I'm nothing special

I'm nothing special.

People think I am though. For some reason that fact I rush from hither to thither and back again being a busy bee makes people think I'm special. I couldn't hold down a nine-'til-five job at the moment, sitting at a desk for that long would send me mad(der than before). So though I might do several hours of work each day, it isn't all one type of activity. So I might do 4 hours studying, then an hour at the piano, then teach for 2 hours, then do a choir practice. All of those things use different skills, and different things to test me. But each of the skills aren't anything special. I'm a mediocre mathematician, too-ambitious-for-my-ability musician, I'm a bonkers teacher and hugely under-qualified for leading a choir. I'm not good enough to do one thing full-time, even if my brain would allow.

I think the problem is because I've fallen off the rails and then got onto a bike and am now cycling alongside the rails, people think I must be something special. Must be in some way amazing to have got all these things "going for me". Everything in my life now is a case of sheer luck and fortunate timing. My reputation meant I could teach again, somehow my boss wanted me back when I started being able to ride without stabilisers. [Enough of the metaphor, surely? Ed.] Then I decided to apply for a music job, and they gave it to me. Which I'm sure was the most stupid decision these two people made ever (apart from one buying a yellow sports car...) however they did and it was just good timing. Maths-wise, I seriously thought I would never get a degree after blowing what was the chance to change into what I wanted. Thankfully, the one helpful thing my CPN has ever done (and to be honest will ever do) was to suggest the Open University. She thought it might give me back the belief that I hadn't blown my chances completely after the university I was at suggested I needed to be stable for 6 months before attempting to return. It currently is looking like a very good option, even though I'm only half way through the degree.

I'm not special. I've just gone about life in a strange way. After being the mad teenager, some had written me off for life. To be honest I had too, for a bit. However making a life (though not the one I intended) isn't special. Everyone does that, everyone. Every single person who is alive has made their lives, yep with intervention from others, guiding from others, with knockbacks along the way, but lives are what we all do.

I'm not average, I know that, but I'm not special.


I spent my schooling being either completely shunned for being different, or elevated to a position of awe by others. It gets very lonely being like that. Where people can't talk to go for fear you would make them feel stupid, which I never would (and actually the opposite would have happened if they just spoke to me), or people can't speak to you in case you have a meltdown when with them and they don't know how to deal with it.

So, if there is a time you feel inadequate because I'm flitting from one activity to another, it isn't because I'm talented at lots of different things, it is because I need to only dabble in each thing to not get found out that I'm nothing special. I'm sure one day someone will go "But hang on, how can you do that? you aren't in anyway qualified/experienced enough to do that, you fraud." and I'm sure I am a fraud. But I'm a fraud who wangles her way through, trying to make a little difference to the people whose lives I'm involved with in a little way. Because after all, they are making their lives too, eh?

I'm nothing special. I'm lucky that life has given me in effect a second chance. Well, actually after my attempts to end it, it is more like a 7th chance or something. ;) But yeah, I'm nothing special. Just a clumsy person with wild hair and stripy socks on trying to make a life. Some days it works, others it doesn't. But that isn't anything special.

Pianos

Every time I sit at the piano now I remember there was a time when it was my lifeline, and a time when I couldn't play because my brain wouldn't let me. The pleasure of just sitting at a piano is so huge, I don't care what happens.

This is making for interesting playing. Improvisations which might sound hideous to an outsider but feel like me speaking the words which I would speak if I could manage to pinpoint the words to use. Fairly competent playings of Beethoven Sonatas, which get better with every run through at the moment (I know that will change at some point). Grabbing some music that happens to be on top of the piano and playing that. Sitting in the almost dark playing Nocturnes by dim lights.

Now, I identify as a musician. Sometimes just because it makes up the majority of my income, sometimes because I can't identify as a mathematician (when having a complete maths fail day). And to be a musician, I must play music. To sit at a piano and not want to get up and run away for fear of a wrong note, or a bad chord, or just not perfect playing feels amazing.

