beautiful monsters

Scary

Hello? Is anyone still reading out there? It’s me, Fionnaigh. Remember me?

Gosh. Six days without blogging – something must be seriously wrong!

Actually, lots of things have been going wrong. It’s been an awful week. Please be nice to me, I’m scared I might break.

Imagine if people could read your thoughts. Imagine if you couldn’t get away from them, because they were inside your head. Imagine if they kept telling you that you’d done something wrong, something terrible, unforgivable, if they told you that everyone hated you. Imagine if people really did get angry about something, and you were told that everything was your fault, that everyone was so angry that they would never talk to you again, that you were a complete and utter screw up and you’d be better off dead. Imagine if they told you that everyone wanted you dead, if they told you how you should kill yourself. Imagine if the voices got louder and louder, until you couldn’t hear yourself think.

What would you do then?

Maybe you’d want to kill yourself, to get away. Maybe you’d bang your head against a wall to block out the voices. Maybe you’d take whatever drugs they gave you without questioning anything. Maybe you’d feel embarrassed, or scared, or angry, or everything all at once.

What if you couldn’t work out what was real and what wasn’t, what was rational and what was paranoid, who really hated you and who didn’t…

That would be pretty scary, huh?

Apparently this kind of thing can happen with bipolar sometimes. Apparently it might be happening because I’m on the wrong medication. I hope that’s the reason, because then it’s easily fixed.

Things I wish I could forget about

My skirt got caught in an escalator. Yeah, really. Luckily the lovely young man I was with had the sense to press the emergency stop button before I was sucked away into the machinery (or worse, left standing in my underwear). It’s just been one of those weeks. Actually, I think it happened last week, or the week before, they’ve all been one of those weeks lately. It’s just been one of those lives. My favourite skirt, the long, full, ocean blue one that I tie-dyed myself, now has a torn hem and black grease stains.

Oh yeah, and remember that NA meeting I went to (as ya do)? I met these women there, they were so lovely, and they gave me their numbers and said I could call, anytime, about anything. After the meeting, I freaked out because I went through the "Am I an Addict" book, and I could answer yes to most of the questions, and I started worrying about my relationship with alcohol, and I panicked, and I got really drunk… Anyway, a few days later, I was trying to get things straight in my head, and I called this girl from the meeting, and we talked for a while, it was really good. And then, a couple of days later, she rings up my flatmate, and says "so… um, is Fi actually a drug addict?" And he’s like "nah, her problem is depression and stuff." And she’s like "Oh, ok. She said she wasn’t, but I didn’t know if she really wasn’t, or if she was in denial…"

Oh yeah. And then there was our Fringe Show. Never ever again. First there was the stress of organising it. I felt like I was the only one who would be responsible if it all went horribly wrong, and that was an awful feeling. We had to make most of the decisions months ago, because there were deadlines for the programme and everything. Well, when I say "we," I mean that I had to make most of the decisions. Where to have the show, what time, all that kind of stuff. And I probably made some really stupid decisions. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I’ve never done this before, and I had to decide everything in such a hurry. I didn’t want to be the only one responsible, I wanted it to be a group effort.

I had a such a full on day on Tuesday, a really challenging class at university, and then I was working in the afternoon, and I was feeling really unwell, like everything was starting to spin out of control and I was losing my grip… All I wanted to do was curl up in bed and cry for a week. Then I got home, and the answering machine was overflowing with messages. All of them from people stressing about the Fringe show, or wanting me to do stuff, or angry about stuff I hadn’t done… At that point I did curl up in bed and cry. I really wanted a friend to phone, just to chat, to see if I was doing ok, to say something reassuring. All night the phone kept ringing, and it was always the same, stuff I should do, stuff I shouldn’t have done, stuff I’d done wrong… I couldn’t handle it, I fell apart. When I’m high, it’s like I can do anything, and that’s when I have really stupid ideas like "I know, let’s put on a Fringe Show." But then, when I crash, it’s too hard. Everything is too hard. Getting up. Walking across the room. Picking up the phone. Talking. It’s all such a struggle. And then when negative stuff happens, people getting stressed or whatever… I can’t take it, I can’t cope, I start wishing I’d never existed.

And then people get annoyed with me, for falling apart. I feel awful, I feel guilty, and so angry at myself. I hate myself for screwing things up. And then people say I shouldn’t be doing this stuff in the first place if I can’t handle it… and it’s hard to explain it to them, cos yeah, sometimes something does trigger a breakdown. Like, I was stressed about this Fringe show, and that might have triggered an episode. But it probably would have happened anyway, something else would have been the trigger. People say I should cut back, I’m doing too much. And there’s probably some truth in that, but at the same time, there’s a balance, I need to find the balance. When I got back from Costa Rica, I tried to rest, cut back on everything, take it easy… and my mental health deteriorated rapidly, and continued to go downhill for six months. Then I came down to Wellington, started university, got involved with environmental campaigns, joined an art studio, started a new job… and I started to get better! My mental health improved steadily more than two years. Lately, things have been going backwards again, and I don’t really know why. Maybe I do need different medication. I don’t think all my problems are caused by "doing too much." Doing stuff is what keeps me going.

