Mental health

Normally, the word “Kafkaesque” is too strong for my life. I have not turned into an insect, or been arrested on charges I don’t know, but which could be capital. I am not in the position of the mother who knows the social worker will take her child if she does not give the right answer, but has no idea how to believe what she must say.

Today has not been completely wasted.

Water has been coming into my flat for years, but only when the rain was particularly heavy and the wind in the right direction. Since March it has been coming in most rainy days. I told the letting agent in March, and eventually when I saw him and the landord outside, I invited them in to see the damp patches on the ceiling, the crack which drips along its entire length and the bucket under the light fitting with several pints of water in it. We went up on the flat roof, and saw the guttering on the upper storey was broken.

A few days later I saw a man with a blow-torch applying more sealant to the flat roof. Never accuse the landlord of not spending money. Water is still dripping in, though. Trickling, sometimes, down the light fitting. I called the agent again, and the secretary would see what was happening. She sent a man round.

The man and his son went with me up on the flat roof, where we saw water flowing from the break in the gutter onto some gravel on the flat roof. The son poked around on the gravel for a bit, and the father said the roof should slope a bit, rather than forming puddles like that. It may still be under guarantee. He thought the gutter should be fixed, but could not just come and do any job needing done- he had to provide a report, then a quote, for everything. Next door has water flowing down an inner wall. He left down the metal stairs and I just stood for a bit, thinking I should probably go down again but not really seeing the point.

Today I cycled to Scotstoun to see someone who works for the local mental health services. I had been referred by the woman trying to get me back in employment, then a woman, Ines, had phoned me, and told me I could have a “follow-up” appointment. She had quizzed me in great detail about my suicidal ideation, and I told her those metal steps were my chosen place for the drop, and how I had considered the precise nature of the rope and the knot I would need. I found the detailed quizzing wearing. Today, Bharti was surprised to hear I was suicidal in December, she thought it was in 2009. No, that was when I left the office at lunchtime intending to take my sleeping pills. The thoughts of hanging were around the start of this year. Even as I said it, I was unsure of the point of explaining.

I got the impression that she did not think she could do anything for me, perhaps because of funding, or the particular service she offered, and wanted to create a file record to justify that decision. “You’ve not got any goals,” she said, near the end of the 45 minutes. I reminded her that I had said my goal was to get back to work, as Esther’s minions were liable to take away all my income. I would like my rational self, which tells me to apply for work, and my emotional self which can’t bear to, to be talking to each other and working together. I would like to be able to talk about these things without crying. Near the end I was blurting all sorts of stuff about why I could not trust or respect my GP practice- the first mistake I can forgive, the second carelessness is more troublesome. Was that a mark down against me?

But the day was not completely wasted, because I cycled thirty miles in sunshine, and spent some time in mature woodland with these bluebells.

Hanging

When committing suicide by hanging, I would want the right quality bit of rope: I would want the knot to slip easily as I dropped, then hold tightly as I thrashed. I would not want to “dance til noon”. The metal steps out the back would be a good place, as it would give me a longish drop to get the knot good and tight: the shock might make me unconscious instantaneously. When I got the rope, I would consider the appropriate knot.

I am not suicidal at the moment, but I gave this some thought in December. Then when I might see an NHS psychotherapist and was assessed whether my depression was severe enough, she quizzed me in detail about my suicidal ideation- or fantasy. I did not think about being found, either the shame of it or the shock for the finder. Yes I made acts preparative to suicide, in 2003 and 2009. She found my depression moderate, which might have been severe enough, but my anxiety only mild to healthy, which was not enough. I wonder if my anxiety would manifest more if I were living with someone else. Clare, you are not bringing in any money, and the house is a tip again. And I would go quakey and start to greet.

Feelings manifest themselves consciously when they need to, when the conscious mind is making demands. So I thought I wanted to go to the Quaker meeting, and then manifested anxiety symptoms. No, I do not want to see those people. And my inner rationalist looked on, perplexed but persuaded by the manifestation.

-Who are you angry with?
-The whole fucking world.
-Are there people you warm to?
-Yes, actually, including some who do not warm to me.

I am seen as someone to fear, which perplexes and bamboozles me, because I see myself as gentle, and have been at great pains to establish to my own satisfaction that I would not get physically violent. And because I find my own force of character difficult to understand, whether I constrain it or let it run free. It terrifies me how badly I can come across when I mean well.

I want to be able to sit in silence with these people and chat over coffee after. I want that to continue, and if that seemed reasonably stable I would want them to give me a task which I would find worthwhile. Quaker Voices printed my writing, but it has shut down.