When I was about 14, I used to shut myself in a room in the music department of my school and just play. One person used to come and try to get some words out of my mouth by asking me questions as I played. Or just come and gently drum on the drum kit in there, so I knew I wasn't alone. They are now at one of the best music colleges in the UK. At that point I wore fingerless gloves every day. Another joyous feeling is to remember the first time I took off the gloves and played with bare hands. I wore gloves to hide scars on my hands, but naturally they impacted on my playing.

College required me to play, I was the pianist at the college, so was expected to. But it was a chore rather than a delight.
Then I stopped playing. Finished college. Hospital had knocked the hope out of me that piano playing could make things better. I didn't sit at the piano for months and months. I played my flute whilst in hospital, came out of hospital and didn't played it for months either.

Then last September, the person who was in my job before me announced his resignation. One thing led to another, and I applied and got the job. It meant learning how to play the beast of all instruments confidently again - the organ. Having to sing in front of others again. Having to be a musician again. But the piano became more and more important. At first it was a way of trying out organ pieces for a flavour of them before going to play them on the organ. Then I got out my old piano books. It took until about May before I could start even thinking about playing something new to me on the piano.

Now though, the piano is my companion again. Sounds crass, but it feels like I can play it again. I probably will always remember the time when the piano haunted me as I walked through an unused music room, but now it is part of me again. I can hardly walk through the room without sitting down at the piano to play something - even if just a few bars. Time gets lost as I sit and just enjoy the piano. Lunchtimes rarely are just eating lunch, they include 40 minutes of playing some days.

It feels new and exciting and I'm appreciating it so much more than when I started playing. Today I chose a pile of music a foot high that someone is trying to get rid of to "good homes". Concertos, short pieces, long pieces, nocturnes, stuff that people may want if I ever play "background" music at events again, old pieces, more modern stuff. I'm excited to have it. It feels good.
I'm OK with the wrong notes, the majority will be right. I'm OK with stuff not quite working, tomorrow it might. I'm OK with the piano, that feels just great.

Feelings and Things

To quote a title of a Chick Corea & Gary Burton piece.

Today I feel autistic. It happens less often now as the over-riding feeling, as I just am me, but today I feel autistic. I was in my old secondary school in a professional capacity, and the reason why I was there was great, it was a successful day. However, teachers there now who were around 5 years ago remember me. One wondered where the 4 years since I left have gone went. Another was really happy to see me interacting (hmm). Another just went "Ooo, hello", others went "Nice to see you." I wasn't exactly an easy student, I screwed up. I took up valuable time of people whose jobs it was to run a school when they had to get me safe. Or coordinate meetings about me. Or send memo's to all my teachers. Or search high and low for me when I disappeared. Or ring up poisons units, or psychiatrists, or my parents. Basically I was a bothersome student. Who wasn't exactly average (most qualifications at the end of the time there from my 200-strong cohort, 42% attendance record for the final year there - thus screwing up statistics completely) but did survive through something just short of a miracle.
Anyway, I was in this school, and though some things have changed (room numbering system for one, very confusing) it is still a place with huge memories for me. Trying to be professional when in that environment means seeming more non-autistic than most other people so they don't realise you are still as much of a mental as you were. So staring in corners isn't allowed. Stimming is only allowed if done in a discrete way (no rocking, no odd actions over and over and over). Oh, and perceived eye contact, so the hair lines of people have been focused on today.

On a day to day basis I don't feel *that* autistic, it doesn't impact on all that much negatively as I've created a life suitable to me. I've got my strengths focused on (only physical interaction is music and maths based, bar mental health professionals) rather than my weaknesses (9-5 job, anyone? Socialising in noisy places with mind-screeching music? Erm, being a functioning boring human being...) However when I need to seem non-autistic, then the problems start. I came home after the day and had to sit and stare at something for a while. I sight-read Beethoven sonatas to just be calm, I ate food that wasn't pressured by being watched by others, I basically had to unwind from the day.