Well, except this Fringe show, it didn’t really keep me going, it just knocked me around. On Friday night the bar was packed. But not with people waiting to see our show. It was packed with people getting drunk after work. And to make matters worse, it was a rugby night. Rugby should be banned. Or, at the very least, they should put warnings in the Fringe info packs (don’t have your show on these nights, there’s going to be rugby on). There were heaps of people there for our show, and most of them were standing around outside, because there was no room inside and it was so noisy and smoky. And then half the people from one of the bands didn’t even show up, so we were worrying about where they were… some of them came eventually, but then they went off again to drink beer at a pub around the corner. We finally managed to round them all up, and we kicked off the show. It was so hard. We had to shout, even with the microphones, I got a sore throat after two poems. We cut it really short in the end. It was like we were fighting against the crowd, it was totally draining.

But the worst part was seeing all the people who made the effort to come to our show, and knowing that they couldn’t really enjoy it because of the atmosphere in the bar. My poetry teacher, who I have a huge amount of admiration and respect for, came with her son and daughter. I was so please that she came, but then I felt awful and embarrassed because the show was such a disaster.

Saturday was better… much quieter. But by that stage I was so exhausted I could hardly enjoy it. None of the performers seemed to have much energy, we all felt so drained after Friday night. I just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.

At least it was cool to see our artworks up for a while. Although even that was spoilt a bit. At first they said we could keep them up for a month, but then they suddenly said we could only have them up for two days. At the beginning of the weekend, we had this big plan, we would just leave them up anyway, and maybe they’d really like them and decide to leave them for a month. But by the end of the weekend, I was so frustrated with the venue, they’d been so inconsiderate and #$@%*! us (and others) around so much, I didn’t feel like they deserved our paintings. I was sitting down with my friend afterwards, and I said I wanted to take mine down, and she said nah, we should leave them up. But that would have meant either leaving them up and not saying anything (and who knows what would happen then, they’d probably lose our numbers and just stack our paintings in a corridor or chuck them our). Or we’d have to go to the bar owner (who was a complete jerk) and say "please may we leave our paintings up for a little longer." No, groveling to arrogant creepy guys was not an option.

So. That was our Fringe show. I spent about $400 on the show, not to mention all the energy we put into it… which would have been fine, if we’d got something out of it… but I just feel so stink about the whole thing. I guess we must have gained something. I’m sure we all learned something. I know I did. I learned that I never want to put on another Fringe show, ever again. In fact, I don’t want to organise any more events of any description, unless the work (and stress) is genuinely shared by a team of trustworthy and reliable people. And even then, I’d think twice about getting involved. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t do it well. I mess things up and piss people off. I think there are better ways I can use my energy.

Other stuff that I can’t think of a heading for

Even the worst weekends have high points. On Saturday I went to a friend’s fringe show, Me he maunga. It was beautiful, inspiring, stunning, and heaps of fun. Beautiful music, I was moved to tears at some points, and laughing my head off during other moments. It was so good to be able to laugh. And it was a great atmosphere, a great audience, and an amazing group of women performing.

In the programme notes my friend wrote a beautiful thank you to me, and it made me cry, because I didn’t feel like I deserved her thanks. I feel like I’ve been such a crap friend lately, to everyone. You know how, when someone is drowning, and someone tries to rescue them, sometimes the drowning person panics, and grabs onto their rescuer, and pushes them under? When you’re doing lifesaving, they teach you how to hold a person from behind, with your arm around them in such a way that they can’t pull you down. Because you don’t think straight when you’re drowning. You don’t think about what’s best for you, or best for anyone else. You just thrash around and try and keep your head above the water.

(We need a word for "he or she." I’ve got squiggly lines coming up under "them," because it’s not grammatically correct. But writing "he or she" just sounds dumb. In some languages, like Spanish, they have separate words for "he" and "she," but when you’re referring to one person, ambiguous gender, you use the word for "he." Guess we do that in English too, "mankind" and other patriarchal bullshit. In Maori there is a word "ia" for he or she, I don’t think it has any gender connotations, someone correct me if I’m wrong. We need a word like that).

Also went to see another friend performing in a singer/songwriter gig. Goddamn he was great. I mean, I knew he was a fabulous musician, and an amazing performer, but still, I was blown away on Sunday. You know when someone is obviously enjoying themselves, and there’s that amazing energy between the performer and the audience, and they feed off each other, the performer rides on that wave and they’re all the more stunning? It was like that. Sparks flying. Made me wanna be a rock star.

Scary stuff

I was "institutionalised" again for a couple of nights last week. But the really scary part was that two different people, independent of each other, brought me the current Listener (with Kim Hill on the cover) and a box of Drinking Chocolate, to cheer me up. Oh dear…

But… since being released I have managed to restrain myself. In fact, we ran out of Drinking Chocolate on about Thursday, and I haven’t bought any since then! Ok, so a couple of times I had a hot chocolate in town. But that’s a hell of a lot better than gulping down a strong brew every hour. In fact, I’ve hardly had any sugar or caffeine at all. And I’ve joined the gym again. It feels great! In my head, I don’t like the idea of going to a gym, inside, with all those machines, when you could be outside walking or biking. But when I do go, I really enjoy it. I think I like the fact that I have so much control, I can decide exactly how hard I’m going to push myself, how much weight I can handle, how high I raise my heartbeat. Most of my life feels so out of control at the moment, it feels good to be able to do something positive. I think it really helps with my mental health too, helps me to break out of some of the negative cycles.

I know this has been quite a negative blog entry. Again. It’s been hard lately. I think that perhaps things need to get worse before they get better. Maybe there are lots of painful things I haven’t dealt with, and they need to come to the surface before I can let them go. It hurts, but it will get better.

And I promise I’ll try to be more positive when I write my next blog entry.

Love to you all.

Posted by Fionnaigh at March 10, 2003 12:00 AM