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Personal stuff under the cut, feel free to skip.

Ahhh well, I lasted alright keeping this as a mostly fandom space with a smidge of social justice thrown in before I got my feelings out, I did two (three?) months. Not even saying much here tbh but I feel shit, a lot of my friends are having hard times at the moment too so I am unburdening to a void that can't be burdened.

November is always my shittest month of the year, unless something quite dreadful happens at another time. The seasonal affective disorder has really kicked in by now, changing seasons and temperatures make my pain worse, and as much as I love Christmas it is a financially stressful time of year, even more so than normal which isn't that financially great anyway. Then we're coming to the end of the year, time to reflect on all the things I wanted to do and didn't or couldn't. It's just all very gloomy and the depression cloud is sitting heavy on me.

I'm trying really hard to let myself feel my feelings, not to only run from them or numb them. But being present in my body is fucking hard when my whole body hurts like a bitch. I am so tired of pain. There was a girl at school who always ragged on that Anastasia song that went "I'm sick and tired of always being sick and tired," and omg I have wanted to punch her stupid face for like 18 years over it (the girl, not Anastasia) because good for fucking you that you don't understand how that feels but for some of us that is the most succinct way of explaining our whole lives and yes it's a bit glib but I really am sick and tired of being sick and tired so jog the fuck on, twat.

Aaaaand this is why I needed the space to write and vent because now I see I'm angry and that's why I'm in such a funk because I have massive anger blindness I don't realise I'm feeling it until I can't function any more. I really hope I can afford therapy again soon.

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just when i thought i'd watched every frame of this bloody scene and noticed everything that was there to notice -

im putting this as a video because shitty gif quality will not do this justice at all. so aziraphale starts hovering his hands over crowley's back, right? and then as the cut occurs he actually places them on him? well, my dudes, ive slowed it down, and-

in between, crowley gives the tiniest nod. now, this could just be a small micro-movement on dt's part (and honestly? can't blame him, smashing your whole face against someone else's in a demon's vague approximation of a snog probably would mean any actor needs to regain purchase, right)

but im choosing to believe this was a crowley-ism, an acting/narrative choice; that crowley gave aziraphale permission.

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it's okay if you get confused easily. it's okay if you forget things easily. it's okay if you lose track during conversation easily. it's okay if you have to ask for clarification often. it's okay if you struggle to parse information or sensory unit. you're not "playing dumb" or "doing it on purpose". it's okay to be disabled, some people just refuse to be accommodating.

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หย็องแหย็งแมน

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The thing that pisses me off the most is that even if covid WAS over, disabled people still fucking exist and deserve to participate in things. The brief period of time in which everyone was doing virtual and hybrid events, people could work from home, social events were actually accessible...all it did was show that we could be doing these things, and just don't fucking care.

Hybrid events should be the STANDARD. Including people who can't leave their houses should be the STANDARD. Some basic fucking consideration for the disabled should be the STANDARD.

And it's just. Not.

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Hozier coded

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I seem to be on my laptop before bed most night lately, and I keep forgetting to do my journal, so I’m gonna try out keeping it here. It really was useful, so I want this to be my new month’s resoution.

Tues 1st March

Achievements

getting up rather than going back to sleep

bringing my tesco shop upstairs (whyyyy, two floors up?!)

sorting out my cupboard

making ginger cubes

descaling the kettle

reading an article

collecting my mail

ordering paper and ink

cooking dinner

Gratitude

Jack helping me with one of my boxes into the kitchen

Hannah giving me benadryl

lovely Mr Tesco Man

a nice conversation over dinner

being out may be a continual process, but making the words “I’m gay” come out of my mouth gets easier :)

Low mood: 6 High mood: 8

Goals for tomorrow:

attend seminar and participate

go into town

do some washing

washing up from today

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I’m writing this for @lazarusgirl - putting it on this side blog partly because I doubt many of my followers will be interested, and partly because it’ll likely end up being feelingsy, which is what this one is about.

