My Dissociative Life. Amazing. And Amazingly Shit.

Yesterday:

Do amazing things. See amazing things. Be with amazing people.

Get home. Burst into tears. Yet again. As the voices and parts say and shout so much.

Today:

Do amazing things. See amazing things. Be with amazing people.

Get home. Burst into tears. Yet again. As the voices and parts say and shout so much and I have to argue even to have a cup of tea because one of them has been seeking to impose a 9pm curfew on it.

....

Some things I laugh about. The banana argument two of them had this week is funny to me even though it resulted in my head hurting quite a bit from being hit. But what's now been recognised as this complex dissociative disorder is pretty damn shit. I would not wish this on anyone. I laugh because what's the alternative? I might be able to do some kind of stand up comedy about it but it's mostly horrible to live with and I do have to hold back or the comedy would get very dark indeed. (Very fortunate to meet someone this year with an equally dark and macabre mental health comedy streak.)

...

I wrote a rant about something today. I wasn't going to post it but Beth says that I should. She supports and understands and has endured twenty-five years of my mental health with the highs and lows. I've been bloody fortunate to be married to someone who stuck by me through so much and for so long.

And this rant is where a few things get very honest. You ain't seen nothing yet! Some people won't like it one little bit.

They don't matter. The people I nearly cried on massively earlier this evening about it supported it. Probably because every one of them knows me - we've met together for quite a while - and has seen at least some of what it's taken to be a part of that group. It's taken a lot for all of that group to be there.

I'll post the rant tomorrow. It'll be extended. With more honesty about childhood, family, dissociation, and so on.

But there will also be gratitude. For all the people, groups, and organisations around me at different times that have stood by me in my struggles to not only stay alive and exist but to push myself (sometimes rather too far for me) into recovery (with set backs - it's only a couple of weeks since I very, very, very nearly committed suicide - I can perform some kind of theatre show but I am far from being well) and a live that's more than worth living and is filled with things beyond anything I dreamed would ever be possible for me.

Without all those other people I would not have made it through this year. I am incredibly fortunate to have all those people. On the other hand I only have them due to years of sodding hard work to get to the places where I've met them and done amazing things with them, often being enabled by their own wonder.

Being incredibly fortunate is one thing. But DID - or DDNOS - is crap. Very crap. Clarity isn't bringing peace. The beginnings of clarity is making things many times harder. In the short term. No, as I said, I would not wish this on anyone even though I were filled with infinite hatred for them. Nobody deserves this.

NaPoWriMo Day 21: The Man Who Met Bob Down The Old Yard

It's day twenty-one of National Poetry Writing Month.

A quickish effort this morning in haiku metre, finished just in time to get to a doctor's appointment about my mental health.

The poem is about something my dad used to say.  If he ever said it.  I know we believed he said it.  Here's a photo of my dad taken forty years ago on the occasion our car ate him.

My dad used to say

“I met Bob down the old yard,

Ya know.” Every night.

My brother and I

Listened to that mystery.

We'd make up stories.

Bob became great guru,

Enlightening the people:

Crawley's peacemaker.

Or he was monster.

Boogieman haunting our dreams,

Spoken in hushed tones.

Sometimes he was normal.

Just a co-worker, mechanic,

Technical wizard.

What of the old yard?

Hidden in unknown places

Dad never showed us.

Far too dangerous:

It's where shady deals happened

Smuggling screws, solder.

The forgotten field

Where old machines go to rust

Sharing their stories.

The killing field

Where students who failed exams

Were all executed.

Years later. We asked him.

Who's Bob? Where is that old yard?

Why did you meet there?

A blank expression.

There was no Bob. No old yard.

No dinnertime news.

Self deluded feat:

Though we heard his words each night

We invented them.

Now, perpetrating

A deliberate delusion,

I've led you astray.

There were no stories

No wild child imaginings.

We just laughed at Bob.

Countless meals at table,

Half-listening to parents

We'd made up the words.

Or was dad lying?

Bill Walker was invented.

Too. Then I met him.

NaPoWriMo Day 5b: Tank On A Hill. Market Lavington, Wiltshire

The official National Poetry Writing Month prompt for day five was to write a poem based in the natural world.  Preferable a part of it that the writer has experienced often.  An idea formed in my head for this.  A view that I saw many times throughout my childhood and my adult life too.  There was a lot of natural - and cultivated - material in that view.

