Picking up the Pieces

So friends, it’s been a while. I hope that you’ve had a great Summer and are now infused with the enthusiasm and the keenness of a crisp Autumnal morning!

I thought that my first post after the break would be about writing but I’m actually going to talk mental health instead.

I feel compelled to revisit this topic because I’ve heard, via social media, that someone I went to school with has died. I don’t know for sure but I have a sense, reading between the lines, that she probably committed suicide. I haven’t seen this person for about 25 years, I wasn’t close to her, haven’t spoken to her, but her death has haunted me.  I feel stupidly, uselessly, that maybe I could have helped her if I’d known her better - talked to her or something. This is highly unlikely and possibly only expresses a tiny fraction of how the people closest to those who take their own lives feel.

A year ago I wrote a post about depression; it’s something that a lot of people suffer from but many people (myself included) are uncomfortable talking about. http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-missing-piece.html

It might sound inconsistent (to say that I’m uncomfortable discussing it) given that I blogged about it, but there is a vast difference between talking to someone in person and in writing it down. Although it can feel like a real exposure, when you blog, the immediacy of a conversation isn’t there.  You don’t get to see the reader’s reactions, and if they do respond, with a written comment, you have time to formulate your response.

I think that we worry how people will respond if we talk about internal struggles; will they tell us to pull ourselves together? A G.P said this to a friend of mine when she was suffering from depression, in her early twenties.

Do we worry that we’ll be boring or burdening the other person?  (Perhaps this is where counseling comes in)

Will people see it as a weakness and judge us for it? Might it endanger our job prospects?

If you haven’t read the original post, I wrote about suffering from a crippling bout of depression when I was sixteen, which lasted for about a year, during this time I had moments when I was suicidal.  

I just want to clarify that I’m not depressed now and haven’t been for some time. I’ve had periods of depression since that first terrifying time; once after I suffered an ectopic pregnancy, then, after the birth of my first child, but it’s never been quite as bad as that first instance, and, thankfully not lasted for as long.  

One thing I remember from all of those times though, a common theme, was that I didn’t feel comfortable admitting to the way I felt. At times (particularly the postnatal bout) I was deeply ashamed of it.

And, as I wrote in the original post, one of the hardest things about mental illness, is the acute isolation.

Because of my own experience, I tend to associate severe depression and suicide with the teenage years but the facts show that this isn’t the case at all.  It certainly wasn’t the case with the girl I went to school with who would have been in her early forties. These are the statistics from the Samaritans:

The highest suicide rate in the UK in 2014 was for men aged 45-49 at 26.5 per 100,000.

And:

The female suicide rate in the UK is at its highest since 2011.

So what can we do about this? Is there nothing we can do? Or, would it help to start a conversation, make it more acceptable to talk about mental health, make a vow never to tell a person with depression to ‘pull themselves together’?  What should society do? Subsidise long term therapy, stop telling boys that boys don’t cry, stop telling men to ‘man up’, talk about our own experiences?

I don’t know about you but when I walk into a room full of strangers, it almost always seems as if everyone else there is more confident than me - they seem be in control, be better at negotiating life and yet, statistically, this cannot be true!  It just just to show how powerful perception and viewpoint is. There are probably a lot of people out there who are suffering from a myriad of disorders and suffering in silence.

I’ve heard some people scorning the fact that people get signed off with stress nowadays; saying that their generation just ‘got on with things’ and I wonder, just how many suicides are people who were perceived to be ‘getting on with things’.  I also think about the men who came back from the First World War suffering from shell shock - mute with stress. Sometimes you can’t just ‘get on with it’ or move on without getting some help.

I stopped blogging for a while, partly because I felt that I was revealing too much about myself in the posts. I felt exposed. But perhaps, if no one talks about depression it perpetuates the notion that it’s something to be ashamed of.

So, once again here are some places to go to for help:

The Samaritans

https://www.samaritans.org/

The British association of counsellors and psychotherapists

https://www.bacp.co.uk/

A free service where you can text for help, as many people don’t like talking on the phone

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/crisis-text-line/

When I discussed the writing of this post with my partner, he said he’d listened to a podcast about suicide:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dlzld

In it someone likened suicide to jumping out of a burning building - the jumpers probably know that they are probably going to die, but anything is better than being burned alive.

