Why is Bruno Mars?

Seriously, just why?

His stupid, piece of crap song Marry You is on the radio. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THAT THEY LIKE THIS SHIT? "I think I wanna marry you". Oh really? You think, huh? Well, that's nice. That's what every girl wants to hear in a love song written about her. I have the same conviction and depth of feelings towards you as I do towards that pasta sauce I bought for dinner a few days ago and haven't eaten yet. I think I might have it tonight, we'll see. THAT IS NOT A SUFFICIENT LEVEL OF COMMITMENT IN A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL, BRU-BRU.

Apart from his stupid crappy songs and his stupid ridiculous lyrics, I think it's the stupid smug look on his stupid face that annoys me the most. Although, obvs, there are a lot of things to choose from. But seriously, look at him:

How is it possible to not want to smack that face everytime you see it? In fact, I just got distracted at work and have come back to this post a few hours after I started it and I *still* want to slap him. That's longevity of irritation, that is.

But since I'm now distracted by a pretty new coat and boots I got for a fiver (srsly, 5 quid for boots - I don't care if they fall apart after 3 wears!), I shall leave poor Bru-bru alone. FOR NOW.....

Things I'm loving today:

Flight of the Conchords and the Muppets. Bloody brilliant.

Minor rant for a Tuesday lunchtime

Things that are bothering me today:

• Why does knitwear from Primark very often smell weird? I've had this happen to me a lot. Nothing I do seems to get rid of the smell, either. I'm practically drowning in perfume today, yet I still smell like I've been dossing in a musty warehouse. Nice. 
• Rihanna. She's not done anything today to annoy me, but her general existence usually does the trick.
• The fact that I can't decide if I like Lana Del Ray or not. I'd probably like her more if she wasn't getting airplay on Cool FM. Anyone getting airplay on Cool FM raises my suspicions immediately.
• The woman in the advert for whatever new toothpaste Sensodyne are hawking now - the one going on about how her healthy diet is destroying her enamel or some such crap. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about her that annoys me. I just know that I'd like to put my finger - and, indeed, the rest of my fist - into her face at a rather sharp velocity.
• People who walk too heavily. I should not be able to hear you coming ten minutes before I see you. 
• My insatiable quest for junk food. No matter how much proper food I eat, I still want to stuff my fat face with crisps, chocolate and anything in between. 
• People in work who insist on drumming loudly (and badly) on their desks, to the point that I've now got a headache. Ditto whistling.
• The fact that I never seem to want to be doing anything that I'm doing. When I'm at work, despite being overloaded with things to do, I'm bored out of my skull and keep planning out all the things I need to do when I get home. But when I'm home I never do any of them. If I do anything other than spend the whole night in front of Mock The Week and QI repeats, it's a minor miracle.

 That'll do for now.

The ignorant taxi driver

It's so uplifting and inspiring when you start the day off right, isn't it? Well I wouldn't know, actually, because I'm pretty sure that's never happened to me and it certainly didn't this morning.

First of all I slept in. When I finally woke I was so completely exhausted still that it took me a while to keep my eyes open long enough to actually get up. Then there was the hunting like a headless chicken for something to wear, the phone (both my mobile and landline) refusing to work when I called for a taxi, the traffic, the weather, etc etc.

Then there was the radio in the taxi. It was the Nolan show, a very well known and popular talk radio show on Radio Ulster in the mornings with a bloke called Stephen Nolan who lives to sensationalise and antagonise. But he was being reasonably sensible this morning - when I got into the taxi, there was a discussion about tourism infrastructure in Northern Ireland. Someone called in saying that there's nothing for families and children to do here because there's no rollercoasters. And the taxi driver was all 'Aye, right nuff, there's nathin like that here, like rollercoasters or annyhin' (actually there is, in Portrush, a very well known amusements park called Barry's. It's not massive, but it does have some of those types of things). Now, I personally object to that because I think we have much better things for kids to see and do here - my 6 nieces and nephews had a ball at the various tourist/museum type attractions that we took them to last summer. The Giant's Causeway, the Ulster Museum, the Folk and Transport Museum - they loved it. But whatever, I wasn't going to get into a debate with this guy over something like that.

