THE JOURNAL OF J.NEE

skip to Open-Up possibly...

2010-05-25T22:28:00.002+01:00

Well, hello, it's taken me a while to find my old blogs, I haven't re-read them, but I'd better copy n save them to a durable form as the diaries of self indulgence 2009.

It's a feature of my life I'm still struggling with despite the cold showers.

Self deprecation appeals to me somehow, it's as if I wouldn't be me without it.

Yet I keep seeing signals, signs and symbols along my life that tell me, call me, scream at me to STOP, shift to positive mode, to take myself seriously, to talk myself up, at least to myself, to work myself up into the state I need to be in to take myself where I need to go.

It's procrastination, and particularly the procrastination that sets in in reaction to dangers both of utter failure and even more, to the risk of being snatched from the jaws of failure and disgrace and handed over to the summer of success in my own eyes but also in other people's eyes - that freezes me completely,

This year that's meant letting down my companions.

In 1997- ongoing somehow or another my supposed race for some kind of freedom led to nothing but disaster for my children, my ex-husband and I. They have all found ways through and beyond this mire, the girls have managed splendidly, amazingly really.

Perhaps I let myself get treated like shit by one of them because frankly I feel I deserve it.

This sense of deserving shit and anger and humiliation leads me to live in a suitably shitty way. No wonder I feel like shit.

How can I start to feel that I've paid my price, or that my applying this price has hurt those I love so much that it was all wrong headed in the first place, that to hold my head high, to attract good things into my life is the best way to make things right for them? It sounds so crazy cos then good things would happen to me. I want that too but I don't feel I deserve good things so it's all pretty muddy....

Ah well, that was a chance to speak to myself for a while...

go to amazing lives

2009-07-30T00:57:00.002+01:00

Hi there folks. Sorry for the lapse of entries on this one. Have temporarily moved most entry making to amazing lives missionmiraculous blog as MrMiracle has now come on board and exciting new developments are afoot for those who acknowledge and value small steps as a good starting point for travelling along a challenging therefore exhilarating - yet manageable - path :-) :-) :-)

Eklectric Eggsentricks Live!

2009-06-30T14:38:00.003+01:00

Yes, the Eklectric Eggsentricks are live and kicking and will be sauntering down to cafes in July! Obviously exclamation marks guide you to exclaim with joy and delight as you endeavour to anticipate what to expect by these two most expert persiflers! Trust me, the persiflers themselves are gagging at the bit on this most intriguing matter themselves. Expect nothing and you will most definitely be very pleased with the improvement on your expectations!!!

Participation is the watch word, the E's propose to engage in counter culture dialogue in re assumptions and languages around 'madness' and 'illness', 'sanity' and 'health', psychotics of the world unite sit down at the local and have a sound bite...:-)

Brief review

2009-06-13T14:47:00.003+01:00

Not sure just how well I'm blooming where I'm planted on the whole.

I'm managing to keep up the washing up most of the time (not all of the time) and I've always managed to just about keep up with the clothes etc washing but continue to fail to keep up with the folding and putting away part of that so at the moment my entire backroom downstairs is dedicated to an ever ascending mountain of clean unironed unput away clothes and bedding, towels etc.

I'm watering the basil plants, so they haven't died yet, and I'm watering the beautiful begonia ? that Kate gave me (thanks Kate, it's still blooming and looking beautiful).

As to development it's simply not happening. I'm not even managing full maintenance. I haven't hoovered for over a week; I haven't washed the floors for over a week; I've failed to keep deadlines for things I've offered to do for associates and colleagues and even my computer has been militating against me, freezing up on me just as I'm desperate to send out a press release to Terry Grimley and also just as I'm supposed to have left the house to watch my youngest daughter perform on the catwalk at the Fashion Design Show at the Artrix in Bromsgrove.

Inkberrow Design Centre is a fabulous centre for fashion and textile design education, no doubt about it; all the kids did brilliantly, it was difficult for me to be confident of my opinion that Amelia stood out from the crowd for her 'attitude', her 'stage presence' and her statuesque form - since I'm her mother I can't promise myself to be objective however hard I try to be and however keenly I am aware that 'objectivity' isn't necessarily a value to strive for..

Speaking of which - on Thursday evening at the Artrix I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen or heard from for at least five years or more - Mike McGrath. We only ever met a few times first in 2002 when I was a bit off my trolley and then again in 2003-4 when he was just a little keen to get back the glasses I'd borrowed off him one evening in 2002. For some reason we really 'clicked' back then and the minute we saw each other again it was clear we are still 'clicking' -

SERENDIPITY is an amazing thing. As my life and my very self have finally been integrating and building back up in a positive way people from my past who I'd be glad to find in the present and future have almost magically begun to reappear. And others who haven't reappeared are clearly not meant to. One or two appear and then the effort to communicate rapidly indicates little by way of reason to keep talking yet the good will is exchanged and that counts for plenty in both directions I hope.

Meanwhile though I've cleared a couple of fear erected hurdles last week, made a phone call and written an email that have been generating anxiety and procrastination, and that is a big plus.

Nevertheless MissionMiraculus seems to be developing more slowly than it 'should' be, my tendency to want to think things through and visualise and enlarge and colour in ideas and so on are holding back the de facto establishment of an income generating concern and a hands on awareness and recovery programme of presentations, work shops and healing projects.