The task was to write about what Rae / My Mad Fat Diary means to me. I’ll preface this by saying I’ve actually not watched MMFD in a while, although that itself is a side effect of how deeply it affected me. My mental health, while doing better in the last two or three months, has been in a pretty bad place for over a year, and when I’m in those bad places, watching stuff that I identify with too much is not good for me. And I really do identify with Rae, in so many ways.

When the series was announced, I remember being kinda blown away that there was going to be a ‘me’ on the screen, I’d never had that before. The fat girls I’d seen (all two of them) were either the “bubbly!” stereotype, or desexualised and kinda dehumanised, actually. Either way, their fatness was not a feature of their personality, although it could be used as a reason for ridicule by others. And yet here was this girl for whom fatness played a large role in her life, and it was a negative role, and the results on her wellbeing had been pretty much the same as mine. The internet is full of testaments to the importance of representation, and I’ve not yet found one that adequately explains how much it meant to me that Rae existed. I guess it’s validation, but times that by a hundred.

When the series actually started, I found it a wonderful, but sometimes hard watch. The problem with identifying so hard with a character is that you feel all their pains harder too, and when Rae was in dark places, I was there with her. Thinking about it, watching that first series was sometimes not the healthiest decision, but at the same time, seeing someone feel the things I’d felt was like someone coming along, shining a torch in the bottom of that black pit in my stomach where depression lives, and going “other people feel this too.” Which of course, on some abstract level I always knew, but to have it there in front of me, sometimes rather viscerally, was affirming. I remember also hoping that people I loved might watch it and find out how I felt without me having to explain. I’m still not entirely sure if any of them actually did, but the thought that they might have, seems almost enough.

The other main way in which MMFD has influenced me is the fact that it shows hope for positivity. I’ve not always been convinced by the timelines along which Rae gets better (although the very real and utterly heartbreaking loss of Tix roots the show in real life mental health care that I do believe in), but the fact that she was lovable to someone, and I BELIEVED that, was again a bit of an eye-opener and gave me a real pause for thought. I’ve not been in a relationship since I gained weight due to ill health, and one of the reasons for that is because I find it so hard to see myself as desirable, but Finn desired Rae. So maaaybe someone might want me some day? I can’t describe it as a magic cure all, I still have big doubts in that area, but as a pioneer of showing someone fat as a rounded character, with faults but plenty of great things about her too, as romantically and physically desirable - well, I’m not sure I’ve seen it on TV since then, either, so it means a huge deal. 

I could go on - I could write a whole book about my feelings about Tix! I love how Rae learnt to do fun stuff “in spite of” being fat, which is a lesson I am still slowly learning myself. I love how illuminating her discussion about eating salad versus eating junk food as a fat person means you can never win, and how wonderful an example that is in intersectional feminist discourse. I love that it humanised counsellors, because I had had a terrible experience with a near-automaton counsellor before and it gave me some faith that maybe they weren’t all like that. (I’ve since gone on to have three counsellors, all of whom have been better than my first). But I think it basically comes back to the fact that Rae is the most relatable character I have ever seen, she feels the most like me, which gives comfort in bad times and hope for good ones. I am so grateful to the real Rae, and to the fictional one, for sharing their stories.

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I’m so sad tonight. And today. My overwhelming thought today has been “maybe I’m just not cut out for being alive”. That’s such a passive thought and yet it’s still stirring up so much in me. It’s like lowkey suicidal I guess. Which is not to say I’m gonna kill myself, or even want to kill myself, but I’m not convinced that life is particularly giving me much. That makes me sound ungrateful; of course, I love my friends and all of those things that make everyone happy. But the day-to-day stuff of being alive, needing to feed yourself and go out and interact with other people and stay awake for 16 hours, doing tasks... I don’t seem to be able to hack it. Whenever I’m left to my own devices in recent years, I go to shit. I don’t know if it’s just laziness, it feels a lot like it sometimes. God I hate myself. I really do today. I hadn’t properly hated myself in a while, and not even a week back at uni and here we are again. 

