My Tale of 2 Cities

  I am currently sitting in the airport coffee shop I always sit in having the coffee and breakfast roll that I always have when it's time to return back to my not-so-native-yet- most-of-the-year-residing-place of Seville. I generally always fly from my actual native Liverpool between 6 and 7am depending on the season. It is January now so the flight is later but experience tells me that this will change to 6am soon enough and will be the service I use in subsequent journeys, otherwise known as 'viajes.' I will still have the coffee and the breakfast roll, it'll just be a little bit earlier.

   The journey or 'viaje' from Seville to Liverpool is something I have become rather accustomed to over the 17 months I have been travelling to and from the two cities or 'ciudades'. Various friends and family members have also partaken in it and they pretty much always arrive at Seville's Santa Justa train station suitably exhausted but very much always relieved to see the dazzlingly blue sky that awaits them as they leave the confines of the interior of the building.

   I never fail to feel proud as I push my guests into the front door of my nice, big, airy flat which will serve as their new home for the next couple of days. I feel even prouder when we emerge from the Puerta Jerez metro station into the bustling city of Seville itself after something tasty to eat and cold to drink. My heart practically bursts when we walk towards the 'magnificent gothic cathedral' and venture behind it into the enchanting streets of Santa Cruz. I tell them about all of the different places we will be visiting, just you wait for the Alcazar I say… just behind that wall it is. I point out my favourite square which is permanently situated and unlikely to move from outside of said Alcazar. I always take visitors to Las Setas/Parasols/The Mushrooms when the sun has gone down and I like to go to Plaza de España in the sunshine, followed by María Luísa Park. I recount the stories of when two friends and I had to go to Plaza de España nearly every day for a week in order to get a little green card displaying a very special number which seems to open up the door to Narnia for those who live in Spain. Plaza de España somewhat lost its charms after the first visit and bureaucratic week which followed but it has regained the magic factor since.

   Seville is chockablock with things to see, watch, smell, eat, drink, listen to, enjoy, walk to, bike to, drive to or simply just enjoy. Orange trees literally do line most of the streets and they're as fabulous as you've been led to believe they are; you can't eat them though. They're not very nice so don't decide to up your Vitamin C intake and collect a few, you would be greeted with a very bitter taste in your mouth. Seville however, has not left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I am coming round to the fact that I am at something of a life juxtaposition and my ambitions and dreams will probably take me away from Seville for some time, maybe not forever but some time at least.

   I went to Seville as a fairly knackered young woman. I was tired and I was drained, but somehow the city of orange blossom worked her magic on me and I slowly came back to life. I didn't realise how full of promise the world is until Seville showed me what I had been missing and I think I will remain forever grateful to her for just being there and shining her lovely sun on me. I know the streets of a different city to Liverpool now and I have a local pub outside of my hometown. My eyes are open so much wider than they were before to the possibilities that the world I live in holds.

   I know that I can stand up in front of a classroom of people and teach them something they didn't know before. I've taught some people how to speak English and they in turn have given me the pleasure of their city. I don’t know if the people I've taught would find my city quite as charming as theirs… for Liverpool is neither tree lined nor sundrenched. The pavements are not windy and the coffee is not as good as it could be. Liverpool does do a decent bowl of Scouse and red cabbage though and you might struggle to see them through the drizzle but there'll always be someone there saying, 'come on in love/lad/girl/Queen and get those wet socks off, you'll catch your death out there you know.' It's a different sort of culture, it's gritty and it doesn't make allowances but it's rich and it's kind. Liverpool is somewhere I have traditionally run from but always feel a huge sense of relief when returning to. Let's not turn Liverpool into something she isn't though. Upon entering my delightful place of origin you are likely to see women who have eyebrows like caterpillars, they just might be wearing their pyjamas and if it's a Saturday daytime they could even be sporting a headfull of rollers. Yes, you will be very surprised but I urge you to look beyond the fake tan and alarming eye related foliage and remember that they are a product of their time. Fifty years ago these women would have been the ones who were dancing about in the cavern club alongside John, Paul, Ringo and George but the changing times and over use of media in every facet of life has them parading about like peacocks instead. You will also see many 'goths' in Liverpool. I had a brief stint as a 'goth'/'skater' type. I was never decked out soley in black, it was more about the people I found myself hanging around skate parks and a lovely arrangement of shops called Quiggins with. I liked the alternative genre of my peers… I'm afraid the 'eeeeeeeeeeee ya dirty skank' ones didn’t do it for me. They still don’t do it for me, I like hanging around Seville with a young lady who wears tent like attire and the majority of my friends are of the guitary/bandy/writery variety. Nice and acceptable both in Spain and in England.

