Back Seat Driver

I had the good fortune yesterday to see two inspiring speakers at a public lecture at Leeds university: George Monbiot (who for a long time has been one of my inspirations) and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o who is a professor of Literature at the university of California as well as being an ex political prisoner, author and long term educator.

The lecture was about activism and social change, and both speakers know intimately about that subject. They had both endured hard times for their beliefs and shot from the hip, yet were encouraging, realistic and mindblowing at the same time.

The lecture made me both angry at the state of the world and happy that there were people who would stand up and rally against the causes of the problem. Yet, somehow I’m tired of standing on the sidelines. Of reading Guardian articles and saying the same things over and over again to my close circle of middle class friends. In short, it made me want to do more. You know, actually help the cause, rather than just getting kicks from feeling like a part of this revolutionary movement but never doing anything to contribute. I have been a passenger for too long.

I come to a point in my life where I’m at a crossroads. A genuine decision has to be made about the kind of life I will lead. I am not in a career nor am I aiming for one. I am not about to start a family. I do not feel tied to England. I feel like my life could go in many directions. I’m not saying it’s final or can never be reversed but over the next year or so, I will shape myself in ways which are at the moment undetermined. From the decisions I make I may never recover or I may blossom. I have to push myself in new ways. I may well enter the world of work, but do I really need to? If I do what kind should it be?

I find myself being softly seduced by the capitalist dream. Owen and I have been so poor for so long and after a while it starts to take its toll. Now I am in a more powerful position where my health has returned and the possibility of generating capital is at last within me. I find myself absentmindedly looking through the paper and saying things like ‘If I worked for twenty five hours a week, instead of just twelve or sixteen we could put the money aside and afford that holiday to Athens that we have always wanted. We could save and buy a car. I could go to more gigs. I could get that T shirt I have lusted after every time I walk past the shop.’

These are things that I have been saying to myself for the past few weeks. I feel the lure of the dollar, the seduction of the slavery. I always say to myself that this is not mindless capitalism, after all, going to see the historical birthplace of democracy and philosophy is not just your bog standard package holiday. The car would open up a world of possibilities; I could attend the local Buddhist centre I can’t get to on the bus, I could see inspirational friends more often. The T shirt, you mark my words, has a political slogan and the bands I would pay to see would be firmly anti establishment. Yet it boils down to this: I am here, voluntarily thinking to myself that I should chain myself to a desk and sign my valuable life and time away in the name of a foreign holiday? Have I learnt nothing over the years? Is this what my anti capitalism boils down to? My eyes glazed over under the neon shop window lights?

Yesterday was a wake up call, a slap around the face from one of Britain’s most important thinkers. I hope I will be eternally grateful.

I am no genius or great leader. I do however possess numerous talents that could help a worthy cause. Do I want to give these talents to the corporations or even established ‘charities’ when I know there are grassroots campaigners out there fighting for things that I passionately believe in who are desperate for people to help them out? What if Owen and I made a resolution to make do with less rather than more and we sacrificed our own personal ambitions for some kind of greater good? Isn’t that something that, when it’s all over, you could really sit back and be proud of?

Yes, you always have to live and cover your living costs. If you make yourself destitute you are, unless you are an exceptional person, not going to be any help to anyone. These are the chains that capitalism binds us with. Owen has his career path, rent and bills to pay, responsibilities galore: all those lovely adult words and concepts that prevent me going off and living in a tree house somewhere. Owen has done more than his fair share of the labour in this relationship for some time now and the balance has to shift now my health is improved, it’s only fair. What a tragedy would it be, though, if I were to find myself a year from now having been rendered useless by the corporate dragons, unable to do anything except work and sleep? My brain is now this lovely fertile ground where radical concepts and ideologies are taking form. I would hate to see it in twelve months time raped and pillaged and stripped bare, leaving only a shell of a woman who struggles to stay awake and who’s thoughts are preoccupied with questions such as ‘what kind of fruit salad shall I buy from M+S’ or ‘what interesting body part can I photocopy today?’ .

I have to work, I know, I know. But there has to be some kind of middle ground, right?

At the moment I am in a powerful position in that Owen and I are fully adapted to spending very little money, less than £10,000 a year, we could hardly survive on much less. In it’s own way, my getting a job is a dangerous proposition in that it will give us freedom to consume in ways we are not used to and once we have that money, it will become easy to become dependent on it. I see money sort of like rooms in a house. When Owen and I lived in a one roomed bed-sit, we were very happy and space was rarely an issue. Then, when we moved to York we took up residence in a house with six rooms and we soon ‘filled’ the space, both mentally and physically. Then, when we decided that we wanted to downsize because it was a ridiculous concept that we were paying for six rooms when we needed much less, the transition back was much harder. In a nutshell, it is always easier to upgrade than downsize. Yet, to upgrade there is always a cost, even if the acquisition seems reasonable or even free, maintenance of the new goods are often pricy. You always pay for more expensive things with your work, your time and your energy (the housework on the six roomed house was depressing in its infinity). Therefore, maybe it’s just better for Owen and I to struggle on with a small amount of money, to make do with as little as possible and have our freedom rather than getting used to having lots of cash.