Then the next item on the show started. It was Alastair Campbell talking about his new book The Happy Depressive which talks about his problems with depression, with alcohol abuse and his mental breakdown in the 1980s. Obviously this is something I was rather interested in. But the taxi driver started scoffing and laughing - 'Why on earth would he think anyone would want to read annyhin like that, like? Sure who'd wanna read sumhin about depression?' etc etc etc. He looked at me in the mirror like he expected me to join in his laughter and mock a person with depression who's had the audacity to write about it.

I know this wasn't the worst thing in the world for him to say on the subject, but something about his attitude just really irked me. He seemed like a fairly stereotypical working class Belfast man - and there has been a huge, huge problem with suicide amongst that very group. Swathes of young men all over Belfast (usually in working class and/or deprived areas) have been taking their own lives, and it's been a problem that the authorities have been struggling to deal with for years now. That he could be so utterly untouched by any sort of mental illness in his family, his friends, colleagues, anyone that he knows seems highly unlikely to me, therefore. But he had such an overwhelming sense of ignorance about it that I found it really bothering me. Thankfully this all happened towards the end of the journey, so I didn't have to deal with too much about it. But I really felt like just telling him 'I have depression, that several of my friends do/have had, and that I find it both interesting and important that someone like Campbell should write a book about this because we need any help we can get to knock down the ignorance and stigma towards the disease from idiots like you' to see what he'd say. But of course, I didn't. I'm just writing a ranty blog instead.

I get that people don't understand this. It's a very hard thing to understand if you haven't experienced it yourself, and even then everyone's experience is different. And I know that there are some people who are just a bit judgmental and think that you have to just pull yourself together. Those people, I tend to think, are just blocking out their own feelings. It's very often a sort of knee-jerk reaction that suggests to me that it's almost hitting a sore spot, like they have their own crap to sort out but they're just ignoring it and don't want to acknowledge that there's a different way to do things, or that different people might think differently.

But that someone could find it *funny* that a person was sharing their story of mental ill-health with others, who couldn't possibly get their head around the idea that there might be people interested in this - it just blew my mind a little bit. How could a person be so utterly ignorant of the world in which they live? How could you live in a city where suicide is a huge problem, and there are constantly public health drives against it, and find depression amusing? And to think that expressing that in public is perfectly ok? To not even consider that the person you're talking to might have some experience of depression, either personally or through friends or family? I just don't get that.

And mostly it's just incredibly sad that this is what we have to deal with, this is the sort of attitude that exists out there that has to be challenged. It's hardly any wonder that people don't want to talk about it, don't want to admit to it, when this is the sort of thing you're faced with.

Evidence of things unseen

I suppose I should really write something here. Hopefully something a tad less dramatic than my last post.

I realise now that it perhaps sounded a bit more sinister than was my intention. When I talk of giving up and so on, I don't mean giving up on actually being alive and breathing and what not - I mean giving up on the idea of anything ever getting any better. Giving up the hope that can be so painful so often. It feels so much like everytime I have hope that things might change, that things can get better that something comes along to knock me down, and then kick me when I'm down, then stamp on my head, piss on me and leave me there for scavenging animals to try to eat. Not that I'm being melodramatic or anything... But it's increasingly difficult to try to focus on the bright side when it feels like the universe punishes me every time that I do.

Which is what brings me to the topic of this lovely little post - evidence. Evidence is a pretty big part of my depression and anxiety problems, now that I think about it. I have all of this evidence stored up inside for every time something has gone wrong, everytime something hasn't gone my way, everytime someone has let me down or hurt me (intentionally or otherwise). And it's very difficult to see evidence for anything more positive. Everything becomes distorted and corrupted in your mind, you absolutely cannot believe anything good that's ever happened, anything good that anyone has ever said to you. Anything good is all lies, as far as you're concerned.

One of the techniques of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is to list the pros and cons to things - make out an actual list of the reasons for and against anything that you think. It's supposed to force you to recognise that you're not always right about the things that you think, to stop you over-generalising and catastrophising everything and look at the details instead of just going off the rails. It's a difficult balancing act, though, to actually make yourself recognise and accept any of the good things. That's what I've been struggling with a lot lately.