I’ve never heard a more devastating or apt analogy - when life feels like hell - death is preferable.

I really want to end on a positive note so I'll share the fact that when I looked up the Samaritans, to find the link to their website, one of the facts on their homepage is this:

Suicide rates fall to six-year low

Take care!

The Book edit

Right, you lovely lot, this is going to be my last post for a while as I want to focus on other writing and take a step back from blogging. I’m going to attempt to take a step back from social media too, in the hope that it will make me more productive. (And also because I find Twitter depressing; the amount of hatred and vile abuse that gets spewed, makes me despair of humanity. I see this from the tweets that famous people I follow, share, I am happy in my own obscurity with my 32 followers! Facebook seems relatively cuddly by comparison, but still has serious time-sapping implications.)

So, I thought I’d make my last post about books, as they are my passion, and give some Summer reading recommendations. I’ll include some oldies and some new books.

If you read nothing else this Summer, for a consciousness-raising, cracking good story, please read:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Born out of the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas was inspired to write this book because of the very different conversations she was having at her (predominantly white) University, about the number of black youths who had been shot and killed by the police, to the conversations she was having in the neighbourhood she’d grown up in.

Sixteen year old, STARR CARTER, is travelling home from a party with her best friend, KHALIL, when they are stopped by the police. Starr is the only witness when the unarmed Khalil is killed by the policeman. As well as grieving for her friend she then has to muster the courage to speak out, at the same time as treading the fine line between constraint, at the exclusive public school she attends and being true to her community.

You might already know this but the title of the book comes from Tupac Shakur’s tattoo - THUG LIFE which stood for ‘The hate u give little infants f*cks everybody’.

Early in the book, Starr recounts the two talks her parents gave her when she was on the verge of puberty; one was the standard sex education talk, the other was a cautionary speech about how to behave around the police (in as non-confrontational way as possible).

The Hate U Give is an enormously heart-wrenching book, it will leave you open to crying in public places, but it rattles along at a great pace. It’s an important book and it’s very much based on real life.

The statistics don’t lie:

Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year, according to data collected for The Counted, an effort by the Guardian to record every such death. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men.

This is the article, if you’d like more information:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/the-counted-police-killings-2016-young-black-men

Angie Thomas also has a fine sense of humour, this is one of her tweets:

Oh, did I mention that The Hate you give is a YA book?

The Hate u give is a highly emotive, without being depressing, read. However, if you are looking for something a little more escapist, the perfect beach read, then you could do a lot worse than look to Marian Keyes. She has often been dismissed as ‘Chic-Lit’ and there’s nothing wrong with Chic Lit but Marian Keyes’ books are as hilarious as they are insightful. There is often something in them that you don’t really get in other books of that genre.  My particular favourites are Rachel’s Holiday, Angels and The Mystery of Mercy Close. Marian (I can’t bring myself to refer to her as ‘Keyes’, like a P.E teacher) writes about relationships, bereavement and depression but there is always a sense of redemption about her books, and always a positive ending. She has a new book out now - The Break https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-break/marian-keyes/9780718179724

If you are looking for something thrilling:

And you are one of the very few people who hasn’t read the book or seen the film, I can highly recommend. The Girl on the Train. It’s a completely compelling page turner with an unreliable narrator and some dark twists and turns. I was late for a school Fete because I had to finish reading it and I love it when a book does that (inconvenient though it may be!).

If you want something life-affirming:

I’ve just read A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Grumpy old man is befriended by young family and various assortment of interesting characters. As his story unfolds you get to see that there is so much more to OVE than misanthropic martinet. It will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.

Taking on the baton from Sue Townsend is Nina Stibbe, who, with her most recent installment Paradis Lodge, has shown how adept she is at capturing the voice, the preoccupations and woes of a teenager.

So, with that I will leave you. Might post again in six months.

Many thanks for reading! Have a great Summer.

Fighting Fit?

