I always thought I'd be a grown up when I grew up

Toodle Pip

2017-04-15T11:19:13Z

I'll be off to Dreamwidth as a sole journal in a few days' time, for the standard reasons, and with the standard feelings of loss and nostalgia. I'm puddingcat there too, if anyone wants to find me, and have imported all entries before this one.

Mostly, I'm mourning the enormous collection of fic I have in memories here, that haven't made it to either DW or AO3, and which (in several cases) have been deleted already. First world problems, and all that.

Cats, eh?

2015-10-05T09:14:46Z

I've just caused a Mexican stretch. (Which is not a racist term, hurrah! I feared, because of English -> Irish "jokes" and a vague memory that US -> Mexican are similar.)

I stretched my foot, because Elsa was lying on it and had surreptitiously rearranged my toes into positions more comfortable for her.

Elsa stretched, presumably because my toes moving without her permission woke her up.

Ripley stretched, because Elsa had stretched and she has too little brainpower to think for herself.

Gambit stretched, because Ripley had stretched into him.

Unfortunately, being touched by one of the girls means PLAYTIME for Gambit. All three of them are now looking rumpled and slightly offended at various points not on the sofa.

50 before 50

2015-09-21T16:00:17Z

This idea popped up on FB today & for a change I've decided to give it a go. I have long enough that I'll need to average one thing every 2 months, so it seems possible.

1. Host a onesie barbecue! (Guests in onesies. Not barbecuing onesies. That would be silly.)
2. Run a half marathon. (I can currently jog for 90 seconds. Still, I have 8 1/2 years to get in shape.)
3. Cook a full roast dinner with pudding.
4. Go to Russia.
5. Do 5 chin-ups.
6. Learn how to shoot compound (to ~1st Class std. About 45% of archers can get to this.)
7. Get to a size 12 & stay there for a year. (For overseas people, that's a US 8-10.)
8. Raise £1,000 for Mind.
9. Raise £1,000 for Wood Green Animal Shelters.
10. Learn 1 new knitting technique per year.

11. Get my degree.
12. Get a job I love. (Can be a PhD place, if I still want to do that when it's time to decide.)
13. Get good enough at Russian to manage on holiday (probably in new_kate's company, which takes the pressure off somewhat!)
14. Sing in public for an audience.
15. Crochet a Captain America picnic blanket.
16. Make a game pie, a la the GBBO.
17. Make apple strudel (including the pastry) from scratch.
18. Go to a convention with friends (Nine Worlds?). Dress up for at least one day.
19. Eat vegetarian for a month.
20. Host a craft day.

21. Knit a garment out of my handspun yarn.
22. Say "I love you" to another person and mean it.
23. Try out a Pinterest-style home improvement.
24. Get another tattoo. (Current idea - which I've had for almost 10 years, IIRC - is to get dark green lines down the back of my legs so any sort of hosiery looks like seamed stockings. I want little leaves growing out either side, though, to be a bit different :) )
25. Visit San Miniato al Monte in Florence.
26. Eat something traditionally Florentine while there.
27. Visit Berlin.
28. Do a bungee jump.
29. Visit the Minack Theatre & see a play there.
30. Do a Tough Mudder / Spartan race or similar.

31. Dye (some of?) my hair a ridiculous colour.
32. Recreate that scene from Ghost with Margot & let mel film it. (My knitting group, ladies & gentlemen...)
33. Get & use a Grow Your Own Mushrooms kit.
34. Go to dance classes.
35. Go to Erotica with Margot. (Yes, knitting Margot. Yes, the sex convention. No, Margot is not Epic Crush.)
36. Make homebrew & drink it.
37. Read Master & Margarita in Russian.
38. Learn a martial art (Aikido? Tai Chi? Iaido if I can find somewhere?)
39. (Re)learn a musical instrument.
40. Carve a carrot recorder.

41. Design a knitting pattern.
42. Go to The Hill Of Witches (on the Curonian Spit) with daegaer.
43. Take part in a yarn bomb.
44. Stick a pin in a map of the UK & spend a weekend there.
45. Visit 3 museum exhibitions.
46. Try Olympic Trap with Anita.
47. Complete a mindfulness course (Cambridge Buddhist Centre).
48.
49.
50.

Suggestions for the rest are welcome & will be considered, however off the wall they are! I'm not promising anything, though ;)

I'm writing all these in a tiny Paperblank notebook - it's A7 and I'm putting each thing on a separate sheet, so I have room for thoughts / ideas / etc. It feels very grown up & not at all my usual lurching from crisis to crisis, leaving a trail of destruction in my wake, car crash of a lifestyle. You never know, I might end up actually feeling half way to being a grown up by the end of this.

(Edited for suggestions so far.)