For a while there I kept trying - no matter how down I got - to not turn it into a self-worth thing, to not beat myself up everytime I got upset or annoyed or emotional about something. I tried to just accept my flaws rather than focus all my energy on them and how awful a person I must be as a result, and tried to concentrate instead on the person that I want to be. To actually try to be a bit better instead of just complaining to myself that I'm so awful all the time.

But that gets hard sometimes. When you get let down or disappointed or struggle to cope with something not going as you had hoped it would, it got more and more difficult for me to keep trying to focus on the practical, positive, proactive side of things. It didn't even feel like self hate a lot of the time - it was fear. Paralysing, horrible, horrible fear. That I was so much worse a person than I thought, because why else would these things be happening to me? Have I just been kidding myself, pulling the wool over my eyes - am I really so much worse than I ever thought I was, and that's why all of this is happening? And if I'm so awful when I thought I was trying to get better, then I must just be a waste of space, I can't do anything right and should just give up. It went something like that.

I seem to have a fear of not being able to see the real evidence in front of me. I'm terrified of discovering that I've been blind to something, that I've been stupid not to see what's right in my face. I suppose maybe that's something to do with the perfectionism - not just the not being perfect part, but being wrong. I hate being wrong. I hate not knowing. I hate not knowing what to do next, what the right answer is or how to find the answer. In some ways, that's a positive trait in me - I suppose it's what always made me good at research and really enjoy learning things and gave me a curiosity about the world and education. But when you turn that sort of inspection towards yourself, it can all go horribly wrong.

And then on top of all of that, there's the sense of failure. I was so convinced a few months ago that I'd made some sort of breakthrough, that things were really, honestly going to be different. And that I've managed to have such an awful month or two makes me feel rather defeated. It makes me question everything. Do I just keep trying, or am I trying at the wrong thing? Is there something I should be doing differently? And if so, what is it, and how do I find out? And so often, that all just gets so exhausting. It feels physically hard to keep going on, keep getting out of bed and going through the motions each day. Very real and scary financial implications for me and my family are the only things that do eventually drag me out of bed. But that becomes so much effort, that it's hard to find the energy or motivation to do anything else.

I need help with this. But I don't know what sort. New meds? Therapy? Although I can't afford therapy and I don't know if I have any free options left to me at the moment. I know I need to get out and socialise more but I've gotten to the point where I just don't seem to have many friends left, and those that I do have I can only see or talk to once in a blue moon because they're too busy. And then there's the whole can of worms of whether or not to tell anyone anything about my problems, which is a whole other post on its own. My doctor keeps telling me to get out and exercise more. To try to find a hobby or something that involves other people. I don't think she gets just how far gone I am - I can barely force myself to be around my flatmates, trying to do something like that is like entering the Olympics before I can walk. And I feel so confined by so many aspects of my situation that I, once again, don't know what the right answer is. I have zero funds at all for anything - I'm finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, let alone finding any disposable income for extracurricular activities. My work schedule is such that I never have free time that I can depend upon - I have to work from home when I'm sick and when I'm on leave, so I can't exactly commit much of my free time to anything because there just isn't much. And I'm so physically exhausted all the time from not sleeping properly that doing anything other than collapsing as soon as I get in the door seems like an impossibility.

Now I'm starting to make excuses for things, I know that. As much as I need some help and support, I need to do this myself because no one can do it for me. I need to make the effort. Trying to figure out that balance between doing it myself and needing and wanting help has always been a struggle for me. I always seem to oscillate between being so desperate for friends and relationships - people I can rely on - and being so hurt and disappointed by the failure of such relationships that I give up on people altogether. Neither is really working for me.

Anyway, that's just some thoughts for the time being. Maybe getting some of this stuff down here will get it out of my head for a bit so I can actually have some thoughts in there about something other than my mental health. It'd be a nice change.

I haven't written anything here in a while. I haven't really felt like talking about anything. I'm desperately ashamed and embarrassed and disgusted with everything that I've become. I'm a complete failure. I keep saying I'm going to change, that I'm going to get better but I never do. I'm too weak. I'm a complete fraud. Sometimes I manage to convince myself that I'm better than I think I am, but the truth always comes back to haunt me.

