I was looking for a job and then I was looking for a job and then I was looking for a job and Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now….

In the grand scheme of things, career-search wise, I’m doing OK. I have a degree, I have experience including an internship, I actually know what I want to do, and I’m not subject to racial discrimination in my job search. However despite my constant searching and applying  on Indeed all I’ve got back in two months is a handful of rejection emails from the few companies who actually bothered to send them. Oh, and a call from a company offering teaching work in China which I absolutely don’t want to do but genuinely considered.

Inamongst all the thinkpieces calling millenials entitled, or making fun of them for having ‘fake’ sounding jobs involving social media or having ‘digital’ in the name (someone took the time to make an actual sitcom on the topic), few seem to question why so many of us still live with our parents. I know one person my age with the same education level who is in full time work. The rest are doing masters degrees or working menial jobs in the hopes of finding something more fulfilling. My sister graduated in 2012 and found every job she wanted demanded years of experience and every job she applied to as a short term money maker felt she was overqualified and would have no loyalty. I’ve found the same problem, despite the fact I have a three-month journalism internship under my belt. In truth, the hunt for a job feels like a fruitless, crushing dirge.

Dramatic-sounding perhaps, but hear me out. My recent internship (a piece of driftwood just about keeping me afloat in a sea of career hunting) was not my first flirtation with intern-ing. Back in the summer of ’16, towards the end of my degree, I was delighted to get a call from a local company in Hull who were interested in getting me to work as a content writer for 8-12 weeks. Unpaid, of course, I couldn’t possibly expect to get paid now could I? Their promise was 8-12 weeks with a ‘very real chance’ of a job at the end. Twelve weeks is a long time but it would just about cover the rest of my student flat contract and I was almost guaranteed a job at the end. I went along for the interview in high spirits, it was a nice office in the city centre, and the staff seemed laid-back with lots of freedom. I was told that I was the most qualified candidate. I had a second interview, involving a basic competence test, all was well. I got a call from the recruitment agency woman who had called me in the first place saying they were offering me a week-long trial to check I was right for them. A little annoying, considering I was repeatedly told I was the best candidate, and it was an unpaid internship (I was essentially being offered a trial FOR a trial) but it was still amazing to get such an opportunity considering I hadn’t even graduated yet.

So I went in with my coffee and pencil skirt feeling very business-like. I wrote some blog posts, transcribed a few radio bits they did, had to do some ‘business to business’ copy which was about the most soul crushing thing of all time but hey ho. I felt all was going well. However, after going home on the third day the recruitment lady called me again. ‘They don’t know how to go about training you’ she said (they perhaps should have thought of that before they hired an intern). She told me to take the rest of the week off while they worked out what approach to take. With a furrowed brow I agreed, but told her I felt fine with how things were going.

Two weeks later, I had heard nothing. I emailed the recruitment agency woman asking her if, when I did come back, I would be coming back to an actual job or I would still be expected to work 12 weeks on zero pay. She told me it was the latter. ‘They’re only a small company, so they can’t offer pay at the moment’. I was tempted to point out that this was at odds with how often I had been assured of their rapid growth as a business, and to ask if everyone else who worked their was lucky enough to actually get paid. I replied that I had to decline coming back at all, that 12 weeks of no pay would essentially leave me homeless for a while. She understood. Oh, by the way, that ‘job’ was at a company running a search engine FOR JOBS.

I’m happy to report the second internship went far better. It only required one interview, I was able to work from home, I was paid £70 a week, given one-to-one training, and had to the opportunity to do cool stuff like interview comedians and write previews for art exhibitions. I came out the other side with solid skills and a sturdy addition to my CV. One month later, I still have nothing. Trawling through Indeed.com every day is a Groundhog-day like affair. Content writer, marketing, social media executive and so on and so on. Most are offering more internships, usually only pointing out halfway through the job description that they won’t actually pay you. Particularly with any kind of creative endeavor. They offer ‘experience’ and ‘exposure’, but such things do not put tofu on the table. Those that will pay are rare, and mostly require a candidate with 5 years of experience in the exact same job, preferably at the same company, and a relocation to London.

When you find one that seems imperfect, but you actually have a chance of getting, it sends you to a 10-page application form that needs filling out. You have a CV with all the same information the form is asking for handily put on one page, but they still want you to fill out the form. Call me a lazy, entitled millenial, but when it’s the fifth job application of the day and you don’t particularly want it in the first place, the impulse to give up on page 4 of the application is very strong.

Also while these companies ask a lot of their candidates, the effort is not reciprocated. Job descriptions are often quite badly written out, some with glaring spelling mistakes. Plus, they are often written so cryptically, so ridden with vague business jargon, that it is impossible to tell what the company does and what they want you to do. Take this for example:

“The role of Digital Marketing Executive will be to implement the content marketing strategy for this prestigious business, devising creative campaigns which will help to increase awareness, brand and drive sales and play a key role in driving the next phase of growth.”

Can anyone tell me what the even heck that means?

So where does this seemingly incredibly unsustainable system lead? Ultimately, it means only the children of the rich can get jobs. If you can’t find an internship you can do from home like I was lucky enough to get, you have to hope Mum and Dad are willing to pay your rent. After several such internships, you may finally get a full time job that pays, congratulations! Better yet, a close relative of yours works at the company, instant stability!

