Benefits - As IF.

      6 years ago I was a valued colleague. 
I had a good career, bright prospects and a good wage. 
I had a pension. Good holidays. 
I was contributing to society. 
I was teaching English and social skills to young, disaffected teenagers who were so often in need of firm boundaries; steady, fair reliable adults who could help to rebuild some of the trust and respect that they lacked. 
I was passionate, respected, consulted. 

      How is it then, that 6 years on, this same young woman sits with her support worker, filling in a form for Disability Living Allowance?
How did she go from the shiny, high gloss teacher to the redundant, matt -finish patient?

      The change was staged, steady. I was stripped, planed, sanded and my identity fell away... disintegrated, replaced by the illness...  
Suddenly, I'm not 'a Teacher' anymore. ("Hi! I'm a teacher too! What do you teach? Me? Oh I do Key Stage 3 and 4 English"). 
Not anymore. 
Now I'm: 'an Anorexic'. 

      I  don't have an income. I've lost my career. I don't have holidays.
Days slip past me. I am overwhelmed by small things. Most days end without ceremony. I have achieved nothing. Thousands of hours and nothing to show. 

      Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what this section of the form seemed to demand, I left it blank.
And so my Support Worker wrote a few clinical / medical comments.

My claim for benefit will be submitted today. 

But really...

...benefits..? 

I'm trying so hard to see anything that would justify the use that word.

Where Were You? A Cry for Those Who Feel Forgotten.

In the months following my 'release' from inpatient treatment, I've joined a writing group. 
I joined on the premise that it seemed to be a very relaxed, sociable, light hearted group which, whilst keeping 'writing' at its core, didn't take it all too seriously.
As it happens, my impressions of it were correct. We meet on Tuesday evenings in a pub. A good situation (although, for those of us with Anorexia, the calories in alcohol are enough to send us running for the Diet Coke).
The group is made up of characters who are intriguing, inspiring and... talent wise, fairly intimidating! Although I can only recall one person who is remotely self important, most of the regulars (around fifteen or so) are published; some are even fairly prolific writers. 
Tonight there was a 'showcase' evening. where folk were invited to read something they'd written in the past.
It would have been too revealing, too personal, but a poem I wrote (and posted here years ago) has been in my mind, (called forth in a very roundabout sort of way) by a poem I read on someone else's blog. An honest poem about desperation and despair.

This poem was written in the aftermath of my own depression, and is not without its own, very potent, sense of anger. I apologise in advance if readers find it offensive. I post it here as a kind of offering to those who have suffered in silence, or have been unheard.
It's for those untouched by comfort, not necessarily because it wasn't there, but because the pain was in a hidden place.
It's a bitter cry, best cried alone, but until it's been cried, it can't fall away.

Where were you when I needed you?
When darkness cast death into me?
I bled black for years
Tears turned to stone and I screamed
each time I passed a tear through ducts
too small for stones.

Where were you when I had words,
to spill and spout and squander?
And my arms ached and ached
from holding the binding skeins apart.
And I retched unseen as they tangled
and strangled deep in my gut.

Where were you when I was fighting?
Punching holes into a silent wall,
Spitting truth bullets into denial’s flesh,
Kicking the dust and biting angry hands
that levered my bitten swelling lips apart,
and rammed words back down my throat.

Where were you when the salt burned like sulphur?
My beaten pillow, wet with censored pain
And twisting, I writhed with the knowing
Of things yet unknown.
And my cheeks smarted with their rage
Truth- shy handprints scorched my skin

Where were you when nothing was left
When slivers of cold metal comfort
Whispered sweet numbing into flesh
And I bled silent pools of hidden screams
On shiny, hard bathroom floors

Where were you when sweat and tears
Plastered matted hair to my face?
Smothering silent screams,
I twisted and turned and gasped,
As I aborted myself
and bled secret shame
onto my sheets

And it’s too late now
For your saving reach
My cold corpse
Can’t feel your comfort
And it’s too late now
To breathe life
Into the bloodless womb

“I want to understand”
Echoes in the hollow
And I am filled with sickness.
And grief swells like thunder

In my head
I spit on your floor
And walk away.
You can pay your respects
But don’t fuck with the dead.

