I was surprised at how tough the therapy session yesterday was.

It started ok.  The psychologist jumped right in to ask me to describe to her my thoughts about death, and how I feel when I get them. That was easy enough.  But then she just kept asking more questions.  She wanted me to describe my thoughts in more detail and it got quite uncomfortable for me.  It was like, she was making me think about it and talk, rather than just talk.

It progressed on to what do I think will happen when I die.  I rambled on for ages about all the different possibilities of what 'could' happen... heaven and hell, reincarnation, or, the worst (and possibly most likely) possibility, just becoming nothing.  It's that thought that drives me nuts when I think too deeply about it.  Imagining being nothing.

Then we talked about what I want to happen to my body when I die, and I said I do not want to be cremated.  Everyone in my family knows this.  I'm terrified of fire and when I was a kid I used to have a recurring nightmare where I was at the bottom of the stairs in my house, and someone or something was upstairs where the fire was, and I wanted to save them but I couldn't.  I don't want my body to be burnt.  It's not natural.  At least if I get buried, then all the nutrients and life energy tied up in my body can return to the earth I came from, and continue the cycle of life.  Being cremated, all I would become is pollution.  She asked if it's important for my body to remain intact and unburnt when I die, and will I still need it after death.  I wasn't sure, but probably not.

Then she asked me, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of dying, and of living forever.  And I realised that to live forever, you'd also have to not get any older.  And then she asked me how would it be to live forever and watch the people around me grow old and die.  So I realised that eternal life would only really work if I didn't get old, and neither did the people I love.  And suddenly I realised that living forever would actually be just as scary as being dead forever.

So all in all, it was a tough session, and very difficult to talk about.  But I think it helped.  We'll continue next week but so far, I'm pleased with how it's going.  It's like, the way she asks things makes me turn my thoughts in a slightly diferent direction that I wouldn't have done by myself.

V

Last week I was given a homework assignment by my therapist.  Since one of the things that affects me most on a daily basis is my preoccupation with, and fear of, death, she asked me to write down every time I think about it.  I'm supposed to write down the situation I was in when I thought it, how long the thoughts lasted and what, exactly, I was thinking, and then rate my feelings of anxiety on  a scale from 1-100%.

of course, ironically, these thoughts that have plagued me for months, have decided to disappear now.

So now I'm wondering.  Do I lie, and write down some stuff based on thoughts I've had before?  So not exactly lying, but pretending that they happened this week.  Or should I just tell her that actually I didn't have any of those thoughts.

It's a tough one.  Thing is, now I finally have this therapy, I really want to sort these issues out.  And I know if I go tomorrow with nothing to tell her, she can't help me.

It sounds silly but I do get these random thoughts of death.  It's like, I suddenly realise that I am going to die, it's inevitable, and I have no say over it.  One day I will fall asleep, and never wake up.  I imagine being dead, and it's like, how can you imagine being asleep forever?  And then I think, well it will be like it was before I was born.  Millions of years went by without me and I knew nothing about it.  But I don't want to go back to not existing.  How can anyone know that they are going to die, one day, and not be scared about it?  Every time I get these thoughts, I get panicky.  I get a numb tingling over my body, my heart pounds and I slip into a state of unreality, like I'm dreaming.  It's like my body's responding to my thoughts and going "Death?  Not on my watch!" and launching into full fight-or-flight mode.

Ugh.  Even by my standards, this is a fairly depressing post so I'm going to sod off and finish watching the football.   And then do my homework.

V

Today I finally accomplished an epic mission to get my best friend PJ together with a girl he rather likes.

They'd had a bit of a thing a couple of weeks ago but nothing seemed to really progress except through the odd text.  So, after she didn't reply to a couple of his texts the following mission objectives ensued.

Objective 1:  Mess with Her Head
Gentlemen, this one is guaranteed to work on about 99% of females I reckon.  PJ's mission was to not send her any texts, or call her, for several days.  This is after a few days of him letting her know he was rather keen, and her reciprocating, to a point.  Day 1: No texts.    Day 2:  No texts.   Day 3: A text!  She can't stop thinking about him and hopes he is having a good weekend.

Objective complete.  And why?  Because ladies have incredible imaginations.  You just need to get into their head and then give them space to work.