  I am passionate about Seville and I love Liverpool. Seville offers sun, warmth, culture and low taxes. Liverpool offers familiarity, personal history and the roots of my family tree. Both of the cities provide things I need and both are of considerable value to me. Quite honestly I’d like to go to work in Seville during the day and then go home to Liverpool at night because I'd get the best of both worlds but I'm not Bono and I don't believe in excessive air travel so that won't be happening. I just really like both places and feel attached to them both, for some time things have been definitely swaying towards Liverpool and England in general. I sometimes feel like a yellow fish in a pond full of green fish in Spain. I feel like a yellow fish in a pond full of blue fish in England as well to be perfectly honest with you but it's my pond and that makes all of the difference. It's not pretty, it's not perfect and it's definitely not quaint. It's big, it's loud, it's in your face, it takes no prisoners or mercy, the cold will bite through your skin and attack your bones but once it's got you it won't let go and you probably won't want it to. Having said that (the bit about not letting you go and you not wanting it to), I could say exactly the same about Seville.

Feeling The Fear

  Well it's NYD of 2015. NYE hasn't traditionally been my favourite day of the year and I don't really love its following day counterpart. I do like the twinkling, heady lights of Christmas and all of the different things there are to do during Christmas Week but then once we arrive at NYE I wonder what will be any different about NYE of the next year. When I look back at the year just gone I see it as important but nothing really changed with regard to work and my lifestyle. It was a mirror year of the one before it, but without a spell in the mental health facility of a hospital and I learned about loss in the March when a special relative died and I learned to adjust to life without her. I spent 2014 taking little steps towards bigger steps and I've entered 2015 thinking about bigger steps and I can see myself striding at some point in the not too distant future.

  I think to truly make the best of a new year or indeed a new day it's very important to look back and see what we can and can't do differently in the future. Over the last few years I have had a weight problem, I lose it and then I gain it. I eat chocolate and ice cream, I go to Burger King and then I feel much worse about myself. I do these things when I am fed up, I don't have the energy to cook or get up so I eat rubbish and ultimately turn the inner sanctum of my body into a rubbish heap. 2015 is the year that this dangerous and destructive pattern stops and it must stop for good. Quite frankly, I've had enough of it and it's just a silly way to live. Yoyo eating habits and myself separated our partnership in 2014 and I very much hope that we don't meet again.

   I've also spent a long time living in fear and I've made my home in the shadows. I made myself afraid of the world around me and the different things it offers but during the transitional moments of 2014/15 I decided that I just don't want to live like this anymore. I watched a programme called Marvellous and it was all about a man called Neil Baldwin who states he's never been scared of anything and as such has made friends with premiership footballers, high end members of the clergy and he's also received a fellowship degree from Keele University after spending some time pretending to be the local vicar. I watched Neil's story with a keen interest and realised that nothing has ever held him back, he simply wasn't born with the fear factor and as a result he's achieved so much and well and truly lived his life to the full.

  I think that my life could be so much more marvellous if I wasn't so scared so I thought I'd start doing new things. I did something new today and I'm feeling quite pleased with myself about it. I often thought I might like to have my eyebrows shaped but I'd already reached the conclusion that I would be lost in such an environment. I was letting my fears about stepping into the unknown take over me again and I was being silly. I won't fit in I thought to myself but today I stepped into a 'brow bar' and went through the excruciating process of having my eyebrows shaped with a thread thing for the first time. I've got the red eyebrow area and the headache to prove it but eyebrow threading is now something I feel capable of having done to myself.

  I'm heading back to Seville soon after Christmas at home here in the UK and I'm going to rejoin the gym when I return to my Big Square sanctum. I'm going to join the expensive gym close to where I live because there's a pool there and I plan to step into a swimming costume and allow myself to be seen by others in a public place because I really like swimming and it's a type of exercise I'm happy to dedicate myself to. I'm also going to finally force myself to learn Spanish in a proper classroom because I don't understand anything in the country I live in and that's really, really thick of me and I shouldn't have allowed it to go on for so long. Spain is an excellent place and best experienced long term with a knowledge of Spanish in one's arsenal. I want to really know and understand another language regardless of whether or not I live there.

