A date for your diary – Monday, June 29th 2009. 7.30pm
Actors and Writers London will be performing a rehearsed reading of my play ‘Spaceboy’ in Hammersmith, London W6.
Spaceboy
by
PAFosterPart One – ‘If I Fall’
Single, self-employed Nathan falls for his next-door neighbour, thirty something Anna Walker.
But Anna has a painful past and a troubled teenage son; and when a local lad goes missing, Nathan’s new relationship is tested to the brink.
INTERVAL
Part Two – ‘Moondust Will Cover Me’
Fifteen year old Hayden is a little confused and thinks he’s in love; and that would be fine, if his new found friend wasn’t hearing voices.
Space is limited, so please let me know if you want to come. £5 on the door.
in reply to ThisisDavina #Time for a quick update.
I’ve had a feeling of not really being part of this world for a few months now. I was down again last week and quite badly too.
What was frustrating was the fact that the previous week, I was just able to gain a sense of normality for a few days before sliding back down again.
My current dose of medication appears to have wiped out my highly creative hypomanic phases, and left me with too many depressive episodes. Obviously, if I had to settle for one or the other I’d much rather have the hypos.
Actually, in the last few months, I’ve had very little normality. And by normal, I mean just having an ordinary life, not affected by my condition.
It can be very hard walking around in a daze, completely disconnected from the world.
And hard on others too.
And it’s when I realise it is hard on others that I get to feeling maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here. That way, my mental disorder isn’t a problem any more. For others, and of course, for me.
Sadly, being down really does cloud your judgement. You lose all sense of rational thinking. The black stuff just takes over. You end up doing things you’d rather not talk about.
But I am going talk about this.
It helps me and others to understand and deal with this condition. If I had a broken leg, everybody could see the plaster. But with a broken brain, I can only use words to convey the torture…
–
My main problem last week was my thinking negatively in a different way than usual.
And that scared me.
I’ve been down. Not hugely down, but down enough to have those all-consuming thoughts of complete and utter worthlessness; the thoughts that I know of course are not true, but they seem really fucking real when you’re depressed, I can assure you.
I’ve been trying to get back into writing for a long time. Being down a lot hasn’t helped. And during a reasonably mentally okay period over the bank holiday, I had a good idea.
During one of my sessions at my Nuffield Writers Group in Southampton, we were doing characterisation work; making up the complete life history of a fictional character.
One of the group came up with a retired woman who loved adventure. Once a month she would use her free pass, get on a bus and just see where she ended up.
She’d spend the day experiencing a new town she’d never been to before and then get on the bus home. Even took an overnight bag with her, just in case she was too far away to get back and needed to stay in a B&B.
I thought this was great.
We got on to talking about characters from different regions of the country, and with me having only lived on the Surrey/Hampshire border, most of my characters just tend to be from here too.
It was suggested that maybe I should get on a train one day and go north to nowhere in particular, like the lady on the bus, and be inspired by listening to and observing the people in the town I ended up.
And I thought this was a great idea too.
Well, over the bank holiday I decided that on the Tuesday I would buy a travelcard, go to Waterloo, stick a pin in a map of London, get on the tube or bus, and go to wherever the pin was to take me.
That way I’d be in a part of a huge multicultural city I’d never visited before. The classes and cultures would be different to my own and I could observe, listen and jot things down in my notebook.
I was really looking forward to it. The thought of being ‘lost in London’ for research purposes was very appealing.
But then on the Bank Holiday Monday, the switch switched itself again and I started going down. I was annoyed that I’d only just come back up again and was determined to carry on with my plan for Tuesday regardless of how I felt.
I was thinking also that maybe going out to London for the day would help.
How wrong I was. Tuesday morning came, and I was even worse.
And it was then that I was aware my down thinking pattern had changed: I wasn’t going to get ‘lost in London’ and discover a new place to inspire me, I had made the decision that I was going to get ‘lost in London’ with the sole intention of maybe not coming back.
It took me ages to shower and decide on what to wear. Silly things were going through my head like what clothes should I be wearing in case I was found somewhere. Should I be wearing clean underwear, or didn’t that sort of thing matter if I wasn’t coming back.
It took me two hours to shower and dress. I wouldn’t normally bother with either when I’m down. Half of me really didn’t want to go, procrastinating like hell. The other half did, and was very frustrated that I wasn’t moving quick enough.
