For better or worse...

There is a two pronged attack in that statement. The words that you are legally required to speak to your future spouse and the fact that sometimes, no matter what, you can't take it back.

This weekend saw me at my very lowest ebb. I had a large setback with career prospects and on Saturday night, I had what can only be described as the longest and slowest train wreck in history. My mentalism act was beset with problems and despite what others have said about it, it is down to me that it went wrong. 

So, for better or worse, I am not removing the post I put up yesterday as it contextualises how I was feeling yesterday while the wound was still very much open, raw and pulsating. It can be found here: http://nottrikk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/time-to-take-stock.html?m=1

I have had an opportunity to take stock of the events of the weekend and the 1 positive thing that I can take from this whole episode is that if I can count on anything, it's the support of friends, particularly my best friend. Jeanette puts up with too much. She is always there for me and when I am firing on all cylinders, we are an excellent team. I just want to say here and now that I hope there isn't much worse and considerably more better from now on.

Special mention goes to the grizzly bald headed bloke. What you did was very appreciated and I felt the weight of all of my friends love in that hug.

Time to take stock

Last night was a pretty big deal for me. I was performing to a large crowd at an event. A number of things went wrong.

Well, I say a number of things, mostly all of it went wrong. Some of it was the fault of poor audience management, some of it was nerves, still some of it was the inability to perform my act with one hand wrapped around a microphone. (The lapel mic that I was given crapped out after about 3 lines into the performance). Practical upshot was that none of the effects worked that well and a couple of them fell flat on their arse. The crowd may have been too embarrassed for me to boo, but as the act dragged on and another issue befell me, it became a long, slow house of cards tumbling down until there nothing but a pile of crap left.

The fact that I had been knocked back pretty badly earlier in the week meant that I wanted this performance to go really well so that I could have a bit of a high spot this week. I think that was my first mistake. The fact that I had built it up to be something that has to happen meant that I was so nervous of what could go wrong. Which inevitably happened. A self fulfilling prophecy if you will. 

I fully expect never to be called back by the organisers and I really couldn't blame them after yesterday evening's debacle.

I should never have stepped onstage to be honest. I am a pretty good theatre technician. I work better in the dark. I should have been content with that and let others take the applause and adulation. 

That isn't strictly what today's blog is about. 

Today's blog is about self destructive behaviour. 

The fact that everything had to go right last night to bring me back up after the low of earlier this week and then it going completely Pete Tong meant that I was in a pretty bad place last night. I thought I had felt low in the past, but last night's black dog spanned chasms of which I was at the bottom.

I hoped I could ride it out, I hoped that the talking therapy would help me. That the CBT might give me the tools to bring me back. That hasn't happened. My destructive self has meant that I am now seriously considering the mood stabilisers again that I was prescribed waaaay back when.

I hate feeling this way. I am pushing my friends away (despite what I said in my previous blog). Jeanette is, as always, a constant though.

As a slight aside, I have been talking to a few people recently who have said that they like reading the blog, they don't comment either here or on The Facebook when I announce it. This is perfectly fine. I have no problem if only a few people read it, you don't need to post an 'Amen Brother!' to it. If you get something from it then that is the point. To be able to identify a little with what is happening to me and maybe not feel alone. 

There is a saying that I'm not sure is that widely used outside of the North-East, "misery loves company". I use it myself from time to time. Possibly not in the most appropriate of surroundings sometimes I will admit as it sounds really negative. The original intention of it was to alert others to the fact that if someone is miserable, they want to bring everyone else down.

But I don't actually think it has to be taken as a negative. There is an affirmation in that statement. Affinity and identification. If you identify with someone, you are like minded. Get a few more people together and you become a group. Still more and you have the makings of a movement. 

That's the way that I take that statement now. Maybe not the original intention, but I can choose to alter the emphasis if I want!

Sorry, that was less if a side note and more of a serious tangent there. 

Back on track. Self destructive behaviour is a dangerous spiral. One that I was riding helter skelter downwards last night. Black mood, arguing with friends and Jeanette, drinking to excess, generally not being a pleasant chap. I'm sure you get the picture. I don't know if it's a part of the human condition that you have to go through that to ride the slide all the way to the bottom, or choose to check out half way down. Maybe the chemical alternative is that checking out.

Is it worth stepping away for a little while? Giving the mind a holiday? 

I can't remember the last time I gave the body a holiday, time away to really relax. It's been rehearsals and making and stress for the past few years. Also a form of self destructive behaviour as far as I am concerned. We give the excuses that I work 9-5 without the ability to take time off inside term time and Jeanette works a bizarre shift pattern. 'It's difficult to schedule' we opine! Is this just an excuse? Surely if we really want to do something so badly, we would just go and do it?

Seems not. Wonder why that is?