Dear Reader, you may think me inconsistent; one minute I’m writing about losing weight, the next about body positivity - which embraces all body types, then back again to getting fit. I’m guessing that it must seem like I’m giving out mixed signals. ‘Pick a stance and stick to it!’ You may well be thinking. We-ell, in this instance I have a concrete reason for wanting to get fit, which has little to do with aesthetics. (It’s in there somewhere, I won’t deny it, but it's not the main reason) Anyway, this time, this time, it’s about health. Long story short: I was getting chest pains, went to the doctor, he couldn’t detect anything wrong but sent me for an E.C.G, that didn’t show anything untoward BUT I went for my over-40 health check (yes, I’m sorry to disillusion you, I know you thought I was 26 but I’m actually 43 :’( ) And the result of the over-40 health check was that, although I was assessed to be at relatively low risk of developing heart problems, both my BMI and cholesterol was found to be too high. So, am officially a fat f*ck. Sorry Bopo-ers, I’ll rephrase that: The NHS evaluation classes me as *inactive and (only just) in the overweight category of the BMI charts.  *Inactive, despite my 10,000 + steps a day!

Enough of the self-pity though, it emerged that I need to do more aerobic exercise - gentle, nature-appreciating strolls are not enough.  I may have mentioned before my hatred of and ineptitude in most organised sports, plus distaste for gyms, so where did that leave me? I was thinking about swimming - sans kids so I can actually swim, as opposed to shivering in the water next to them, when someone suggested an exercise DVD so I duly purchased one. Davina: Fit in 15. The idea behind this one is that everyone, no matter how busy they are (as I tried to type this, my four year old came over and bit my leg - she was pretending to be a zombie) has 15 minutes to spare in their day. And they are right, about the 15 minutes - it doesn't seem like too daunting a time investment . I’ve done the 15 minute cardio section of the DVD twice this week - fitting it in between school drop-offs etc. It’s pretty intense, I haven’t got onto any of the other bits yet - the bits that involve weights (tins of beans) or squats.  But do you know what - I actually enjoyed it!! I know it’s early days but I did experience that endorphin rush that exercise junkies go on about.

Me, running!

I wanted to start a series of pre and post exercise pics - you know the ones; pre exercise, slumped forward, rolls of flesh, hair scraped back, no make-up, miserable face: Post regime; all buff and smooth, hair down and uber glossy, tastefully applied make-up, big smile.

I don’t know if I can do it though. I don’t know about you, and your experience of fitness DVDs, but when I’m doing them and focusing on the people on the screen, with their toned, muscular, inoffensively smooth bods, I imagine myself looking like them - not after a year or reasonable amount of time or anything like that, but instantly, then I’m often disappointed that the exercise hasn’t taken immediate effect! But this is all about health, right? So none of that should matter...

I went out today and got myself some snazzy new trainers and a pair of sports shorts, and we all know that once you’ve got the merchandise, you’re 2 thirds of the way there, right?? The shorts seem to have an unnecessary number of layers; I mean it’s not as if I wear my genitals on the outside of my body or anything , so I don’t really understand the need for the inner layer, but apparently they contain some kinda ‘wicking’  technology to take sweat away from the body (but isn’t the function of sweat to cool the body down, stop it from overheating?) so perhaps I’ll never look back.

Will I be able to maintain the momentum or will I be writing a passive-aggressive piece, a couple of months down the line, about how the BMI charts are shown to be unreliable and we’re all gonna die anyway? Only time will tell.

Be more Jeremy

I’ve always been a bit of a Leftie. I worried that I might become more right wing as I got older and had children, but that didn’t happen. If anything, having children galvanised my political leanings; the social issues seemed all more important than ever before, once I’d bought two little lives into being; particularly health care and education.

Sure, there’d been a dip in political passion during the New Labour disillusionment years, but my inherent socialism experienced a revival after the birth of my second child. This was due in part to 1) reading Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones and 2) Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party. On the second point I felt that finally, here was a Labour leader who actually sounded like a socialist and, more importantly, practised what he preached.

But I’m very aware that although I wholeheartedly agree with the party line about being for the ‘many and not the few’ and I want healthcare and education to be free and accessible to all, I’m not always as nice a person as I’d like to be. I’m not as kind or generous as I would wish. Sometimes I actively hate other people - it’s usually when they bump into me and don’t say ‘sorry’ or decline to say ‘thank you’ when I hold the door open for them…(Surely good manners are about showing consideration for others though; acknowledging them?) but I’d really like to be more zen about things, kinder and more caring and more generous of spirit. I’d really like to be more Jeremy.