This market ultimately has to collapse in on itself. Denying  many young people the chance to support themselves for the convenience of businesses who are somehow disgusted at the thought of paying a living wage simply isn’t sustainable. It isn’t just Wetherspoons that takes advantage, but cozy white-collar office jobs. It’s a symptom of late stage, unregulated capitalism. Everything to appease the bosses, even if it means literally not paying a wage. Recently, a screenshot of an unpaid job at a London anti-slavery charity went viral. It’s gotten so bad that even my classically conservative grandma is shocked and appalled at the state of things. Colliding with other problems like the eye-watering rent prices in most cities and the accumulating student debt of those doing masters degrees to stave off the daunting search for a job, something has to give. And when it does give, I just hope it’s not the workers who bear the worst of it.

The bright side of being sad

Will Graham expressing my coping methods.

“There’s no room for demons if you’re self-possessed” 

“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that’s unacceptable”

(Both the wisdom of Carrie Fisher)

If I was going to describe the year 2015 for me, instead of using actual words I would probably just scream and punch something for half an hour. I had a devastating breakdown in my mental health, I had to deal with the fallout of that.  My stepfather’s illness got steadily worse and I heard the news of his death in the train station at eight in the morning trying to get home to say goodbye to him. No one in the station stopped to comfort me. One woman picked up her bags and walked away.  I spent Christmas with a family in mourning and read his eulogy while most people were buying stuffing. Even in the calmer parts of last year I dealt with my Mum’s appendicitis, my family moving house without me, and other slaps to the face. My family now joke that we’re cursed. As Carrie Fisher once said “the situation was getting worse faster than I could lower my expectations”.

It’s no coincidence that this was also the year I took up amateur boxing.

So now it’s 2016 and nothing that terrible has happened yet,save for the death of my great uncle Joe, who was in his late eighties. OK so that was not ideal… But, like a character in a movie with a hastily written tragic backstory (or an X factor contestant) I have changed a little.

I’ve always had a pretty sunny outlook, despite outward appearances of being quite grouchy. At heart, I tend to assume things will get better, or at least assume they can’t get any worse. This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with a lot of crap in my life, but still I’ve always kind of kept on truckin’. I tend to be calmer and happier than most when things are ticking along smoothly, possible down to denial, possibly down to just being glad bad things that happened in the past aren’t happening right now. Having knowledge that life can be terrible can make you pessimistic, or it can just make you extra grateful when things are less than terrible.

This attitude isn’t always a good thing.

Flashback to early last year. I was living in my crappy, cold, dark house, with the knowledge that my beloved stepfather was terminally ill. If I felt bad about all that, I managed to push it right on down and ignore it. I looked at the positive. I had freedom, I was a university student living with my friends, young, healthy and I had my own double bed for the first time ever. I was no longer a bullied teenager living in a godforsaken comatose backwater village enduring my parents tempestuous divorce. I could come and go as I please, my stepdad was ill but he was doing ok at the moment, and I would often get good news about how his tumours were shrinking. Maybe he would be ok after all. So I just kept smiling, went out for the odd drink with friends and basked in the glorious fact that I could come and go as I please.

I had these little OCD ticks, but whatever, they would get better.

Spoiler alert, they did not.

So before I knew it I couldn’t function on my own, and I spent most of the day exhausted and in tears. I believe this is partly down to my refusal to just be sad already.

If I had just said to myself “hey, your life is crap right now. That doesn’t mean It’s gonna be crap forever, although it may get crappier yet, but instead of being lil’ miss happy sunshine giggle fairy, just brood a little bit and acknowledge that you’re not happy” I may have spared myself a repeat prescription of prozac.

I’ve always joked that I would make a great goth (I have the colouring for it) but I’m just “too chipper”. Well maybe forget that.

So surprisingly enough, this year I’ve found myself feeling sad sometimes. I’ve recently been putting up with this super fun chronic fatigue thing my body is doing, and a year ago I maybe would have just ignored it and told myself sleeping to much is better than having insomnia. The urge to do that still comes up. “Oh I’m fine besides that, it’s just a little bit annoying, you know?”. I don’t want to worry other people, and I don’t want to worry myself, so part of my brain goes “leave it, hun”.

I have pledged to myself that I shall not leave it. It sucks that so tired my eyeballs hurt. It sucks I can hardly face a 9:15 lecture. It sucks that in third year, when I have work piling up, all I want to do is curl up in bed.

And about that, it’s not just tiredness, even when I don’t feel the need to nap I want to snuggle up in my bed and act like the world is on pause. And it’s only expected that I should feel like that. I’m grieving, goddamnit, I’m recovering from a serious mental health episode. I am now going through life knowing it’s potential for random, sustained cruelty. I have threads of real sadness in me that weren’t there before.

Acknowledging this brings a strange freedom. I find I’ve become bolder, more assertive, more motivated (when I’m not napping). All the inspirational facebook posts in the world had nothing on the motivational power of an awful year. I say things like “fuck it, we’re all gonna die anyway” and I mean it and I do the thing.

