This was my response to an article in The Gaurdian headlined as above.
It adds up if you are a Tory Boy and Dealer Dave Cameron is certainly one of those.
His comments "The thought of prisoners getting the vote makes me feel sick" and "People (on housing benefit) should not be living in houses they could not dream of owning" place him somewhere out there with Hitler. Dave of course plans to starve us to death instead of murdering us.
How can Nick Clegg continue to ally himself to the dealer while he is taking the food out of the mouths of children and the sick with one hand while slipping £35000 a year to the man who takes his photo with the other.
What we are paying for with the money Dave has stolen from us is the re-inforcement of Tory ideology.
Cameron was NOT GIVEN A MANDATE TO DO THIS. HE DID NOT WIN THE ELECTION. HE IS IN DOWNING STREET BY DEFAULT.
We saw how Thatchers destruction of the welfare state could not be repaired by Labour over 13years. Dealer Dave realises he probably only has one term to achieve his aims so he has set out immediately to undo the repairs Labour were able to afford to make.
The "URGENCY" behind his cuts is to protect the Banks and the Stock Market. The "Urgency" has nothing to do with the ordinary people of this country
Because of the actions of those with money in this country, those without money are being kicked while they are down.
The dismantling of the Welfare State, while stigmatising those too ill to work, and outrageously labelling as "work shy" those who are unable to find work, especially at a time when the actions of the government are about to cause millions to lose their jobs, are criminal acts.
It must be clear to even the stupidest fan of Dealer Dave that as the Job Market becomes flooded with those whose jobs have crumbled, that the disabled, the sick, and the long term unemployed will have no chance of obtaining the jobs that are available.
I still wait for an MP or a Paxman or a Non Murdoch Journalist to ask how these radical changes are being funded. If 85% of Incapacity Benifit desicions were overturned at tribunal how much did those tribunals cost, and how does that compare to the money "saved" from the other 15%.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Friday, 29 October 2010
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
This is the big society we are all in together.
1. A reduction in child benefit for the wealthy will be easy to cheat and there are no plans to check up or enforce it.
2. The children of disabled parents are having the food taken out of their mouths because their parents benefit is being reduced for up to three months while people without medical information decide whether they should "seek work".
This is the big society we are all in together.
3. A new "airport tax" has come in to force. The BBC has already had tax experts on radio programs telling those who can afford to fly how to get around the new tax.
4. The BBC broadcast the news that 85% of people in Burnley who had their disability benefit cut had it given back as soon as a judge sought medical advice about their disabilities. The BBC did not question what this must be costing. Knowing the exorbitant rates of legal costs, one suspects it is a lot more than the money saved from the other 15%.
This is the big society we are all in together.
5. You may have read or seen that Rupert Murdoch told 30 business men that he supports the way Cameron is carrying on Thatcher's work.
6. You will not read, or learn, via Murdoch’s many media outlets, that people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia are being told they must seek work they have no chance of obtaining. The alternative, to stay in psychiatric hospitals that have no room for them, because Thatcher shut all the big psychiatric hospitals down.
This is the big society we are all in together.
7. You will have heard about Cameron’s stamp down on immigration.
8. You are not being told that asylum seekers whose cases are taking too long to investigate are being told they can stay before the investigation is completed. Remember this when dealer Dave Cameron tells you there are less asylum seekers in the system.
This is the big society we are all in together.
9. Cameron and the other 20 millionaire members of his cabinet are worried that the value of their investments will fall.
10. I am worried that even though I have been told by specialists who deal with my back, and psychiatrists who help with my depression, that I should not attempt to work again: and even though I have been retired from two very different occupations on medical grounds, meaning I am uninsurable and therefore unemployable: that someone who has not had access to my medical notes WILL decide I must look for work when I am honest and tell them that on a very good day I can stand at my cooker, while leaning against my sink, long enough to fry an egg. Does that sound extreme, it is already happening to people.
This is the big society we are all in together.