-What does being Quaker give you?
Pain. But also contact with stimulating highly intelligent spiritual empathetic witty people. This is a connection I don’t want to lose, but if my becoming distressed is a Wrong that I commit, which could justify my exclusion, then I might be excluded at any time for something I cannot control. When we fall out, we fall out really badly and can be self-righteously vindictive.

I will try to come across as loving and positive, and hopeful, and not let rage and terror too much get in the way.

-Are there enough warm souls to carry you forward?
-No.

And yet when I said I could not be my whole self, that my distress was unwelcome, he denied it. Perhaps he does not know. I want our naked humanity to come out. There was some backslapping about the story-telling event, when lots of us gathered to hear a story-teller from Bedford. I felt that was a missed opportunity, that we should come together to see each other, to know and be known, not to be entertained, but the friendly togetherness and light small-talk was adjudged a success.

I value the silence. I find it hard work, to be present with my whole self, to accept my whole self, to know my whole self- sometimes I approach that, sometimes I don’t.

In December, I gave the matter of how I would hang myself some thought. I do not want to be maimed. I do not want to survive it. I want it to be as quick and painless as possible. I note that I am using the present tense, even though I do not want to do it, now.

Jade Eatough

Jade Eatough was living as a woman in a men’s prison when she hanged herself. In 2005, he sexually assaulted a 19 year old woman. He had his arms around her but she shouted and swung her arms, and he ran off. Two hours later he held a knife to the throat of a fifteen year old girl, marched her to waste ground and raped her. In mitigation, his barrister said he had been damaged as a child by physical and sexual abuse. The offence was so ordinary that it was reported in the local paper, the Accrington Observer, but not more widely. Her suicide on 19 August was reported in the Sun and the Mirror.

She had started hormone therapy, but not had surgery. She was in a men’s prison as she had no gender recognition certificate. She was not on suicide watch.

I also found the UKStar, which seems bizarrely autotranslated: “She was vital as a lady” rather than “she was living as a woman”. “A prison service orator” rather than “spokesperson”. “She was detected passed during a slight dungeon check”. UK prisons are unpleasant, but we don’t use dungeons any more.

Jessica Winfield, also a trans woman in prison for rape, was moved into segregation, and the Sun reported that this was for making sexual advances to female prisoners. The Independent reported that she was segregated for some other reason, quoting “a source close to the situation”. Prisoners are segregated for their own protection. Prisoners may be tried for offences committed while in prison, and the prison governor can impose additional days which extend the date of release. The governor can also impose cautions, solitary confinement, loss of earnings and loss of access to the canteen. Segregation is not a punishment.

Winfield had had genital surgery, and a Gender Recognition Certificate, but when I read about her first she was referred to by her former name, Martin Ponting. I repeat the name in case you come across it elsewhere: she is Jessica. She changed her name ten years ago, but was only transferred to a women’s prison in March.

Female inmates might reasonably object to a rapist in their general population. Winfield needed protection, and the Sun reported that she was punished for wrongdoing. How civilised a country is can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. The crimes are monstrous, but the punishment should be the loss of liberty, not violence and the fear of violence in gaol. Jade Eatough did not deserve to die.

Their transitions show how desperate a trans woman can be. They transition in a male prison, as only at the end of the process can they be sent to a women’s prison. They might hope to be unobtrusive in male role, but they have the courage or single-mindedness to transition. They do it for the same reason we all do, that it will make their lives better: that life marked out as a weirdo and victim in prison is preferable to life as a man.

There are about eighty trans folk in prison in England and Wales. Their punishment should be no more painful or onerous than any other person in prison. There were five trans deaths in prison between 2008 and 2016. That is a higher risk of death than anyone else faces.

Suicide

The Samaritan woman wondered if I had thought of killing myself. I have taught myself not to, and this is how.

I wanted to die, and looked longingly at buses- could I fall under one? I started thinking more seriously of it. I decided I must not hurt anyone else. It would hurt my father to know I had killed myself, so it must appear like an accident. But crashing head on, on a fast road, might kill the other driver and their passengers.

-It would be murder, she assented.

And it must be relatively quick. I could not think of a way which satisfied these three requirements, so I did not.

People regret, sometimes immediately. A procurator fiscal told me of a man who had hanged himself with sisal, then tried to loosen the knot, scratching desperately at his neck, but could not. A coroner’s assistant told me of people throwing themselves off the cliffs at the South coast, and landing on a ledge a short way down. Perhaps they broke an ankle, could not climb back up, and died of exposure. Those who survive jumping from bridges- their first thought is often to the effect What have I done!

