Happy Happy Happy.

MY LATEST ARTICLE...

(Has been Published on 'The F word' today- a prominent contemporary feminist website. Apologies for lack of blogs here but a combination of getting the above edited, a bad couple of weeks MH wise and then going down with tonsillitis has made me rather quiet! One or two more blogs are in the pipeline though, so hopefully October will be a more fruitful month for Syncopated thoughts.)

Jx

Let's Push Things Forwards.

This photo is troubling me:

In case you didn’t realise, it’s of my husband, and a little girl.

He met her when we went camping in the Lake District. She was called Neve. Owen was sat on top of the rock near our tent just doing some reading and thinking. Then he heard a call; ‘hey smelly pants!’, and there was Neve, grinning up at him with a cheeky smile. She poked her tongue out and came and sat next to him.

She was quite a character, about four or five years old and the oldest of her brothers and sisters. Utterly bossy, compulsively cheeky and very playful.

Owen’s heart melted, I could see in his eyes he was won over completely. He played with her for hours, and they connected. They laughed and joked and climbed and ran and explored and giggled and jibed and jived and made each other happy.

And oh, my god. I felt so fucking broody it’s untrue.

I had never realised, up until then, just how much of a good dad Owen would be. I had always, because of the way he generally spoke about children and because of the relationship he has with his own father, assumed that he would be, in his parenting style, very awkward and detached and grumpy. I figured somehow that he would never quite enter into the spirit of a family fully. Then Thomas, my nephew came along and he started to prove me wrong. He is very good with him, reading books for hours and helping Sophie bathe him. That was nice, seeing that, but I’m not really a baby fan. They cry too much and I don’t understand why. I am so scared of breaking them. HHhhhhhHHowever, I do admit to being wholeheartedly a five-year-old fan especially when they’re children who are confident and funny and yes, quite cute. Seeing him react and interact like that with Neve was so intoxicating it was almost primal. I just wanted, for the two or three minutes when this photo was taken to drag him to the tent and make a baby. I wanted to ride him long and hard and have gruelling explosive sex. I wanted…well…sperm rather than cock. My oh my I have never felt anything quite like it.

Now every time I see this photo I get an echo of the same feeling. I want to delete it, but somehow can’t bring myself to.

This is doing my nut for three reasons.

1) I have always stated that I don’t want children

2) We can’t afford one child, let alone the two or three I would want if, hypothetically we did have children.

3) I am severely mentally ill and don’t know if I’m well enough to cope with a family.

Yet, after Neve came into our lives, albeit briefly, something has changed between the two of us. I never mentioned my feelings, but I knew Owen could tell. Also, I could tell that something in him was changing, like the way he was looking at pregnant women and young mothers in the supermarket. Last night it all erupted and we had a funny ‘hypothetical’ conversation that boiled down to discussing parenting styles and school preferences (as in types of rather than specific ones) and the best age for us to do it. It was all very strange, like totally new territory, peppered with phrases like ‘well we never said definitely never,’ and ‘I’m not saying we will, but if we do then what do you think about…’ The whole thing was just very strange and weird and oddly exciting. This is just stuff we have never ever discussed because it was never important to us. I don’t know what’s changed really.

However, we would be stupid if we refused to ever think about the possibility of a family of our own because we are so family orientated already, and I’m never going to be career driven, I’ve accepted that already. I want to categorically state that I don’t have a tick tock sense of time passing. Nevertheless, it would be sad if we didn’t even properly discuss the issue until we were thirty-five and then it was getting on to being too late. Also, for us getting pregnant is going to be a huge, long and dangerous process because it will involve me gradually coming off my medication and proving that I can live drug free- a massive step that could take years- before we could even think about going ahead and actually trying to make a baby.

Like I say, the whole thing is rather troubling. Not simply because it’s a 180 degree turn around from even a month ago, and not only the annoying fact that both of our families told us that exactly this would happen, but because it’s a part of a wider picture.

I am having to really accept that I have a future.

Ever since I had to leave my OT course because I wasn’t well enough to cope with it, and then the suicide attempt, where I gave up on life altogether, I have refused to face up to the fact that I could have some semblance of a future ahead of me. I have constantly frustrated my Doctors, nurses and shrink by remaining bleak about my prognosis. ‘Ten percent of us die from this fucking illness’ I said, again and again. My death wish is so strong at times I just knew I would be one of them. Despite the fact that I am happier now than I have been for years, and genuinely healthy and loving life, there is so much of me that thinks each day that passes like that is a fluke. Sure, today was fun, and I enjoyed it, you could even say I’m doing well but how long until the next breakdown, the next relapse? For months after my hospitalisation I refused to even think about my options, and every time my CPN, Nick, would gently prod me about my future, I would laugh in his face. ‘I have no future.’ I would say. ‘Haven’t you read my diagnosis, haven’t you read my notes? I’m totally fucked. I’m doomed to go round and round in this eternal mood swing cycle of elation and depression. I will deteriorate further and further. The illness will destroy my functioning and relationships until one day I will crack and it kills me. That is my future. I am resigned to that. Now just leave me to my fate and go and spend valuable NHS resource on someone who actually has a chance of getting better. Someone you can actually help.’

