Pass me the bucket.

Sometimes days are hard. And all you can do to get through them is drink alcohol until you’re so drunk, you can’t type properly. Thank fuck for autocorrect because without it, this wouldn’t make sense.

Depression makes you think that everything is your fault. That every little thing you do or say, every action is your responsibility. The way others feel, is a direct result of how you’vevtreated or spoke to them, disregarding how they make you feel.

I should know. I’ve loved someone, since around September last year, who doesn’t love me back. I try. But I know it’s futile. I can’t make someone love me.

Despite how much love I have for him, how much I care and I want him to be happy, I’m the one who’s happiness is the least important because that’s how it works. I meet someone, I fall in love, I give everything but it’s not enough. It never is. And the he goes off and meets the love of his life.

So I’ve had a drink. So fucking what. I’m lonely. I love someone who doesn’t love me back. Do you know how heartbreaking that is?

@specsygurl

Fuck this shit.

I write this from the edge. The edge of madness. All I can do to ease the pain is drink. The only thing that numbs the pain but even now, after a bottle of gin, I find myself in the most extraordinary pain that can’t relived.

I’ve never felt good enough. Always been the one who’s left in the corner at the end of the disco. Always picked last for any team and always the one who texts first.

I’m done with it. Done with being second best. Done with being the charity case. Done with being the one who waits all the time.

I’m nothing special. I know that. There is no place in this world for me anymore.

Beating your own head

Ever feel like giving up? Like all the effort you put into trying to be the best person, but only to appease someone else, just isn’t working? All that effort to try and make someone love you. Why? Why do it? You’ll never make someone love you. They either do or they don’t.

I keep telling myself I’m going to stop, going cut myself off. But it’s like cutting off my oxygen supply, except this oxygen is poisonous. You need it to breathe, but it’s slowly killing you. Slowly killing your soul, with its toxicity. So what do you do?

You can’t breathe either way.

Rip your own heart out.

I don’t know the last time I wrote anything. I don’t know anything. All I know is I’m slowly walking down my own path to self destruction.

He told me not to fall in love in with him. Why? Too late now. This bitter sweet love that engulfs me. Makes me feel sick. Why do I do it to myself? I’m not what or who he wants. I can’t mould myself in to any one. I can’t even be me.

So I carry on. I sleep with others. In the hope for love. For affection. To feel worthy. But I end up feeling worthless. Like a piece of meat no one wants. The leftovers. Handed around like scraps at the dinner table.

Does it make me feel better? Do I feel happier? No. It’s a fleeting moment of sedation. The drug of choice. To be loved but conditionally. The condition being that I’m not the only one. I’m not loved at all.

I share and it kills me. I go with other men to soften the blow, every time he wants someone else. Fuck me and I’ll forget about him. For a brief minute, except when I can see his face. And all I want is him. But I can’t. I’m his, but he’ll never be mine. While I live and breathe, I’m still worth nothing. I’m not wanted, not needed.

So I go elsewhere. Pass myself around and hate myself even more. The slut has become. But all I want is him. I’m unrecognisable from the person I once was.

What have I done?

To build a home.

Months, years can go by and then in one blinding second, a simple reminder can take you back to somewhere you forgot ever existed. Be it a smell, a touch. A song. A memory you’d completely forgotten about, suddenly lived as if it happened a second ago.

October 2014. My mum, on her second cancer diagnosis, recovering from chemo. My brother, my nieces, all at the family home, enjoying an autumn day. My brother is in the kitchen holding one of my youngest nieces. She is almost 2. The Cinematic Orchestra playing on the speaker for some background noise. My beautiful, gorgeous niece, singing along. I was lucky enough to capture it on my phone. 20 seconds of pure joy, until she curled into my brothers shoulder and hide from the camera.

I’ve not heard that song for sometime, or seen the video. Until today. Sometimes memories are forgotten, pushed down into our subconscious. The ones we really don’t want to remember or the ones we wish could. I’ve not watched anything with my mum in it since she passed away. I can’t bring myself to. I can hear her voice clear as anything in my mind. Calling my name. But to hear it in a video. To see her, still alive. I’m not ready.

