sidisgettingbetter-blog1

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

Gym Ratz

 - or How I stopped hating my body for existing and learned to love it for what it was.

CW super intricate and detailed body talk/emesis/self esteem/sui ideation/diet/disordered eating/self harm/exercise/gender and body dysmorphia

When I think back to the first time I was uncomfortably aware of possessing a body, I think back to my third birthday. I was wearing a black and white tartan dress with a white polo neck underneath. I looked cute as hell, and I knew everyone was about to arrive. An influx of guests; the attention was all on me. And as my gaggle of relos rang the bell outside the house, the pressure of having to perform literally cascaded out of my mouth and onto the antique floorboards of the intersection in the main walkway. It was awkward af to say the least.

How does this relate to me now? Well, it’s just over six months ago now since I started dating someone who goes to the gym. Like, a lot. And I’m not talking about someone who just goes on weekend nights to get a pump on ~4 da CHIX~ at 8pm, I’m talking him and his brother actually going in and taking care of themselves in a mildly-moderately ritualistic fashion on an almost daily basis. At first I was as accepting of their bizarre habits as a kind of curio. I would make light of them heading off to the gym - which they never pressured me to join them in, mind you - by talking about what a great personal trainer i would be. “I could sit outside right up at the windows,” I said, “and shout motivational quotes from Gwyneth Paltrow whilst I punch a dart”. And we would all laugh.

Backtrack quickly to a moment around four to five months ago when I was being dropped off after work by a cabbie about a three minute walk from my house with plenty of sideways which I know like the back of my hand through furious location scouting through the day. If you give me a point to disappear along this road, I will have lost you in 13.65 seconds. Stat. I paid him and started to march toward that place when less than 30 seconds later I saw a cab out of the corner of my eye slowing down. I kept my walking constant, I didn’t want him to know I was afraid. He definitely wasn’t the same cabbie. He asked me if I needed a ride home and I said no. He asked if I had a boyfriend and I said yes (lie, I was living with my girlfriend]. I then played classic me and told him to fuck off. He then got out of his cab, a stream of very rape-focused obscenities proceeded and we were face-to-face. I had dropped my bag. I was ready. I double jab-crossed the guy out of necessity. I didn’t want to do it. I missed his nose (on purpose, I didn’t want a law suit) and he very swiftly departed in his car. How did I feel the confidence to do this? I finally had caved and gotten a personal training session less that two weeks before this altercation happened. I wasn’t physically stronger than this man, but I did have the bravado to back these tiny punches up.

A few weeks and a lot of deep breathing went by and I ended up asking my partner if I could go to gym with him. I’m not gonna lie, he was pretty excited. He asked what I wanted to achieve out of going to the gym. I think he was pleasantly surprised with my emphasis on weights and strength training. I wanted to get bigger, not smaller. I wasn’t after a trim and toned ”summer body” (though there’s nothing wrong with that), I just wanted to be strong and bigger than I was before. A bunch of femme body ideals revolve around the idea of us taking up less space, or only taking up more space in highly sexualised areas for men’s pleasure (ie. boobs and booty gains). I’m not interested in that. I’m 5’10”, a height which means that a lot of clients will outright tell me that “you’re not my type” because they already find me too imposing. I’m not interested in taking up less space on any level, especially not corporeally. So I started going to the gym.

It’s been about two months now. At first I was petrified. I was afraid people would laugh at me, or that I’d look like a fool. In high school our classes were segregated and they boys’ class used to stop practice to laugh at me specifically, so I had that in the back of my mind the whole time. I was on the verge of tears my whole first session. No-one made fun of me; they were all concentrating on themselves. But still, I was petrified as being thought of as weak. And to be honest, I still am. I tripled my lat pulldown from 20lb to 60lb in two and a half months which i’m told is insane. At the end of the day, if you can truly own a weight with impeccable form (what I strive for) rather than literally and figuratively jerk off a weight you can’t handle, you’re doing better than the other guy. One of the things I truly love about lifting is that you’re competing against yourself. Only you can know what you have and haven’t done. I’m competing with (not against) my mind. My wonderful, beautiful, complex mind. It’s ritualistic. It’s calming. It’s very special to me.

One of the most startling things to me about getting strong is how it has shaped my body. A few months ago I lost my binder at my partner’s place. I had to learn to deal with having boobs outside of work again. Working out, more specifically chest day, made my boobs get bigger and perkier. Surprisingly I didn’t hate this as much as I thought I would. Boobs aren’t a marker of femininity by necessity. My femme-ness is now basically impossible to hide, but so is my strength and the two are impossibly intertwined.

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

“Everyone dies.”

My uncle, who is also my Godfather, said that to me on my very first trip to the UK.

Everyone dies.

It’s part of a Buddhist principle that I don’t have a full grasp on so I won’t attempt to explain it to you, but it’s supposed to be a principle that comforts rather than one that unsettles. It’s definite. You’re life is finite. It’s basically the Buddhist version of YOLO.

My ex, upon meeting my uncle (and in a positive way mind you), described him as “an ageing Beastie Boy. Like, he’s had his fun and his fair share of wild times but now he’s found spirituality and family and now he’s come back down to earth. Now he’s almost ascended again but on a different plane”. For all his faults, my ex did have a way with words.

But it is true. Everybody dies. Everything dies. Some via old age. Some via accident. Some via violence, or by our own hand, which in my opinion go hand in hand (though others feel differently, and that is okay too). At my church we pray each day for “those who have died in the night, particularly those who have died suddenly, or through violence, or by their own hand”. I know from experience that all three of these can be wrapped up into one occurrence. And on today, the dawning of this fourth day of Lent, I give thanks for still being here. For living through twenty five and a half years of what haven’t been the easiest life, but not the worst by a stretch. I give thanks for still kicking on and celebrating the wonderful relationships that I do have - romantic, platonic and familial. And I give thanks for those around me.

It’s not a well-known thing but it’s a common thing to take something up for Lent, as well as to give something up (I’m trying to be less judgmental/less of a bitchy homo. Let’s see how we go, I’ll do my best). This year I’m taking up, on top of a daily reading of the scriptures, to once a day, regardless of denomination, or lack thereof, to listen to a person’s problem and give my honest advice. I’m not an expert in anything (other than running away from my problems but ignore that) but I’ve been told I’m a good advice giver and that shall be my giving of alms for the forty days.

This has been short (for once) and sweet (like you) and I hope to hear from you soon.

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

A very important announcement.

[NB THIS WAS WRITTEN ON VALENTINES DAY THEN I HAD TO GO TO WORK]

Okay so I’m running late for work (As per usual. Another perk of my workplace: if I’m an hour over which start time I suggested and I’m not there I get a text asking if I’m coming in tonight. They’re not mad, they’re just checking in so if a regular rings up asking if I’ll be coming in they can give a solid answer as to whether I will be there. One of the beauties of this job is that it’s super flexible. If I texted in saying “not working tonight, see you Thursday” the manager would reply with “no worries babe, see you Thursday xx”. Also the one and only time I no-showed for a shift it was because I was in hospital for a suicide attempt so everyone freaks out if I’m more than an hour late because they think I’m dead. (See? Some people do actually care about sex workers!) But today is Valentines Day and my main objective for the day (apart from making awful men cry and lament why their wives left them whilst admitting to being abusive, sexually inadequate, bad fathers and all around shit people) is to love myself.

So here we go.

My name is Sid. I’m a queer trans alcoholic sex worker and I am learning to love myself. Slowly but surely.

I’ve mentioned multiple times on my fb and my blog that I identify as genderfluid in slightly more abstract ways than outright saying it. I am comfortable with being called Lil or Lils and being called those names 100%. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. Lily is a stretch. It’s a gorgeous name and I love it but I just don't think it’s me anymore. But Sid is my fave. “Lils” came about from a (hospo) boss of mine who could identify my anxiety and just wanted to make me feel more relaxed about my working environment. He just wanted to make me feel familiar and more like one of the family but he kicked off a whole new nickname. That is a special thing

While there I went back to sex work after a year-long sabbatical on a 1-2 day basis under my current work name. Then I took a break (Spring racing and the Grand Final is hectic is hectic af, wouldn’t recommend for newbies/those diving back in) then went to come back under my original work name.