And when I feel sad? I let myself be sad. I listen to sad music, and I cuddle my stuffed rottweiler puppy Ronnie (who I definitely didn’t get as a Christmas present just this last year) and I just let it happen. I keep an eye on it for bigger problems, but I let it happen. I think about all the reasons I’m sad, I have many, and I just let myself be a moody bitch. I’m experiencing the effects of grief, the fatigue, the irritation, the infamous “seven stages” which are meant to follow each other in an orderly queue but instead hit you all at once and just swim around, not making a whole lot of sense.

Sometimes I’ll remember something arbitrary I did with my stepdad once. I’ll remember the time we had a carvery on my way back to Uni or when we went to a beer festival or when I found him holding his hand in pain by the fridge cos the chemotherapy made him extra sensitive to the cold. And sometimes I cry. And I just let it happen. Same with horrible memories of my illness. Memories of my stepdad will come from nowhere, when I’m cooking, when I’m trying to sleep, and It’s like a big knife in the chest. Grief likes to ambush you, and it can hurt physically. I’ve decided not to ignore that. That sadness will be there forever, and trying to forget it would, as I’ve learned, be very unhealthy.

Obviously sadness can take over your life, sometimes to the point of crisis. But It’s a natural emotion, and I’ve always believed emotions are a part of us, they are not separate, they aren’t switched on and off through sheer force of will, they are us. So now I’m practising what I preach, and I’m letting myself feel bad as well as good.

 

Living Life Post-‘Breakdown’

So earlier this year I had what many people would term a ‘mental breakdown’, which is a phrase I never thought, and never hoped, I would have attached to myself. My life long low-level anxiety and OCD took over my life to the point I couldn’t look after myself and I had to leave uni and come home to recover.

Thanks to counselling sessions, prozac, being looked after and generally having time to heal I am more or less back to ‘normal’ and I can function well. But carrying on life as if it never happened is not a choice I have and I can’t help but feel I had the stuffing knocked out of me and you can see where I’ve stitched myself back together. So I thought  I’d take a look at just what it means to live after a breakdown.

The biggest change is now knowing what is ‘wrong’ with my mind. I always noticed my compulsions and irrational worries, but I always just sort of… put up with them. I believed my worries were legitimate and my odd compulsions were just a habit, a tic, an annoying part of being me. Now I know what to call myself, and these labels are more freeing than oppressive. Knowing that these are illnesses I have and not just something that I am is empowering, now I can fight them when I see them, they can’t sneak up on me. I talk about it as a ‘blessing in disguise’, it was horrible but getting to the point where I had to seek help and learning what I had meant I could find out how to fight it.

What surprises me looking back is just how passively I accepted what was happening to me. I was having a bad time anyway and when my anxiety flared up and my OCD became the cruellest, most abusive dictator imaginable who delighten in seeing me torture and humiliate myself, I suppose my strength to fight it was waning. Or I just didn’t know how far it could go. I didn’t think it would leave me in physical and mental agony, I just thought it would eventually die down like it has done before. I will no longer remain so accepting of it. Now if my compulsions come back I fight them. Walking down the street while visiting friends in Hull I had the same nagging voice return, telling me to walk on certain patches of pavement or step there or go back to that and I shouted NO. Out loud, in a (luckily) empty street. There was no way I was letting that nagging voice inside me keep me from going where I needed to go. It helped, strangely enough, I surprised myself with my newfound assertiveness.

The other side of discovering this strength is realising just how weak I was at the time. I now live with the horrible knowledge that my mind is capable of turning against me so entirely that I can’t take care of myself. That is a terrifying thought. I have to be on guard for the rest of my life, and I must learn to accept that what happened before could happen again and I will have to adapt to that and learn how to cope. A stranger at the post office kindly offered me a lift home the other week, and told me she worked in mental health. I said what had happened to me and we discussed just how common these problems were and how they could happen to anybody. I certainly didn’t think I would ever have mental health issues as a part of my life, they were something other people suffered from. Now I know I am no less weak or susceptible than anyone else, which applies to everyone.

Generally I view myself at the time it happened as a stranger. That wasn’t me, it happened to somebody else. Sometimes it comes back, like 5000 volts of electric memory, the times I nearly passed out with exhaustion completing my routines, the times people stared at me or shouted things at me in the street, the time I was stopped by a policeman asking me what was wrong. When I remember, really remember, I feel terrified, vulnerable and lonely. I usually curl up into a ball and tell myself it’s all over now I and I will never be that humiliated or scared again. I have always prided myself on being a strong person, someone with insight and enough emotional intelligence to withstand things. Nothing is more humbling than fully remembering. I don’t really like talking about it that much, and I only do so when I feel it is necessary. I hate listing my tics or discussing them openly, I found it hard enough to write this. I understand terms like ‘mental scars’, what happened was, in every sense, traumatic and it’s a horrible thing to know happened to you.

I’m more aware of myself and the world than ever. Now mental health issues apply to me, they mean a lot to me. I was delighted to hear Jeremy Corbyn had appointed a Minister for Mental Health, and to hear people discussing what needs to be improved in treatment of mental health. I wince if I hear someone who is a bit tidy describe themselves as OCD. I ended up bonding with people around me who had similar issues, and I joined the mental health awareness society at uni. It’s a shame that it took something as dramatic as that to make me take notice of just what a big problem it is. It will remain as an issue close to my heart and I will try to be as helpful as I can to others suffering similar things. The prejudices I had about mental illness have gone and my language has changed. I’m happy to see this happening on a bigger scale, people now seem to seriously debate the issue and try and take down the stigma, and I often find myself against people belittling anxiety, OCD and other disorders, or not changing their language to reduce stigma and false stereotyping. I will always be on the side of political correctness.