It IS making progress and patience has never been my strong suit so it's important not to get the cat o 9 tails out. Still we're 2 weeks past the deadline I set for registering our company and launching it and this is now very much on my mind...

Domestic conflict continues to beset us at home, the heritage of the 'wilderness years' in my life, the years of depression and self loathing, the years of occasional eruptions of bizarre and highly agitated and disturbed, distressed behaviour that in some degree the children were witness to at least at a background level, is such that they cannot view me with confidence or any huge respect.

Not least because I have never developed capacity to respect myself highly enough. Help by way of 'talk therapy' is at hand, however, not from therapists, who I can't afford, but by way of friends and my 'support worker' Mike Lewington who is worth his weight in gold. Because he values authenticity above script and doesn't insult anyone's intelligence. We need him in MissionMiraculus and we'll work toward a budget that may attract him away from 'nhs provided services' into our 'MM provided recovery project initiatives'.

I could say more but this is already quite long. I need to get on with some time wasting, after all it is saturday...

Quick One

2009-05-19T23:36:00.003+01:00

Feeling a lot better, partly due to supportive commentating by ekesan moppat, whoever he is, thanks, mopp :-) and partly due to finding self four days along the line without any adolescant rages coming in my direction. Could sleep for a few weeks though. This is because being disorganised, to the degree that I am disorganised is utterly exhausting. I need a housekeeper, a personal assistant, and some kind of catapult that shoots me out of sleep in the morning by 6 or 6.30 and a nasty natured miniature terrier to nip at my heels til I've run away from it for a mile each day before breakfast. Rather than the cuddling, licking fur cushion that in fact lives with us.

Anyhoo, re 17yr old daughter life's been rewardingly friendly as said for four days now, it's weird, hasn't happened for years I don't think, darenb't mention it in case I break the spell

It's late, I'm off

Hi There

2009-05-15T16:10:00.002+01:00

Clam had to go because her name offended my sister. She had a point. How can I expect someone called 'Calamity' anything to blossom like Doris Day in the 1950's.. I so agree with her. I need a more dignified, graceful identity. J.Nee doesn't quite hit the mark; still maybe if nothing else we have an unmovable initial J and Nee implies both 'born as' and also 'born'. So maybe J has only got as far as the J or is still on knees or is in the process of rebirthing or - there are plenty of connotations so it'll do for now.

I no longer look daily to see if any one is reading or commenting. I no longer have a sense that I have reTaders. I no longer have been a writer let alone reader of this site for a few weeks. That's for a number of reasons. Firstly there was my being so up to my ears in other things that it slipped to the back burner. The more rapidly since no one was commenting so it was easier to d iarise on paper with biro than to 'put it out there' like an unmade bed..

Then there was the quiet spiralling downwards as a small number of contingencies met together in a manner that dispirited me. I remain dispirited.

Funnily enough I received an email recently that constituted in its vocabulary music to my ears, a brief spell in bliss, a rapid trip to and from what it might be like if my real self were anything like, in reality my 'i deal self'. It was a compliment from someone I respect very highly who used the word 'gifted' in relation to me and 'superb' in relation to my work as a writer.

It took me about 4 pages of typed script to explain to myself that neither of the adjectives appropriately apply to me, however much I could wish they did. It reminds me of the time in 1997 when I said to some unintelligent mh worker 'All my life I've wondered whether I'm a genius or a moron. In the end I've realised that I'm neither, but that I'm probably closer to being a genius than a moron'. As far as I know that, as a logical statement is equivalent in content to saying 'I think I'm probably above average in my functional intelligence'. Oddly enough this was recorded in my medical notes at the time as 'has a psychotic delusion that she is a genius'. I discovered this when I visited my notes a year later. It was one of errors of fact. For example my address was wrongly recorded, my qualifications matched those of my less academically successful or able (now ex) husband, my history as a published writer was recorded as a delusion of grandeur 'thinks she is a poet', my near bi-lingual background due to my mother being Swedish was recorded as 'delusion that she can speak Swedish'; my deliberate performance of uttering in Swedish because it just seemed absolutely pointless bothering to open my mouth in English, no-one was listening to a word I said, I reckoned I might as well be talking greek! I couldn't, so Swedish had to do. This was recorded as my talking in a made up language.

Yes, of course there were more errors that year, carefully recorded, stored and insisted upon ever since as a 'closed case' of 'fact' that it is pointless to revisit since it's all water under the bridge now.

Mmmmm.... Since the above more or less comprise the framework of 'delusions' I was said to be suffering from and since other indicators such as 'reckless spending' or 'sexual disinhibition' etc of bi-polar disorder were missing, I was not placing myself or anyone around me in a position of risk to harm -

..then to a high degree it would seem that twelve years on I remain forbidden to mention something: at the end of my marriage my ex husband behaved in 'mad making ways' once his girlfriend of the time went on holiday and he focussed on getting me hospitalised since in his avowed belief my wish to end the marriage was a proof that I was mentally ill.

His determinedly disturbing behaviours added to what was already a very distressing situation. In the stress of it all I began to lose weight and sleep. I did enter a mental and emotional crisis. The 'help' I got from the Mental Health Services from that point was of huge assistance to my husband from that point on until 2004. To me it was the ushering in of an era of violence, isolation and mental/emotional/social cruelty so severe that twelve years on from its inception I'm still pinching myself amazed that I'm still alive.