11. William Hague’s mate Lord Ashcroft, the tax dodger who gives millions to the Tory party and said he would move to the United Kingdom if Cameron won the election, has decided not to move here after all. There has been no mention of whether the Government will now attempt to obtain the tax he owes.
12. Dealer Dave said on Wednesday that people on housing benefit, “Have no right to live in houses they could not have dreamed of if they were working”. Here in London this means that hundreds of old people who were once taxpaying workers but who have fallen on hard times, will be moved out the homes they have lived in throughout their lives and put into bed and breakfast. This will be coming to an area to you soon.
This is the big society we are all in together.
1. A reduction in child benefit for the wealthy will be easy to cheat and there are no plans to check up or enforce it.
2. The children of disabled parents are having the food taken out of their mouths because their parents benefit is being reduced for up to three months while people without medical information decide whether they should "seek work".
This is the big society we are all in together.
3. A new "airport tax" has come in to force. The BBC has already had tax experts on radio programs telling those who can afford to fly how to get around the new tax.
4. The BBC broadcast the news that 85% of people in Burnley who had their disability benefit cut had it given back as soon as a judge sought medical advice about their disabilities. The BBC did not question what this must be costing. Knowing the exorbitant rates of legal costs, one suspects it is a lot more than the money saved from the other 15%.
This is the big society we are all in together.
5. You may have read or seen that Rupert Murdoch told 30 business men that he supports the way Cameron is carrying on Thatcher's work.
6. You will not read, or learn, via Murdoch’s many media outlets, that people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia are being told they must seek work they have no chance of obtaining. The alternative, to stay in psychiatric hospitals that have no room for them, because Thatcher shut all the big psychiatric hospitals down.
This is the big society we are all in together.
7. You will have heard about Cameron’s stamp down on immigration.
8. You are not being told that asylum seekers whose cases are taking too long to investigate are being told they can stay before the investigation is completed. Remember this when dealer Dave Cameron tells you there are less asylum seekers in the system.
This is the big society we are all in together.
9. Cameron and the other 20 millionaire members of his cabinet are worried that the value of their investments will fall.
10. I am worried that even though I have been told by specialists who deal with my back, and psychiatrists who help with my depression, that I should not attempt to work again: and even though I have been retired from two very different occupations on medical grounds, meaning I am uninsurable and therefore unemployable: that someone who has not had access to my medical notes WILL decide I must look for work when I am honest and tell them that on a very good day I can stand at my cooker, while leaning against my sink, long enough to fry an egg. Does that sound extreme, it is already happening to people.
This is the big society we are all in together.
11. William Hague’s mate Lord Ashcroft, the tax dodger who gives millions to the Tory party and said he would move to the United Kingdom if Cameron won the election, has decided not to move here after all. There has been no mention of whether the Government will now attempt to obtain the tax he owes.
12. Dealer Dave said on Wednesday that people on housing benefit, “Have no right to live in houses they could not have dreamed of if they were working”. Here in London this means that hundreds of old people who were once taxpaying workers but who have fallen on hard times, will be moved out the homes they have lived in throughout their lives and put into bed and breakfast. This will be coming to an area to you soon.
This is the big society we are all in together.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
2009 Budget
Reap what you sow.
As someone with both physical and mental disability I find it somewhat enjoyable to watch those who don't want me living next door, and begrudge benefits that allow me £30 a week for food, squirming about this budget.
As these closet tories have become more and more well off over the past 10 years people like me have seen our medical and social facilities reduced and have been hounded and made to feel guilty for things beyond our control such as the fact that medically qualified people tell us we should not work.
So what if the greedy have been asked to share a mouthful of their sandwich with those who are less well off.
It's about bloody time!!!
Monday, 24 November 2008
Thought of the day
Do you remember back in March when this "Socialist" government was patting itself on the back for stealing the Conservatives plan to force the feeble, the mad, and the sick, back to work regardless of what a persons doctor might think of the idea.