For me and Owen the problem is that the work is unequally divided, rather than that we don’t have enough money. We might not be able to jet to Greece every few minutes, but we can eat and pay the bills and pay for Owens PhD. Maybe the equation we need to be looking at is how we can both do as little work as possible to maintain our living costs and then utilise our freedom for the greater good. The last thing the world needs is another back seat driver, enjoying the benefits of the ride but full of criticism for the guy in control. It needs people who will step out of the back seat and take charge, contribute, put their own necks on the line and their own foot on the accelerator. It needs activists and campaigners, people of integrity. Folks who will not be bought or sold, who can stand up and help stop the injustices that are perpetuating the suffering we see all around. It needs you. It needs me. The world needs us to give it everything we’ve got. Today, I’m standing at a crossroads. I’m not sure what direction to head in, all I know is that I have to travel against the flow.

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.

If You're Happy and You Know It.....

On Friday, my CPN commented that, right now, I seemed happier and healthier than he had ever known me to be. I thought about it and realised he was right. A smile spread across my face and we sat there for a couple of minutes beaming at each other. He asked me why I thought that was, what had changed? I said that I sort of had the feeling that everything was beginning to make sense, when for a lot of my life it hadn’t. He asked me what I meant by that. I said I just knew how to be happy. How to really be happy. Was it, he suggested, (the CPN in him shining through) because I had learnt through all the intense work we had done since I left hospital how to manage my illness better? I said, yes I am managing my illness a lot better these days for sure and that is helping immensely but that’s not it. It's about a lot of different threads of my life coming together and creating a coherent picture.

I’ve had all these sets of beliefs, often conflicting and not very well thought out that were random and disjointed. These days they’re all fusing and I’m starting to have an actual worldview. It’s been very influenced by my Buddhism, of course, but there’s more to it than that. I have done a lot of thinking in the last few years and I now have, or am starting to have a framework to hang my life on like a clothes horse on laundry day. This is creating this feeling of immense balance and stability. It’s giving me a sense of contentment and freedom and for the first time in my life a realistic picture of who I am and what I stand for. Sure, I’ve always had the general gist that I am left wing, and a feminist etc. But there were so many gaps and holes in my thinking. Now I feel like a complete picture, even if it is a rather surrealist one.

As a teenager and an early adult, there was one word that could describe me and that is ‘confused’. I didn’t know who I was or what I thought about this or that. I didn’t know how the universe fitted together or how my mind worked or how to control my emotions. I didn’t know jack shit, basically, but rather than be one of these self assured people who were convinced they had the answers, when they really knew nothing, I could see with a stark clarity how little I knew. It went on like this for a long time, through some very bleak years. But now I have the sense of it all coming together. That I know who I am, where I belong, what my role is, what the meaning of all this is.

I’m not saying there are no grey areas anymore. There certainly are. But part of my new acceptance of myself is to love and accept my own ambiguities. That grey is the new black, so to speak: to accept fully that I am never, ever going back to that clear cut time of fundamentalist Christianity and nor would I want to. This ever present questioning is part of me, part of my identity. The fact that I can see things from a multitude of angles should no longer be viewed with absolute negativity but as a very beneficial thing. I see my doubt and scepticism as something that pushes boundaries and helps me examine the world, rather than a negative hindrance to ever fitting in or finding peace.

I say this at the risk of sounding smug but I think I am learning how to be happy. This is something that many people take for granted, but for me it’s something I’ve really had to work at hard. And now I am starting to have a sense of payoff. As one of our exercises this week, my CPN has asked me to write down in concrete terms, for a bit of fun, a sort of practical guide to my new found happiness. So I could know in future, if the sky were ever to cloud over again, where the path to sunnier climes lays.

So here you are, in all its glory is the document I have cobbled together for next weeks meeting: I did it like I was a guru or something because I thought it would be fun. I actually am not suggesting anyone do the same as me. Think of this as a kind of self help manual, literally written for myself. This for my purposes only- though if it helps you, I do individual sessions of life coaching for $300 an hour! Email me for details.

Jen’s Practical Guide to happiness.


