Oh! I hugged Mini T!

Hooray for me!  I have been alive for 38 years.  It was my birthday yesterday, I indulged in pork pie and beer (because it was my birthday).  Hooray for me!

Its Mental Health Awareness Week this week, just a week or so after Piss Morgan (I am aware of that typo) complained that too many men are oversharing and should Man Up.  One twitter user replied saying that their brother tried to Man Up, failed and ended up killing himself due to anxiety and depression; he felt he couldn’t talk about it because it’s not manly to share your feelings.  This is the myth that Piss continues to perpetuate, in this day and age where the biggest killer of young men (under the age of 45).  He seems to think it’s not okay to talk about your feelings, because if you do it makes you less of a man.  He then posed the question "Is James Bond not a real man, then?" on Twitter and the internet laughed at him, because that’s all he’s good for.

Regular readers of this blog will have seen my documented struggles with anxiety, depression, incredibly low self-esteem and suicidal ideation.  These aren’t daily feelings (thankfully), and the suicide thing hasn’t reared its head in a long while.  But from time to time, it hits me.  Yesterday whilst out with David for my birthday, he took a photograph of me holding a pint (because it was my birthday).  This might not seem strange, in fact, it’s almost obligatory that he do this on my birthday.  But I hated the photograph.  I look enormous (which I am), like the size of a fully grown manatee.  He posted it to FB because that’s what he does, and soon the compliments flooded in as well as more birthday greetings.  And my dark half came out and she started her up her old game of telling me how shit I look:

‘They don’t really like you’. 

‘They’re just complimenting you because that’s what you do when someone posts a photo of themselves or their significant other on FB’ 

‘They really want to post up the truth, YOUR truth, Tara, and post ‘Sorry Dave, your wife looks like a manatee with a stupid smile where her top lip disappears so it shows all her stupid teeth’.   

Managed to get to the cinema without too much trouble and then finally enclosed my dark half back in her cupboard.  Then, as we left the cinema, (which is situated next to a gym), two blokes came out of the gym, one looked over at me then whispered something to his mate, then they both looked over and openly laughed at me.  And it was definitely not because I’d told them a hilarious joke (You know what I hate about Russian dolls?  They’re so full of themselves ).  So I was made to feel like utter dogshit on my birthday – fair dos, they didn’t know it was my birthday; they didn’t know I have such a low self-opinion but yeah, they made me feel like utter garbage.  David and James, bless them, tried to help by saying ‘forget about them, they’re idiots’ and ‘They don’t matter’ but that’s exactly how anxiety can get you. It’s true, why SHOULD I care that two blokes I don’t even know openly laughed at me?  Because I do.  Because anxiety and my dark half make me.  And I’m finding it difficult to cope at the moment.  Got another birthday night out planned with the gal pals for Saturday.  I hope my dark half fucks off by then.  

If you’re being affected by low mood, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation or any other kind of worrying thoughts or feelings, please do share your thoughts and feelings with others, whether its friends family or MIND or Samaritans, or even contact me through this blog.  Just please don’t suffer alone.   And writing my feelings helps me out so much.  I find it cathartic, which is why there are so many posts on here about mental health.

FUCK Piss Morgan.

Mini T's Mini Meltdown (This is NOT a delicious recipe)

I went to a horror movie convention the other weekend in Birmingham.  It was brilliant, met up with friends and made some new ones, including Michael Myers himself, the actor Tony Moran.  It’s true, we’re FB pals, HE friend requested me. I taught him the word minge.  Fairly proud of that. 

 

Anyway, I got some photos with some Nightmare on Elm Street stars, Rod Lane from NOES 1 (Jsu Garcia) and Roland Kincaid from NOES 3 (Ken Sagoes) (paid for) and some pals took some snaps of us too.  And then I saw the photos, and I could have wept.  I look utterly horrendous in every single one.  I’m the size of a juvenile elephant, my face looks utterly ridiculous, I have about five chins and that weird top lip disappearing smile that always makes my teeth look more prominent than they are.  This is why I haven’t posted any of the pics up.  Even the ones I’ve paid for.  Even the one of me with Jsu Garcia AND Ken Sagoes (a photo op I’ll never get again) because of how I look.

 

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have major hang ups about my appearance, most noticeably my weight and then my actual physical appearance.  I thought I’d come to terms with the fact that I could look pretty at times, and hell, I even wore a bikini and posted it on the internet…I think that was more the prosecco though than me.  These photos from the horror con kicked off something in my brain which, coupled with a few other things, caused me to have a bit of a meltdown over the last weekend.

 

Anxiety had kicked me around on Friday and Saturday, culminating in me dropping out of a well overdue night out with my gal pals.  I couldn’t have coped with all the photos, the trying to make myself look presentable enough to be seen out with these women, my best friends, who are all goddesses in their own way.  In my brain, sometimes, I feel I don’t fit in with them.  And it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.  It’s nothing they’ve ever said or done, it’s purely me and my own stupid brain.  So I ducked out of our night out because I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with me ruining every photograph.  And I stayed in, with the cats for company.  Weirdly, as the time passed, and I knew I didn’t have to go out, my anxiety eased off a little.  Just a little though, it’s still here, kicking the crap out of me.