I can't help thinking it might be worth reviewing this from time to time now that the "Able Bodied" are losing their jobs as quickly as they did in the late Seventies and early Eighties, (when Thatchers government decided that many of the unemployed were actually "Sick" and got their doctors to sign them off. What a generous act that was, and I'm sure the fact that those treated in that way then vanished from the unemployment figures had nothing to do with it).
I digress, I think it might be worth watching this space to see how often we hear about the phony, work shy, sick people now, and how many of us will actually be offered employment when there are three or four A/B's going for the same job.
I can't help thinking it might be worth reviewing this from time to time now that the "Able Bodied" are losing their jobs as quickly as they did in the late Seventies and early Eighties, (when Thatchers government decided that many of the unemployed were actually "Sick" and got their doctors to sign them off. What a generous act that was, and I'm sure the fact that those treated in that way then vanished from the unemployment figures had nothing to do with it).
I digress, I think it might be worth watching this space to see how often we hear about the phony, work shy, sick people now, and how many of us will actually be offered employment when there are three or four A/B's going for the same job.
Thursday, 13 March 2008
The Budget: An open letter to James Purnell M.P.
Wow that budget made me so mad again. I'm hoping the Guardian will print this but it might be too much of a personal rant.
At the same time as he was announcing measures to reduce child poverty for 1.7 million children, James Purnell announced that all 2.7 million Incapacity Benefit Claimants will be required “to seek work and have a tough medical assessment”.
Ignoring the fact that every criticism of the administration of this benefit implies criticism of the medical professionals who deem claimants to be unfit for work, Purnell proudly claims to have “shot a Tory Fox” through this action.
Doesn’t Purnell know that Fox Hunting is now illegal? That it is considered cruel and something that amounts to the persecution and bullying of a smaller, weaker, defenceless species.
The Tories are the recognised national experts at such bullying of the weak, the Labour Party was once known for being the opposite of that.
2.7 million votes are not many to lose I guess. Almost a quarter of those are all ready trapped in the Mental Health labyrinth, the least vote catching and the most underfunded and incohesive of both Medical and Social Services. All Incapacity Benefit Claimants, while not begrudging the aid given to others, will have been disappointed at yet another budget that has failed to recognise or seek to alleviate the relative poverty in which many of them live.
I am one such claimant. I am 58 years old and was obliged to give up work four years ago (having refused to do so when urged by Specialists and G.P’s six years earlier). I once had savings but I was obliged to use these up before being able to claim any help beyond the £80 a week invalidity benefit. I also receive Disability Living Allowance but this is totally consumed by running a car, something I am obliged to do because my doctors recommend I should not use public transport. (Being forced to stand in a swaying bus or train carriage could cause me paralysis). The cost of Taxi fares for Hospital appointments etc. would amount to more than the cost of the car.
I also receive a small Occupational Pension which, because I refuse to become homeless, is totally consumed by my mortgage interest. It was not until my savings were exhausted and I had lived solely on benefits for six months that I was able to access help with my mortgage. If I had not been a home owner my rent would have been paid from the moment my savings dropped to a certain level but, because I wish to retain my independence wherever I can, I was obliged to impoverish myself before help, which amounts to approximately 25% of my mortgage interest was available to me. All of this means that I am no longer buying my home, simply “renting” it from the building society. When my mortgage completion date is reached I will be forced to sell and through this act loose my entitled to some of my assistance until any profit I receive is exhausted and I am forced to join on the back of the benefits Que once again. This help with my mortgage interest is under permanent review and is reduced by the equivalent amount every time I receive a small increase in my pension or my other benefits.
I am no longer expected to pay Council Tax, but even with this one clear “benefit”, once I have paid my utility bills I have approximately £11 pound a week for food, toiletries, cleaning products etc.
I am not seeking pity here. Had I not been labelled a trophy “fox” by Mr Purnell you would still be unaware of my existence. Today I feel obliged to make people aware that, while there might be some who “choose” to live on benefits, the majority of us, and I can include here ALL those I have met who live with Mental Illness, do not “choose” to live in this way. Would you “Choose” to live like this?
