found this on the bbc ouch site.
Thought it may interest folk who don't read it/know about it. Written by one of their columists who has mental health problems.
Columnists
Liz Main
Liz is Australian, though grew up in India. A journalism career led to TV presenting and PR, which led to a five year spell of depression. Following this, Liz resumed her career working on government policy on mental health and social exclusion.
Pyjama Girl moves house
What a weird week it's been. After 13 years I've packed up and left London to the place where my loved one lives. Yesterday the removal man came and piled my many boxes into a van to put them on the boat so that I can jam my fiance's formerly minimalist flat with all my junk. Hey, marry me, marry my stuff.
I have made an effort though. I've thrown a huge amount away, or bundled it up for charity. All those clothes, shoes and other unwise purchases. All those books. Do you have any idea how hard it is to part with cookbooks, even the ones you've never used?
But ditching all of that was a doddle compared to going through the boxes and boxes that I hadn't opened since I'd moved out of the last place, when I'd quickly packaged up my life because I had to move my insane self out of the flat I was in. Half of these seemed to be photos, mostly of nieces and nephews: the first nappy changes, the first steps, the first Christmases, birthdays etc. I was ruthless. Three full black bin liners thrown away, and with each photo I felt a tinge of sacrilegious guilt.
Difficult as that was, much more painful was the discovery of my life BC - Before Crazy as my partner puts it. The photos of me up to my knees in red clay directing a video shoot in Borneo, and chasing Rupert Murdoch down a corridor with my tape recorder outstretched. My first front page newspaper article. Job references and CVs tracking my professional progression. Memorable holidays in places I may never go again. They were all there boxed up clumsily.
So were the photos of friends that I know I once knew but can't remember the names of. I look at them and wonder what they are doing now and whether they can possibly imagine what has happened to me. It's all a reminder of the way my life was BC. There were the highs that no one noticed and the lows that I mostly kept hidden and the therapy that I ran away from to move to London - but they weren't in the photos. Instead there was just me, at 21 white blonde and surreally glamorous (by my standards), thinner than I can ever remember being and dressed to the nines complete with red lipstick and pearls. Photos of a life I just can't relate to any more: Sailing on Sydney harbour. Going out almost every night of the week and three times a day on weekends. A life where I wore a mask of makeup and oversized earrings (anything to draw attention away from who I really was, and anyway it was the 1980s.) I dreaded not looking the part, and here was the evidence of me trying desperately to convince everyone that I was happy when actually at the time I was just watching another person go through the motions. Dissociation, they call it.
And then in more boxes lay AD - After Diagnosis. The bizarre artwork from occupational therapy - black block prints of spiders and snakes from the bad days, rather jollier orange and blue ones of wombats and emus from the better times. All binned.
Not so easy were the diaries. I hadn't remembered writing so much down. Entries made almost every day that I was in hospital, most of which I hadn't read since. It was hard reading these flashbacks to psychosis, the documentation of my determination to die. Notes on people who danced and sang and made amusing comments in the height of mania, people whose small acts of kindness helped so much, the people who were interminably boring or frightening or mean. The staff who helped and the ones that were harsh, or even cruel. The ever-present drone of Magic FM, the over heating and terrible food, the inability to get a cup of tea when you wanted one, or to have a bath because someone had drenched the floor and/or stolen the plug. But mostly it took me back to the fear. I hadn't remembered being so scared in hospital, so utterly out of control and terrified of what might happen to me next. But there it was on paper, the awful bleakness of it all.
I kept some of the diaries. I wanted to throw them all away, but I kept them because I don't feel like that anymore. I don't want to die, and I hope I'll never feel like that again. Something inside me has changed. Being with my partner has stabilised me and shown me that there's a purpose to life, but it took psychotherapy and a lot of work with fab psychologist to get me to the point where I can actually commit to a trusting and loving relationship.
I had a farewell-cum-engagement party in London last week, and for the first time I felt that Liz BC and Liz AD were one person. There were people from my school in India, friends and flatmates from along the way, people I'd worked with in London, people I'd met through all aspects of mental health. It was a great party for me, because it really didn't matter who people were or how I knew them, for whatever reason they are friends. It has taken time for me to put my two lives together, and to think that I can move on. I'll still be crazy, the downs aren't going to magically disappear and neither will the ups. So the impairment remains, but thank god the 1980s accessories are a thing of the past.