Objective 2: Pass The Test
At some point, a lady will set a test for her prospective mate.  In this case, The Test was a text saying she had contacted another guy she liked, and didn't want to see PJ again.  Sounds like a dumping text, no?  Well, no.  Because she also said how much she likes PJ and is attracted to him but she feels like he deserves better.
OH REALLY?
PJ nearly caved at this point.  Lucky I was there to save him.  All he needed to do to pass The Test was send a text saying actually, he can decide who he deserves, and he likes her a lot, and just wants to make her happy.  DINGDING!  Text from her saying she is confused and doesn't want to lose him.

Objective complete.  Lady sets Test, Man passes Test.

Objective 3: The Kill
It's crunch time.  She is on the thin line wavering between PJ, or dumpage.  This is a very delicate time, and won't last long.  It's time to get round there in an all guns blazing, "say hello to my little friend" moment.  (my actual advice was "get your ass round there with some flowers and don't leave til you've seen her.  Gogogo!"
So he went, and she was out, and so he sat outside in the cold wind with a bunch of roses like Hugh Grant in a silly romantic 'comedy'.  And when she came home, she fell into his arms like the silly girl in a silly romantic 'comedy' (kind of).  And she said she would not see the other guy any more, and she likes PJ more than she thought she did, and she wants to see him more.

Objective, and Mission, Complete.  All together now: Aaaaahh....

I'm a genius.  Or an agony aunt.  Or both.  Either way, it feels rather nice

Am I just incredibly immature, or is anyone else watching the game and giggling a little bit whenever the commentator says "Zhirkov" ? 

Hmm. I haven't even felt much like writing. I still don't now actually. it's like I have too many thoughts swimming around in the fish pond of my brain that I don't know which ones to write. 

In fact apart from a conversation about pink ninjas (so coloured so that they can blend against the wall of the pink house we walked past yesterday) I had with my boyfriend, it's all been a bit... bleh.

Gradually things at work got better over the week though.  Started with the Fool not really speaking to me, until by Friday, Manager took us both out for lunch, which was nice. 

My anxiety has been fairly stable too.  I hadn't really had any panicky moments at all, or even those niggly thoughts that keep the anxiety there simmering under the surface.  On the few occasions it did try to pop up, I sent it away again by breathing correctly and not thinking too much about it.  I have suddenly come to the realisation that at times when my chest starts to feel tight, or I'm getting that feeling of random fear, I do breathe far too quickly and too shallow.  So relaxing and taking deep breaths from my stomach, rather than my chest, is helping a lot.  And, I have my first psychology appointment on thursday.  So that should be interesting.

But then on wednesday my mum dropped the bombshell on me that she's feeling depressed again.

She has severe, chronic depression.  I remember the first time I found her, after her most serious suicide attempt.  We'd had an argument a couple of weeks earlier and I'd moved out to live with my boyfriend.  We patched things up but I didn't move back.  But I was still at college, and had exams coming up, and needed to study, so I'd asked if I could study at her place on a sunday afternoon.  She agreed.  But when I got there she didn't answer the door, and I didn't have any keys.  I remember eventually phoning her friend, and I don't remember why I did that, but she came round with her husband.  Then we phoned my grandparents friends, thinking they might have keys.  They didn't, but they came round to help.  In the end,
the two men went round to the back door and smashed a window to get in, then let us in the front.  I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs while they went up.  They wouldn't let me go up.  Then I heard them shout down to call an ambulance.  Obviously I ran up the stairs.  The two women tried to hold me back but they just held my coat so I shrugged out of it and kept going. 

I remember how my mum looked.  I thought she was dead.  Her eyes were half open, and there was dried white foam around her mouth.  I think at first, I thought she'd just been drinking, and had a fit (she's epileptic), because there was an empty cider bottle near the bed.  Then someone found the note.  I don't remember it very clearly.  Everything after that is a bit of a blur.  I remember someone taking me into the bathroom and sitting me on the edge of the bath while the paramedics came and dealt with my mum.  He wouldn't let me see the note but I made him tell me what it said.  She'd written to my brother saying not to think badly of his dad, that he still loved him.  And to me saying not to blame myself.  Obviously, I blamed myself.  I've never stopped.

Since then there have been too many suicide attempts to count.  I've not always been the one to find her, but a lot of times I have.  She was sectioned for a year in a mental health unit at the local hospital. 

Recently her depression's been better and they've sorted her medication.  And she's been so ill with her lung problems that I think she's been concentrating on getting better.  And now that's got a bit better, her depression's back.