So I have emotional and mental scarring, which, while invisible, often feels like I am living after a serious physical injury. Knowing what I have is both a blessing and a curse and will require me to take care of that part of my health for the rest of my life. However it is freeing, knowing I can get over this, I shouldn’t put up with this and I am certainly not alone.

My Psychological Connection to ‘Hannibal’ (last post about Hannibal I maybe promise)

This will be a slightly self indulgent and fan wanky post about my favourite show (yet again) but I just wanted to record and organise my thoughts about it and how much I relate.

I’ve been looking up Empaths and Highly Sensitive People and I think I may partially be in the same category. Looking up the traits, I tick a lot of them off. Random unexplained pains, a feeling of “just knowing” or understanding things, connection to animals, dislike of conflict etc, etc,… The last one particularly. When people are arguing near me, even if it is about something trivial or just a superficial debate, it is something I can’t stand. The second voices are raised I have to leave the room. It’s hard to explain, but I almost feel like they are angry at me and I can feel the bad ‘vibes’ (no better word) from their emotions in my own body to the point I feel physically ill. I can’t even watch question time. I openly cry at sad films; scenes of cruelty, particularly to animals, really shit me up. I can sense people’s inner motivations better than most. I often have mild out of body experiences, suddenly overwhelmed with the miraculous coincidence of my existence and I have to shake myself back into reality. I have vivid dreams and they start as I’m falling asleep. When I close my eyes clear images appear and sometimes my thoughts are so loud they sound like they are coming from the outside. My relationship with reality is… fractured. I don’t have full on hallucinations or anything, I just find it hard to keep entirely focused on what is happening and not daydream. Particularly if what is happening is dull and mundane (even if it is incredibly important). This is frustrating, for me and everyone else.

If I am an empath, it is something I share with Hannibal protagonist Will Graham. He uses his mind to profile criminals, I mainly use mine for writing and sussing people out. I’m realising more and more how much I relate to Will Graham, and not just with his love of dogs. In the first season Jack says “Will deals with huge amounts of fear, it comes with his imagination” Alana Bloom replies “It’s the price of imagination”. This fully resonates with me. I have recently realised that I suffer from anxiety, manifesting itself in OCD. Internet jokes about Will’s “unstable” nature helped me learn to laugh at a recent and overwhelming bout of anxiety. It’s wonderful to see a show that accurately represents what it is like to live with these traits and the downsides, and to celebrate the benefits of it. Will is invaluable to the FBI, his mind is the best tool they have and he’s every bit as emotional and dreamy and neurotic as me. It shows my unreal mind does not make me useless and laughable in the real world, it just means I have a different role to play.

As I’ve learned more about my mind and its qualities I have become more defensive of it and more confident. I can now explain my own way of seeing the world and defend myself when people call me lazy, over sensitive or out of touch with reality. I especially react strongly if people dismiss my emotions, or emotions in general, as “silly”, “illogical” or “crazy”.Emotions make sense if you have enough sensitivity to understand them. It’s a cold hearted and dismissive person who thinks emotions are irrelevant. Emotions can form the basis of opinions without voiding said opinions. Why else would you form a particular opinion without feeling something about it first? And if I start crying during an argument it’s because I hate arguments and I’ve been holding in the tears for hours, not to “emotionally blackmail” you. Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller has spoken of his love of “emotional plotting”. In Hannibal hallucinations appear as though they were real. Visual metaphor and magical realism also play a huge role, always being prioritised over grit and realism. It has always been an insecurity of mine as a writer that I could never come up with an intricate, world spanning plotline like George R.R. Martin, I have always had a concept or feeling to communicate and struggled to come up with a solid, workable plot to weave it into. The meaning comes before the means. This is what makes ‘Hannibal’ a unique and beautiful show, rather than a weakness. I love seeing something that reflects my approach.

The cinematography of Hannibal is like seeing my view of reality played out on a screen for the first time. Much has been written about the detail and artistry of the look of ‘Hannibal’. Every set is impeccable, the clothes are gorgeous and even the murders are Gothic masterpieces. I usually can’t watch murder shows as their bleak aesthetics get me down, I need to surround myself with intricate, beautiful things to feel comfortable. Any bedroom I’ve ever had has always been a bit of a visual cacophony, the wall of my room in my old-old house (I’ve moved six times) looked like a huge collage. I can’t stand bare, minimalist spaces. ‘Hannibal’ is deliberately, defiantly baroque and macabre and beautiful. What fascinated me was the attention to tiny details that usually get missed. I have often been teased for finding myself transfixed with things that don’t seem especially exciting. Seeing an extended close up shot of milk billowing like a nebula in a cup of coffee on ‘Hannibal’ was seeing my worldview finally understood. There is beauty, cosmic beauty, in the most mundane places and the makers of the show understand that. Whether it’s watching the way steam rises from a kettle and swerves and curves past the kitchen cupboards above it or the way blood mixes with milk, there is artistry everywhere if you know where to look. ‘Hannibal’ knows where to look and every frame is a masterpiece.