Sometimes I begin to believe the days of pain and mistreatment are over and that 'good karma' is moving back into my life in that 'circle' so cutely promoted on the 'Lion King', or in the scrible 'the cheek shall inherit the fun', or in To Kill a Mocking Bird - oh, in so many many sources of idealism in which goodness and kindness and honesty prevails and cruelty and greed and malice is conquered.

And then for a while I lose that hope again, or at least, my hope fades a little. What doesn't hope is that in the case of all but one person I've met in my life I have only ever met people who 'mean well' and even the one I've met I've my doubts about I believe there is 'self-righteousness' involved, that the person believes they are 'good' - indeed the person I have in mind told me several times when I was still encountering him that he is 'too nice for his own good'. We all have a right to our own opinions.

Just now hope is flagging a bit. Just a short fall of positive thinking probably. A yearning creeping into the filaments of me for feeling the sun on my life. It's probably just me accidentally chasing myself into the shadows. I must stop it. It's much more fun in the sunlight of living, much better when I forget myself, much better when I forget myself just now I keep remembering me and it's getting in my way and getting on my nerves....

Another Copy and Paste

2009-04-29T18:59:00.002+01:00

Black and White Cat or something of that sort, to me
show details Apr 16 (13 days ago) Reply

I am delighted to hear that you are, like me, a person enjoying a multiple personality order. The difference between you and I is perhaps that you are a little disconcerted by there being more than one of you inside your body and so endeavour a achieve congruence of personality. Whereas I suspect congruence of personality features would be impossible for me, as it would involve the personality equivalent of doing the splits and walking on a tight rope. I couldn't sustain it even if I could get myself into position. I chose the lazy way - over a period of time and quite unconsciously, that is without conscious note or intent, I developed a variety of Janie's. It certainly does throw people at times, and sometimes it's me that's thrown, into a loony bin. But generally speaking since all my selves are in contact with each other and I experience my 'self' as one core, then the behavioural and expressive shifts in my behaviour in different circumstances are no more or less than a variety of masks for one and the same method 'actor' in my life story as it unfolds before me as I live it and at times attempt to direct it, pointlessly, I've now realised, since in some very happy way, it turns out my life directs me not the other way around. How weird is that. I don't know whether or not I've got anything at all to do with it. The mistakes of course must be mine. The helping me back to my feet afterwards, and brushing me down ready to 'fight another day' however, is what makes me have full faith in 'god or whatever's good'

Post a comment

Something I came across from a year or more ago

2009-04-21T19:59:00.002+01:00

Finding

When I came across the piece of writing below, written in a depressed state probably just over a year ago, I felt uncomfortable. I remember that in previous years Clam spent prolonged periods of time in such a self blaming state of mind but I thought that since 2004 she had overcome such intolerance toward herself.

Self Blame
In it she makes a number of assertions about her problems, attributional assertions, that are pretty damning. Are they true? Who knows? This recovery journey blog and MissionMiraculus has in some way emerged out of the depression that the writing below partially reveals. Miss-Miracle tries to inspire and encourage Clam and others to let go of negative and limiting beliefs of self or other.

Limiting Beliefs

It may be that Clam remains to some degree trapped within the limits of the revealed beliefs. Breaking through walls of guilt and shame and lack of self-value isn't easy. But like the seed that fights for life beneath the concrete pavement miraculously it sometimes does throw down roots and then fight its way to the sun. (Thank you for the metaphor Anita)

Encouragement
Why copy and paste this writing to Calamity Jane's blog? Well, recovery isn't plain sailing: sometimes it's good to look back, remember just how things used to be, notice what progress has been made. Clam's made a lot of progress since the winter of 07-08; perhaps this will remind her of just how far she's come and encourage her in the face of the very long way she still has to travel from here.

The found text

"My illness, such as it is, is based on a profound lack of personal insight and a terror of responsibility.

Consequently, my life is driven by two forces – terror and fantasy. When I am in a state of fantasy I imagine that I am capable of high and even extraordinary levels of achievement. During these times I act as if I were already achieving things, whilst in fact I am achieving little and while I am at it I spend as if I had already earned the income that my idle fantasies project.

Whether by spinning off my own unrealistic world into a state of agitation and anger I am driven to face my lack of responsibility and the consequences of that or by any other means more slowly the bills come in and I am forced to face my lack of means to pay my way, I fall into an abyss of humiliation, terror and obsessive avoidance behaviours that by no means bring me any nearer to dealing with the problems that have arisen.

At fifty I face a grim truth: I have neglected my most important responsibilities for I fear to calculate how long.

I can go down the road of seeing this as a Grimm’s Fairy Tale with a bad ending or I can make the decision to face up to reality and work very hard, both internally and externally to make things better for myself and the girls and to develop a life that has self respect, however poor I happen to be at the time.

I am so very frightened of the poverty. Yet this fear has led me to deny my circumstances and to avoid exactly those actions and attitudes that would have protected L/A’s growing lives and conditions of living.

Is manic depression an illness in this case or the natural, physical, bio-chemical consequences of a life time of irresponsibility and carelessness, of selfishness and greed, of idleness and a conscience that only operates when the consequences of these things begin to come home? I fear that in my case both features are at work.

What causes all this is only of interest insofar as a route outward to a more defensible future pattern of life is sought, genuinely, courageously and in the long term. All I know at this minute fear and a desire to hide away from the human race. I have let myself down, my children down, my mother and my friends. Others may walk away and now I see that my isolation is just and fair, I deserve nothing and no-one."