For me when I *have* to be a less quirky, more functioning, non-me version of me, it makes the things that make me me seem all the more obvious. I would never choose to sit in a staff room, if I worked in a school (which I may do one day, but not this one) I wouldn't do the staff room unless it was necessary. I'd have to get out of the buildings and disappear off for 10 minutes. I guess this rules out working in a school in a more fixed contract based teaching-classrooms-of-children role, as sometimes things happen in breaks. It is back-up plan for life number 3, so hopefully won't be put into action any time soon. [In case you are wondering ideal plan 1 is being a maths lecturer at a university and living in a place in the middle of nowhere with a piano and not much else, whilst 2 is doing music teaching + SpLDs one-to-one stuff. Plan 4 is to get a job as a crematorium organist, which may just be slightly too morbid for it to be considered acceptable with my background.]


So I feel autistic. And as a result of today, it is 0220 and I am still awake, in my day clothing, and nowhere near ready for sleep. Some things never change, my sleep pattern is always mucked up. While I was a student at this school, I didn't sleep most Sunday-Thursday night times at all, took short naps during the day when I was sent home for being unable to cope, slept all of Saturday afternoon after teaching Saturday mornings, and some of Sunday, before realising school was the next day and being in panic.


I've got another 2 days in the school this week. And a mental appointment in under 8 hours. My room is a tip. I've listened to "Feelings and Things" a few too many times in the writing of this post. So, I bid you a farewell for the day which started as Tuesday, and move onto Wednesday by initiating Mission: Sleep.
From this autistic, quirky, weird, non-"functioning" being, it is time to type for the time being "Me, Out." as if I had a lovely clunky radio in my hand. (except I'm not "Me" then, I've got my own call sign when conversing with my family via radios as we do at times.)

Budget, The. To be found in a drawer marked: Rubbish Crap

I don't like receiving Disability Living Allowance (from here on in called DLA), due to the word which the D represents - Disability.
To those who see me out and about, they probably wouldn't realise I've got the things which mean I qualify for DLA. I hate the fact I have those things, but it is how things are.

My CPN, when doing her bit of the very lengthily form for my new allowance (currently pending, and has been for quite a while), said it was "compensation for how things are". I hate that. The way things are is basically due to my mucked up head, and how it has affected life. Not just my life, but my family's too.

20 years ago, as my parents were on day 11 of having a child of their own, did they really think that they would be still looking after the baby when it was 20? Probably not, it was probably a time full of little sleep, accommodating visiting relatives, and wondering quite how it would all work.

Anyway, the thing is, I'm still living at home. Bar a week at uni in which they visited every day, and the months in hospital (where they visited every day too), I've lived at home always. Some days, they have to wake me up, choose clothes for me as I can't function and make decisions, wake me up again as I've turned over and gone back to sleep, persuade me that out of bed is a better idea for the rest of the day... You get the idea. I'm not just being a stroppy ex-teenager who is difficult to wake up, I don't mean to make life difficult, but my parents hate mornings if I'm having a less-able-to-function day. Is that what DLA is for? Well, yeah, probably. Or persuading me that the outside isn't too scary, and I'll enjoy the thing when they've got me there? That too.


Sooo, my point is, when I have to face up to the fact I am considered disabled, that is bad enough. Add into the mix having to go to a medical that is either trying to catch me out, and make me say "Actually, I'm a very functioning human being", or going to result in proving that some person (with the horribly powerful right to tick a box to say "Yes" or "No" to an application) who met me for a medical thinks I'm disabled, and it will feel rubbish.
I would love to be able to say "I live alone, I function, I can look after myself, and enjoy everything" but I have a horrible feeling I've got too far to go before 2013. By which point, I hope to be doing my Masters (which dear Mr Osborne will probably make the funding of all the more difficult). I'd love to say "Actually I'm a very functioning human being", I really would. People at work probably don't understand what I am, but they see me for short bursts of time. Where the lovely line from Albert Camus "Nobody realises that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." is vaguely the case [the "normal" needs to be replaced with "acceptably different" or something].