They would sigh. And disagree, in the strongest terms. But I wouldn’t listen.

Now, something is shifting within me. I still have bleak moments, and I am still resigned to the fact that I have bipolar disorder and my life is never going to be the easiest.

BUT,

It doesn’t have to kill me. I don’t have to be one of the 10% who wind up swinging or jumping or slashing themselves into an early grave.

It doesn’t mean I have to be housebound, or dependent on my husband for everything.

It doesn’t mean I can never work.

It doesn’t mean I can’t be happy on a long term basis.

It doesn’t mean my marriage is doomed because he will get sick of me eventually.

And, I suppose:

It doesn’t mean that I would inevitably be an awful mother.

That’s the scary thing about seeing Owen with Neve. That’s why it has been playing on my mind so much. Because in a way, it’s all about me facing up to my potential and doing the brave thing with my life. I don’t mean whether or not we have children. The point is I have to face the fact that unless I get hit by a bus or develop a malignant tumour etc. then I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I have to accept that deep down. I can’t afford a repeat of last October, and I know that now. It’s about realising that, yes, I love life and also about realising I am worth something. Not just to other people but to myself.

Neve was a symbol more than anything else. In some senses a symbol of hope, yes. That I have come a long way and have a future, a life ahead of me that can bring me a lot of fulfilment and happiness, in whatever form I choose. But she was also a symbol of the fact that I am now tied to this earth and along with all the happiness comes a shitload of pain. I will lose people close to me, I will have relapses and crises, and other illnesses and heartache. Neve is a symbol of the fact that now I can’t deal with that pain by drowning it in booze night after night or jumping off a bridge. Not anymore, that time is passed forever. I’ve moved into another phase, one with much more happiness but also much more risk. I have to process the pain, I have to feel it, I have to let it go.

Also, with this idea of a future comes the responsibility to make the best of what I’ve been given with the talents I have. I can no longer use my illness as an excuse. I have to face up to the fact that I am a talented, loving human being with a lot to say who can really contribute to society be it through writing, teaching, working, campaigning, or… you know… raising three kids in a radical way. Or a combination of the above. I have to face up to the fact that I do have some control over my moods, they do not just come out of nowhere. My lifestyle, attitude, honesty and compassion for myself are key to my happiness rather than just pink pills and ‘the luck of the draw’. It’s all about taking control and my responsibility seriously.

I didn’t expect to be alive today. Now I’m thinking about in ten, twenty, fifty years time.

We are talking about the future again. Houses, kids, countries, jobs, ideologies, dreams, golden wedding anniversaries and book ideas. That’s simply something we didn’t dare to do for a long time. It’s a testament to Owens faith in me that we have got to this stage, but also to my own determination and hard work that I’ve got this far so quickly.

I’m half excited, half terrified.

Thank you, little Neve. You’ve opened my eyes to what could be and helped me and Owen more than your five-year-old brain could ever possibly comprehend.

Life Under Canvas.

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Mantra

I’ve heard it argued that you shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ too often. The phrase loses it’s power, they say. The words become meaningless, hollow. They don’t send shivers down your spine like the first time they were whispered in your ear, the impact is lessened, and soon the phrase becomes bland, like saying ‘what would you like for tea?’ or ‘it’s raining again, it’s supposed to be summer.’

I am here today to testify. Me and Owen say ‘I love you’ to each other at least fifty times a day. That’s no exaggeration. If anything, it’s a conservative estimate. On days where he’s at work sometimes I pick up the phone, dial his desk, wait till he answers and say ‘I love you’ then hang up.

He usually rings back:

‘I love you too’

It is something we do, something we have always done.

Yet the words have more power now than they ever did the first time: spoken by nineteen year old Jen, my nervous laying down of the cards before I even knew what those words really meant. I knew that by saying them, I crossed a line that would shape us forever. It was a week into the relationship. I said them once. It took Owen three months to respond. Maybe some people would have taken that as a snub. I didn’t. I knew very quickly that this would go the distance. But Owen is more tentative, more hesitant. He likes to be sure about things. He likes to think before he acts. I knew this from the first day we met. I had to accept him for the way he was. So for three long months I waited for the answer I wanted to hear. When I finally heard the words, I knew they were heartfelt. I was curled up on his lap. I had been crying. I don’t remember why. Owen was stroking my hair. His hands fell gently on my scalp, weaving patterns among my follicles. Nick cave was singing softly in the background. ‘Into my arms, my love… into my arms.’ I still don’t know if that was deliberate. He said ‘Jen, I think I love you too’. I fell to sleep with those words ringing in my ears. I smiled and dreamed about us holding hands, our ringed fingers interlocking.