I finally got out and caught a train from Woking; by which time I was already a nervous wreck.
I’d had a few tears when hugging Richard and leaving the house, but he was cool with it. He knew I was down and a few tears is not at all unusual at these times, as all my emotions get completely fucked and I’ll cry for no apparent reason.
Of course I was hoping he’d stop me. But he didn’t. He simply assumed that if I was going out then I was okay, since if I was really depressed I’d be upstairs in bed – ie: staying safe.
Sadly that wasn’t what my stupid brain had in mind.
On the train I wrote in my notebook:
Suicidal today. 50/50. Probs mixed episode. On way to London. Gunna get lost. Don’t know yet if I’m coming home. Help. Please.
I spent the rest of the day dealing with huge waves of the black stuff. I’d be okay for a bit, and then I’d be crying and shaking and my teeth would be chattering away as I became very tense and scared.
All the while I walked. Across Westminster Bridge, back along the Victoria Embankment to the Millennium Bridge, around the Tate Modern, and back towards Waterloo.
There I sat for ages and ages, before heading to the National Theatre where I sat on one of the huge green and rather funky AstroTurf chairs.
And all I could do was try to hide how I was feeling. The last thing I wanted was someone to notice me, because if they stopped or asked me if I was okay, I knew I would simply crack up and land in a big heap on the pavement.
And fuck knows what would have happened then.
Thankfully the hoards of people in London that warm sunny day completely ignored me, save that is for a young homeless woman in a pink sleeping back at the top of the steps by the National. I didn’t look at her – I didn’t look at anybody that day – but as I passed she simply said “Cheer up, Love”, and it was then it struck me: I must have looked pretty terrible.
I eventually found a seemingly deserted bit of concrete thoroughfare at the side of what I think must have been the Royal Festival Hall.
And there I sat, leaning against the wall in the sunshine.
By now it was probably about half five, and I’d managed to walk (very slowly) for a good few hours, and all the while fighting the very strong urge to just get on a bus and never ever come back. (At one point, walking along the Strand earlier in the day, I counted nine buses in row.)
I was now a total wreck. Plenty of people passed by on route to somewhere and it would have been quite easy for me to have slit my wrists there and then without anybody even noticing.
Not that I would ever do that, you understand. I could never do that. The pain and the blood would be far too much for me. It’s a headfuck even thinking about it.
Then two police officers walked past. On the beat I guess. And neither of them noticed me either.
It was then I actually made a decision. As they walked away I worked it out. I planned to go up to them and just say: “Help. I’m suicidal. Please take me to a safe place.”
You see, the odd thing is, there are times when the natural human survival instinct just kicks in.
But then all the stupid thoughts started rushing through my head about how it would just cause so many problems and that I’d never be able to deal with the consequences.
I then accepted it would be far less hassle for all concerned if I just got on a bus, disappeared, and then found a quite deserted place in a park somewhere in which to lie down, go to sleep, and die of hypothermia during the night.
Of course, by now I was practically screaming for help on the inside; and crying, shaking and looking a complete wreck on the outside.
And yet, still nobody noticed.
I kept looking at my phone willing it to ring with a call or vibrate with a text.
I was then about ready to suffer the consequences and just do something stupid when, thank fuck, I did get a text.
It was a text from a close friend simply saying hi and checking I was okay.
Obviously I wasn’t.
But with loads of texts and calls from this friend, listening, caring, understanding, helping, and just being there for me, two hours later I was persuaded to accept I would be much safer at home, and finally got back to Waterloo to catch a train…
–
Fuck me, what a day!
I don’t recomend it; it’s horrible.
Every minute you just want to call someone and tell them what’s happening, but you can’t ’cause when you’re like that you don’t want to put anybody out or give them cause for concern.
And all the while you’re hoping and praying that someone will think to call or text and just ask if you’re okay.
Sadly, the longer this goes on, the more your fucked up brain tells you that nobody cares anyway, so what’s the point in prolonging the agony?
You are constantly fighting yourself. And it’s a battle to the end.
There’s just no way of describing the torture of trying to think rationally when your brain and thought processes are just so completely fucked up.
Anyway, it took time to return from my hell deep inside the black stuff, but I’ve been back a few days now and, having had the support from Richard and close friends, I’m okay.
Okay that is, until the next time…
Thanks for reading.
# # # #fb #I’ve recently been reading with interest the ‘25 Things’ notes from various friends on Facebook, and was wondering how long it would be before I was tagged and would be asked to reciprocate (wow, spelt that right first time, lol!).
