Drinking

There is a truth that you can only have if you've known an alcoholic.

The truth is the effect of alcohol on your life.

It is different from the truth you have if you realise you are an alcoholic. It is different from the truth that you are a binge drinker. It is different from the that when you drink wine/gin/vodka/(insert beverage here) you cry and become melancholy.

It is the truth that even if its not a problem, it could become a problem, and you know what a problem looks like.

That problem is misery. It's forgetting conversations, it's repeating yourself, it's explaining again. It's not understanding. It's also finding things hilarious, amusing, loving the glow you sit in.

Alcohol is a lubricant. It helps loosen you up in social situations, at parties. It helps loosen you up and let go of frustration, exhaustion, tension created by work, family, life. It lubricates your escape from reality. Helps you slide out of yourself into an understanding of the universe free of common angst.

It helps you celebrate and cope. Cope with anger, upset, grief, disappointment, betrayal.

As the daughter of an alcoholic, I am hyper aware of my drinking. That doesn't mean I don't drink or that I don't enjoy drinking. But I am aware when I drank for 5 days straight, most of it at home, on my own. I know it's not right. I know it's not right when going one night without a drink is a struggle. I know that I've started something that might be difficult to stop. I know the longer this goes on the harder it'll be to resist. I know I'm damaging my body with drinking at all let alone so consistently. I know that I will be able to sleep without a drink, I know that I can find other ways to cure my boredom, but I know I haven't bothered to try. Throwing up booze is only mildly more unpleasant than throwing up most other things.

I sit on a train drinking a gin and tonic and every mouthful hurts. The pain itself in my abdomen is nauseating, adding to the nausea I was trying to drink away. 
I am the Girl on the Train.

But I am strong and I can stop. I want to stop. I will stop. That's the truth of being a daughter of an alcoholic: at the first sign of rouble, alcohol is not the answer. I have to face up to the trouble, then I won't have to drink to solve it. The truth is knowing the answer can be found sober.

I'm just not ready.

Being topless

As a woman, my chest stays covered up in a way that men do not need to adhere to.
Just the other day I walked past a group of men pouring concrete. One of them took off their top in order to deal with the heat of hard work and sunshine.
Now, I couldn't do that. If I were on a beach, or maybe in a park, and I was wearing a bikini top, then perhaps I could.
But my bra? Nah, forget it. It's indecent.

Friday night I walked down the corridor in my boyfriend's flat to the kitchen in joggers and my bra. We didn't encounter any of his flatmates and as far as I know no one saw me. Then on Saturday his landlady asked me not to do it again. Because there are "single men" in the flat and it's "not nice".
I'm aware I don't live there. I don't pay rent for that room or contribute at all so I am happy to abide by the rules laid down by the landlady; I'm not about to try and cause problems for my bf.

But why is my chest, covered by a bra, a problem when my boyfriend's chest, completely uncovered, is not??

Because my chest is sexualised.

Boobs are sexy. Breasts are erotic. Tits are titillating.

This is a double standard that has existed for, well, since we learned to make clothes and start policing women's bodies. There's an organisation, GoTopless, that campaigns for equal bare-chested rights. And why shouldn't we? We are caught in a catch 22 of women being seen simply as child-bearers and our breasts are milky-life-giving-machines, and being objectified and sexualised and our breasts are something to grab and lick and maybe even make a mess on.


I present to you the difference in attire, for your own perusal. 

Please see Exhibit A: The bra I was wearing Friday night.

Exhibit B: My bikini.

This is the bikini top I own. Perhaps it's a bit demure. I mean, it definitely is compared with this:

Or this:

What is it about sand & sea (or pebbles and desperation on the UK coast) that allows boobs out and about with some barely structured fabric over them? 

These days, there is an added layer of policing for women's bodies: the internet. Social media giants Facebook have been learning the hard way that nipples are not sexy, that they do not need to be covered up.

Exhibit C: Breastfeeding.
Exhibit D: Napalm Girl.

So if Facebook, more and more dominant in our lives and technology beyond status updates and selfies, is telling us that nipples are naughty, what hope do we have that individual humans might think differently?

Perhaps if I lived in the block of flats with my boyfriend, if I paid rent, had rights, the landlady would not have asked me to curtail my body's freedom in the same way? To me, it's irrelevant.

Tits are tits, and whether you have them or not, you should just get used to them. 

Passing

*This blog was written on 17th June 2016, when I found out I had passed my second module of my qualification. I've now passed my third, so I've completed the course. With that and my ongoing illness, I felt like now was the time to post this*

Moments after I emailed someone to say I was expecting the mark this month, it arrived. 12-24 hours earlier than I was anticipating.

I passed.

My eyes were drawn instantly to the percentage. I had high hopes; I'd scored 98% in my exam.

At that moment my brain challenged that established fact, making me wonder if that was a mistake.

I had high hopes despite the deep seated knowledge that it was by no means my best piece of work. I'd tried, I'd really tried. But the whole four months working on this assignment I went through disordered eating, depression, anxiety, self harm and suicidal thoughts.

I hated that assignment but not as much as I hated myself and my life. I persevered with both.

I could have deferred. Perhaps I should have.

But you can't defer life and this pass mark feels symbolic. Of course I'm going to be disappointed because that's my nature; I am never good enough. But actually this time the disappointment is buffered by relief, and the relief is winning out. Because I did the very best I could do. I know I did. I can see that the fact that I am still here and that I passed this module despite everything, that I am doing the best I can do and I am enough. Just enough.

So I'm going to continue trying my best in everything I do. That's all I can expect from others and myself.

