What works works

I'm drunk.

What works works.

I arrived home from work stressed and dysfunctional and totally failing as an adult; even in my attempts to not be an adult.

I'm now drunk. I am now functional as an adult and as an adult attempting to not be an adult.

What works works.

Don't beat yourself up about it.

Make a Child Smile

Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/carl1226/

Make a child smile. Not because you should. Because you can.

Gender

Image from http://www.livescience.com/37087-dsm-gender-dysphoria.html

What is gender?

There are biological aspects to gender. Each gender provides the gametes for a new lifeform, but that's just sexual reproduction. The long chain of several lines of evolution.

What is gender when contained in a social context?

Why do girls play with baby dolls?
Why do boys play with military dolls?

Why do we believe that gender is something inherent when it is obviously something that is taught.

I am a male with a feminine body (I've had my arse groped more than once in a club cos some misogynist thought I was female). If it's down to stature then my world should have consisted of being brought up in a feminine world.

I was lucky enough to be brought up with enough of a view of several different struggles for equality in a local world that was fighting for a rejection of prejudice to come to a number of generalisations.

Some languages don't have gender. Instead of She or He it is simply They.

Social gender is not inherent in genetics.

There is only one Human Race.

So where does your gender come from? What is derived from social conventions and what is genetically you? Are you defined by social context or by you?

I'm a human ape. What are you?

Life's a Game

Image from http://theskyfx.deviantart.com/

I read Luke Rinehart's The Dice Man as a child, probably pre teen. I consumed huge numbers of books as a child. You do that when everyone's telling you to sleep and you have a wonky circadian rhythm, no torch, and you know how batteries and bulbs and wires work. At least until you get an old valve radio or big black and white television and start listening to the world service or watching open university on BBC 2.

The Dice Man was an influential book along with Stephen King's IT, James Herbert's Rats, and a bunch of other adult drama and horror.

The Dice Man isn't a way of doing something, it's a way of thinking about something.

We make decisions all the time. We apparently make all of them subconsciously long before we make them consciously. I see this in effect all the time.

Two times recently in my life I saw two different people act out an identical act for similar reasons and goals. The resemblance was uncanny. In both cases both seemed confident that they were making the decision at the time they were with me. In both cases they had made the decision long before. In neither case do I believe that they had consciously made the decision. In both cases their conscious was genuinely trying to decide between two courses of action.

Most days as I go through life I see discussions that have an obvious outcome. The decision has already been made.

When we think we're rolling the dice has nothing to do with when the dice were rolled. This is an element of The Dice Man. A friend of mine uses a coin toss to expose her subconscious. Her approach to ambivalent decisions is to toss a coin. If you agree with the coin's outcome you go ahead with the coin's "decision", it either means you didn't care or you agree. If you disagree you'll tell the coin to fuck off. This exposes the unconscious decision. It forces you to accept the choice you have already made.

This is how we travel through life. We make decisions. The decisions we make have consequences.

We roll the dice to deal with those consequences.

The Slippery and Darkened Spiral

Depression is a spiral for me.

Each person I know who's been through depression has a different way of seeing it. The classic feeling for me many years ago used to be one of feeling like I was in a tunnel someone else made and mostly I couldn't see the light at the end of it. Occasionally there'd be a glimmer but it was impossible to tell if it was an actual light or if my brain was just making things up due to the long term meta sensory deprivation.

I got out of the tunnel. I had 15 years or so of living in the light. I occasionally got depressed, everyone does, but let a day or so go by and whatever it was wasn't important any more.

This time it's not a tunnel. This time it's a very dark and slippery spiral.

In recent weeks I've sat at the bottom of this spiral well a lot.

Occasionally I scramble up the slippery spiral or I jump from level to level and briefly get to see the light. It takes a huge amount of effort both to get anywhere near the top and a huge amount of effort to hold on to wherever I have made it to up the spiral.

