Sunday 24 June 2012

F*ck Mirrors!

I'm having a moment here.

I was watching a video about putting sticky notes on your mirror(s) with nice qualities about you, and then I started wondering what if I put a diagram of how mirrors work from a physics point of view, to remind yourself that that's all it is. Light bouncing off cells and surfaces and hitting your eyes upside-down and getting flipped over by your brain etc. How all it can show you is the outermost layer of your body as a living organism.

And then it occurred to me that this whole thing of 'you get what you give', 'you're a good person, people love you' etc is quite a nice parallel. Because you are reflected in other people. The way you treat them affects the way they treat you. The way they think of you might be totally different to the way you think of yourself, but then all they're going on is the way you behave towards them, and that's normally very positive. Because we're good at convincing ourselves that we're useless etc, but if you want to know what you look like, use other people as a mirror. Temperament, personality, honesty, integrity - all personal traits reflect themselves in other people, just the same way light reflects off matter.

So please, everybody reading this, stop obsessing over that piece of f*cking glass and go find out what you really look like. The end.

Saturday 23 June 2012

No rest for the wicked

Work is so exhausting!
That's what I have to say right now.

Working supposedly 1 day a week as a tour guide in Oxford but have been doing more than that as a sort of booster start. Every day I've come home I've been absolutely shattered; in fact today, I'm still shattered from yesterday. (Didn't help I forgot to take my meds this morning so have been half-asleep all day, but I'm not really talking physical tiredness here.)

I don't know why it's so draining. It's quite nerve-wracking, I mean, I have to take these groups round and pray that I do well enough to earn money, since their tips minus commission to head office is all the pay I get, so I really feel the pressure. And it's so disheartening and demoralising when you get a stingy group who give you nothing and you're like, well why did I just bother taking you round then? Not working next week at all that I know of, thank fuck! (Unless there's a sudden private booking that needs to be covered, I've just got my fingers crossed that there won't be...)

It's crazy how I'm just tired ALL THE TIME. But then, this is the first time I've actually given myself a break, with no goals (theoretically at least) to meet, for the first time in 9 years. So I need to reach targets with rehearsals and work and I'm writing some short stories as well (Doctor Who fanfiction ftw, megalolz), but I'm refusing to set tasks related to the Masters like learning vocab or politics or whatever. It's like when you don't realise you're tired until you sit down and then you can't get out of the chair.

Well, I've just sat down in my metaphorical chair having been on my feet for the last third of my life. So no wonder I can't even contemplate moving.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Managing Healing - what do you do?!

Hey everyone.

As you may know I came back from Russia in the beginning of April because I basically couldn't take any more - stress from my job, stress from other people messing me around, and all of that on top of other things I was trying to deal with to begin with. When I went out, I was still recovering from the huge amount of stress that is Oxford - and let's not forget that the end of that term was marked by an overdose - and had then been put through a pretty awful summer of uncertainty and frustration just trying to get to Moscow in the first place. When I got there, I spent the first couple of months starting to process the overdose, which I hadn't done until then, and that was obviously quite tough.

What it comes down to is that I hadn't had a break since my depression started, not a real break, not the kind of break that you leave feeling actually able to face life again. Any of the experiences that have fallen between 2004 and now would have warranted some healing time, but part of what's made it such a struggle is that I never get that chance, and every new trial comes before the weight of the one before has been lifted. I was kinda feeling like a huge Jenga tower - just about upright, but put one more block on the top, or take one out from the middle, and I'll collapse completely. That's what was happening. That's why I had to finally put my foot down and leave.

I know it was the right decision because as soon as I made it, something changed. I decided I was going to leave on a particularly horrible afternoon, and that evening I was going out to an English club. As I stood in the metro watching the train coming down through the tunnel, I suddenly realised that I had no desire to jump in front of it. Without even being consciously aware of it, that's what I had been thinking every time I stood on a metro platform for I don't even know how long. I had never been planning to do it, it's just that the thought always crossed my mind, in the way that when you pass a holiday advert you momentarily picture yourself on that beach. Realising that it had stopped was what alerted me to how fucked up it was.

I've been home for two months, and I really don't know where the time has gone. I wanted to use it for healing, but I don't know how to go about it. I'm torn between wanting to set myself tasks and goals, and feeling that actually the constant need for tasks and goals might be contributing to this mess in the first place. I'm not very good at letting things happen gradually, following their own course, even though they have been. I'm not nearly as depressed as I was, in fact I've been feeling much better; my eating and more importantly my attitude to eating has changed, and those are both massive results. But I was sensing that within weeks of coming back, so what have I done with the time since then?

I think the worry is legitimate because I'm starting a Masters in October and if I'm not ready for, if I'm not healed enough by then, I honestly don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do. But neither do I know how to ensure that the necessary healing happens. Aaaah!