Shrinking in the Night

I WAS GRIPPED by an attack of terrifying illness last night. Basically I hadn't been drinking and I wasn't high ~ well, I was no higher than usual ~ and yes I had taken heroin a couple of hours before... But suddenly I came over all nauseous and dizzy and when I closed my eyes my body was shinking, so I took to biting my thumb nail and yet my thumb was huge and I felt completely unreal. So I went to look in the bathroom mirror and I was pale and fabulous. I looked so much better than normal ~ so maybe I was hallucinating~? Then I had to take a bucket to bed just in case I puked.

I lay in bed, trying to enjoy feeling ill (well I did used to enjoy being sick as a kid, ya know ~ so I could skip school and everything), but it was an uphill battle. I'm just too old to revel in sickness. And yet Anna Grace calls me a complete hypochondriac!

Because I hadn't slept on Monday and wasn't inclined to sleep last night, I woke up incredibly late. After about one thirty. It was most inconvenient. And I kept thinking about that vulgar name I had thought up for my club night and I felt really guilty and contrite for being so vulgar and crass. But can I say in mitigation that the names were the product of an extended brainstorming session and obviously most of what you brainstorm will fall flat. I think the best one I came up with was Hillary Pillory, but I probably couldn't use that, because people would think I was taking about ecstasy pills...

Here's what I said to Beverly on the subject:


I just read that again and thought you were talking about an old friend named Sandra. Who was coming visiting! Man I can be so slow at times!

I mean, I read it the first time and fully understood, I read it a second and I'm up a gum tree! What is wrong with me?!

This is my 2nd attempt at commenting because I left half a sentence out and the old comment was just crap. Ha!

Can you think up a good name for my nightclub? I posted up a rude one on my blog and probably everybody will hate me because of it. Maybe "Slutbox" would be better... what am I saying I hate names of bands etc with sordid sexual references you know like Courtney Love's "Hole" it's just so trashy and amoral and tasteless. I need to think up something fabulous and was joking about "Gnome Brigade" and "Itchy Swine" but what CAN I call it???

It's always been an ambition of mine to have my own club night. Also I want to release a record, appear in a French film (it must be a speaking part)... and do loads of other things nobody would really believe of me...

I wonder what it was that happened to me last night? I felt kind of mentally and physically ill at the same time. And why do these things happen to me? I mean, it's happened to me a few times this year: my physical, mental and energy bodies become misaligned and distorted in space... what is that? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

When this happens and you're half asleep it's called hypnogogia ~ but it happens to me when I'm wide awake. Is that why the doctors call me schizo?

Oh by the way, don't worry about my shrinking. My clothes still fit, so I can't be that much smaller than before...

*******


THIS IS A SPECIAL VIDEO FOR ANNA GRACE
who is having doggie troubles, because she thinks her Porkshire has cancer and is dying and I can't think up a single nice or friendly or reassuring thing to say to her

The short film tells the story of Hachkō, the most faithful dog of all time, whose owner died and yet he turned up at the railway station every evening for ten years, waiting waiting waiting for him to come back... and eventually they meet up in Japanese paradise or the Buddha Fields to remain together for all time...

If I drop, how will I ever get up?

EVERY MORNING I wake up feeling sick. Too sick to drink alcohol. I buy alcohol anyway, pour it out and it just sits there for hours. Then I sup so slowly I don't get drunk at all. It's not banging into walls, double-vision drunkenness I'm after, just a half-intoxicated feeling. Anyway this morning I had to rush to get to the post office. My infected ear is as bad as ever. Amoxocillin pills seem to be doing nothing, so maybe I'll have to use the old spray that made me even more deaf. I walked as rapidly as I could. Which wasn't that fast. I felt dizzy. The world seemed to be swaying. I realized I had forgotten my mobile phone. If I tripped and fell, I felt I would never get up again. Then I'd be dragged into hospital with no phone, no money, no way of getting out with nobody knowing what was wrong, because it was only an ear infection anyway. Is this how all people feel when they get old? Shaky and unsteady and terrified of going down? Or is it just me. I don't think it's the drink, by the way, because I don't drink enough to be an "alcoholic". And I certainly don't have that syndrome where one drink sets a person off and they don't stop until unconsciousness. Never been like that. And I don't think it's the drugs. I haven't touched the "brown" in days... Although I am getting heavy sweats. So heavy I drank twice the normal methadone dose yesterday to see if I could stop them. But it didn't stop them. Should I go to a doctor? By the way, if I felt broadly like this, yet had no symptoms at all to pin it on, I'd assume it was "depression". And I'm starting to feel depressed as well.

