It’s 12.30 am on Tuesday 11th March and I have just renewed my library books online with one click of my dutiful mouse.
Convenient, to say the least.
I have 9 books of playscripts sat here in my office from my last visit to the Performing Arts Library in Dorking a whole six weeks ago - and I haven’t read any of them.
My bookmark, a silver ‘P’ I unwrapped at Christmas a couple of years ago, marks the beginning of Scene Two of Caryl Churchill’s play Owners.
Scene One, I recall was set in a butchers shop where CLEGG, the butcher is chatting to WORSLEY a young man in his early twenties with bandaged wrists. I’ve tried to kill myself six times, says WORSLEY towards the end of the scene. And I’m a willing victim.
Needless to say, that was a little too close for comfort at the time and I’ve not been in a good enough mental state to read any of the other nine library books since.
Saturday night was probably the bottom of my current episode, a long and rather deep one. At least i hope it was.
I have started to write again, so here I go; splurging I think is the technical blogging term.
I’m not really one for splurging I have to admit, but I’m doing this purely for my benefit tonight and not yours, though if you do decide to read on and do get some enjoyment or life enhancing nugget of information from this post then I’ll be happy to consider it a bonus.
I don’t really want to go on about my depressive episode, but as I said this is for my benefit, not yours, so I will. You don’t have to read this.
It’s odd. Tapping away at the keyboard in the small hours is showing me that things are changing again. The fact that I haven’t written anything on this blog for a month is also significant.
It’s not that I haven’t done anything worth blogging about, I have, it’s just that although I have been doing things I would normally enjoy and want to blog about, I haven’t had the pleasure of being able to enjoy anything.
I haven’t had the energy to concentrate for long enough to write anything either. I’ll even confess that I haven’t been able to keep up my mood diary in handwritten form so that I could cheat with my postings like I did last time.
I haven’t been able to do much at all. I could give the excuse that I’ve been really busy, but unless you’d consider being really busy sleeping an excuse then I haven’t been really been really busy either.
Slept rather a lot actually. Far too much.
Today I got up at about 10.30am. Had a smoothie for breakfast, fart arsed about doing nothing in particular (though I did recieve one important phone call that I had to deal with and also managed an important email) had some soup for lunch, then, because I was totally worn out and couldn’t concentrate on anything at all, I went back to sleep for three hours.
When I woke up I had recharged enough to brave the weekly shop at Morrisons, not that I actually did any shopping, you understand. Richard did that, I just wandered around in a daze for an hour and stuck the credit card in the slot thingy while Rich packed the shopping in our green boxes.
Please note, I do not choose to live the life of a zombie. There are plenty things I should, need, and indeed want to be doing. Each and every task piles up, waiting for the day when my brain is alert enough to be able to cope with doing things.
As is often the case, during my hypomanic phases (though sadly not enough and not long enough either recently) I’ll be able to concentrate for many hours at a time and do hundred and one different things in order to catch up with my life.
What I hate most about these excessive down periods is my lack of creativity. Ironic that I have plenty of time to be creative, but simply can’t. The brain just doesn’t work. I get lost in a dark fog and find myself in that room I talked about in my last post.
Incidentally, it was thinking about describing that feeling in a blog post that got my mind off the subject of seriously considering what appears at the time to be the only way out. Thinking about what I was going to write allowed my mind to wander away enough to allow me to go to sleep.
So what have I actually been able to do in the last month?
Well, I had an assessment with the Intensive Group Therapy Team at the ACU (the mental hospital at St Peter’s in Chertsey) having been referred by my Psychiatrist an I’ve since had a letter saying I have a place on the next course that starts on the 17th (Monday).
The programme is for eight weeks and I’ll have to attend three 90 minute sessions each week; Art Therapy on a Monday, Mind Matters on a Tuesday, and Open Space on a Wednesday, as well as a fortnightly meeting with my co-ordinator.
It’s essentially talking group therapy for patients (or ’service users’ as they prefer to call us in the NHS these days) with a variety of mental health issues - I don’t think my group will be confined to those with BiPolar Disorders, and to be honest, talking therapies, whilst I do recognise they have a place, aren’t really going to be of a major benefit to me, and certainly won’t cure my condition, but the sessions I’m sure will help my understanding and at least I can have severe down days with out worrying about what people think about me.
The routine of having to be there for each session will also be helpful.
One thing that I am looking forward to is that by talking about my mental health I’ll be able to help others in the group who aren’t so clued up about their condition.
On the day of my assessment at ACU, I also went to Sunbury in the evening with Richard and a couple of friends and took part in the annual Trivial Pursuits Quiz Night organised by the Riverside Youth Theatre to raise funds.
I am pleased to say that our team, the Methuen Marvels, came 2nd out of 14, so we’ll definately be going next year with the aim of winning!
The following night I helped out Front of House for the Ottershaw Players Farrago - this year was a very adult version of Treasure Island. My contribution was new lyrics for Village Peoples ‘In the Navy’. And I’m not repeating them here! (Though with charater names like Pirate Dan Gleebles, and Roger the Cabin Boy I’m sure you get the picture.)