It's an Amazing Life

2009-04-17T04:15:00.002+01:00

April 7, 2009 11:12 AM

The Editor said, in a very recent comment on someone else's blog, "Well clearly you must ensure that you sport a black and white hat in due course or I shall never know who you are ;-) And of course I am the very epitome of discretion so when I see the hat you can rely upon me (lmao)...

I am delighted to hear that you are, like me, a person enjoying a multiple personality order. The difference between you and I is perhaps that you are a little disconcerted by there being more than one of you inside your body and so endeavour a achieve congruence of personality.

Whereas I suspect congruence of personality features would be impossible for me, as it would involve the personality equivalent of doing the splits and walking on a tight rope. I couldn't sustain it even if I could get myself into position. I chose the lazy way - over a period of time and quite unconsciously, that is without conscious note or intent, I developed a variety of personas.

Range of Personas can Land you in the Bin

It certainly does throw people at times, and sometimes it's me that's thrown, into a loony bin. But, generally speaking, since all my selves are in contact with each other and I experience my 'self' as one core, then the behavioural and expressive shifts in my behaviour in different circumstances are no more or less than a variety of masks for one and the same method 'actor' ('me') in my life story as it unfolds before me as I live it and at times attempt to direct it.

Pointlessly, I've now realised, since in some very happy way, it turns out that my life directs me not the other way around. How weird is that. I don't know whether or not I've got anything at all to do with it. The mistakes of course must be mine. The helping me back to my feet afterwards, and brushing me down ready to 'fight another day' however, is what makes me have full faith in 'god or whatever's good'

Good Gracious Me - How time flies!

2009-04-04T12:41:00.002+01:00

Last posting was 22nd March and I think this means it is almost two weeks since I reported. Following advice I'm now going to try to make the postings a bit shorter and a bit more frequent; I'm told that will make them easier to swallow.

Well - I'm still smoking and I'm still crap in the morning yet I feel like I've made some important progress since last posting -

I WROTE THE REVIEW I'D BEEN PUTTING OFF SINCE DECEMBER!

And apparently it's perfectly acceptable - I can't begin to tell you just how wonderful that makes me feel. I shall try to be mindful of this experience next time fear attacks me in a manner designed to bring procrastination to the forefront of my behaviour patterns.

Thus I am now planning to write to further short articles this weekend, one about the anti stigma conference I attended in January and one about eggsentricity. This will raise me in my eyes to efficiency status and I shall almost certainly be able to find the energy to locate my mascara in consequence.

Fun er al

My Uncle Dick died the other week; I'd post up a photo of him for you but I haven't got one and I haven't got any photos on my computer yet, so.. Also I don't think you know my Uncle Dick, although you might know him if you are a Greville visitor but I don't think any of the Greville family apart from Heidi know about these blogs so I feel confident you don't know him. Maybe one day I'll get a photo of him and tell you a bit more about him and then you will know about him. But this isn't a family blog so maybe I won't.

Anyway, it's a blogworthy matter here because the importance of the event required me to get my ass in gear make myself look respectable and then shoot down to Luton and Dunstable hospital and collect my father and make him look respectable. This took a bit of time, finding a barber who'd give him a wet shave and a decent hair day - and the project was wholly successful I'm proud to say. During the service my father was faintly challenging in his loud and insistent requests to pop out for a cigarette but my aunt and I kept a firm hand either side of him and we managed to acquit ourselves well, he and I, as the generally identified nutters of the clan.

And all the reports of the family were that I'd looked great and seemed like a really caring person etc and a lovely person etc., - all I can say is that I didn't dress or do anything to win approval as such, just wanted to somehow give my father a day to remember, a chance to say goodbye to his big brother while also hooking up with his family in a positive way.

This positive experience was reinforcing for the positive identity hardwiring patterns I'm trying to develop. I don't feel right that I got something good out of a family reunion based around the death of one of its members. The good thing about it is that the event also triggered very good memories of my Uncle Dick, affectionate, nostalgic memories and feelings.

The Domestic Front

Over the last two weeks there's been an unspoken division of labour in the house. I've been tidying the kitchen and living room and my daughter has been messing them up. Simple and effective. This morning it appears she's the clear winner but by later on this afternoon my dictatorial preference for something approaching order will be encroaching on the downstairs rooms as specified. Meanwhile I've been offered a day by my support worker to help me get the missionmiraculus office organised week after next.

I have just read this to my daughter. She hotly denies my description. She fiercely resents my writing this since according to her I do absolutely nothing and I am a swear word. Will this do as a balanced piece of reporting?

Over and Out

I have to end here because though I have much more to say, James is here and as Director of tea, hats and remorseless hilarity I can no longer concentrate.

Over and out from your ever deluded swear word ;-)

Mother's Day Went OK

2009-03-22T18:16:00.002Z

Collected my mother on Friday afternoon and invited her to participate in trouble shooting 'inhouse tensions' between my youngest daughter and I. My mother did what I could have expected of her - began attending to the washing machine as an avoidance tactic and when that wasn't working she sat down at the kitchen table and said nothing, smiling politely and nodding in whatever she assumed to be all the right places. My older daughter joined us for a short while and offered a good deal more proactive and helpful input.