On The Other Side.

"...But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
Sometimes the wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens
later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation...
...I have infinite faith in the craft of surgery, but no surgeon can heal the kind of wound that divides two brothers (siblings)"

Abraham Verghese

Cutting For Stone

As I am having huge problems finding words at the moment I have resorted to using those of others.

This resonated as I read it the other day.

There's not a lot out there which acknowledges the impact of damage between siblings.

I remember in the early days of my sister's anorexia, when the wound of her violent and total rejection was still so, so raw and my flesh unaccustomed to the pain, searching high and low for books about anorexic siblings.

All I found was a reasonable amount of literature on 'Helping Your Child Eat' or 'Coping With An Anorexic Child'. That kind of thing.

A good few years ago, I figured that one day I might have found the healing and the balance I needed to help me write a book about anorexia with siblings in mind. I thought that somehow, I would be able to look on the years of loss with the glow of gentle understanding borne of the twisting grief of watching the slow suicide of a sister I loved with everything I had.

It would be called, "On the Other Side" in reference to a range of recurring nightmares I had for the first ten of the seventeen years of her illness. The dreams were all variations on the same theme... I was always stuck on the other side of the shatterproof, soundproofed window as she was mugged, the other side of the pond as she was buried in the mudslide, the other side of the turquoise lagoon as she drowned.

And the feelings are indescribable and yet, so many of us are familiar with the extraordinary pain of watching those who we love the most, kill themselves slowly and painfully, whether that be through eating disorders, drug addiction, alcohol dependency or just very, very poor life choices.

Not to minimise the angst of those who are compelled towards death by the strength of their addictions, but I honestly believe, and I'll speak only for myself in an attempt to avoid sweeping generalisations... I honestly believe that it is more painful to watch someone you love in agony than it is to be in agony yourself.

The Other Side exists for all of us at some point in our lives, but rarely to the degree that it does when it is the absurd chaos and torment of severe mental health problems and addiction that tear a family apart.

No surgeon can heal the wound that divides two sisters. If I could find one who did, I'd sell everything I ever had.

Christmas - The Best and The Worst

Polarity
is the word that springs to mind.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I'm not a huge Dickens fan but this is one of my favourites.


Christmas can be a time of magic where, without even realising it, a mysterious sense of wonder can seep into even the heaviest heart, piping the edges of dead dreams and hopes with fine,spider-spun, incandescent threads.
Childlike innocence, a longing for something greater than 'us', the sudden warmth in a stranger touched by 'Christmas spirit', the unfamiliar sense of community... Christmas holds people, just for a brief, flickering moment, in a warm palm of purity, goodness and equality.
Gone are the British class boundaries and the pretensions and graces.
Just for a moment, we are bought together by an affinity that may only be described as supernatural.

All this said, Christmas can be the very worst of times.
Nothing blows colder than the wind of grief, loss and loneliness experienced by those who suffer at this time of year.
Many of us have been there. Standing outside the beautifully adorned windows of houses which glow golden Christmas light and sparkle with velvet laughter and heavy blanket heat.
Nothing like being on the other side of the pane, with the cold ache of despair that cannot be touched by the warmth you are surrounded by.

The cold isolation is felt all the more as you gaze at the dancing flames you cannot feel.

Christmas is a mix for most.
A time when the temperature is rarely consistent.

For those who can stay warm, I wish you a wonderful, peaceful, hopeful Christmas.

For those who have a little more trouble with the thermostat... or those who are cannot even make it past a front door, I pray that you would find the strength to hold on, hold out for the next day when it may not feel much warmer, but at least the "lack of" will not be so acutely emphasised.
I pray that you can hang in there for the aftermath when Christmas has passed and the pain is not highlighted so acutely.

I don't mean for this to be a depressing post.

I just want to acknowledge the two sides to this season and to reach out to those who are feeling despair.
You are not alone.

The Joys Of Disorganised Attachment.