So how did I end up here? A scavenging fox. Surely a drug user or alcohol abuser. If you will bear with me I will relate my story, which, in common with what is written above, is not untypical.
Possibly because my childhood was spent in poverty I have suffered from depression since I was seventeen years old (possibly younger if you count childhood “unhappiness”). While ever-present my depression worsens about every six years and requires some level of medical intervention. It’s a bit like bi-polar disorder but I don’t experience the manic highs, just the lows. I have never allowed this illness to define me. In spite of it, and sometimes because of it, I worked my way from manual work in my teens, through retail work in my twenties, computer related work for most of my thirties and then a Social Work Qualification, working with Children and Families until, in my late forties the events described below led to the first medical recommendation that I should give up work. Reluctant to do this but unable to continue in Social Work, I trained for, and then became an Adult Education Lecturer until the events below rendered me unemployable.
Definitely because my childhood poverty my spine began to disintegrate ten years ago because of a condition similar to Osteoperosis. Since then I am never out of pain, either in my back or, what is known as “referred pain” in my legs, and sometimes both. An operation carries the risk of paralysis so is considered inadvisable until paralysis occurs “naturally”. Pain killers reduce, but cannot remove the pain. Occasionally another part of the spine crumbles. One day one such event will leave me unable to walk but so far specialists have kept me on my feet by administering steroid injections into the spine. I have learned this week, following my latest relapse, that the risks of injecting are now so great that the option no longer exists and increasing doses of pain killers are my future until such time as paralysis occurs.
In 2002, while still lecturing, I suffered a major relapse. I have never been able to purchase medical insurance because of my depression. Faced with year long waiting lists I used £2.500 of my own savings to get myself back to work in three months, still not much evidence of lead swinging or benefit scrounging is there Mr Purnell.
Although I had fought the extent to which the back pain impacted on my depression for six years, in 1994, following the death of my Father, the two combined to bring me to a standstill. I suffered an extreme Mental Breakdown that led to me compulsorily attending a Psychiatric Day Hospital for 15 months. I now had to listen to recommendations from both Psychiatrists and those involved with my “Back Pain” that I should not consider a return to work. I guessed I was pretty much uninsurable by any employer since then.
As a consequence of my more sedentary lifestyle I have now contracted diabetes and am also treated for Hypertension and High Cholesterol levels.
Here I sit Mr Purnell, not just a benefit scavenging fox but a wounded benefit scavenging fox. Interesting that you chose that imagery, didn’t the Nazi’s include film of hoards of rats in films supporting their de-humanisation of the Jews? The Nazi solution to people like me was the same as that they used with the Jews. I guess leaving us to starve, contract hypothermia, or become so depressed that we kill ourselves is cheaper even than that “final solution”, no wonder the Tories thought of it first. Isn’t it your job to provide an alternative to that sort of thinking?
So we wait Mr Purnell. Wounded foxes. Those least able to avoid the hunt. So conditioned to being victims of the benefit system, that most of us will not even react when you carry out your bullying purge to see if you can catch one or two of us out. Over the past thirty years we have watched various governments remove most of our hospitals, reduce, until they are mostly ineffective, the numbers of Social Workers who help us, and the numbers of social provisions that once offered us Sanctuary. Dehumanised and disenfranchised to such an extent that no one bats an eyelid when you change the rules so that you can lock us up rather than support us in our homes as you do other groups of people in need.
As a life long socialist I find myself feeling like the scapegoated victim of family abuse. I do not want you, or your colleagues to go away but I do want you to stop bullying me. Sadly, I realise that is unlikely to happen so long as you run with the hunt rather than with the foxes.
At the same time as he was announcing measures to reduce child poverty for 1.7 million children, James Purnell announced that all 2.7 million Incapacity Benefit Claimants will be required “to seek work and have a tough medical assessment”.