  I'm eager to make my dreams come true in 2015, I want to learn how to make my writings sellable in the commercial market and teach others how to speak English. I'm going to tie up loose ends in 2015, GCSE maths and driving licenses must finally be obtained and a path into the future must be cleared. I'm not planning to change the world in the next couple of months but I'd really like to make my world a better place to live in. Starting these new habits isn't the tricky bit, the beginning is easy, it is the keeping up of the healthier habits that are more difficult. It's time to fly, fly, fly away from fear and into the unknown land of optimism and maybe a little bit of adrenaline rush skydiving. 

 

Femme Fatale

 The date is December 24th 2014 and it is undoubtedly Christmas Week. I've been thinking about the ladies in my life today because it is my mum's birthday, sister's hen night in three days time, annual Christmas Eve drinks with two cousins and a sister and also the first time we're experiencing Christmas without our Aunty Eileen and for another branch of our family a lady called Grandma Mattie. My aunties, neighbours and my mum's friends traditionally come in for a mince pie and a cup of tea today so it really is all about the señoritas.

   I've been blessed with the women around me. I was brought up with a sister and my mum has 3 sisters of her own, my nana had several sisters and one of them is now but an urn behind the chair in our dining room now but until March she was a larger than life teeny tiny little old lady who helped to make several of my dreams come true. I also have several cousins, one of the youngest who is now experiencing her first Christmas as an eighteen year old and is joining her older female counterparts for the usual dance around the Christmas tee, aka Stamps Bar & Bistro this evening.

   I will begin with the subject of mothers. My mother is as quirky as she is strong, batty as she is generous and hot tempered as she is sweet natured. My mother, or Ange as I usually call her has behaved like a lioness for the last 27.9 years, she protects her girls with a fierceness only mother's possess and woe betide anyone who tries to stand in her way. Over the years Ange has fought for my dyslexic sister's right to learn in a suitable environment, fought with my sister over her refusal to learn, stood by me through thick and thin (literally, currently thick but I'm working on it …ish) and supported me through all of my little adventures. She had a great example you see, through several different women she watched as she grew and I like to think she took the best of what she witnessed.

   I also have a sister who is to be married on Valentines Day to a delightfully handsome and calm young man. So calm he's falling over on occasion, I was expecting him at 10am to drop off some items to the family home, he whatsapped me at 11:45am saying that he was "running a bit late." We've taken to calling this sort of thing Classic Jake. One hopes that he doesn't experience the same tardiness on his matrimonial day. I digress. We're going to celebrate her hen night in a few days time, 27 women all intent on having a party are going to hit Liverpool City Centre and swap stories all about my little sister. I already know that I will beam with pride because my one and only sibling is truly a woman to be proud of. Lucy is a very small person with long dark hair, she's got a tiny frame and a husky voice, it was one of the things people thought was cutest about her as a child. Lucy was mischievous as a little one, known to disappear into lingerie stands in Marks & Spencer's and reappear wearing the garments after our mother had spent a frantic few minutes looking for her amongst the clothes stands. Lucy grew older, not taller or wider but a little more orange for a time and became a naughty teenager, struggling in the classroom to understand the tasks expected of her and frustrated by the slowness of her progress in the middle of a school unable to assist her. She found some solace in the school toilets with cigarettes and every now and again she would skip off only to be caught. My Lucy was a very unsuccessful truant, she was caught by me, our dad and one of our nanas during her escapades away from school. Lucy then grew up a little more and became something akin to responsible over time, now she's an example of someone who's turned out just right after being given time and space to grow into who she really is. Who she really is, is my sister, the same person she always was but now a little more socially acceptable. She's going to become a wife, a daughter and sister-in-law. She'll do a great job, those who have to fight for their place in society often become excellent examples and our little Lucy is an excellent example of what can be done when you work so very hard to realise your aims and goals.

   I have grandmothers, aunties and cousins all of whom have played their part in my journey from 1987 to now. I have been loved, worried about, played with, talked to, discussed and most importantly included in their lives as they go about their own daily chores. They've shown me compassion and given me attention, they've taken me on holiday and out for the day, they've had me as a house guest in London for the weekend with no notice whatsoever, they've included me in their families and said nice things about me to my mum. They've accepted me for who I am and understand that I am anxious, I am panicked, I get depressed and sometimes go missing inside of myself but they are able to look past it and see what lies beneath the frazzled and yet very quiet veneer. They've made me feel cherished for all of my life.

