Mental illness analysed

It was 955 posts already to the last one, not 916, they've really mounted up. Just get that correction out of the way. I was just reading something that reminded me how much Jewish humour is centred round mental illness. I said that people aren't bipolar, batteries are, but they fixed them when they started adding lithium. That is a typical example. Woody Allen made his millions purely by expressing neurosis, Seinfeld, the new series I love the Big Bang theory taking the mickey out of autistic spectrum disorders, and most of my own jokes since starting school. The world is a threatening place and anyone that sensitive reacts in ways that can only be joked about otherwise we'd all pack it in.

Jews don't get drunk as a rule, if they suffer they either complain or make jokes about it, usually a combination of both. I carry on this tradition and was so interested in mental health I made a profession treating it, as a calling. We are trained to see the funny side of problems so the sufferers can, although I don't laugh or make fart jokes as I would if not working. They do have boundaries. Maybe if I set myself up as the childish humour cure and made cracks about wetting pants, skid marks and opening the window maybe it would distract some people from their problems enough to distance themselves from them. Or maybe not. So I do it here instead. And everywhere else. But technically mental problems are only funny as an observer. If you have them they are no fun at all even when we make fun of ourselves. I'd rather not see crowds as threatening or travelling as a potential for disaster but if I can tell stories about looking for public toilets or queuing for hours to change flights home it can make it sound almost dramatic. In fact these experiences are hell, being stuck in any situation you can't escape is the ultimate driver of severe stress and easier to spend your life avoiding it rather than ever become immune to it, if that was even possible without tablets.

So although we can joke about counting cars and road signs and memorising phone and car numbers the actual reality is besides being able to recall lists from about the age of three, there is no other benefit in having a sharp mind as the rest means we notice every event and feeling and can't turn the reactions down. It also drives genius but in a world generally driven by averageness and mediocraty most people are prepared to put up with almost anything while we few can't bear the slightest discomfort, like the princess and the pea. But while royalty can just about escape the real world we are in the middle of it, and besides turning down 99% of invitations and avoiding half of the areas we live in then we are totally exposed to it all, worms and warts. But take away the heightened awareness and you become a zombie so hard to win. So make jokes about being stuck on the motorway, visiting psychiatrists, side effects of tablets etc but it's the price many of us seem to have to pay for our greater awareness of everything. Each time I read a list of famous sufferers from mental illness I wonder how many actually didn't have it.

So to conclude the story, my friends past and present include (at least) three bipolar, two psychotic depression, three paranoid schizophrenics, two depressives, an epileptic, an anxiety disorder, and probably quite a few more I've lost track of. Some also have none of the above and strangely enough tend to be the ones who disappear while the others are usually happy to hang around. I wonder if anyone else who hasn't actually met their friends in hospital as many do has the same collection or somehow I seem to have been fed these people, even though most had nothing wrong when I met them so can't say I had any part in it. I can't see my anxiety changing as it's no less part of me as my eyes, unless enlightenment is real and happens to me. Now if I became enlightened and kept it then I'd be a real curiosity, although I don't think it's meant to be possible to have both. Yet...

More pony and trap

One question that's occurred to me recently is how would other people react in my exact position? It's so easy to throw stones from outside when it's not your problem but being in a situation virtually impossible to alter by any means is going to get to everyone somehow as being in the crap is the same whoever's in it. That's a question up for discussion, I can add no more than present it, but these pages reflect that position.

Today for instance. Complete neutral. A free day from beginning to end and not an idea or person to fill it. I also know why some people go on about mundane details of their life like what washing they did or food they made. There's nothing else. Today was like that and I'm on my way to sounding like I have Alzheimer's at this rate. Have I told you I did the sheets last week? I was going shopping but I went to the park instead. That I do remember. And I got as far as Blackbird Cross and took pictures in the churchyard and found a few very nice paths there I'd never discovered before, tucked in between gravestones and chapels of rest. Here's one example:

If my websites represented the rest of my life I'd have a small empire of products by now. It's so easy to sit here and add to every aspect of my 7 or so personal sites and other forums around, and thank goodness all is read by a few or many people and appreciated by many as they say so (not here any more but they do). As unproductive I am in the real world is how I've transferred my productivity to websites. And I call the radio. All about creativity and exposure. I'm not a celebrity of any sort yet, but working on it. And I know it'll happen as my network of branches grows continually and one more, probably the biggest, is due in a few weeks. Meanwhile I am still obliged to fill the empty time as best I can, and I also mowed the front lawn later today, so people don't walk past and think that's where the plebs must live, for a few weeks anyway. Like having a haircut. And believe me, if I'm suffering from depression at any time at the moment it's for a very good reason. I feared being left alone for half my life and then it happened. As more and more situations happen each would be better when with someone else with you, and I don't. So I talk to my blog, the cat, the phone and radio presenters. But I can't see any and still wonder if anyone else is in the same position or actually cares?

All or nothing

Two in a day, though really the last one was yesterday but I live hours behind everyone. Today was my big day off. Health is clearly affected by stress and my tiredness appears to be connected with the return of the earache, all brought on by the sort of news I learnt some time ago we are all not immune from. You can't avoid any real disaster just like you can't make someone phone you when you're bored. All you do is avoid all the problems you can and get the ones you can't, which are as big as any others. Admittedly mine is only theoretical until the whole dispute procedure is over but as they say you are only in a situation where the potential is now, as in a football match. Unless I score 7 goals by the end of the second half I'm going to lose. So although it's possible it's not going to happen unless something changes pretty major.

I also realised all my life I've been drawn to all negativity as I see humour in it. Pleasure is fun for me and not for reporting. It's not funny either. When I told people the few really good things I'd done they glazed over and said I was boasting. So we all really hate to see others doing well unless we are as well. Otherwise we feel cheated. So even though it turns me into a potential depressive I am drawn to all disasters and find a fascination with failure and suffering. And when I talk about diarrhea, death, arguments, bad weather, being rejected and all the other regular parts of life we all hate but love to listen to, I find the audience enthralled. So although I'd prefer to be happy and successful somehow there's no story in it and it does seem by talking about the dirt and darkness it becomes the only reality for you as a result.
I felt cheated by life in as many ways as exist. Being an only child started me off as a solitary whinger and thinker and stopped me socialising with anyone but left wing intellectual jews of my parents' age. So by about the age of 7 I was a small version of Woody Allen, talking about medical issues gained from reading the family books since I could read, mental illness, dreams and failing at school, all through the hippy aura of 1967 onwards. Precocious I'm sure but age is never connected with wisdom, only experience, and I could sometimes see through teachers and others in authority as I could see at that age some of the bullshit ways they treated kids and talked down to them. Then I stopped growing at 14, at a typical 14 year old height. My friends all reached 6 foot and I rarly danced with a girl shorter than I was. Though they wore heels it still raised even the tiniest to my height and it must have taken me 20 years to realise there were other things that could attract women besides height.

Then I was kicked out of the family house at last, after hanging on for 5 years despite having a place of my own I came and went from. It was only as it was sold I had to go as it was no longer there the next day. 14 years later I'm still alone and with absolutely no logical way out. So th foundations for negativity are deep rooted and the easiest way to adapt and exploit is to make a story out of it. If people didn't respond I'd probably grow out of it, but like Tony Hancock most people can identify with the dropout and fall guys as it takes the heat of them. If someone treads in the dogshit first everyone else can avoid it. It's a role I never wanted but seem to be returned to, just like Buddha had to be Buddha I have to be the fall guy. So when I recover from one thing a day or two later something else happens. Had there been a gap I may recover properly, but each new disaster or problem comes now so soon after I leave the last the gaps barely notice and I just have a new turd to look at from the previous one.