Time to give the mind a break I think. Some time to heal and re-group.

Applications and rejection: a perspective post.

So, just heard back from a job application I put in... They certainly didn't hang around telling me that I didn't get an interview. Applications only closed on Monday.

In one respect, I feel rejected, dejected and really, thoroughly not wanted.

On the other hand, I'm not working in Games workshop or on the dole. I have a job and while I am at the top of my current job tree and getting restless, I still have what I have. A roof over my head, a (goodish for now) job and the love of a good woman, supportive friends and family. So I suppose, there's nothing really for me to feel sorry for myself about.


So why do I?

I think it stems from the fact that the job that I applied for was pretty much written for me. Design experience, costume experience, puppetry experience, teaching and curriculum development experience.  Everything I have, in spades. And they didn't even give me a fucking interview. To be rejected in the first round of applications and not even getting to the first interview where I could have a chance to shine.

It might be the black dog towering above me now, but I haven't been as low as I am right at this moment. After I received the news, I was actually considering going home for a little while so that people wouldn't see me hugging myself and rocking backwards and forwards in my seat (Although this is, I suppose, a digital version of that) I was seriously close to it. I went out at lunchtime to get some of the sunshine into me to see if that would help and for the first time in nearly 1.5 years, I almost caved in and bought cigarettes. I know it would make me feel even worse, but that chemical nicotine rush would be worth it wouldn't it?

There is no pithy end to this one, no bon mot at the end of the tale to make it worth the read... Sorry, but that's life isn't it? Sometimes it rips the fucking floor from under you.

Alienation

Oh right! You are talking my language now! Alien Nation, loved the movie, the TV show was a bit pants and went on for a little too long, but the concept was brilliant and I think went on to inspire the likes of District 9 etc.

No, not that Alien Nation you wally, 

Alienation: (n), The feeling that you have no connection with the people around you. 

Depressed people frequently feel a sense of alienation from those around them. (My emphasis)

It's all about perception isn't it if I call someone and it goes to voicemail, I can think one of two different things, either they hadn't heard the phone or it was on silent, OR they are deliberately screening their calls and not Wanting To Talk To Me. AND, OH GOD! WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME SO MUCH?

I'm sure you get the the point. It's the nagging doubt that maybe people have no time for you and your depression is the only thing they see when they picture you. Whether this is actually the case is open to interpretation, but one of the things that people who are depressed tend to do is to pre-empt this alienation. It's going to happen anyway they believe, so they have to control it by being the instigator. Maybe this is just me talking here, but there is little enough that I feel that I have control of with my mental health, one thing that I feel that I can control is something to hang onto even if it is a self destructive thing.

I have spoken to other people in the past about this, I won't mention individual cases as it's really not my intention to out people, but it think that the control issue is perhaps one of the major triggers that a depressed mind will dwell upon the most. It may be body issues or substance abuse etc. but as long as there is one thing that the depressed mind can get a hook into and control (or have the illusion of control) then the world can be coped with. Some people manage to live like this for years (or so I have read) quite manageably, but others don't cope well with it. I think I am in the latter camp. 

I have talked in the past about the electronic support network, about paying it forward and random acts of kindness which I occasionally have to be reminded about, (thank you to my lovely wife for that) I have talked the talk but I have not walked the walk. I have systematically alienated friends as a pre-emptive strike against them distancing themselves from me. I am not proud of this fact. But it's there and a fact. I don't know if I can do anything about it other than to say this (and I can say it here because I am not sitting across a table from you or in your front room playing Xbox (or your game platform of choice)). If it appears that I am pulling away from you or the group. I may in fact be trying to do the opposite. My whole being may be screaming at me that I don't want to do this apart from that little corner of the mind that appears to be in control of my mouth and actions who is saying 'do it to them before they do it to you. It's inevitable you know, everything you do either turns to shit or is so half arsed that people are laughing at you behind your back. Fuck 'em. Listen to me, I have the inside track on what people are really like.

Oh, sorry... Did I mention the paranoia too? I forgot about that... That potent little double barrelled  cocktail of paranoia and self loathing. A heady mix and one that can make you do things that you really oughtn't be doing.

Yes, I may come off as aloof in social gatherings if I don't know you that well, I just don't want to open up. Call it upbringing, call it an inability to cope with emotions. A friend mentioned that we are all high functioning autistic to varying degrees. I don't have any medical research to back that claim up of course, but it certainly feels right. A way to mentally level the playing field. I am just as screwed up as everyone else, but they can either hide it better or are not aware of it in as much detail as I am. 