DLA is the bit of money which pays for petrol for me to be able to be taken to work, or orchestra, or something else which is considered "Living". It is in the name, in case you hadn't noticed. So, travelling to somewhere I've never been before to discus how crap I am at living, and how I need help, is horrible. And someone whose first job (according to Wikipedia, I'm not going to look further into it as I have better uses of my time, so this might be some bit of weird rumour) was "to provide data entry services to the National Health Service to record the names of people who had died in London", is right now not very liked by me. (is that non-explicitly negative enough? It is said in a grumpy way, if that helps.)

[And it also means that teaching VAT rates as a means of teaching percentages just got a bit too simple. Dividing by 5 is just, quite frankly, too simple. At least with 17.5% I could introduce the concept that 10% + 5% + 2.5% was quite a sensible way to calculate it, so using dividing by 10, then halving that, then halving that again, then adding them all up. Mr I've-got-lots-of-names-and-a-bit-too-much-power-for-my-own-good will thus be making real life applications different, so he can be also be blamed for the worsening rate of mathematical ability of children if it carries on at 20% for a long time.] (Disclaimer: obviously this isn't quite true. But still, it is slightly true.)

Medication

It is over a year since I took my anti-psychotic meds. Which means over 10 months ago people found out I had not been taking them. (I just nodded whenever the "And your parents deal with your meds, correct?" question came up in MH settings)

Since late last July, when I had a Care Meeting in which they admitted they couldn't all force me to take medication (I still had been cajoled into take my other meds as they were a different time of day), I haven't had any psych meds. I've had 2 ibuprofen since, and that is all the meds which I have had. Those 2 tablets weren't taken lightly, more suggested strongly as I sat clutching my head - and I gave in, and took them in some vague hope the headache might go.

Life minus medication is better for me. I had got to the point where my thoughts on meds were "I don't know the real me, there have been drugs in my body for too long for me to know the real me." I had been on medication since the age of 13, adding in more and more different types, taking dosages people didn't always agree were right for a child.

Turns out the real me is a more bubbly life. Even with the stuff like I described in my last post, I'm still more bubbly now than I was. I'm several dress sizes smaller, and 4 stone lighter than I was. Not so tired on the whole (even as I feel incredibly tired right now, it is nothing in comparison), not wanting to eat the whole kitchen worth of food (I wanted to eat the contents of those unidentified cans at the back of the cupboards as they might have been the food which would fill me up) and I know this is the un-medicated *real* version of my body.

Side effects are horrible. I put on weight because I was constantly hungry, I was too tired to exercise it off, I was binging because I needed to fill the immense hungriness, then purging (which is a horrible thing to feel you *have* to do, and a horrible thing to do). I was feeling horribly ashamed by this ever expanding body, which meant that the "body image issues" just got worse. The despair at the hideous body meant I didn't want to leave the house, so I did even less exercise... [you see the pattern emerging, I'm sure]

If I had not become so bloody minded and stubborn about it, I'd probably still be taking medication. I'd be even heavier than I was. I'd probably still be feeling rubbish about it all. Instead, I stopped taking them, one by one, without telling anyone. So when I did, I could say "I haven't taken them for X weeks, and you haven't noticed any difference, so I reckon I don't need to take them again."


Since then, I have now got a basic statement in my files along the lines of: "Don't give her medication. We tried most of them [and she point blank refused the lithium/sodium valproate option, which was what we might have gone across to if she accepted] and none worked. So don't bother, and work out what it the current issue before doing the "throw meds at her" option." And I am sooo soo soo so so glad that they have realised that medication isn't for me. Talking is hard, yeah, but giving me meds which don't help and come with the side effects is worse.


I did my college exams being unable to speak due to a swollen tongue, and unable to focus my eyes due to very very slow reactions. I was having a mild allergic reaction to the meds, and they were monitoring it, but not taking me off the medication. (I was in a psych ward) Not exactly the way to get the grades you have worked hard for up until that point.

