Fireflies........

Someone whom I love very deeply suffered a bit of a wobbly over the last week. This prompted me to contemplate yet again how powerful and delicate an organ the brain is, how easily the balance of it can be disturbed and how distressing such disturbances are for both the person who is suffering and that person’s friends and family.

I suppose I understand it a little myself because I have sunk into some terrifying pits over a twenty year period. I get the very odd high-very, very, odd and not enough to warrant either medication or psychotherapy. I quite like the highs, I always write my best work when I’m in that head, the big ideas come and I try to hold them, write them down, record them for use in some piece at a future date. The worst I do is stay awake too long and talk too much. After the last episode I mentioned these warning signs to the beloved other, he is in general able to spot the dark clouds glowering before I do, but he’s not so tuned to the slight highs and his reaction was

‘But you talk so much anyway, how am I to know you’re going high?’

It’s hard on him and on my family but they’re great. They never ever condemn me, tell me to pull up my socks or to get on with it and stop feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, living with mental illness is haard on everyone in the family. Sometimes I feel self-indulgent, letting the high or low get the better of me – particularly a bad low day, a day I cannot, physically cannot get out of bed, a day I want to die, count the paracetamol or contemplate the branches of trees pondering would they take my weight in a noose. I hope I never get to that space again where I actually do something with the thoughts that lurk in the recesses of my mind. But sometimes these very thoughts are the only things that calm me. Planning my death, my funeral – incredibly morbid, dark dark thoughts.

But then the doorbell might go and a freckle-faced boy comes home, and how could I leave him yet? How could I abandon him when he still needs me. He and his brother, my step daughters, my husband, family and friends. They are my ‘will-to-meaning’ (Viktor Frankyl). I draw breath for them. I be. For them. And as long as they are I too will be.

Why am I blogging about it? Why pour my soul, the fireflies in my brain onto the page? Because I have to. We have to. As a society we have to drag mental health centre stage, it is an area of medicine where prevention pays off. With the slow decline of religion in the Western World something must replace that spirituality, the comfort the contemplation of the divine gave to generations. Whatever the Divine might be. For we all need a ‘will-to-meaning’, something to make sense of it all, make living worthwhile. For some it is Art – painting, music, reading, writing – all the disciplines. For others sport or yoga or something non-chemical for which one has a passion. That, and one good teacher, is all any human being needs after all basic physical needs are met to live a contented life. Live, love and be safe in the moment.

Amn’t I horrid deep?

The Year that was in it..........

New Year’s Eve

I can’t say I’m glad to see 2009 go.

It was a good year for me and mine. I finished one novel, started another, got commissioned to ghost-write a fantastic memoir, had one short story published and was shortlisted in various comps for three others. My poetry improved....I think, and I read some fantastic books, favourite novel was the latest read ‘Let The Great World Spin’by Colum McCann, favourite non-fiction ‘Ma’s Search For Meaning’ by Viktor Frankyl.

Plus I returned to the paid job in a nice office with a great bunch of fellow employees. I have indeed been blessed. The better half retired early – watch out golf courses North County Dublin, and is settling into contented middle-age (he finally admits he’s middle-aged).The only drawback to his being home more is that he is now starting to question various aspects of household management - things that have held absolutely no interest for him over the last twenty years. However a gentle reminder - a roar of ‘Jemser- for Chrissake, you are no longer in work!’ - soon eliminated his tendency to behave like someone who has control of staff.

I made some lovely new friends through my writing, both online and in the flesh. My children continue to be happy and healthy – despite teenage neuroses and pre-pubescent anxieties. I saw some fantastic plays and lots of new little arty venues taking off in the city, joined yet another writing group and I think this one might go somewhere! Oh, and I started a blog.

Then I had a peaceful and happy Christmas with lots of loved ones about.

Only real downer this year was the Irish summer – why am I still surprised at its consistent failure to please? Someone once said Ireland doesn’t have a climate, it has weather. That‘s true.

Finally it has taken me forty-eight years to find me erogenous zones… so I’m not going back to sucking wine gums…………




(Joke! Joke! Joke! And not even an original one)