The Last Week...

So as I approach the last week in my job the thing I'm finding the hardest is dealing with other people's sadness. Having to navigate so many other people's feelings about me having my job cut when I've already got so many feelings of my own. I feel sad because I'm leaving a job I have loved (in varying degrees) for the last 5 or so years. I feel lost, scared of the free fall that is freelance that approaches so fast and so slow. There's no security in my future and I'm dealing with this at the same time as I'm managing and finally acknowledging my long standing cycles of anxiety and depression. I'm also sad for the children and parents losing the service me and my team provided. And all the other even more essential services. I feel sad at a society cutting public services whilst protecting and pandering to the rich. And I feel sad just on the personal level of saying goodbye to so many people I have worked with, the children I have seen growing up, the colleagues and parents I have come to know. 

And at every centre when I tell my groups I am going everyone wants to share with me how sad they are about it. Everyone wants to tell me how much they value what I do, the effect that me and my team have had on them and their children. People tell me how angry it makes them. They ask me what I'm going to do. They have so many suggestions about what I might do. Everyone offers advice and sympathy. Next week I expect they'll also be offering presents and goodbye speeches. 

When I tell them I am going freelance they assume I'm doing children's work. When I start to mumble about audio production and hosting storytelling nights they look at me like I'm suddenly strange and unfamiliar. My plan sounds ridiculous in my mouth. 

I am overwhelmed by all the love and the sadness. I am overwhelmed by the scatter gun advice. I am overwhelmed by the powerlessness of all concerned. I know it's all meant well. I mostly manage to take it in good grace. I save my tears for the walk home. 

The worst thing is when the kids are sad, there eyes are so big, their hearts so exposed. The worst thing is imagining the ones who look forward to seeing me every week coming in the first week I'm not there. Too young to understand why and yet so young that in the future they probably wont remember I was ever there at all. Young enough to feel the loss but too young to remember the joy we had when then look back. 

Children give the best heckles:

Me: There are lots of frogs around at the moment...

Child 1: There are lots of dragons around at the moment. I like dragons. They are big and breathe fire. They are my favourite animal. 

Child 2: I like dinosaurs. They are MY favourite animal. 

Child 3: I like crocodiles!

Me: Well, dragons are really great animals but sadly they don't exist. Dinosaurs are also great animals but they lived a very long time ago and aren't around anymore. Crocodiles are also great but you don't really find them in this country. Anyway frogs...

#TimeToTalk

Today is #timetotalk which is set up to get people talking about mental health issues, to combat the stigma and make those of us who experience them feel less alone, and to encourage people to actively try to get help. 

Some of you who know me personally may be aware that I experience a wonderful combination of anxiety and depression with additional sprinklings of rage. I have panic attacks generally triggered by crowds or similar claustrophobic moments. 

I've had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and found it useful. I've never been able to get talking therapy on the NHS but I'm lucky as I have a conversation based podcast that has really helped. I'm currently not interested in medication although I know many who it works very well for. I do drink far far less often than when I was younger as people occasionally note. That's helpful. 

I've always been very open about the rage part because I like to wallow in guilt and put people in positions where they can think the worst of me (whilst desperately hoping they won't.) Although ironically that's the part I've always had the most success in controlling. It took me years to admit to myself I suffer from depression and anxiety, partly because since I "cope" I've never felt those labels were mine, knowing so many friends and family members who suffer those conditions more acutely or other conditions that are life debilitating. Even writing this I am battling the thoughts telling me I'm a fake who is appropriating others pain. But I know that is just my self-loathing and anxiety talking. 

The thing about trying to deal with these things alone (still my default instinct sadly) is it makes you isolated as well as anxious and depressed. Also it means that the only person who sees me at my worst, who has to deal with all the shit I'm holding back and hiding it my partner, which in turn makes me feel guilty about that too. It amazes me that she's stuck with me these last 13 years considering how terrible I have often been to live with. 

And let's be clear when I'm talking about depression I'm not talking about feeling sad, I'm talking about wishing that I didn't exist, that I was rubbed out, that nothingness could embrace me. It's not sad it's empty, it's numb, although inside that numbness or maybe behind it are the squirming maggots of anxiety telling me I'm worthless, toxic, ugly, weak, pathetic etc...

Anyway, there we go, that's me. Or rather one facet of many that form me. Not one I want to be defined by but one that I am sick of denying. 

