Missing

I can't be bothered trying to punctuate properly tonight so please forgive the errors, I do struggle with punctuation, guessing most of the time.

I lead a very lonely life, the only family I have in Australia is my mother and brother, unless you count the ashes of my father and skeleton of my other brother. I have one friend near-by and the rest of them are an hour away. This week I am doing nothing until Thursday, and even that is not until the evening; it is entirely possible that I will not change out of my pyjamas until then. I thought I’d be witty and write a funny post about the little things I miss about certain family members, I got to three paragraphs and realised that I don’t know enough about any of them to miss anything other than the most shallow of details. So I thought I should just write a little ode to my father, but I don’t really know him either. We hardly spoke, a lot of the time I was scared of him, but he was my dad and now he’s gone and I have no opportunity to get to know him.

Here are some things I do know about him that I miss:

• He was a very giving person, he couldn’t show love properly, he spoke through gifts. I do this too.
• He was a hard worker, working up until a couple of weeks prior to his death in the midst of radio and chemo therapy.
• He really loved his older brother, they looked so much alike.
• When Rico (my black cocker spaniel) moved in with my parents the two of them fell in love and dad had a billionty photos of Rico on his phone which we found after his death.
• He could fix things – the house is going to fall apart without him.
• He’s the one who said yes every time I wanted a new pet, including horses!
• He was impulsive.
• I have his eyes.

Left Horse

I poured myself a scotch and coke last night and was reminded how retarded my left hand is after overshooting the shot measure and then – after filling the glass not quite to the rim with coke – picking up the glass, that really wasn’t that full with my left hand and making a rather large mess. I think the only thing my left hand can do well is type. On a qwerty keyboard well over half of the typing is normally done by the left hand anyway. To demonstrate the retardedness of my left hand I thought I’d draw you a picture of a horse. Horses are my favourite real animal, I had two as a teenager. There was April a palomino of mystery breed who nearly killed my dad by throwing him into a fence and then jumping on his arm, and Copper, a chestnut Thoroughbred who was much less terrifying to ride. I would like to note that I did not name either of them.

Anyway, here’s the picture.

Trolley Queen

I’m a real adult now – yes?

I might have got up at 12:46pm today, but that’s okay because I made up for it by doing a very adult thing. I left the house twice and the second time was to go to the supermarket like the responsible contributing family member that I am; and I used a trolley, for maybe the third time in my 28.4 years I used an actual trolley, not even one of the little quarter trolleys that make you look like you’re too good to bend over to reach the bottom ones. I walked down every single aisle, some multiple times because I couldn’t find two things on my list anywhere and ended up having to substitute. I didn’t kick the little boy who decided it was a great idea to lie on his belly and pull himself along the aisle with his hands. (I know this isn’t because he’s disabled because when he reached the end of one aisle he stood up, walked to the next aisle and resumed his crawl.) I looked a little retarded walking back and forth to the scales from the sweet potato pile several times until I found one weighing exactly 500g – how amazing am I 500g exactly and I even read it on an analogue scale! Then, just to cement my adultness I opened the boot of my car for the first time since maybe December and put the shopping in there rather than throwing it on my back seat.

So just to summarise: House exited twice with no sedatives; child not kicked in the head; used and understood scales and opened my boot! The “You’re a Real Adult Now” ceremony is on Friday at 2pm in Northcote – getting there is the final test because if you can drive there without getting out of your car and punching someone in the traffic you truly deserve the adult medal. If you’d like to come and watch you’re very welcome.

Better Than Me

I just have to share these, you'll need about 10 minutes for each one but they're spot on and hilarious.

Depression Part 1

Depression Part 2

I Used to Bath my Cat

This post is quite graphic, there’s lots of blood, if you can’t cope with that stop here.

Things aren’t great at the moment. I know it’s Wednesday only because it says so in the top right corner of my laptop screen. It is 2:09pm and I am sitting in my pyjamas and dressing gown un-showered for six days. I feel sticky and my hair is wet from grease but the motivation to fix it eludes me. I am forced to wear long sleeves due to the 26 cuts I made on my forearm on Sunday night. My brother and I are silently battling over control of the heating thermostat; he likes the house warmer than I can bear whilst trying to hide my arm. It will be seen sooner or later - these scars will be visible for months - but the longer I can delay Mum’s reaction the better. Sunday night was beautiful I wasn’t in distress I just really wanted to make a mess. I made three long cuts from my elbow to wrist and 23 smaller ones over the veins on my wrist (I didn’t count at the time, that was done later) the bleeding was erratic and at times caught me by surprise necessitating scrubbing the carpet and changing my bedding, thankfully it all came out. There’s something mysteriously beautiful about bleeding, it’s like opening a valve and releasing pressure from the machine that is me. I think this is the primary reason I cut. I feel such a release as soon as the first incision has been made. I don’t know why I like to see the blood, maybe it reminds me that I’m human, but that’s just a guess. From what I’ve read and what various medical professionals have said to me it seems that most people do it for the pain. Not me. If I had access to local anesthetic I’d numb my whole arm/leg/torso, whichever I was planning to slice open, pain is not my friend.

The apathetic state I’m in is not good but there is no help available to me at the moment and really I don’t know what anyone could do anyway; push me into the shower with the taps jammed on and the screen door locked, drag me out of bed after eight rather than 12 hours have passed, dress me and carry me out the front door. But what then, there is nothing to do upon leaving the house, all of my friends are an hour away and most work and study during the day and have happy marriages to keep them busy at night. After writing this I’ll be filling out the form to re-apply for my writing course, that along with a possible casual job will probably help me a lot, but as we saw with my breakdown over starting the DipEd even a little bit of stress causes massive problems for me. I don’t know what the fuck to do, be idle and bored or busy and torn to pieces by stress. I wish I could still do schema therapy, it was very helpful and gave me something to do two days a week.

2:55pm, Mum will be home soon. I might try this showering thing and get dressed to avoid the “what have you been doing all day while I’ve been working” talk.

ECT and Memory Loss

I read an article yesterday regarding memory loss caused by ECT; the writer was severely affected by the procedure, experiencing an uncommon level of memory loss. The further I read the more I related to her, it seems the amount of damage I am experiencing is not the norm. I struggle to remember the names of people I’ve spent significant amounts of time with, I can’t remember what I did the previous day, there are huge chunks from my life missing. My friends all know that my memory is patchy but I don’t think any of them really ‘get’ the severity of it and I find myself pretending to know what’s going on, nodding along as they talk about things we did together last year and trying to hide the embarrassment I feel as I attempt to bluff my way through these social occasions. I feel lost and scared, I don’t know what I’ve forgotten and I worry, well actually I know that I’ve lost some special memories; though I do mourn for the more mundane ones as well, for they are part of what makes me me. Maybe it’s good that I’ve forgotten so much, my identity isn’t really something I should value as it’s so messed up, but I do value it and I want the memories back; I don’t want to fake my way through conversations or have to give up and admit that I have no idea what’s being discussed. I want the knowledge gained from my time at uni back. I want to be able to make new memories.

I won’t be having any more ECT, it has caused me more harm than good and formed a bit of an addiction to general anesthetic  - which I am only just admitting to myself.