgotten my early promise to keep friends and interested parties up to date on my yearly ride on the Bi-Polar Mood Disorder Roller Coaster, but somehow pen and ink felt a safer space to allow my thoughts to wander where-ever they took me than here in Cyberspace.

I am now catching everyone up on what has been a unique and interesting period of my life. If there is one thing I can say it is that PhD studies, it is that creative writing and generally living in a twenty-first century world still seem highly incompatible.

I refer to the fact that I would consider myself as one of the most feminist women I know... yet the gender stereotype thing is so ingrained I cannot shake the usual female maladies.

You know the ones?

• Getting yourself between spouse/partner/ex and child to save male on male all out war zone (which others can screen out by not a BMD person susceptible to the slightest atmospheric changes and charges).
• Trying to absorb mood swings of adolescence/young adulthood, at the same time as dealing rationally with the frustrations of aging, hearing loss, hair loss, fragility and arrogance that "there is nothing wring with me, I can look after myself" after third return to kitchen from car, before driving off on short shopping/ medical trip. Hence increased anxiety (of the normal variety); my constant fear that in either mood neither males should be behind the wheel of a car, yet fearful of if they were at home, just how much worse life would be for me.
  
• Add to this my increasing less patient/pleasant dealings with so many debt collectors at the door and on the phone, plus filing all types of fiscally related legal documents gathered throughout a prolonged period of offspring deviant behaviour, whilst offspring still remains incapable of 'owning most' of the responsibility despite the fights of TOUGH LOVE! I still walk on eggshells fearing violence and prefer (for my own safety and sanity) the apathy, and avoidance through either laziness, ignorance, or reliance upon parent to fix... or simply a lack of development in the frontal brain cortex... Anyway, Mum does her best as if she were a 1950s prototype compliant little homebody.
• Did I really just confess that self-image?
  
• OMG... I can almost see myself in starched petticoats, full skirts, neatly hair-rollered and brushed out, complete with white frilly-pinny at picket fence... after having indulged in a afternoon sherry or two, a bex (or modern equivalent) and a 'good lie down' (Nanna nap thanks Barry Humphries!)
• Putting self last (especially indulging in the small pleasurable things that others see as being work-avoidance, or financially wasteful, or even malingering).
• Putting everybody's else's wellness/happiness/calmness/emotional stability first.
• Try getting a telephone message through when one householder is wearing noise reduction headphones and gaming solidly for the best part of forty-eight hours straight, attending class the next forty-eight, then golfing and sleeping the remainder of the week, whilst choosing cooking and house movement times between 2am and 6am!
• Add to this the older one takes the messages, doesn't write them down, or ignores the phone because a horse race is on. The' state of the art' phone having had the message listened to, then gives no audible hint that there is actually a 'saved' message. Thank goodness for email and txt or I would never hear from or about anybody.
• Finally add to this a tendency on the part of said BMD woman, to conflate global crises with local ones, mount political crusades against all forms of injustice and simply see significance everywhere others see none.I am tired and emotional, in the true sense of the phrase!
  

SOLUTION....time for a good long holiday.

But not for me the Peninsula Hot Springs and Massage, the Ella Bache full beauty regime, and the constant desire for copious good quality wines, champagne, new jewellery, shoes and clothes or the boxes upon boxes of Belgium dark chocolate... not even the wild manic rampant sexuality of full blown mania, my drugs and body image has shattered that little stress reliever.

No, it is sedate walks along Patterson Lakes with a good friend, a gallery visit or two, a Wheeler's Centre talk (free) but on DSP week to afford the train ticket, a wander through the Coolart Bird hide, and furtive out of control paperback book buying instead of paying pressing bills. (Even my meds can't seem to curtail that one). It's as if I am not alive unless I own and hold copies of women writers work from around the world. It's as if I am not truly a lover of literature and reading unless I at least accumulate a bedside stack for future indulgence.

My wellness regime... great. Let me just catch you up on that little saga. September, birthday month, Footy Grand Final and of course ageing, plus the inevitable plateau of weight loss on the lap band diet.... More exercise they cry.... more wine I crave... and a little cheese and bickies with that also... savoury of course.

Then comes Spring Racing Carnival.... no I didn't go or watch... but my dress size had gone up so even thinking of going to the Mornington Cup socially became a disaster in the clothes shops! Oh well let's just have a few more nightly 'non-nutritional fluids' and eat less real food just lots of Greek Yoghurt (good call that one... up goes weight further)....

DOWN SLIDES SELF ESTEEM.... straight to near-rock bottom depression at the very time I am supposed to be gearing up to return to study, whilst barely making ends meet on my own financial commitments (all of car, health insurance, funeral plan, home and car insurance.... you know all those little luxuries!).

Lifestyle tip for thinner people, it's cheaper to buy $2.99 bottles of Aldi wine than nutritious food! Bang there goes November and it's time for the usual Conference attendance that usually tilts my mood scales back upwards... but not this time... as there was no TAX REFUND TO SPEND GUILT FREE!

Despite the heaps of praise and encouragement and feeling accepted by coleagues from most Unis (except mine), I am drawn back to the world of the night people... in Wellington of all places! I told you about touching base with Richard O'Brien and my mind regressed to the exciting seventies in London, broke but happy and carefree (and most likely fully blown manic).
The theatre feels like home. I feel at home. I do not feel like an outsider or imposter as I do in the Uni... but unfortunately I must return home and face the accusations of money wasting, selfishness and malingering on my studies. the inner voice is screaming... just write the creative...get the novel finished, whilst the other voices are saying why bother, it's no fun anymore. I am not doing it for me anymore. I am doing it for a bloody bit of paper that for me might just prove useless in the current employment climate at my age.

Down and down I go... then wham!

Christmas in all it's dysfunctional glory. Why even try?

Because I have to stay out of a psychiatric ward as that would confirm negative professional opinion of my academic capabilities and personal lack of self determination. . Add to this tourist season, enforced hibernation and a mild case of agraphobia... well I held on with doctors propping me up despite a false accusation resounding in my ears.... "You know you always fall in a heap after Conferences"... implying that I am manic at Conferences, not simply stimulates and energetically charged with my mind in overdrive of thoughts and ideas... no I am thus abnormal, dysfunctional and downright certifiable. If this one voice only knew me when I was manic, the suggestion would not be thrown around in such a cavalier manner.

Luckily for me in February at the very end of a fraught beginning to the academic year along comes the timely onset of chronic and recurrent blood disorder, requiring medical attention, another hangover from an earlier era 'pernicious anaemia'... I assume it is similar to having a shorter bout of Chronic Fatigue Synnrome, one cannot even summon energy to do normal daily activity.

Beware the ides of March!

You see once you declare yourself publically as BP then watch out... do not be "too happy", or "too enthusiastic" as it could be concealing ideas of grandieur... yeah, sure get like Charlie Sheen don't I? Me with my Tiger Blood! Oh and don't get "too quiet or introverted"... that's not allowed either. One must not be sad for any reason (deaths, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, senseless road trauma.... you are NOT TO RESPOND TO THIS IN AN OUTWARD MANNER)

Can someone tell me how I measure the 'normal' emotions on an outside world scale?

Or can I only measure it on my own scale?

My own scale says time off, more yoga, more excercise, positive diet, alcohol cut down (severely), more art classes and more serene walks.

Bugger PhD timelines... I need to re-discover the joy of surviving to the age of 55 with BMD and enjoying who I am, warts and all. So F*** you world.

This time of year is mine, poverty or not... there's more to life than just getting by.