“Sorry, that name is taken by someone else now. Pick another?”

The first thing that popped into my head was that game you play where it’s like “LOL THE NAME OF YOUR FIRST PET + THE NAME OF THE STREET YOU GREW UP ON = YR HOOKER NAME”

I grew up with a black cat with one eye with a white mark on his back. His name was Sidney because ‘To Sir with Love’ was my mum’s favourite film and Sidney Poitier starred in it and he was her favourite actor. Growing up in a town with a higher whiteness score than my ATAR (ie very high) left me very sheltered so showing me films like this give me a slightly more panoramic view of the real world. His eye had been removed because the vet was like “there’s a grass seed in there! You have to remove it!” Then when he came out of surgery the vet was like ”… so there was no grass seed, he’s just been fighting dude cats but he’s on antibiotics now and he’s missing an eye. But you still have a cute cat right?”

And so I grew up with two cats; Sidney with one eye and a white patch on his back from where he used to go and get into scrapes with other toms and one of them scratched him down to the point where he couldn’t produce melanin in that part of his skin anymore and that’s why his hair was white there. He was tough. He was scrappy. He fought with teeth and skin. He was a badass dude. (The other was Amelia: a rescue kitten who almost died of cat flu as a youngun but lived to the ripe old age of 19.5 and died once her bladder filled up with cancer. They were good mates and I remember even at the tender age of seven feeling sorry for Amelia that she had lost her friend. Bless both of their souls.)

Anyway, so anyone who has been on the internet in the past 15 years has come across the whole “lol what’s ya pornstar name?? Your first pet + the street you grew up on! Comment below LOLZ” phenomenon. I went to go back to my old brothel and they were like “someone else works under that name now, you need to pick another”. My first pet was Sidney and the first street I grew up on also happened to be the surname of the dude I was seeing very seriously when I started working full service so I rocked up with my medical certificate and was like “You can call me Sid”, and so it stuck. Of course I was femme’d up to the nines but having a name as androgynous as Sid made me feel amazing. I was wearing lingerie and giant heels and a super long wig but I still had this weird feeling of “Hey, Sid is my name. This is it!”. Then I left that job and the name “Sid” just stuck in my head. I couldn’t be Sid in a work capacity anymore. Partially for safety reasons that I won’t go into, partially because I loved people calling me Sid in general.

So TLDR: you can still call me Lil or Lils if you want. Again, I love the name Lily and I appreciate the fact that I was given such a beautiful name at birth by my parents. You can call me that at a stretch, or just chat to me privately. I have both a phone AND the internet (again, how cool is Brunswick??) It’s just not me anymore. Or maybe just not right now. Who knows? Gender, sexuality and time are all made-up constructs. That doesn’t make them invalid, it just makes them fluid and changeable. Why does something have to be solid and immoveable to make it real? If your partner what they want for dinner tonight and they say “idk, just not chicken” does that mean they hate chicken from now till the day they die? NO. IT DOESN’T. (also if you’re cooking for your partner and they’re pouting about what you’re cooking it may be time to dump them. Just sayin’.)

So please, when in doubt please call me Sid. Lil and Lils are A.O.K too. I wanted to change my name on fb to just “Sid” but I’ve had to change it so many times due to not wanting my legal name on Facebook and people reporting me for having a “fake” name so many times that I can’t change it anymore. If someone reports my name one more time I’m going to have to make a whole new fb. How cool are transphobic trolls (also as a sex worker having your full legal name on fb is scary as fuck, so make that wh*rephobic trolls too), hey?

But THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST

are you ready??

MY PRONOUNS, UNLESS I AM ON THE FLOOR AT WORK TALKING TO CLIENTS, ARE THEY/THEM. ZERO EXCEPTIONS (except for some people I will speak to, mostly partners about their families).

I’ve been going at this in a gentle way for almost two years now but I’m done. Call me Sid. Call me Lily. Call Me Lil. Call Me Lils. But do not use she/her pronouns for me.

I get that for people who have known me a long time as she/her or who aren’t integrated into the queer/trans community will struggle with this. I don’t expect you to flick a switch and just miraculously pick it up overnight (at the same time don’t be one of those people who gets my pronouns wrong once and goes into a total tailspin like “OH MY GOD I SAID SHE PLEASE FORGIVE ME PLEASE DON’T SEND ME TO ALLY HELL I’M THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD I BEG FOR YOUR PENANCE PLEASE COMFORT ME”. For once in your life this isn’t about you. I will gently but firmly correct you every time you misgender me. But for the love of God please don’t make this about how hard I have madelife for you. And if you think the singular “they/them” pronoun is made up, then it;s time for a history lesson.

So is the rest of the English language. And every other language for that matter. That’s how languages originate and evolve. Shakespeare loved a good singular “they/them” as well as a good “made up” turn of phrase so unless you know a person named Jessica who you don’t neg for having a “made-up” name stfu (yes, Shakespeare straight-up made up the name Jessica. Google it) and if you’re gonna fight every person you know named Jessica then please call me so I can at least come and back up all those Jessicas with the skills I learned in that one 3/4 basic bitch ultra-beginner Muay Thai class last week (I only did 3/4 because the instructor recognised that I had zero stamina, coordination or balance and was going to cry, vomit or both simultaneously so he let me off easy. He did acknowledge that I have excellent reach due to my gorilla arms and when I land a hit properly it’s pretty intense considering how small I am. That’s because I am full of rage at shit like this and white cishet men in general.) So basically I can double-jab-cross you without breaking my knuckles and then I will rage cry till you run away.

TLDR:

My name is Sid. Or Lil. Or Lils. Or Lily. But preferably Sid. If you can re-name a pet that you’ve adopted you can rename me. It’s honestly not that hard.

Unless I am in a situation where I absolutely cannot be gendered correctly, i.e. at work, going through airport security, doing my taxes, at church or in the presence of someone’s heavily conservative family my pronouns are ALWAYS they/them. Always. If there are other extenuating circumstances text or message me because I hate to make other people feel uncomfortable, especially when it comes to people’s family circumstances, but at the same time I’ve spent a quarter of a century living in discomfort in various facets of my life/existence (not just gender and sexuality stuff) so other people didn’t have to and I’m just exhausted. Just please do this one thing for me. Please. I’m even going to include an educational video here for those who haven’t heard of non-binary pronouns before and how you are actually already using them in everyday life without realising.

If you’ve made it this far thank you for reading please just know this:

My name is Sid.

I am Genderfluid (google it. I can write a post if you want me to).

My pronouns are they/them.

And I love you.

xx

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

I’ve been gone a lot of days.

I know I’ve been gone a while and there are several reasons. First is that the day before I went back to work I relapsed and I didn’t know how to tell all of youse. First of all it had nothing to do with what I do for work. I was looking forward to it. I crave routine almost as much as I missed hanging out with all my mates. They had been checking in on me either via text or dropping in but I was 110% ready to get back into the swing of things (so to speak). I fucking hate the “happy hooker” trope (why is it that I have to love and/or feel empowered by my job to make it a “valid career choice”? Hell, we live in Late Capitalism, what job is even a choice? If you don’t make money you literally can’t survive and the only way to make enough money to live (thanks for nothing, Centrelink) so your only choice is to work) but I legitimately love my job and missed it dearly.

But on this particular day that I relapsed Carrie Fisher, aka second mother, had died and I cried a lot. Like, a lot. Then a very routine and manageable bill aka financial responsibility fell up on my shoulders and I had about $11 left to my name. Then I said goodbye to a lover at my tram stop for what would be the last time I’d see them for about a week during which time we would have no contact (perhaps they’d find themselves in the wilderness and come to the realisation that I’m bad news? And it’s 110% not their fault; apart from the fact that they can do things by themselves, who could blame them?) and did the reasonable thing that every self-loathing alco does - traipsed to the nearest bottle-o and bought the cheapest bottle of wine going. It was a sauv blanc. +1 to every roll on self-hatred.

