Fed up of being myself

UKH. I JUST GLANCED AT THE TRIPE I typed out yesterday. If only I could claim to have been drunk when I posted. That's my problem, I'm too stone cold sober these days. The lack of drink and gear is driving me mad.

I'm hoping the manic depression has bottomed out. I had actually got so depressed I had forgotten there was a chance, albeit a very slim and unreliable one, that I could get suffused with false manic happiness again and have a lovely brain-melting few weeks of excitement.

I do have this mysterious sense of hope in the dark though. A dim light shining in deepest space.

You see I should feel very excited about the future. But it only stresses me out a LOT.

I need to see a dr and get new meds. That manic depression book in the library says bipolar people are like junkies. Always hanging out on the next high. Which is why hardly any of them actually take the meds as prescribed, for years and years. Now I'm almost ready to drink the stupefied chalice of mediocrity. I do feel if it is natural to be nuts, so by taking meds I'm going against nature. If they would give me that lamotrigine stuff I would consider taking that. Lamotrigine (lamictal) is a mood stabilizer that is said to work better against bipolar depression than mania. Whereas lithium makes you feel cold and tired and causes difficulty concentrating and even worse requires regular blood tests. Worst of all it's far more effective against mania than depression. Ie it's a no-fun drug. I want something that totally fills in the valleys and only chops the raving mad tops off the hills. The Foothills of Hypomania are where I want to live.

I'm not looking forward to next week. Not at all.

It's the No Gear Idea that's intolerable. For a long, long time it was the only point to my day. I bribed myself to do things by turning life into a series of sandwiches. That is: I took heroin before and after I did anything. Knowing a lovely dripping shot of gear was waiting there for me was the only thing that made me want to come home. Knowing I had heroin for breakfast was the only thing that got me out of bed. Now life is one long stretch of blank meaninglessness. I'm counting the years until I die. Being as I'm nearly 40 I might have 20 years left. Most of the people I knew had been on the gear 8 or 10 years when I started it in ernest (10 years ago after quite some time messing about with it) they're mostly dead now. They're lucky, sleeping in their graves. I have to drag myself around in the dark. I know I should write something more sugar-coated and full of shit but that's the truth of heroin addiction. Life is meaningless without the gear and every day on methaone is a day more addicted and more hopeless. I'm actually starting to get to like the nasty buzz that gloop gives you. The buzz of methadone is a feeling of normality seeping into my iceblock of a body when I wake up. So it's not a high; it's just feeling (physically) OK instead of not feeling OK. If you give addicts methadone, they'll stop craving opiates so much and crave death instead.

OK it has to stop now before I get too truthful/morbid.

The Tory government now think the sick and disabled should work for less than the minimum wage. One of them let this slip yesterday. I don't know why they don't just kill them all. That's what they want to do: they just won't come out and say it. They already want the sick living out on the streets. And I would vote Tory!~!!!!

I have only 2 major political opinions: 1 a national health service that is free for all (like we have today) and 2: low taxes for the rich (so I can be rich and pay low taxes). Number 3 would be proper effective treatments for drug addicts so I could have gone on IV diamorphine when it would have made a difference. It's too late now.

If I could have gone on prescription diamorphine years ago, as about 500 UK addicts are (and contrary to popular view this is ONLY available on the NHS. If anyone knows a private clinic dishing out maintenance diamorphine PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.)... if only I could have had a treatment that works instead of one like methadone that just makes you more addicted (methadone has a 4% success rate: frankly I find it hard to believe it's even that high), I might have had a chance of being rehabilitated. The rot set in some time around 2004 when I started hallucinating. And ever since then it's been a slow ride downhill. I didn't know it was "shizophrenia" did I?

My gran used to think because I was intelligent I should have got a good job. But I applied for jobs left right and centre and never got ONE interview. I would quite like to work for the lcoal council because it's easy. I just need a job that is easy where you don't have to deal with people and don't have to do 2 things at once. I used to be good at multitasking. Not any more. That's one of the impacts of my brain melting on me. I couldn't think straight any more. My ideal job would be to be Queen. I think the grey perm and white gloves would quite suit me. You get free housing for life and don't pay proper taxes (even though she does make a "contribution" ~ if the sovereign paid inheritance tax withi a couple of generations there would be no Sanringham House or Balmoral Castle. I would quite like to be the Queen. I like posh dinners, diamonds, palaces, politics and history. I'd do barely any engagements where I had to meet the public. I'd spend my days at home, drinking.

Oh crap. That's another thing. When I used to work nights years and years ago I never had time to EAT between sleeping and going back to work. I literally slept every hour I wasn't working or on the way to or from work. Now I sleep even more. So how am I going to fit that in? I'm only working fulltime. Part time work isn't worthwhile. I was going to do volunteer work but all my clothes are dirty. My shoes have holes in them and they stink. My coat has cigarette burns on the sleeve and also reeks of BO. See it's all too depressing for words. I just want to curl up and die.

