He was a brilliant comedian. He made me feel uncomfortable because he was so upfront about his disability, at the time when I was still trying so hard to hide from mine.
I wanted to be that courageous. I guess eventually I was.
If you were to ask me, today, as Mental Health Week draws to a close, if I was looking forward to next year's "week" I'd say "Yes, but I'm glad this one is over". I don't want to sound unkind, but it was tough going.
Mental illness is like that; talking about it, reading about it, living it, it leaves driftwood on the beach in my mind after the tide has gone out, and beachcombing isn't a lazy Saturday afternoon activity.
It's rewarding, you never know what fantastic prizes you'll find, but it's hard, draining work all the same.
Ask me again in a year, less a fortnight, and I'll tell you I have my big bag, and my gloves, and I can't wait for the tide to go out, but today I just want to go home and wash the sand off my feet.
It can be exhausting. REST. Let the sea reclaim some of it for now, let the wind and sand weather the edges.
Sometime in the future, you'll select the best bits of driftwood, to make something of magnificence with it.
DEB
The risk is always there, when you talk to people, that something they say will touch on a raw nerve.
Someone said something, and I wanted to quote myself; writing from many years ago.
I didn't, because I didn't think they'd understand.
Nine tenths of the time I think I know me.
All I know for sure is this - that this cleverly crafted illusion I call my reality is as fragile as the finest crystal.
It would only take one small chemical imbalance to bring it all crashing down.
I dont really know who I am.
I probably never will.
That's how it is.
Nine tenths of the time I sort of know me.
Even depressed, I still know who I am.
The manic.
The dangerous, impulsive, sometimes violent, sometimes childlike, unpredictable, fixated, dream head, all this, and more, all these things, and others, and none of them and all of them.
I cannot completely know someone who is never the same from one meeting to the next.
Sometimes i just want to scream.
I feel so frustrated.
So trapped.
(Insert suitable substitute for potentially offensive term; starts with the letter "F")!!!!
I've just tipped over the edge into I dont know what I dont feel down I feel like my skin is moving all on its own i'm twitching and suddenly tired so very very tired and my skin feels tight like its just too small and I cant stay focused tired twitchy crawly too tight skin no more too say ride it out & move on.
Like a wave silently gliding across the sand and then you're up to your waist in the freezing saltiness facing a wall twice your height but this is not the beach or the sea this is how it comes to you washes over you engulfs you leaves you fighting for breath not knowing which way is up tossed around like a rag doll a sort of prickling hot skin crawling feeling and everything is brilliantly clear you can taste the coffee you haven't made yet you can smell it you can see it if you dont try too hard its so clear but its not there and it's hard to believe because it all feels so real but it's only an idea in your head.
I cant scream loud enough
And I cant run far enough
And I will never find the words to put on paper
and you will NEVER EVER know how this HURTS
This exquisite bitter-sweet sorrow
this loneliness bereft of love
this empty lonely aching crying weeping stupid scared lonely lonely shell of a man who cannot love himself and cannot forgive what he is by birth
I did not choose this affliction to be my burden in this life ...
I have walked a mile in another man's shoes. And that man was me.
Try this - half way through a complicated and difficult project, feel it hit you like an icy wave, solid as stone. Crashing through you. Waves of nausea, fear, that strange all too familiar bitter salty taste in your mouth. That overwhelming feeling that nothing you ever do, nothing you ever could have done has worked. Every thing you try, fails. The grey empty blackness. The flat lifelessness. Empty. Soulless.
I hate the badness of the endless days. I hate the sadness of the bleak, dull, endless, monotonous days. I hate the madness that makes my very existence possible. What would I do without it? The very thing that defines me, who I am, is the very thing I would be rid of, excise, cut away, dispose of, leave behind, hand on. Simply deny, or destroy.
So there you have it.
The admission that could well haunt me for the rest of my life -
I WOULD DESTROY MYSELF IF I COULD.
(In letters tall and bold).
But
I CANT AND I DONT KNOW WHY.
In letters just as tall and bold,
the words that haunt me.
You know what really frightens me?
Really scares me?
Scares me to the point of losing sleep?
Life.
Is there another word?
It's okay if you don't understand. This wasn't really written for/to anyone but me.
My life was a very bleak place, once.
It got better, given time.
Thanks, Oppy.
I don't try to look too hard for a reason as to why I'm barking mad, I'm sure that if it wasn't simply luck of the draw then I'd have some inkling.
I blame my upbringing for me having turned out as I am. All those people who instilled in me the idea that being a good bloke was a good thing, by golly, they've got a lot to answer for. 