Making a start clearing out some of her things was hard enough. Finding foreign money she’d saved for holidays she never took. Always wanting to, but ultimately another surgery got in the way. Surgery so she could live, but not in the sense she should of. No transatlantic flights to see family, no weekend getaways. No change of scenery. Just bland hospital walls with the paint peeling and waiting rooms with the same magazines that people thumb through, but never really read.

I couldn’t bring myself to clear anything else. It feels so final. It’s gone from a home to a house. Yet, everything there is a reminder of how much a home it was. How much love and joy was encapsulated into 2 floors and 8 rooms. Now it’s just a shell. Keeping all my mothers worldly possessions under cover until I can till bring myself to be pragmatic enough to clear it without sentimentally getting in the way. I don’t know when that day will come. If it will ever.

My best friend said goodbye to her father last weekend. A long battle, and an even longer end. The memory of it all, comes flooding back like a tidal wave. The deflating feeling that your lungs get when you can’t get your breath back. That’s how you feel the first few days, few weeks. And slowly you learn how to breath again. Until something suffocates you, reminds you and you’re back to that first moment of loss all over again. That moment of shock when you can’t tell what’s real from what’s not. You can’t separate fact from fiction. Words are spoken but you can’t hear them. You can’t form a sentence without having to go over and over in your head what words you’re trying to say.

Words absolutely fail me. I want to tell her, with time, it will ease. Tell her to take comfort in family and friends. I want to tell her it will get better. That in time, all the good of her father will flourish in her sons and that she’ll see how all the love he had for her, is passed down, and in that, he’ll live on forever. I’ll say it because I want to believe it. I want to believe that with time, grief will give way to hope, and the crushing depression that hangs over my head like a fog will clear and I can carry on doing the things I did to make my mum proud. So I wouldn’t be a let down of a daughter.

It’s over a year now, but still. That moment will live with me forever. The one memory I wish I could forget. Not because I want to forget my mum. How could I ever. But because I want to forget the absolutely crippling pain of knowing you’ll never get to make any more memories with someone. It’s a painful process, dredging up the past. Warm happy memories of times when we were the luckiest family. Then the not so lucky times that you try to suppress. The times when you realise how fucking hard it was for my mum at times. Those are the memories you don’t want, the bad times. The guilt ones. The ones that made you realise how much she sacrificed to make her own children happy, despite being desperately unhappy at the time, because of someone else. The guilt comes back again, and the good memories dissipate like clouds over a scorching sun. All you’re left with is the bad. And all you wanted was a happy home.

I can’t change the past. No amount of grieving will bring my mum back. No amount of guilt will atone for any bad I’ve ever done. So put one foot forward and keep moving. Slowly.

@specsygurl

Older, but definitely not wiser.

I did something today I never thought I’d do. Maybe I need the validation, maybe I need the sex. Maybe I need to know someone still actually wants me because I know, from where I’m standing, I’m unwantable.

I’m undesirable, a bore. Someone that doesn’t warrant or deserve love. I don’t even deserve sex. So I did what I swore I’d never do and texted an old fuck buddy.

Our last liaison was not so successful. After being cancelled on so many times, something to which I’m no stranger to, I decided that I couldn’t do it anymore. Not because of the sex. The sex was fun. It was adventurous, and made me feel good. But the fact I’d change my plans for him so many times and he’d let me down, I couldn’t handle the disappointment anymore. Not just once or twice. But nearly a whole summers worth. How we met that night was a fucking miracle in itself.

I know why I did it. You do strange things when you’re depressed. Trying to convince yourself that someone actually cares, when deep down, you know they actually don’t. Maybe I need to be fucked to get the demons out. To feel like I’m actually still a woman and not some freak. Not some experiment gone wrong.

