Fiction Imitating Life.

Someone else’s fiction.

My Life.

Lamb has gone to a LARP event. Live Action Roleplay. She has gone off for the weekend to dress up as something and be that character and have a jolly good time.

Last week she told me about her character. The character she designed herself.

She is a Pixie Witch type thing. And her husband is a teapot. A very beautiful teapot. She is a pixie witch with Aspergers syndrome. Who cannot relate to other living things very well and forms relationship with inanimate objects.

She tells me about her character while I am sat on her sofa stroking my pet rat, my cuddly toy rat, so-called inanimate creature, with whom I have a closer relationship than any ‘living’ thing. I had a better relationship, deeper understanding, with my teapot then I did my ex. I talk to my stuff better than I talk to humans. I am more comfortable hugging a mug than being embraced by a person. I make friendships with things, and feel their loss keenly should they wear out or get lost.

I form quick and deep relationships with ‘inanimate’ objects. Cuddly toys. Bits of rock. Paper creatures.

My mind goes back to when I was ten, an origami moth I made, it was lost, I hunted everywhere for it, I cried over it. They said make another one. They didn’t understand, it would be wrong, it would be a different one, different character, different being.

My cuddly toy, paper model, my blue-tac figure, were more real to me, and much more relatable to, than the other children. Some would join me in playing with these things, but we played differently, they were pretending, to me they were real. They grew out of it, I never did.

Lamb is spending her weekend pretending to be very like me. Only without the pain of actually being this different. She is just pretending not to understand Humans, I truly don’t.

I wish I was married to a large teapot.

A purple one.

Semi-Public Displays Of Mentalism

I am a self-controlled mental. I keep my public displays to a minimum. I have spent so many years being told to be normal.

Well get with the program. I’m not normal. I never was. Capiche?

I was born odd. I’m genetically odd. Just look at my dad and paternal uncle and grandfather and its obvious where the oddness came from.

I’m not normal. But I expend a hell of a lot of energy attempting to look so.

And I do an okay job of it most of the time.

You wouldn’t really notice, most of the time when I go odd, when all the noise gets too much or circumstances overwhelm me. I go quiet, I push myself hard into my seat, I fiddle with whatever is on the table, I twist my fingers around each other, I tap, I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I get my playing cards out and shuffle them, I hum. If in the pub, I tap tunes with the beermats, I go and stand outside with the smokers, I go to the toilet, all of these calm me, help me de-stress. You wouldn’t know how difficult I am finding it to be there. How my brain is about to implode or melt. How I want to scream or cry.

These days my keeping it in is getting harder. I suppose its something to do with having more things to handle. A house, bills, finances, having to remember to look after myself.

There’s the twitching, the shouty, screamy mess. It all hurts, it all hurts so much. Inside and out.

Recently I feel like I’m about to burst.

About to snap.

I go to Lambs house, end up shaking on her kitchen floor, forgetting how to make a mug of tea, biting my lip so as not to scream. The noise from her keyboard, the noise from a neighbours music, unbearably loud. I went to try to drown out the argh. Usually Lamb does help drown it out, but that day even she couldn’t help. On my walk home I yearn for a cop car to jump under. I forget how to walk. I don’t yelp too much.

But that was Monday.

Tuesday. CC comes round, helps me with the washing up that has built up in the last week. I feel pathetic, unable to look after myself at all. I hold the screams in until the door closes after she leaves.

There is a gathering on Tuesday evenings in my local Mind. A gathering of particular people. A group of people who believe I most definitely belong with them, even though I do not have the official say so, a group of people with whom I very much fit. A group I don’t have to pretend at all with, because they understand me, because they are similar.

Today, so loud, new people, noise, chaos, questions, changes, things to figure, and me with less cope than ever.

A recipe for Disaster.

Koi was going to sell me her treadmill as she is moving house and no longer wants it. I have to organise collecting it. I can’t organise boiling a kettle, let alone  anything more complicated, even if its only just moving it down the road. It all gets organised, but I can’t deal with it, so it doesn’t get done. I can’t think. All that is in my head is smashing, smashing me, my head hurts so much, I’ve hit it so much these past few days.

Too much happens.

I can’t process it. I still can’t.

I run to the toilet to shake. I headbutt the walls and the door. I try to speak. To ask to play Fluxx. To do something to help me not crumble completely.

I don’t really know how, just everything got to much. I’m under a table soon. I’m shaking and hugging a purple cushion. Headphones on. Hood up. Unable to speak. Stroking my cuddly toy rat. Singing random songs.

I’ve had bad experiences when I have been in that state before, people trying so hard to help, but just overwhelming me more. This group of people are similar to me though. They understand the need to be left to un-bleurgh oneself before you can manage anything. So they left me for a while until I was okay enough to come out from under the table myself. They then get me a hot chocolate and help me to recover my calm.