It’s not like I’ve not been trying either. I did two readings today, which is a big deal for me. I attended both my lectures yesterday and even asked a question in each one. I’m trying hard to remember stuff from counselling, and to stick to my New Year’s Resolution of “always be kind to myself”, but I’m still so sad. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that I should try so hard and still feel like this. It makes me wonder what’s the point in trying? If I try and I still feel sad and hopeless and like there’s an aching gap in me, why not just get back under the duvet and stay there? 

I did a thing in counselling where I had to talk back to mean Amy. That’s something I haven’t tried yet.

Mean Amy: You are shit. Your flatmates think you’re boring. H thinks you’re fat and unhealthy and disgusting. You can try all you like but you’re never going to have a normal life. You’re never going to be happy. You can pretend you’ll be glad with a 2:1 but you know you won’t. Look at you, acting like you’re on top of everything now, of course you’re not. You’re just as hopeless as before, but you’ve painted a shiny veneer on it and are pretending. See how long that lasts you. Why do you bother? Why do you bother with anything? Other people do nice things for you and you don’t even appreciate it. What are you going to do when mum’s dinners run out and you really do have a bad day? What then? You should feel ashamed of yourself. You’re lazy. You think you’re trying but you’re not. 

Actual Amy: Well you know what, you just made me cry, a lot. In fact just typing the word “cry” then has made me well up again. So I might not read back and reply to everything you just said. But let’s just start with the fact that anyone who can make me cry that much is so very, very cruel. You live in the same head as me, and you should know that around here, we do compassion. Even for people who are hard to be compassionate towards, like certain family members who do hurtful things. I’m not saying that you have to get in line with that immediately, I know it’s hard for you, but it’s okay to be a bit nicer to me, okay? Honestly, in terms of trying and its usefulness, I’m having a bit of a tough time with that one myself at the moment, but I haven’t always. Trying HAS brought good consequences before, and it has also been hard before.  Maybe trying is harder at the moment because we’re facing a lot of new challenges at once? Also, our skills we learnt at counselling were quite tailored towards studying, and not general living life, weren’t they? So if I don’t have the skills for, or the practice of, going to the shops yet, that’s okay, it’s another thing I can learn. Because when you look at the studying bit, that really is going better.  As for all this stuff about me being a terrible person who doesn’t appreciate other people, that’s not true. I know we’re meant to find a middle ground between us here, but sorry, with that one, it is just patently not. true. And even if I had used mum’s meals out of laziness, that’s not the worst crime and doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them. I do, I really do. They’ve given me comfort and meant on days when I’m still anxious about being around new people, I’ve had a way to prepare good food quickly. Mum would be happy with that. You need to be nicer to me.

...

I feel a bit calmer now. My chest feels less tight and heavy, and I feel like I might be able to sleep eventually. I have a 9am seminar tomorrow, that’ll be fun to wake up for! Good grief, this depression lark is no fun, no fun at all.

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What the fuck, brain? Why am I so sad tonight? 

Possible reasons:

I came across an unexpected SI trigger earlier. I haven’t had that in ages and this is intense and won’t go.

Sometimes I just cannot deal with how different to me my mum is. Today is one of those days. 

Following on from that, I’m so worried about my Dips when I go back to uni. First because he gets so anxious when people are missing from the house, and what if he thinks I’ve abandoned him, or his dementia gets worse and he forgets me? And second because mum and dad are so quick to get frustrated with him and I hate it. He is old and confused, can’t see or hear, he needs patience. It seems like they only like him when he’s convenient. I know they love him to pieces, but as for actually wanting him there unconditionally, that’s very much my place these days, and I’m scared of how he’ll feel and how his dementia will progress without that.

I hate living in such a passive aggressive household where no one communicates and it feels like everyone hates each other (read: mum and dad hate each other) without ever saying anything or dealing with it. It is too tense and negative and draining for me.

it’s a body-hate day. 

I’ve not been very productive.

Not used my SAD lamp in a while.

Not left the house / exercised.

I’ve got out the habit of keeping my mood journal.

I’ve been in pain for two days, and my tummy’s felt icky for a week. I’m tired and drained and fed up of feeling ill.