Sex and depression aren’t easy. You want sex because you crave the touch of someone, but you’re so depressed you can’t imagine anyone wanting to actually be near you, let alone fuck you. When you’re actually in the mood and you find someone who you actually want to fuck, and fuck hard, all the cares and worries disappear and all there is, is you and them. Nothing else. No anxiety, no pain or hurt. Just two people, fucking each others brains out in a hot sweaty mess. But if you’re whacked out on antidepressants, chances are, you can’t do fuck all anyway.

I’ve been on and off antidepressants for nearly 3 months, and it’s really fucking hard. Trying to get through some days unmedicated is the hardest thing I’ve done. Especially the days when all I want to do is jump off a building . Let me tell you how tiring it is, trying to be happy. Trying to get through each day without wanting to die. It’s beyond exhausting. Sometimes knowing you can end it all is the only relief you get because you know the pain will end soon.

It’s a vicious circle. I stay off my meds because I want sex. But I don’t get any because the one man I’ve fancied in a long time, probably (and with good reason, because I’m a fuck up) hates my guts. So, get medicated. Because the pain of being hated is worse than wanting sex. Realising that man, doesn’t care, doesn’t want you anymore, maybe doesn’t even want to be friend. It’s soul destroying. But I still care. Always will. I can’t turn how I feel off like a tap.

So, go on the meds. But then, you don’t feel like having sex, because everything is numb. From your brain to your arse, you feel nothing. Although the pain of not being wanted is still there. That’s not numb yet. So keep taking the pills. And then in a moment of madness, get drunk and text your old fuck buddy, the one you thought you’d deleted. Wow what a plan. I’m really on the road to recovery here.

Who knows what’s next. A chance trip to meet up with someone who doesn’t even know how my age yet. And he’s somewhat younger. Imagine the shock when he realises I’m old. Maybe it’s time I became a slut again. Maybe get back to my hedonistic days of doing who I want, when I want and not caring about anyone. That seems to be the plan. Caring gets in the way. Gets you hurt. Especially when they don’t care back. Maybe just take whatever I can get and be done with it. Who knows if I’ll even meet up with old fuck buddy. Probably not. I never fucking learn.

@specsygurl

A freak like me: a rant.

My least favourite subject discussed today in counselling: my birthmark. The one defining feature that I can never shed. Never hide, never cover, never rid myself of. And yet as much as I protest to other people that I’d never cover it up to appease those who cringe at the sight of it, there are more times now than ever I wish, like a hideous halloween mask, that I could take it off and disappear into the background.

Everyone has an opinion on it. Oh you should do this, oh I’d do this if I was you. No. No, you don’t fucking get to tell me what you’d do or what I should I do until you’ve lived in my skin for at least a week. You don’t get to tell me shit because you’ve never known the humiliation of being pointed at because you look different. Because you don’t fit society’s ideas of what’s acceptably normal beauty wise. And don’t fucking tell me, beauty isn’t everything when you blatantly favour beautiful women over what society would term a plain normal, average woman.

Society will drag you into it’s ideals and tell you what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Then tell you, beauty is within! Embrace your inner beauty. What a confusing contradiction. Fuck society. And fuck anyone who thinks it’s their opinion to tell me it’s what’s inside that counts. It isn’t.

I’m not denying for any moment that someone with undeniable beauty hasn’t worked their arse off to get far in life. But those with less than aesthetically pleasing looks, have had to work even fucking harder. We’ve had to prove our worth in more ways than a pleasant smile or dazzling eyes. We’ve been the ones judged on what we can or can’t bring to the table because our looks won’t get us anywhere. Every person I’ve met that doesn’t or can’t relate in anyway to what it’s like to be judged because of a facial difference will never ever understand. Try as you might to pretend, until someone asks you why you look how you do, asks personal questions about your love life, your intimate details, questions whether or not you deserve to have a place in society, then you’ll never ever be able empathise with anyone who doesn’t conform to normal.