I drank 1/4 of it and was instantly hit by a) how awful it tasted then b) momentarily after how shitfaced I felt. Considering I was consuming at least 30 units of alcohol a day and still relatively high functioning, I’d say I needed around 3 or 4 units to stabilise me in the mornings. 1.2 having a noticeable effect on me was almost embarrassing as the fact that I’d relapsed. Three months prior I could’ve drunk anyone under the table (then probably made out with them if they were willing just for the hell of it) but this was a thing no more. Then came the awful moment  of “oh Jesus, now I need to tell people about this” so I did the logical thing and drank another quarter bottle for Dutch courage. I then poured the rest into the front garden. First up was my partner who I have been with longer (and is also my best and oldest friend and the sunshine of my life) because I thought it’d be easier. They’ve seen the darkest, most ugliest part of me (I’m talking multiple spews on ER floors because oral diazepam isn’t a thing when you’re that far into alcohol withdrawal) and I felt overwhelmed by a sense of disgust but I did it and they were beautiful and wonderful and understanding, as you would expect from the most special and handsome prince alive. The worst was telling the lover who was going away. Not only are they one of those strange creatures that I’m fascinated by who can have one beer and be like “nah that’s enough,” they are also one of those people who is like “I just don’t like to drink for my health.” (I’M SORRY WHAT? YOU DON’T WANT TO LIVE THE HEDONISTIC LIFESTYLE OF WAKING UP IN A PILE OF YOUR OWN SPEW WITH NO PANTS ON IN THE OPEN WALKWAY OF YOUR APARTMENT BLOCK AT 7AM ON A WEDNESDAY?? YOU DON’T WANT TO BE GOING INTO ORGAN FAILURE BUT SOMEHOW STILL KICKING BECAUSE ALL YOUR DAILY CALORIES ARE COMING FROM STRAIGHT VODKA?? (True story bro, also sorry Mum)) And although I knew they wouldn’t be mad I was terrified of them being disappointed. Plus I was putting them in the predicament of saying “hey so this bad thing happened and now we can’t talk about it for a week BYE HAVE FUN XOXO” Anger is easy to detach from. Disappointment infers very real attachment and this kind of love I’m not used to where you’re at the point where you’re like “so wait,,, you love me but you don’t, like, have to??”. Also deep-seeded abandonment issues, but that a whole other post, hey. Anyway I told both partners and they were both lovely and terrific.

I reset my sobriety counter app the next morning amidst the first hangover I had in a while (If you just keep drinking, hangovers don’t happen!) and felt something I can only equate to the feeling of “sub drop” for those of you acquainted with BDSM terminology. If you’re playing a sub role in a BDSM scene, in a meta sense you are totally in control. Unless this is some 50 Shades shit (ie. rape) you can tap out at anytime. But aftercare is still important. That’s the part where the other person is like “hey, you’re not a piece of trash. You’re a precious and important person and people love and care about you, even if you don’t believe it.” and they give you a cuddle and a glass of water and something sugary and bring you back to the real world. I straight-up didn’t make myself available for that. I felt that I needed to be punished. I deserved to suffer, to pay penance. It did not feel good. I felt that all the “good work” I’d done had been reduced to numbers and no longer counted. All 43 of them days. Over a half bottle of Bowlers Run of all things too. It could’ve at least been for something good, hey (like Four Pillars Navy Strength or Talisker. I’m a picky bitch when I want to be.) But from three hours between drinks to 43 days is a good effort, hey? I’ve since deleted all my sobriety apps. I don’t like counting by days. If I’m doing the right thing by me who gives a fuck about numbers?

After the Bowlers Run incident a few weeks later I thought I’d bounced back and so agreed to go to a pub with an old friend of mine. I’d told him I’d quit booze but when we got there (I suppose out of instinct. Guess how we met) he tentatively asked me if I wanted a pot. There was zero pressure and he was very sweet and cautious. He was just being social. I thought “fuck it, I have to learn how to moderate sometime!” so I said yes. We had a lovely time. Singing the songs of the old country, so to speak. Talking business (his, not mine). I may have punched another pot. I left on time for work. Also a guy I went to school with was bartending. ’Twas not bad, just surreal.

And I felt like utter trash. Not on the principle of having a drink and not the next day re: hangover, but i could actually feel the psychophysiological depresso sink in. It was not a pleasant feeling. I wasn’t pissed. I wasn’t taking that medication where every time that you ingest a drop of booze you spew. It’s just not fun anymore.

Anyway, this is my vent for today. Tomorrow is V-Day and we’re gonna be delving hardcore into some gender and sex work stuff. Content warnings will be up if you need bbs <3

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

I’ve been gone a few days.

Hey babes, it’s been a while. Well like three days but it feels longer than that. I’ve been busy doing shit during the day then getting home around dinner time fully intending to write about my day but then I’d get distracted by memes or Netflix then I’d look at the time and it’d be past midnight so I’d be like “ah fuck it” and just go to sleep. So strap yourselves in for a long one. I’ll try to keep it brief but as you may have noticed that’s not my strong point.

Thursday was a good day. It was my fiancee’s birthday. As you probably know I’m not working at the moment so I was on a limited budget gift-wise. I needed something that was low cost and high impact. The thing that my fiancee loves most in the world (other than me, duh) is Diet Coke. Last week all 1.25L Coke varieties were 50% off at Woolies. Low cost. High Impact. I had two cases delivered, bought six bottles myself and rallying the troops on Facebook I netted another eight bottles in one day. 38 bottles in total. On the morning of their birthday they had a doctors appointment so I waited till they left the house (whilst waiting for them to leave I googled the upcoming season of one of my favourite shows in order to find out the release date, because I knew it had to be coming up soon. I went to the wikipedia page and accidentally spoiled myself but in a good way by glancing at the “Main Cast” subsection and seeing a certain actors name that would lead me to believe that the character that they led us to believe had died at the end of the last season, whom I loved, ISN’T ACTUALLY DEAD. Again, it was a good day.) then went upstairs and arranged all 38 bottles on their bedroom floor. They were stoked when they got home. I’d want to marry me too.

Then it was off to see my psychiatrist, which is always a treat. I love my psych. I’ve been seeing him for five years and apart from being an amazing psych he’s just a cool, interesting dude with lots of knowledge on the weirdest variety of topics, who doesn’t talk down to me, encourages me to do my own research on my mental illness and medications and has no issue with me being queer, polyamorous or a sex worker. And he bulk bills me. Sorry folks, but he’s all mine. His books are closed until further notice.

Anyway, this appointment was just a check-in to see how I was going out of the hospital because the last time I saw him was exactly a week beforehand when I’d only been out for a day so it was hard to tell if I was going to go up or down mood-wise or stay on an even keel now that I was off lithium and booze. Over the course of that week I had become very chipper and energetic and chatty and motivated to do things (like write these posts. And go for walks in the sunshine. Long ones. Really, really long ones) which would normally be a sign that I was headed for hypomania or mania, except for the fact that I was still sleeping eight hours a night and had a healthy appetite, so I didn’t quite know what to make of it. All I knew is that I was worried is that I was headed up in a very bad way, especially given that I knew my psych was going away on December 15 till mid November, possibly overseas where he would be unreachable. (He’s going to Rome so long as he sorts out what he called “domestic duties” in time. I assumed that by domestic he meant just things in Australia in general, like sorting out a family matter or doing his taxes, but not he meant domestic as in handyman-type odd jobs around his house. This is a man who looks like a caricature of a psychiatrist down to the horn-rimmed glasses, I’ve never seen him in anything but a suit and tie and the most domestic thing I’ve ever seen him do is water the two indoor plants in his office. The idea of him wielding a hammer, mowing a lawn or fixing a leaky tap is both unpicturable and hilarious to me, but I wish him luck in his endeavours.