1. Body: All the common sense advice they say is true. Sleep well. About 7-8 hours a night, no more, not much less. Keep bedtime regular. Eat healthy meals, not junk food. Exercise, preferably out in nature. Drink a lot of liquid, not so much beer and coffee. Go to the doctors and dentist regularly.

2. Mind: Read a paper every day, but not the same one. Keep connected with the world from a variety of viewpoints. Think about what you’ve read, process the information, form opinions. Read books, watch films, listen to music and interact with culture. Challenge yourself in your choices. Never stop learning. Express yourself creatively through whatever medium suits you. Stretch yourself. Try new things. Meditate daily or whatever helps you wind down. Keep a journal or blog and reflect on your life.

3. Friendship: Be close to the friends that matter to you. Ditch the ones who don’t. A few good close friends are better than many fake ones. With those who you keep, make an effort to maintain contact. Rebuild burnt bridges. Surround yourself with people who love and understand you for who you are and appreciate your talents. Reach out to them when you are struggling. Be honest. Be a good friend in return. Listen to others problems. Be happy for your friends when they are successful, rejoice in their achievements. Phone them even when you’re feeling antisocial. Be generous with time, money and hospitality. Let them know how much you love and value them. Try not to compare yourself with them- everyone has their own suffering. Don’t try and solve other peoples problems for them or encourage other people to become dependent on you, help your friends help themselves.

4. If you have a partner: put their needs above your own in everything you do. Give them the biggest plate of food, the largest glass of wine, fulfill their fantasies in the bedroom, dress in clothes you know they like. Try in everything you do to make them feel like the most special person on the planet. They deserve it for putting up with you! Apologize first, make peace, don't hold grudges. Realise, above all else that (like all your friends and family) they are just another person passing through on this great cosmic journey and whilst you love them with all your heart you really can’t make them the centre of everything. Avoid dependency. That whole thing about letting things go and they come back to you is pretty much the truth. Just love everything about them, farts and all, and remember it is not your job to change them! Only they can do that!

5. Attitude: Learn to let go of the past and the future. Try to live in the present. Be peaceful. Treat everyone equally. Be kind to people, especially if they are suffering or rude to you. Try not to attach to things: to people or possessions or feelings. Develop contentment and learn to love where you are now, not where you want to be. Try to see things as they really are: avoid lying, avoid delusions. Try to contemplate and come to terms with death by looking it straight in the face, but without seeing it as a solution to your problems. Remember the path to enlightenment as a better solution. Be mindful in your actions, try to not ever behave thoughtlessly. Walk the line between doing your best and being a perfectionist. Don’t ever let your fears stand in the way of your dreams.

6. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Don’t judge others. You never know why or how until you’ve been there yourself.

7. Laugh. A lot. It really is the best medicine. Take risks with laughter, never sit on a joke, share it! Even if nobody laughs you’ll most likely get a groan.

8. Time: If possible, strive to get a job that is also your passion. Fill the time you have free with what you really want to do. Never kill time even if you are tired. It only makes you feel bad afterwards. If you have to rest, take quality rest : meditate a while or sleep. Don’t watch Junk TV.

9. Cut yourself some slack: Don’t make the standards too high. Be kind to yourself. Love yourself. Don’t overwork.

10. Find balance and harmony in everything you do. An excess of anything nearly always leads to bad things. Take space. Build in quiet time. Take delight in peace and stillness, even if only for half an hour a day. Don’t dwell on negative thoughts, just let them go. Equally, delusions of grandeur should be abandoned for a more realistic worldview.

11. Finally: Sing in the shower, every day, at the top of your voice. It lifts the spirits, whatever the weather.

Killing Time, Waiting for Sleep.

Things you are afraid of: Scream man, sharks, snakes, wasps, having to kiss/hug strangers as a greeting, TV announcers late at night, the sea, choking, hell, public speaking, aeroplanes, looking stupid, panic attacks, forgetting peoples names, stand up comedy where they pick on the audience, role playing in interview situations, dementia, the dentist, Owen dying, hallucinations, my dark side.

Things that make you laugh: Owen, my Dad, too many TV shows to mention, my likeness to Lisa Simpson, being tickled, bouncy castles, running for busses, nerd sex, geek humour, TV Chefs, Rhodri, getting drunk with friends, near death experiences (or the exhilaration afterwards), cats falling out of trees, my sixth form poetry, Bill Hicks, Ricky Gervais, Jack Dee (and many others,) pigeon English, silly puns, The God Channel, my own general incompetence, making three letter words during 'Countdown', The Mark Steel lectures, politically incorrect humour, things that make you cringe, Mr Bean, adverts from the 1950’s, panel shows, pretentious people who are at the same time incredibly thick, life in general.