Why I'm writing all this stuff, I don't know.

But I do know I had one of my first panic attacks around the time of her first suicide attempt.  At the time I blamed it on just starting the Pill, but maybe it wasn't.  I remember that I was laying in bed and thought I had a pain in my leg.  That led to me thinking I had a blood clot, and when the pain went, I inexplicably decided the clot was moving to my lungs.  Of course the chest pain I had then from the panic did not help matters.  I couldn't breathe, and my chest hurt, and I remember sitting up all night watching tv and thinking I should call an ambulance.  Then the next day I went to college, and I still had the chest pain, constantly.  I nearly passed out on the way to college, and when I got there my biology teacher saw how pale I looked and sent me home.  I went to the doctor who told me it was just a panic attack.  I just thought she wasn't taking me seriously.  The chest pains lasted a week until they eventually subsided.

Now there's also the business of my dad.  It's father's day today and I don't know what to do about it.  When I was 13 I decided to live with my mum, despite her alcohol problems she had at the time, instead of him, because of the emotional torment I suffered from his new wife.  He didn't speak to me again until I was 19.  No birthday card, christmas card, phonecall, nothing.  That was the original start of my emotional problems, maybe, because that was the time I started self-harming.  First the cuts on my hand, until my chemistry teacher noticed them.  Then I did them on my arm so I could hide them.  I remember having a lot of fights with my mum about it.  But I had a lot of supportive teachers at school that helped a lot.  I saw doctors and social workers and a child psychologist and in the end, just got better at hiding it. 

The thing is, I was always such a daddy's girl when I was a kid.  I remember when he used to go to work in the mornings, I would run to the front door as he closed it, and put his fingers back through the letter box, and I would hold them and not let him go.  I remember him being the one giving me pocket money and buying me presents.  My mum was just always there, of course, so I suppose I took her for granted.  But it did hit me hard when my dad just cut himself off from my life.  He wouldn't even answer the phone when I called his house, or his wife would answer and tell me to leave him alone.  He now blames her for his behaviour back then but I think that's a cop out.  He's now married to a much nicer lady who I get on with.  But the damage has been done and I find it hard to find love in me for him.  So I've never bothered with father's day.  I'll give him birthday and christmas cards, yes, but why celebrate father's day for someone who decided not to be my father for those years?  But then, how long before I can put it behind me and move on?  Can I be a hypocrite?  And not only that, but thinking about calling him was, I believe, one of the triggers for my last panic attack.

And then back to this week, and back to my mum...  She told me on the phone on thursday, when I was at work, that she was depressed again, and her cpn wanted to talk to me about some things.  I instantly went on the defensive and asked what things.  She said that it was because I haven't given her any rent money this month.  For a start, this was something we agreed on, because I had something else I needed to pay off this month.  And then I asked her, even if I gave her a million pounds, would it stop her being depressed?  Of course not.

But still when I got home the cpn lady was there.  And I freaked out, turned around and walked back out.  I went to the park and watched the ducks for a while, and then I went to my grandparents and talked to my grandad about his hernia operation.  By the time I got home, the cpn lady was gone.

I know I was probably wrong to do that but I'm not strong enough to handle these things at the moment.  I can't handle being told that if my mum wants to kill herself it's my fault.  Not that anyone says that directly but that is the implication I take from everything they say.

I think I've sorted things a bit with my mum now.  I've said I'll pay my share of the council tax this month and work something out for next month.  I stayed with Boyfriend this weekend and called mum last night and she said she felt ok but the crisis team took all her pills away. 

So I'm stuck here with all these thoughts and a loooong blog post which doesn't really even begin to cover it.  Good luck to my psychologist on thursday.  She's gonna need it.

V

It gets my goat when I go with my boyfriend to our local corner shop, and there's a group of silly 14-year-olds hanging around outside, thinking they look hard in their hooded tops and tracksuits that their mum washes and irons for them, that ask him to buy them cigarrettes and/or alcohol.

To those annoying little brats:  You're pathetic.  Get a life.  Then when you're old enough you can ruin it with fags and booze.

V

It really, really gets my goat when people get on a train and pick up a free newspaper that's on the seat next to them.  They start to read through it, and then the train gets to their stop.  But instead of putting the paper down for the next person to peruse, they put it in their bag and take it home! 