This might be the worst I've felt on NYE in a long time, and that's saying something, considering that I find it the most hateful time of the year and always have done. But this year I fucked up like no other. I ruined everything good that I've had, one way or another. Now I'm on the edge of turning 30 and I'm utterly disgusted with myself. I have a horrible, awful job that pays fuck all, where I let them walk all over me and treat me like shit because I can't seem to get myself together properly enough to get a new job. I'm more alone than I've ever felt before. Which, again, is saying something. I have nothing to show for my life. 30 years of nothing.

I'm stuck in this nothingness. Too weak and useless to do anything about it, one way or another. Stuck with the same awfulness happening over and over and over again, and getting worse by the minute. I just don't want to feel anymore. I don't want to feel anything ever again, I think.

Hope?

I'm doing a bit better today. I managed to distract myself yesterday and get a few things done, which helped take my mind off of things a bit. I'm trying really hard not to let myself slip back into all those dark potholes along the road, and I think I'm getting somewhere. Maybe. I hope, anyway. I just have to keep reminding myself of everything that I realised and felt when I had my 'revelation' a few months ago. I need to focus on who I want to be, not who I am now, or what's going on now to upset me. I have to keep in mind who I want to be, who I think I really am underneath all of this shit, and keep trying to get there. That makes it sound a helluva lot easier than it actually is, and I'm not exactly doing cartwheels over here, but I'm trying. That's something, I guess.

As for the whole ex situation, that's a bit more complicated. But I think I might have figured something out there too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. This doesn't have to be all sorted out perfectly, one way or the other, right now. If we both really meant everything we said about how much we care about each other and wanting to stay friends, then that's how it will be. It won't always be easy or comfortable, but as long as we don't let go of the friendship, we'll figure our way through it somehow. Eventually.

Or something like that. I think I'm less articulate when I'm less upset, for some reason. Makes wanting to be both a writer and sane a little difficult, really. Anyway, I'm trying to get back to real life and not let everything in my head overtake that. Making Christmas presents, baking cookies, working, tidying, doing laundry, all that stuff. May not sound all that exciting or that big of a deal, but anything that might help me cling onto my life is worth a shot.

A new day? Pfft.

Well, it's a new day. I don't really know what profound message there's supposed to be in that. People talk about tomorrow being a new day when you're having a bad day, but what the fuck sort of help is that supposed to be? Another whole day to feel miserable and shitty and to have to drag yourself through? Great.

You probably can't tell from my sunny disposition, but I'm not in a much better mood today. I'm tired, weak, dizzy, annoyed, irritable and cranky as all hell. All I want to do is crawl back into bed but my mediocre-ly paid job beckons me so here I am. I keep trying to distract myself - when I find myself drifting off into my head and daydreaming about anything (good or bad) I keep trying to tell myself to stop it, and think of something else to think of. But that's easier said than done. Especially when my office appears to be staffed with loud, obnoxious missing links of evolution.

I want to sleep so badly. I don't really remember what I dreamed about last night, but I don't think it was upsetting, so I'd take sleep over consciousness any day. I just don't know what I'm meant to do here. I don't know where the middle ground is between ignoring everything and hoping it will be ok, and having a complete meltdown like yesterday.

And I'm not sure that I even want to find the middle ground right now. I mean, I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to be in this sort of pain and feel like my entire life is falling down around my shoulders. I just want it all fixed. I want him to want me again, I want my best friend back. I don't want to get over him. It's been months and that's what it comes down to. I don't want to get over him. I want him back. I know that that isn't going to happen, but I can't get it out of my head. So where do I go from here? I know that so much of this situation - not just the relationship stuff but depression in general - is about the choices we make. But I can't choose how I feel about him. I didn't choose to fall for him in the first place, how do I choose to not feel this way about him now?

I really feel like I'm missing the part of my brain where people figure this stuff out and get through it. I just have no idea how that happens, or what it looks or feels like. All I know is I'm tired, and I want this out of my head. I want not to have to think about it. Not to be tormented with it.

Anyway, if I want to stop thinking about it so much I should probably shut the hell up.

I don't know.

I don't know what to make of today. I've completely fallen apart. I feel frustrated, ashamed and disappointed in myself, that I've gone right back to where I started, it seems. More than that I'm just tired. Tired of being tired. Of feeling so alone, and in pain, and feeling so completely uncertain about everything. I feel like I have no judgement anymore - no idea what's real, what's not; what's right, what's wrong; what will help or what will make things worse. I just don't know.