The strangely romantic relationship between Will and Hannibal has been explained by way of their understanding of one another. Even when Will knows what Hannibal is he can’t resist someone who ‘gets’ him. Whoever you are and whatever your mind, finding someone or something that seems to 100% understand you is rare and sometimes never happens. For me, so far, its ‘Hannibal’. It is reassuring in a world that sometimes dismisses and belittles me to know there is a piece of art and pop culture that will always psychologically have my back. Now I just need to get a job writing for them…

For the love of God – improve funding for mental health

“Write hard and clear about what hurts” – Ernest Hemingway.

It has taken me some time to pluck up the courage to write about this, but I feel as someone who aspires to being a writer and someone who is finally in a place good enough to talk about this, I have a responsibility to shout into the ether of the ‘net what happened to me. Or rather, in me.

All my life I have suffered, or put up with, anxiety and OCD. It’s always been low level, flaring up like acne in times of stress. However so far it has always been something I could live with.

This changed around spring this year. I was having a bit of a bad time. I was living in a cold, dark, miserable house at uni. My finances weren’t great and looking to get worse. My family were moving away from the lovely house we had lived in for two years without me there to psychologically separate from it. I was lonely most of the time. I come from a busy and noisy family and despite living with 8 people I spent sometimes whole days on my own in my room, my flatmates quite understandably spending time with their partners and revising. On top of that there was an illness in the family. This was all getting me down, things really got bad when I was hit with unusually bad insomnia.

I’m usually a great sleeper, as soon as my head hits the pillow I’m off.Then one night I just didn’t sleep. I freaked out so much about it I didn’t sleep the next night. This continued, I knew it was because I was anxious about not sleeping that I wasn’t sleeping, vicious circles and everything. I would dread going to bed and would often end up staring up into the dark, frozen with fear about not sleeping. Other people may have brushed it off, watched a dvd and tried again later, I just couldn’t for some reason.

This anxiety over not sleeping brought the OCD on. If you know me you’re probably thinking “you are the least likely candidate for OCD ever” and you’d be right. I’m messy, disorganised, I hate order and routine. But the thing is, like most mental health issues, 99% of what you hear about OCD is utter bullshit. Condensed into an easy to swallow, watered-down concept they can make freakshow documentaries about. Mine, much to my flatmates dismay, did not take the form of tidying. I would get the compulsion to do rituals and physical tics, pointless activities to temporarily settle my anxiety. I restricted myself unnecessarily as well, in what I watched, read and ate. The words I used, my nights out, and so on. For a while it was merely a pain in the arse to deal with. Even then I didn’t think it was pointless and I should stop, I just saw it as my own personal burden I had to ever so catholicly deal with. People asked me why I was walking funny, or performing arbitrary routines and I would brush it off and change the subject.

After Easter break it very quickly spiralled out of control. I wasn’t eating enough and I lost a lot of weight. Routines and stupid rituals could take up hours of my day and physically exhaust me. My knees were in agony due to an ongoing tic of sitting up and down in chairs for literally hours. I had blisters on my hands. I was dehydrated. The worst one, the one that made me realise I truly needed help, was walking. My trip to uni featured lots of different pavement slabs and patchy tarmacing and my OCD compelled me to walk on certain things in certain ways, sometimes going back to them several times. A journey that took 15 minutes normally got longer and more frustrating. One day it took an hour and 45 minutes. I came home and collapsed in a chair, sobbing. The journey was hell, I was in tears most of the time, paralysed with panic and trying desperately trying to steady my breathing and wishing someone would break away from their life and rescue me. I knew then I absolutely had to tell someone, which naturally terrified me. I thought people would think I was a nutcase, I thought I was a nutcase. No one wants to be labelled. It was walking home that finally rescued me. My friend Jennie blessedly found me a few days later trying to complete the same journey and failing. She smilingly asked me how I was and I broke down in tears. She took me home and I told her what was happening. She, and everyone else (with one exception whom I will not name) was of course overwhelmingly kind. People are like that, most of the time. I bought my flatmates prossecco to say thank you. The next week or so they took me to doctor’s appointments and meetings at uni to get extensions on my coursework which had become an insurmountable task to do. They made me cups of tea and talked to me, and walked me to and from uni. They were angels. They didn’t judge me or laugh, they stayed up stupidly late while I did my batshit routines and even cooked for me. Eventually I went home and slowly but surely got better. These days it is still present but not overwhelming. The kindness of others was not something that gave out on me.

The problems came with trying to get solid medical help. A psychiatrist in A&E gave me my options but could offer me no real help there and then. I couldn’t get a doctors appointment in time and had to wait til I got home. A doctor called the emergency mental health team, who didn’t see me as an emergency as I wasn’t suicidal or harming myself or others. Eventually I got put on a six week waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy. Another doctor prescribed me prozac, which has worked.

Everyone I spoke to was sympathetic but told me I would have to wait. Admitting you have a mental health issue takes time and a crapload of courage. Once you’ve told someone, you want and expect help straight away. Then you’re told you’re going to have to wait even longer.You are torturing yourself and humiliating yourself and you get a waiting list. Everyone said the same thing, mental health is the worst and most underfunded part of the NHS.