The last meeting I went to for my support group, a young girl with a birthmark brought the subject up of how people, particularly strangers, feel it’s ok to point out that yes, you have a birthmark. To completely change the subject because they feel the need to have their curiosity answered. Their desire to have their own needs met, far outweigh the need to have my autonomy and my feelings intact. Never mind the fact that this is the one topic that anyone with anything remotely different in their appearance has to deal with and answer everyday; no, as long as that persons’ curious need is fulfilled then fuck my feelings. And I’m expected to apologise if I come across as rude because I’m having a particularly shitty day and I don’t feel like discussing the red mark that covers pretty much most of face and body. WELL HOW FUCKING RUDE OF ME. HOW FUCKING DARE I NOT FEEL LIKE DISCUSSING THIS ONE THING THAT EVERYBODY ALWAYS FEELS ITS THEIR RIGHT TO ASK ME ABOUT.

I get that people are intrigued, I do. But sometimes the way people ask. Like I don’t have any feelings at all. Parents are the worst, hushing their kids up. Kids ask because they’re born without the prejudice that we inherit and build as we get old older. They’ll ask in such a way, as soon as you tell them, they accept it and move on. Why can’t adults be like that with pretty much 99% of the shit and prejudice that being different in this world presents.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been put on this earth purely to be a freak. To be something stared at from afar and up close. To be an exhibit in the museum of ugliness. Just so that ordinary people’s love of the grotesque is sated. I don’t deserve to be loved or have any right to be desired. I simply exist to satisfy the needs of the morbidly obsessed.

Let me tell you how fucking tiring it is to be me sometimes. Or for anyone with a facial difference, or anything that singles them out. To have to put on my cheery birthmark face, because after all ‘it’s what’s inside that counts!’ It’s fucking exhausting. Pretending to be the ‘poster girl’ for birthmarked people. Not allowed to be known as simply, my name. No, I’m just the girl with a birthmark. That’s the only role, the only definition I’m allowed. I’m getting really fucking tired of it.

Never mind the fact that quite often I’m dying inside, I don’t always want to talk about how I look. And I don’t want fucking sympathy or pity. Sympathy is even worse. The pitied cries of ‘oh you’re so brave! To have your face and still you leave the house every day. I couldn’t do it it I looked like you.’ That there. Why don’t you just fucking kill me now if you think I look that horrendous, that YOU wouldn’t want to wake up everyday and have to have to face the world.

To be honest, most of the time, I don’t give a flying fuck what most people of how I look. Aside from the fact it’s other people’s business what their opinion is, at the same time, I don’t want to know it. I’ll still get out of bed and try and live the best life I can because deep down, I know I’m pretty lucky. So I don’t ever want pity. I certainly don’t want your fucking sympathy bullshit. I want acceptance. But I’ll never get it. Not in this world, not with this society where you can get more likes on social media for putting a profile pic with a filter than you can for putting an untouched photo of something raw and real. People don’t want reality, they don’t want to see different. They want normal, they want beautiful. And I don’t fit that criteria. I never have, never will. I don’t fit in.

So, this is my face. And I don’t fucking care if you think I’m ugly.

@specsygurl

Big mouth strikes again

I ruined perhaps one of the best friendships I’ve ever had. Because I can’t keep my mouth shut. You’d think after 40 years I’d realise but no, jealousy got the better of me and I had to put my foot in it. And now, here I am, wondering if life will ever be the same.

It probably won’t, so it’s up to me now to try and make the best of a bad situation. I fucked up and didn’t get the job I wanted, and now all I can think about is how to get through the next week without succumbing to the inevitable. The thoughts in my brain that tell me I’m useless, and I’m better off not being here. It’s hard fighting them when you’re alone, and everything points to them being right.

Even heavily medicated, I still know they’re right. I might not know what time of the day it is but I know deep down, my life is a big mess. I’m not sure how to shift it, how to clear this fog around my head that tells me I’m useless.

For now, sleep. Sleep is all I can do. To keep me out of trouble, to keep me going from one day to the next. Until I figure out what life is meant for. Sleep.

The old demons return…

Urgh, the things you’ll do to get through the day sometimes. Those days when you’ve fucked up, when everything is out of your control. And you can’t see the light through the dense fog that clouds your own mind. Nothing goes your way and all you hear is that voice in your head that you try so hard everyday to block out.