Things that make you cry: Too many films to mention, my parents going back home after visiting for the day, Owen shouting at me, letting people down, 'Epitaph' by Badly Drawn Boy, getting caught doing something bad, guilt, arguments, period pain, people saying they are proud of me, death, old peoples homes, anniversaries, too much whiskey, my brothers calling me fat, failing at anything, looking through old photographs, compilation CDs from people I’m no longer friends with, beautiful scenery, Winnie the Pooh, saxophone solos, 'Strange Fruit' by Nina Simone, hurting people I love, regrets, stubbing my toe, falling over, weddings of people who really love each other.

Things you love: Myself, Owen, Popple, all those close to me, people in general, piglet from Winnie the Pooh, Charles Bukowski, chocolate, long walks, sunshine, conversation, alcohol, sex, drunken sex, pushing limits, connection, collaboration, reading, blowing open doors of perception, The Buddha, Ajahn Brahm, The Guardian, real coffee, masturbation, Tesco DVD Rental, good wine, bad wine, forests, churches and their graveyards, cats, singing, erotica, writing, politics, a good snog, moonlit dancing, friendship, words and language, intelligence, impermanence, meditation, turkish delight, hobnob biscuits, going to The Willow, tea, Dr Pepper, philosophy, travelling light, visiting friends, watching TV naked, foreign films, all good music, Benjamin Franklin, my huge feet, when Yorkshire men call me ‘petal’, cooking new meals, playing the same song on repeat, overanalysing, The Marquis de Sade.

Things you hate: Looking at photographs of myself, people who can’t admit it when they don’t know something, anyone who looks down on anyone else for whatever reason, ignorance, competition, slavery in all its many forms, being touched on my neck, computer problems, people who diss feminists without really understanding anything about them, corporate capitalism, the arms trade, old peoples homes, right wing religion, drunken drivers, people who fish for compliments constantly, those people who when clothes shopping just throw wrong sized clothes on the floor and don’t pick them up, my chin, general selfishness.

Things you don't understand: Most things in the world including but by no means limited to: maths, science, any language that isn’t English, art (as in paintings and stuff), dance, Chinese opera, the rules of the road, The Karma Sutra, people who like George Michael or shoe shopping or badly written fiction. Why anyone would want to own a tarantula as a pet, why vanilla ice cream and chocolate custard tastes better than anything on earth, car maintenance, flower arranging, how to fix an Mp3 player, the intricacies of anything historical before 1900.

Things you're good at: Identifying other people’s strengths, comforting people who are suffering, explaining stuff, reading fast, keeping myself occupied, putting words together in an order that makes some people want to read them, thinking too much.

Things you suck at: Spending too much time alone, running, eating small portions, remembering to phone people and other people’s birthday’s, asserting my will in a conflict, cracking one liners, making light of a serious situation, tidying up, remembering to dust once a fortnight, paying council tax on time, reading books right through till the end, sitting through long films, taking photographs, driving, controlling my addictive personality.

Things on your desk: I don’t really have a desk. There is the computer table and that mainly has stationary and a computer on it. There is a phone from when I phoned my mum earlier, and a mug from the tea I just had. That’s it really.

Right now you are: Jigging my leg, very sleepy, listening to Voxtrot through the stereo, waiting for Owen to finish watching a Russian film before we go to bed, hungry, tired of racking my brain for facts about myself.

Facts about you: Oh, enough of the narcissism already. I think I’ve talked enough.

Things to do before you die:
Tie the rope to the beam and kick the stool from underneath me.

(Sorry…. depressives joke)

Time for bed, I think!

Free Willy?

'Voluntary : Preceding from one's own choice or consent. Free of coercion, including any sanctions for not taking part.'

It was in the news this week that chemical castration is being proposed as the latest measure in the war against all things paedophile. The authorities insist that this would be a voluntary measure, naturally, as we are not the kind of country that goes around hacking off the balls of sex offenders in a response to the will of the lynch mob. No, we are far more civilized than that. We give them little pills, or a shot of Depo Prova in each buttock and of course, it’s entirely their choice. Isn’t it?

So this story got me thinking about the term ‘voluntary’. How it is used as a weapon to control people by those in authority. I want to explore the psychology behind it and highlight how in many cases, voluntary choices, as defined above, just don't exist.

I guess most people who can remember their childhood can relate to the kind of ‘voluntary’ decision making that adults imposed on them. I remember clearly a time in my early childhood where I was first made aware of the ambiguities of this ‘voluntary’ concept. It might be a rather frivolous example compared to castrating paedophiles but the psychology of the situation is the same.