I managed to take Fin to the cinema during half term, though I confess I’ve completely forgotten what we saw so it was probably crap.
Oh and I did manage to go on auto pilot for a couple of days. I went to the races at Chepstow (working behind the members bar with a polish guy who didn’t know the difference between Guiness and Fosters) and the the next day I was at Wembley again working as manager in the Venue resturant for the Carling Cup match between two football teams that I have forgotten too. (Might even be working there for the Foo Fighters concert in June.)
Managed to go to my Nuffield Theatre Writers group meeting a couple of weeks ago. Though I have to say it was bloody hard work, not least because by this time my brain had slowed down to just about the pace of a snail.
Luckily I’d taken the precaution of buying a railcard and travelled to Southampton by train. Certainly wouldn’t have been able to drive down. (Too many bad thoughts - amazing how the mind gets fixated on ditches and embankments and tress when you’re driving down the motorway during a depressive episode!)
I arrived, but I’d been asleep most of the day, was wearing the same clothes I’d worn all week and couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a shower.
One helpful chap commented on the fact that I hadn’t had a shave and that completely drained the minute amount of confidence I had left in myself. I tried to explain I was BiPolar and was in a very bad down episode and left it at that. I seem to remember someone saying that I had a least made it to the meeting and that was to be commended considering the circumstances, and that helped.
I have managed to go to my Sunday afternoon sessions with the Riverside Youth Theatre in Sunbury. They are doing Sondhiem’s Into The Woods in May and it’s coming on nicely. Admittedly I haven’t been up to my usual capacity with organising workshop activities, but have managed to teach at least half of them how to juggle! A skill which, I am sure, will, at some point in their lives, come in useful.
RYT also entered their production of Richard Harris’ Albert (Stepping Out, Outside Edge) into the Elmbridge One Act Play Festival last week and I helped out back stage. Again, one of those exciting experiences I would normally have really enjoyed, but sadly for me it was all just a blur. The performances were great, and the Ajudicator was positive, though the lava-lamp was having an off day. I know how it was feeling!
I’ve been asked to consider writing a one act play for the 50th Woking Drama Festival in October and can even apply for a small amount of funding. I spent the two evenings I was watching plays at the Elmbridge Festival (I went along on the Wednesday night to see a friend performing in a new play) thinking about how totally useless I am as a writer and that there wouldn’t be any point in even bothering to write one, let alone enter it into the Woking Festival.
I have, somewhat surprising, even come up with an idea for such a play, but constantly keep telling myself its crap. I have managed to write down some notes, so maybe when I’m back up again I can look at it with a much better mental picture and maybe get round to writing it. We’ll see.
Last week I also managed to help Richard with letting his shop. Part of Richards property where we live is a small (250 sq ft) lock-up shop (we live on the three stories behind and above it.) and the last tenants who had been there for ten years vacated it at the beginning of the month.
We put up a ‘to let’ sign and its been my responsibility to field the calls and find a tenant. (Richard hates dealing with that sort of stuff and I enjoy it and its the least I can do to help out since he does most of the other things in our relationship, though I do all the driving because Richard never took his driving test when he was younger and sold the mini he was learning to drive in to buy an antique four poster victorian brass bed.)
It’s not been easy or enjoyable though since it has clashed with my down period. I don’t have the ability to make the calls I need to make, and don’t get to answer the calls I need to answer either. Richard just ends up saying I’m out on business (ie asleep upstairs) and says I’ll call them back.
We have a potential new tenant, a beauty therapist into manicures and pedicures and tanning and waxing and stuff, and I really need to chase things.
I did manage to speak to our solicitor today about issuing a new ten year lease on the shop, but I also need to speak to the old tenant whose claiming he paid a deposit ten years ago, and I can’t do it all at once. It’s things like this that just have to wait until my brain is able to menatlly deal with the concententaion needed to communicate effectively.
As I mentioned earlier, after just one important 15 minute conversation demanding my utmiost concentration and powers of thought today, I was knacked and needed to go back to sleep. Maybe I’ll be better able to deal with things tomorrow.
If you’re still reading, you’ve just learnt that depression isn’t just about being sad or unhappy. The sad (and often suicidal) thoughts come from the frustration of trying to deal with a brain that doesn’t work, one that won’t allow you to do or enjoy the things you normally do and enjoy. There are times when you end up feeling that it is never going to get any better and you just want to end it all purely and simply for the relief of not having to deal with it again. There is (for me anyway) the constant battle of weighing up the short term pain in committing the act with the long term pain of dealing with a brain that doesn’t work properly.
In my analogy of the room that I wrote about in my last post, the key to the locked door being thrown away means that I have developed a system where by I can keep that decision as far away as possible. Though at times like when you’ve been as down as I have for the past month, there is a very fine line.
As I said in my last post; on saturday night I found the key and opened the door. I’m intelligent enough to know that this extreme low period will pass, but there are plenty of other people out there who will not be so fortunate as I am.