So I asked him if he thought I was headed for mania and he said that he doubted it. Given that I’d been off my meds for three weeks it would have happened by now. Instead he said my elevated moods were more likely caused by my body “rejoicing” (yes, that’s the word that he used, which I loved because the only other person I know who uses the word “rejoice” is the Bishop) in the fact that I wasn’t filling it with a litre of an 80% proof depressant every day anymore. Fair call, but I was still wary of the possibility that things could turn sour and I wouldn’t be able to seek his advice or support. So I came up with a plan. It’s a tactic I’ve used before, and it works. When the high gets out of hand, pop a sedating anti-psychotic like Seroquel or olanzapine and the dose of lithium I was taking before I went off it, then continue to take the lithium daily like I used to. The anti-psych will make me go to sleep for 12-16 hours and pretty much immediately begin to bring my mood down, giving the lithium the three days it needs to kick in so I can stabilise long-term. Funnily enough this is the exact same tactic that Claire Danes’s character, Carrie, uses for the same reason in the most recent season of Homeland. She really is the big sister I never had. We’re two peas in a pod.

With this in mind, if I do become hypomanic or manic there’s a good chance that I’ll be enjoying myself too much to actually want to take meds to stop me feeling so exuberant even though it’s dangerous for me to be in a state where I’m prone to reckless behaviours and not thinking clearly. So if you notice anything out of the ordinary (erratic behaviour, writing strange posts on any of my social media or sending odd-sounding messages to you at weird times i.e. really late night/early morning hours, which would indicate that I’ve stopped sleeping, talking really fast/running my words together because my mind is moving so quickly, etc.) make like that guy from the Crimestoppers ad: if you see something, say something, either to me or someone close to me and make me take my meds. Hide it in my food by crushing the pills up and mixing them through my morning smashed avo like I’m a puppy that won’t take its tablets if you have to. If this happens and you help me out I will buy you a present and give you a kiss on the lips when I come back down to earth.

Okay, onto something lighter. I headed back to Brunny for my fiancee’s birthday lunch with their mum and some of our friends and it was lovely. Then we headed off to the zoo! I hadn’t been to the zoo since I was in high school so I was pumped. We had taken our time with our lunch though so by the time we got to there we had limited time until they started closing down the exhibits. We missed out on a couple of exhibits we wanted to see, most noticeably the butterfly house (boourns. But we can always go back) but we got in the crucial ones like the elephants, tigers, reptiles, meerkats and my personal favourite, the otters. Plus, we got to see one giraffe drink another giraffe’s piss and two orang-utans kiss each other on the lips (twice!), which is not something you see every day. It was ace.

Then we went to evening mass, which was a full house, surprising for a mid-week service. Cara got a special birthday blessing from the Bishop. I was very happy for them but also very jealous, because I didn’t get didn’t get a birthday blessing

Then it was back home for our new nightly bonding ritual, which is watching our fave guilty pleasure TV show together in bed: Family Feud. Now, I’ve been a fan of Family Feud since I moved back to my folks’ place for a few months in September last year, when it became a ritual for my mum and I to watch the Feud together. My fiancee, on the other hand, is a newcomer to the Feud. They came to visit me in the evening a few days into my stay in hospital and at 5.59 on the dot I changed the TV to channel 10 fully prepared to embrace the Feud. At first my fiancee scorned me for my passion for the Feud but ten minutes in they were yelling answers at the screen and heckling people for giving terrible answers to the questions, just like a true fan of the Feud should. Now they’re linking me to applications to be in the audience and to be one of the survey participants for the questions that will feature in future episodes. The conversion is complete.

Now, there, are a few things i love about Family Feud. First of all, the whole point of the show (if you want to win anyway) is to guess the most common, boring, generic answer to the survey question. You have to think like a normie, which when you are me is very hard. I like to play along at home, shouting answers at the screen, especially when watching with someone else. The level of challenge is upped significantly. As a Feud veteran my normie thinking skills are pretty fucking good. I regularly guess the top answer before the people on the show do. I’m more normie than the normies if I want to be. But sometimes I say what I honestly want to answer instead, just for kicks. For instance the other night the prompt was “name something that gets you up in the middle of the night”. I knew the top answer would be needing to go to the toilet but instead I couldn’t help myself and for a nanosecond reflected upon my personal past experiences and shouted “A BOOTY CALL!” Needing to pee was indeed the top answer. Booty call was not on the board. The people they survey for the Feud need to get laid more.

My other favourite thing about FF is heckling the contestants, for various things but mostly for giving shit answers to the prompts. For instance last week the Owen family were on for three successive nights and I don’t know how the fuck they got that far on the Feud, let alone in life because they were some of the least bright people I have ever come across. To the prompt “name something that would get delivered to a building site” the team captain Kate answered “mail”. I lost it. Mail? MAIL? Apart from the fact that it’s under construction still so there probably isn’t even a mail box yet, IT’S UNDER CONSTRUCTION. NO-ONE LIVES THERE YET. THERE’S NO-ONE TO DELIVER MAIL TO. Mail was not on the board. Her cousin Julia answered with “food”. Food. Fucking food. Not timber. Not bricks. Not cement. Food. Speaking of Julia, Julia was my favourite of the Owens to heckle because apart from consistently giving stupid answers, Julia was Just a bit tragic. On their first night team captain Kate introduced Julia as “my newly single cousin Julia” which prompted Grant Denyer to ask Julia what she was looking for in a partner. Instead of saying something generic and light hearted like “someone I with a good sense of humour who can be my friend as well as my partner” she went into full needy overbearing mode. I can’t remember exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “someone who will look after me and protect me and always be there for me” and I’m pretty sure she dropped in something about needing him to want to have kids too. I couldn’t help myself, I yelled “Julia! Get it together! No wonder you’re single!” perhaps I was too harsh on poor Julia but such is the way of the Feud.

And then there’s Grant Denyer. I love Grant. He’s a comically tiny human being, he’s a flamboyant dresser and considering that he’s hosting a family oriented show (seriously, it even has the word “family” in the title) that is made for Liberal voting, News Corp consuming normies in a 6pm time slot on a national commercial station he says the most wildly inappropriate, sassy things. The other night he called a 6’4” buff tradie “delicious” and while I was loving the homoeroticism and totally shipped it I still don’t know how it wasn’t edited out. But you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. So yeah, that was my Thursday.

Friday was less intense, this should be a short one. I woke up late, watched like 10 episodes of The Fall then went to meet someone for what was supposed to be a platonic, “practice hanging out in bars sober and turn an an acquaintance into a new friend” kind of deal which I then escalated into “would you like to come back to my place to watch a movie?” which then escalated into him staying over. So that was Friday.

Saturday’s overarching theme was “I feel old”. First up, I woke up next to a 22 year old. There’s nothing wrong with being a 22 year old (especially if you’re this one in particular. He’s lovely and has excellent taste in films and memes. And I’m not just saying that because I know he’s reading this.) and I’m 25 so it’s not a huge age gap (it really shows in how much stronger his emoji game is though. I’m convinced there’s a negative correlation between increase in age and emoji game. There is one outlier though, and that’s my 78-year-old grandmother, who can emoji up there with the best of them) but it reminded me of what I was like when I was 22 and apart from the fact that it feels like an eternity ago, I look back and realise what a baby I was in so many ways. I know they say your brain doesn’t stop developing till you’re 25 (which means I’ve royally fucked myself over with all that rampant alcohol abuse. This is as good as it’s gonna get) but I was an utter moron. I’m not saying I’m super responsible or good at making life decisions now but I have grown up. Then my fiancee pointed out that I type with two fingers like a wannabe tech dad and felt even older. Going out to lunch with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while didn’t make me feel old. For one thing he’s older than me (by one year, but it still counts) and for another thing I hadn’t seen him in forever so it was good to catch up.

What did make me feel old was when I got home and decided to flick back through some of my favourite albums from back in my high school days that were released in my high school days. I’m finding (or was finding) a lot of comfort in film, TV and music that is familiar to me at the moment. What I didn’t realise is how long it’s been since I was in high school. You know how Spotify on your computer tells you what year an album was released. Yeah, they need to have a “hide release date” function because I fell into a spiral of looking up all of my old favourite albums and discovered to my horror that most of my favourite albums are between nine and eleven years old. Some were older. That’s almost half of the time I’ve been alive. For those of you who are of a similar age to me, read this list and feel my pain.