I love the NHS, I think it’s the thing we should be the most proud of as Brits. Mental health is stigmatised, misunderstood (“I have to tidy! I’m so OCD!”) and not physically apparent. You have to be suicidal to get immediate help. The way we see mental health has come on leaps and bounds, half a century ago I may have just been lobotomised, locked up and forgotten about like a minor royal (ouch). I’m grateful to have been born when I was born. Things still need to improve however.

What startled and upset me when I told people what was happening with me was how many people shared similar experiences. Nearly everyone I know had dealt with depression, anxiety or some other disorder at some point. This isn’t something other people have to deal with. I always thought that. Now I realise it is incredibly common and present in people from all walks of life. Any other type of illness this omnipresent would take up a sizeable chunk of the NHS, yet it seems near impossible to get help quickly and effectively. Things aren’t looking good with the outcome of the latest election either. My stepdad, who is ill, joked “I’ll be dead and you’ll be a looney!”.

The whole of the NHS is suffering but, like mental health sufferers themselves, this part of the NHS is shuffling along, neglected, silent and misunderstood by many for far too long. This isn’t the problem of exceptional individuals you don’t know, I guarantee you know someone who has suffered from mental health issues. Maybe you’ve had them yourself. I’m still getting better and I’m finally understanding what I have and what it will mean for the rest of my life. Many others are still living in the dark and we need to help them, right now.

I don’t know who exactly this post is addressed to. You, George Osbourne, The media, the general public, the Government, the Health service. I just hope someone hears.

Quorn again

So I thought I’d do a post on vegetarian living and the weird stuff we have to put up with.

I haven’t eaten meat in around five years. After a lifetime of being able to separate the living, breathing animal with the edible thing on my plate it just didn’t click any more. I have always loved animals and been opposed to hunting and cruelty, and it got to a point where I could no longer justify eating meat. I stopped seeing food and started seeing the lump of cooked flesh that had once belonged to a living being killed specifically for me to eat. I had alternatives and I knew what I was doing, so I gave it up. I phased it out for a while before stopping altogether. And yes, Mum, it was partly Morrissey’s fault.

These days I know I couldn’t stand to eat meat, no matter how tasty it is. It grosses me out. I worked in a cafe for a year and the smell of bacon did not tempt me to leap over the counter and snatch the full english breakfast from a customer’s hand and declare I could no longer stand a life without it, it made me feel sick. Seriously, why do people talk about bacon like it’s the second coming? It smells like burning pig flesh! Even when I did eat meat I never got the bacon hype. “How can you life without bacon!” relax, it’s a thin strip of pig meat, not wifi access. I particularly hated having to handle raw meat. I did a trial in a coffee shop that sold breakfast sandwiches and found myself in a situation where the bacon was burning in the oven and neither me nor my Muslim co-worker wanted to take it out. Meat freaks me out. Having to pick up something from the butchers for my boss was like walking into a nightmare sequence. And they took FOREVER to get whatever carcass lump I went in there for. If I accidentally eat something with gelatine or some other animal product in it (WHY THE HELL DOES YOGHURT NEED GELATINE?) I feel it sitting uncomfortably in my stomach for hours.

Being vegetarian isn’t easy. It’s a huge inconvenience. Vegetarians don’t open a menu and marvel at the many delicious sounding options and weigh up which one is the best, we scan though pages of inedible options to find the two half arsed veggie options and decide which sounds the least boring. You know what sucks? Being a vegetarian who doesn’t like mushrooms. Welcome to mushroom city. Also cheese city, but that’s pretty good. Many restaurants simply don’t put enough thought into vegetarian options. It’s usually something just thrown in there to keep us quiet and is usually much less substantial and appetising than the rest of the options. On a school trip to London we ended up in a place where the one vegetarian option was the only one that didn’t come with chips. I was starving for the rest of the night. There seems to be an idea that veggies have smaller appetites, we like “rabbit food”. The options are usually salad, vegetable lasagne, boring veggie ‘burger’ or… no that’s it I have genuinely run out of examples. For some reason huge fast food companies who would knock down old people’s homes or screw up the entire rainforest for profit seem fine with ignoring the veggie market and putting almost nothing on the menu for them. Not that I ever would set foot in a mcdonalds out of choice, but when I’m dragged in there by a friend I would like to get something besides their nasty cardboard fries and weird milkshakes (those probably aren’t suitable for vegetarians either). I am a British northerner and I like stodgy comfort food and big portions. It’s no fun to be poking at your individual vegetable lasagne with a who cares? salad while your family happily enjoy huge roast dinners. Of course you can’t complain, because you chose to be vegetarian, as everyone reminds you when you ask why the hell we are in kfc when there’s a lovely vegetarian place a ten minute walk from there.