While my strength lasts I try to use being in the lighter shadows to improve my situation. I call out to those around me and let them know I am still alive. They matter to me.

When I'm sat at the bottom of the spiral I rest and plan for my next assault on the spiral. This time the plan will work.

The worst times? When you have an obligation and your state of mind is fighting you every step of the way to fulfil that obligation. I'm useless, I can't even get out of bed and make a coffee, let alone do my duty. You kick and scream at yourself from inside. You lie to yourself about how things will be if you just get on with it. You try and work out who you used to be and how you got here. You go round in circles.

If you're suffering from chronic stress as well... you shake, you're cold, you're hot, you're thirsty and by the time you've made a drink you're no longer thirsty. You're hungry, you make food, you throw it away with only the tiniest nibble taken to justify having made it. Food disgusts you, people disgust you, you disgust you. You spike on adrenalin and then crash and become comatose.

Nothing is enticing. Nothing is worth it.

Nothing.

You sit in the well at the bottom of the spiral.

I Feel Like...

It's the most common thought in my mind, I feel like...

I feel like taking photographs, but I can't just go wandering around as the opportunity arises, the weather sucks, my ankles hurt (broke them both a couple of months ago) and I can't justify funding suitable lighting to effectively take photos indoors. So I don't take photos.

I feel like fixing up my broken house, but the state of my house just reflects the state of my mind - messy. There's always more to do to it but I give away half of anything that will increase it's value till I'm free of previous legal encumberments.

I feel like watching films, but I know I won't concentrate on them so what's the point.

I feel like company, but company is complicated. It means many things and the company you get is not always the company you want.

I feel like writing code, but my brain won't settle on an idea long enough for it to become a mathematical model of reality that is stable in my head.

I feel like setting up my new Raspberry-Pi HiFi computer in the living room (it rocks), but I need to do a lot more before I can make anything permanent in the living room and I won't sit in there on my own for any length of time so what's the point.

I feel like making something wonderful to eat, but there's only me to eat it and I won't care if I eat or not. It wouldn't be the first time in the last few years I've made a wonderful dinner and thrown it all in the bin a couple of hours later.

I feel like going out and socialising, but it takes a lot at the moment to even walk out the door and I just can't afford it most of the time.

I feel like catching up on work, just to help out, but work hasn't given me a pay rise in a few years now so my inclination to help them out when I've never got any spare cash to have fun with is limited.

I feel like... so many things... and yet they all seem to have their own counter feeling creating a general state of mass ambivalence.

Stalemate.

TL;DR I ranted at my doctor. I may have gotten some progress.

My doctor is a really nice guy. I like him a lot. He didn't deserve my visit the other day but he's also the face of the NHS and in that role he is there to take some of my frustration at the lack of care given to my health over the years.

I have two long term chronic health problems. My eczema and my sleep pattern.

Right now I have a bunch of complications driven by the stress I've found myself under, over the last two years particularly. On a monthly basis the work in my life seems to get more and more with no sign of letup. In my personal life various things have occurred that mean on an almost monthly basis I have found out even more about what a lying cheating whore my ex is while she "sweetly" tries to negotiate with me an exit for our legal entanglements.

Last weekend I broke. I broke badly. The "sweet" ex decided the best way to help me with this was to make up some story about how she'd reported me to the police for abusive behaviour against her, including that I had invited around specifically "a person with known violent behaviour when drunk" to get drunk with me. This person has been drunk here many a time and shown no violent tendencies, because any tendencies he may have had were related to emotional circumstances at the time. He's also probably my closest friend right now, so he was here because I knew he could quite happily listen to me rant without making comment or judgement.

The "report" was based on me sitting within earshot of her while ranting. I'd just found out that every word she has said since this process started two years ago has been a blatant bare faced lie. I was ever so slightly upset at the over £6,000+ I have spent on legal and financial advice to try and sort this process out over the last two years. To say nothing of the money I have invested in the house itself. If we sell I get nothing. If we sell she get's little and likely doesn't cover her original deposit.