Legend

2015-09-12T09:51:07Z

I went to see this last night, and it's brilliant. I'm not a huge Tom Hardy fan (I don't dislike him at all; I love his attitude re Mad Max, but I don't go all weak at the knees) but he was absolutely amazing.

About the only thing that spoiled it for me was getting distracted looking at the 2 sets of makeup used to make each of the twins look subtly different; it was absolutely flawless. They'd even managed to give them different scars (not from in-film injuries; old, healed ones).

Yes, there's violence; in terms of goriness it's not half as bad as some 15s, but because it's so realistic (i.e. not ridiculous over the top fantasy one-shot-and-they're-dead minimally bloody fantasy style, it's a lot more affecting and very believable.

I came away actually feeling really sorry for Ronnie; he might have been a decent person, were it not for his upbringing Reggie, and his intermittent refusal to take the tablets intended to control his schizophrenia. (It's unlikely that he'd ever not be violent, I reckon, but it could have been so much less bad than it ended up.) Meanwhile Reggie came across as the worst sort of charming, charismatic manipulator; more intentionally violent, rather than unable to control his impulses.

There's an off-screen marital rape scene at one point. It's very brief and, as usual with me, most upsetting because it reminds me how recently that was criminalised.

I don't think I want it on DVD; it's in no way a fun or feelgood film, so I can't think when I'd feel like rewatching. That doesn't stop it being very, very good.

World Suicide Prevention Day

2015-09-10T18:49:56Z

Copypasting from FB because I'm not rewriting all this.

Right. ‪#‎WSPD‬. Deep breath

I'm struggling to think of something to say that isn't "Don't let it get that bad", which is about as helpful as a chocolate teapot (and without the benefit of being chocolate).
By the time it got to the point of A&E, it was too bad for pretty much anything except actual medical intervention to help. I'd lost all ability to believe that people might actually get anything out of being around me (and particularly if I stopped pretending to be someone else), that there really, actually, absolutely no way that anyone would want me for anything ever again (work, relationships, actually close friends), and that there. was. no. hope.

I'm still struggling with all that. A lot of the time I think I'm relying on my therapist's hope, and that the NHS wouldn't have spent ("wasted", says my brain) all those resources on me if it wasn't going to have any effect.

Depression shouts really, really loudly. It has the most logical arguments you've ever heard, and will latch onto possibilities if you do try to reason your way out of it. (Yes, there's a possibility that I'll get better. It's not a certainty. There's a possibility that I won't.)

So. If someone seems to be getting down more than they used to, or smiling less, or withdrawing from social things, or gaining or losing weight, that's the time to step in & reassure them (as directly or indirectly as seems appropriate) that you don't actually wish they'd drop out of your life. Don't tell them that it's hard to be around them (trust me, they know, and almost certainly think it's worse than it is. Telling them will make them think it's even more worse. Even worserer.) Don't tell them what they should be doing; ask if they'd like to do (those same things) with you, because not doing things they should is yet anther way they can fail, or not be good enough.

For someone where I am now (still sleeping ~10 hours a day, still in tears about once a week, still really, really struggling with the concept of inherent worth that's not based on What I Do) - ask how things are going, but only if you're really, really sure you can deal with the answer. Same as above; I'm absolutely convinced that everyone has a tolerance level for how much of Actual Me they can deal with (as opposed to Public Me, for which I deserve an Oscar), and if I inflict too much truth on them they'll run for the hills. If I could be (get) comfortable that being asked how I'm doing isn't just social lubrication but instead genuine interest, then I might just be able to lean on people when I need to.

(Although don't say "Let me know if I can do anything". I've never been able to think of anything, however much I need help. Be specific.)

And if someone really is suicidal, or nearly there, all I can think of is: Try to distract them. Talk bollocks for half an hour. Hug them (with permission). Let them cry on you. Avoid trite platitudes. Say lovely things (I know this usually makes me cry more, or want to run away, but it'll be a voice against the litany of shite coming from their brain.) Speaking personally (which of course is all I can do), hitting this point meant that all actual detailed self-hatred changed into noise and desperation and a screaming nothing in my head; all the things that had been stopping me earlier suddenly didn't matter. I needed someone (and got a lovely paramedic turn up) to be there with me; not to point out any faulty thinking, because none of that mattered any more, but to hold on for me until the desperation passed. He gave me something to do the following day; go to A&E & repeat everything I'd said to him.

I don't know where I'm going with this, so just another couple of things (again, speaking for myself):

- Don't turn up unannounced unless you're very sure you'll be welcome. Dealing with people can take a huge amount of psyching up, but turning you away reinforces the idea that I can't Do Socialising and that I'm driving people away.

- Bear in mind that not falling apart completely can take all my resources at times. Certainly at my worst point, I had no control at all over what I was saying; tact and diplomacy would have required reserves I just didn't have.