I know I'm exhausted. I've cried most of the evening. I tired myself out for a bit there and distracted myself with quizzes on the internet (sounds really lame, but it seems to help take my mind off things, because I'm forcing myself to think about something else). But as soon as I started to feel better I noticed that I was doing it again with the fantasies. Imagining that everything would be ok - that all of my fears have been wrong, that my ex isn't seeing anyone else, and that things will be happily ever after. But they won't.

I wonder what has been going on in my head these last few months. I wonder was anything real. I don't think so. I've barely seen anyone else the last few months apart from people at work, my family, and my flatmates. And I keep all contact with all of the above to a bare minimum. I've lived entirely in my head, and created this world where everything is fine. And because I've not been quite as depressed, or at least not beating myself up in quite the same way, I've been telling myself that I've been making some sort of progress. But I haven't. I've done what I always do - retreated into this fantasy world. And now that reality is smacking me in the face I'm having a full blown meltdown.

I don't know how to get from one minute to the next. The prospect of the rest of the day terrifies me - what am I going to do after I finish this blog? Cry some more? Go over and over and over things in my head? I guess I go over things so much in the hope that one time I'll get it right - I'll figure it out. But I never do. And it's not something I can figure out. It's not like if I concentrate hard enough I'll work it out, like on a quiz or something. This all just is, and I have to deal with it. But the problem is, I have no idea what that means or involves. I don't know if I've ever truly gotten over anything that's hurt me badly in my life - I don't know what it looks like.

And then comes the night. Trying to get to sleep and failing miserably. The aching pain of needing to sleep but being afraid of it. Trying not to cry during the night. Counting down the hours till I have to get up for work. Dragging myself into work and trying not to cry on the bus. Trying not to cry in the office, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Not to mention trying to get a fuckload of work done, that was already going to be difficult enough to manage.

I just want this out of my head. All of it. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was a fucking asshole.

Normal?

Man, does life suck sometimes. Everytime I think I'm getting somewhere, something just comes and smashes me right back down again. With everything, even the little things. I thought I was getting on top of things at work, but there's tons more to do than I thought so I'm screwed. I thought I was getting to being ok with myself, and with the break-up with my ex, but I am so, so, so not.

I don't know why I do this. I don't even know how I do it. I live in this little fantasy world all the time, where I banish all bad thoughts with imaginings and fantasies about everything being fine. And then reality rears its head, and I'm right back where I started again. I just feel like I do not know what I'm doing. At all. I don't know what's the right thing to do, what's the wrong thing.

I'm told that I catastrophise things all the time - always imagine the worst case scenario, become convinced that that's what's going to happen, and freak out. But when I try to rationalise that maybe that's not what's going to happen, that I don't have much evidence for that, I end up being proven right about the disaster. Like with my ex - we've been keeping in touch since we broke up. Not the way it used to be before - we used to talk all day every day then. We'd tell each other everything. Now it's just the odd message and email here and there. And I don't know what it's ok to talk to him about. I used to be able to talk to him about anything, and I just don't know what the rules are for this sort of thing, and it's awkward to talk about that via phones and email. Every now and then I'd get freaked out that he was seeing someone else. I had no evidence for this, just paranoia on my part. So I'd tell myself that - that chances are he probably wasn't. That chances were, he was telling me the truth when he said he wasn't ready for a relationship and that it was bad timing with us, so he wouldn't be looking to get involved with anyone else so soon after us breaking up.

But now I'm not so sure. It seems like I was maybe right in the first place - that he just didn't want to be with me, and that he might be seeing someone else. And I cannot handle this. At all. I'm completely falling to pieces. I was so looking forward to his coming home from university for Christmas, so we could try to get our friendship back on track. So we could just hang out and talk crap and get used to being just friends again. And since he was suggesting things for us to do, it seemed like this would all be great.

Until now. Just a passing remark, but something about it is stabbing me in the stomach. And I just do not know what to do at all. Do I just cry my way through this for god knows how long? Do I cut him out of my life? I don't want either. The only thing that got me through the break up in one piece was his insistance that we would still be friends, still be best friends. That nothing could change that. The idea of my life without him is terrifying. It's dark, lonely, cold and utterly, utterly horrible. But everytime I think of him with someone else, it's like being stabbed. Over and over again. So which is the best option?