So it's beneficial for us to play nice isn't it? Instead she carries on her illicit relationship and extends it, now infecting the entire house. This is where my head is right now. You don't want to know anything about her actual relationship, because I've recently learnt more about that that makes it even more scary and I can only conclude she is living in some fantasy world, hence the continuous lies even when they don't benefit her.

This is what my doctor was facing me trying to explain in under 10 minutes. And the big problem being none of the above is what I wanted to talk to him about. It's just some background.

So I started discussing what I believe is an underlying problem of mine and has been my whole life. It's just like my eczema in that respect.

My parents were told when I was 3 months I'd grow out of my eczema, when I was 3-4 years old I was told I would grow out of my eczema by my teens, when I was a teenaager I was told I would grow out of my eczema it's a teenage thing... You see the pattern. The same with my weight. Yes he'll put on weight when he's a teen, he'll put on weight when he's a young adult, he'll start to fill out when he's 25. Oh middle age, that's definitely got to do it. I have recently been consuming alcohol and food at a rate that means I should have a world class gut right now. Nope, still 57 kg. I am now middle aged (and pretty healthy according to my recent inspection)

So this is genetics. It's not my lifestyle, it's not I don't eat enough, it's me, just get used to it.

There's another thing that seems to be part of my genetics and that's my circadian rythym. It's a bit laggy. No, it's a lot laggy. If you let me run 3 hours behind everyone else I seem to do okay, things seem to occur normally. The problem is when you're trying to conform to a 9-5 style lifestyle it doesn't really fit. Your 9am meeting is a 6am meeting from my body's point of view. I spend my life working as if I had a 6 hour jet lag to contend with every day.

I believe I suffer from a delayed sleep phase type circadian rythym sleep disorder. The only way to prove it that I have found, till recently? Prove you don't have any other kind of sleep disorder.

Have you ever tried to convince a doctor to spend a bunch of resources on a bunch of tests that are all going to come back negative. It's not easy.

So a year ago when I went to the doctor over some major sleep issues I was having at the time I presented them some information on DSPD (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder) just as an "I'd like to investigate this sometime, do you know anything about it?" at the end of the appointment. They took it, read it, filed it. No more than I expected at the time.

So I'm broken, sat in the doctor's office, I've summarised as much of the above as I can in ten minutes while being in a state where my thoughts are all over the place and there are so many possible places to diverge off into more detail (It was only about half an hour previously that I'd had the dawning realisation about how much my ex had been lying to me).

He turns and says so we just need to sort the stress. I exploded at him verbally. I screamed something along the lines of if all you can offer me is a 5mg valium as a short term chemical fix then you are fucking useless to me and I am wasting my time here. He then asked what I'd do and I said go home and continue to self medicate using alcohol as a sedative because I've read the data on valium and I've read the data on alcohol and it basically comes down to one is socially acceptable and the other isn't.

If you can give me a short term fix with some promise to actually fucking listen to the data I'm trying to present to you then we might get somewhere and I know we haven't had time to deal with this here, I said it when I booked the appointment, it was also the first thing I said to you as I walked through the door, I kept stopping myself part way through things because I knew we had no chance of delving into it any deeper and here you are saying well that's it time's up. No.

So he asked me what the diagnosis was and what the treatment was. This again made me explode with I'm not the fucking medical professional but I can see one simple fix if this is the case and that's just simply some medical acknowledgment of I'm not pathologically lazy I'm just permanently jet lagged. That's something I can take to my employer and maybe we can all benefit and maybe my stress will reduce (ya know not being jet lagged all the time) and maybe my eczema will improve and my diet as I'll be consuming foods when it wants to eat not when I'm forcing it to eat.

So he said okay what about if I give you enough valium to get you through to next Tuesday which is the next earliest appointment I can book you in for and I shall go and read up some more on this.

Thank you.