Anyway, here is to another year med free, a year in which I'll drink more wine, enjoy more music, not fall asleep constantly, lose more of the med-weight, and bounce around. Thus fitting into more of the clothes I left in boxes in my room in the hope I'd fit into them again. And guess what? I am. Pink trousers, bright green tops, more fitted clothes, and less stretchy material! *grins* I've become more of a normal shape, instead of huge in all directions - yep, I'll still have the stretch marks, I'll still have the days in which I wear my "fat clothes", but it is so much easier to live with.




Some people are helped by medication, and I'm happy for them. But I'm aware it is a relatively easy option for MH people to be giving out. I think when you have seen the horrible things it does in the cause of "helping", then you become more sceptical. If there is any place to put you off psych meds, it is a psych ward. Especially a psych ward at medication time.

Which is also something I plan to avoid, just as a matter of fact. Seeing 5 in the space of 13 months was enough. Eating their rubbish foods was enough to send me bonkers - one lunchtime meal choice was available at one place I was at for 10 weeks, so I had that every day when I couldn't persuade them to just not order me a meal/let my parents take me out/let me have some healthy stuff from home.

Hannah, me, mental and the cats...

Some days I want to go and stand in the market square wearing a t-shirt and scream "I am Hannah. I am also mental. I am also the local church's organist. And the teacher to quite a few of your kids. I am also the one who wears brightly coloured clothes. I'm the one with the frizzy memorable hair. But I am mental. And that doesn't negate any of my other features."

I don't though.

Feels stupid in some ways. This, in effect, double life I lead. Everyone has things they hide from parts of their lives, but does something that has quite a large impact on everything get hidden? I don't know.

When I am standing in front of a group of musicians, bouncing around, do they realise I'm mental? I don't know.
When I am kneeling next door to a little kid, making myself their height as not to tower over them, whilst we wait for their mother to come and collect them, do they realise I'm mental? Do their parents? I don't know.
When I am standing at the bus stop, stimming like crazy, but chatting happily to my unprofessional, unsupportive support worker, do the people realise I am mental? I don't know. [Side thought, do they think she is mental? More likely...]
When I was standing in the queue at the supermarket buying a range of medication, alcohol and sharp things, did they realise I was mental? I doubt it, I was still served.

Anyway, the quest to not look outwardly mental (whatever that might be) has led me to feel that I don't know the real me. Is the smile real? Is the frown real? Are these (some say, horrifically) bright clothes part of the real me?
Am I actually mental? Or is it just not as clear cut as that?
Am I sane? Or is that a glorified, powerful word which has no clear concept underlying it?

Am I disabled? That is an incredibly powerful word. Which could technically refer to me, as I fall into the categories the system categorises at disabled. And I do have funding for support which only comes because of this "disabled" label. But would someone seeing me on a daily basis outside the home really believe that? I don't know.

In the quest to seem suitably sane (or at least, not unsuitable mental) I've created something. Someone. This thing called "Hannah". I'm confused as to whether this is me, or not.

I'm a few weeks away from leaving my teenage years behind. Aged 13, I wasn't your average teenager. Nor any point after that. I've spent them being mental. And trying to hide that. Failing miserably to hide it at times, when in complete meltdown mode. Succeeding at other times, I am always in a perplexed mode that some people have this wholly positive view of me. It doesn't fit. These people who I let down aged 17 when I landed myself in hospital, who then employed me again aged 19. I didn't ask for my job back, I was asked whether I would do it again, for better money, and more responsibility. How can that view of me still exist? When all this evidence suggests otherwise?


How I perceive the world, and how the world perceives me is a fundamentally weird thing. For everyone. Especially for people who are considered (for better or worse) "mental". Now I'm "recovering" (I hate that word) I'm starting to feel uncomfortable with me. Having challenged my views on everything that was "concerning" to others, how do I know this me is real? I was convinced that I was responsible, I still am, but I've been constantly told I'm not for several years. Maybe I'll get told tomorrow that though this is Hannah, this isn't actually *me*.