Thought it may interest folk who don't read it/know about it. Written by one of their columists who has mental health problems.
Columnists
Liz Main
Liz is Australian, though grew up in India. A journalism career led to TV presenting and PR, which led to a five year spell of depression. Following this, Liz resumed her career working on government policy on mental health and social exclusion.
Pyjama Girl moves house
What a weird week it's been. After 13 years I've packed up and left London to the place where my loved one lives. Yesterday the removal man came and piled my many boxes into a van to put them on the boat so that I can jam my fiance's formerly minimalist flat with all my junk. Hey, marry me, marry my stuff.
I have made an effort though. I've thrown a huge amount away, or bundled it up for charity. All those clothes, shoes and other unwise purchases. All those books. Do you have any idea how hard it is to part with cookbooks, even the ones you've never used?
But ditching all of that was a doddle compared to going through the boxes and boxes that I hadn't opened since I'd moved out of the last place, when I'd quickly packaged up my life because I had to move my insane self out of the flat I was in. Half of these seemed to be photos, mostly of nieces and nephews: the first nappy changes, the first steps, the first Christmases, birthdays etc. I was ruthless. Three full black bin liners thrown away, and with each photo I felt a tinge of sacrilegious guilt.
Difficult as that was, much more painful was the discovery of my life BC - Before Crazy as my partner puts it. The photos of me up to my knees in red clay directing a video shoot in Borneo, and chasing Rupert Murdoch down a corridor with my tape recorder outstretched. My first front page newspaper article. Job references and CVs tracking my professional progression. Memorable holidays in places I may never go again. They were all there boxed up clumsily.
So were the photos of friends that I know I once knew but can't remember the names of. I look at them and wonder what they are doing now and whether they can possibly imagine what has happened to me. It's all a reminder of the way my life was BC. There were the highs that no one noticed and the lows that I mostly kept hidden and the therapy that I ran away from to move to London - but they weren't in the photos. Instead there was just me, at 21 white blonde and surreally glamorous (by my standards), thinner than I can ever remember being and dressed to the nines complete with red lipstick and pearls. Photos of a life I just can't relate to any more: Sailing on Sydney harbour. Going out almost every night of the week and three times a day on weekends. A life where I wore a mask of makeup and oversized earrings (anything to draw attention away from who I really was, and anyway it was the 1980s.) I dreaded not looking the part, and here was the evidence of me trying desperately to convince everyone that I was happy when actually at the time I was just watching another person go through the motions. Dissociation, they call it.
And then in more boxes lay AD - After Diagnosis. The bizarre artwork from occupational therapy - black block prints of spiders and snakes from the bad days, rather jollier orange and blue ones of wombats and emus from the better times. All binned.
Not so easy were the diaries. I hadn't remembered writing so much down. Entries made almost every day that I was in hospital, most of which I hadn't read since. It was hard reading these flashbacks to psychosis, the documentation of my determination to die. Notes on people who danced and sang and made amusing comments in the height of mania, people whose small acts of kindness helped so much, the people who were interminably boring or frightening or mean. The staff who helped and the ones that were harsh, or even cruel. The ever-present drone of Magic FM, the over heating and terrible food, the inability to get a cup of tea when you wanted one, or to have a bath because someone had drenched the floor and/or stolen the plug. But mostly it took me back to the fear. I hadn't remembered being so scared in hospital, so utterly out of control and terrified of what might happen to me next. But there it was on paper, the awful bleakness of it all.
I kept some of the diaries. I wanted to throw them all away, but I kept them because I don't feel like that anymore. I don't want to die, and I hope I'll never feel like that again. Something inside me has changed. Being with my partner has stabilised me and shown me that there's a purpose to life, but it took psychotherapy and a lot of work with fab psychologist to get me to the point where I can actually commit to a trusting and loving relationship.
I had a farewell-cum-engagement party in London last week, and for the first time I felt that Liz BC and Liz AD were one person. There were people from my school in India, friends and flatmates from along the way, people I'd worked with in London, people I'd met through all aspects of mental health. It was a great party for me, because it really didn't matter who people were or how I knew them, for whatever reason they are friends. It has taken time for me to put my two lives together, and to think that I can move on. I'll still be crazy, the downs aren't going to magically disappear and neither will the ups. So the impairment remains, but thank god the 1980s accessories are a thing of the past.
![0]](http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif)