Now its seven years later, we are married. We have said those words almost a million times. They have acquired a history. They have become a ritual. They are a part of us. There are stories I can tell about those words. Some of the times we spoke them stand out. Like the time Owen sang them to me drunkenly on our wedding night before he fell asleep and I felt happier than I ever have in my life. Or the time I said them to him when he had taken his first pill and he looked back at me in sheer delight and awe, like I had given him the secrets of the universe in one single sentence. But mostly when I think of the phrase it is almost as an invisible thread, weaving in and out of our lives, binding us tighter together, strengthening the bond between us.

It can mean different things. Rather than simply being a statement of devotion, these days there’s a whole art form involved in interpreting the sentence.

‘I love you’ can mean, amongst many other things:

‘Shut up’

‘That joke wasn’t funny but you still make me laugh.’

‘I want to have sex.’

‘I’m going to cum.’

‘That food was nice.’

‘Please?’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re annoying me.’

‘I can’t imagine life without you.’

‘You rock my world.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Stop being silly. God, you’re a plonker.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘I’m proud of you’

‘Good luck.’

‘I’m with you.’

‘Happy birthday.’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Get on with some work!’

‘That’s so typically you.’

‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘I want to be with you forever.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘I love you. I mean really, truly, so much I’m going to explode.’


*******************

So the list goes on. We never define what the sentence means at the time. We just say the words and we both understand. It’s a language within a language. It is comforting and inspiring and reassuring and challenging. It’s sometimes a little stifling but mostly utterly utterly freeing.

Has the phrase lost it’s impact since the first time?

Well, yes and no.

The words are just words. Their power waxes and wanes with the force that moves them.

When they are said out of habit they are meaningful and nourishing but not knee knocking. However, even now after seven years, and I would hedge a bet that even after twenty seven years we will still be able to pull a mind-blowing ‘I love you’ out of the bag. It’s all in the context. The power is in the chemistry between you at the time. ‘I love you’ is the product of a reaction, a winning formula. I savour the words, I roll them round my mouth and taste them on my tongue. I have never found a more potent mantra to help me through this life. It might be a cheesy line to finish a rather cheesy entry, but ‘I love you’ is the most important thing I have ever heard, or will ever say.

No Ripple

I have grown to like being still.

I have taken to sitting in silence, especially in the daytime when Owen is away. Sometimes I play a record on softly in the background, usually an old favourite: Nick Drake or Leonard Cohen. Often even that is overwhelming. I dislike too much noise. I sit, with my thoughts on mute; sitting, breathing, just being.

I can do that for a long time, sometimes hours. I can’t explain why, or how but I find such beauty, such depth in silence. I feel a stripping away of the layers, a crumbling of the barriers until all you’re left with is a pure and calm stillness. Sometimes, my body rebels. It gets bored and restless, it longs for the shiny, for the new. I persevere. Still I sit, still I breathe, in and out, in and out. The boredom, too, eventually melts away.

I focus on the breath. I count to ten like I’ve been taught. One to ten and back again. Just me and the breath. Everything else disappears. I count to ten. I breathe in and out. Until the thoughts are still and all is quiet within.

Sometimes, when I am feeling this calm, I take out pad and pen and let myself write. This is a true joy. I write spontaneously. I have never done this before. I don’t know where the words come from, but I don’t think them first like I usually do. I do not edit, I do not delete. They sometimes make sense, they sometimes don’t. I don’t care what happens to them. They are not my words, they do not belong to me. They are pure: free from ego and competition and paralysis. I like writing this way, although it feels more like channeling than writing. When I read the words back though, I can tell they came from somewhere inside me. I am no medium, except of my own subconscious. It is so different when you let the words form on the page without worrying about them. You learn that they usually take care of themselves. It’s like a mother finally having the courage to let go of her child’s hand as they cross the road. It’s all in the act of letting go that things become pleasurable, really pleasurable and that you become free. The stress disappears, the knots unravel. The words on the page do not belong to me, nothing belongs to me, hell, there is no me! It’s just all good. Really good. And it makes me smile.

But that’s the writing. I do that because I can’t not write. I’ve never been able to live a life where I don’t write. But the day is long and mostly I just sit. I sit on my stool or I sit on the sofa. I sit on the park bench, I sit by the river. The water flows like time passing. You never put your foot in the same stream twice.