Meanwhile, my support worker contributed the most wonderful suggestion of all - that he find a full day in which to help me to get the makings of a working office established in the back room to take that task of the never ending waiting list of priorities.

Hurrah!!!! This gesture has raised my spirits hugely and in itself provided the kind of lift I needed to face the rest of the weekend in good cheer.

Saturday consisted in good part of trips to supermarkets, Lidl and Sainsbury's - my mother's excellent plan was to fill my cupboards, freezer and fridge to bursting and she pretty much succeeded. This done it was a clear privilege and pleasure on my part to take the whole family out for a meal in the evening - the more so since I had a discount card that deducted £25 off the already cheap bill. Instead of Mother's Day costing me a fortune it turned out to be a positive money saver. I did, however by the mater a pair of silver earrings that suited her very well and were from a jewellery shop rather than from Tesco or etc., I think she appreciated the gesture - I know I appreciated her shopping..

My mother did something else to please me over the weekend. It's something she does during her every visit. However, usually I choose to take offence, get defensive and accuse her of trying to make me feel bad about myself by doing my work for me. It is the sorting and folding and putting away of clean washing. Bless her heart, she also washed all of my daughter's clothes back from University, three weeks worth of stuff lovingly saved up for the visit. By the time she left this afternoon all of the build up of clean washing was sorted and put away; the kitchen floor was thoroughly swept and we had all had an excellent sunday roast dinner, courtesy mainly of my cooking and her shopping.

I wasn't unpleasant, as far as I recall, for the entire weekend! I confess I did commit the unpopular offence of incorporating some hours yesterday devoted to my own pleasure, pleasure that included resort to the karoake machine and my favourite companion between noon and eight. It was unfavourably remarked on by the family but worked remarkably well for me - and for them since either side of it the constant ridicule and insults were on their part offered in a light spirit and on mine received with equal good grace and humour.

And now for the revised recovery plan. The quit smoking plan as stage one isn't working. So I'm going to try another tack. My plan this week is to rise at 6.30 every week day and to spend til then until 9am on my own appearance, breakfast and on the appearance of order in the house, including some preparations for the office conversion room. To support this I shall find my diary this evening and I shall set out a morning routine to support the changes I plan to make.

Watch this space if you can find it in your heart to do so, and send in any ideas and comments if you can find any time for it, thanks.

Let's see how that goes.

Two Steps Backward....

2009-03-16T23:36:00.002Z

Well: If you follow clam's misadventures it would be nice if you would let her know ;-). She's aware you have a busy life and have little enough time to skim her ramblings let alone comment on them, but she needs you now so please do what you can.

She did very well last Wednesday, 11th March; didn't go near a cigarette, didn't use nicotine replacement, was a nicotine, smoke free zone until nearly noon the following day.

Her excuse was that she was visiting her 78 year old father in Bedfordshire, where she found him shuffling about like a zombie, in a psychiatric hospital there (where he's been for most of the last 3 years) drugged up to the point where you could see a film of the stuff across his eyes. His continuous speech was focussed on asking for a cigarette, being told he couldn't have one yet, he had to have one an hour no more, smiling, asking again, etc. She chose to keep him company in the chilly garden and play the disapproved patient with him as they puffed away once an hour for the six hours she was there.

The idea was, she told herself, she'd return a non smoker. This landscape altered slightly on Friday morning when she made herself obviously available with a cup of tea outside another building devoted to matters of mental health and a friend offered her the cigarette he could see she was yearning for. The weekend did not see a turn for the better.

The house got put back in order however, not order you understand, but the same disorder level as had been documented with her mobile phone a couple of weeks earlier. This was restoration of a kind.

Until Monday when for some reason best known to herself, she slept in the morning, went for lunch with a friend, went straight home and did some more dozing and then, early evening ate four cadbury's chocolate eggs. She still feels sick. It wasn't a nutritious evening meal. She also bought a further pack of ten cigarettes. The kitchen isn't looking great and she still has 3 baskets of clean washing to fold and sort and put away, a review that's now embarrassingly outstanding and a short anti-stigma conference article ditto.

She is feeling very ashamed of herself. She is seriously considering pulling her socks up with or without your support. She doesn't currently feel she deserves your support and if I'm going to be honest - I kind of don't either. Maybe you can work this way - if you see a posting by her that shows you that she's putting in the hours and effort on her own recovery and development journey you could pop a comment into the comments box as a reward; when she's reporting her lack of motivation give her a wider berth. This is always assuming that you are following her journal.

I'm hoping that we can drum up some support for the air space I'm giving her. My purpose in handing my journal to calamity jane for the present is to conduct an experiment: could such an approach to recovery, documenting its progress and problems, constitute an effective method of motivation and forum provision for recovery journeys?

Without some interaction neither outcome can be evaluated since the method simply isn't working to provide a 'community of interest'.

Let me know what you think. Below this posting you should find a word 'comments' - -press on it and a box will come up so that you can input your comments. My goal is to look at the nitty gritty of 'recovery' in the fullest sense. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

MissMiracle

It's Been a Hard Days Week

2009-03-08T00:33:00.000Z

A blog that goes out onto the 'world wide web' and is theoretically available for anyone to read necessarily entails a challenge of confidentiality. This blog sits at the junction between the personal and the generic.

To my mind, as you will remember if you read last weeks posting, each and every detail of an object, subject or relationship is essential to its over all composition, meaning and value. In a 'masterpiece' take out a note and you change the entire impact of the music.