My parents were the first to pull the voluntary trick:

‘Tidy your room or don’t tidy your room, it’s entirely up to you’, they said. ‘Go on, live in a pigsty, it doesn’t bother us. All your toys will get spoilt, your clothes won’t get washed, but we don’t care. It’s your choice, Jen, you do what you like.”

So I called their bluff. I thought I was being clever. I was fooled that I actually had the power of this so called voluntary decision behind me. I refused to tidy my room and went outside to play cricket with my brothers. When, several hours later, the sun had set and I came back inside they were both waiting, arms folded, by the bottom of the stairs.

“You haven’t tidied your room, Jen. “

“You said I didn’t have to.”

“Yes well…. (exasperated eye roll)…. I know we said that but your auntie Mary’s coming over tomorrow and you don’t want her to see your room all messy do you?”

“I don’t care. I’ll shut the door if you care that much. Can I have that ice cream left over from tea?”

“No. Not until you’ve tidied your room.”

“But you said I didn’t have to.”

“Well, you do if you want any ice cream.”

“Well, (exaggerated nonchalant shrugging of shoulders) I’ll go without then. It’s only Kwik Saves raspberry ripple anyway, and that goes all gritty between your teeth. ‘

“(audible sighs) Jennifer, stop being difficult. That room is getting tidied, tonight, whether you like it or not. Now do we have to drag you there and sit with you whilst you do it? Do you really want us to see what’s lurking under your bed? Or can you be a good girl and do it on your own?”

(Cue violent stomping up the stairs, tears, slamming my bedroom door and other general tantrumish behaviour.)

Then of course, one dirty sock at a time, in between the sobs and the foot stomps; I tidied the goddamn room. So much for voluntary decision making.

That is why I am always suspicious when I am presented with a choice and it is described as voluntary. This is why I am deeply against anything that curtails civil liberties and freedoms even on a so called voluntary basis. These things always start off as free choice, but end up mandatory. It’s the nature of the system: of power and control. When somebody demands you should make a choice, I find they usually have an agenda themselves and the chances are its not going to be so voluntary after all. The very fact that you are being told to make a choice kind of goes against the voluntary thing in the first place, doesn’t it? I mean, in a totally free world, if I wanted to live in an environment without clutter, I would just make the spontaneous decision to tidy my room, vice versa if I didn’t care about my possessions I would just leave the mess be. The very fact that my parents brought the subject up at all just highlights the fact that they have the power to make me do it. Simply by saying ‘we don’t care what you do’ they are drawing attention to the power dynamic and implying that if they did care, there’s not an awful lot you could do about it. The fact that you are being given a voluntary choice speaks volumes when in fact that voluntary choice should just go without saying; it should be part of your human rights. The fact is that most so called voluntary choices are badly disguised ultimatums. Failure to comply with the ‘right’ voluntary choice leads to further sanctions until you make the decision the authorities deem is right. Of course, if I hadn’t gone upstairs and tidied the bombsite that was my bedroom, there would have been a whole other range of escalating threats, pleas, and measures of force on the part of my parents until they got their way.

As an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital last winter, I heard person after person tell the same story- that at their crisis meetings with doctors and social workers they had been given a ‘choice’- they could enter hospital ‘voluntarily’ or be sectioned against their will. To anyone who knows anything about mental health, you avoid a section at all costs. It is, in effect, to be deemed insane. Your human rights are taken away, the fuckers can do pretty much anything they want. You have to take what they say, and comply to whatever treatment they deem is appropriate, which can include electro shocking and in some countries, a lobotomy. So when their Doctor popped the ‘voluntary’ question, were these people really being given a free choice that ‘preceded from one's own choice or consent?’ Of course not. Some people gave the shrinks a big fuck you and said ‘The only way you’re dragging me into that place is under section, I am not playing a part in this.’ However, most people I spoke to were neither as brave nor stupid as that and acquiesced. They said no to the section and went ‘willingly’ without need of police escort.

It is in this example that you see the beauty of the voluntary technique. It is effective because it seemingly passes the onus of the decision making from those in power on to you. This is no more than a smoke and mirrors trick to make them looks like the good guys. When you are ordered to do something against your will this generally causes deep wells of resentment which sometimes blossoms into rebellion. However, when you are coerced in the form of a loaded ‘voluntary’ choice (even though you were, in actuality, in the same situation as those who are forced), the process acts upon you emotionally in a very different way.