A few weeks ago my therapist noted that I had a very disorganised attachment pattern.
At the time, I wasn’t the least interested in what she was saying and put it down to just the usual psycho mumbo jumbo that abounds in that particular sphere.
I have blogged about this before. It’s the second or third time she has mentioned it in passing. I’d love to have the ... whatever it takes...(guts perhaps?) to have asked her what she meant but at the moment, for reasons that are, quite churlishly, sticking their fingers up whilst urinating up the wall of the logical corner of my brain, I feel as though her kindness is a poisonous solution being drip fed into me. Hence, no questioning the therapist.
However, alone I crumble. And so again, I knelt at the font of Google in search of answers.
What IS a disorganised attachment? And for that matter, what the hell IS attachment? (I saw dozens of brand new Dysons being showcased and demonstrated by men with very white teeth (not sure where that came from) each displaying a technologically ingenious array of attachments).
Anyway. Turned out it has nothing to do with hoovers.
In brief, and I’m not remotely up on psychological theories so, if you know better, feel free to correct me...
There are all different types of attachment but they all concern the relationship between a child and its caregiver (often the mother).
A secure attachment appears to be th 'ideal'. The child's world is hunky dory because the mother is attentive to her baby's needs therefore allowing the child to build a healthy dependency, sense of security and protection.
With me?
Ok. In all honesty...? How many people get that.

The following is information I found on a Canadian website called AboutKidsHealth

Disorganized/disoriented attachment
There is a group of children (15-20%) who do not fit into Ainsworth’s original three-category scheme. Mary Main, another influential attachment researcher, added a fourth category to include these children.
Whereas children in the 3 primary attachment groups have organized strategies for dealing with arousal, disorganized children either lack an organized pattern to their behavior or have strategies that repeatedly break down. When stressed, in the presence of their caregiver, these children appear disorganized or disoriented displaying unusual behaviors such as approaching the caregiver with their head averted, trance-like freezing, or strange postures. These behaviors have been interpreted as evidence of fear or confusion with respect to the caregiver. Disorganization is considered an extreme form of insecurity.
Many children who fall into the disorganized category have experienced some form of maltreatment or have a parent who has been traumatized by severe loss. Other stressful situations involving reorganization of the family such as family moves or the birth of another child may also temporarily disorganize attachment patterns in a child.
The unusual behavior of the disorganized child is more difficult to understand even when considered from the child’s perspective. Many children with disorganized attachment patterns have been subjected to highly stressful, chaotic, and frightening environments.

So basically, pretty much anything could create a disorganised attachment. What interested me though was this...
...

Disorganized attachment sometimes occurs following extreme loss on the part of a parent. Researchers speculate that parents who are unable to recover from tragic losses (e.g. death of their own parent, abuse by a parent) subtly communicate a sense of anxiety and fearfulness to their child. This situation is highly disorganizing to the infant because the person who is supposed to be a source of comfort is also a source of fright and anxiety. Faced with this impossible situation, the child’s attempts at an organized strategy break down.

My mother lost her mum as a young child. Sent away to a boarding school within a year, she never got over the loss.
As a very small child, I remember her father as a stern but formidable old man who wore beige cardigans and smelled of cigars. The unresolved loss of her mother must have near killed her when he died.
Then, her most treasured sister died.
I was about 5.
I have an unaturally bad memory. 1 gig at most. I jest but I have considered the possibility of early onset dementia. You laugh, but you don't know just how much of a black hole so much of my mind is.

Children who show disorganized patterns of attachment in the Strange Situation Paradigm at one year of age have the greatest risk of aggressive behaviour, conduct disorder, and dissociative behaviours later in life. Dissociative behaviours involve a breakdown in a person’s perception of his or her surroundings, memory, identity, or consciousness.

The point I was making (before I rudely interrupted myself with a quote) was that although I remmeber nothing, my younger sister remembers my mum crying every day for a long, long time.
Grief?
I don't know.
But.
This disorganised pattern begins to look... Well... I won't say convincing because my layers of cynicism are not THAT easily pierced, but.

I could go on but I won't. It'll be another post.
Given that I have been attempting to articulate this post for over a week now, it is fair to say that I am finding it a real battle to allow myself to make anything too concrete or 'real'.
This whole journey is proving to be a lot harder than I thought, and for different reasons.
When I started out, I never figured that I would be my biggest obstacle.