Nonetheless - you won't get any great symphony if you have that note on its own, and you'll struggle even to explain why the loss is so significant when so many notes remain. If I take Clam's recovery journey to be one note in the symphony of recovery journeys across the locality I am in, or the country, or the continent, or the world - then it will be of little if any genuine interest or value unless it can be seen as an example of such a struggle, relating to myriad other examples and testing itself out against recovery ideas - in other words reflexively evaluating itself as it goes along.

Forgive the above complicated way of explaining myself and please bear with me - I shall soon be returning to the anecdotal which makes for a much easier read. Were I a better writer I could express myself on these more theoretical points in a more graceful and popular way. To date I've not become so good a writer as that and I have to beg your pardon and invite you to read this intro a few times, perhaps, if your background isn't an academic one. Mine was - I think that's why I struggle to be a good writer when I'm trying to express complicated and abstract ideas.

Bluntly put what I'm trying to say is that in writing this blog I am both genuinely trying to drum up (internal and external) support for myself at this stage of my mental and physical health recovery and trying to provide a portrait of sorts of the difficulties involved, and the amount of determination needed, to effect a full recovery from mental health created life problems within our culture.

I'm thinking - I guess I should have spelled this out in the first posting of the blog. It is why there are currently two closely associated blogs being run by MissionMiraculous (in lieue of its forthcoming more comprehensive website), the other, as you probably know, is http://missionmiraculous.blogspot.com - an arena of more general discussion, although the latest posting is by way of raising the general through the particular.

And now let's get on with the update of Clam's life and recovery project:

It's not been going well! I've been smoking plenty of roll-ups, just a few days to go before Q day Wed 11th; by the time you read this I may already be onto an inhalator with an enormous achievement begun - to be fair we won't be able to say it's been a success until I leave that thing called life, with luck and a following wind that won't be for a very long time so..

On the home front the earlier part of this week (1st March onwards)was enough to push me to my limits. One family member for various reasons of their own to do with feeling stressed, and perhaps hormonal, found themselves compelled to do a great deal of yelling and swearing at me, accusing me of being a dreadful mother, of accusing me of caring about no-one but myself, of being extremely lazy, accusing me of being disgusting and so on and so forth. This reached a crescendo on the second day when, returning to the house in a rage for an umbrella, the ferocity of the door knock broke a pane of glass in the front door. After three days it was pretty much getting me down.

By Thursday morning this person's sun had come over the horizon again and they have been absolutely fine and cheerful ever since. Unfortunately by that time I was punch drunk.

Meanwhile, in my efforts to get involved in issues that are very close to my heart I've been signing up for everything relevant in recent weeks at CEIMH's suresearch group, while also trying to begin to make inroads on the state of the house, focus on very small targets that nonetheless need a bit of daily attention for maintenance; to continue business planning with my business advisor in my working toward a position of financial independence and positive health status once I have reached a sustainable level of recovery, and developing these blogs and a few other bits (not so few) of writing.

By the end of February I had managed to turn up to a suresearch related meeting still wearing my pyjama top and a week later a very kind and thoughtful acquaintance of mine had taken me to one side and observed that she had noticed my recent slightly dischevelled and tired appearance told me she was becoming quite concerned about me. 'You're not looking after yourself' she said.

It's true of course. I'm not great at looking after myself. I'm pretty good at looking after others. However - after a good long stint of not looking after myself I'm fit for exactly nothing and over the last couple of days nothing is pretty much what I've been fit for. I've managed to do the ferrying about of my teenage kids and I've managed to maintain personal hygiene; I turned up late to the writing group meeting half an hour late recently and didn't have with me the pieces of work I'd promised (since I still hadn't written them) but apart from that have made it to meetings all bar one (sorry sorry sorry to Pam Durrant - I'm still cringing as I think of you sitting and waiting for me at Sainsbury's the other Thursday) - BUT it's true I've not been looking after me, not been eating properly, not been sleeping regularly or enough and not getting anything like the amount of solitude my system needs to recover from social interaction.

Therefore the house is now in a worse state than it was when I went around it taking snapshots with my mobile phone, I wrote two or three totally unnecessary and slightly paranoid emails over the last day or two that I feel most remorseful about, I overreacted to news of someone within the mental health movement gossiping about me in an untruthful and insulting way AND none of this would have happened had I been rested and properly fed and feeling more in control and therefore able to feel more comfortably positive about myself.

Writing all this down helps me. It's the shape of my life I need to address. It's my needs I need to become aware of. And tend to. Because without this I can't recover. It's this chaotic nightmare of a life that I create for myself when I proceed to forget my own needs, get out of touch so much that I fail even to notice I'm beginning to crack that surely provides explanatory pointers to the cause of my breakdowns and depressions. If I want to travel away from these health crises then I am going to have to learn to pay attention to my own needs first. Not so near last that by the time I get to them I'm in hospital.

Still Smoking?!

2009-03-05T14:59:00.000Z

Hurrah! Apparently the title language problem has been resolved!

Nine or ten years ago, in a 'conversation' with someone no longer in my life I was being somewhat contemptuously challenged about my cigarette smoking habit.

My challenger was a man who had smoked, by his own account from the age of thirteen until the age of thirty three when I, pregnant at the time, had asked him to join me in stopping. He had become, overnight, a zealous anti smoker.