The worst part about being vegetarian is having to deal with carnivores. I don’t hate meat eaters, don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit opposite people and scoff while they eat ribs. I silently wonder WHAT THE HELL HOW CAN YOU EAT THAT IT STILL HAS BONES IN IT but I don’t say anything. I ate meat for years, defiantly. I was one of those “I could never be vegetarian!” people, it seems hypocritical to act like I’m St Francis now I swapped chicken for Linda McCartney . It’s just that people can be very antagonistic when you sheepishly tell them that no you can’t have a fry up to cure your hangover, you don’t actually eat meat. The same questions come up over and over again. “Do you eat fish?” is something I have heard hundreds of times. No I don’t eat fish. I miss it way more than anything else and I stare longingly at chip shop fish, but no. I have an iron will. If it’s dead I won’t eat it. “Is this just because you don’t like meat or is it like a….moral thing?” people want you to say that it isn’t a moral thing, because that makes them feel like I’m judging them. It is in my case, but like I said I don’t hate meat eaters. “Ok if you were on a desert island with only a chicken and it was a choice between eating a chicken or dying…” Please just stop. People can also get annoying and jokey. “Hahaha meat is murder! Tasty tasty murder!” or “haha plants have feelings too you monster haha!”. Hilarious. People seemed threatened by it, as if you plan to shove it down their throats. That’s another thing, people say “I’m fine with vegetarians, just not the ones who try and convert you or have a go at you for eating meat”. Where are these vegetarians? I have never met these people. More often than not I have to put up with obnoxious carnivores trying to convince me to go back to bacon. “Uhm, actually humans are evolved to eat meat” I don’t care. “Look at it! Look at the chicken! don’t you want some mmmm!” get it away from me. “You know farmers rely on meat for their income” what about tofu manufacturers? “It’s just the circle of life” Yawn. “Animals are bread for meat, if we didn’t eat them it would mess up the whole system” So? I haven’t eaten meat in five years, the smell of bacon makes me want to gag. My mind is made up and you aren’t going to convert me. I don’t try and convert you so leave me to my goat’s cheese salad and Smiths albums. It’s the same kind of people that have to argue for atheism every time someone says they’re religious, it’s just to try and prove how clever they are and get the upper hand. The most annoying thing is when carnivores find out they quite like the vegetarian thing at a buffet or barbecue or any food sharing thing and hog it for themselves. Every time I am home Mum buys these southern fried quorn burgers which are amazing and every time my carnivorous siblings eat them. When I complain I get told it was my choice to go veggie and it doesn’t give me a right to hog food everyone else likes. The problem they aren’t seeing is they have other options. They don’t HAVE to eat the quorn burger, they can have the cold chicken in the fridge. Or the beef burgers, or the fish fingers, or the bolognese. I JUST have the quorn burgers. Tasty as they are, they’re my only option and it’s hugely frustrating when the same people who irritatingly waft sausages in my face are happy to ride the veggie bandwagon when it turns out we have some pretty nice food. If you go out for tapas with a veggie for God’s sake don’t take all the patatas bravas. They may be tasty but that’s all we have. It’s also disheartening when family or flatmates decide to cook a big meal and leave you out. I ask what’s for dinner, I get the reply “WE’RE having chilli. You can eat…eggs or something I don’t know.”

There are some perks to vegetarianism. I used to be a picky eater but I’ve discovered some incredible food I would have otherwise avoided for a good reliable burger. Goat’s cheese is my favourite thing ever, and I have recipes in my arsenal and cooking skills I would have otherwise not bothered with. Vegetarian food comes with a lower risk of food poisoning and apparently plenty of other health problems, like heart disease and high cholesterol. Didn’t cook your veggie burger properly? it won’t taste as good but it won’t kill you! You get a smug sense of superiority when a story about contaminated meat or a new disease contracted from eating a certain animal makes the news. The horse meat scandal was hilarious. Just fantastic. And the best part is you can interact with animals knowing you aren’t part of a system that hurts them. I mean just look at their little faces, how can you eat that?!

Why do you come hair? And why do you hang around?

I just read a pretty spot on article about the ‘beauty’ obsessed nature of body positivity movements.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/pretty-unnecessary-beauty-body-positivity

In summary the article basically says that ‘beautiful’ shouldn’t have to be a requirement of having value as a person. Body positivity shouldn’t be “everyone is beautiful” it should be “who cares if you’re beautiful? You’re still very important!”.

Firstly I’d like to acknowledge that I don’t have a great need for body positivity myself. I have a pretty decent amount of self confidence and aside from the usual adolescent insecurities I’ve never suffered too much. Sure, I don’t think I’m the most stunning creature ever. I’m alright. I’m definitely not the most photogenic (hence the lack of photo in this post), my nose is a bit bigger than I’d like and I could do without my broad shoulders. Given the choice I’d wake up tomorrow looking like Charlize Theron. However I’m young, white and slim enough that I am not too much opposed to narrow beauty ideals.

The one insecurity that gets on my nerves nearly every day is my hair. If you’re my facebook friend or my friend in any capacity you’re probably already bored sick of my hair-based angst or at least had a giggle at one of my self deprecating jokes.

I have Irish Hair. For those of you without Celtic genes and a weirdly spelled name, you probably don’t know what that is. I have Irish blood on both sides of the family, mostly from my Granny who emigrated from Roscommon. Mostly, I like being vaguely Irish. I wish I was more Irish. I have an interesting name, I got a slightly different perspective on the world growing up Catholic in a Church of England country (we’re more dramatic and interesting, and our churches are ostentatious and fabulous) and I can credit it for my distinctive colouring (pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes). The hair, however, I could do without.