That voice that tell you, you’re useless, you’re fat, you’re a freak, you’re ugly, you’re worthless. All the hard work in building yourself up, just comes tumbling down in an instant. Like watching a building implode with dynamite: thats your self esteem. That’s those demons in your head telling you, don’t get your hopes up that you’re anything other than below average. Everything you’ve done, all the hard work at this point, reduced to debris around you.

And all I can do is walk. Walk so far, for so long, that I don’t know where I am. Because thats what the voices tell me to do. Walk. Walk to that bridge, walk to that train station. And all that stops you when you’re standing on that platform waiting for the next fast train to come rushing through is that you don’t want to fuck up someone elses life while you’re in the process of ending yours. Until someone is standing on that platform, or hovering by the edge of that bridge, I don’t they will ever fully understand how exhausting it is to have a mental illness. To just want the noise in your mind to be over.

I guess this is something I should know by now. It’s not like it’s the first time. Or the last. But you wonder sometimes, how much longer will I keep going? How can I keep finding the strength to live when the lows hit so often? When will I actually get better? Despite everything. Despite all the heartache, the rejection, the knockbacks.

My counsellor says I’m stronger than I think, but I don’t know anymore. All I know is I want to be happy. I want to silence that voice in my head. The one that rears when I’m in the deep of a low episode. The one that tells me that I’m better off not being here. The one that makes me want to get so drunk, just so I can sleep. Block everything out and not be awake. So I do, and eventually the numbness wears off and I wake up. But even if it’s just an hour, I get some sleep. I’m well aware that my demons won’t be fought with a bottle of vodka, they won’t be silenced by a walk or even a run. When I stop, and the silence of being still hits, they’re still there. And I don’t know anymore how to turn them down.

@specsygurl

Mum: a year on.

Oh what a year it’s been. And yet it feels like yesterday. The phone call at work. The hushed meeting, the family room with the sign on the door, that tells the outside world in no uncertain words, this room contains bad news. All the texts and phone calls to get everyone here as soon as possible. They said it could take it a week, I never realised it would only be hours.

I can remember every second. All in slow motion. Telling my manager I wouldn’t be in for the next however long. Going home and packing an overnight kit so I could stay at your bedside. Nurses bringing me extra blankets and pillows so I could sleep on the floor next to you. But I was as wide awake as I’ve ever been. Every few minutes or so you’d wake up and sit on the edge of the bed, in so much pain all I could do was help you sit. And that one last hug. Your head, heavy on my shoulder, and your arms, too tired to move, I put my arm around yours and held you close, not knowing it would be the last hug I ever gave you.

4 years of cancer, raging through your strong body had led you here. From day 1 you knew the odds. You knew it wouldn’t be easy, that it would be a fight but you never shied away from it. Always asking questions that you perhaps you didn’t want to know the answer to, but always facing it with honesty. Because you knew more than me, that one day, you’d be ready to say ‘I’m done now’.

But it was always on your terms. Always when you were ready and not a moment before. August 2017 and you were at your poorliest. But still, you never complained. You always found something to laugh about. The blocked toilet, in your room, the callbell that didn’t work and the door that didn’t shut. None of it mattered to you, you made all the nurses and staff laugh with your light hearted humour. Because that’s what you did best, put other people at ease when they’re anxious.

Dad, close to tears most visiting days, saw a glimmer of hope when you decided, as I could tell much against your wishes, but because you couldn’t bear to see him so upset and lost, that you’d do another round of chemo. More long days and more sickness but the sadness in dads eyes when the doctor gave us the odds was enough to prompt you, selflessly to give it another go.

For so many weeks, you endured the day long trip out. And I’d walk from home after work to the house, borrow you car, come and wait till the late hours of the evening and sit and talk about anything and everything while your machine bleeped away and the drip feeding you a cocktail of poison and chemicals slowly ebbed into your veins, only for you to wake up in the early hours of the morning when I finally got you home, to cause the most horrendous sickness, that most people would question why they were still doing this, week in week out.