Those free papers are supposed to be for bored commuters.  If you really want to read a paper at home, stop being such a tight git and pay 30p for one at a newsagents.

V

Well the IF saga came to a bit of a head yesterday, and ended with IF sulking and refusing to talk to me.

The day before, I'd come across some invoices I couldn't pass for payment, because they just didn't match the order.  But as it was coming near to the end of the day, I made a list of them, and decided I would wait til the next day before I handed them over to my manager.

But the next morning, manager and I had to go to another office for a meeting.  In the car on the way there, I happened to mention that I'd made a note of some invoices I couldn't pass, but I wasn't entirely confident that they would still be there when we got back (ie, IF would have passed them against incorrect order lines).  Manager then asked me to check when we got back, and let him know if they were still there or not.

So when we got back, that's what I did.  And lo and behold, all but 5 of the invoices I hadn't been able to pass, had gone.  I decided to investigate, and found that they had indeed been passed against completely the wrong order lines, messing up the order.  So I went with Manager into a meeting room, and told him.  He seemed exasperated.  He just can't understand how IF can continue to cock up no matter how many times he's told not to. 

He called IF into the meeting room, and started with the words "I don't want to place any blame..."   Which, if I heard that, I would have interpreted as "I blame you Pikachu."  And, with me still in the room, he told IF about the mistakes I'd found.  He put it in a good way to be honest, and made it sound like I had just wanted to see how he passed the invoices considering I'd listed them as queries.  But I'm pretty sure IF took it that I had grassed him up, and had been checking up on him.  Which I suppose I had, but he shouldn't have kept cocking up then should he. 

Anyway I then got the silent treatment for the rest of the afternoon.  And when I got excited over my delivery of blue post-it notes (if you've ever worked for a long period of time in an office, you'll know how easy it is to get excited over something as seemingly mundane as the standard yellow post-it notes being replaced by blue ones), I heard him spitefully mutter "Pathetic."   Well he's the one twice my age who is sulking like a little girl because for once in his life he hasn't managed to con someone into thinking the sun shines from his backside, so who is really pathetic?  Manager said he would have a word with him, but I don't really care to be honest, and I certainly won't lose any sleep over it.  I've got the day off work today, and I intend to enjoy it :^)

V

If there's one thing that annoys me more than anything else in the universe, it's Incompetant Fools (hereafter referred to as IFs).

There is one particular IF working in my department.  Both me and my manager have noticed mistakes he's made over the last couple of months, and finally this morning Manager decided to have a word with him.  But still, an hour later, I noticed he'd made a mistake AGAIN!

It's not that it's easy to make a mistake in what we do.  Basically we match purchase invoices to the orders, select the order lines that the invoices relate to, and pass them for payment.  What we are not supposed to do is pass invoices that do not match the order at all.  In that case, we are supposed to go back to the people who raised the order and ask them to change it.  Obvious, one would think.

But IF is seeming to insist on passing invoices that do not match the order.  At all.  He'll just pick a completely random item on the order, and pass it that way.  And his reasoning?  "oh well it gets it off my list".

The annoying thing about it is that what's been happening is, an invoice will come in that I will see I can't match to the order, then we'll see that the reason we can't match it is because IF has used the order line for it already.  And then we have to explain to people in the buying department, and it just makes our whole department look bad.

It's now at the point where I'm going through the invoices and if I find one with a query, not only will I pass it to Manager, I also have to tell IF to leave it alone, because I can't trust him to notice the problem himself.  Because we've even had times where Manager has phoned the buyers, asked them to change the order, they've agreed to do it, but before they get a chance, IF has passed the invoice incorrectly.

Infuriatingly, he is supposedly my 'senior', so he gets paid more than me, even though I blatantly do a better job than him. 

And bizarrely, he actually thinks he's amazing.  He keeps going on about how quick he is at passing the invoices.  Yesterday he even had the cheek to say to me "I bet you're glad I'm passing so quickly so we clear the log, and you can get on with your own work."  I very nearly replied "Well it would help more if you did it right!"

I do all the passing of invoices for one of the subsidiary companies too, but that's on a different system and I'm the only one that knows how to do it.  It came up in a meeting last month that I should show IF how to do it so he can do it if I'm off sick or something.  But several wild boar are going to have to paraglide past my window wearing garlands of 4-leaf clovers and carrying fairies on their backs before I'll do that.  I'm not having him mess up all my work.

