Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Especially to my little one.

I don't think it was ever bias that you were mine.  You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

For you, for ever.

Sleep tight.

Christmas Wrapping

I sat, crossed-legged on the cold, faux laminate floor today, wrapping presents.  Each one had a different variant of Christmas-themed paper, one holly, one ivy, one fairy, one some sort of terrible garish tartan that the only thing deserving of being wrapped in it would be a set of bagpipes.  Because the only person I would ever dream of giving bagpipes to would be that man at the station who called me a twat.  I might be a twat, sir, but you, sir, you, sir, are a Cunt.

I like Christmas, in its way, but like my birthday, it reminds me incessantly of the slow march towards death.  It inevitably recalls the lost magic of my youth, and the ever-growing tragedy of another year I've done fuck-all with.  Every year the pile of Christmas cards grows smaller, like it has The Shrinks, and neighbours die, and the round robin letter those most loathed people send becomes a tally of divorce and demise and little Sophie got AIDs this year and apart from her crippling heroin addiction we can't think how.

I do really like Christmas.  I just don't like mine.

It could've been worse; at least I didn't do the song.

CALMzone

Those of you based in the Thames Valley area might be interested to know that a new CALMzone has recently been established there.  CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) is a registered charity that exists to prevent male suicide in the UK, which is the single biggest cause of death in men aged 20-45.  They offer a free, confidential and anonymous phoneline and web chat service between the hours of 5pm and midnight, every day of the year.

The Thames Valley branch is the third in the UK, the others being in Merseyside and London - probably because they're all such depressing places to live (sorry) - and will allow more men in the Berks/Bucks/Ox area to access local support.  So if you, like me, frequently find yourself roaming the Thames Valley landscape like Cathy across the moorland, pining for Heathcliff or your sadly misplaced mental health, do keep them in mind.

Find them on their website at https://www.thecalmzone.net/, or phone them on:
0800 58 58 58 (Nationwide inc. Merseyside and Thames Valley)
0808 802 58 58 (London)

In other news, this week I'll be curating the Twitter account for Mental Health Voices over at @MH_Voices.  If you have any topics on the... topic of mental health that you think should be discussed, drop me a line here or there.

Happy International Tea Day.

Every day is tea day for me.

Dickhead

I took your death out on another kid who had your look.  His teeth were less crooked but his smile was yours and I didn't want anyone to have that.  They never did it quite as well as you did anyway.

I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.  In years past and when I hadn't found your grave, I left flowers for another boy who died your age in the hope that somehow they'd be known.  I found your place in June, and the headstone looked so new I half-believed they must've buried you last week.  That birthday you got roses, and irises and lilies and all the things we never would have got you years before.  But somehow now they're all I think to buy.

I forgot because it's changed somewhere.  Not a day went by I didn't used to think of you, and if I hadn't slept than I'd have said it's not an hour.  But it's been a long, long time since then, and I can go whole days without remembering that I miss you.  I'm sorry for it, and I'm sorry that I'm glad about it too.  I'm sorry that I'm tired of being sad for you.

When you drank yourself to death alone that Friday night, I don't know where I was.  I don't know why I wasn't there that time, when every other week I'd been beside you.  And still today I wonder how intentional it was, your missing letter never able to confirm it either way.  I knew that you weren't happy all the time but then who is?  You laughed too much to die.

I still see your face as clearly as I ever could, the smile, the gap between your teeth.  I might not think about you every day but there's yet to be a week.  And still it brings the same old sting, and anger that you couldn't stick around.  I wish I'd had the chance to hate you, even more the chance to die before you.  I wish I didn't know you, ever, or just never knew you'd gone for good.  I wish I didn't miss you like I do.

Oh

I have completely forgotten what day my birthday is.

I think it might be some sort of stroke.

PropranoLOL

Today marks two weeks since I have started taking these accursed pink tablets, and while I have not yet suffered any rectal bleeding, scaly skin or complete stoppage of the heart, the side-effects are beginning to make themselves known in the most unnerving of ways.  I keep getting incomparably dizzy every time I rise from a sitting position, and invariably go wheeling away in the wrong direction before I collide with a wall or a small child and am sent back on the right course.  Today, on getting out of bed, my legs took me a full eight feet across the room until I managed to pinball my head off a shelf and collapsed into the door.

That is not to say they have been entirely ineffective.  The heart palpitations have on the whole receded, apart from when I was being hunted by the stalker, but I remain hopeful that his current absence from the shrubbery in my front garden will continue.  Unfortunately, the debilitating dizziness is making me wonder if I am in fact suffering from another brain tumor, and rather than a side-effect it is instead a hint at my impending doom.  Time will tell, I suppose.  I'll likely be dead by Christmas.

I don't find it very funny.  I think they were poorly named.

Apparently this man suffered from terribly scaly skin but just sort of went with the flow.

Good show, sir

On certain days of the week, my work takes me to a learning centre for young adults with disabilities.  This can range from autism and cerebral palsy to severe anxiety and rare genetic disorders.

