Interlopers

I'm sick of sharing my house with interlopers.

All I want is to spend the next month or so without anyone sharing their opinion upon how I should live my life.

I don't want to feel obliged to talk to or feed anyone.

I don't want to listen to anyone whinge about how sick they feel.

If you're sick, go home to your mother because I don't want to know!

Oh and please don't tell me what I should watch or read...I'm old enough to make up my own mind!

As for telling me to go to bed...well you don't want to know where I want you to go!

Kate >:(

Being Erica

Hai hai,

Being Erica is a lovely Canadian show about  thirty-five year old woman who's life is full of dead ends. She enters into a agreement to participate in a radical new therapy to help her get her life back on track. The twist is that she gets to re-live days in her life, and see what changes if she acts to change the original outcome. Some things are able to be changed, others can't, and she needs to learn how to take the most from every situation...and learn that everything has consequences. 

The series starts out with Erica writing down all of her regrets. Which Doctor Tom then makes her re-live...forcing her to chose the same or different outcomes, and then live with the consequences.

So the point of this post was to ask this question that I found on the Being Erica website: If you could go back in time to any point in your life, what point would that be? Why would you choose that moment, and what might you do differently?

I have a heap of things that I'd probably do differently back in childhood...most of which centre around how socially awkward I am with peers. I would like to try talking to Dr Ziggy, way back when I was first diagnosed with depression, and try to get a more stable lifestyle sorted early on.

If we skip forward to young adult, I'd skip a couple of boyfriends, but add in a couple of others earlier on. Oh, I'd make the most of knowing people from other schools. Hmmm, and if possible I'd have stayed at school in Hamilton. I'd go to uni and study part time rather than full time...and hopefully finish that course. I'd also organise visas and work for while I was travelling in Europe.

I'd ride my horse more often, and keep up with hockey.

I'd make the most of revealing clothing, and feel good about my hair and figure.

I'd take back hurtful remarks which were only said to blend in with the crowd.

I wouldn't be afraid of being different or strong.

I would explain that I wanted to go to brownies and ballet so that I could see friends outside of school hours, not because I wanted to actually do those activites. I'd ask if I could call friends on the phone instead of assuming I wasn't allowed to use it. I'd organise sleep overs.

I'd be up front about hating public speaking, and not submitting homework which I thought was a waste of time. I'd be more insistent about studying latin rather than crap subjects like geography.

I'd say that I played the piano everyday, rather than let Gilly take it and sell it.

I would make Nonno write down a recipe for strudel, instead of letting him make piles of this and that. I like to follow a guide, even if eventually I substitute ingredients.

I would tell Nonno how much I was adding to the nest egg he'd given me.

I wouldn't just roll my eyes and go into another room when Nonno was telling me what to do...but ask him why instead, and perhaps even tell him my own thoughts on the subjects. LOL, although this would probably have hastened his thoughts that I'd defected from him.

I think I'd like to have asked Polly, Nonna and Nonno about their lives when they were younger.

I would like to have taunted Richard a little less.

Ok, i'm stopping there because I've just had a mood swing...and I'm not feeling all that pleasant.

It's almost funny but for most of this post I've been feeling happy and strong thinking about all the things I'd do differently. Yet when it came to thinking about Richard standing forlornly at my bedroom stairs, I hate that I put him through that...yet at the time it gave me a smug sense of power, which is why I repeated that weekend after weekend.

Kate

Shutter Island.

Hi ho,

Zak suggested that I watch shutter island, as it would be a movie that I would enjoy. :) He wasn't wrong. I was pulled right into the story (even if the acting was a little distracting at times).

This summary is from the IMDB website, which is where I look up all info on movies or TV programs. Shutter Island summary can be found here, as well as below.

• It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

The best bit however is the twist at the end, which I hope to not spoil for you.

Anyway, being a hospital for the criminally insane post WWII it's hardly an unusual propostition that you would see someone who is Manic-Depressive (BiPolar)...which of course you do. It got me wondering if Zak equated me with the Manic-Depressive in the movie, or if he hadn't connected the dots between A and B. Most likely he hasn't noticed the link. Which is quite sweet in a way...makes me feel that little bit more normal. LOL, on the other hand if he did link A and B, then I ought to feel quite insulted!

The BiPolar person isn't exhibiting symptoms aside from her psychotic break makes me wonder if Hollywood even bothers to research the illnesses they are trying to portray. It is however, quite obvious they seized upon the two illnesses that are well known to the public to help authenticate the Insane Asylum image. I suppose that I should be thankful I'm not Schizophrenic, as they were tared with the "I'm covered in my own filth" brush. So much for social media trying to educate the masses about mental illness.