Home again: I stare at the white wall. I see so much peace and beauty there. I walk into the garden. I smell a flower. For a moment, that flower is the universe. I watch the bees and wasps fly around the garden. I wish them well. I breathe, I breathe, I breathe. I go inside. I brew a cup of tea in my old china cup. It is white with a golden rim, and a chip in the top. I pour the water slowly, watch the leaves diffuse. I blow. I sip. I swallow. The tea becomes part of me. Water becomes blood. Hydrogen and Oxygen along with everything else. I wash the cup, the soapy bubbles pop on my arm. I rinse. I dry. I place the cup back in the cupboard. I am aware of every movement in my hands, the feel of the rough tea towel against my moist knuckles. I walk back to the sofa. I sit. I stare at the white wall. I see such beauty there.

Later: I smile. It is colder now. I pull my blanket round me. I don’t know the time. I don’t want to know the time. He is not here, but will be back. Until then, I sit. I make Nick sing some more. I don’t listen to the words, just the melody, the sound of his instruments; his guitar and his voice. That’s how it’s always been with Nick and I. The sun sets, I watch it on the horizon through my window. I do not ignore the building site opposite. I try to see the beauty in the cranes and the scaffolding. It is not difficult, although it was at seven o’ clock this morning. I yawn and stretch my arms into the space above me. I sit, I light a candle. I stare into the flame, I don’t know how long for. Soon, I don’t hear noises, not even Nick. I stare at the candle, I stare at the flame and its many different colours. My eyes softly, gently close.

There is a smell of smoke. I open my eyes. The candle has blown out. Its plumage spirals towards the overhead light. I lick my fingers and pinch the wick. It fizzles but does not burn.

I stand, fully awake. Nick has long stopped, the disk ejected. Outside there is darkness. I shut the curtains, turn on the light. The stillness remains within me, unshakable. My stomach rumbles. I walk into the kitchen, open the cupboards, ponder quietly what to create for us today. Whilst I am thinking, I hear the front door slam. He is home. I smile: another day over and not a ripple in the pond. What joy I have known today, what more could I want for? The door opens, he is wet with drizzle and his nose is red. He kisses me, throws his arms around me, says; ‘It’s good to see you, it’s great to be home.’ Here, you see, I have everything I need. Here, you see, I want for nothing. After all, this is my home. Not this town, not this house, not this man, not even this body. Home is the stillness, the rich beautiful stillness that lies here: deep down inside me.

Respect

This is one of the best articles about Nirvana that I have ever read. I used to want to write an article about this band, their complex messages and what they meant to me. I always put off doing it, now I don't think I ever will. Forksplit has said it all for me and more. She is simply a kick ass writer with a voice stronger than most bloggers I have ever read. If you haven't checked her out on my links section yet, then do. If, by any chance you are a Nirvana fan then please read this. You will not regret it. I loved this article because it was written by someone who was genuinely touched by Kurt and whose life he shaped in a similarly deep (yet not always healthy) way to mine. I have not listened to Nirvana in a couple of years, like Forksplit I have majorly overplayed them and they now seem to belong to a bygone era. But reading this reminded me of how much they were a part of the landscape of my life for a long long time. It's beyond nostalgia, reading this made me feel like for a split second I was connecting with all those spine tingling sensations I felt when I first heard the opening chord to Serve the Servants or saw for the first time the famous picture of Kurt wearing too much eyeliner in the markets in southern Spain on a summer holiday and not being able to tear my eyes away. It brought back the memories in a way that some corporate music journalist would struggle to do. For that I am grateful and I might even go and listen to 'All Apologies' in a quiet corner just out of respect for the great man and the way he shaped a generation of misfits.

Pure Nostalgic Soppiness

I’ve been sorting out the ‘my documents’ section of my computer which hasn’t been reorganised since the second year of Uni, back in 2002. It has been quite some feat! I have found millions of unfinished blogs, introductory paragraphs for short stories and lots of embarrassing photographs.

Also, over the course of this frustrating dragging, sorting and deleting of files, I came across some old poems. They made me feel quite nostalgic so I thought I’d share the ‘best’ (I use the term loosely) ones on this blog so they’re not just languishing away on my hard drive for the next five years.

The following three are love poems, written over the course of mine and Owen’s relationship. They are displayed in chronological order. ‘Marked’ was a poem I wrote the morning after the first time we had sex without a condom, I was wrapped in a blanket waiting for Owen to make me a cup of tea and feeling very taken, very in love. ‘Because you must love me’ was written in the aftermath of a silly argument as a reconciliation gift, and ‘Victory’ was composed on the beach outside our Honeymoon apartment, three days after we had married.


Marked

It smells
sickly sweet
running down
my insides.
I thought it
would waft up in
savoury swirls.
I thought it was
supposed to be
salty.
It trickles out of me
soaking through my
stolen boxer shorts.
I think of them now,
swimming inside of me,
tiny little tadpoles
that all have your face.