Expanding on the above example; when these ‘voluntary’ psychiatric patients entered hospital I noticed they were generally easier to control than the sectioned patients- not because as common mythology goes, those under section were actually much iller (although some were) but because the voluntary patients had gone through a process where part of them felt like they had got themselves in that situation. They felt tremendous guilt about agreeing to their treatment even though many of them had huge reservations about it and felt somehow responsible. They got angry at themselves for caving under pressure rather than getting mad at the system for the weight it piled on them in the first place. Even though, later, some of them were angry and recognised that they had been coerced, many of these people at least partially believed the lie the authorities told them; that they had come there of their own free will, they had been given a choice, they had chosen this and now they had to live with the consequences of their actions. What were they complaining about anyway? Of course, once they had entered as a voluntary patient, if they wanted to leave they would again be threatened with, or actually, sectioned, showing how empty the ‘voluntary’ label is. You can see through this example how the act of giving someone a choice makes them complicit and then less likely to rebel further on down the line.

I’m not trying to say there’s no such thing as a voluntary choice. When Owen says to me ‘do you want beer or wine?’ or ‘what shall we do tonight?’ Even though factors might complicate and influence these choices, as in I might know that he prefers wine and wants to go to the cinema; because the power relationship between us is the same, the voluntary choice is not loaded and I am free to say what I really want. I think voluntary choices only become coercions when there is some kind of power imbalance and then it’s hard to ever be truly free. As the power imbalance becomes more extreme, so can the demands of those in control. So the most vulnerable people often have the least rights. The mentally ill are drugged and shocked into submission. The paedophile is castrated. The old person incarcerated. The asylum seekers are detained, the immigrants repatriated, the Jews are exterminated. All of these horrendous things have been done under the guise of free choices, (remember that entrance to the Warsaw Ghetto was, at first, ‘entirely voluntary’) making it palatable to the public until they get used to the idea and then, eventually, it becomes compulsory.

It can be argued (and often is) that laws and regulations are necessary for preventing the system collapsing. I’m not going to get into the arguments for and against chemical castration of paedophiles. I object to it, but my real beef today is with the delusional idea that these paedophiles, who at the end of the day are considered to be the scourge of our society, the very lowest of the low, the very bottom of the power scale, are going to have any ‘choice’ in the matter at all. Yes, they may technically be allowed to turn the treatment down, at least at first, until a bill that makes it compulsory is sneakily passed in parliament ten years down the line. But, I guarantee you, behind closed doors, in the meeting rooms and on prison review committees the pressure for these men to comply with the treatment will mount and mount until the word ‘voluntary’ rings as hollow for these men as it did for the Jews, squashed together like stripy sardines on the train to Auschwitz.

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.

God Shaped Hole

It was a sunny day. Owen and I were walking down the river, hand in hand. I told him that I found the trees and the water, the ducks and the general air of peace quite spiritual. He laughed. He said that to him the word spiritual translated as ‘bullshit bullshit bullshit’ and he generally switches off whenever someone says it.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the spiritual path, or more precisely the one I am walking on. What does it mean to be spiritual? How would I define that in my own life? I do consider myself to be a spiritual person but I think I have a weird definition of what that means- on which I will elaborate later. I also see Owen’s point. There is a hell of a lot of bullshit out there. Most religious people, including many many Buddhists, anger me with their illogicality, superstition and intolerance. So, I’d like to do a series of three blogs dealing with different aspects of my journey and how my concept of the spiritual has changed over the years. For simplicities sake I’ll split it into the early past, later past and the present respectively.

So, the beginning. To say I had a very religious upbringing would be understatement of the decade. On the one hand it was wonderful. I was born into a close knit group of loving Christians in a small charismatic church. They were one large extended family and my early life was spent in the company of some of the kindest, gentlest, most generous and giving people I have ever met. My life was infused with love, acceptance, meaning and purpose. I felt close to God, my heavenly father and when you are a child that is a wonderfully enriching and joyous experience. Jesus, too, was my best friend and I loved him almost as much as my Mum and Dad (I was supposed to love him more, but I never quite managed that.) Every day was spent doing churchy activities; I studied the bible, played my saxophone in the music group, wore a camel outfit in the nativity play, sang in the choir, went to Sunday school and regular church twice a week as well as a multitude of ‘extracurricular’ activities. My love of justice and social issues stems from what I did in those early days at our church. We regularly visited old people’s homes and hospitals, we ran and campaigned for charities such as Tradecraft, Tearfund and Christian Aid. Through our missionaries we were always very aware of what life in the developing world was like and our youth leader slept in a cardboard box for a week on the streets of Sheffield to teach us youngsters about the sufferings of the homeless.