So, back to me (lol, anyone would think it's all I ever talk about). Hmmm, I wonder if I could behave as calmly as the bipolar person did in the movie when they killed their family...I honestly doubt it. After having listened to the accounts of friends who have also dealt with BiPolar psychotic breaks, I doubt that any of them could say the same either. Usually there are lots of tears, shouting, rocking back and forth, clinging to loved ones begging them to stop the insanity...hardly any of which was evident in the movie version of a BiPolar break. Although I suppose since this scene was such a tiny part within the whole of the movie, I could cut them a little slack.

I suppose that if taken solely as a movie thriller, and not an accurate portrayal of mental illness (which is the position I ought to take) this movie captures exactly what Hollywood intended it to.  After all would people really want to go to the movies to see real life? 

Here's to the escapisim of movies, the knowledge that the good guys always win, Santa always arrives before the sun comes up, the funny guy gets the girl, kisses are accompanied by fireworks, and that everything is wrapped up in just over two hours.

Happy viewing!

Kate

For the love of deafies...

Hello,

This is a quick video post for all those like myself who are deaf enough to mis-hear every song and conversation.

Cheers Kate

Oh so in to cats (Fall Out Boy) - watch more funny videos

Death

Hello, 

I was just trawling through blogland, because Kelly suggested a link between Alice in Wonderland and bipolar, and of course that turned up a heap of bipolar blogs with people expressing their take on the subject.

Now this post isn't actually about Alice in Wonderland, although I may save that topic for another post down the line...this is about a video I saw on The Trouble with Spikol . Basically Spikol was talking about the allure of having a terminal illness since it would wrap up her life nicely, and that the way people view life and death is highly subjective due to their experiences.

Now here are my thought's on the subject:

I have never thought about wanting a terminal illness, but that is probably because I'm the daughter of a nurse...although I can certainly understand the appeal of it as it was described as "wrapping everything else up nicely". A huge benefit would be to surviving family, knowing that you hadn't taken your own life. Thereby circumventing all the ill feelings they would have to reconcile as they dealt with you actively choosing not to be in their lives any longer.

Now as you know, I'm fairly well medicated and live an almost stress free life so that my mood swings are mostly under control...but that doesn't mean that the very first thought 98% of my mornings isn't "I wish I was dead.". I've also lived though enough depressions now that I know that if I can make it through each day, eventually the depression will lift.

I joke about life with my family, and that I'm aiming to be 125 years old...they all think I'm crazy for wanting to be a decrepit old person for that long. However I look at it as make up time for all the crappy bit's that I haven't been able to live because I haven't been able to enjoy my life.

I have a Do Not Resucitate order known to my family if my brain or organs are damaged enough to not function for whatever reason. lol, but i'd also like to be stuffed with movable limbs, so that my family can keep me around forever.

So I suppose I'm stuck half wanting to be in this world and half not wanting to be here. I've done my best to limit the impact I have on the world, so that my ups and downs create as little mess as possible. I'm not having kids because that's unfair to them, although I love my neice and nephew to bits, and would miss them if they stopped coming to stay every week. All of which I've expressed many times before. I certainly try to live a full life within the limits I've set for myself. There are things I regret, but there have also been many unexpected pleasures that have resulted from the way I live.

So, Spikol has an ongoing thought in her head about how nicely things would be wrapped up if she were to die that way. Myself, I can't combobulate terminal illness as an answer for my life...the accompanying pain for a start throws up a flag, and has me asking do I really want to make things worse before they get better? Personally I can think of far more pleasurable ways to spend the last days of my life, and then round it all of with a quick death. That of course has me putting my own needs before others...Spikol's tidy death put's others needs before her own, but if you're going to go down that path then you may as well bite the bullet and keep on living. Which defeats the purpose of an early death.

I know that occasionally in the depths of a depression I've thought that everyone would be better off if I wasn't around, but the fact is I'd be depriving all the people I know of my wonderful presence. I have friends and family who actively seek to spend time with me, so therefore there must be something about me that they see as being beneficial to their lives. So, even if I can't see the point in me being here, they can...which I suppose is the ultimate reason for me still being around.

The only other reason, could be that there is something I'm meant to discover and share with the world, lol, but I hardly see that happening any time soon.

Hmmm, I wonder if I did discover something and spread the word about it, if I'd up sticks and die the next day? My purpose in the world having been fulfilled, and all that? I wonder how many people die thinking that? Maybe I should go and hang out in terminally ill wards, just so I can hear the pearls of wisdom that tidily wrap up other peoples lives. I may discover the meaning to the life the universe and everything. Although most of the nurses i've listened to in my life, probably wouldn't recommend that...and I can't say that they have any more answers than the rest of us.

Did you know that combobulate isn't really a word? Discombobulate is, but apparently it came about fully formed. It's derived from words akin to discomposed, discomfit and other words of like. Although combobulate could make it into the english lexicon, if enough people were to use it...such is the beauty of the english language.

Yet again I've waffled on and off topic, as is my wont. So I'll leave it at that...and prepare the easter egg hunt for the kids in the morning (well in a couple of hours time actually).

Cheerio,

Kate