Because I guess you must love me

I’m sorry for my clothes,
on your bedroom floor.
For never shutting the toilet door,
For being too tired and not rubbing your head,
my knickers kicked carelessly under the bed.
For turning conversation too often on me
and endlessly wondering what the future will be.
For eating all the pickled onions in the jar
and constantly dreaming of being a star.
For not washing up
and picking my nose
and ignoring five day old
stains on my clothes.
For talking and talking,
dragging heels when I’m walking
for interrupting john snow-
and finding it hard to just flow.
For not being bothered to go on top,
for keeping on going when you ask me to stop.
For wearing your dressing gown and burning the sleeve,
and just never knowing when I should leave.
For farting and wafting it under your nose,
for admiring and lusting then stealing your clothes.
For my hair brained schemes, my silly ideas
my cigarette breath and not cleaning my ears.
For the occasional tantrum when I don’t get my own way
my inevitable tendency to overlay
tell me this darling:
why the fuck do you stay?


Victory

He swims
up and down
the shore,
head bobbing
like a beautiful buoy
in the ocean.
His skin
glistens
in the sun,
his eyes
sparkle
like the water
dripping down
his body.
And I think
fuck me
how good it is
to witness
death
being cheated
by flesh
and blood.
How we've lost
before we've started
but our small
victories
are sips of
water
on a long
hot day
in Spain.

Serve the Servants

The 11th to 17th of June is national carer’s week here in the UK. I’m not usually a fan of weeks for this and days for that as I think they can often provide a pinnacle of focus for that week’s highlighted charity or issue which then gets forgotten about until roughly the same time next year. They are horribly media centric – perfect for journalists and bloggers who need a prompt for something to write about that day (self obviously guilty here). The activities that surround them are usually very cheesy or horribly decadent, designed primarily to pull on heartstrings and generate direct debits from as many people as possible. However, then I start getting into my feelings about charities in general which I surely will another time but not now. For the time being I am going to take the sound bites I’ve heard on the news and Woman’s hour as bait and talk a little bit about carers and caregivers rights in this country.

I feel qualified to talk about this as it is a subject that is deeply, deeply close to my heart, even though I wish it wasn’t. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be me who was writing this blog at all, but Owen- he’s the expert on this subject and I would love for him to guest blog on this page. I’m sure he, circumstances permitting, would have gladly obliged. Like a lot of people in his position, he’d love to have time just to write articles about things for fun, too. However, for his sins Owen is my long term carer. As well as being an ambitious full time PhD student (sans funding) with a two hour commute to his University, he additionally has to look after me and work two jobs spread over thirty five hours a week to support us both enough just to scrape by. Today, Owen got out of bed at six am, started work at seven, and isn’t planning on stopping until midnight or so. It has been this way for a long time now; he barely even takes a day off. He usually falls asleep at the keyboard sometimes around one o’ clock and staggers to bed after I have spent ten minutes giving him a list of reasons why he will make himself sick if he doesn’t at least get some rest.

We don’t get any help from the government, nor have we ever done, for many complicated reasons, not least the fact that he is a student and financial help for those in higher education is pitifully hard to come by, even if your wife is so sick she can’t get out of bed and doesn’t know what day of the week it is. We don’t get any support, despite the fact that, as part of the army of unpaid carers, Owen and those like him are saving the government billions of pounds in labour costs – for the government to actually pay these carers the same as paid professionals the work they do would involve spending the same again as the annual NHS budget (57 billion). In terms of carers, Owen is one of the relatively lucky ones. Most of the time I am fairly high functioning, and can do things for myself, even if they are within a limited sphere. However, for the last five years I have been unable to work for more than a few weeks at a time and several times a year we will have a bad spell where Owen has to really take over.

During these times, which can last from a few days to a few months, Owen suddenly finds me incapacitated to the point that he has to do all my domestic jobs; the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning etc which are time consuming and annoying, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. For twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, for long stretches of time I might go into ‘I want to die’ mode, which (as I guess the name gives away), means I am actively suicidal. So, not only does Owen have to do his studies, his teaching, papers and conferences, as well as everything around the house and his mundane paid employment in museums and cafes but he has to spend countless hours watching and caring for me. On the days he doesn’t call in sick at work because he’s too scared to leave me (I think most of his employers think Owen’s immune system is pathetic when in fact it is steely) he will phone me from his desk and we will talk in code every fifteen minutes to make sure I am still alive. It is embarrassing for me to admit, but during these times he becomes responsible for everything about me; from making sure I eat, sleep, wash, dress, brush my hair, and clean my teeth and all the other things that most couples don’t think about. It is not unusual for him to take hours in the morning just getting me out of bed and looking like a human being. At night time, he has stayed up all night, for days on end, just watching me, making sure I don’t do anything daft. He takes me to appointments, liaises with doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, he learns names of drugs and therapies, negotiates what medication I should be taking when and makes sure I take it, even though this can lead to some blinding rows. He sits with me whilst I cry, listens to me for hours moaning about what an ugly bitchy shithead I am. He eats microwave food with blunt cutlery because all the knives are locked away. He accompanies me on bus and train journeys because I can’t face them alone, he walks with me in town because all the people can trigger psychosis on a grand scale.