I downloaded all the readings for one of my dissertation modules earlier, and there is so much. I’m a slow reader. The lecturer scares me (but I wanna do this topic SO BADLY) and on the course page she’s got this thing about how you should have read ALL the primary and SOME of the secondary readings and be able to DISCUSS them. She says to work 14 hours a week outside lectures which is definitely reasonable, but there’s no way I can do all that work in that sort of time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, if I’m studying wrong or just really thick and take ages to understand? But I am scared, and I’m scared of failing again, and I’m scared of hitting bad lows again. 

I’m scared that I’m feeling this way and have no counselling appointment lined up. Most of my coping strategies related to work, and although I can tweak them, I’m just scared. I feel overwhelmed right now.

I spent £50 on a thing that really wasn’t worth £50 the other day because I really really wanted it and my loan had come in, but now I feel guilty and stupid.

The loudest thought in my brain tonight is “I HATE MYSELF” and I’m sad because I’d come on from that and it is such a horrible, exhausting, depressing thing to think.

Okay brain, that lot seems a legit reason to be so sad tonight. Could we maybe be doing better in the morning though? This feeling sucks and I want to cry.

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A New Year’s Post

I can’t remember if I did a post for New Year last year. Last year was an odd one because 2014 had been so shit (losing my Nan being the main thing, but there was plenty else too) so it was good to get it over with, but I was in a big old depression hole. The year before that I remember being angry at new year because everyone was acting like it was good and for me it was a reminder of how little I’d achieved and how life was long and hard. I can’t remember a new year’s eve I’ve liked, really. But I just wrote in my achievements and gratitude journal, as I have been doing almost every night for the last two months or so, and I wrote the sentence,

“I am grateful to experience a New Year’s Eve that doesn’t feel terrifying or bad.”

Okay, I know we’re not exactly at party poppers and champagne, but this is big for me. Especially as yesterday was a really dark day, the kind of day that would drag itself to throw shadows over the next week or weeks until I’d been in bed for three days straight, had this been this time last year. I feel much more peaceful at the moment. In part I think that’s due to counselling, and in part, because of the general place I’m at in life at the moment. I’m honest about my mental illnesses, or as honest as I can be, and people have been supportive. For the first time in my life I’m not pretending things are okay when they’re not. Some days that still feels like self-indulgence, but I’m learning my way out of that. I’m learning my way out of lots of unhelpful ideas! I feel like I have ways to combat the darkness and to climb back out now, whereas I didn’t before. And that makes the darkness less scary. It’s still fucking shit, but it doesn’t feel quite so powerful at pulling me under any more. It’s nice.

I’m still not in a place to make New Year’s resolutions, really. Letting myself down can still be too big a trigger to go backwards and I don’t need that kind of burden yet. But, there is one resolution I can make where that won’t be a problem: I will always be kind to myself. That is one of the best things I’ve learnt through counselling. Perhaps not the most complicated or the hardest to get to, but in terms of setting myself back on a more-okay path when my mood wavers, checking in with “am I being kind to me at the moment?” is a lifesaver. Of course, it’s advice we see on Tumblr, and I’m sure I’ve said to people many times, “please be kind to yourself!”, but I feel like I have actually internalised it and believe that it’s okay to be kind to me now. It’s pretty beautiful (and I know I sound like a pretentious twat saying that about my own emotions, but it’s true), I have spent my whole life being kind to other people - or at least trying my best to - and now I’m giving it back to myself. And now I’ve been hit by a wave of happy tears :) I know I’m still a long way off from loving myself, but just allowing myself kindness is pretty marvellous.

Here’s to 2016. (Or, to those who also dislike new year like I tend to, here’s to everyone stopping banging on about New Year - it’ll happen soon enough!)