Learning From Lyrics III - Another Brick In The Wall Part III

The final part of the Another Brick In The Wall trilogy is perhaps the hardest for me to write about.
The lyrics show the result of years and years worth of bricks being piled one on top of another to form a brick wall, the scale and fortitude of which is not really even noticed whilst it is being built. In fact, it is only really recognised when the wall has become so inpenetratable that feelings can no longer be clearly identified.

In this last piece of Pink's building work, there is a change in tone, both musically with the addition of a previously unheard aggression, and more importantly (to me) lyrically.

Another Brick In The Wall, Part 3 (Roger Waters)

I don't need no arms around me
And I don't need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

The first two parts of The Wall reveal how the foundational bricks have been early experiences of loss, grief and rejection. Later, during Pink's adolescence, the wall was cemented and fortified with his experience of shame. More than that, his sense of being shouted at rather than listened to; humiliated instead of nurtured; and made to stand still and look disgust in the face, rather than encouraged to grow as an individual with a voice.
How many of us lost our voices when we were talked at instead of listened to?

The third part is different. It's a part that I feel I could have written myself and it's a part that no matter how hard I try, I won't be able to fully convey it's meaning because it speaks to a broken part in my heart rather than a logical place in my head.

In my experience all our walls are built with bricks that revolve around one major theme and no matter what different names and experiences each brick has, the theme cements them together.

Unmet needs.

The need we had to be loved, accepted, heard, held, invested in, trusted, fed.

When we have enough unmet needs to cement all our bricks of loss, rejection, grief, abuse... When the walls are so high that we no longer have clear memories of the things that caused us pain... THEN... Then the wall has become our prison as well as our protection.
The wall doesn't just protect us, it prevents us.
We don't feel the bad but we don't feel the good either.

For me, this is where depression steps in.

And in depression, there is only the dull, interminable and indescribable pain of depression itself. You feel the dark shadows cast by the wall, and you feel the dreadful heaviness of the bricks, but you no longer recognise the shame, the loss, the rejection that built it.

Pink sings about no longer needing anything from anyone.
Why?
Because it is just too painful to need things and to never get them.
It's easier to kill the need than allow the desperation of having the need and the pain of never having it met.
We've all done it... We've all experienced the situation where, for example, we haven't recieved the invite we had expected.
"I didn't really want to go anyway".
I work with some fairly damaged young people (and yes, I do see the irony). They are masters of self protection. Their walls are spiked with broken glass and barbed wire.
Last year a tough lad agreed to take an exam. He expected to pass despite refusing to do any work for it.
When he failed he was so upset he turned a table upside down. I told him he could retake it and it was no big deal and all he could tell me was that he didn't want the qualification anyway. He hadn't wanted it in the first place.
We don't get our needs met so we stop needing. We DENY needing.

I feel just like the kid whose anger quickly turned into 'I didn't want it anyway'.
Pink doesn't "need no arms" around him.
I know that feeling.
It's the dead, dessicated pain of not being held when you most needed it.

It is almost too frightening to consider needing anything or anyone and I hear Pink singing about the deadness I feel in this last part of Another Brick In The Wall.

Learning From Lyrics II (more on Pink Floyd)

Having identified the experience of loss, rejection and betrayal as foundational bricks in The Wall, I'm going to go on and have a look at Part II of 'Another Brick in the Wall' (and thanks to the lovely Gail, I can also hopefully manage to embed the song! - I say 'hopefully' warily!)

Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (Waters) 3:56

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

"Wrong, Do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

The haunting tones of a young child in the first part of the trilogy, are here replaced by those of an angry and rebellious adolescent. Rather than the earlier focus on loss, the theme changes to the damage done by the 'dark sarcasm' of teachers during school years.
(It occurs to me as I write that, paradoxically, the double negative in the first line is indicative of the fact that they DO need education!)
Waters' experiences with education clearly had a negative effect on him, as he writes about the oppressive schooling which became, 'another brick in the wall".

Few people I know came out of school unscathed and I can particularly identify with these lyrics as I recall a certain year in a very small Roman Catholic Primary School where the numbers were so small that children in Years 5 and 6 had to share a teacher and classroom.
The teacher I refer to was notorious for being a horrible, unfeeling man who had little patience for any child who he deemed to be 'weak' (sounds slightly Victorian, I know. In actual fact, he was a Northerner living with a load of 'soft Southerners' and there was truth in the stereotype in this instance).