   And finally, this Christmas as I've already said is the first without Aunty Eileen. Eileen won't be in her orangey red armchair this year looking out at the world she could no longer be a part of and she won’t be waiting for me to come and make some kind of warm sandwich for Christmas Day breakfast. She'll be with all of the other people who've been loved and lost this year all over the world. I hope she's up in the sky and twirling about with the man she is having her first Christmas with in 16 years. We talk about her a lot, I think about her all the time, I talk to her when I'm walking about attending to my business in the streets of Seville and I know she's always keeping an eye out and probably wishing she'd been able to visit me there in person. I'm glad she can see it all for herself now.

 
  Christmas always makes us think and this year it's making me think about the women I'm surrounded by. Some are in the here and now and some make up the fabric of the memories I have of the past. Each one is a beautiful stitch in an ever growing work of life and another branch on a family tree that just keeps on growing and growing, always in bloom, never bare and permanently giving hope to those who take shade and stop for a rest under its branches.

 

These blogs act as a sort of writing therapy to me, they help me offload the things which play on my mind. I try to make them useful for myself and also enjoyable reading for others so I would like to  thank you for  taking the time to read my entries and I wish you all a truly happy and 'especial' Christmas Week.

 

The Whirlwind Romance

  I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced a whirlwind romance or had times when you were living in the moment. I have. Around 7 weeks ago I started having a little go at living in the moment and I discovered that it didn't really suit me. Living in the moment is all well and good when you don't find functioning hard work. 7 weeks ago I was equilibriumised and my feelings centred around Emmerdale and Heinz baked beans at the end of a long day… until I found myself in the middle of a whirlwind romance.

  I'm not altogether sure how I, careful as they come, avoiding pavement cracks, would never walk underneath a ladder Helen Edwards came to be in a whirlwind romance. Whirlwind romances go against everything I have taught myself is sensible. The whirlwind romance is quick, it is convincing and then it is over. By the time it is over it has left your hair tangled up and you've quite forgotten that Emmerdale was once so fabulous because you rediscovered butterflies in your stomach and hours spent laughing over absolutely nothing in the company of someone who looks just like sunsine. The whirlwind romance reminds you that there are actual human connections for you out there and Heinz baked beans don't necessarily have to be the best part of a day.

   The best part of your day can be a hug or a smile. It can be breakfast on a sunny morning and you don't even mind staying in on a Saturday night because the company inside is so comfortable and cosy. You have this happy feeling in your chest when you're with your friends, you just feel lighter and you don't have to carry all of your own bags anymore. The whirlwind romance is a special thing because it takes two people who click instantaneously to take part and they can create something truly delightful very quickly. It's like a very sweet film has come on and somehow it's your life, you've got the leading lady part and the soundtrack is wonderful. Whirlwind romances generally have a difficulty of some description though and in the film version the writers know how to fix it but in real life the actors don't have a script to rely on and they can't be sure of what the other person they're starring alongside is thinking. Life isn't a film and humans are riddled with insecurities, upsets and histories that the people in The Holiday or Love Actually aren't in possession of.

  Humans get things wrong when they're trying to get things right. Humans have self preservation to think about and humans who've been hurt very badly are a lot more likely to get these things wrong so we back away from our whirlwind romances. We remember when we just had ourselves to think about and we make the decision to end the romance, lovely as it is because we miss the simpler version of our lives. And then we regret it and realise that we didn't help ourselves at all because we were just biding time with Emmerdale and Heinz baked beans until the really good stuff showed its beautiful face. Emmerdale and Heinz all together along with Coronation Street, Spanish lessons on the couch and long car journeys on Sundays.

  The writers of the film version have the solution but the humans bumble along and eventually one of them gets on a plane and feels a finality that makes a tear slide down her little face as she gets closer to all of the other people who mean the world to her. They're great and she loves them but she will always remember the time in her life when Emmerdale, Heinz Baked Beans and Coronation Street were all happening at the same time in her pretty living room and she'll wonder if she'd not caved in when she did that everything just might have turned out differently if she'd just stayed in the whirlwind.