But my mind's eye focused on one point in that view.  And the idea had to change.

The Tank

Cross Lavington valley

Eyes lifted to plain's edge.

Borderland of war games.

Again, our laughter: Full-groan

At an old familiar joke.

“I can see a tank, can you?”

We were safe in humour,

Knitting our family with

Threads of shared stories.

Thirty well-lived years of

Custard crumble, garden golf,

Of smiles poured from that first teapot.

Of a choice of two unchanged

Walks to village store past

Recollections of the Noddy house,

Comments of kingfishers and

Staring again at the bubbling kettle

And then the child angel in the graveyard.

All a little older. But still the same.

Then, the death of the favoured uncle.

The world shivered, became less safe

Without his smiled acceptance.

That was the year they removed

The water tank from the hill.

The joke passed away too into memory.

Only the angel remains now.

Watcher over that which was lost.

There's truth in the above.  Also a bit of fiction and a bit of truth bending.  Much still remains - the favoured aunt is there and if I manage to visit there will probably be custard and crumble.  The bubbling kettle will still be there too and the walks into the village from her home on the hill.  For anyone wondering, there's a YouTube video of the bubbling kettle, posted by lavingtoncurator.  Posted therefore by the favoured uncle.  Or possibly the favoured aunt.  You may not be excited by this.

As for the Noddy House, that was demolished in 1984.  The favoured uncle wrote something about it here:  https://marketlavingtonmuseum.wordpress.com/tag/tudor/  I entered it once as a child when it was empty and probably not long before it was demolished.

The child angel is in St. Mary's churchyard in Market Lavington.  On many visits to the village photographs would be taken with the angel.  Here, last year, are my two soft toy friends enjoying the angel's company.

Days Of Gratitude - Fungi, Flowers, Freefalling, And Freedom

I'd been finding it hard going.  Then my wife had an accident and had to be in hospital.  So everyone found it hard going.  She is home now but it's going to be hard going for her for a while.

These are the tough days as I experienced them.  They had plenty of good in them.

Some may disagree and say that the books pictured below are most definitely not good religious books.  We all have opinions.  Some may say that there is no such thing as a religious book.  The religious and spiritual books surrounding me are very varied.  I don't think the special interest will ever die no matter how my views change.

Onwards with the days.  You can't beat a good fungus.

October 20^th

For sitting in a cafe with good religious books to read.

For doing well in a reversi/Othello game. Okay, it's only level 2 of 10.

For chai.

And for being able to sit in the dark when very very overloaded in the evening. This photo is a selfie.

October 21^st

My brain went into free fall for a number of reasons. One of those days in which essential self care is made impossible.

Grateful for a fungus in the morning and a flower at night.

October 22^nd

Grateful for a few hours free for essential self care.

Feeling bad but without that time, bad would be much worse.

And they were great hours too.

Grateful once again for a bus pass.

Without that bus pass getting out on random adventures would be far too expensive for me.  With it, there is some money left over for enjoying food and cafes - at lower cost than the transport would be without a bus pass.

This really good meal in Bedlington, above the Light Well-being Centre, cost £3.50.

October 23^rd

Grateful to be able to spend some time alone.

Grateful to have managed to get things tidy enough to have access to these keys and make a complete racket for the first time in a while.

I confess to playing a God song. But I did medley it with The Green, Green Grass of Home!

October 24^th

Beth came home. She had had enough of hospital and wanted to be home instead.

Three pictures not connected with that news. While Beth was in hospital that room became a room again.

Recovery will take a while but will not include hospital food and will include home comforts and quiet.

Days Of Gratitude - A Hospital, An Accident, And A Notagiraffe

October 15th got off to a really good start for me.  Time with a friend.  With no pressure to be anything other than who we are.  It did not get off to a good start for my wife.  I'm writing this on October 26th.  She's home now.  Recovery will take a while.  But she's home.