O yeah, and I found out by digging through the Polish on the side of the carton, that lime n mint drink is actually a Mojito without the rum...

Today I got cactus and lime. Isn't life a trip!!

I didn't want to post this. But here you go ...

Please bear with the negative attitude; I was feeling very down when I wrote this earlier today ...

THE COUNCIL gave me official signed proof of address today ~ a tenancy contract.

I fell asleep on the couch with The Deer Hunter playing. There's no TV here until I get the Sky dish plumbed in so I'm reduced to DAB digital radio and DVDs.

I woke up about ten times overnight. Eventually I turned on a talk radio show and that sent me out like a light. Which might say more about BBC London than my sleep habits...

The council had given me an appointment for 10am ~ far too early. I trudged down feeling miserable and sick. I had hoped the walk might help my bad mood, but it did no good at all. As for my proof of address crisis, I've come to terms with the worst: that I won't be able to prove who I am or where I live and so will be stuck in limbo for weeks. Sorry to be negativistic but that's how I feel.

I've come down to earth with a bump and now feel sad, miserable, guilty, run down, sick and tired. That's probably just normality. Reality. A return to my actual shitty ordinary self. I never got used to it before. Maybe I should ditch the medication and just learn to live with it. I have after all been living with it for years. I just wouldn't have taken seriously the idea that I was hypomanic last week (would just have thought I was in a good mood and couldn't sleep) ~ wouldn't have realized I was bipolar. I never realized I was bipolar until the manic high had gone so far I felt like I was on drugs when I was on nothing at all. This is quite a common mental state but it's full mania, not hypomania and means you're seriously mentally ill. Paradoxically it was when I started hearing voices loud and distinctive (as opposed to the murmurings of years past) that I actually realized I had gone "mad" ... Well you all know the rest of the story. I've had these problems for years but didn't take them seriously because of the drugs. I had always assumed that if I could only pull myself together, clean up and put some effort into life, I'd eventually turn out OK. I still thought I'd get a bit derpessed from time to time. I've always been prone to depression. But I never believed the friend who told me I was bipolar more than a decade before I had any formal diagnosis. I mean, we all have ups and downs, don't we...?

I'm not taking the quetiapine (Seroquel). It doesn't seem to work that well. I had to stop taking it in order to be clear-headed enough and awake enough to be able to move house.

So now I don't know what to do. The housing office keep asking about my support worker: do I have one, when am I going to see him. As if it's a matter of urgency. Deshane has not been in touch THIS YEAR. Like most professionals he probably found me warm and intelligent and engaging and thought that equalled an easy case. When my troubles turn out to be at least as deep-rooted and pervasive as everyone else's (why else would I NEED a Support Worker? ~ he gives up on me. Just like all the rest.

Why the housing office think I need such support so urgently, I'm not sure. I thought I came across as pretty "normal". Then again my friend Pinky ~ yes it is as in Pinky and Perky, only Perky committed suicide in 2010 ~ accurately discerned that I was hypomanic when I just thought I was high on life. Then again hypomania IS being high on life as a stage of bipolar disorder ~ that's what it means "below mania". For years I never genuinely believed I ever suffered even from depression, long considering the medical word to be a mere excuse for a bad case of the "can't be bothereds".