I watched that man bully my middle sister, week anfter week, as she failed spelling test after spelling test (because she was dyslexic and not academically inclined).
He would make the class sit down as counted down from 20 out 20 to 10 out of 20 (by which time only a few students were left standing. As he got even lower, I would sit twisting my pencil in my hand, willing him to have mercy.
4 out of 20. My sister would still be standing, by this time, visibly trembling with her face and ears burning.
When she couldn't stand the humiliation anymore, her reddened face would screw up and she would begin to cry with the desperation of someone who knows that they can't afford to be crying.
"Go boil yer head", was his usual, disgusted, response.

I would grip and twist my pencil until it hurt. The unbearable stiffness in my spine makin it hard to even breathe properly as I visualised stabbing him with the pencil, or heroically facing him with the all the cold, angry bitteness of a ten year old child who has yet to become immune to watching the same sister suffer.

Despite the fact that my career revolves around education, I find myself wincing when I see colleagues treating young people badly.
Even in the slightly more emotionally 'enlightened' era we now live in, I would bet that most teachers have NO IDEA how much damage they may potentially do to a vulnerable young person.

When Pink sings about education in Part II, I think that he is referring to the shame that comes from being subjected to mockery, sarcasm, humiliation.
You want a wall built fast? Shame is your material.

Learning From Lyrics (Even More Words on Walls)

Ok. So... If anyone knows about walls, it's Pink Floyd.

I've been thinking about his wall-themed-songs (penned by songwriter Roger Waters) over the last week or so but haven't managed to write anything, partly because I haven't had the time to do so and partly because I am feeling a sense of deadness (which is another post altogether).
Please bear with me as I attempt to collate the assortment of jumbled thoughts I have had about Water's lyrics and why I think they are such a powerful metaphor. It's a work in progress ok?! (Ain't we all!).

Anyway, for those who are not familiar with Pink's brilliant 'The Wall' album (and to be honest, I'm not a raving fan, I just happened to like this album when I was teenager dreaming of rebellion) there are three parts which specifically make use of the wall metaphor.
I have a feeling that when examined closely, Pink's wall might well have similar foundations and similar bricks to the ones that many of us 'building types' have used.
I'm going to start with the first.

Another Brick in the Wall. Part 1

Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
Snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?
Daddy, what'd'ja leave behind for me?!?
All in all it was just a brick in the wall.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.

The haunting first part of the trilogy refers to Water's father, who left to fight in World War II and never returned.
In this very short verse, we hear the the innocent, and naturally egocentric, questioning of a small child as he struggles to comprehend the loss he has suffered, interpreting it as a rejection.
There is also perhaps, a sense of anger and of bitterness in the question about what the father had left behind, apart from a memory and a photo.
The wall has started in the child. It is not something that the child has planned or wished for. It wasn't a brick that was selected or specially placed, but the impact amounted to the foundations for the wall.

Loss.

I wonder how many of us have walls with huge bricks which would, if touched, speak of loss and grief.

I'm not just talking about death either. I'm talking the loss of anything.
Even if Water's father had returned from that war, it would still have been a loss when he left; a feeling of abandonment would still lodge itself somewhere in the child's frightened mind.
Rejection too. Powerfully destructive and it forces in some of us, a need to protect ourselves from a future of rejections and losses.
We build a wall.

Few children are emotionally equipped to deal with the emotions that swell in and around loss. Even worse if our parents are unable to hold us in the grief and the anger and the chaos.

Like most of us, I've had people die. But the worst losses I have ever suffered haven't been through death. No. The worst loss I have ever felt is my middle sister. And she is still alive, though the word 'alive' seems incongruous if I am writing about her. She exists rather than lives.

My sense of loss and rejection at the start of my teenage years was a founding brick in my wall.

I'm wondering whether anyone else can idenify with this.

******** (and) To anyone reading, do you know hw I can embed a vid from youtube in a blog post WITHOUT having to use the 'share on(name of blog)' option on the youtube site? Is it possible?
Thank for reading *********