Funny then that I should be tagged twice by friends from two different social networks within a few hours of each other.
So for Helen Eastwood and Alex Dowding, here’s my effort.
Mind you, this post was first started about three months ago, so I doubt you’ll even remember you did one, let alone tagged me, lol!
And if you’re one of the twenty three other fb friends I’ve tagged, then may you have fun in telling the world your twenty five fascinating facts.
Anyway, here’s the obligatory bit to cut and paste…
—
Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I taggd you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
—
And here, in no particular order, is 25 things about me you’ve always wanted to know but were too afraid to ask…
1) I went to school and college with current cabinet member Yvette Cooper. I asked her out at a disco (she declined; probably knowing something I didn’t at the time, lol) and her mother taught me A’ Level Maths.
2) I have a recurring nightmare of the handbrake on the car failing. I am constantly rolling backwards out of control, desperately trying to avoid numerous parked vehicles.
3) I have a MENSA qualifying IQ of 155. (Cattell IIB – max 161) I took the test and joined to prove I wasn’t as “lazy and unintelligent” as my mother said I was.
4) I love my Mac – nuff said.
5) Grieg’s ‘Piano Contereto in A minor’ is my favourite piece of classical music but I doubt I will ever learn to play it. I can play ‘Fur Elise’ and ‘Chariots of Fire’ though.
6) Being bipolar (type II) means I regularly see a psychiatrist and psychologist and spent 3 days in a mental hospital when I had a mixed episode in July 2007.
7) I love books, but am very careful about reading them. I read paperbacks quickly and without damaging the spines, and I have an aversion to marking them – even with pencil.
If I buy another pair of sunglasses this summer it will be the third pair I have bought in my adult life and it will again be a pair of Raybans for about £100. Having said that, the first pair I bought 20 years ago seem to be quite popular again.
9) My mother is due to marry for the 4th time. Her 1st husband was my father, the 2nd was the 1st’s brother-in-law, the 3rd was the 2nd’s best mate and the 4th has the same name as the 1st.
10) I am ashamed to say I only get to brush my teeth about once a fortnight and am very lucky they have stayed in reasonably good health, despite my inablity to clean them.
11) There are (far too) many times when I don’t leave the house for three or four days at a time. These are generally the days when I stay in one room, sleep, and don’t answer the phone.
12) I will either die of old age or I will commit suicide. Since I am very protective of my brain, it would be somewhat ironic if I died of a brain haemorrhage.
13) I’m not superstitious.
14) I have lived with my partner Richard near Woking in Surrey for nearly 14 years. We have a parrot (who will probably out-live us both), but have never had carpet on the stairs.
15) My mental health renders me pretty much unemployable and so I’ve been self-employed (if you can call it that) for the vast majority of my adult life, and have only ever earned enough to pay income tax twice.
16) I am Sagittarian and my favourite colour is purple.
17) I keep a blog, Stephen Fry is following me on Twitter and I have my own Fan Page on Facebook.
18) In 2005 I finished writing a musical using 27 different Erasure songs. The lyrics are excellent and there’s a great story there if you get the songs in the right order. Took two years to complete it though. Watch this space.
19) I spent the majority of my fourth (somewhat solitary) year at secondary school (Year 10) writing a horror novel entitled ‘Leonsean’. It filled four and a half science exercise books.
20) I have always enjoyed being around young people. From working in various youth clubs and schools to helping out in a youth theatre. It’s amazing what you can learn from them, if only you take the time to listen.
21) I will one day have a play produced at the Royal Court, an afternoon play broadcast on Radio 4, and a musical running in the West End.
22) I finally accepted my sexual orientation when I was 22. I was 27 before I had the courage to tell anybody else, lol. I will never have children – and that really pisses me off.
23) I spent a year in America as an au-pair during which time I wrote, produced and directed what was reported in the Boston Globe to be America’s first pantomime.
24) I attempted to run away a lot when I was a teenager, but eventually gave up trying when my mother started packing my suitcases for me.
25) I am teetotal, I don’t drink alcohol at all. I did until I was 20; I prefered lager, had a particular fondness for Guinness, and avoided bitter and spirits like the plague. I have smoked five and a half cigarettes and never taken any illegal substances. (Okay, so I’m boring, lol!)
Oh well, that’s it. Your turn…
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