On some days it's hard to fill out a gratitude diary.  But there are always things to be grateful for.  Always.  It's just that on some days we have to search hard.  And on some days they may be smaller and be swamped by things for which no sane person would be grateful.  I haven't been through the worst of life.  Of course not.  And I hope I never do.  If I think of those who have suffered in concentration camps or gulags or suchlike places.  If I think of the terrible journeys of refugees and the terrible circumstances that forced them to flee and seek refuge.  If I think of someone locked in to their body with their mind active.  Yeah, I've not been through the worst of life.  Not by any means.  I wonder if I would still be able to fill out gratitude diaries if I was going through them.  Those who have suffered deeply have often written about it and even for the most positive of them there would have been moments in which they were tempted to utterly despair, or in which they actually did despair.  But many of them write of positives too, even when in those dark places.  Right.  I'm rambling.  Time to stop.

One thing is for sure.  When I write my gratitude diary I don't ignore the difficulties.  They are part of life and a diary without them does not portray life in a way that reflects reality.  So my posts contain the (perceived) darkness as well as the (perceived) light.  A Taoist story asks whether we can truly know which circumstances and events are darkness and which are light.  I think there's a lot of wisdom in that story.  I also think that sometimes the story is nonsense and some things are just a bit crap!

October 15^th

Grateful to be able to meet up with a distant friend, look at the photos at Side Gallery, and sit and talk in a cafe. Grateful for a new 99p soft toy friend.

But I am not grateful for the rest of the day. The rest of the day is a bigger negative than the first half was a positive.

My wife fell from a ladder and is in hospital. She fractured her spine. There is possibly nerve damage too that may affect things. And probable spinal surgery tomorrow involving titanium. We can be grateful though that she isn't paralysed. She's in a lot of pain but thankfully we still have an NHS and it's still staffed by good people so she's being looked after well.

October 16^th

Sunday is a blur. It began, after little worried sleep, with the news that Beth's fall hadn't just resulted in muscle problems but in a fracture to her back. I went to A&E and it's such a blur that I can't even register whether Kit was there too but they must have been. Beth was moved to a ward after nearly 24 hours in A&E and we stayed for a while before returning for official visiting. Beth was understandably not feeling or looking good from pain, drugs, shock, fatigue and injury. Grateful for morphine!

I think we're all just grateful to have got through Sunday and got through Saturday and that the events of Saturday aren't going to be drastically life changing. Yeah, I'm bloody grateful for that. Things could have been a hell of a lot worse very easily.

October 17^th

Grateful for the comfort of soft toy friends.

Notagiraffe was bought on Saturday in the good part of my day.

I am holding Amethyst, Portal, and Got A Warthog. All of those are important to me.

Also grateful that KFC was both open and had the right things when Kit and I left the hospital in the evening.  I've gone there with Kit four times before and failed in the quest to buy what was wanted.  It meant that they could at least have something tasty to eat on their 16th birthday. It really wasn't the birthday we would have hoped them to experience.

October 18^th

Grateful that today improved. Beth was much more alive and smiling. Grateful the RVI staff are being so good. Grateful things are not worse than they are.

And that the view from the hospital cafe is pleasing.

October 19^th

Grateful to have got out to Whitley Bay charity shops today.

Grateful that Newcastle has attractive places. Like Metro stations and hospitals.

Grateful that Beth is doing as well as can be expected and can walk a little. She is grateful for morphine.

It's been horrible. The next bit of time won't be great. But we are all grateful that things should (hopefully) get back to some semblance of normality well before the end of the year.

For My Favourite Uncle And For All The Happy Times Spent With Him

On Friday it is the funeral of my favourite uncle. I can't be there but I am thinking of his widow and children a lot, and thinking of him too.

This is a photo from 1983 and my mother was amazed at this technological scenario. She captioned it "3 computers in one room!"

 

 

In the foreground from left to right there is me, my cousin - son of favourite uncle, and my brother. We have Sinclair Spectrums. In the background my favourite uncle sits with his Acorn computer.

I remember on that day that my uncle challenged each of us to write a program called "Traffic Lights."

It was a great day, like so many others we spent with him, his wife - my favourite aunt, and their children.

I thought of this photo when visiting the South recently because my brother and I visited them. It was very good to see my aunt and her children. But my uncle was missing.

 

 

The garden where we shared so many times and so many games.  