My whole childhood revolved around God, the first playgrounds I recall don’t involve slides and swings, but tombstones, as me and my brothers would play hopscotch over graves and clamber over stone crosses in the graveyard whilst waiting for the adults to finish a healing ceremony or a PCC meeting. Ritual and the supernatural infused every mundane event: we would pray together as a family to find a car parking space in Tesco and say another one when it ‘miraculously’ appeared- amazing on a busy Saturday! In fact, praying was the bee’s knees. We were encouraged to pray anywhere and everywhere and by the age of six or seven I had an almost unstoppable chatter to God in my head. We prayed before eating, sleeping and traveling and a million times in between. We would pray for everything: to heal grandmas gammy leg, for the weather to clear up before the church bazaar, to protect the house from fires and burglars when we went on holiday, for world peace, for the presents from Santa to be the ones we wanted, for our toothache to clear up, for Sheffield Wednesday to win the cup, that we would find the TV remote, the end of child poverty and that our hamsters would never, ever die.

Although we never called it this; mine was a magical childhood in the literal sense, dominated by the mystical. Our daily lives were, we perceived, being guided by the invisible hand of a loving but knee tremblingly powerful creator God. We were his special children and we knew it. As I got older, I got more into the heavy stuff. Encouraged by my parents and those in the church around me, I would have visions, really intense intricate ones and I started to speak in tongues at large rallies. Strangers would come to me on trains and in the streets at random and give me bible verses. I had a strong feeling of being divinely blessed, of being a vessel to channel God’s love and his all important message. I would go on marches with churches from the area; walking through the streets of my town with a banner in my hand shouting ‘Jesus loves you’ and ‘Be bold! Be strong! For the Lord your God is with you’. The kids from my school would snigger and laugh at me but I would wave my banner proudly safe in the knowledge I was going to heaven. When I was sick I would be prayed over by all my Mum and Dad’s Christian friends in their beautiful and personal holy languages, I remember feeling such peace, reveling in their divine lullaby as I shut my fevered eyes. I soon got baptized, then later confirmed. I drank the blood and ate the body of God incarnate. It tasted bittersweet. I loved God with every ounce of my being and he was so, so real to me. He spoke to me in words and in pictures, in music, song and through the words of others. He was present in the natural world around me, I saw him in the trees and the wind and the thunder. We were told, repeatedly, that he knows everything about you; he knows how many hairs are on your head and is listening to every single thought you have. There is no escaping him; we used to sing in Sunday school: ‘so high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get round it, oh wonderful love.’ My mother told us that if we were ever stuck for an answer to something, pray to Jesus and then open the bible at random. When I did this there always seemed to be something of guidance, so I did it a lot.

Life was just so deep, so rich and so intense. There were layers within layers within layers. Signs and symbols abounded everywhere, we wore our fish badges on our clothes and on our cars and eagerly spotted them on long journeys like other kids do to Ferraris. God didn’t keep his views to himself; everything was charged with significance. Turning the TV on in the morning to find a story about local traffic congestion was God personally telling you to set off early for school that day. There was an unseen world beyond our world brimming with angels and demons and, we were told, they were every bit as real as you or I. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might have been fictions, but in our house the devil was alive and kicking. It was possible, even, to see the future, although this was dangerous territory for a mere child. Possession was real, the occult a deadly threat and in our church exorcisms were not unheard of. After all, ours was a battle, a spiritual battle. There was a judgment day coming, it could be any day now, any minute. We were at war with evil and what’s more we were on the winning team, the Bible told us that was so. I believed so much I gave part of my £1 pocket money every week to the cause. I went to emotional praise services where I raised my arms in the air and sang, ‘hallelujah’ over and over again with tears of joy streaming down my face. I went to healing groups where men who hadn’t walked for twenty years threw away their wheels and went tottering down the aisle like a fifteen stone baby taking its first steps. I saw grown women collapse through the power of the Holy Spirit and heard grown men speak terrifying prophecies of things that surely would pass, (praise be to Christ our Lord). At the age of eleven I was more in love with God than any boy at school and I was more than secure in the fact that the feeling was mutual.

I write this now, read it back and I think, fuck. Actually, that paragraph explains a lot. Because I’m so close to my parents now, I always forget how fucking fucked up my childhood was, in some senses. Goddammit, is there any wonder that I am writing these words through the hazy filter of a cocktail of some of the worlds strongest antipsychotic drugs? I mean, I spent my childhood chattering away in a divine language to a god who could read my mind, who paid for my sins with the blood I drank every Sunday, who could give or take away everything I had and smite at will; instead of thinking fairies and pop stars like most kids I was, at least some of the time, caught in a cataclysmic battle between good and evil.

No, this love affair did not end happily. In fact, it ended very badly.

