Dot Dot Dot

I'm pretty sure I am right, most of the time. 

I have been thinking about this recently, and I have come to two conclusions. 
Either everyone in the world thinks this way too, in which case I must be wrong, or I am one of a few people who think this and (as long they all agree with me) we must all be right. 

But the people who shout very loudly about being right seem to be the ones that are most likely to be wrong.

A conundrum. 

I feel strongly about things, and it distresses me when others don't. I don't mind when people think differently from me, as long as they have put some effort into actually thinking. It's when people don't think at all about the issues that fire me up that I assume that they are wrong, neglectful, not participating in society, not making their mark. 

I was listening to the Slow Burn podcast, and discovered Mae Brussell, who was a radio host in the 1970s with a deep passion for a good conspiracy theory (any conspiracy theory). Apparently she read eight newspapers a day. Her motivation for digging so deep into the stories of the day was that she felt a responsibility towards her five children, not to just sit back and let the world wash over her, and accept the perceived wisdoms, and putter along as a backseat passenger. She wanted to know what was going on, especially when she felt she wasn't being told the truth by the People Who Know Stuff. 

I do love a newspaper, but I doubt I could make my way through eight of them a day. Scrolling through Twitter, though. That I can do. And I like to think (in my Always-Rightness) that I only fill my brain with Important Stuff, I only follow Interesting People, I only click on Learned Things (and not bait). I tell myself that I am expanding my horizons and doing my civic duty, widening my knowledge. Of course all I am really doing is reinforcing my own long-held opinions, turning my core beliefs into iron ore, patting myself on the back for being so Right All The Time.

The discomfort we feel when we are confronted with truths we don't want to accept is very real. Visceral. We (I) don't like the feeling of doubt creeping in - what if everything we have believed to be unassailably true is in fact just something someone once told us, that we never even thought to question?

It is infinitely easier to stick to our guns, close our ears, cover our eyes and three-monkey our way through life. Even if we did dramatically change our minds about something, after carefully listening to a person who we would usually ignore or mock, it is unlikely that we are going to truly transform our general outlook on life. In fact, if we did do a complete moral or cognitive u-turn, our integrity would rightly be called into question.

So how do we open ourselves to new possibilities, without becoming embarrassingly flippant in our attitudes and opinions?

It all comes back to opening our ears, and trying new things, and embracing challenges. 

I am ridiculously excited to have been asked to participate in this year's DotMD festival in Galway in September. To be included in such a jaw-dropping line-up of writers, thinkers and doers is both humbling and ego-boosting at the same time. More importantly for me though, is the opportunity to once again open my ears and eyes to a wider view, a bigger picture, and to experience the thrill that comes from brushing off the cobwebs in the corners of my mind. 

Come along, you'll enjoy it. 

You know I'm right. 

No Surprises

It's the start of a new year, so I'm going to do the thing that all good TV schedulers do, and fill this space with retrospection and predictions. 

I used to make a photo-montage each November, to mark the anniversary of my diagnosis, and share it on Facebook, and cry a little bit at the beauty in my life. But my faith in Zuckerberg has reached the point where I am reluctant to even look at the screen (which has just reminded me to finally cover the camera on my laptop with an airmail sticker - paranoid, me?), so the chances of me presenting him with a neat package of my life story over the past twelve months are slim to none. 

But it was a nice thing to do, to remember all the wonderful giggle-filled moments that we had had, the achievements and milestones, the flow of life through its up and downs.

My children are growing bigger and older.

My house is growing bigger and older.

I am growing older (size remains roughly the same).

My hopes and fears expand diametrically. 


These are things for which I am grateful.

It was a bit cold in the sea on December 31st.....

Not A Drop

I went to see "A Star is Born" in the hopes of having a good cry. 

I went to a counsellor the same day.

Not a drop.

I did that thing of playing chicken with the counsellor when she went silent for ages. I thought I was going to get the giggles, so I ended up filling the space. But I should have held my nerve.

It is very hard to go to counselling without thinking of Tony Soprano.* 

I was never much of a crier when I was little. I remember watching TV with a relative once (non-Irish) who started sobbing away at a made-for-TV movie, and I was gobsmacked at the shamelessness of it. Even more incredibly, as the credits came up, she just blew her nose, wiped her face and switched over to Wheel of Fortune. I couldn't understand how such heartfelt emotion could be switched on and off. If I had reached the point of tears, that usually meant I was facing down deep disconsolate pain and my inner angst had burst out of my nail-digging fist. It would evolve into a wailing and a shuddering and a sickupping mess. It wasn't just something that could come upon me like a sneeze or a giggle, out it pops and you move on, without analysing deeply the whats and whys.

Everyone knows that this all changes when you become pregnant or have children. The floodgates open, the heart creaks at any tiny hint of something small being hurt or harmed, and the tears leak like my kitchen ceiling. It's enjoyable and liberating and I absolutely loved going to see Mamma Mia in the Mums 'n' Babies cinema club and soaking the Baby Bjorn with my tears as well as the baby's drool. 

There is something very therapeutic about a good cry. But Bradley and Gaga didn't do it for me. And I find I am boring myself, these days, so pouring my heart out to the kindly therapist totally failed on the lacrimation front. I could think about my children being motherless, that is always a shoo-in for producing a good salty flow, but I'm not a total masochist.

I was reading Sara Baume's "A Line Made By Walking", in which a young woman who is suffering an emotional wobble returns home to live in her dead grandmother's house. She describes lying with her face on the carpet for hours. That's how I feel on my down days. This insight I am getting (only intermittently, thankfully) into the world of depression is revelatory. It's the absence of feeling, the vacuum of emotion, that is most disturbing. Sadness, heartbreak, desolation - they would all be an improvement on the black-hole-ness. Despite many years of speaking to people with low mood, I always assumed there were strong feelings involved - raw emotion, deep hurt. Now I realise that those would be a relief, a sign that you were still able to feel and experience life, rather than just existing in this detached nothingness. The ability to have a good cry is the very thing that depression takes away from you.

I am grateful for the fact that my visits to the dark places are brief. I think my impatience is serving me well here; boring as I am when I'm content, it's a far sight better than the Father Stone I become when I'm feeling low. So my subconscious self decides to snap out of it, to change the channel. 

We went to see The Grinch the following week.

The tears flowed.  

*{To be fair to the counsellor, in addition to the usual dying/not-dying dilemma that I bring, this time I had the extra baggage of Doing Work on the House. She just threw her hands in the air at that stage. Someone who is mid-renovations cannot be helped by conventional psychotherapy. And if you're living in the house at the same time? Well then you pretty much deserve all the misery. There is no way to keep positive and chirpy when every day starts with the rat-tat-tat of three burly builders dragging a load of rubble into your kitchen, before you've had your first sip of tea. Lovely fellas they are, but Christ I will be happy to see the back of them}