COOL ALBUMS THAT ARE BETWEEN NINE AND ELEVEN YEARS OLD

Robbers and Cowards - Cold War Kids

Transatlanticism - Death Cab For Cutie

Plans - Death Cab for Cutie

First Impressions of Earth - The Strokes

Oracular Spectacular - MGMT

Empire: Kasabian

West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum - Kasabian

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not - Arctic Monkeys

Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys

Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

Strange House - The Horrors

Down in Albion - Babyshambles

Shotters Nation - Babyshambles

Back to Black - Amy Winehouse

Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons

Late Registration - Kanye

Graduation - Kanye

Our Love to Admire - Interpol

We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank - Modest Mouse

Silent Alarm - Bloc Party

And these are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. What the actual fuck, where did those years go? I AM OLD. DO YOU FEEL OLD? BECAUSE I SURE DO. If I’ve forgotten any bangin’ albums that were released between 2005 and 2007 please message me so I can add to the list and we can all reminisce/wonder how we’ve managed to waste a whole decade of our lives

Okay, I’m done for the night. I was going to write about today but all I did was go to church then go for a walk, so it can be the preface for tomorrow’s post.

G’night x

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

Wholesome. Productive.

Another day that I thought I wouldn’t be writing, yet here I am.

Have you ever gotten into bed, reflected on the day and thought “dang, that was wholesome and productive”? I had one of those days today for a few reasons. I arose early before my alarm to the lower abdominal pains that only a UTI can produce then bolted upstairs to the bathroom with the urgency that, once again, only a UTI can produce and experienced that all too familiar feeling the one can only compare to what it must feel like to piss out razor blades. To be fair, I deserved this. I’ve had this thing for five days but I’ve been putting off going to the free clinic up the road because a) I’m convinced half of those doctors have just printed their “qualifications” off the internet because they’re fucking hopeless and I trust them no further than I could throw them b) I’ve waited two and a half hours there to get a medical certificate for work before. Fuck that, and c) I’ve had quite enough of medical facilities for the time being, so I was just hoping that if I smashed enough Ural it would just go away. On the other hand, I kind of feel that I don’t deserve it. I mean, I’ve spent the past six months smashing 4+ cocks five nights a week at work, plus a few on the side for recreational purposes, and had not one UTI. Over two full weeks of zero action and maximum hydration and all of a sudden my bladder is on fire. Not fair. Anyway, I resolved to suck it up and go to the clinic (I was rewarded for my productiveness with a competent doctor and a 12 minute waiting time. Though memo to self: don’t wear a leotard when you know you’re going to have to piss in a tiny cup. the logistics aren’t good.) But first - you guessed it - I had to get to church. (See? Wholesome!)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, today was St. Andrew’s Day and, he’s the patron saint of Scotland. I lived and studied in Glasgow for a semester and loved it. If I could live anywhere else in the world it’d be Glasgow. So there was no way I was missing St. Andrew’s Day mass. To be quite honest I knew zilch about him, so after I published last night I looked up his wikipedia article like the budding biblical scholar I am and read up on him. I could rattle off some fun facts about old mate Andy for you but if you’re reading this you have the internet, so you can wikipedia him yourself. Anyway the service was held in the Lady Chapel (fuck I love saying “Lady Chapel”) and it was lovely and small and quiet. Once that finished I walked down the road to get my fire down below sorted and picked up my antibiotics. With my new-found proactive mindset I then headed back up the road to the whole foods store in search of something that was full of good bacteria and didn’t contain dairy (more on that later) in order to head off the inevitable yeast infection that would follow the antibiotics.

I picked up a few wanky cacao-based protein-rich/raw/vegan/paleo snack bar things because I needed something so satiate the rabid cravings I’ve been having for refined sugar because I’m not allowed to have refined sugar at the moment (again, more on that later) as well as some red rice because that shit is high in protein and delicious then I found what I was looking for, and almost didn’t buy it because I was so embarrassed and full of self loathing at the thought of it: kombucha. But I sucked it up and bought it anyway. I’d never actually tasted it  but I knew it was what I needed because my body is now resistant to every over-the-counter remedy so I had no choice. So I headed home, poured myself a glass, took a sip and hated myself even more when I thought to myself “hmm, this actually doesn’t taste that bad.”

So here’s the most wholesome and embarrassing part of my day: I accidentally did a whole day of full vegan. And mostly organic. I’m not vegan, I don’t plan on being vegan but apparently today I was vegan. And here’s why: for the foreseeable future my diet is extremely limited for two reasons. Given the whole litre-of-vodka-a-day thing you might assume it’s because of my swole liver but you’re wrong. The only things I have to avoid for my liver are red meat, saturated fats, alcohol (duh) and paracetamol, and I’ve had to scale back my antidepressant to a 1/3 dose. The real problem is the angry, red, scaly psoriasis that’s currently covering my entire body. Apart from the fact that I’ve stopped my lithium completely because it’s a salt and therefore dries out your skin (don’t worry, it was on my psych’s orders, I’m not going rogue again. I’m not going to lie though, it’s probably contributed to my extremely chipper mood and recent spike in writing output. I’m not complaining) I also can’t have refined sugar, dairy or nightshade vegetables (the most common ones are potatoes, tomatoes, capsicum and chilli). There goes basically my entire diet, on the odd occasion that I did eat pre-admission. You know what is good for me at the moment though? KALE (which seems to be the kombucha of foods, it’s good for everything and really, really wanky) and foods rich in omega 3s like oily fish (both for my skin and to hopefully help repair the brain damage that all the booze did. My memory is shot. Have you tried to have a conversation with me recently and I’ve told you a story that I’ve told you at least three times before? That’s why), but I forgot to pick up tuna at the shops so I had to get creative for dinner.

I love pasta. It’s filling, it’s carby, it cooks quickly and it’s hard to fuck up. I had some high fibre pasta in the cupboard so pasta it was. But then I was faced with a great conundrum: if the sauce can’t be tomato or cream based what do I do? So I decided to go full Mediterranean wank and do sautéed mushrooms and kale with olives, chopped almonds and extra virgin olive oil tossed through my high fibre organic fusilli. With a glass of kombucha as accompaniment. It was delicious. 10/10 would recommend. My body is a temple. A desecrated one at the moment, but a temple none the less. And this is why I hate myself. Or part of why anyway. Earlier today I was having a flick through Facebook memories. On this day three years ago I was serving my mum and stepdad dinner at the restaurant I used to work at, which means that by this time of night I was definitely in a bar somewhere getting on the piss. If the ghost of future me had appeared in front of 2013 Lily in that bar and said “Lily, exactly three years from now you’ll have tried to kill yourself six times in the space of sixteen months, turned into a proper wake n bake alcoholic, be two weeks sober, be going to church multiple times a week, be eating wholesome vegan kale-based meals and drinking kombucha” 2013 Lily would’ve been like “HA FUCK OFF”, waved future ghost me away then turned to the bartender and ordered another extra dirty martini. And most likely a shot of Tromba Blanca to keep me occupied while the bartender stirred that baby down till it doubled in volume. But here we are. Wholesome. Productive.