Anyway, I retain a small amount of detachment as I know I'm doing it, and can see most of the reason is it's a script dying to be written. Until I can make a film or TV series of it my only chance to become the Tony Hancock of this century is describing my problems. Ideally it would become a career and by making a career half the problems would go as a result and then I'd just be pretending, much like Woody Allen does in his films. I hear he really isn't like that but it makes good movies. Just because he always plays the same character makes him no more that person as any other long running character. I'm still reading stuff about how to gradually switch your mind and even your life from negative to positive but the trouble is when negativity naturally comes into my life I have the ability to exploit it so it seems to almost be attracted and moulds my personality as a victim. I hardly need an analyst as I look in a mirror (the screen) and do it all myself.

Back to reality, my day off was still well used, I did a little work but have now completed the accounts and hope that's done for another year besides the tax entries I usually do. It did keep me busy but as always there was a sting in the tail when the figures I took from my computer were finally wiped out by the only written data we had, solely from having a set of data at home so I can work when I please. The end figure would have been identical but just not a shock as for a month we thought it was a couple of thousand more in the company's favour and when I finally used hard copy I found whatever figures I'd used here were baloney. Don't ever rely on a computer to store accounts. They can hide and change every entry you make and if you tag it with one it's not meant to have it'll turn up in the wrong place and fuck up every balance you try and make. I also took some architecture locally I was directed to from a flickr house group, which produced more nice ones, and collected a film my father had started and I finished of pictures about 3 years old to now. I posted the best online and some were quite good but not as good as with the SLR or digital. Compact cameras will always be toys and turn out random results as you can't see what you're taking or change what you see outside very narrow limits. I also called the radio and spent much of the remaining time on the phone. I hope to have a little walk next although it's freezing outside, since the global warming remains in the minds of the sheep who believe in it and the liars who told them it was here. If I said the martians are coming they'd lock me up, but if a politician says the world is going to burn (on just as little evidence) and gets enough of his colleagues to agree the lower orders fall for it hook line and sinker. How and why would elected and unelected superiors make stuff up to increase our taxes? Oh, the answer is in the question, ie 'to increase our taxes'.

In the same way terrorists allowed them to make our privacy and freedom of movement similar to Stalin's Russia and we thanked them for doing so, lying about a potential threat of a degree or two above what it is now making the world into Dante's inferno if they don't rob us blind is exactly the same scenario. Throughout history the world has been a lot warmer and colder, and there was more time with no ice at the poles implying warm is normal. Not to these arseholes. The fact oil and gas are running out now and we use them to keep warm tells me anything that keeps the north and south a little warmer will conserve these resources as you only cut your heating when the temperature goes up, unless you're stupid and follow the green lobby. Yes, far better to catch every germ going from hypothermia than actually have a quality of life. These sods who tell you to stop driving, lower your thermostat and use 3 watt lightbulbs so you can walk into the door or tread on the cat are not doing these things themselves believe me, except for the few so on the edge that they shouldn't be allowed to adjust their own thermostats. Most people do as they're told if they trust the source of authority. As I said, from an early age I tested every order, and was punished regularly as a result. As I just have been again, the biggest ever. If I said the money demanded most people would marvel such a sum existed to repay. I'm talking quiz show money. But in the negative. I seem to be being presented with every fear I ever had as a reality one by one, and denied most of my wishes, plus any wishes I had fulfilled were taken away as I explained (add mother leaving in 1981 to that).

Now if I could ever publish these stories and get paid it would fix the financial problem and the guilt about being one of the long term doleites. It would also add to my status and maybe even meet a few people through it. Tragedy has always been a big seller but although it's universal not many people exploit it and write about it. The trouble is I'm an authority on it and as soon as I drift towards normality something happens to send me back into negative mode where I am so comfortable and familiar and know exactly what to do with it as far as making it into a drama. Lose/lose situation, unless that book and film deal ever materialise.

One small bonus, the TV channel I was on last month and previously has just been axed. Thank god I was on and repeated 3 more times first as it could have happened at any time. It could be my last ever appearance for all I know but at least I appeared. Unless something really silly happens I will be on web TV any minute (read months) and will post a link but I think it'll be pay only, sorry. Ironic they've put me on a channel where no one can watch without paying when none of the cast were paid except the presenter. I don't make the rules...