Ignoring the fact that every criticism of the administration of this benefit implies criticism of the medical professionals who deem claimants to be unfit for work, Purnell proudly claims to have “shot a Tory Fox” through this action.
Doesn’t Purnell know that Fox Hunting is now illegal? That it is considered cruel and something that amounts to the persecution and bullying of a smaller, weaker, defenceless species.
The Tories are the recognised national experts at such bullying of the weak, the Labour Party was once known for being the opposite of that.
2.7 million votes are not many to lose I guess. Almost a quarter of those are all ready trapped in the Mental Health labyrinth, the least vote catching and the most underfunded and incohesive of both Medical and Social Services. All Incapacity Benefit Claimants, while not begrudging the aid given to others, will have been disappointed at yet another budget that has failed to recognise or seek to alleviate the relative poverty in which many of them live.
I am one such claimant. I am 58 years old and was obliged to give up work four years ago (having refused to do so when urged by Specialists and G.P’s six years earlier). I once had savings but I was obliged to use these up before being able to claim any help beyond the £80 a week invalidity benefit. I also receive Disability Living Allowance but this is totally consumed by running a car, something I am obliged to do because my doctors recommend I should not use public transport. (Being forced to stand in a swaying bus or train carriage could cause me paralysis). The cost of Taxi fares for Hospital appointments etc. would amount to more than the cost of the car.
I also receive a small Occupational Pension which, because I refuse to become homeless, is totally consumed by my mortgage interest. It was not until my savings were exhausted and I had lived solely on benefits for six months that I was able to access help with my mortgage. If I had not been a home owner my rent would have been paid from the moment my savings dropped to a certain level but, because I wish to retain my independence wherever I can, I was obliged to impoverish myself before help, which amounts to approximately 25% of my mortgage interest was available to me. All of this means that I am no longer buying my home, simply “renting” it from the building society. When my mortgage completion date is reached I will be forced to sell and through this act loose my entitled to some of my assistance until any profit I receive is exhausted and I am forced to join on the back of the benefits Que once again. This help with my mortgage interest is under permanent review and is reduced by the equivalent amount every time I receive a small increase in my pension or my other benefits.
I am no longer expected to pay Council Tax, but even with this one clear “benefit”, once I have paid my utility bills I have approximately £11 pound a week for food, toiletries, cleaning products etc.
I am not seeking pity here. Had I not been labelled a trophy “fox” by Mr Purnell you would still be unaware of my existence. Today I feel obliged to make people aware that, while there might be some who “choose” to live on benefits, the majority of us, and I can include here ALL those I have met who live with Mental Illness, do not “choose” to live in this way. Would you “Choose” to live like this?
So how did I end up here? A scavenging fox. Surely a drug user or alcohol abuser. If you will bear with me I will relate my story, which, in common with what is written above, is not untypical.
Possibly because my childhood was spent in poverty I have suffered from depression since I was seventeen years old (possibly younger if you count childhood “unhappiness”). While ever-present my depression worsens about every six years and requires some level of medical intervention. It’s a bit like bi-polar disorder but I don’t experience the manic highs, just the lows. I have never allowed this illness to define me. In spite of it, and sometimes because of it, I worked my way from manual work in my teens, through retail work in my twenties, computer related work for most of my thirties and then a Social Work Qualification, working with Children and Families until, in my late forties the events described below led to the first medical recommendation that I should give up work. Reluctant to do this but unable to continue in Social Work, I trained for, and then became an Adult Education Lecturer until the events below rendered me unemployable.
Definitely because my childhood poverty my spine began to disintegrate ten years ago because of a condition similar to Osteoperosis. Since then I am never out of pain, either in my back or, what is known as “referred pain” in my legs, and sometimes both. An operation carries the risk of paralysis so is considered inadvisable until paralysis occurs “naturally”. Pain killers reduce, but cannot remove the pain. Occasionally another part of the spine crumbles. One day one such event will leave me unable to walk but so far specialists have kept me on my feet by administering steroid injections into the spine. I have learned this week, following my latest relapse, that the risks of injecting are now so great that the option no longer exists and increasing doses of pain killers are my future until such time as paralysis occurs.