Changing

  In all of my 27 Christmases I have only ever spent one of them away from home. I was in Australia and it was very hot. Some of Christmas Eve was spent outside in the garden and some of it was spent indoors having a nice roast dinner, the people I was with made a huge effort to welcome me but despite their best efforts I wasn't at home, it just wasn't cold enough and my people of the previous 18 Christmases weren't there. My Christmas traditions are steadfast and strong, they have weathered years of change, loveliness and upheaval. My favourite one is the one in which my dad stresses about the roast dinner for a week before we have it and tries to start cooking it 3 days before Christmas Day and then when it's served at the table my mum whips all of the plates away and puts them in the microwave for 60 seconds apiece. 

  Since I was quite young we've always had someone extra at the dinner table, for some years we had my mum's brother with us but he sadly succumbed to his own demons some years ago and left his chair in our dining room. The most long term of our Christmas Day visitors was Eileen Kelly and my oh my did she let us know she was there. The TV was too loud, the heating was too low, the dinner was too big, the tea had to be clear enough to see the bottom of the dainty mug but strong enough to have the flavour just so and she could have you up and out of your seat in a nanosecond over just about anything. Eileen Kelly was a prolific houseguest, she didn't sit quietly and she always made her feelings known… but her absence this Christmas is already felt and missed and shows that as people we have to be able to adapt to change because nothing is more certain than death and nothing is more secure than the knowledge that Eileen Kelly will not be at a delightful temperature whilst the rest of us might as well be in the oven with the lamb roast this December 25th. 

   Last Christmas was the last one I'll ever know like the ones I always knew before and I didn't realise it at the time; probably for the best. This Christmas marks a Christmas of change too but I know about that already. My Little Lucy, light of my life and other entity of myself is set to marry in February so naturally Christmases afterwards are going to be different. We don’t know how she will go about her Christmases future. Perhaps Lucy and new husband Jake will join us one year and then go to visit Jake's delightfully quirky mother the year after and if that's what they do then I've already decided to join them on Christmas Night. Jake's mother has a 'treats' cupboard and a personality like no one else I've ever met and I'm feeling quite excited about counting her in as one of the family. Christmases future will be different and this will be the last one that Angela and Gerry are mum and dad with dutiful daughters Helen and Lucy making up the numbers. We are 4 you see, soon to be 5 and I very much hope 6 when a niece or a nephew comes along. Those Christmases will be entirely different because they will centre around lots of bright yellow and blue toys and a small face that believes in Father Christmas.

  Christmas usually marks the end of a year and NYE the start of a new. We get the chance to reflect on what's happened to us and to the people around us and wonder how we can better improve on it in the year to come. We do all of this wondering surrounded twinkling lights and amongst joy galore, under the watchful gaze of a pretty fairy that was bought at a carboot sale 20 odd years ago for 50pence. Her hair is raggedy and her wings are stuck on the back with sellotape now. We change, our lives change but that Christmas fairy sits on the top of the tree year after year, who knows what she's thinking, she might be wondering if she'll ever be invited out for Easter but we're always happy to see her. I've had some quite intense change this year with the loss of Aunty Eileen and the way I've been trying to rewire my brain so that I can experience life without anxiety, stress and then eventual depression. 2014 has been a lovely old year in the most part. I've lost someone very special to me but I've gained also. As I've learned, things change, sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst but change can always be counted upon and I plan to spend the next couple of months working very hard on the inner mechanics of my brain so that I am able to accept, deal with and understand change when it comes my way. I don't want to live my life as though I am a bucket of water with no current or flow and I doubt many others want to live that way either. I know that I want to spend some time dedicated to my own mental health and eventually help the mental health of others to become stronger. I know I want to go back to university and I know I want to wake up able to face the day in front of me with the excited and optimistic attitude it deserves. I know that I want to be more organised and a little bit more proactive. I know I want to shift some weight and I want to go to the gym. I know I want to get up earlier and I know I can do all of these things but it will take me some time to get used to them being part of my daily routine. I already have my NY resolutions ready and waiting to go once 2015 kicks in on January 1st but maybe I should start on some of them a little early?