I contemplated how I loathed killing spiders. I would if I had to, because of my arachnophobe friend, but find them fascinating and beautiful. How much more beautiful is my hand! I might hate myself and want to escape, but how could I kill something as beautiful as this organism?

In 2003, I had had enough. I decided to take painkillers, and thought they would kill me more easily, and I would become unconscious more quickly, if I washed them down with whisky. I went into the living room to get the whisky and found my bathwater dripping through the ceiling. I could not bear that. I called the landlord, who called a plumber to fix it, and when he had gone the feelings had gone away. That was my proof of the existence of God for years after. I told a friend who said, “Your guardian angel knows how you tick”.

-Yes, she said, guardian angels, God looking after us
-sometimes the synchronicities work really well.

In 2009, I was sitting in the office and decided I would kill myself. I had got sleeping pills from my GP, but they were too strong, making me feel tired all the time by day. I kept them in case I decided on suicide. I left the office at 1pm, and went home. I would lie in the bath with a mug of hot chocolate and take my pills. I got home, sat in my living room, and realised I did not want to kill myself, I just had to leave that situation there and then, immediately, without any plan of what to do next.

Since then I have realised how fiercely I want to survive. I could not kill myself. It colours my view of assisted dying. Suicide is stupid. A friend said every time the subject came up, “It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. Perhaps he too had had to talk himself out of it.

I hate myself

Googling “I hate myself”, with quotes, produces 902,000 responses. Images are dark with text like “I lie I cut I’m a terrible person I’m lonely” and “Everyone is better prettier skinnier funnier than me”. I am unsure what to make of “I hate myself but that’s OK”.

We kill ourselves because we hate ourselves. I wonder how common it is? Trigger warning, below, for sexual violence- the actual text is minimised and there is a further warning.

I loathe the first entry on Google. Figure out what you CAN change and do it!

If you don’t like something about yourself that you can actually change, start to do that today. Maybe you don’t like your weight you can start eating properly, and getting exercise TODAY! Has he any idea how difficult people find dieting, and what comfort people get from eating? Possibly they could find better comfort in exercise, the runner’s high, but they need to know the mechanism. It is not so simple. The next suggestion, find out what friends and family value about you, is better.

How common is self-loathing? According to Psychology for Everyday Life, most of us. It tells us to challenge our Inner Critic.

Liz Jones hated herself and found herself inadequate despite being a successful writer who went to receptions at the House of Commons. “My male side has retreated, meaning people don’t respect me.” Useful information for trans women. When she had just started primary school, some older boys

trigger warning for sexual violence: highlight to reveal text

_{pushed her into the boy’s loos, stripped her and repeatedly kicked her.}

Would that-

I feel that hating myself performs a useful function. It holds me in restraint. This could be useful for any number of people- first my parents, then bosses, anyone but me.

I felt decades ago that I was at war with myself, that I pulled in different directions.

I wonder if saying “I hate myself” is a superficial, emotional reaction for some people. You get upset, you feel you have made a mistake, you hate yourself. Then there is the deep, settled, constant loathing.

Hello.

It sits under consciousness, manifesting as anxiety and depression, sometimes surfacing as the inner critic- manifesting that control for the behoof of others-

I want to see it and recognise it.

I hate myself. I hate my reactions, my responses, my weakness, my hiding and running away, my failures.

Perhaps it comes from not being loved as a baby.

Hello, back.

Yes. It has been so difficult, terrifying, enraging. All that feeling which is so hard to admit, which is shit me.

I want to pay that respect. It has served a function. It has been so strong. All that pent up rage. I wonder if I can loosen it: talk to it, calmly and reasonably: make friends with it, because it is part of me.

Sonnet: to a friend contemplating suicide

 If you should think of dying, think of me.
There'd be some corner in another mind
That was forever sadness. There would be
A rich potential lost. In you I find
The laughter learnt of friends, and gentleness
and think, your heart, all goodness shed away
without which England always will be less
its love, its brilliance, choosing Night o'er day.
I know your hurt, the inescapable part
of that fey softness where your beauty lies,
The vulnerable you is my sunshine.
If you despise the grandeur of your heart
so what was made God's image cruelly dies
'twould shadow all your sweetness with your crime.

It has a clear debt to Rupert Brooke.

Euthanasia

I have always been against euthanasia. I have been happy with assisting suicide being criminal. Might I change my mind?