I was watching a film set in World War II. Everyone seemed so capable back then. How did my grandparents cope? My Nan drove the buses around Windsor and my Granddad nearly got killed in Libya. They were allowed to smoke cigarettes whenever they liked. I couldn't be a bus driver: I haven't even got a normal driving licence and I drink too much. I'd quite like to be an engine driver though, if I could drive the Eurostar train to Paris that would be cool. I'd also like to be an American freight train driver. Or a British one for that matter.

O when am I ever going to be OK again.




OK this was a stream of consciousness I bashed in while watching the film On The Buses. I'm in a bad mood all the time, just posting on the internet makes me feel worse.

CROYDON TRAMLINK
buses are boring. this is really fucking exciting



RUSH HOUR ON THE TOKYO METRO
Hey I thought the Tokyo subway was the most crowded in the world? London is considerably more crowded and opporessive than this:~~~



This is much more like it. Look at that bloke having a really good shove
nah London ain't this bad; we don't have professional door-closers like this lot



My Japanese is really awful. I saw loads of characters I recognized on the walls but couldn't read them. Didn't even know what 住 meant.

This is a Japanese news story about an inconvenient shutdown on the transport network



PS:~ What the hell has happened to Anna Grace? Anyone who knows, please getin touch ASAP... Any assistance gratefully accepted. Anna, if you're reading this GET IN TOUCH thank you.

Pre Move Jitters

I'm not doing clairvoyancy by the way, as I'm afraid of getting possessed. I think the Chinese characters I see in the air from time to time are eidetic memories, not clairsentient distance-vision.

I got up after midday and wasted ages trying to get it together to take my socks off and go into the shower and go outside and up to the methadone chemist. All the time I was out I wished I was back in bed. My bed is full of rubbish so I've been sleeping on the floor. I think it's good for my back.

As well as panicking how on earth am I going to move house, I tried to fill out a government form but it was so depressing and I got a fullblow paranoia attack from doing so.

On Monday I'm buying some more huge tartan washing bags and I'm just piling my stuff into them. My Mum said she would drive me to and fro. As long as she's not in France.

I would rather move into a nutterhouse than stay where I am. But I don't want to do anything. I just want to curl up and die. Then I tell myself not to be so damn childish, that life has a purpose and I feel this sparkly light. But I have no energy whatsoever to engage with this mystical purpose in life. So that's today and here's Lady Gaga:~~~



O yeah and re heroin, I know it's bad to be a heroin addict, that's why I want to stop taking the crap. I mean "want to stop" I haven't had it for a couple of days and when I had it, it was too weak for words. THE ONLY THING THAT EVER MADE ME FEEL GOOD (APART FROM PSYCHOTIC MANIA) AND I'M GIVING IT UP! I MUST BE TRULY DERANGED..!!

Rehousing Challenge

I'M GETTING REHOUSED and I'm living in terror. I even know where the house is. It's within easy carting off distance of the nuthouse. I say that because everybody in that house will be raving mad (like me). So now I have to pack a bag or ten and try and feel positive. I don't actually feel very positive at all. When I found out I was in sheer terror, then I fell asleep. Then I'm meant to be changing drugs clinic (again) then I'm meant to change back (again). You see why I don't understand anything? It's incomprehensible.

I've decided yet again to try giving up "gear" for good. Yet again. It does nothing for me. I mean I can't feel the bloody stuff when I take it, so I know I'm wasting my time. I wish I had never got into heroin. I can't believe I'm here now. Me! Talking about me being on heroin. How ridiculous is that. I was never like Anna Grace Young in that all my heroes were junkies and all I ever wanted to do was try heroin. True, I had a sneaking fascination and if someone had presented the naive young me with Drugs of the World on a silver platter saying I could try just one, I probably would have tried the heroin. Because as far as I knew, heroin was the strongest drug there was. So that's the one I would have tried. When I did dabble in drugs, heroin was always in a class of its own. It wasn't available. It was frowned on. The way I saw it, if drugs were bad then all drugs were bad so if you were going to try drugs you might as well try heroin. The fascination was there, but that's all it was. I never intended to become a heroin addict.

If only I could relegate that crappy stuff to the same dustbin every other drug from my past has been chucked in, I'd be OK. I feel no compunction whatsoever to take any other drug ever. My brain can produce a free high anyhow (I now know). Why bother wasting money on drugs to be high? I now get more of a buzz out of Japanese than heroin. Which either says a lot about the Japanese language or a lot about heroin, I don't know.

I keep seeing Chinese characters, not just with my eyes closed but with them open. They appear against blank walls and doors while my head is dreaming. See, I'm a clairvoyant. I can see into life's mysteries... I used to own a crystal ball, but it got left behind in an old house, or stolen. I'm not sure which. I don't need a crystal to scry into, just a blank door will do.

Today, for the first time ever, I was leafing through my kanji dictionary, this huge list of radicals (the graphic components that make up characters) and there were so many of them I couldn't name. And I briefly experienced self-doubt. Usually I view the 2200 basic characters as a linguistic chocolate gateau, to gorge into.

I learned a new one today: 獣 kemono. It means "animal". Because ke can mean fur and a mono is a thing a 毛物 kemono could be a furry thing. Just a 着物 kimono literally means "something to wear". The Chinese reading of 物 mono is 物 butsu, the old slang word for heroin: worlds apart, the words are the same... Butsu means exactly the same as the English word "gear". Another word for animal is 動物 dōbutsu, a "moving thing". I like the way they're so basic in their vocabulary. When you know these words you can actually see the constituent meanings.