In 2002, while still lecturing, I suffered a major relapse. I have never been able to purchase medical insurance because of my depression. Faced with year long waiting lists I used £2.500 of my own savings to get myself back to work in three months, still not much evidence of lead swinging or benefit scrounging is there Mr Purnell.
Although I had fought the extent to which the back pain impacted on my depression for six years, in 1994, following the death of my Father, the two combined to bring me to a standstill. I suffered an extreme Mental Breakdown that led to me compulsorily attending a Psychiatric Day Hospital for 15 months. I now had to listen to recommendations from both Psychiatrists and those involved with my “Back Pain” that I should not consider a return to work. I guessed I was pretty much uninsurable by any employer since then.
As a consequence of my more sedentary lifestyle I have now contracted diabetes and am also treated for Hypertension and High Cholesterol levels.
Here I sit Mr Purnell, not just a benefit scavenging fox but a wounded benefit scavenging fox. Interesting that you chose that imagery, didn’t the Nazi’s include film of hoards of rats in films supporting their de-humanisation of the Jews? The Nazi solution to people like me was the same as that they used with the Jews. I guess leaving us to starve, contract hypothermia, or become so depressed that we kill ourselves is cheaper even than that “final solution”, no wonder the Tories thought of it first. Isn’t it your job to provide an alternative to that sort of thinking?
So we wait Mr Purnell. Wounded foxes. Those least able to avoid the hunt. So conditioned to being victims of the benefit system, that most of us will not even react when you carry out your bullying purge to see if you can catch one or two of us out. Over the past thirty years we have watched various governments remove most of our hospitals, reduce, until they are mostly ineffective, the numbers of Social Workers who help us, and the numbers of social provisions that once offered us Sanctuary. Dehumanised and disenfranchised to such an extent that no one bats an eyelid when you change the rules so that you can lock us up rather than support us in our homes as you do other groups of people in need.
As a life long socialist I find myself feeling like the scapegoated victim of family abuse. I do not want you, or your colleagues to go away but I do want you to stop bullying me. Sadly, I realise that is unlikely to happen so long as you run with the hunt rather than with the foxes.
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
Depression & Nightmares
15 22 Aug 2007. 1700 Hrs. Depression & Nightmares.
Right now I am experiencing one of those very scary moments we depressives have from time to time.
During the last Forty Eight Hours I have made two postings here, spent a wonderful “social” evening with my son, and, sorted out some potential Social Work Articles, overcome my fear of rejection, and submitted them to a magazine. I have also identified and printed some relevant wildlife photographs and, again overcome the rejection fear, and submitted these to a competition.
Why the scare? Because this activity is both a reminder of just how inactive I have been for weeks, and a possible indicator that I am about to zoom off in the opposite direction.
As usual there are also huge gaps in my memory of my “time away” so I am scanning what memory is there to try to discover whether I have done, or not done, anything during the period to cause upset or harm to others, or to myself. My discoveries so far are focused on too much money spent on CD’s and Cigarettes, not too bad because I can balance these by living on beans on toast for a while. (Pollyanna moment: This will also help my needed weight loss, and through that, my back pain).
It is because I am still on the Sad side of OK that I remain fearful. During the next twenty four hours I might slip back to that frightening place, or I might suddenly be filled with optimism and enthusiasm, both potentially fraught with danger so I have to hope the coin will land on the side marked OK.
I guessed change was on the way last night following a night of vivid dreams and nightmares, all completely different but all connected in some way. All containing people and places from my past, my present, and, who knows, my future?
On nights such as these I am woken, in either euphoria or fear, every couple of hours. These awakenings can be as terrifying as the dream itself but last night, (a possible indicator that I am on the up), I was able to hang on to reality and make a cup of tea and smoke a cigarette between each one to re-ground myself.