Having been suicidal, I know that it is no solution to any problem. I feel that any life is better than death. And, I know what it is to Want something ridiculous or disgusting in others’ view- my transition- and from that can empathise with bodily integrity identity disorder- those people who want parts of themselves amputated.

I would want not just anybody to be able to assist someone to kill themselves. I would want this restricted, so there was a clear evidence trail: so my scheme would need particular licensed, medically qualified killers, a psychiatric assessment, and an independent witness of the person’s desire.

I loathe the idea that someone might kill herself now, because in a year she will have no quality of life, and will be unable to kill herself. If you can get yourself to a high building and over the parapet, you can kill yourself- though in a selfish way, hurting the people who have to find you, and scrape you up. Incidentally, there are some very very bad places to throw yourself from the cliffs at Beachy Head: you might land on a ledge, broken but conscious, then die of exposure because no-one could find you. A coroner’s assistant told me this. And a man who hanged himself with a sisal rope had scratch marks at his neck: he had changed his mind, but been unable to loosen the knot.

Having been suicidal, I can report that there is a ghastly unreality about one’s fantasies. I imagine myself relaxed and content, slipping off, whereas the threat to life brings forth primordial brain structures, raging at the dying of the light.

Suicide is utterly horrible, the declaration of final hopelessness. My friend said “It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. But not in these cases: someone terminally ill whose illness will slowly strip away mental and physical function and cause increasing pain-

A year ago I would have been unequivocally against euthanasia. It is an easy way out for the medical profession, too: they strive for effective palliative care, because that is their only option. I want them to work very hard on palliative care. They still will, many of them. Any mercy killing is an admission of failure for them.

Over the last few months I have been coming round, and this morning sitting down to think it through, here, I have come round to supporting euthanasia for the terminally ill. I am not quite there for everyone who wants it: not for depression, not for someone paralysed from the neck down as I dare to hope such a person, forced to live, might find some meaning in life.

Uses of Memory

The train left the platform, slid into the tunnel, and stopped. The lights went off. There is only the ghostly light of laptop and smartphone screens. Irritating. Philip and I have said all we have to say to each other, or all we can say, and we are silent. As the minutes tick on, I realise I will have to go straight to Kings Cross rather than get out further South and walk the streets. I had wanted to walk through the British Museum, its glass-roofed central court captivated me. Still does.

-Why have we stopped?
-Probably a suicide, jumped in front of a train.
And I feel such resentment. Selfish bitch. What are tall buildings for?

Smart-phones? Surely not, not in a tunnel, though people could be looking at old texts and photos. Oh yes, it was a year or two before they came out. Not smartphones, just lap-tops. And- did we decide suicide was the likely explanation, or hear about it after? And did we make conversation, or have That Conversation which breached our friendship finally, then? I am quite clear that I had wanted to walk through the museum, though from what I understand about memory that could be an addition coming into my mind later. Like in the song.

If I can unconsciously reconstruct a memory, and remember it differently from how it was- spoken testimony is among the least reliable of evidence- then, can I make it different, on purpose? I have met fantasists and liars, creating mythical worlds in their history or other lives, but this would be consciously for the purpose of contemplating reality and myself rather than deceiving anyone.

-I felt such resentment.
-I felt such sympathy, and prayed for her. I am sure she was female, whether or not we realised it was suicide at the time, or heard it later, or indeed there was some other explanation.
-(Oh no, she’s going to say it-) “Probably a bit of both”. Depending on which is most acceptable to hold in consciousness, what is swirling about underneath.

Someone asked about coming of age, and I thought of that Menarche ceremony. Then I thought of how F had worked so hard to prevent me taking part among the adult women that I had gone off and sat by our camp fire. Resentment. And- can I concentrate on other parts of that memory? The Resentment swam into my mind, seemed the most important part of it. I heard of an NLP technique- view an unpleasant memory as a small monochrome image, but good memories full of detail and colour. I have no mind’s eye, but the principle holds- remember other parts, give them prominence. That walk in the sunshine with S, perhaps, or the discussion with the other queers about exclusion- all the acceptance I had-

Can I change my frightened hiding, my rejection of the world, into joyous acceptance? Can I by vibrating see opportunities and possibilities, and grasp them? Or will that happen through healing if I just let it and do not try to force it?

The right no

Che Fece [what did]

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no-the right no-
drags him down all his life.