Now it's quarter past midnight and my head is spinning. I'm scared to death of moving house. What am I going to do? What's happening? What will happen? I tell myself it has to be a good thing.

PS far as I know the council hasn't OK'd it. So I still might not move. Then I'd be even more disappointed.

PPS far as I know, it's a normal house, not a tower block


An American akita.



These are akita-inus. In the film Hachi, starring Richard Gere, the baby Hachi (an akita) was played by a brushwood dog...

BRUSHWOOD DOGS come in a variety of colourings...







In the "old Nagano dialect" where shiba-inus come from, shiba can mean "little" (as well as its mainstream meaning of "brushwood") so 柴犬 shiba-inu can be translated "little brushwood doggie"...

... according to Wikipedia.

****************

I DIDN'T POST yesterday because I had nothing to say. Me and my "symptoms" went down the methadone clinic where I had little to say. Luckily I managed to change the subject off myself by talking about my efforts at Japanese.

On the way home I bumped into a schizophrenic I know who was having a psychotic episode. He seemed to be in a very Elevated Mood and was burbling on about God and the Devil. Then my Worker phoned me up about what Nutter Clinic I was supposed to go to. And this guy was blaring away down the phone about religious matters (but not in the matter of a country vicar sipping tea at Miss Marple's house; more manic street preacher style). I think my Worker thinks I have really peculiar friends now.

Deshane is coming by this afternoon. I'm depressed from trying to put together a to-do list in my head. The list seems un-do-able. Every time I feel like giving up some inner spirit kicks me and says Come On!

My council tax is in a complete mess, unpaid and seemingly unpayable. I wish I'd ticked the box now saying I was Severely Mentally Imaired. The Student Loans Company who I'm also in default to, wanted me to make a similar declaration of severe mental illness a couple of years ago, but I didn't think I WAS mentally ill. At least not in the way they said. Now I supposedly am ill but confused about the whole matter. A lot.

Deshane the home help key worker person is coming and I'm trying to keep positive. That's not very easy when something is slipping through my fingers. I don't know what's slipping. I just know I need to GET A GRIP.

Staying alive is the absolute bottom line; but what then? I feel confused now. I decided to continue my home clear-out. I have 3 typewriters. 2 are electric and just unusuable. The 3rd is manual and might be handy in a powercut, or if I decided to write a novel on a desert island. I have 3 dining chairs all retrieved from the street. 2 have to go. A whole bunch of Nigerian DVDs for the charity shop. I must have had a compulsive hoarding thing going on but I barely noticed it. See what I mean about living in a whirl. Whenever I try and make sense of things I'm told I Think Too Much. But without thinking, All is Nonsense. See I don't know. I just don't know. Did anyone except Mr Furtheron notice yesterday's last Shiba-Inu was a soft toy. The label on the back left leg gave it away...



Anna Grace's book I Hate Myself and Want to Die is available from Amazon. The American version has it in stock at $15.04; Amazon UK charge £9.86 and say they'll order it in.

The Tale of Hachikō... & I had an Onken

忠犬ハチ公 HERE'S THE STORY of a great Trotterdonkey Doggie named Hachi, which means he was 8th in the litter, who met a professor of agricultural engineering in Tokyo sometime before World War II who faithfully followed the professor home every night. Each evening, Hachi used to wait at the main railway station for his master to return home. When one day the professor died suddenly of a heart attack Hachi refused to accept the death and continued to show up, every single afternoon at the appointed time. Thin and bedraggled he was fed sandwiches by the Japanese commuters... All attempts at rehoming him failed. The faithful furry simply ran back to Shibuya Station and continued his vigil.

After he died, a statue was erected in Shibuya Station in Hachikō's honour. In 2008, a Hollywood film was released, starring Richard Gere. This is the story of Hachikō's life. Original Japanese version. You don't need any Japanese to follow this; it's all set to music:~~~~~~~

ハチ公物語 Hachikō Monogatari ~ The Tale of Hachikō



Top illustration: the original Hachikō...

Here's an Akita-inu tied up on the way to the dog show. Same coloration as a brushwood doggie; much bigger. Then you get to see lots of Japanese people down the precinct.



***********************



I HAD AN ONKEN this afternoon. Vanilla yogurt with chocolate flakes.

Not much else to put. Not feeling too good.

8pm Hey I'm having "psychiatric symptoms" ~ "racing thoughts". I keep hearing the most random ideas spoken each side of my head. Down the library this afternoon I heard some woman whispering my full name, which irritated me. Then this other woman continued to have what appeared to be a pretty detailed conversation about me. The cow! I told myself I was "just being paranoid".

8:55pm the "psychiatric symptoms" have died down. I've been having them all day. I feel ill. I nearly went to bed just after 6. I don't know whether to see a dr. I don't see what a dr can do for me. I don't know what to do.

**************************

HERE are some 柴犬 brushwood doggies, some shiba-inus in the snow...