These are just a small selection of the daily sacrifices Owen will make to give me the best life he can. Our relationship turns, (sometimes overnight) from one of absolute equality to total dependency. My personality is transformed and my functioning is grossly impaired. Yet Owen just gives and gives and gives. He does all the above and more, and has never, ever complained. Sometimes he gets tired and down with it all, sometimes he can get very upset, but has he ever snapped at me or lost his patience? Never. Not only does he do all this but he tries to give me a good quality of life; despite being so tired that he needs twenty five cups of coffee just to get up in the morning, he tries to do this all with a laugh and a smile, a hug and a kiss, a joke, a giggle and lots and lots of sympathy. He tries, whenever possible, to keep me out of hospital. He cares for me with dignity and respect and makes sure my wishes as regards my treatment are upheld as much as is humanly possible. He slaves away to make an awful situation bearable, and every night before I go to sleep he says to me ‘I believe in you, this will get better and even if it didn’t I regret not one moment: I would do it every day for the rest of my life.’ And then he is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

I know. I know. If there ever was such a thing, I am one lucky manic depressive.

But, as special as he is, Owen is not the only one.

Up and down the country there are friends, relatives, neighbours all caring for people they love not for monetary value or job satisfaction but because they feel it is the right thing to do. Many have given up well paid jobs to do so, and have to eke a living out of the pittance that the government provides for the ‘lucky’ few carers it deems eligible for financial help. At the moment, the maximum weekly carer’s budget is around £48.68, (for a minimum of 35 hours a week- equivalent to £1.39 an hour) which is significantly less than many of the other benefits going and many carers find themselves in financial dire straits. These are real people with real lives every day losing their houses, jobs, cars, and possessions in order to give their sick loved ones a life away from institutions and the slow decay they bring. The support they generally get from the system is laughable. Their hard work is often unrecognised or treated as a nuisance, their relationship with the patient undervalued. When they ask for vital support, for respite care, for some kind of state provided home help in addition to their unpaid labour, for some much needed money or equipment, it is usually an uphill struggle all the way. Forms are piled upon forms for even the most basic means of assistance and the lists of excuses soon mount up as to why you are not eligible for this or that. Many carers feel like the authorities are entities they have to constantly fight, rather than vehicles they can turn to for support. The strain is enormous, the pressure huge. Yet many of these carers are themselves are vulnerable people. A huge percentage of them are elderly, often hardly able to move properly or fully function themselves. On the other end of the spectrum, some are mere children who find themselves looking after their parents and siblings instead of concentrating on their schoolwork or social life; terrified that if they, as a ten year old child, don’t keep the family functioning then social services will get involved and split the family up. These are truly the unsung heroes of our society, for those people who have never had to care for someone day in day out then all I can say is you have no idea what it is like. I have no idea what it is like and I’m a lot closer to the action than most.

I sometimes ask Owen; ‘what do you get out of this?’ After all when we met he was just turned eighteen. He was barely an adult with patchy facial hair and a passion for computer games. He is not a super stud but he is not a bad looking bloke and he has a great personality. I think at university even if he couldn’t have pulled the Julianne Moore look-alike that he dreamt of, he could have at least chosen someone whose idea of an evening in wasn’t drinking a bottle of whiskey and locking herself in the toilet with a razor blade for three hours. To this day it mystifies me why he didn’t go running for the hills. I would have done. I have asked him this question a number of times. Sometimes I am genuinely curious, sometimes I do it when I beat myself up. He has only ever responded with these four words: ‘Jen, I love you.’ and refuses to be drawn any more on the matter.

It is, clearly, not all one way. I support Owen in many of the things he does and bring happiness into his life in many capacities other than the ones I have mentioned. Most people who care for someone deeply love the person involved and find caring for them rewarding and fulfilling, even if it is sometimes a soul-destroyingly exhausting and strenuous process. But it seems to me that it is precisely this love and devotion that the government are exploiting. They know that Owen and the six million others like him are not going to just turn their backs on their loved ones. It basically boils down to this, why pay someone for something when they are willing to do it for free? They know that Owen means it when he says ‘Jen I will do anything for you’. Even if that means year upon year of little sleep, no money, overwork and battle after battle with the authorities. When the alternative is to see their loved ones go into hospital or residential care, out of their lives and control, often putting them at risk of abuse and exploitation many carers simply say ‘over my dead body’, and battle on. That is what Owen and the rest of my family have done for me and I owe them my life several times over.