Then I got diagnosed "schizoaffective" and looked up what schizophrenia actually was, and found out that low-grade depression, a failure to engage with life and a "can't be bothered" attitude are a major part of the condition. Whereas ordinary bipolar clears up between episodes, schizoaffective leaves you with residual symptoms. Also the severe episodes can be more extreme than plain bipolar. Which is why, when I was really ill, I started getting signs of catatonia on top of the mood syndrome.

But I'm not catatonic now. Just exhausted. I'm going to bed now. (This was written in the early afternoon.)

One good thing about feeling this sick (and I really did feel bad when I wrote those words) is that I can justify going to bed during the day. That's what sick people do ~ lie in bed. And I feel very sick indeed ...



*******

Yet another self-absorbed, feeling sorry for myself post, I know... I didn't want to post this. But then I thought "well it shows the kind of crap I wallow in some days" and my blog is meant to be a diary of what a loser I am, so here you have it ...

Diamond Jubilee Report

IT WAS PISSING down with rain on Sunday. When I saw the Queen getting dragged up the river in a tiny tug boat I nearly flipped my lid: "Is THIS the much prated-about Royal Barge~??" Then I saw the Royal Barge which was fairly resplendent and relaxed.

I couldn't watch much of this river pageant. I felt freezing cold anyway. So watching the Queen  and Prince Philip, Charles and Camilla and Wills and Kate shivering in the middle of a bleak river in the driving rain was too much. Why the City of London couldn't extend themselves to a transparent awning to keep the Sovereign and her family nice and DRY I've no idea...

I started getting really depressed that night and was fighting to stay awake . Come midnight I was too excited to sleep and stayed high all night. It was a natural high. Either that, or the coke pixie somehow blew some of Peru's finest up my nasal passages. But I never took any cocaine. I don't LIKE cocaine. The high is OK, but everything else it does (like cause a stressed feeling, that can flip into paranoia) I can most definitely live without.

So I didn't sleep till past six a.m.

Then I got up and made more salad. I was going to go down town to watch the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert in the Mall. But in the end I watched it on my own on television.

Grace Jones looked like she'd forgotten her medication. She hula-hooped all through her song about a river. Then I realized she was singing about "the rhythm".

Elton John roared all through his set.

I must have been out buying cherries when Kylie Minogue and Shirley Bassey came on.

Why does Madonna never perform royal events? And why no Michael Jackson. I know he's dead, but they could have dug up his bones and made a dancing marionette. MJ would have loved that.

If only Simon Cowell had auditioned every act , no matter how "established" before any were allowed to perform for Her Majesty, we'd have had a very different line-up. Paul McCartney in particular would never have got a look-in. His voice sounded completely knackered.

By far the best bit was Prince Charles's speech and the fireworks. Then the news came on. Prince Philip is in hospital with cystitis.

On Tuesday the Queen finally rode through town in an open coach, which is what I'd wanted to see all along. It wasn't the gold state coach I'd been expecting. Or the glass one Princess Diana used to ride to St Paul's cathedral for her wedding. Then the top Royals waved from the balcony. And then it was all over. The Queen gave a speech of thanks, broadcast after the evening news.

I'm not very happy. I had to take more methadone than prescribed just to stay OK yesterday. I took some gear on Sunday, but haven't used since then. I think of this long drug nightmare and I'm tired, so very tired. I just want it to end.

I've had terrible problems with ear wax. In trying to get it out, I managed to completely block my right ear.  SO NOW I'M HALF DEAF. THAT'S WHY I'M WALKING AROUND SHOUTING AT PEOPLE.

Got a doctor's appointment. it clashes with that shit-for-brains methadone clinic, where I don't want to go anyhow.

So I'm depressed and pissed off.

I bet the Queen's lying in bed totally exhausted after the last few days. Actually, I bet she's out working. As per usual...



 DAME SHIRLEY BASSEY: DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

This was the high-point of the Jubilee concert, and the only song that seemed relevant to the "theme".

I did eventually see this, yesterday, on reapeat...