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Today was such a beautiful day with my little cousins, I am so honoured to have them in my life. They make everything feel so much better and they make me smile so much. I love them with everything I have. I’m gonna bullet point my favourite things from today so I don’t forget them :) (Names changed to letters because privacy; one of them has a name that starts with I, which just looks like I’m saying I-as-in-me, so I’ll do I*)

E loved her birthday cake! I spent about 15 hours on it yesterday, and maybe another 3 hours on Friday and today, so there was a LOT of work that went into it, but she was so thrilled. Her little face when she first saw it was almost like, “I can’t comprehend how this is cake”, it was lovely. She said thank you about 5 times through the day and I got several big squeezy hugs :D

I had my first conversation with I* today! Her words have come on so much since I saw her for Halloween, and she has learnt my name!! :D She got my mum’s ages ago, and honestly I felt a bit sad that she didn’t know me, but today she was ordering me about like nobody’s business :D There is something really special about a child knowing your name when their vocabulary is still so limited. It’s like “you are important enough to be among the small amount of sounds I know at the moment”, it’s lovely.

We played hide and seek! This was one of I*’s favourite instructions for me: “Amy! Hi and sik!” E got involved too and we had great fun. I* was particularly adorable in that, when she ran out of ideas for hiding places, she just went and hid where we had hid on the last round :P

E followed me round a lot today, I felt very special :D She showed me a video game and drew me pictures and put me in her “best friends book” that she got for her birthday. I was allowed to use her purple gel pen to write with too, and if you know nine year olds, you know that is an honour. (Very amusingly, the book was like a little survey of “revealing” questions, and one of them was “have you kissed anyone?”. I said yes, and she said “yeah, like your mum or dad or something.” Not in the judgemental, mocking way that an adult would say that sentence, but just completely innocently and like those kind of kisses are just as important as romantic ones. She’s an awesome kid, and with my grown-up glasses on, it was really funny).

M getting utter, pure joy from performing his “magic trick”. My auntie has an electric candle decoration thingy, and it has an in-line on/off switch, M does a trick where he blows on the candles and they come on, and he blows on them and they go out, with the switch (not always discretely :P) behind his back. He let everyone in the room try, and me, my auntie, his two sisters, even the Santa on the wall could do the trick, but my Mum couldn’t - ie. he just didn’t press the switch on Mum’s go XD It was so funny, he was literally rolling on the floor laughing at one point! 

M also came and sat on me with his blanket for a cuddle. This is so rare, I can’t tell you. It’s only recently he’s started giving me hugs when we say hello or goodbye, so to get a proper snuggle, just because he wanted to snuggle with me, melted my heart quite a bit. Again: honoured <3

M also got a certificate in school last week for improving his confidence in class. I am so proud of him and it makes me so happy because school can be tricky when you’re shy. His teacher says he’s come on leaps and bounds since September. That’s my little hero :D

Perhaps most strikingly of all, E learnt how to do a special type of poem at school last week (I’d never heard of it, what are they teaching kids these days?! :P) and she wrote one about me.

Amy Fun, smiles, happy, Playing with Amy She is really funny I love Amy my cousin.

TALK ABOUT BLOODY MELTED HEART. How much she loves me and how much she thinks just good things about me is honestly overwhelming. I honestly don’t have favourites of my little cousins, I adore them all and love their different quirks and traits, but E is special to me because since she was born, when things are really bad for me, she is one of my reasons to stay alive. In sixth form, I had her picture glued on my diary and I looked at her to keep me going. She has helped me grow so, so much, in terms of how I can relate to children, but also in terms of letting myself go, being open to being silly and looking silly, and not judging myself to harshly, So to see through her eyes, a little glimpse at what she sees when she looks at me, and how stark a contrast it is to what I see when I look at me... I’m not sure there are words for it, really.

I love you, my little darlings. Thank you for making the world so much nicer :)

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The best way to finish an unpleasant task is to get started.

Unknown (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

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I really really don’t want to do my work today, so I’m gonna try and work through it to get myself in a better frame of mind here. Okay.

Reasons I don’t want to work:

it was hard and frustrating to not get everything yesterday

I made very slow progress yesterday

my room is really cold and I wanna be in bed

I am tired and wanna be in bed

Ways round these things:

Yes it was hard and frustrating yesterday, but on Tuesday it was fairly plain sailing on the same article. Perhaps yesterday was an off day and today will be easier again.