I think talking is good. And the more we talk about difficult issues the better it is for everyone. But not everyone is ready. Not everyone has access to safe ears to listen. Attitudes out there are pretty shitty. Let's try and talk more and listen more. Let's try and be understanding. 

Here's a conversation I had with my Aunt that talks about her much more severe mental health issues.

https://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-125-margaret

The reason I am wearing these rings...

This morning shortly after waking up I was put into a coffin dead with a load of vampires, skeletons and Cleopatra but luckily I was found by an explorer employed by the Queen of Canada. This explorer explained to me that I was dead but she could make me alive. She had better do it quick because Cleopatra wanted to mummify me and she apparently takes people's brains out of their skulls through their noses with tweezers. That didn't sound fun so I was pleased that the explorer was also the Queen of Canada's chief medical practitioner. She slowly took me through a series of medical treatments (some of which also involved hairdressing expertise) which ended in major surgery to restore my facial expressions. There was no anaesthetic but there was a blindfold. The doctor plays the Sugerbabes when operating and has to apply perfume during procedures to protect herself from dying. These rings we're then applied to keep me alive. After a week they can be removed and I will be fully alive. 

Apparently all this would have been solved quicker if we'd removed my beard. 

#InternationalMensDay #IMD #IMD2013

I am not an international man because I do not recognise the bullshit values of male honour, patriarchal family structures and patriotism. These are the ways patriarchy oppresses men and are not something to be celebrated: 

http://www.internationalmensday.com

Bat Contradictions: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/15/batkid-san-francisco-charity-make-wish

I do find this story heartwarming and at times it brings tears to my eyes when I consider the community spirit and compassion that went into it. Those bits in the movies always get me from "I'm Sparticus" to It Could Happen to You. And it's great to see people coming together and people embracing the magical and absurd. It is a candle in the darkness. 

But it also makes me think about how this magic event for one lucky kid is such a stark contrast to the lives of many kids. It makes me wonder why something like this happens for a child recovering from cancer and yet children with the preventable and human caused conditions of poverty and war do not get such amazing moments. 

I find myself questioning the value of a charity that provides wonderful moments to individual children who already have some luck and privilege going for them rather than putting those resources elsewhere. Even as I love them for making something so beautiful for all the rightest of right reasons. 

It's a complicated mass of contradictions and overlapping truths really. Like most things in life. 

One thing that I also find conflicting is that part of it involved the helpless woman tied up and saved by a hero trope. Which I'm not sure I'd advocate infusing the next generation with. 

@GBApodcast: What you might have missed:

So recently the feed on my podcast stopped working for a bit. 

The episodes of the GettinhBetter Acquainted (www.gettingbetteracquainted.co.uk) podcast that you may have missed due to feed issues are below. If you follow this link: 

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/getting-better-acquainted/id436643148 

you can resubscribe to the now properly working iTunes feed where they are all now available. Your old feed will look like it should work but it doesn't. 

Samantha Feeney #2 - relationships falling apart, becoming a single parent, getting your life back together and embracing a new start.

John Adamthwaite - playwriting, theatre, how to fit writing plays into your life and if it's a medium that is relevant the modern world.

Charley Lucy Harrison - family, divorce, storytelling, comedy, bitcoin, complicated childhoods, rat based tragedy and everybody's wall's.

Carl Jackson - travelling around the world, neuroscience, culture and the merely real.

Nina Gray - bullying, complicated childhoods, feminism(s), mental health, France, twitter and spider diagrams.

Paul Jerome Anderton - equal marriage, immigration, life changes and the death of his father. Running through everything a sense of history. 

Caz Dyer - changing perspectives and perceptions, Honduras, plans to cycle from the UK to Africa, teenage stories from the POV of an ex "Mean Girl" and an ex "severely bullied geek".

The Osmaston Family Special - A personal journey into the unknown territories of family history featuring rediscovered wartime diaries, the legacy of the British Empire, childhoods in India filled with tigers and elephants, engineering the industrial revolution, walking on graves, landed gentry and confronting the judgement of my 15 year old self.

And...

Tony Hickson - knife throwing accidents, impersonating Elvis on Channel 5, being a paparazzi photographer, transgressive art, travelling with the Circus, the World Gurning Championships, and serial killer puppet shows.