Carers, in my experience, are not asking for much.

They are asking for:

a) Enough money to provide them and the person they are caring for with a basic standard of living where crippling financial worries do not make an already fraught situation 1000 times worse.

b) Recognition of their efforts and respect of their own wishes and needs as well as the patients.

c) Respite care and more short term intensive inpatient services for when times get really tough. When they judge the situation to be unmanageable, that is, not some government crisis team’s checklist.

d) Specialist help for the things they cannot afford to provide themselves, or are not trained to do.

There are other things, but these are the main complaints I find most carers have. Of course, as a patient myself, I do realise there is a debate around giving carers too much power, in that I believe as a patient it is me who should always have the final word, if I am able to do so. Some carers may have ulterior motives and it is the authority’s job to ensure abuses do not happen. However, the truth of the matter is ‘what’s the alternative?’ If, as a patient you are not supported by those around you then there might be some limited care in the community stuff, but if you have a time of crisis or get too ill to cope, you will end up in an institution. Enter a hospital or a residential environment and you relinquish all control anyway, to people who are much more likely to abuse and neglect you than your own friends and families. Ask most patients who’d they’d rather have the power over them and I’d hedge a bet it wasn’t the syringe wielding electro-shocking multidisciplinary team at the hospital, but their loving husband, or their mum or dad or their grandparents. In most cases, patient’s rights are the one and the same as carer’s rights. These devoted caregivers are sacrificing so much and getting so little in return. That’s why we, (especially those of us who are on the receiving end of their love and attention) should be fighting together to get these unsung heroes the rights and privileges they deserve.

Pants on Fire

4. I undertake the precept to refrain from false speech (lying).

{OK, I admit it. This is the big one. The one I was nervous about facing, the one I’m a bit reluctant to delve into. Not only because I have friends who read this thing and I’d hate for this to affect their trust of me, but because sometimes there are things about yourself that you don’t like to dwell on. But, I decided to write this blog in the spirit of honesty, and on a subject like this it would be irony of ironies that it was now that I shied away from the truth.}

I’ll start by saying this:

I was instantly attracted to my husband for three main reasons.

1) He had long hair, a big brain and a nice, kind face.
2) I could talk to him about anything and felt immediately that I could trust him.
3) He didn’t tolerate my bullshit, and my lies.

Of course, as time went on, the list of ‘things that are great about O’ got larger and larger, but these initial three were the reasons that I went on when I decided to ask him out. In some ways, Owens’ love and devotion to facts, truth and honesty can mean he is a difficult man to talk to and get on with. He is rubbish at sycophantic smalltalk or polite niceties for their own sake. But in those first few days of the relationship, it was the thing I fell head over heals in love with and the thing I knew I needed to be a central guiding influence in my life were I ever to be a happy, well adjusted person again.

Back then, my head was more concerned with fantasy than facts. For many of my teenage years I had been best friends with a pathologically compulsive liar, and some of her behaviour had, over the years, gradually rubbed off on me. Although, unlike my friend, I don’t think my lying ever got to the stage of illness, I was certainly not grounded in reality. I was deeply in love with melodrama, exaggeration, daydreams, fiction. I was not into the hard hitting truth, I was not into mundane existence, as I saw it. Unlike my friend, I would rarely invent things that were totally not true but I was very fond of embellishing things, polishing them, editing them to my favour. I am a perceptive, imaginative woman and was generally pretty good at doing this realistically without getting caught (although like many liars I could have been delusional that I was fooling everyone).

I had been a very honest child, and I think I am fairly honest by nature, but during my teenage years I somehow lost the spirit of telling the truth. At the end of the day, it was just more interesting, more exciting to say you had drank ten pints than two, told your teacher to fuck off rather than ‘yes sir’, to say you had kissed five boys, rather than none. I’m not saying I had a serious problem, and I know that many teenagers do the same thing. It’s just that for me, I have always prized honesty so highly in my life, my family and other friends are very honest people, in fact most of the people I have been close to over the years have had painfully honest, self aware streaks. Yet I developed an unhealthy habit of deviating from the truth and each time I did so, I got a bit further away from myself. After a few years of this, it got to the stage where realised I would need serious help in breaking the habit and finding my way back.

Then Owen came along. We met on the first day of university and from the word go he would just call me on my bullshit. He stamped it out as soon as he saw it, whenever he recognised it. He both encouraged and praised the times when I was honest and chastised my deceitfulness with great force. He was acutely perceptive at telling the difference. He shaped me; he was both firm and plain speaking in his demands; ‘if you want to be with me, if you want this relationship to go the distance then you are going to have to put love of truth, rather than excitement and drama, at the centre of your world. I just can’t be with someone who has it any other way.’ I am not used to ultimatums and God, it sent shivers down my spine (the good kind). It made me sit up and listen.