Irish hair is never neat. It is dry and wild no matter how expensive your conditioner is. It is neither curly nor straight, it simply twists and turns of it’s own accord.  It is so fine and light it feels like it’s not there. It is extremely breakable particularly when stressed. In my case, it also happens to be thinner than a potato-free stew. It also gets greasy quickly, whilst still remaining dry and brittle. The slightest presence of wind or rain makes me look like a crazed fortune teller. You know when you tie your hair back and endearing little strands of it fall down around your face? Irish hair springs out in wild curls that stick out horizontaly. In short, everything that can possibly be wrong with hair is present in my hair. It almost never looks good and I also happen to be cursed with a total lack of ability to style hair. My immediate family suffer the same thing, but aside from them no one seems to have much understanding of what wild Irish Hair is like.

I remember at school having to wear a ponytail (my hair was down to my waist, scouse Mums don’t do bobs) and always despairing the little wiry curls that would escape the bobble and surround my face the second I got to school. So began my life long fight with my hair. In secondary school when I started to notice everything wrong with me I tried to take control. I cut my hair short. After a lifetime of freakishly long hair I was bored. I dyed it every possible colour to distract from the fact it was terrible and I couldn’t style it. I washed it every day and during my punkier phases I straightened it almost every day. Naturally my hair viscously bit back like a lion when I tried to tame it. It thinned out more than Donald Trump’s. So I layed off the dye and the heat application. Now it was just boring and brown and wilder than ever. Last year I panicked when I saw actual bald spots and thin, witchy patches. I started taking iron tablets and consciously upping my protein (being vegetarian and a student probably doesn’t help). I reduced the amount I washed it by half and, sure enough, it has got better. For a while, though, it was bad. I would cringe and feel close to tears of I caught sight of my pathetic amount of whispy hair in a mirror.

I would burn with envy when other girls would swish around their thick, healthy hair and style it constantly without the ugly results I had to put up with. I still bubble with anger when thick haired people complain about the cards they’ve been dealt. It weighs down on your head? It’s hard to style? It takes a long time to dry? Cry me a river. Why don’t you complain that you’re wallet is too heavy, or you have nowhere to store all the flowers Tom Hiddleston sends you? I may sound bitter and it’s because I am. Thick haired people seem genuinely surprised that I have zero sympathy for their “problems” or that I simply can’t, or rather refuse to, understand how “difficult” it can be to have stunning, healthy, thick hair. And no, you would not prefer mine. After washing it’s so flimsey and unimpressive a professional hairdresser probably wouldn’t notice it. A day after washing it’s so wiry it looks like the insides of a scarecrow. Catching sight of it in the shadow of a projector is the worst, I look like a Quentin Blake illustration.

Speaking of hairdressers, I feel like they are an alien species. They ask me if I want layers, a side fringe, feathering when all I want to say is “help me. Just look at this and do the best you can”. I remember getting it curled professionally for my sixth form prom and picking out an airbrushed model in a magazine sporting the hair I would sell semi vital organs for. “Ha! I’ll do the best I can!” said the stylist. If I was Joan Rivers I would probably say something like “Hairdressers call most people that come into their salons their ‘clients’, they call me their ‘patient’!” In my dreams I either have flowing, shiny mermaid locks, or the hair of Princess Merida, or even an adorable pixie bob. Even a cute cropped hairdo wouldn’t work, although it would get rid of a lot of my problems it would only exacerbate my less-than-delicate features and big face and most likely make me look like Dylan Moran or a less hot version of Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club. Mostly I just get a shoulder length boring cut that is as uninspiring as a cup a soup. Any longer and I look like a witch, any shorter and my face looks weird. Of course such haircuts never last. Another fun thing my hair does is growing faster than bamboo.

So we’ve had the other stages of hair grief, when comes the acceptance? I’m working on that. No, I’m not working on the part of this blog post where I wrap it up and tell you I am in fact a goddess and my hair is perf, I am working on accepting my hair. Is there anything good about it? It does style easily. If I actually knew how to style it this would be a huge bonus, but recently I attempted a quiff which looked somewhat impressive and stayed in place with only a shot of hairspray. I like the colour. It’s dark brown and it suits me. Sometimes it falls nicely and can form  natural curls when left to dry on it’s own. It always feels soft, too soft, like “brown smoke” as my friend says, but I suppose that’s something. I have other decent features I suppose. I like my hands and my eyebrows, I’ve been told nice things about my eyes. My face is sometimes like “daaaayym!” to me and sometimes it’s “damm!”. I am beginning to finally accept my hair. I know it won’t change and when I try it turns into a battle in which my hair always wins. My hair is not a benevolent helpful force that enhances any beauty I might have, it is a political enemy I grudgingly make peace treaties with. So I just leave it as it is. I distract from it. I keep it the least interesting thing about me. I push it back from my face, where it stays, I work with what I have rather than trying to force something I don’t. I try to take this position with all my insecurities, including my big nose and broad shoulders and weird little hump thing I have at the top of my back. You can’t have it all, although some people seem genetically blessed. My hair isn’t good and it probably never will be, unless I find a hairdresser who is also an actual wizard. Don’t tell me my hair is pretty, it’s not and that is ok. Pretty hair isn’t everything. Compliment something else about me, laugh at one of my terrific puns. And for the sake of all that is holy, begorrah and bejaysis, do not complain about your thick hair in front of me.Ir