 

Writing about how I’m feeling is one of my main coping mechanisms.  It’s cathartic.  And I might overshare at times, but I’d rather do that than have all my feelings and emotions bottled up, ready to unexpectedly spill.  Folk call me brave for writing, I’m not.  I’m just sharing experiences I’ve had, that others might have had, so that maybe one other person can read it and know that other people get anxiety and depression. 

 

I’ve always been an advocate for speaking about my mental health; and I will continue to be.  I’m aware that others feel they can’t speak about it which is sad.  This is a conversation that we need to have, we need it to grow above just a hubbub; it needs to be a loud and angry conversation.  Mental health services are getting slashed by the government (and previous governments).  Mental health charities and other charity helplines are getting inundated with referrals, letters, emails, telephone calls from people suffering because there’s no mental health service near them, or that it’s been so slashed to the bone, they can’t get an appointment.

 

It’s not shameful to have a mental health issue.  We need to feel comfortable to speak about it.

 

 

 

New Year - New ME

Well, not quite as we’re almost a third of the way into the year now and there has been no sign of my motivation.  It crept back quite quietly a few weeks back and has been quietly prodding and poking my determination awake.  I am now determined to do something positive about my appearance (long time readers of the blog know I have a lot of hang ups about how I look and in particular my weight).  I’ve always been fat, in my head this started when at about age 5 or 6 at primary school, one girl decided she’d call me fat at lunchtime.  I stopped eating my lunch for a bit and my ma wasn’t too happy with me.  It was not an eating disorder I hasten to add.  It was a response to having been called fat by a peer.  But the damage was done and that word has stayed with me for life.

I was a chubby kid, the kind of kid with ‘puppy fat’ that would go when I got older.  It didn’t.  I grew from a chubby kid to a tubbier teenager: PE was hell and the showers… well forget about it.  I was never really very feminine as a kid, or a teen.  I hated dresses and preferred jeans, cords, check shirts (thanks grunge) and the like.  Shopping was always hell, and I only ever went out of necessity.  I was a tubby girl but still had quite large boobs so still kind of looked in proportion.

Yet since that childhood lunch time, I always identified with being fat because I had to be, right?  My fellow classmate wouldn’t have said that to me unless it was true, right?  She wouldn’t have said it solely to hurt me?  I know full well she will have forgotten that lunchtime in the canteen of Holy Family infant school when she first identified me as fat, but I haven’t.  It was the first time I can remember that fat was used as an insult, and it’s a pretty powerful one too.  And one I still connect with, even when in 2005 I got to a size 12, a relatively ‘normal’ dress size and body shape… not for me it wasn’t.  being shorter of stature, I was still classed as obese – I had a bony arse for Jesus sake, but no… still obese… one person I remember saying to me ‘Yeah that’s great and everything but you could stand to lose a bit more, couldn’t you?’  and the phrase that goes through my head, said by more than one person on occasion ‘You’re too pretty to be that fat’.  To me, that says that says you can either be pretty OR you can be fat… you can’t be both, that’s not how it works.  You see it everywhere today, fat shaming of people, maybe women who have just had a child being hounded by the paparazzi as to why they haven’t got back to their pre baby shape, or a good looking guy relaxing on the beach with maybe a little paunch ‘[Insert Celeb Name Here] looks as though he has enjoyed his holiday a little TOO much’.

And when you try to do something positive and motivating, you can get shouted down about that too.  I started doing the Couch to 5K programme a couple of years ago (it was during that summer of Ireland’s woeful performance at the European championships).  David cajoled me into doing it and I really quite enjoyed it.  We’d run across Hearsall Common for as long as the programme ran for, and I felt wonderful.  I’d never been a runner ever, came last in my first ever school sports day running race, but here I was, being able to build up my running and my stamina and it felt incredible.  I was fearful of others for a while until one night a bloke called out of me ‘Fair play to you love, I should be doing that myself’.  I was on nodding terms with some of the joggers who regularly went for a run on the common.  It was going really well until one day some pricks in a car shouted fat abuse at me.  I tried ignoring it but it was too much to take; I was 6 years old again being called fat for no reason, being abused for no reason whatsoever.  I burst into tears and that ended my few months of Couch to 5K.  I was too scared to go back and do it again.  My wheels fell off my exercising wagon and that was it.

I realise this is just a big old load of rambles, but I’m trying to explain why I am how I am (I’m well aware I don’t actually have to explain myself to anyone).

So, after a trip to the GP this morning, I discovered that the NHS does a referral scheme to Slimming World – I was weighed and promptly referred.  Basically, you get 12 weeks of meetings for free…this is mega because I was actually going to join a slimming class next week when I get paid.  And my mojo is returning to put me through going back to the gym where, around the body beautifuls and the skinny girls on exercise bikes, I can try to fit in, get back on my treadmill and run like fuck…I’m going to try to run away from that memory from when I was 6, away from the car full of wankers shouting names at me but most importantly, I’m going to try to run into a newer, healthier, slimmer me.  I have NOT been pressured to do this, I feel its time to change and I feel healthier in my mind and motivated to do it.

Watch this space.

Darn tootin', pie. We can DO this.

Nb: This will NOT become a diet/exercise blog site.  I promise.