Alright, I’m off to watch another episode of The Fall (is it just me or is every character that Archie Panjabi plays like, lightly seducing every other character she comes into contact with? Or is it just her voice and mannerisms? Except for Bend it Like Beckham where she plays she fabulously screechy, bratty bride-to-be sister. Not so seductive.) then go to sleep because as my psych always reminds me, when trying to manage your moods when you have bipolar the next most important thing to taking your meds (which I’m not, being off lithium and all) is regular, good quality sleep. And my body is a motherfucking temple.

x

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

An unexpected turn of events.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything to write about. I don’t really do much. I wake up early, lay in bed and think about life. I eat some breakfast so I can take my meds and supplements. Go for my UV treatment for my hideous leprosy-eque outbreak of psoriasis if it’s a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. I watch a couple of episodes of something familiar that I love (Now that I’ve finished rewatching Homeland I’m rewatching The Fall. An hour spent hating men and worshipping Gillian Anderson is exactly as therapeutic as it sounds) then go for a stroll up Sydney Road in the sun (yes, me, Lily, voluntarily walking places and seeing daylight), go grocery shopping, buy something wholesome like peaches or organic kale, then continue on to Glenlyon Road to go to church and light some candles for the people I love in my life who are in need of some extra help, then walk home in a very chipper mood. I make lunch. A friend might come by and visit. Then I binge watch a couple more episodes till it’s time to cook a wholesome dinner, then I either write something if I’m in the mood or binge watch some more episodes of something then fall asleep around 10.30. Rinse and repeat.

But then something magical happened today. After an early morning EEG at the Royal Melbourne (seriously I might as well have a ward named after me and move in) to make sure that the seizure I had when I was in the ED where my head snapped back and I screamed blue murder before beginning to convulse violently like something out of The Exorcist was cause by the litre of vodka and month’s worth of antipsychotics coursing through my system and not by undiagnosed epilepsy (not confirmed but looking likely) I jumped on the 19, got off at Brunswick Road and walked up to church (I could have taken the tram all the way, but again I’m now the sort of person who enjoys walks in the sunshine. Two-week-ago me hates today me) to light my candles. I walked into the foyer, did my little dip in the holy water with my ring finger, crossed myself and proceeded into the church. Now, normally late morning on a Tuesday I’m the only person there but not today.

I walked in and saw the Eucharist set up. I’d read Sunday’s pew sheet, the only thing scheduled today was 8am mass so whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t supposed to be open to the general public. The Bishop was standing talking with around 10 older people that I didn’t recognise, some of whom were wearing dog collars (not the fetish kind you perverts, the priest kind) and our brand new Pastoral Assistant, Mason, who is from Wales and an absolute sweetheart and dead set legend. And by brand new I mean he landed on Friday and by Sunday mass was helping out with service, jet lagged out of his mind. He and I had a lovely chat at the post-mass barbecue on Sunday. He seemed super keen to talk to me, I’m pretty sure because I was the only other person there under 50 and the other person who hadn’t asked him to say something with his Welsh accent yet. I made a friend! So when he saw me standing at the entrance to the church looking confused and awkward he started waving enthusiastically, which prompted the Bishop to turn around and start towards me with a big smile on his face. I freaked out and blurted “Sorry for intruding, I’m just here to light some candles then I’ll get out of your way,” but the Bishop explained that they were doing the daily Eucharist and invited me to stay. I had nowhere to be so I acquiesced. I ran around the corner into the Lady Chapel (yes, that’s a real thing), lit my candles then came back for the service.

An older gentleman with a beard handed me a very small, brief kind of pew sheet (again, I’m a baby at this, I don’t know what everything is called) and we began. A lot of it was familiar to me from regular mass but I still had to read off the pew sheet because I don’t know it all off by heart. I did notice that most of the people around me weren’t reading off the sheet and saying things in unison that weren't written in the sheet but didn’t think much of it. Until the Bishop invited us  to come up and stand in a circle around the Eucharist to receive communion and I noticed that I was the only person who had brought my sheet up with me. Everyone else knew every. single. word. off by heart. So I knew something was up, but wasn’t sure what. Everyone took communion (including me, cheeky Bishop) then we ended the service with the Bishop saying that the lunch that had been organised was happening at an Italian restaurant a few doors down. I assumed I wasn’t invited, which was cool because I was never supposed to be there in the first place, and got ready to leave. Mason came straight over to me and said “It was so great that you turned up. I mean, it’s always lovely to see you but it was nice to not be to only one here who isn’t a priest!” I froze. “Wait, what?”

Holy. Fuck. Turns out I had unwittingly infiltrated the daily Eucharist of what is essentially the Illuminati of the Northern Melbourne branch of the Australian Anglican Communion. I felt like an imposter. But then the Bishop came over and gave me a hug and asked me to join them for lunch. Once again, I had nothing else to do, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I felt less like an imposter and said yes.

At first lunch was the priests and the Bishop taking care of business, sorting out who was hosting what inter-parish events for 2017 while Mason and I sat down the end of the table discussing our favourite places to visit in the UK and how great Scotland is, because I studied in Glasgow and he studied at St Andrews (He did his dissertation on the duality of two biblical texts - can’t remember which ones, I hadn’t heard of them. Again, I’m new to this - and how they could be interpreted in relation to nature and women. Once again, legend.) Once the big wigs were done with admin we said Grace and started eating lunch. The priest sat next to Mason, whose name was Stuart (I don’t know if he was a Father, Reverend, etc. He didn’t say.) was also a legend. He’s only been at his parish in Ascot Vale for a couple of months and was talking about how he had come from a very left-of-centre parish where he had basically been able to do whatever he liked with services and had been worried coming to a more “High Anglican” parish he might have to tone it down a bit. For instance, at his old church he used to dance while people were taking communion because it made him so excited and happy to see people receiving the body and blood of Christ. At his first Sunday mass at his new church he suppressed the temptation to dance because he didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. Then he looked up to see that half the congregation was dancing anyway so he joined in. How sweet is that?

But wait, it gets better. Stuart, Mason and I were all discussing how the first Advent had gone, this being my first and Mason’s first ever Sunday mass since arriving, and how exciting and great it had been. I thought ours had been a banger, but Stuart topped ours by a long way. His church is very small and doesn’t have a choir. All their music is done through a laptop and speaker system. When the time came for everyone to come up to take communion, the guy in charge of the music accidentally started playing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion, at which point he yelled “Oh shit!” loud enough for the entire congregation to hear and frantically scrambled to put on something a little more, well, churchy. But Stuart, again being a little bit left-of-centre, insisted that the sound guy leave it, because he thought it was hilarious. So everyone took communion to the Titanic theme song. Stuart finished the story with “… and my heart has been going on for two days.” I almost died. I will be visiting All Saints Ascot Vale very soon. I paid for my meal, said my goodbyes and nice-to-meet-you and headed off, excited for the 10am mass for St Andrews Day tomorrow (patron saint of Scotland, as if I’d miss that).

So yeah, that was how an ordinary day took a surreal but brilliant turn. Oh, also I’m two weeks sober today! Go me!

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

I have another thing to tell you.

While I’m on this honesty roll, I have another clanger to drop:

I go to church.

Yep, this lefty, queer, mentally ill, alcoholic hooker is more like Tony Abbott than you ever could have thought. I am literally a lame, gay, churchy loser. I’ll get into why in a little bit, followed by how this is relevant to my recovery, but for now let’s talk how, because it’s kind of a long story. So settle in.

For years my grandparents (maternal, the cool ones who I actually like) had a holiday house on the Gippsland Lakes and every Easter my immediate family would make the four hour drive to the house and we would all hang out for the holiday. We had a couple of little what I would call “niche” Easter morning traditions. Obviously there was a fuckload of chocolate but there were other things too. Us three kids would each receive a set of flannel pyjamas in preparation for the upcoming winter (practical) and a book, because reading was highly valued in our house. Then when I was twelve or thirteen a new tradition was added, but just for a couple of the fold.

One Easter Saturday my grandmother, who is the closest thing I will ever have to a soulmate and a very spiritual woman, though of no particular religious denomination, came to me and asked if I would like to go to Easter Sunday mass with her the following day at the local Anglican church. I didn’t say yes right away. I wasn’t exactly a stranger to the C of E. Historically my family are Anglican. My parents were married in the Anglican church in Gisborne, as was my dad’s sister (pretty much at the same time that my parents’ divorce was finalised, which I never quite got. Like surely there was some kind of family curse on that joint and you’d just go to the next town over or something? Old habits die hard I guess.) and my two siblings and I were “named” (my mum would definitely like me to clarify that we weren’t Christened) in that same church but I’d never actually attended a mass or anything. Plus I didn’t believe in God, and I thought that somehow they’d know that and I’d get kicked out. Pubescent logic. Despite this however, I could see how keen my grandmother (heretofore referred to as “Omi”, which is German for “Granny”. My grandfather is “Opa”) was and I wanted to spend some one on one time with her amid the scrum of the family holiday so I said yes.