When not caught up in my own self destruction, the world is terrifying. And big, and powerful. Full of things which I don't know about. I don't know about me, so how can I know about maths, or music, or this or that? Let alone the whole world. I don't have an average upbringing to compare everything to, I had a wonderful upbringing but I doubt it was average. And I have ended up being classified as mental. Would that have been the case in different circumstances?

Today, I sat with my cat sleeping on the sofa next door to me. Our neighbour's cats were in our garden. I watched them slink along to the bare tree and one climbed up. The other was flapping about trying to catch a fly. Teetering at the top of the tree, one was watching the garden on the other side of us. Not knowing, or at least not remembering, a dog lived there. About a minute of weaving in and out of the branch stumps of this tree, the cat came back down. Probably still unaware of the dog.

I feel like my cat, asleep on the sofa. Occasional twitching, but sound asleep. Oblivious.
I feel like the cat on the ground, engrossed in the fly, getting itself in a frenzy at a fly. Pointless in some respects.
I feel like the cat in the tree, teetering on unsteady branches, peeking at what lies ahead, and deciding that looking at it is enough for today. That I'm quite safe enough slightly outside my comfort zone, thank you very much.


I digress, with some rather strange analogy which took place today. Sorry.
Identity is a weird thing. I've most likely over-thought it all. I'm mental. I'm Hannah. I'm me. Just I'm not so sure on those things...

Pounding the streets

Pounding the streets.

Under 6 weeks until the longest day now. Half past nine in the evening isn't dark any more, though the street lights are on. Makes the world a funny colour scheme - purple flowers glow almost as if ultraviolet, the trees are all brown (rather than the greens of the day time) and the sky is an off-blue. It still feels lonely though.

Maybe lonely isn't a bad thing though? How it is meant to be.
Maybe a funny colour scheme isn't normal? Just how I perceive it.
We all know I "think differently" according to them, so maybe I see differently too? Maybe others don't see the same things? Maybe?

Under 6 weeks until the longest day. Quarter to ten in the evening is quite dark, though the street lights are on. Makes the world black and sepia. It still feels lonely though.

Maybe lonely isn't a bad thing? Still got the neighbourhood cats popping up unexpectedly. Or the friendly birds pecking at the moss on the side of the road. They happily go on their lives, sensing the opportunity of me walking past for a conversation or chance to circle around the walking person's legs for the sake of it.


Nature feels more real this year. More here and with me. Only went out one time in spring last year, ended up in hospital, didn't really feel like spring. Year before I spent head down, walking around in a daze. This year, I'm noticing it. Pounding the streets, up hills, down hills. Under the street lights, to the bits of the road not close to street lights and thus dark, under the street lights again. Music in the head. Music in the fingers, playing imaginary piano in the air. Music in the feet, pounding the streets. Pounding the streets, normal. Lonely, lonely existence. Just how it is meant to be?

Pounding the streets. Clomp clomp clomp clomp. Trying not to fall over. Trying to take it in, absorb the world. Though the world isn't going anywhere and I am not planning of going anywhere, I have a residual thinking process left over that tells me this is my last spring. Or at least, that this might be my last spring. I need to always remember that it might be just residual mentalness, or it might be just my innate thinking systems, but I don't have to make this my last spring. Like that day wasn't my last day, and all these days after it haven't been my last either. That month wasn't my last, that spring wasn't my last, that year wasn't my last. But it could have been. I could, tomorrow, do something. I won't, but I could.
I have the problem I am aware of what I could do. It is just how it is, I'm aware of how physically ill/non-alive I could be. Can I go back to being innocent again? Not sure when innocent me became me though. A long time ago, before I realised I was different. Or at least, I was treated differently.