Grrrrr...

V

I have to admit, I'm somewhat addicted to Springwatch.

If you've never seen it (it's on every night on BBC 2), it's basically Bill Oddie getting excited over mating birds, and some guy in Scotland dressed like a yeti stalking wildcats.

But it's so good!  They have cameras in several nestboxes of different birds so you can see when the birds lay their eggs, the eggs hatch, and the fledgelings grow and leave the nest.  (Bill Oddie is also a living legend. )

It was funny watching it tonight actually because I was chatting online to Other Half at the same time.  He wasn't as impressed by it as I was.  When a pine marten was filmed snatching an egg from a nest box, and the bloke was getting rather excited about it because pine marten footage is pretty rare, Other Half typed "lol that was not amazing".  I said "you're not easily impressed, are you" to which he replied "well first he said they run and chase birds and cool stuff then he raids a nest and gets an egg".  I suppose when he puts it like that, I can see his point...   But I did not agree with him about the baby woodlice.  I said I thought they were cool, but his response was "u think lol I thought they was ugly."  *sigh*

Anyway, I just find it fascinating because the Pagan in me adores nature, and also because it's amazing to me to think that all of this is going on all around us.  Even where I live in London, I'm pretty sure there's a pair of blackbirds nesting somewhere, but I suppose I never really gave it so much thought.  They are busy full-time parents raising their little families all around us - and doing a much better job than some people.  This morning, Ziggy (my little black cat) brought in a toad.  Where he got it from, I have no idea.  And as well as the usual rats, mice and occasional pigeon, Smokey (my crazy half-siamese, half-panther) once brought in a bat.  It just shows the variety of life that lives alongside me, and I don't even notice it (until it's dragged half-dead and bedraggled through the cat flap).

I suppose it's made me realise that Nature is bigger than me.  Nature fights against people and continues its circle of life (cue Lion King song).  I used to spend a lot more time out in the woods near where I live, even walking in the park, places that are quiet and full of green and life, listening to the bird song and the insects and the wind in the trees.  I used to be a happier person then, I think, and I was a lot more inspired to write my novels than I am now, sat in front of a pc all the time.  My head was so full of ideas that I didn't have any space for worry.

So today's message to myself is, get out more!!

V

Really, it's been one of the best weekends I've had for ages.

I got paid on Friday so decided to go shopping on saturday.  Now the thing is, I do tend to get really lazy, and do my payday blitz on Teh Interwebz and get all manner of clothes, books, cds and games delivered to my house.  But this month I decided to go out with The Other Half.  It helped that he's fixed his sleeping pattern so we were both awake at a respectable hour of the day, rather than me waking up at 7am and waiting 4 hours for him to surface (plus an extra hour for him to drink his morning cuppa and actually drag himself out of bed).

So we found ourselves strolling into town at 11am, which was even better because it wasn't too crowded.  I get very very annoyed by crowds of people and usually end up with genocidal intentions towards the entire population of the shopping centre.  But I was in a good mood, and so was he, and we had a laugh and a mess around.

I ended up spending far too much money though, of course    I bought 3 new summer outfits plus some underwear, 2 cds (HIM's Uneasy Listening collection, and Lost Prophet's Liberation Transmission album), and 2 new games.  Buying Oblivion for the Xbox360 was a bit of an epic task.  The Other Half insisted it would be better if we got the 'game of the year' edition which included the expansion pack and would be cheaper than buying the original seperately.  Well we went in 4 different shops, and none of them had it.  GAME had the cases on display but did not have the game itself, which was annoying, especially as we had to wait for the shop assistant to finish chatting with his mate for 10 minutes before he would serve us   Then we decided to get the original game and the expansion seperately, but every shop had either one or the other, but not both.  So we had to buy the expansion in HMV and the original in GAME.  Well it was worth it :^)

I also got Age of Conan which I have to say does seem rather good.  It's very graphics intensive and I may have to invest in a new graphics card to get the most out of it.  I don't think I've played such a gorey game before, the blood effects are quite realistic and at times my character decides to decapitate her opponent, which is fun.  Although, how I'm going to fit in another MMORPG in with my work and WoW raiding schedule, I don't know.

All in all, despite the annoying heat, it's been a fabulous weekend for me, hope it was for you too :^)

V