Following the birth of my daughter within a few months I smoked a cigarette and a few years later when 'the shit hit the fan' as my marriage broke up (at my request and insistence) I took to smoking with an enthusiasm that mirrored that of my parents. I didn't approve of myself for it, indeed I had much to say to myself of the most damning variety about it, but I did it all the same for a few years. I've slowed down a lot now but I'm still doing it.

I assume you've guessed that the challenger was also the husband in the case.

Well. In response to his challenge back then I answered this: "The day you stop smoking up my life is the day I quite smoking cigarettes".

I have used this metaphor of comparing cigarette smoking favourably with bullshit and character defamation and so forth on several occasions since then.

Clearly this tactic of attack and defence has been a convenient excuse!

I continue to believe that fear and oppression and corruption kill more surely and quickly than does tobacco smoking and my own most cherished belief is that cancer is an extremely complex response of the body to psycho-social repressions and sufferings as well as the obvious strain the body is put under by being continually subjected to crap making its way into the lungs and oxygen getting such a poor look in and so forth. Indeed, I'm inclined to believe that it is a disease of such complexity that with our present frameworks of explanation we have no earthly chance of understanding it. I may of course be quite wrong since I got grade 3 in biology and I'm talking CSE, and I dropped physics and chemistry at 12 as a complete idiot in the subjects - if it didn't fizz or explode I really wasn't interested. I'm a lot more interested now of course :-)

All the same. Until I was nineteen and a half I had the lowest possible opinion of cigarette smoke. BOth my parents, indeed almost my entire family, long living all bar the uncle who pickled himself in snaps and expired at 43, were and are heavy smokers. Oh, I lie. My Mor-Far wasn't - he quit smoking at about 50 or so.. Anyhoo.. Throughout my later childhood and teenage years til the fateful moment I really found cigarette smoke obnoxious. Once I started college I used to come back from the pub to my beautifully smoke free bedsit smelling the ash all through my clothes and my hair. I was forever washing the stink away in time for another dousing the following day.

I was an art student and so the smoking culture was ubiquitous in every sense. And as an art student I was a weirdo. Having been to an all girls school I was shy of boys unless I could somehow desexualise the situation which, obviously, I did immediately. I arrived armed with my commitment to non attachment via Buddhist ideas and dressed in shrouds of calvinist self denial viz colour, beauty or pleasure at all. I practiced yoga instead of laughter, beansprouts instead of beer and marxism instead of boys. I worked with a group of four lads on a subversive little mag called 'Issue' linked with a self important albeit interesting and lively bunch of artists called Art-Language. I was not fitting in socially, though my typing skills came in handy.

One evening just near Christmas one of these boys invited me to try a cigarette and challenged my right to know I didn't want to smoke if I'd never tried the pleasure. Both dared and exhorted to prove I was not a prig I hesitated then accepted the invite. I don't actually remember the experience much apart from noticing that I didn't enjoy it. Nonetheless some junction between 'fitting in compromise' and 'food replacement option' fell into place instantly. Twenty-four hours later I was standing at the bar of the pub across the road buying myself 'ten of the very very weakest cigarettes you have, please'.

I've been a smoker ever since. I have had times of not smoking - two pregnancies and two lots of six months quit efforts since, and for five years extremely little and always furtive smoking while my children were very small. In the last eight years I have been unrepentently puffing away day and night quite often, though over the last seven months I have reduced my intake on and off.

NOW FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT : I, CLAM, WILL BE QUITTING SMOKING CIGARETTES ON WEDNESDAY 11TH MARCH 2009.

ON TUESDAY 10TH MARCH I SHALL EAT PANCAKES TO MARK THE OCCASION.

ON WEDNESDAY 11TH MARCH I SHALL ANNOUNCE THAT THE ERA OF MY LIFE BEING SMOKED UP HAS NOW PASSED. I SHALL HAVE A POLITE BUT CLEAR AND ASSERTIVE WORD WITH ANYONE IN FUTURE WHO CHOOSES TO DEFAME ME, MISREPRESENT ME, FRIGHTEN ME (DOES THAT MEAN THE SAME THING), OR UNDERMINE ME.

Whoopsy daisy :-0 - I do believe I have just been guilty of some degree of leaked anger and that I have just delivered something of an ultimatum! Relax and remember that my references at the beginning of this posting will alert you to the somewhat specific basis for needing to make such an announcement. I should add that mental health service provision in my local area proceeded unwittingly to oblige the referred to no longer husband most co-operatively and pleasingly to his purposes by engaging in processes of 'assessment' 'diagnosis' and 'treatment' and 'after care' that fully constitute misrepresentation, defamation, threat and undermining. More of this elsewhere at some other time. This blog is about recovering from mental health issues and abrasions, not about psychiatry's impending denouement... ;-)

Well, ANYHOO to get to the point, yes dear reader that's how far we've now come, I thank you for being so patient; Yesterday I visited the quit smoking nurse and I came away with a prescription for an inhalator. Next Wednesday, it turns out, is National Non-Smoking Day. To celebrate that day I shall not smoke nicotine and shall provide a small but memorable demonstration in favour of clarity in life as a step on my journey to blow all the cobwebs away !

Those of you who know me don't look for an invitation, I have no idea what I shall be doing by way of said demonstration but you may be assured that if you don't witness it for yourselves it will nonetheless be undertaken as much in honour of your good selves as in honour of National Non Smoking Day and I.