 I was recently told that I've eaten so many eggs that I've built myself an egg shell by a delightfully astute individual and I thought that he was very accurate on both counts. I have indeed been living in the fragile shelter of my own fear for quite a long time. I've improved on some things and not so much on others but gradually I'd really like to break free of all of the things that have been holding me back so I'm starting with stopping feeling sorry for myself. Someone has been and gone and he left a wealth of destruction in his wake but gone he is and coming back to repeat his performance he is not. He didn’t mean to cause such harm either, he's actually very pleasant in personality with a generous nature, a kind spirit and I've been demonising him for far too long. 2015 starts with a blank slate, a mind in recovery, a life to live cautiously and in measured amounts but it must be lived all the same. Everything always feels like a really big deal so I won't be climbing mountains but I'll be stopping for coffee, consuming frozen yoghurt, going for walks and allowing myself to enjoy what's left of 2014 before the year changes and I have to start getting up early.

Not Being A Hermit

As a depressed person… nah not this time. Change of subject?

Okay then, I agree with you.

   This evening I am going to talk about cohabitation. I am cohabiting at the moment and I'm finding it anthropologically fascinating. I am a British English teacher who lives in Seville and being totally honest with you I haven't done anywhere near as much Spanish language learning as I should or could have done. I currently live with a nice young lady, she's Chinese and she doesn't speak English so we've had some interesting moments together when discussing bin bags and washing up liquid. I've lived with the Irish, some British girls, some British boys whilst at university, I've room shared with a Belgian girl when I was working at a summer camp and of course spent most of my communal living with my long suffering mother, father and sister. They've had a grand old time of it with me and my boiled, fried, poached, scrambled and omeletted eggs. My dad actually counts the amount of eggs that are in the house when I arrive home and then averages them out day by day to see how many I have been eating. I similarly find his fascination with bacon equally amusing. "Where is the bacon? I never get to have any bacon.. you girls are always eating the bacon." He never gets any because he forgets it's there until he see's the empty packet in the bin and realises he hasn't had any of the bacon that was once in the packet. My sister has some interesting habits as well, she runs around her bedroom with no clothes on shouting, "I'm nakeeeeeddddd, don't come in!" She says it all in her very best Scouse. My mother is a different kettle of fish altogether, now she really is a conundrum. Ange, (as I like to call her) broke her ankle once and didn’t like the plaster cast much. Ange's method of dealing with it? Well, just remove the plaster cast with a kitchen knife of course. She took on the personality of a lunatic for a little while as she hacked and sawed away at the large lump of plaster surrounding her leg. My dear old dad wasn't best pleased when he came in from work and had to bundle her into the car back to the hospital ready to be casted up again. He was a lot less pleased when she did it again a few days later, this time telling my sister and I not to tell our father she had removed the plaster cast. I remember wondering how she thought he was going to notice all by himself at the time. We've also had some pets. Now, the best one was definitely Charlie. Charlie was the king of felines but sadly joined our other animals in the cat graveyard my dad has been fashioning for a couple of years last May. We miss Charlie, he made us laugh and he was as bizarre as the rest of us. He was a cat who thought he was a cat/rabbit/dog. He'd play fetch with you, try to catch birds in the TV, play with your heels as you walked past him, jump across the garden and chase butterflies. Charlie was a great one to cohabit with, never a dull moment on his watch.  

 

  One of the young ladies I cohabited with at university was a little on the odd side. I'd moved into the house a few months early because I was 'of' the city of Liverpool and feeling desperate to have complete control of the huevos in the kitchen so by the time she arrived I'd made myself a little bit at home. By at home I mean that kitchen things were in the kitchen and a mirror was in the living room. I went to work the first Saturday that she was living with us and came home to find that she had gone quite ballistic and rearranged the entire house having ranted and raved at the much quieter girl we were living with that I had 'taken over' the house. I was a little surprised but I let it lie. I didn’t have the house meeting she wanted though and after going hysterical about 4 rolls of toilet paper not being enough for her general consumption she left our little house and things became altogether calmer. Another housemate went off in a hissy fit because my boyfriend came round whilst she had guests, I was under the impression that if one student is in her bedroom watching a film with her boyfriend then another student should feel more than comfortable to have her friends over and all be in the same house together. I was wrong. I know of people who've had strange dealings with biscuits, the TV and other generally odd things when it comes to housemates.