My nightmares are particularly vivid and very terrifying and if they become persistent over a few days are one of my few reliable indicators that I am going “down”. At these times the “nightmare” becomes a “day mare” on waking and I can continue to be haunted by the sights and sounds of the “mare” in a hallucinatory way right through to the point it picks up again as I eventually regain sleep the following night.
Scary enough at the best (or should that be worse) of times but particularly difficult during schooldays and my working life when I had to learn to concentrate very hard on the reality of the day and push aside the visions and sounds of the fantasy being played out in my head.
All depressive suffer some symptoms they do not tell the medics for years, (sometimes never) for fear this is the thing that will finally prove they are mad and lead to them being locked up. For that reason these “day mares” remained one of my “secrets” until very recently, brought into the open because with age I no longer care if people think I am mad, I no longer care myself if I am mad as that aspect of me is responsible for the best parts of me as well as the worse.
I wrote a poem about coming to terms with Mental Illness while I was attending the day hospital. It is based on my own experiences and on some of those of my colleagues. I wont post it here because it might be overlooked, I will post it next.
Luv Bri
Right now I am experiencing one of those very scary moments we depressives have from time to time.
During the last Forty Eight Hours I have made two postings here, spent a wonderful “social” evening with my son, and, sorted out some potential Social Work Articles, overcome my fear of rejection, and submitted them to a magazine. I have also identified and printed some relevant wildlife photographs and, again overcome the rejection fear, and submitted these to a competition.
Why the scare? Because this activity is both a reminder of just how inactive I have been for weeks, and a possible indicator that I am about to zoom off in the opposite direction.
As usual there are also huge gaps in my memory of my “time away” so I am scanning what memory is there to try to discover whether I have done, or not done, anything during the period to cause upset or harm to others, or to myself. My discoveries so far are focused on too much money spent on CD’s and Cigarettes, not too bad because I can balance these by living on beans on toast for a while. (Pollyanna moment: This will also help my needed weight loss, and through that, my back pain).
It is because I am still on the Sad side of OK that I remain fearful. During the next twenty four hours I might slip back to that frightening place, or I might suddenly be filled with optimism and enthusiasm, both potentially fraught with danger so I have to hope the coin will land on the side marked OK.
I guessed change was on the way last night following a night of vivid dreams and nightmares, all completely different but all connected in some way. All containing people and places from my past, my present, and, who knows, my future?
On nights such as these I am woken, in either euphoria or fear, every couple of hours. These awakenings can be as terrifying as the dream itself but last night, (a possible indicator that I am on the up), I was able to hang on to reality and make a cup of tea and smoke a cigarette between each one to re-ground myself.
My nightmares are particularly vivid and very terrifying and if they become persistent over a few days are one of my few reliable indicators that I am going “down”. At these times the “nightmare” becomes a “day mare” on waking and I can continue to be haunted by the sights and sounds of the “mare” in a hallucinatory way right through to the point it picks up again as I eventually regain sleep the following night.
Scary enough at the best (or should that be worse) of times but particularly difficult during schooldays and my working life when I had to learn to concentrate very hard on the reality of the day and push aside the visions and sounds of the fantasy being played out in my head.
All depressive suffer some symptoms they do not tell the medics for years, (sometimes never) for fear this is the thing that will finally prove they are mad and lead to them being locked up. For that reason these “day mares” remained one of my “secrets” until very recently, brought into the open because with age I no longer care if people think I am mad, I no longer care myself if I am mad as that aspect of me is responsible for the best parts of me as well as the worse.
I wrote a poem about coming to terms with Mental Illness while I was attending the day hospital. It is based on my own experiences and on some of those of my colleagues. I wont post it here because it might be overlooked, I will post it next.
Luv Bri
"I am a Loony": Poem
Here is the poem I mentioned in my previous post “Depression and Dreams”. I hope it stands alone but If read in conjunction with that posting it needs no further introduction.
It is called: -
In Good Company.
I am a loony from the bin
Society puts its rejects in.
