The Maroon Diaries

It's often not good for me to read books that are detailed descriptions of other people's mental illness. I'm glad that people are writing and publishing this stuff, it's vital for raising awareness in the wider community. But I find it difficult to immerse myself in such a book, to really go there along with the author. It just reminds me that I'm mad too, and of the suffering it causes in my life and others, and brings all that sensitive stuff up to the surface. I really appreciated this comment in this review on Readings - While I would suggest that this is perhaps not the book for those who are currently suffering deeply from mental illness themselves, it would serve as an invaluable resource for the people who work with and care for them. So when I found Madness: A Memoir by Kate Richards in the library I wasn't sure I really wanted to read it. But there was one particular detail here that made me really want to try to read this book - the fact th...

Like most of my generation, I grew up watching an awful lot of television. An awful lot of crappy, often American television with all the brainwashing advertising in between. I certainly developed addictive behaviours toward televsion viewing as a child. Once I was grown up, I decided that that was bad. When I had my own place, I lived without television, and had no doubt that I was better off. When I thought of people who use television to deal with their moods, I had nightmarish visions of overweight women in pink, Tim-Tam-crumb-infested nighties watching Ricki Lake and home shopping infomercials. As long as I didn't have a television set, that could never be me. I sure as hell wasn't giving up the Tim Tams. However, I did go out of my house sometimes. Sometimes I was in other people's houses. So I still got to see plenty of television here and there over the years. And I came to understand that there's a lot of really good stuff on television, too, and to appreciat...

I've noticed that there's a bit of a theme that, when I encounter when reading blogs, fires my anger right up, and I fire off comments in the heat of the moment. And I figure, if there's all that energy there that is going into other people's comments spaces, I should take that energy and focus it on my own blog. The theme is around psychiatrists and the mental health system and how they treat their patients. I don't like it. I don't like it a bit. When making generalisations, I think it's important to be clear about the nature of generalisations, and that is, of course, that they don't fit every situation or individual. There are always abundant exceptions to a generalisation. And so I would expect, even though as a generalisation, I don't like psychiatrists, that I would meet one along the way who was actually quite unobjectionable, or at least that I would know of someone who could tell me, 'Hey, I know this bloke who's a psychiatris...

Dear lovely readers, I am so sorry I haven't gotten back on the blogging horse. And I don't just mean that I'm sorry out of an obligation to the blog or anyone - I'm really, honestly, just sorry for myself. Truth is, I've been pretty bloody depressed lately. Yep, it's possible to get depressed even living in a tropical paradise. Various people whom I care about are going through hard things like illness and outrageous family problems, and one died recently. And the bloody federal election didn't help any, let me tell you. Like life is worth living under a Tony Abbott government. Pfft. At least my late friend didn't live quite long enough to see that come to pass. And I've really been missing the blogs so much, mine and all the beautiful ones I love to follow. But you know how things seem harder to catch up on when you're already depressed. But this morning, as part of my ok-I-really-have-to-pull-myself-together mission, I made a deliberate po...

I didn't wake up so well this morning. As soon as I was conscious I felt irritated, disconnected and anxious. My mind was running over in circles of negative thought. I felt the shadows of the night's dreams - quite a string of disconnected anxieties - still present in the morning light. This is something I'm used to. It's a common feature of a depressive illness - to wake up in the midst of the hardest emotions, and to struggle to rise out of them somehow to reach the realities of the day that is unfolding. Taking care of how I wake up is an important part of my mental health management. The discovery of the blogosphere was a remarkable boost to my morning experience, possibly the best one since I discovered tea-drinking in my late teens. First thing, when I wake up in the morning, I make a cup of tea. I often dream of having someone to make a cup of tea for me and bring it to me in bed - oh, surely, the very definition of luxury - but in the meantime, the thirst f...

I went to the dentist this morning. It's incredible how the mention of a visit to the dentist strikes fear in the heart of even the biggest, toughest and meanest. We seem to have this deeply entrenched cultural agreement that dental work is a terrible thing to have to go through, deserving of much sympathy. We hold up the hypothetical trip to the dentist as a measure against which to compare all unpleasant or painful experiences. Just the sort of thing that I want to look for the beauty in. Just to be a bit subversive. Now, I'm not a masochist - obviously, there's no denying that a dental procedure, with all that drilling and grinding and poking and whatnot is an uncomfortable, unpleasant experience, even with the dramatic improvements in anaesthetics. But I have found a way to remember to look on the bright side and not let that discomfort become distress. I'm lucky that the public dental services in my area are really good. These services can really vary a lot i...

Yesterday, I got cracking on the next stage of a certain ongoing work-in-progress that I refer to as the door-hanger-thingy. Once I decided that I was going to blog about this project, I thought I'd better come up with a better name for it, preferably one that actually described what it was. I thought about it for a bit and decided that my creation was a Braided Doorway Curtain. Only it didn't really stick. I'm still calling it the door-hanger-thingy. It's an odd fact about my main living area that is technically has no windows. It does, however, have three external doors that can be opened and closed. Each one was once a wall of a telephone box. Oh yes, how cool is that. Add to this the consideration that our backyard is a communal space and really, anybody could be wandering about out there, and the issue of curtains comes to the fore. I've tried many variations since I've been living here - but over time it occurred to me that what I really wanted was a bea...

Today is my birthday. 34 today. In celebration, my tribute to Einstein's famous birthday photo . So often I've read or heard stories of people getting older, and feeling it badly on their birthday, suddenly realising their life is not what they expected. I thought I would not be so susceptible to such an experience, as I'm not so attached to age numbers, or expectations, or regrets, generally. But today, it's my turn for 'one of those' birthdays. In my plan for my life, I was going to be living in Europe by now. I'm sad that I'm not, and that I'm still living in a town I do not like at all. It snowballed from there. When I was young, everyone was so sure that I was going to have a special life, a big life. I was sure that great things were in my destiny. Usually I do think of my life as pretty special and great. But today, suddenly the days when the world was my oyster and my whole life was ahead of me have dissolved - and what do I have to ...

It's like sinking in quicksand. It only makes it worse, and exhausting, to kick and struggle against it. Better to yield, and sink, and just keep breathing. Eventually, I'll go to sleep, and I'll wake up, and it will be another day. It doesn't feel like this can be true, but I know it from experience, and I cling to that. The air is heavy as molten lead, movement is like through treacle. Movement hurts. Stillness hurts. Light hurts. Thought hurts. The world is unbearable, both its beauty and its tragedy are utterly heartbreaking. I want to die, I want it so much, more than I have ever wanted anything in life. Or that's what it feels like. I have realised, after many years of such thoughts, that there is actually one thing I want even more, and that is not to disappoint or hurt the people I care about. So I'm still here. Curled up in the foetal position, whimpering. Tears running down my face. Hungry, but powerless to do anything about it. I just can't de...