How do people get over things? I've never really understood this. I've never really gotten over anything. Time and distance has helped a bit, I suppose, but I can still burst into tears when I think of past things and people that have broken my heart. My heart is still broken from all those hurts. It feels like I just don't have the bit of your brain that you're meant to have to get over things. I do not know how people do it. I suppose there's one or two things I have gotten over in the past. They still make me sad when I think about them, and I regret screwing things up, but I don't exactly cry over it anymore. But it took me 7 years to get to that point. That is clearly not normal.

And all of the things that I supposedly should be doing to try to get better mean turning my life upside down, all at once. And I just can't do that. I'm literally not in a position to do that. I need somewhere new to live, with different people or preferably on my own (and I have nowhere near enough money for that to be likely at any point in the near or even distant future). I need a new job. I need more money. I need new friends. And as someone stuck in a crappy job in a recession, who's gotten used to not having anyone around me, and spending 100% of my time alone, I just can't even imagine what not being like that looks like.

I still keep trying not to get annoyed at myself over all of this - to not my simply being upset and sad turn into self loathing and getting angry at myself, but that's getting harder and harder. Because the more I fail at fixing things, the more it is my fault. And even if I just try to accept that, without piling blame and guilt on myself, it doesn't seem to be doing much for me.

And possibly more than anything, I hate that it's Christmas right now. I love Christmas. Always have. But I always manage to get so, so, so sad that I'm alone every year. I mean, yeah, I go to my parents and everything for the holiday itself, but not having close friends and/or a boyfriend to hang out with and do all the things that everyone around me seems to do at Christmas is a torture that increases year on year. And I thought for a while there that this Christmas would be different. That I wouldn't be alone, because I'd have my boyfriend. My best friend. But now I feel like that's being ripped away from me at the worst possible time of year.

I know that it all comes down to the fantasizing - I imagine things being better instead of doing anything to achieve it. And I let my imagination run away with me. Why do I keep doing that? Why can't I get those things out of my head?

I just don't know what to do anymore. And I'm really, really tired of that.

Advent LolCatendar Day 10

I love Christmas sweaters. Bloody love 'em. I could have a different one for each day of December and still not have enough. However, even I would have to draw the line at this one:

 

However, if anyone would like to buy me a Christmas jumper, just drop me a line and I'd be happy to direct you to the 59 million I have bookmarked ;-)

Advent LolCatendar Day 9

I don't know what he's talking about, I'd flipping love a hat thingy like that...I'm actually not even kidding...

Advent LolCatendar Day 8

I finally put up my Christmas tree tonight. It's v v v pretty, even if I do say so myself. And I did it whilst wearing a Santa hat and singing Christmas songs. On my own. Cos that's not weird....

And speaking of weird and Christmas, this site is epic - Fruit Cakes. Some of the Christmas jumpers on there have to be seen to be believed.

Advent LolCatendar Day 7

Advent LolCatendar Day 6

This shall soon be me (literally - I even have those exact lights!). Just the prospect of putting up the tree and decorations (all done with a Santa hat atop my head, and Christmas music playing in the background, of course) is getting me giddy with excitement. Unfortuntely this excitement is currently being tempered by having to wait for the glazier to come fix the door the tree goes in front of. Hmph.

But back to the topic - woo for Christmas!!

Advent LolCatendar Day 5

Happy 5th of December!

Advent LolCatendar Day 4

Oops. It snowed a teensy, tiny little bit last night, so clearly that distracted me from posting yesterday's entry. So today is a 2 for 1 instead!

Advent LolCatendar Day 3

Nieces and nephews come in handy sometimes. Especially when it means you get to go on the carousel at the Christmas market. Snow was the only thing missing!

Day 2 on our Advent LolCatendar...

I really do, you know.

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! (Well, almost)

IT'S DECEMBER!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I can officially start to recognise Christmas now - I can wear my Christmas jumpers (and dresses, and cardigans, and t shirts...), and Santa hats, and sing Christmas songs and make cookies and put up the decorations and the tree and the lights and...and...and... I think I might be having some sort of advent-related over-excitement here.