So we rock up ten minutes early for the service to one of the fugliest churches I’ve ever seen. Anyway, we go inside, are handed a pew sheet and hymnal and look up to that building’s saving aesthetic grace: behind the altar is a panoramic window that overlooks the entire lake. Omi, being a very sensitive woman who cries at everything (once again, soulmates), immediately grabs me by the forearm and bursts into tears.I, steer us into a pew and prepare for the unknown ahead. The service begins and to my utter shock the reverend is a WOMAN. At this time I didn’t know women were allowed to be senior members of the clergy in any Christian denomination. The priests at the church in Gisborne had both been men and apart from that the only other denomination I had been exposed to was Catholicism and I knew that they were definitely not down for that shit. I was beginning to think that I was going to like this place. And I did. The service was beautiful and inclusive. I approached the communion rail for a blessing, got blessed, felt very blessed as a result. Had an all round swell time. The holiday ended, we packed up and went home. And I made a concerted effort to forget about the experience and the effect it had had had on me.

When I went back to school I didn’t tell a soul. Not that I had a soul to tell. A bad haircut, lack of social skills and keenness to learn don’t tend to net you many friends until VCE at least. Add Christian to that and I might as well have climbed into a bin and stayed there for the next six years. (Ironically if I created an OkCupid profile right now that just said “I have a bad haircut and no social skills but I am constantly looking to further educate myself” and ticked the “I don’t want to see or be seen by straight people” box I would be FLOODED with cute date invites). I couldn’t stop thinking about the feeling Easter mass had given me though, as hard as I tried. So I went with Omi the following Easter. And every Easter after that until I hit year 11 and turned into a Dick Dawkins-style dickhead Atheist. By the time that phase was over I was in uni, living out of home and spending my Easter “holidays” working and having panic attacks over literature essays. So no more Easter church with Omi for me.

Then last year a person very dear to me joined the choir at the local Anglican church and this rekindled my interest. One day I asked and they said I was more than welcome. With Easter just around the corner I texted Omi asking if she would like to come with me for old time’s sake and of course, she said yes. And it was beautiful (and not just the church itself). Easter Sunday is generally a banger of a service because after two days of very solemn service because Jesus has died our number one guy is back! Hallelujah! But this was especially great. This particular church is “High Anglican” so there’s ritual and incense and bells but what I really loved was the the Bishop didn’t deliver his sermon from the pulpit; he delivered it among the pews. As we made our way out of the church at the end of the service he was there to greet us all and was shaking peoples hands, having a brief chat. My loved one who was part of the choir introduced me to him and I stuck out my hand for a shake but instead he embraced me. No one else got a hug! And from that moment I knew he was going to be one of my favourite people, and this was going to be one of my favourite places. I don’t go every week but I try to (in the six weeks leading up to my admission I didn’t go once, which I felt terribly guilty about but he understood, as you’ll see).

The Bishop is generally a pretty cool dude. I mean, he is a member of the clergy so he does have some pretty conservative views on some things but sometimes I text him and we meet at his house for coffee and we talk about all sorts of things to do with my life and faith. He knows I’m queer and a sex worker and sees neither as a problem. And his views on faith are surprisingly liberal. He’s told me that I don’t have to have a firm, unwavering belief in God to be a good Christian. Sometimes just wanting to believe is enough. Sometimes just the comfort of the ritual of worship is enough. I couldn’t agree more.

The Bishop came to visit me in hospital (arranged with my consent, of course) while I’ll was still in a pretty bad way, full of drips and diazepam and we had a chat about what had been going on and why I had been absent from church for so long. Not in a chastising way, but more that he had been concerned for me (and rightly so). At the end of our chat he asked me if I would like to take communion. Me, being slightly confused, (again, full of diazepam) though he was asking me if I was still looking to be confirmed, because I currently am not and therefore shouldn’t be taking communion. So I said to him, “But I’m not confirmed!” to which the Bishop, being the loose unit he is, threw his hands up in the air and went “Pshhh!” before producing a little compact filled with communion wafers (for the holy man on the go) and a vial of holy/blessed (I don’t know what you’d call it, I’m new to this whole thing) oil to anoint me with. And so I took my first communion.

Fast forward to this morning and I walk to church with a spring in my step, ready for my triumphant return and unwittingly walk ten minutes early into no ordinary Sunday mass but a big one: Advent, aka the first day of Christmas (we like to draw this shit out) and I immediately burst into tears. Happy tears. The Bishop usually stands in a little foyer off to the side of the main church until the organ starts playing and the procession enters but he sees me, starts waving frantically, and comes into the church itself to give me a hug and ask how I’m doing and tell me he’s glad I’m there. Then he leans over and whispers in my ear, “you’re welcome to take communion today too.” Once again, loose unit. So I did. I went up and got my wafer and had an itty bitty sip of cask port that had been blessed by a holy man and enjoyed a banger of a service.

Okay, 1,700 words in we can get to the recovery bit. Because I totally don’t count a sip of the blood of Christ as breaking sobriety. At the end of the service the Bishop announced that after the usual tea and coffee in the church hall after the service we were then invited back to his house for a barbecue in celebration of Advent. “Brilliant,” I think to myself, “there’s nothing I love more than a free feed!” What I didn’t take into consideration is that this is the Bishop that invited us back to his house for drinks at 11am on Easter Sunday so by midday on Advent there was bound to be booze everywhere. At first it was easy. It was mostly cheap red and cider. I’m done drinking stuff just for the alcohol. But one of the hardest things for me about letting go of booze is the fact that I’m an alcohol nerd. I love good booze. So when someone produced a bottle of Macedon Ranges pinot that I have had before and adored I had to bite my lip and very pointedly ask for a glass of mineral water. I stayed for about an hour, ate my lunch, drank my mineral water, caught up with some members of the congregation I hadn’t seen in ages and generally had a nice time but all I could think about was that fucking wine. But I didn’t have a glass, even when it was offered it to me. On my way home I walked past three bottle shops, two places that I know do great Bloody Marys (I have a soft spot for them) and went into none of them. And it was really hard but I did it. Then I got home, took a valium to ease the craving then sat down to write this.

So yeah. Something else you didn’t know about me. I’m not here to preach to anyone. I don’t give a fuck who or what you pray to, or if you pray at all. I’m just sharing my experience. If you’ve got any questions, or maybe would like to come with me one day (not necessarily to a service, you can go anytime during daylight hours. It’s really quiet and pretty and it smells really good) let me know.

[sidisgettingbetter-blog1]

I have some things to tell you.

If you’re reading this we’re probably friends on Facebook and if we’re friends on Facebook you probably saw the post I made last Wednesday night announcing that I was going to take my own life before going offline for a few days. I realise that I ignored all comments on that post and almost every private message I received in the wake of it, giving no updates as to how I was going or even if I was still alive. So I feel I have some explaining to do.

First of all, a lot of you know this isn’t my first time at the rodeo. This is my sixth attempt since last July. But this time was different. Before this attempt my psych and I had tried repeatedly to figure out what the warning signs were in the days and weeks leading up to an attempt. Like sure, I have bipolar with psychotic features but not everyone with that diagnosis tries to kill themselves (about 31% attempt, around 15% are successful FYI). We came up with nothing. I would be totally stable then all of a sudden just snap and next thing be in an ambulance.

This time round was premeditated. Arguably weeks in advance. I just hid it from everyone, including my loved ones and my psych. I knew lithium (my staple mood stabiliser) was useless to overdose on because it’s an emetic. That’s why they give it to you in bottles of 200 tablets. So I was planning another escape route and decided on throwing myself in front of a train on the line down the road from my house. I live on a main road so to test myself as to whether I had the guts to go through with it on my way to the shops I would close my eyes and cross the busy street without looking (which resulted in a lot of angry and frightened motorists). So I decided I was ready and started writing my suicide notes. One wasn’t good enough, certain people deserved individual ones. And there were a lot of those people (those letters are gone now, don’t bother looking or asking for them) so it was taking me a while.