You may very well disagree - our politics may be wildly discordant. You may hate Jeremy Corbyn, I do know people who do (and I tend to think less of them for it…). A lot of people would have been put off reading this post by the title. Would it help if I replaced ‘Be more Jeremy’ with ‘Be more 'Zen'’? Or ‘Be more like the Buddha’? Or something about being kind to people ‘cos they’re fighting a struggle that you can’t see? I just think that ‘Be more Jeremy’ has a nice, catchy ring to it. You can pretend we’re talking about a different Jeremy if it helps (but please, not Clarkson, never him!) How about historical social reformer, Jeremy Bentham?

He (Jeremy Bentham) became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts.[6]He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham

Too leftie for you, still? Perhaps if we think of the 'Jeremy' in the title as being merely a symbol or conduit for good deeds, generous feelings and love.

Anyway, to any that I haven’t put off by my rampant socialism, I’ll continue.

I’m trying to adhere to my ‘be more Jeremy’ mantra by sticking to proper vegetarianism, rather than the lazy cop-out of pescetarianism (eating fish). I’m trying to give in to my better, kinder impulses, than to slip into the pettiness and irritability which normally characterizes daily life. It isn’t easy. I held the door open for a yoof the other day but had my headphones in so couldn’t hear whether she thanked me or not, so didn’t hang around to shame her in a passive-aggressive manner. I'm trying to be as complimentary and encouraging to people, without descending into phoney bullshit. I'm trying not to hold onto grudges...

My good intentions slipped though, the other day, friends, when I’d held *two sets of doors open for this f***er at work and hissed ‘You’re welcome!!’ over my shoulder at him when he declined to thank me….The thing is, he did say ‘cheers’ or something, rather sheepishly, (so perhaps it taught him some manners) but what actually happened (to me) was I was left feeling like a petty, spiky pedant, so was it really beneficial? (It was a really hot day and it’s a FACT that hot weather makes us grumpier: http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/summer-affects-mood-too-hot-irritable-moody-bad-tempered-study-psychology-science-belkin-kouchaki)

*The old man has just proof-read this piece and says that finds it amusing that my whole view of socialism seems to be channelled into the issue of holding doors open for people!

I’ve also read another study which says that kindness is the personality trait you are most likely to inherit from your parents:

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/new-study-reveals-which-personality-trait-youre-most-likely-to-inherit-from-your-parents-kindness

We want our children to be kind, don’t we? I want my children to be confident and assertive but not at the expense of other people. I want them to have empathy. It seemed for a while as if kindness was going out of fashion, had become passe. People who showed any compassion were mocked and derided as ‘snowflakes’. Twitter seemed (still seems) like a constant out-spew of hatred and bile. People kept voting for things which seemed like an embodiment of a kick in the gut. Right-wing extremism was becoming normalised. One of my favourite tweets, from one of my favourite tweeters; Moose Allain, was:

I used to be a Nazi but I'm alt-right now

People kept saying that they didn't care about anybody else. Then, something rather lovely and amazing happened. More and more people started opting for something that felt more like a handshake, dare I say, even a hug. Of course I'm crudely analogising the results of the most recent election. But I dared to feel hopeful.

And, just as the handwritten parenting advice on my wall extols that 'calm breeds calm', it also follows that hope breeds hope and kindness breeds kindness.

If you have persevered with this until the end, your upper lip may be curled in a derisive sneer by now. You may be thinking that I've vastly over simplified some rather complex issues. But is it really so complicated? If you treat people with respect and consideration, then that's what you'll get back in return.

Star (Wars) in their eyes

In the same vein as the ‘popular’ Men who look like animals/vegetables series, I bring you Star Wars character looky-likeys.

Do you want to see some tenuous resemblances between famous people and your favourite rubber monsters, shiny robots and aliens? Don’t be silly - of course you do!

First up the iconic golden know-it-all and insufferable fusspot, robot C3PO

Separated at inception, from…

Charles Hawtrey!