 

The garden from which we have eaten so much home grown food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed good family conversation.  But he was missing.

There's Blob Thing engaged in conversation with the cat.  I am not sure what Blob said to make the cat wear that expression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked on paths and roads we have walked many times as an extended family.  But he was missing.

 

We visited the museum he had poured so much love and enthusiasm into.  But he was missing.

 

 

And, like so many times before, we ate great food.  But he was missing.

His death was sudden, a few days before. A big shock to everyone. He's going to be greatly missed by family, friends, and the whole community of the place where he lived. His blogs will be greatly missed too by those people across the world who read them.

 

Why did I think of the three computers photo?  Because at one point five of us were sitting in that same room with laptops in use.  Another laptop sat open on a table.

 

Yes, SIX computers in one room.

 

And that doesn't count the mobile phones we all had close to hand each of which are far more powerful than a Sinclair Spectrum.

 

Times have changed.  But I confess that I now lack any knowledge to program any of the computers with even the simplest program called Traffic Lights.

Times have changed.  This is a photograph taken a little over three years ago when we visited Avebury Manor.

My parents are seated.  From left to right standing are my child, me, my uncle and my aunt.  My dad was already very noticeably ill but that day was an excellent one, full of smiles and laughter.  So many days with my uncle were full of smiles and laughter.  If I picture him in my mind he is smiling.

 

Another Avebury Manor photo.

 

 

Smiles.  Yes, we smiled for the camera.  But when visiting my uncle we all smiled.  And we enjoyed being with each other.  I will return to his home again and stay there with my aunt.  Maybe it'll be during a family gathering and I will see cousins too, and a half-aunt and half-uncle and all their spouses and children.  I had been half planning to get there next Summer anyway.  That plan still holds.

 

One final picture from that day three years ago.

This photo calls him king.  He truly was the king of uncles.  Anyone from my mother's side of the family who reads this will know that to be true.

 

Farewell uncle.  We lived far apart but I will miss you.  We will all miss you.

And on Friday I will find time to raise a glass to you and in your memory I will smile.

Days of Gratitude - Three Days, Three Places, From A Butterfly To A Bucket

It was a strange week.

I slept in four beds in four places.  This is not a usual thing for me.  These three days include three places.  Crawley, Greater Manchester, and Newcastle.  It all felt very strange.

Notes:

I will probably not be allowed to live down my statement to the effect that we didn't need a coat.  In my defence, a coat wouldn't have done much good against the storm.  A hermetically sealed diving suit would probably have leaked against that much rain.

The last picture here shows one of my favourites out of any photo my dad took and exhibited in his years of exhibiting photos in the local camera club and sometimes further afield.  It shows a little girl called Vanessa.  We were camping somewhere near the France-Switzerland border.  Each day the girl was sent out to fill a bucket with water from the slow running tap.  One day my dad said hello to her, not worrying about the language gap.  And he took some photos.  They probably won him a prize.

The day after these was the start of a brand new experience for me.  One that has proved to be something of a confidence boost.

September 13^th


Grateful to have left Crawley. All the necessaries are done for now. My parents' house is on the market. I hope it sells easily.

Grateful that Amanda and I didn't drown. We were out in the worst of the storm. A little wet! A wall of water between us and her door as if the house had been replaced by the torrent of Hardraw Force.

Pictures:

A butterfly at Crawley station.

And Amanda and myself on a bus in what was still a gorgeous hot and sunny day in Salford. 















September 14^th


Grateful to have been able to see Amanda. Just for a night. But one night is better than none.

Grateful to be home now. I have a whole day to recover from being away and my head is informing me of how tired it actually is.

Grateful the house in Crawley is now officially for sale and has viewings.

Photos:

The house used to be the Jesus Army community house in Salford. I detoured in the morning to see it. It's a place I used to visit 20 years ago.

A picture I see when passing through Leeds on the coach. This time I remembered to take a picture when passing and was fortunate to press the button on the phone at the right time.

September 15^th


Grateful for a day of rest. It is desperately needed.

I have unpacked most of the boxes from Crawley and put up some of my dad's prints.

I think I need a week to get over Crawley. I have had a day. Tomorrow will be very unrestful and totally unknown. Eek!