The nineteenth day of the fourth month of the year nineteen eighty nine

Last year I spent my birthday in Essex. I was mentally ill without really knowing it, thinking I'd got over the obvious mental illness because I wasn't self harming outwardly. 

Instead I was obsessing over food and exercise in a way that would come and take a total grip on me later in the year. I still enjoyed my birthday weekend, with people who I was incredibly close to. Despite irrevocably losing one of those people since then, I look upon that weekend with fond memories. 

This year, I am physically ill. I have a cold. I'm coughing and spluttering and the nausea from the catarrh is nasty.

But you only get one birthday a year. 

I'm nearer to 30 than 20. When was my life supposed to start? Can I take on the mantle of a millennial who still lives with her father because rent is too high, who is still trying to "find herself" and has already discovered the person she's meant to be cannot be found in Australia, New Zealand, Europe or America? Nor was she is Brazil, and she's unlikely to be in Vietnam, Dubai, Thailand, Mexico or any other country on the bucket list. 

Who has a bucket list at 27?

I like having a spring birthday because as I travel home from work (I was sent home because people don't want my germs) the green of the trees lining the tracks are bright, and radiating hope. Hope for a plentiful year. 

I've now lived 9 years 3 times. 

And every other day of my life I feel like I haven't done enough. I'm not doing enough. 

I'm not being enough. 

But that's the great thing about birthdays that I don't think I appreciated until now, until today:

On your birthday it's enough just being you. 

Magic Jumper

I wear my magic jumper when it's cold out, and I'm numb inside.

My magic jumper is a barrier.

It doesn't protect me from the pain in my head, but it provides comfort from the pressure in their words. 

I wear my magic jumper not to make me strong,

But to stop me feeling so weak. 

My magic jumper doesn't always work. 

But I have it just in case I need it. 

Like hope, better to have it than not. 

The best thing about the magic jumper though,

Is taking it off. 

Knowing that I got through another day. 

The Rio Summer

I’m woken by a woman knocking and ploughing into the room. I’ve just started dozing after having a bad case of stomach cramps and sickness, and she’s pulling my hostel windows shut. I moan and she says something in Portuguese and gives me a thumbs up. I have no idea what she said.

I’m just dozing off again when it hits. Straight away it’s a solid stream of rain, battering the windows and the roof. It’s loud. This is Rio summer, apparently. Good thing I wasn’t well enough for the beach this afternoon.

Later I’m woken again by my room mate coming in, who is drenched. More drenched than the word drenched could even describe. She make a puddle on the floor as her entire body drips. She points out to me the incessant wail of what could be a warning siren the following Portuguese tannoy that sounds like a dire warning even though I can’t understand it. It’s on repeat, and though we don’t speak any of the language, we’re pretty sure it’s telling people to watch out for the floods. My roomie tells of puddles the height of your calf. It’s rained nearly everyday so far, sometimes heavily. Never this torrential.

When the sun is out, or even when there’s light cloud cover, Rio is stunning. Up on Sugarloaf Mountain, the city below was drenched in the sun’s rays, not the sky’s tears, and Christo Redentor poked his head out of the clouds, misty and mysterious. In the Babilonia community the sun douses the local football pitch come basketball court as kids play football in flip flops, or even barefoot. Hardier than the best Premier League professionals.

As I lie in my bunk listening to the thunder, I recall greeting Teams GB and Egypt at 9pm at night in the pouring rain. My roommate was playing beach games in the rain because the young people here wanted to keep going. A little bit of rain doesn’t dampen the spirit of the Street Child Games.

Back in the void

When it comes back, it's like a burning in my throat. It spreads through my body from my chest like a fire. It's consuming everything. I recognise its work but I feel powerless to quench the flames. I know I'm not alone, but I don't know I'm not alone. 

I comfort eat. I cry. I enjoy the cold biting at my hands when I'm outside. 

I want to throw up. To get it out, to get it all out. To get out the bits I can't cry out. 

It's so visceral. As I push up from the ground a void opens up beneath me. My arms push me away, but my heart strains to leap inside. 

I want to wake up tomorrow and be ok. The light at the end of the tunnel seems so slight, so minuscule that I feel as though I'm imagining it. It's not hope, but a speck of dust in my eye. 

Everyone's own Dresden

I like to step on broken paving slabs 
They remind me I'm not the only unstable one. 

For me, depression is like the city of Dresden. 

My mind, my life, who I am, has been destroyed. It is an innocent party, and depression has rained down on it, burning it to the ground. I feel frequently lost and confused and I don't know where to go next because all of a sudden I don't know what I want. How can you know what you want if you don't know who you are? 

My mind is my own Dresden because from the rubble and the ash I can rebuild myself. It will never be exactly like it was before and indeed, I wouldn't want it to be. But I've spent 26 years crafting myself, can I ever be really different? 

I realised very recently I've been having anxiety for 18 years.
The fear of moving home and my reaction to it.
All through my uni days when I would describe my mind racing and the neon blocks playing Tetris in my head, trying to organise my thoughts. I hadn't had that in years until last month. 

When you rebuild yourself after a  breakdown or just particularly bad depressive episode, you actually build a San Fran Dresden. You pick yourself up from the ashes and you work to make the pillars of your mind more secure in the face of depression. To protect and fight against the shakes of anxiety. 

In my San Fran Dresden I'm relearning to love the things that make me who I am, and I build it around all the things I want to do. There are unmapped territories I am yet to discover. There's a need to have something 'to look forward to'.

It takes a while to realise, but life with and after depression is just life. The only difference is that, against the odds, you are still here, still standing. 

You are San Fran. 
You are Dresden.