I did manage to lock the door again and throw away the key, and to be honest I don’t think I would ever be able to actually step outside, though over the years I have thought about the ‘how’ many, many times.
And although that scares the shit out of you, what really fucking scares the shit out of you is wondering if or when the thinking about the ‘how’ actually stops scaring the fucking shit out of you.
Enough.
If you’re still reading, I’ll move on.
Since I thought of the title of this post (can you remember it?) before I thought of the actual writing I’ve still got to get on to the second word in order to complete the double meaning. Confused?
I’ve said already that I haven’t done much reading, and neither have I written much either. The last time I even looked at Kath and Kin was probably about two months ago.
I find this deeply distressing since I can’t even begin to earn a living in the future if I can’t write a play.
There has been the odd spurt of a scene or two - I managed a couple scenes of a short five scene play as an exercise in writing in words of one syllable. (Incidentally, we haved moved on to the art of writing a good ‘arguement’ in my Nuffield Theatre Writers Group - Stichomythia as the ancient Greeks called it. Which reminds me I still have the homework to do!)
I have though managed a few more lyrics. The attention span needed to write a lyric is a heck of a lot less that writing a play, or a blog post for that matter. I can have an idea, make a note on paper, then type it up and add to it, then review it and re-write it, all over a period of a couple of days with minimal effort each time.
I am even being asked by other people to write for them. I’m up to 9 songs I think at last count, and now write for three musician/songwriters, though I have to admit I have yet to hear any of my creations set to music so I don’t know if they are any good.
Though I did read a couple out at a poetry evening for a recent Woking Writers Circle Meeting - another evening where I definatley wasn’t firing on all four pistons - and the comments were favourable except for one member.
After saying they were good she promptly added that they would only work as poetry because you wouldn’t find the word ‘pedestal’ in a song.
I was floored. The word was pivotal to the meaning of the lyric and my mental state was not helping my feelings of total inadequacy.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I heard Diana Ross singing Chain Reaction with the Bee Gees ( You took a mystery and made me want it. You took a pedestal and put me on it.) Sod her I thought thinking of the Writers Circle Member who had dared to cut me down, if its good enough for the Bee Gees, it’s good enough for me!
I am having fun with my lyrics, and though I am usually very happy writing plays, lyric writing has at least meant I have been able to write something creative in the weeks I have been down. Admittedly, most have reflected my mood, though none are autobiographical since all my lyrics are about characters who have a story to tell, in much the same way as those in a play, just that the time taken to tell the story is very much shorter.
I’ve recently been asked to write lyrics for a member of the Riverside Youth Theatre who sings in a ‘metalcore’ band. Apparently not as much shouting as ‘thrashmetal’, or so I have come to understand.
I must admit I have not had the slightest interest in this genre since I’m much more main stream rock/pop (80’s synth driven pop - Erasure to be more specific) but having heard some of the music I could at least, once I got past the shouting and screaming, appreciate the musical and indeed the lyrical content. You need a fair amount of talent to play that stuff.
The pace is much faster and the song structure appears a bit different too. Lyrically the tone is much darker than I’m used too, though there is still a story to be told, just in a darker way. Hey, I can do dark. Been there, bought the tee shirt.
I also appreciate that we are all entitled to our own taste in music and it has been quite an experience researching the lyrics of this genre, something I never would have done had I not been asked to attempt some lyrics for this band.
Anyway, I’ve had a go and sent a lyric off into cyberspace; it remains to be seen what comes of it. At the very least I hope it will inspire somebody to write some music for it. (Yes Taddy, that means you!)
Which brings me to the end of this post. (You’re still reading?!)
Oh except that is to mention the bunnies. Got to mention the bunnies!
Richard’s niece (and her husband and six very young children) all moved further south recently and couldn’t take their pet rabbits with them. They have been in the driveway of Richards parents house for a month or two now, but this week I managed to find new homes for two of them.
The little silver dwarf buck has gone to my friend Nicky’s son Finlay and was subsequently named Smokey, and the half brown half white doe is has now been named Clover and is living it up in Horsell with my friend Amanda’s two children.
It’s great to bring pleasure to others. Just slightly annoying that I haven’t been able to actively enjoy it myself. though I do make every effort to.
I’m off to see my psychiatrist again on Wednesday and report on my medication and my Group Therapy place. I am wondering if the meds are causing some of my tiredness. Who knows? At least I haven’t had a major reaction to them like I did the last lot! Up to 75mg now. Need to be at 150 before they are supposed to be doing anything. here’s hoping.
Oh well, that’s it. Three and half hours and three and a half thousand words later and I have finished my post.
Again, writing it was just for my benefit, but hopefully if you’ve got this far then you’ve got something out of it too.
I’m certainly pleased I have been able to concentrate for three and half hours straight - the first time in over a month - and I have a record of what I have done during this depressive episode too, which is great.
Admittedly I am beginning to wain a little and so have decided I am going to post this now completely un-edited, something I wouldn’t normally do, but what the hell, it is a record of my current mental state and that is why I have written it.
Thanks for reading.
RSS Feed