Friends, I’m convinced that George Lucas based his golden robot on this actor from the ‘Carry on’ films. Hawtrey even plays a multilingual character in the early (and one of the only good) Carry on films, Carry On Regardless.

Second up, everyone's favourite Wookie, Chewbacca

Twinned with great actor and all round dude, Jeff Bridges

Next in the spotlight is the cuddly little fella, the Ewok. Ewoks are somewhat divisive; many thinking they're too cute and have no business in the franchise. As I came to Star Wars as a child and a child with a penchant for cuddly toys, I've always liked the Ewoks and this is my candidate for the Ewok looky-likey:

Ewok

Kenny Rogers

OK so any bearded man might be a candidate here, but let's face it, Country and Western legend Rogers ticks a couple of boxes - hairy, a bit squishy-face and with Ewok-like teeth.

I have to admit that I'm running out of steam a bit here, reader; peopele have already drawn parallels between Jabba the Hutt's toady, Salacious Crumb and fascist fuckwit, Nigel Farage (and I can't bear to pollute this post with his image. Any comparisons with Jabba himself might bring accusations of fat shaming, so I'd prefer not to go there. So, I'm going to have to end with a rather obvious, really lazy one (which is perhaps what Lucas himself was doing) and say:

Gredo

And

One of these prawns!

Thank you and goodnight.

Write it down

I was a teenage cliche; I wore a lot of black, including heavy black eyeliner, I slumped around the house in an apathetic torpor and I wrote reams of poetry.

To talk about it a little less flippantly, years ago I suffered from a dreadful, terrifying bout of anxiety and depression. It’s not a secret; I’ve written about it here:

http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-missing-piece.html

I didn’t feel that I had anyone I could talk to about this - and this is one of the worst things about mental illness/depression; that horrible sense of isolation*, but this was when I started writing poetry. Terribly earnest, revealing stuff - more of an outpouring of uncontrollable thoughts and emotions than a structured bit of verse. But perhaps, at a time when there was none to talk to, it helped.

*This is something that needs to be addressed; particularly when you consider that suicide is one of the biggest killers of young men in the U.K.

I’m constantly reading of the cathartic power of writing things down, these days. An article in Stylist magazine about managing anger, suggests writing about your angry feelings to identify what’s bothering you. The artcile suggests that this might be more helpful than giving vent to your rage:

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/how-to-be-less-angry-the-seven-proven-ways-to-control-and-defuse-rage-temper-tips-anger-management

The NSPCC recommends encouraging children to write things down, among other things, to help them deal with stress. To try and write down or draw what's bothering them:

https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/your-feelings/anxiety-stress-panic/coping-with-stress/?utm_source=facebook_mainnspcc&utm_medium=nspccsocialmedia&utm_campaign=ownfacebook_post

There is a regular piece in the Guardian entitled ‘The letter you always wanted to write’, which is self-explanatory really.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/13/a-letter-to-my-parents-whose-favouritism-ripped-our-family-apart

I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I see a counsellor. Sometimes, between sessions, if I’m feeling troubled, I email my therapist. She always said that I could ring her if I needed to, but I hate talking to people on the phone, so I email instead. These emails can sometimes be a huge, splurgy outpouring of emotion. More often than not, I don’t actually send them - finding that the simple act of writing it down will have helped. (Sometimes I will send it for the sensation of making a connection or being ‘heard’. The adolescent poetry didn’t have an ‘audience’.) I rarely do this nowadays, finding that the longer I’m in therapy, the less I need to do contact her between sessions.

Getting back to the poetry, do you know what's great about writing about your feelings as poems? The verse form seems to lend itself better to expressing your feelings, than simple prose. Perhaps because it's it's more fluid and free from constraints, you feel like you can give vent. The repetition can give emphasis to certain points, perhaps highlighting areas you need to work on. If you tell yourself that no one will ever see it, it will give you the freedom to write whatever you want; be as self-indulgent as you need to be.
I'm not suggesting that it will solve all mental health issues; simply that it might be one thing to do to help.

Why not give it a go?  You don't have to show it to anyone but who knows, it might be the start of a glittering new career...