These displays of mental oddness are increasing in frequency, intensity and visibility. I had one in art on monday as well.  I can mostly keep it under control. Mostly. I only have them in place where there are lots of odd people who won’t overreact. Hence them only being Semi-Public displays. I used to be able to keep a lid on it in most situations. Now I struggle to keep a lid on it in any situation.

Everything overwhelms me. Everything is too much.

I am frightened lest I have a full-blown Public Display of Mentalism. I am frightened of what could happen if that happens. I’ve had people overreact to my oddness before. It’s not pleasant. I’m scared because I’m so much odder these days. I’m scared I might get locked up. I know that would only make me worse. Noise, Chaos and loss of my set things makes me worse.

Like Ferrous Metal

Iron-y

Lamb got hit by a car. Or rather the car got hit by lamb. It was a stationary car. Lambs rather large dog bolted under the car after a cat and she got rammed into the back of a car. She is okay. In a lot of pain and bruised but okay.

When I visit her I make her food and tea, help her with the laundry, come over all competant.

Trying not to laugh or cry.

For I want so much to be underneath a car. To sit down in the middle of the road would be so easy now.

Alanis morrisette comes on the radio as I write. Yes my dear it is Ironic.

World please stop teasing me.

Relief and Guilt.

I was woken this morning by the noise upstairs so looked at the post as soon as it came through the door, rather than several hours later. A letter from the housing association, whining about rent, housing benefit had stopped, oh dear.

Phone support worker, argh, hate phoning but texts are not working properly currently, he is free now, so I go to see him. There are other issues that need dealing with, the large amount of money that randomly appeared in my account last week, and the different amount that appeared later that week and my usual amount not appearing. Confused. No letters to explain why.

The support worker removes my file from the drawer, two letters fall out, sent to the emergency accommodation I was in, rather than my place. Oh Dear, DWP fail! Beaurocracy fail! Letters sent to the wrong place, accidental reversion to my old address by DWP causes housing benefit to be put on hold and letter about that sent to wrong address. Convoluted much?

Anyway, back to the letters. One icky brown, DWP. The other white with green bits, council. They are opened with relief and confusion. How did they manage to randomly swap my address back? We never will know. Support worker telephoned all the necessary people, so hopefully it will now be sorted.

I have been put in the support group for ESA, it is a relief. No medical, it would have been a relief to be put in any group, or even given a date for a medical, at least then I’d know something was happening. Being awarded has removed much stress. I know that for at least a while I only need to deal with me, the flat and learning to cope. The extra money is nice, but the best thing is knowing that, at least for a while, that is dealt with, I can relax about it. Knowing that the money that appeared in my account is not going to be requested back. Being able to see the possibility of actually getting out of my overdraft within the next few months is another relief. To think that for the first time in a couple of years I might see CR on my bank statement. Debt is not good for mental health, but I’m slowly getting out of it, it feels good.

Relief. That my situation is sorted for now.

Guilt. For my friends who are struggling to get anything out of the DWP, who are being hounded for paper work, made iller by having to attend medicals, generally messed about by the DWP. It’s not fair. It sucks. I feel guilty for it even though I can’t do anything about it.

But I can do something. I can make sure I have enough money and sanity to be able to feed those I know who can’t afford it because of the DWP messing them around.

Took It.

I hate pills. I really do. I will not take them at all if I can avoid it. I have never in my life taken antibiotics. I perhaps take an aspirin or two every couple of months during particularly painful periods. I didn’t even take painkillers when I broke my big toe, I just put my climbing shoes back on and climbed a 6A  technical grade climb where my entire weight was put on said toe. And then I climbed a week later on said toe and re-broke it. I only stopped climbing when I ripped the nail off because I couldn’t get me feet in my climbing shoes.

I am stubborn.

I hate pills. The last lot of psych meds I took made my heart go funny, made me horribly spaced out and then sent me very very hyperactive.

I am understandably nervous.

But a few weeks ago I talked to my GP about trying meds again. I am that desperate I was willing to try.

So yesterday I swallowed my first does of Fluoxetine (Prozac). Today I swallowed my second.

I am odd now.

I cannot tell which is med effect/side effect and which is just they way my head was headed anyway.

I have eaten one meal in four days. My appetite was none existent at the weekend due to how suicidal I was.  Is now a continuation of that? Or is it the Prozac? Not that I’m complaining. My eating disorder loves it when my appetite goes.

I am giggly. Hyper. Irritable. Nearly smacked someone yesterday. I have a glowing Grin face. Is this just how I was headed anyway? I do bounce a bit after surviving when I am that suicidal and that was the worst bout of suicidality yet. Did I just bounce because I heard the beautiful Making it out alive’s voice for the first time? Or was my brain just waiting for a reason to smile so that it could be unleashed.

I danced all the way home from Lambs house. I plotted and planned random road trips to various friends. I was effervescent. I still am. I bumped into a friend from Mind. I talked and chattered and cared. We went to hers and watched TV. She had been praying for a miracle, she got me, some company who cares, not a miracle, just a friend.

I want to party, and do things. And all that jazz.

I’ll sparkle while I can.