- Platitudes suck and give the impression that (a) you aren't listening, and (b) aren't thinking.

Right. I'm done.

Via a couple of people:

2015-09-09T10:47:01Z

Picture by Wuxi on Flickr
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Friending Meme for LJ Survivors - 2015 Re-edition

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Thanks!

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It lives. (For certain definitions of "lives".)

2015-07-10T11:05:48Z

Yes, well, being terrifyingly close to overdosing doesn't get better overnight. Or in 18 months, apparently.

The upside (laughs hollowly) to getting *so* bad is that I got referred to psychiatric services who immediately leapfrogged me to the top of their "Holy shit we need to do something" queue. I now have a consultant psychiatrist, a psych nurse / care coordinator, and a peer support worker (basically, someone who's been through the system & come out the other side, who now works for the NHS).

Huh. "NHS" isn't recognised by spellcheck. Telling.

I *seem* to have a relatively ok mix of brain drugs, in that I'm not crying messily *every* day & nor do I have anxiety so bad I can't leave the house or eat anything more exciting than spinach (that was a fun fortnight). I've joined a gym (on a student membership, hurrah for the OU!) so that I can honestly say I'm doing everything I should be doing to get better (adn a bit of me wants to be able to say "See, I *told* you it wouldn't work", which is quite disturbing in itself.

I'm still doing the maths, which is going terrifyingly well. I'm torn between thinking "100% should *not* be possible!" and "But that's really insulting to everyone who didn't get it!" and "That's really insulting to everyone who got it!"

Knitting, too, and spinning. They keep my hands busy so I don't damage myself.

Archery, though... Coaching stopped last summer when my coach signed up for another qualification & picked a different guinea pig. This meant my relatively small problems snowballed & have ended up with the whole thing being associated with misery & disappointment; combine that with ongoing anxiety over crowds and I haven't shot for months. It sucks; so does seeing posts about shooting on my FB feed.

One of the big problems I have is what they call resilience; basically, it takes me several days to recover from the smallest thing going wrong (or even going right, if it involves any confrontation at all). This is making me avoid doing all sorts of things *in case* they go wrong / someone says something that upsets me / I get disappointed, etc. The way I described it to Patricia (private therapist, who I still see regularly) is as if there's a load of bowls in front of me; one has boiling water in & the rest are hand-temperature, and doing the Thing means sticking my hand into one of them. The number of bowls varies with the perceived risk / degree of fucked-upness that might result. Clearly, some things are pretty unlikely to have a bad outcome, but if they *do* go wrong / if I pick the wrong bowl to stick my hand into it would be catastrophic.

So I'm doing things like avoid Ultron in case I get disappointed (I wasn't much, but Too Much Tony and Not Enough Cap, which is another dread I have about Civil War. It has all the Avengers => it should be an Avengers film. Cap 3 should be all about Cap & Bucky. I have Strong Feelings about that.)

(I also have Strong Feelings about Bucky, which should come as no surprise considering that angstmuffin assassins are my kryptonite.)

Anyway, I'm still off work (pretending to be normal for long enough to do anything is exhausting. Plus, too high a chance of the boiling water.) and getting income protection insurance, which will stop if / when work finds a way of terminating my contract. Hello, anxiety.

I'm horribly lonely much of the time, which isn't helped by anxiety over people being dicks during my worst few months and really mixes well with ongoing social phobia. Also, the house is such a state that I hate being in it, but am too overwhelmed to do anything, pretty much, so I don't feel able to invite people round (conversation! Argh! Boiling water!) As for Actual Relationships, after an attempt last yearish I'm now Utterly Convinced that I'm both undateable and do not have the sort of body that anyone would want as more than a body-temperature fleshlight.

TL;DR: I'm hanging on with my fingernails. I hate being like this.

I live, I live!

2014-01-31T22:44:03Z

Um, just. I guess this'll show e how many of you have removed me from flists in fits of disgust or "who was she, again?".

Life Sucks. My depression as been accelerating onwards & upwards since early 2013, and then Mum died relatively suddenly on November 29th. What everyone had thought was virus-induced labyrinthitis turned out to be metastases in her brain & spinal fluid, and she deteriorated rapidly after going into hospital.

I'm currently signed off work (for 2 weeks, though the thought of returning makes me go cold as that's another Huge Area of Misery) so Im focussing on the 2 things that make getting up in the morning worthwhile; archery (though I'm in a slump due to Mum-related not shooting for 2 months, and Being Coached, which always makes things worse before they get better), and the OU maths degree (in which I remain convinced that their 1st year courses are written for idiots; I'm good at maths, but not 90%-on-a-bad-day good).

So, there's me. Words are hard atm (which probably explains wy sums and arrows are my friends).