  I have to ask myself though… what do my ex housemates have to say about me? I think that everything I do is perfectly normal but I bet they don't. I always like to keep pre washed dishes in the sink for example but the people I live with often prefer to keep them by the side of the sink. This simple act baffles me and I find myself thinking… but why don't you put the dishes in the sink? There isn't much room beside the sink you see, so I can't understand why the dishes aren't in it and comfortably out of both sight and mind. I always have a TV with me wherever I go as well. I might be putting on a wash or making the breakfast. You can guarantee that you'll hear the dulcet tones of Phoebe, Joey, Rachel, Monica, Chandler and Ross wherever and whenever I happen to be in the local proximity. They may also find the amount at which I like to sleep a little extreme, I love a good sleep. I've had housemates feel the need to check on me in the past and make sure I'm alright. They were up and out with the lark type people and I was more up with Loose Women and then back to bed after my 12pm breakfast at the time. I was a waster and they were seizers and we all lived together under the one roof.

  As I go through life I often wonder how I am perceived. If I think everyone else is wholeheartedly weird then surely they must think I am also a little strange? Or maybe I'm just really critical and should focus more on my inner wellbeing than the eccentricities of others. Either way, whichever way you throw the dice and whatever number it lands on you can't get away from other people unless you want to become a hermit can you? I don't want to be a hermit so I shall accept that my new housemate likes to turn the kitchen into a swimming pool every time she cooks and literally drenches every tea towel at least once a day because she's very nice and she made me churros earlier on.

 

Other people… can’t live with them and can't live without them so I'll just embrace and accept as I find and hope that they're feeling willing to do the same.

We See The Light Surrounding You

  I have had depression for the majority of my formative years and it has been a constant visitor over the last four and a half. Four and a half years ago I would never have dreamed of standing up and saying 'my name is Helen Edwards and I have depression, anxiety disorders, OCD and SAD.' I'll send everyone running for the hills I would have thought. I sometimes think of myself as a Pic'n'Mix stand for those looking for a mental health issue. You want it... I've got it. Sometimes I'm out of stock but the delivery man generally comes around again and I'll have whatever you need in store at some point, you just have to choose the right moment.

 I make light of it but it's not easy is this business of living with a faulty head. Sometimes it feels like such an uphill struggle that I just don't get up, don't go out and don't communicate, but, and there is always a but... It's really not the way to deal with it. These 'coping behaviours' are actually very destructive and they cause more harm than they cause good. I've done them myself and I've seen them in lots of people I know you see, so I do know what I'm talking about. I also know how hard it is to break them and go down the healthy road, so very difficult when my bed is such a warm and comforting place to be and there are monsters everywhere else.

  I had myself a little breakdown last Christmas. It wasn't my first and it may not be my last but I sure do remember how it felt. Awful. Absolutely... Awful. It was soul destroying, mind crunchingly awful and if it was an ankle that had fallen out of a tree and got broken then you'd expect a lengthy recovery period. No one would say, 'ahhh slap a smile on that ankle.' There would be no slapping of ankles and there will be no slapping of minds thank you very much. It doesn't work like that, matters of the head do not manage to realign themselves with a plaster cast and some heavy pain killers. 

  Now depression isn't all bad because as a depressed person... (there I go again with the 'd' word) I have been rather fortunate because I have done something magical and turned into a magnet. I seem to be programmed to gravitate towards those with other mental  health difficulties so it's given me quite an interesting perspective; I am both the depressed person inside of the window and also the devastated person looking in and wondering how on earth I can pull this lovely individual outside back into the world again. I have friends with all sorts of problems. We range from anxious to insomniac to bi polar to clinically depressed and we all share our stories sometimes. The one commonality is that none of us realize how fabulous we are when these moods take over us, yet everyone else is quite perplexed. 'But she's just so beautiful. Why can't she see it?' Or 'he's an exceptional young man and he has no idea.' We really don't have any idea about any of the good stuff when depression takes hold because all we can see are the negatives around us. It's like living in a beautiful palace and only being able to see the mark on the window. Try as you might, you just can't see anything else. 

  I know that many people I think the world of can only see this mark. They're oblivious to everything else and it's not their fault but they're some of the most intelligent, funny, feeling, beautiful people I've had the delight to find. This world we occupy is a bloody hard place to live in sometimes but I've decided to carry the flag and wave it around as high as my 5ft2 self can wave it for Mental Health. I'm not ashamed, I'm not proud, I'm not standing in a rainbow declaring it to be the best way of life, I'm just moving along and hoping that I'm not making a total hash of absolutely everything. So here goes... My name is Helen Edwards and I am genetically predisposed to depression, anxiety, SAD and OCD... But I also have fabulous long, blonde hair and I'm quite funny when I want to be. Now then, how about you?