Days Of Gratitude - The Final Four Days In The South

These were not the easiest of days.  I don't want to go into details of why they weren't the easiest.  Just accept it, they weren't.  I am glad these days are over.

They weren't easy for more reasons than expected.  The circumstances mentioned below were very sad ones for everyone concerned.  Others had a great deal more to cope with.  For myself the shock was great.  For those closer, the shock was much greater.  Very sad.

And yet even in these days there were things to be grateful for.  And some big surprises too.  The opportunity mentioned below was stunning and a total sudden surprise.  It meant that a week later I found myself not in Newcastle as expected but in Edinburgh.  But that can all wait for a future post.

September 9^th


The circumstances are not what we hoped. Not at all.

But I am grateful to be able to see the relations that I like.

I often visited this place as a child, the home of my favourite uncle and aunt and their children.

We would always walk into the village and often take pictures of the child angel.

We would always be fed well.

Things are different this time. But the angel and the feeding remain. As does the view.

September 10^th

Grateful the day is over.

That's all.

Except grateful for an opportunity presented to me unexpectedly.

September 11^th


Grateful for a surprise lunch with my ex church pastor from Crawley. I learned solid, literalist, Biblical homophobia in that church. Things have mellowed a lot since then.

Grateful too for water features at a Crawley hotel.

September 12^th

Grateful that we got the necessary things done today.

Grateful to have got through this time in Crawley. In 12 hours I will be gone.

Photos were taken tonight in the darkness of what was my parents' back garden.

Grateful too for a surprise contact and the promise of meeting a friend at the weekend for the first time in 20 years.

Days of Gratitude - Autscape, Friendship, And Finding Freedom In A Cemetery

I am posting this on August 25th.  Today would have been my mother's 72nd birthday.  She died a few days after reaching her 70th birthday.  Facebook keeps giving me memories to share each day and most of them have been status updates about the events leading up to my mother's death.  Every day I am given the option to share some painful circumstance.  I haven't been sharing.

The morning after my mother died I had to return from Sussex to Newcastle, leaving my brother to deal with everything for a while.  On returning to Newcastle I attended the appointment at which I was officially diagnosed as being transgender.  It's tempting to wish that my mother had lived to see that day and the two years that have passed since then.  But no amount of wishing would make it a reality.  After that appointment I returned to Sussex.  I wrote the address for my mother's funeral and reading it was a privilege - and quite a challenge to not fall apart at certain points in it.  I posted the address in a post on this blog and it also appears here, the final ever post on my mother's blog which she lovingly wrote nearly every day for quite a few years and filled with family and friends and many photos.

That all happened two years ago.  This is now.  And these are five days of memories for this month, to add to the memories Facebook keeps on recommending I share with the world again.


18^th August


Grateful for Autscape. A lot could be said about that.

Grateful though to spend much of the afternoon not at Autscape!

Amanda and I walked into Settle, relaxed together, ate ice cream and then walked a little by the river.

We found a great rock to sit on in the middle of the river and I even had a free thirty seconds for stone stacking, reminding me that I want to take myself off for a quiet day doing it.

19^th August


There is much I will miss. Much to think about too.

But I am grateful that tonight I will sleep in my bed.

Farewell Autscape for another year. Tomorrow I have to attempt to think about food again.

Grateful too that this time round only a week will go by before I see Amanda again - for a Christian festival!

20^th August


Being looked after when arriving at the meditation group in a state. Sitting alone in silence helped and then good people and lunch.

Grateful for the people who set up that group and for the way the enterprise will be expanding very soon. There will be a meditation centre in the city centre and there are great plans for the future.
Also grateful to look out of the window.

21^st August

Grateful for missing the bus home after the Sunday Assembly social and going a different route back to the Metro that turned out to be interesting even though totally an incorrect route.

This led on to becoming sidetracked in a cemetery I have been meaning to visit almost since we moved here.

Also very grateful that a year ago today I met a very wonderful woman. I couldn't be more grateful than I am.

22^nd August


Grateful that one year ago tonight I danced, played and sang barefoot in a big thunderstorm.

She had encouraged me to do so. She didn't accept my refusal.

A year on and we have a most marvellous and undefined relationship centred on a stunning magic friendship.