-Constantine P. Cavafy

 

In December 2009, I walked out of my job with the idea of killing myself. I had the sleeping pills, and I would take them. I said goodbye to the receptionist about one o’clock and went home, and sat in my living room. The strong desire to die went away, but I realised I could not go back to work. I was on a final written warning with an ultimatum “do this or get sacked”, and the next month I resigned in order to avoid being sacked. I took my month’s notice on the sick, and have only worked for six months since.

 

I had had to get out, immediately, without any plan for what to do next, and only the knowledge that I would rather die than stay there made me do it.

 

I do not know how this post will end.

 

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I was going to write, “All my life I have run away and hidden and I have to come to terms with that” and-

Is that true? I have not really progressed a career, I have not had many friendships,
but I have transitioned. That took courage.

 

Perhaps rather than Cavafy, Awdry:

 

Once an engine in front of a train

was afraid of a few drops of rain.

He went into a tunnel

and squeaked through his funnel

and wouldn’t come out again.

 

So Henry was bricked up in the tunnel, and with no head of steam he could not call Hello to the other engines. Though it is a children’s story: he comes out eventually, and is happy.

 

Perhaps rather than Awdry, the Goddess: Durga dancing in me, and me in her.

 

————————————————————————————————————–

 

OH GOD! IT HURT! IT HURTS!!!

 

————————————————————————————————————–

 

I wanted to kill myself because I was hurting that badly. I still do. I slowly – no, patiently and carefully, at the fastest speed I can manage, release my own bonds and come to self-acceptance. As I do so, it becomes possible to move on, perhaps to say a Yes- though I cannot yet be sure. And part of this is realising how awful and destructive my self-criticism has been, and mitigate it.

 

I know what I have to do. I want to get a job. If I want to heal, or to do performance, I have to develop my raw talent and get doing it. I took the opportunity on Saturday 26th: friendly audience of about forty, I compèred, some told me I had done it well, noticed that I had thought out what to say. And after, in the night, I was distraught, thinking of the level of human connection then and the chance to show off and be applauded, and then going back to my loneliness. And-

it cannot always be a high like that, and I have the skills to make more opportunities like that. And there will be more opportunities like that.

 

My life has been really, really hard. And I have now transitioned, and come to greater self-acceptance than before. And I am calming my fears.

 

—

 

The Episcopal Church ordains trans people to the priesthood. Thanks be to God.

Conscious incompetence II

In 1998, I realised how much I wanted to die. I thought, the world is grey, life is horrible, it can only get worse. That Autumn, I had my introduction to Carl Rogers’ thought through a counselling course at the local college. Over six months, I became aware of something within me, which I named the “vulnerable bit”- buried very deeply behind layers of protection which I named the “Shell”, locked away.

On my last evening at the counselling course, after I was kicked off it, I had a strong sense of just being that vulnerable bit, out in the open, without the shell. I was talking to another participant, and I felt I was me, not pretending, not acting, not self-protecting, just open. I wrote this verse, just the first two verses at first, I added other verses years later:

Tonight I was two souls
First by force and then by choice

This man makes his will, Truth

and then I hear another voice

This voice gives a piteous cry

and from my pain I turn my eye

 

Lady now you need not weep

Your beauty is for joy and song

The flower so long in darkness kept

will soon rejoice to see the sun

That man, his will, his truth, will go

I am myself. Myself I’ll know

 

Tonight I was two souls

Through blessing I became myself

The fear that makes me man grows less

The woman smiles, and moves to health

The man’s “protection” rots her soul

when she can shed him she’ll be whole

 

Today I was two souls

A woman, sensual, sovereign

A man, whose fight for false ideals

now falls away, an end to pain

He leaves behind the master’s role

She welcomes him, and I am whole.

 

 I did not like that verse. I did not like the metre, or some of the language, and I was not ready so strongly to identify as female, but I knew that the “Vulnerable bit” was in fact the Real Me. That was who I am. The thought terrified me.

 

Starting to live full time female, I felt I was doing enough self-acceptance to get by. I met a woman who came to LGCM events because her teenage daughter had just come out as lesbian, and she was amazed by me. She thought I had what she wanted, that self-acceptance, self-actualisation, accepting who I am and living authentically from that. I had not, even eight years after transitioning.

 

I had the sense, occasionally, of being in the vulnerable space, open and unprotected. I did not know how to protect myself, other than by retreating into the shell.

 

At the HAI level 3 weekend, I had the sense of being that vulnerable self, open and present, and for the first time protecting myself with adult boundaries rather than the Shell. It seems like I felt unsafe very young indeed, and created the best protection I could at the time: and now I can protect myself in an adult way. This is something I need to think about and practise.

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