He claimed, and stands by this claim to this day, that despite what I might think, I am actually ten times more interesting when I’m sweating it out and wrestling with the truth of a matter than when I’m off in fantasy land. He said that he loved me more when I was just being myself and hanging out with him; even when life was humdrum, rest assured he didn’t find me boring in any way. That to seek truth and love honesty might not always be the easiest path, but was always the right, more fulfilling way. That my own personal truths when I discovered them would be more thought provoking and impressive than any half cooked exaggeration or tall tale I could come up with.

That was pretty much the nicest, most inspiring vote of confidence that anyone has ever said to me and I took his words on board. I did this, not because of his ultimatum, although by then I wanted to be his lifelong partner more than anything I have ever wanted, but because I recognised that following his guidance would make me a better, happier person. Because more than anything I was terrified of winding up like my friend, who was getting more delusional by the day. I would speak to her on the phone and she didn’t even know who she was anymore, and her lies had escalated to the extent that she was claiming ridiculous and scary things: that she was giving blowjobs to serial killers in prison, had a heroin addict stalker and was working for the government as a spy. It sounds strange to say this now, but Owen’s upfront truthfulness was the antidote to what could have been seriously dangerous territory. It was like the lighthouse beacon warning me off the rocks, a guiding light to save me from the course I was set on. His integrity was to me back then the most important and challenging thing I had ever witnessed, and to this day, it is the thing I treasure and value most about my husband.

His plan to make an ‘honest woman’ out of me has (mostly) been successful, and despite the odd setback I continue to grow in truthfulness and integrity everyday, but the path hasn’t always been easy. I still fall into old ways sometimes. I find myself saying the silliest of things, like the bus fare was four pounds instead of three pounds fifty. Or saying I’ve done things when I haven’t. It’s stupid, petty, and basically a bad habit that I am still working on.

Like I say, I very rarely out and out lie these days but one of the remaining problems I have with false speech revolves around the way I handle my health. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I have suffered mental health problems for years and until very recently I’ve dealt with them, basically, by lying my ass off. “I’m fine” was my mantra, chanted to everyone I met in the street, to my friends, to my family… even to Owen. Unless I was drunk and banging my head against a wall, or so depressed I could hardly breathe, I would basically try and put on a smiley front. I think a lot of people who know me think of me as a ‘happy depressive’ and that, my friends, is because I lie. I’m not saying I always succeed in convincing people. But I always try. This ‘coping’ method that I would halfheartedly defend (who wants to hear all my fucked up twisted thoughts? I’ll have no friends left) was exposed for the sham it really was last year.

When I attempted suicide in October, ten minutes previously I had been on the phone to my own father, saying the same hollow phrase; ‘I’m fine’. My head was in pieces, I was literally tearing my hair out, but I simultaneously laughed at all his jokes and the conversation was light-hearted and normal. We talked about the Sheffield Wednesday scores, what I was having for lunch and the relative merits of crackerbread over ricecakes. Then I put the phone down and emptied the contents of my lithium bottle down my throat. That, right there, is the danger of false speech. That is because when you are not honest about your feelings, when you lie, when you do the whole bottling/ stiffupperlip/ braveface/ bullshit, it always ends up badly. Maybe not always as dramatically as that, but always badly. After that incident my relationships with those closest to me were damaged hugely, as none of them really knew anymore whether what I was saying was anywhere near the truth. It is only now, months later, that the wounds are even starting to heal and I think in the case of my father the trust between us has been damaged almost irreparably. I should have just faced the truth, and confided in those around me; the many friends and family who love me dearly rather than relying on my acting skills and my lies in a vain attempt to cover up the truth. Painful as it is to admit you’re not coping, it is more painful to die of liver failure, surely?

So, taking this precept is of vital importance to me, in fact I would take it tomorrow. I have already made gigantic strides in this area, and I work hard every day to become a more truthful person. I would say, out of all the precepts, this is the one that makes the most sense, speaks to me most powerfully and is ethically not much of a dilemma. I have learnt the hard way that lying is damaging, that your own false speech hurts both yourself and those around you. The ones you love the most are always at the epicentre. I have witnessed that those who tell lies, even white lies, lose the trust of those around them and this eventually brings them great pain; the loss of a friendship, or even a partner. Lies are corrosive and manipulative by nature, and even when they are well intentioned often do more harm than good in the long run. Personally, I am proud to say that I am more truthful than I have ever been, but I seriously have to learn to tell the truth about the shit that’s going on in my head, my mental state. I have to stop trying to protect those around me by telling cushioning lies and be open about my feelings and my thoughts. I guess you could even say my life depends on it.