You’ve read about me in the Sun or Mail,
Where the headline without fail,
Will warn you that you might be stabbed,
Or even have your children grabbed,
By me, or others of my kind,
Whom you will inevitably find,
Asleep in doorways, scrounging money,
To spend on booze or dogs with runny
Eyes, that we appear to keep,
Rendering our poverty obsolete,
They’d rather us you did not see,
My other loony friends and me
Claiming the life we live we choose
Our smelly clothes, our worn out shoes
Our confused speech, our confused minds
Fuelled by drugs we somehow find
Regardless of our lack of dosh
We’d clearly rather “trip” than nosh.
Winston Churchill, Lady Di
Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Ives
Spencer Tracy, Kurt Cobain
Michelangelo and Mark Twain,
John Lennon, Vincent Van Gogh
Gustav Holst, Rachmaninoff,
Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene,
All people you might not have seen
If judged on their illness alone
By the editor of some tabloid tome.
I am a funny from the farm
I promise I wont do you harm
Some of us might, that is true
But statistically so might more of you
I’ve never robbed, I’ve never killed
Believe me, I am much too ill
Like many from the funny farm
It’s me, not you, who I might harm
And during times when I am well
You would not know, you could not tell
I’ve raised my children, stayed in work
Social responsibility I’ve not shirked
I work hard to avoid that bin
Society puts its rejects in
But this illness descends without warning
Fine at bedtime, nuts in the morning
If we frighten you, then you should see
Just how scared we are, my friends and me
And if at times we slur our speech
It’s drugs from the medics, not drugs from the streets.
Mary Shelley and John Keats
Virginia Woolf, Louis MacNiece
Ernest Hemmingway, Henrik Ibsen
Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Charlie Parker, Anton Bruckner,
Sylvia Plath and Edward Elgar
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James,
All these and many other names,
Might not be known to you and me
If their madness alone the world did see.
I am a nut without a case
You’d never know it from my face
I’ve trained my countenance to hide
The torment that sometimes rages inside
If I seem ignorant when you ask
Please realise that the simplest task
Can seem immense at times like these
I’m standing, but I’m on my knees
It’s not your pity that I seek
Just understanding that this week
I might not be the man you know
I’ve lost me too, and now I’m so
Confused, bewildered, “off my head”
Contemplating being dead
The internal argument ensues
Could the loss of me be the making of you
While all that I ever achieved
Crumbles to nothing at times like these
And deep inside I’m forced to face
The truth. - I’m a nut without a case.
Charles Dickens, John Bunyan and George Fredrick Handel
Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Gerard de Nerval,
Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Edgar Alan Poe,
Spike Milligan, Cole Porter and Victor Hugo
T.S Eliot, Brian Wilson, and Alfred Lord Tennyson
Charlie Mingus, Lord Byron and Emily Dickinson
Noel Coward, Samuel Johnson, and Monticelli
All shared the illness with people like me,
This world would be a less cultured place
If they’d hounded these humans out of the race.
I’m round the bend, I’m up the creek
Without a paddle in a boat that leaks.
A political pawn who lives with social rejection
Until the next general election
When headlines scream that folks like me
Are never safe, should not be free,
And if you weaken, are not sure
They’ll ask if you want us living next door
They’ll jumble several diagnosis
To arrive at a Jekyll and Hyde prognosis
To fuel the fear in folks like you
That you can never tell what we might do
You’ll have to search very hard to find
That Schizophrenia just means “confused mind”
That those with the fictional “split personality”
Are folks with depression, people like me
But the “split” in us is not “good” or “bad”
It is loss of control of what’s happy or sad
It means loss of our jobs, children, husbands and wives
It means loss of the love that we once had for life.
I am a loony from the bin
that society puts its rejects in.
Like many from the funny farm
It’s me, not you, who I might harm,
It’s not your pity that I seek,
Just understanding that this week
I might not be the man you know. . . . . . . but I’m in good company.
© Bri 2005 (with “names” from www.mixednuts.net).
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