Come along now, sign up sign up for calamity jane, get yourself down as a follower: miss-miracle has but one purpose in view in start up utterly selfish, to feel some support in her travels to wave her on. But in essence her mission is the mirror of you - you're a part of her and she's a part of you. We're all little facets of the diamond of life and if we help each other to shine what a startlingly shiny diamond we shall be.

BloomingWhereImplanted

2009-02-27T18:38:00.000Z

Those who visit Amazing Lives, the first MissionMiraculous blog, will notice that the second editor's official entry was, as this, typed without spaces. And this is why : when I try to type the title with spaces each space alters my english into a language that I don't recognise, I believe oriental or asian. Hopefully I'll get this sorted out in due course, but I haven't got it sorted out yet.

The reason why I have begun this blog is that from the tiniest detail to the largest landscape MissionMiraculous wishes to embrace relationship, communion and integrity of being and purpose.

As you will see from the by-line to the Amazing Lives blog (a blog that now has come to be a dialogue between the editor and Formart H Sax and thus has ceased temporarily to be a public arena of conversation or communication vehicle and has instead become a behind the scenes in public set of conversations about start up hitches and challenges vis a vis MissionMiraculous the wider project plus blog):

This blog is different. I have no idea how to entice a readership for this blog but I want one. I want one because I have in mind a personal transformation to complement the transformation I have in mind for the entire edifice of 'Mental Health' from its very vocabulary to its grossest most concrete of emanations and thought spun consequences.

Sometimes, you know, I almost begin to wonder whether maybe both Hegel AND Marx got it wrong - that maybe the point is not to interpret the world, not even to 'change the world' in that rather gung ho manner in which Marx conceived it back in the leveller days of the 19th century, but in fact to 'picture the world that we want' and then begin to plan for that picture as a dream coming true, with task lists the lot. It's perhaps an approach that lies closer with Marx than with Hegel in that it involves more than reading and writing and talking.

I fail to be able to imagine how it could become a military adventure, however, and this is an excellent reason for subscribing to MissionMiraculous as a concept-analysis-development-impact organisation. What on earth do I mean by the last description of MM? Remind me again later, I'll give it some thought and extrapolate.

ANYHOO - back to the beginning, this MM blog is about the detail, the individual picturing a better life and heading for it with - What? Determination? Joy? A sun hat? Grim Determination?

Why did the concept of 'grim determination' offer itself to my mind?

Because picturing the life that I want: seeing myself on the beaches of bliss; at the party of personal realisation; holding the w/holiness of health in my entire being; dancing at the dawn of dottiness without a care in the world while balancing an eel on my nose now I'm so well balanced and graceful -

is a project of living that I've come some way in yet have a way to go to attain. And in order to attain it I'm going to have to jettison certain habits of expectation, behaviour, and attachment (addiction) that are a part of the foundation of my 'comfort zone'. It's a comfort zone that threatens my physical health (smoking and lack of exercise and irregular sleeping and eating patterns), that holds back my efficiency (poor time management, lack of a regular structure to my week), that dampens and lowers my spirits and my self respect (domestic crisis-management culture in which nothing gets done that doesn't absolutely have to get done and doesn't get done even then if it's going to cost money).

In due course I'm sure you'd like to hear about the progress I HAVE made in my life since 1997, that year of significance of the beginning of the Blair administration. And you shall be enlightened with some history of that in a future editorial entry. When I say editoria obviously in t his particular blog you need not be looking for dialogues to develop nor secondary contributors to be named. This is going to be the journal of Calamity Jane's journey toward a dream come true. My dream will have come true when I:
- am an established non-smoker
- have established a regular physical exercise pattern, form/s to be described
- have de-cluttered my house from loft to kitchen and front door
- ditto garden
- have created a working office in the working office designated area
- have created a bedroom for myself
- have created and established a proper structure for my days and weeks including
- eating habits
- sleeping routines
- creative time built in timetabled
- MM time built in, timetabled
- voluntary commitments timetabled
- domestic work timetabled
- developed a regular, independent, form of income that meets my needs as a provider and a householder
- found best possible support through which to withdraw from psychiatric medications
- ditto to develop a successful alternative to such medications through holistic and life style measures.
And all of these routines monitored, recorded and evaluated. Health charts, photographs, videos the lot. Why am I making such huge weather out of a simple change of life style project?

Because frankly, (a) By turning my life and its development into a cultural project of the variety 'one woman transforms her existence to defy the expectations of psychiatry' (as they were inscribed by inference if not dictat by her consultant nhs psychiatrist by 2000), then providing that I succeed then I shall have also offered a fully documented 'case study' for 'recovery from psychiatry' and this could, just could become a loose template for a more popular development of journeys away from psychiatry by individuals who have been labelled within its frameworks as suffering from 'severe and enduring mental illnesses' such as 'Bi-Polar Disorder' (my label) and 'Schizophrenia'.

To achieve my goals I need readers of this blog. I need as many readers as I can get. I need as much encouragement and support as I can get. Top of my list is becoming a non smoker, I've smoked 3 sovereign's while writing this entry, if you get my drift - worry not, however, dear reader - I have also made an appointment to see a quit smoking support nurse next week and this weeks ash wednesday was indeed ash but in my house pancake day comes again next tuesday for a second start at lent..