During this time I was growing more and more depressed so instead of doing something healthy or logical like call my psych and say “hey, I’m not feeling so great. Could I please have some of that antidepressant that we know works really well for me?” I decided to stop taking my lithium and antipsychotic in the hopes of triggering a manic episode to a) make myself feel better b) aid me in having to motivation to actually follow through with my plan and c) make the quality of writing in my suicide notes better. Priorities. (mania has historically made me a better writer). Then one day I got a text from the local pharmacy where I have all my scripts on file saying that a fresh batch (a month’s worth) of my antipsychotic had been filled and was ready for collection. So what did I do? head out the front door, close my eyes, cross the road and head off to the chemist to pick it up. That night, despite having not finished all my letters, I thought of the five minute walk to the train or the 30 seconds it would take to pop all those tablets out of their blister packs and quaff them and went “ah, fuck it!”, opted for the latter, wrote the Facebook status then laid down for what I thought would be the last time. When I finally came around in the ED at the Royal Melbourne I was livid to still be alive. I tried to punch my partner in the face. I’m not the biggest or strongest guy in the world but it took four people to pin me down and stop me from ripping out my IV lines. I almost got Code Grey’ed (for the uninitiated that’s physical restraints and a big needle full of sedatives).

This story is missing one crucial element so far though, and I think I’ve waited to slip in this little detail because it’s something that I have been - and still am - deeply ashamed of. I’ll shout that I have bipolar from the rooftops not only because I’m not ashamed, but I don’t want other people to be either. What I’m about to disclose isn’t an issue that I think anyone else should be ashamed of but, you know, self loathing and all that.

I am an alcoholic.

And I’m not talking a going out and getting black out drunk with your mates a few nights a week binge drinker (though I have been in the past). I’m talking (well up until my admission) a full-on wake n’ bake bottle of vodka a day alcoholic. If I have seen you in the past six months, regardless of occasion or time of day I can guarantee you I wasn’t sober. I haven’t had to set an alarm to wake up in six months because if I hadn’t had a drink in three hours I would be woken up by my withdrawals which would usually take the form of hot and cold chills, muscle aches and all over body tremors so severe that I could barely walk, let alone get up and down stairs (kinda crucial when you live in a terrace house) and I would need to hold the glass of vodka I would have pre-poured before bed for this exact reason to my lips with two hands like a toddler. After a while I lost the self-control to not drink my breakfast ration the night before so would be too far into withdrawal to walk to the bottle shop and discovered the blessing and curse that is Tipple. For those not familiar with it, Tipple is basically Menulog for booze. Place your order on the app, pay via credit card or PayPal and it will be at your front door within 60 minutes. Catch them during a quiet period (which when they opened at 11am generally was) and they could be there within 15 minutes. By the end I was waking up and before I even checked Facebook I would place my Tipple order then just lie in the dark shivering and aching till I heard the knock at the door.

Because I drank steadily throughout the day I was very rarely visibly drunk so you probably wouldn’t have noticed (or maybe I’m flattering myself and people were just too polite to say anything) but essentially I wasn’t drinking to get drunk. I was drinking to get to a baseline at which I could function. And stuff was kinda softened around the edges which was nice at the time. The point is though, I didn’t enjoy it. I hated it. I would literally be sat alone in my room pouring myself a drink that was half vodka half orange juice (carbonated mixers are too hard to drink large volumes of on an empty stomach - more on that later) - or better yet, decanting straight vodka into Mount Franklin bottles so I could drink covertly in public - saying aloud “I hate this, I hate this” but I had royally fucked myself into a corner and in order for me to seek help I would have to tell a whole bunch of people that I loved and/or respected this awful secret. Plus despite how much I hated it, my death wish outweighed my distaste for my dependency and I would’ve been quite happy to drink myself to death if I hadn’t ended up choosing a more immediate approach. So instead I chose to lie - either directly or by omission - to those people. So it took a suicide attempt and hospital admission to be forced to address the problem.

Once I was with it enough to figure out that I was out of ED and Short Stay and had been admitted I assumed it was to a psychiatric ward. But I was wrong; I was on a medical ward. Once my bloods came back showing that a) my liver and kidney function were severely depleted (the technical classification for my liver was “deranged” which I still think is hilarious. Not many other people do) and b) all of my electrolytes, salts and other nutrients were completely fucked because I hadn’t been eating (again, more on that later) they had to put the physical stuff first (this did mean that the whole week that I was in hospital following a fucking suicide attempt I saw a psych once for ten minutes, but that’s a whole other post). Understandably I still wasn’t completely with it for the first day or so, so people had to keep quelling my mixture of confusion and rage when stuff that would never happen on a psych ward like getting metal cutlery happened but I got there eventually.

With the whole empty stomach/not eating thing, I don’t have an eating disorder but the alcohol made my eating patterns disordered. Even though a vodka lime and soda is supposed to be a “skinny bitch” drink, vodka is still alcohol and alcohol contains a lot of calories so by drinking at least 750mL of spirits a day I was essentially unwittingly tricking my body into thinking that I was eating because I was giving it energy. This resulted in me having zero appetite and being lucky if I ate one small meal every 2-3 days. This meant that by the time I made it to the ward I had refeeding syndrome. I’m mostly over it now but I still bloat up like a motherbitch and sometimes get stomach pains after a decent meal.

One upside of being on the ward is that it completely cured my fear of needles. I had a cannula in each arm pumping various goodies into me as well as bloods taken twice a day and various jabs putting stuff into me on to of that. At first I was trying to take out my cannulas so they had to bandage them up and would cry whenever they stuck a needle in me. By the end I’d see a nurse or phlebotomist heading my way with a sharps container and just be like “eh, do your worst”. So there’s that.

What else good has come of this? Well I now no longer have a physical addiction to alcohol. I’m officially a recovering addict. We’re still waiting on the full results of my liver ultrasound but it’s highly doubtful that I’ve done any permanent damage at my age, thank Christ. I’m not planning on going to meetings like AA or SMART Recovery at the moment because I’m not experiencing psychological cravings at the moment but I’ve got a really good app on my phone (did you know that I’ve saved $551 on booze since my last drink?? That’s almost a whole month’s rent in ten days!) and now that my loved ones and healthcare professionals know my big secret I have a whole lot more support. I’m not alone. And I’m sure someone reading this is in the same position that I was in and hopefully they feel less ashamed and like they now have someone to talk to about it.

Oh yeah. And I don’t want to die anymore.

In terms of meds changes my psych has taken me off lithium for the moment (I’ll go back on eventually) because it’s exacerbating a massive psoriasis flare-up I’m having at the moment so I’m on a 1/3 strength dose of that antidepressant that works so well for me that I was talking about before to take it easy on my liver and hopefully avoid the very common phenomenon of what my psych called “post-withdrawal drop”. And of course no more of that antipsychotic. So far it’s working out pretty well but I’m super emotional. Everything makes me cry (even more than usual). As a comfort thing I started re-watching one of my favourite shows and I cried at the scene where they introduce a character who I’m very fond of but that I know they kill off FOUR SEASONS LATER. Then today I went to the chemist to get an anti-inflammatory for my back because after seven days in a hospital bed the pain was so bad it was taking my breath away. While I was waiting for the pharmacist to grab the pills off the shelf I was standing in the only position that was comfortable for me: that pregnant person stance where they thrust back their shoulders and support their back with their hands with their elbows stuck out. This coupled with my bloated refeeding syndrome belly led some random old lady to approach me and ask me when I was due and I burst into tears because being pregnant is pretty much the worst thing I can imagine happening to me. But apart from that it’s going pretty well!

So yeah, that’s the full story. I hope this helps someone, and if not it’s felt good to get it all out in the open. If you have any questions shoot them my way. Thanks for listening.