Where was I going with this? I think It actually ended up as a tangential riffing monologue based on my recent practises of figuratively pushing people away. I had a bad week this week for no apparent reason, I've done a little bit of reading on it and apparently, brain chemistry can change quite rapidly. Leading to mood swings. It was the first time that I had ever felt something like that. Going from being quite buoyant to black despair in the space of about 30 minutes. It was quite scary to be perfectly honest and reading the blog back that I wrote while it was happening is a little more laying my soul bare than I originally intended to be on here. But I digress. Scary scenes inside the gold mine and all that guys. Hopefully, now that I have experienced the rapid escalation of the black dog, I will be able to see it in future for what it really is. Brian chemistry and a deficiency of some description.

The TL:DR of it is that if people appear to be pushing you away, ask them. They may not want to be doing it or they may genuinely have issues... Whatever happens, the issue has been brought to the front of conversation and can be dealt with there and then.

Please just fucking talk about it people! Don't let it fester! You are my friends for a reason.

What the hell just happened?

Warning! From here on in there be swearing, lots of it. 

have no idea what happened on the way home this evening.

It was as if someone just pulled the plug out of the sloshy bath of happy that I'd been building up over the past few weeks.

I just want to stick two fingers up at the world this evening and say FUCK YOU!!!

And I have no reason for feeling like this. None whatsoever. So I ask again? What the hell happened? I don't have an answer. And that pisses me off even more. If I had a reason for feeling this shitty then it may be better as I could actually do something about it. With this situation I can't do a bloody thing. It's so frustrating and that is exacerbating things too.

So how about I put my toys back in the pram and put my big boy pants on and suck it the fuck up? I could, but how the hell did I get in this state in the first place? Is this going to be a regular thing. 

I know the therapy is starting to get a bit frustrating but that was at the end of last week.

The only positive out if this is that it can only get better cos it couldn't get much fucking worse.

Looking back

Warning, there will be a certain amount of laying my soul bare in this blog. i have come to terms with it, but if you don't wNt to know, stop reading now. you have been warned!

Well, since I started this Blog about 2 months ago, I can't believe the progress that has been made. The catalyst for beginning on this journey was a particularly bad experience that I had on New Year's Day. At that point, I was a bag of neuroses and anxiety. In thE intervening time, I have had some changes. The therapist that I was seeing has moved on and I am with a new person at my local surgery. He challenges me and makes me analyse the problem in a very detached way. I think that this is helping although during the sessions, it does get a little frustrating when I don't have a response to a question and have to ask him to re-phrase it. My first session with this therapist was a lesson in 'why the fuck am I doing this?' We talked about the insomnia that I had been experiencing for the whole of the session. Nothing about depression or anxiety. It was slightly bewildering, but when I came away from it, I realised that he had been attempting to tackle the problem obliquely by looking at one aspect and then addressing whether it is a cause of a symptom. Very clever. But then in the next session, we were still talking about the insomnia (which had by then abated. I am still filling inky sleep diary and I have no idea why... There is probably a very good reason for this to continue, but I confess to being unable to see it.

So, fast forward... There are things on be horizon which I don't want to discuss just yet which may mean a significant change in my life. Which may be just what I need. 

This past couple of months has been a very scary time with me moving a long way out of my comfort zone that I have built up around myself. I have begun to hug people. Strange as it may sound, I will never initiate a hug with anyone other than immediate family. I will reciprocate if someone hugs me, but I have a problem with physical touching. Since January, I have on a couple of occasions initiated a hug with people outside of my immediate family. I still wouldn't be able to hug relative strangers, but each to their own. 

Other comfort zone busting stuff:

Interacting socially with people without my buffer (Jeanette) being present. If you know Ms. J, you will know that she didn't kiss the Blarney Stone so much as bite a chunk off it. She is comfortable in virtually any social situation and can talk to anyone. I normally leave the social stuff to her and only speak when I am spoken to. This is an arrangement that works very well. I know I am socially awkward, I didn't develop in the same way as others socially. When others were going out and partying and generally having fun with their peers and members of the opposite sex, I was sitting either in a movie cinema watching g the silver screen or in my bedroom watching videos  of comedy and movies. I watched and re-watched movies. 

I didn't need other people when I had my buddies on the screen. Nowadays, I find it difficult to talk to people who I haven't talked to before. This is one of the challenges I set myself. Talk to someone each day in a social setting. It might be asking the checkout person how their day is going, it might be in a professional context. But I have been doing it and have come to the conclusion that we are all just winging it and playing everything by ear. Some are better at it than others. Some are awful. I am pretty much firmly rooted in the latter category, but I am getting better slowly.

On the plus side, my creativity has gone through the roof and I am coming up with new ideas and designs left, right and centre.

Tomorrow I get to go to my first group therapy thing. Not a clue what this is going to be like, but because of my love of film etc. I am envisaging a cross between something from one flew over the cuckoos nest and Glengarry Glenross. More to follow if I think it is appropriate tomorrow evening.