Maybe I won’t get everything today either, but it’s better to get something, than the nothing at all I’ll get from not working

Finding it frustrating means you’re coming to terms with really complex issues. Go me for being able to do anything with tricky things!

Slow progress is better than no progress.

My progress will be even slower if I don’t work today - I’ll be delaying moving on to my next topic

Be kind to myself. Going slowly is okay, and not understanding is okay. Even If I understand nothing more of this article I have understood quite a lot of it so far and I can work with that.

The heating is coming on.

Get a hot cup of tea.

Bring my blanket upstairs.

I’m less tired than I was earlier. I definitely have some ability to focus at the moment.

If I get to the point of not being able to keep my eyes open any more or complete brain fog, I am going to allow myself a nap. I will not have to make myself do work if I physically can’t.

Siiigh. I know all these things are true but I still don’t feel like it. What am I scared of here? I’m scared that I can’t do it, and if I can’t do this, how the hell am I going to finish my revision for exams? And if I can’t do it now, what happens when I go back for the new term? I feel scared, helpless, stuck, overwhelmed and guilty. So, if the practical considerations don’t feel helpful to getting work done, we need to work on the underlying bit.

For being scared, let’s look at the worst case scenario. My head is saying it’s that I completely fail my exams and don’t graduate uni and am left with thousands of pounds of debt and no job prospects. I see what you’re doing there, brain. I understand you’re worried about all of those things as well as this bit of work, but is it really realistic that six or so pages of an article are going to make or break your degree? What’s more, you’ve already read them and taken some of it in, so there’s even less riding on it. What you need to do now is some notes. Not the best, grandest, most thorough notes ever. You’re not writing an essay. Just get the ideas down as something to look back over.

Helpless, well, that’s a slightly silly one. Look at you, you’re helping yourself now! You know there are strategies to help these feelings, and you are trying them. Maybe they don’t make things instantly feel good, but that’s okay. Remember how it’s practice that reinforces them all?

Okay, so now your heart’s started being a dick and pumping like it’s having a rave up in your chest. First, propranolol, because you’re late taking it. Second, just sit with it. It’s not dangerous, it’s just uncomfortable. Don’t let it lure you into a whole panic attack, it ain’t as special as it likes to think it is. It can do its thing while you do yours, that’s okay. (...and would you looky at that, it’s calmer already.)

Maybe helpless felt more like vulnerable. Vulnerable to what? Probably all these spinny thoughts and the feelings that keep me from doing stuff. I feel vulnerable to my anxiety still. It’s like I’ve come out of a battle, had time to rebuild my armour, but it’s not patched up yet and there are still holes that if the enemy just realises where they are, they can attack and royally fuck me up again. I’m scared of mental illness creeping back in to my life, so so scared of that. So maybe that’s something we need to bring up with a counsellor, whether current or new when I go back to uni. It’s okay to be scared of that. And if I’m scared of that and feel vulnerable to it, it makes a lot of sense that struggling with work a little feels very big and overwhelming as it has very much overwhelmed me before. But this isn’t last time, I have many more tools for dealing with things now. My armour might not be complete, but I’m not out in a field naked with a headdress that says “shoot me” any more. I can work on it, but in the mean time, I am more capable than ever. I can try, and I can also stop if it gets too much. There is no pressure. I am more important than my grades. I am more important than my grades.

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Week 10 Goals

do one mindfulness exercise a day

be honest when I see the nurse on Thursday

get as much revision in as possible despite a busy week (“as much as possible” isn’t exactly an easy goal to measure up to, but self, you know you’ll know when you could be doing more. Don’t finish the week with that feeling, look at how good getting through this Grice stuff has made you feel!)

write in my diary every day

enjoy my time out with friends and whistlestop trip to Brighton and do my best to avoid guilt about non-revision time

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It has taken me a long time to even start to consider that my life matters; that I am ‘good enough’; and that I am worth fighting for. But I am slowly getting there;  I am learning; I am a work in progress; and that’s okay.

 (via letsrediscoverkitty)