When I was thirteen or fourteen my dad got a new job at a different church, and I was wrenched away from the bosom of St James, the church I grew up in, and transplanted to a new one where I never fitted in. The church was a lot less charismatic, a lot more ‘normal’ and I couldn’t really cope with the implications of that. I missed the community, I missed the friendship of St James, but more than that I missed the intense fusion of the spiritual with the everyday, the raw, emotive worship of an awe inspiring god. At the new church, they were more likely to argue for hours about the colour of the choir robes and the grape variety of the communion wine rather than harnessing Gods power to heal lame men. It was all a bit middle England and the teachings were totally different. The spark died, the romance began to fizzle out. I also began to read more widely than the children’s literature and Christian books I had been brought up on. I started reading newspapers, and a lifelong curiosity towards other cultures and their belief systems kicked in. Doubts arose- Why is there suffering? Why is homosexuality a sin? Is the bible really the divinely inspired word of God? What about dinosaurs? What about Feminism? For the first time my unshakable faith faltered. Over the following years the doubts grew and grew. I stepped further and further away from my roots. To my parents dismay, I became a ‘liberal Christian’ then a ‘Unitarian Universalist’ then an agnostic until, when I left home and consequently the church, I took a deep breath and proclaimed myself an atheist. My house, as they say, was built upon the sand.

The God shaped hole physically hurt me. It left a void in my life so huge it nearly consumed me. It ached and itched and gnawed away at me. I could not feel peace. I was haunted by guilt and doubt and anger. I was sure I was going to hell, an eternal separation from happiness and peace. My head did not know how to cope without my hotline to God. Who now would I turn to for help, for guidance? All my coping mechanisms were taken from under my feet. My black and white worldview dissolved, leaving only a huge grey area that confused and disturbed me. My whole interior world basically collapsed. I did not know what or who to believe about anything. I found it hard to trust anyone. When I discovered alcohol and marijuana, I saw the oblivion as a refuge from the whirlwind inside me, but this would ultimately (as you’d expect) exacerbate rather than solve my problems.

My ultimate refuge, as it still is, was the written word. I immersed myself in books. I wrote and wrote and wrote. By now I was deeply suspicious of the techniques our church employed to recruit and gradually shape the faithful, I sneaked books in from the library to the house and hid them under my pillow. They dealt with emotional and religious manipulation, spoke boldly about brainwashing techniques and various forms of propaganda and I read them avidly from cover to cover. I found that there were many correlations between what I had experienced and the things that people who were in so called cults had gone through. Even if the examples in the books I read were more extreme than my experiences: I had never been told to have sex with the priest or give all my possessions away, however a lot of the emotional processes had been the same. I came to the conclusion that all religions were basically cults, were harmful and dangerous. I began to think of what I had been through as abuse. Unintentional abuse, I must stress. My parents 100% believe that they acted in my best interests and they hold that view to this day. But the truth is that the church did a lot of harm to me. I found for many years reality hard to deal with and in the sober light of day, dwelling in a world without angels and demons and an omnipresent God, I struggled immensely. To have a god shaped hole is the most painful thing that to this day I have experienced. It is the loss of a father, a friend and an eternity of bliss. It is the loss of a community, a world view, a coping mechanism and a purpose. It is a loss of self, in a sense, a self that you have to rebuild from scratch without the help of your family or support networks. For many years I teetered on the edge of the God shaped hole. Sometimes, I thought I would be sucked in completely and just cave in on myself, never to return. The recovery process has been long and is not over. It was helped by many years in therapy, but still part of me aches for my unshakeable faith never to have wavered and for me to be writing this to you with my bible in hand and fish badge on my collar. But that is not my path. Once you have seen through something and identified it as a lie you can never go back.

Aged 18 I’d turned my back on God for good. There were just too many doubts and intellectual contradictions, too much guilt. As much as the church meant to me, I knew if I were ever to be happy, I had to leave it behind. I came to see God as my parent’s fictional friend and Jesus as a man who was quite inspirational but ultimately made up. I no longer believed in miracles or the mystical, I came to see my experiences as a manifestation of mass hysteria. None of it, the prophecies, the conversations with God, the healing, the miracles were real. I had been duped, good and proper and all I had to show for it was a broken heart and a disintegrating bible. At the age of eighteen I felt like a country that had been ravaged by war, torn apart and fractured into many parts. The rebuilding process would take years and the practice of forgiveness even longer. The years that lay ahead would be difficult, taking me to the edge of sanity and back but nothing, nothing I have ever done in my life was as hard as the day I finally closed my eyes and said:

Dear God

I don’t believe in you any more.

This is the last time we will ever talk.

Goodbye.



(to be continued….)