Nature is here, and it is here to stay. And I have reasons to be here, and to be here to stay for some while yet. For one thing, I'm going to get my contract made permanent. Being alive is a bit of requirement for that, surprisingly enough. Another is all the music I still want to experience. Another is all the maths I want to understand. The want not to be a bloody statistic or a shitty stereotype, but instead me. ME. Me. Not someone with X, Y or Z. Not someone who can't do the things she has dreamed of since the age of 5 (side though: was I innocent then? Not sure). I'm just doing them in a different way. But hey, I'm not conventional. I hate fitting into boxes and labels and the normal way of doing things, and so I am doing this the unconventional way. By being me. And shock horror, you poor souls and the cats and the birds and the trees and the streets have got to put up with me a bit longer. Right now, for a lot lot longer. I'm going to grow older, I'm going to wear purple (so just like now). I'm also going to try my hardest to get to my dreams, they might not be possible, but I can't not try. Not now, not here, not with the streets beneath my feet and the cat meowing un-tunefully to the piano sonata currently playing in my head. (well, the world isn't always on your side, is it?!)

Life minus the therapy?

Therapy minus the therapist. AKA "life".

Turns out life can be made quite busy with various things. Last saw psychologist 12 days ago, and don't see her again until July - for one final "checkup". Then that is it. Nothing from her.
She admitted that at times, she didn't believe I would ever get to my goals, that maybe "feeling content, but not ridiculously happy" (what I said I wanted in my first ever meeting with her) was never going to be attainable. I probably infuriated her, I infuriate myself. I don't know if "content" will ever happen, but it feels slightly more attainable than it did. And the complete despair that once was the constant companion isn't so enthusiastic as it was.

Anyway, I'm busy. Busybusybusy. My "weekend" is Monday and Tuesday, as I am busy on the conventional Saturday and Sunday weekend. Mondays are always rubbish, I get more and more worked up, and panic about the week ahead, and muse at how badly things went the previous week. I end up with the physical mentalness, I have spent the day getting more and more tense, jumpy, and generally yucky. Tuesdays are when I start thinking "right, another week, just get to the end of it". Surprisingly enough, I do get to the end of the week. And then Monday rears its ugly head. And then Tuesday happens.

Tuesday is the day it currently is. I've got my CPN coming in 90 minutes, so probably should find some food, brush my hair, take yesterday night's wine glass from the coffee table and put it in the dishwasher, locate the empty bottle from where ever it ended up and put it in the recycling, and try to make self coherent and acceptable.
She judges my mood on what I am playing on the piano when she comes to the door. Last time she came, I was playing the end of the Warsaw Concerto. She took this to mean I was quite jolly, and maybe a bit less tired as it is fast and a big flourish at the end. In fact, I'm just trying to make the piece sound better. Nothing to do with my mood. Just me learning a piece of music. Anyway, CPN isn't the most understanding person, thinks she should tell me I don't look like the stereotypical "ill" person (I am NOT ill, I have never been ill, I will hit her around the head with her boring black diary one day if she carries on saying I am ill) because that will help. In what way exactly does she think telling me I don't look like a mental will help?! /CPNrant

[Break to go and have some lentil soup for lunch]


Hmm, yes, so life almost-post therapy is looking slightly busy. Next days currently free are next Monday and Tuesday - though may have an appointment on Monday, which may be a good thing as it gets me out of the house, or may be a bad thing if it goes wrong or she annoys me so I come home slightly angry with the world.

I need to remember to breathe. And smile. To remember that though everything in life isn't permanent (playing for funerals confirms this) there are still lots of good things. Even though the tree that I look at out of my window has grown leaves in the last week so I cannot see the squirrels bouncing along, the view out of my window is now green. And the most amazing shade of red/maroon from another tree. Spring is here, and I am here too. And that feels utterly terrifying, yet quite positive. I'm not going anywhere. And neither are the squirrels, they still bounce along the garden to take any goodies they find back home. I'm here, and so is everything. Right now, it is all here. The trees are alive, the blossom is everywhere, and each Monday will be followed by a Tuesday, and each Tuesday will be followed by a Wednesday.







And now it is only 35 minutes until le CPN arrives. So I need to go and do those necessary tasks which seem to be the decision between me being a "coping" mental in her eyes, and a completely "non-functioning" mental. *bangs head on desk, thus breaking the glasses which for some reason are on top of my head and not on my nose* *puts glasses back on face and goes to check for spolling errurs*