Cancer doesn’t ask if you’re enduring enough to keep going. It does what it wants. Year after year of ops, various trips to different hospitals, a busmans holiday for me on my leave, round in circles and more questions, answers, more ops. Some people would’ve given up. I would’ve given. But not you. You kept going, kept being your brightest and relentless self. Never giving up, never asking, ‘why me’. We met so many lovely people along the way, I’m sure your infectious positivity and your general happy lovely self warmed them and made them feel so much more at ease.

You were always so good at that, making people feel at ease. One the first day of chemo, back in 2014, we bonded with Sandra over a bag of mini cheddars and words with friends. That’s the thing about cancer, you never really know when your times up until it’s up. Say hi to Sandra for me, I hope you’re all sharing the mini cheddars. Tell her I miss her. Another crap point of last year.

I’ve lost count of many of our loved ones this fucking vile inhumane disease has taken from us. From our family. I don’t want to think anymore. Too many to comprehend. It just doesn’t bear thinking about. At least you’re all reunited.

From 2009, when your were first diagnosed, you always held yourself with such dignity. You were what made me want to be a nurse, and for everything that happened, I’m glad I learnt what it meant to really care for someone. I’m glad I could care for you for the last 6 months of your life. It made it all worth it.

The last 4 years, we shared more than most mother daughters ever will. I’d give up the next 4 years again if it meant you were still here. I still dream of you most nights. That you’re coming home. We’re going to Canada, or we’re on holiday, on the beach somewhere warm. You’re well and no one mentions the C word. It’s funny how you bond even more over 4 years when your leave is taken up, taking you to hospital appointments and ops. It’s strange, I have all the time in the world now, yet sometimes I’m completely lost.

I wish I could’ve told you more. Wish I could’ve been more honest. I always felt like I’d let you down if I told you. The real reason I was in hospital. I think it would’ve hurt you more than me. I know you only ever wanted the best for me. I’m sorry I let you down. But no one will ever hurt me again, you raised me stronger than that. It just took a bit longer to realise.

But the last night will always haunt me. My one fear, the only thing I’m afraid of now and that’s that I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell you I love you. You never got the peaceful exit from life that you should’ve had and I know you’d tell me it’s ok, but I should’ve done better. I should’ve seen the signs before it was too late. I wish I could get the image of you out of my head but it will always be there. My counsellor says it will always be there. There is nothing I can do.

I hope you know you were an amazing mum. I wish I could’ve told you at your funeral but I couldn’t think about anything other than how I was going to get through the next day. I wish I could have told you how you always put me and Paul first. You always went without for us. We never had much but you always made us feel like we were loved. You used to come and watch me swim in my events, ferry me around the country to my county cricket matches. You never complained. All you ever wanted was to give us what you never had.

You never wrapped me in cotton wool either. From the day I was born, which I know was hard for you. I didn’t look like any of the other babies. This bundle of flesh and red. But I knew you loved me. I knew no matter what colour my skin was, or how much I was different I was your daughter. You never excluded me from anything, always encouraged me to go out and join in. You never made me shy away from anything. The confidence I have, I owe to you.

My counsellor told me I should write all this to you. To tell you everything that I’ve wanted to say and I hope I’ve covered some of it. There will be a million other things that I wish I could’ve said. And a million other things I wish I could’ve done to be a better daughter. I know how heartbroken you were when me and Jim split up and I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve given you a grandchild. But the truth is, it just didn’t happen. And now the thought of having a baby on my own, especially without you terrifies me. You’re not here to help me and guide me. Help me be the mum your were. But wishing won’t bring you back. It’s been a year to the day, almost to the hour. And it still hurts. I still can’t bring myself to clear any of your clothes out. But I know it’s time to carry on now. It’s what you would want. For me to go out and live the life that you wanted for me. So I hope I do my best for you. You know I’ll never forget you. Love you always Mum x

Sharon