These are some of my favourite days, as the students are lovely and they don't send out the same waves of negative judgement towards me that the other pupils do, like last Thursday when I heard one mutter to another that my hair was sporting a 'shit dye job' when my hair colour is entirely natural, bizarre as it may be.  There is no collaboration between it and my eyebrows.  It's like they're born of different parents.

Today, after a very enjoyable maths lesson - the first time I have enjoyed maths since the age of sixteen when I was forced out of the AS class due to sheer incompetence - I was approached by one of my colleagues on the way out.

'I thought you did wonderfully today,' she said.  'The way you worked with her was just perfect.  If you can make her laugh and get her to do her work at the same time then it's really something special.'

Now I spend a good deal of my time working myself up into a hysterical lather that I am about to be fired, so this was music to my ears.

Too much music.  I burst into tears.

'What's wrong?' she said.  'I thought you'd be happy.'

'I am,' I told her between sobs.  'I'm very happy.  I just wasn't sure.'

'Wasn't sure of what?'

'If I was doing ok.'

This lady is around my mother's age, and proceeded to coo over me in much the same manner, which I very much appreciated even if the show of such genuine affection did make me cry even harder.

'I'm sorry,' I said eventually, once the gift of coherent speech had been returned to me.

'Don't you worry,' she said.  'You're doing a very good job.'

And off I went.  And I haven't had anything to drink tonight.  Apparently that's what feeling good can do to you.  I can't believe I'd forgotten.

Tea-drinking instead.  Fewer episodes of crippling depression, more of insomnia.

Why we should bomb the shit out of Syria

In the spirit of good old British Nationalism and the forthcoming air strikes on Syria, I have decided to compile a jolly list to show my unwavering support for the cause and for our great prime minister, David Cameron.

1. Everyone who will die will be a terrorist.
2. It won't be murder because they will be martyrs.  And everyone loves a martyr.
3. Anyone who doesn't want to bomb Syria is a terrorist sympathiser.
4. It will also mop up the dregs of the refugee crisis as there will be no more refugees to flee the country.
5. David Cameron clearly has the best interests of the common man at heart.
6. Afterwards, Isis will be too scared to do a terrorist attack in England.
7. Since allied air strikes started, nobody wants to join Isis.  Claims that recruits have doubled since then are clearly lies manufactured by notorious rebel leader, 'Red Jez the Corbinator.'
8. We did really well in the last wars, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think this should clean up any residual arguments, and put the mind of the nation at ease.

We are doing the right thing.

Man of the people.

Marks and Spencer is changing its name to Gethsemane

Yesterday brought little relief from the imminent threat of death by stalker.

In fact the whole day was interminable.  Work brought two hours of psychology, where my entirely redundant presence requires me to sit and listen to lessons on unethical psychological experiments.  It is all very interesting, but I left the class, once again, with my soul in turmoil at the terrifying fragility of the human condition and the precarious hold by which society maintains its stability.

After work, I thought it might be nice to go to Marks and Spencer, because I am in mortal need of new headphones.  My current pair are on the cusp of explosion, and I really do require headphones so I can't hear the horrible things the students are probably saying about me on the train.  I was rather disappointed to discover, however, that not only is the biggest M&S in the fucking south entirely barren of headphones, but they provide a very misleading pair of earmuffs that really got my hopes up for a moment.  I then got lost trying to find the toilets, and ended up wandering around the labyrinthine children's section for ten minutes like a paedophile overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice.

When I eventually located the elusive bathroom, I found myself unable to use a urinal as there was a gentleman there with his underage son, and I had already made myself look illegal enough so I was forced to go darting into a cubicle.  Rather unpleasantly, the toilet I elected to take refuge in had a poo floating in it, and in locking the door I thereby became responsible for the poo.  Even though I had not put it there, to exit the cubicle and leave it languishing to be discovered by another would have left me feeling humiliated and ashamed.  So after I completed my wee I flushed it away, and it went without a fight, which makes me wonder why the horrendous fucker who dropped it from his rectum didn't deign to do the same.

I made it home without being arrested as a child-snatcher, but as soon as I had the temerity to relax, fate swooped in to snatch the calm away.  The phone rang.  I answered it.  'Hello?' I said.  But nobody said hello back.  Nobody said anything at all.  I waited about ten seconds until I realised it must be the killer continuing his vendetta against my already fragile psyche, and slammed it back into the receiver, my calm shattered for the night.  The whole affair is taking a dreadful toll on my health, and last night I found myself unable to sleep due to a crippling bout of heart palpitations that left me lying wide-eyed in the darkness convinced I was teetering on the brink of mortality.  And then, when they eventually stopped, it was so unnervingly sudden that I thought my heart must there and then have ceased to beat, and I had already begun to plunge headlong into the dark inevitability of death.

And now I've washed myself with some new-fangled mint-scented shower gel, and it's just too fucking minty.  My balls are burning with freshness.

The only thing that could top this off would be bombing Syria.

The balance of humanity hangs on a thread.  The propensity for evil is in all of us.