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A Beautiful Revolution

so, tonight, because I'm in the middle of the most moist of a gorgeous, artery gorging love affair with the new Nick Cave CD, I'm going to do the thing that marked the first hour of six months of intense, fervent personality depletion for me. I'm going to go to sleep with my walkman on max volume, repeat play.

I'll be doing it every single day I can for a week.

That's not the full flavour, though - for the full flavour of how it feels to lose your mind, I need to:

• drink till I'm sick;


• cry uncontrollably every single minute of the day;


• only listen to songs that remind me of really good sex; and


• only speak to another human once every fortnight.

• convinced that something sluggish, baleful and malign is alive in my attic;


• in a house that was haunted by me.

For a real treat, I can try:

• passing out and waking at five too pissed to drive to work;


• with my head in the cat litter tray; or


• leaning in a crouch to hold my knees and press my forehead against a cold radiator for seven days solid; or


• be too scared to open a letter;


• to pick up a ringing phone.

I could:

• drive ten miles across west London at midnight to find somewhere I can buy drugs to block it out; but


• forget to take them, because


• I'm too busy sitting with the car door open puking in the gutter to


• remember to do anything other than


• listen to music, and


• cry in front of strangers at all.

I'm trying not to mention the dull voices in my head that told me things, the fear that perhaps they weren't real, the terror that probably they weren't real, the utter horror that I couldn't actually tell the difference.
I'm trying not to mention the friends who cocked a sceptical eyebrow and asked 'are you sure?' when I asked for support in this. Or the moments when I'd have to invent a cover story at work for why I hadn't bothered to turn up or phone for weeks on end.

Nick is crooning a subcalypso folk grunge at top whack in my ears right now. I never blogged all of this stuff at the time - although I blogged all the way through it - because the idea of mental illness, of mental dysfunction or damage - shames me.

I wish I didn't have that prejudice.

If I'd had the nerve to be open, to tell the truth about everything that was happening to me back then, I might have gotten a little more support than my so-called friends were able to give me.
And, you never know, when I beat the fucking thing, and came out of the drugged up zombie zone that my fuckwit doctor's pills put me in, and damn well cured myself in five months flat, someone, somewhere, might have said well done.

A year on, and I can say these things.

I can run my finger over and across the same triggers, and know that it won't fire a bullet.

Well done, me. I'm fucking brilliant.

Posted by Sarsparilla at 11:21 am

- JonnyB | 01.06.05 | 12:00 pm

Wishing you much love and peace for this year.

And yes. It's an incredible album.

- billy | 01.06.05 | 12:40 pm

...not just brilliant - fucking amazing :^)...

well done you

- Vaughan | 01.06.05 | 12:57 pm

The best comment I can think of - which isn't a very good comment at all, in fact - is 'very eloquently put'.

Very eloquently put, then.*

*2005 resolution: must improve quality of comments.

Particularly the 'signs' . . . I never blogged about those. Well, not so obviously, anyway. Lots of obfuscation and ridiculous cod-poetic analogies. Oh yes.

- PPQ | 01.06.05 | 1:16 pm

Hah - well done V.
You looked the sucker in the eye and beat it down.
As for your so called friends...why I oughta.........

You are brilliant, and twisted and funny and talented and strong.

You and Andre...you think you're made of some of the same stuff?

Whatever.

Stay you.

- PPQ | 01.06.05 | 1:18 pm

ps) Footnote no 2, not portentous I hope? Not an end? Just a warning that your notebook is finished and you need to buy another?!!!

- looby | 01.06.05 | 1:50 pm

Yes - you're not going to diosappear again are you?

- christy | 01.06.05 | 2:19 pm

happy new year vanessa! take care of those eardrums. ;-)

- alan | 01.06.05 | 3:44 pm

GET READY FOR LOVE

it's all we can do

- Jennifer | 01.06.05 | 4:45 pm

I can say it now, then, can't I?

Well done, V. Brava.

Speaking from one who knows, the only shame in mental illness is our prejudice against our own variety of it. For what? More of the same, if you're asking me. Only more deeply, internally bled.

Well done.

- Anne | 01.06.05 | 5:27 pm

Not to sound like an AA meeting, but...one day at a time. Fuck that. One MOMENT at a time. You're here. That's enough.

- Ben | 01.06.05 | 6:15 pm

Fantastic post, fantastic album. Congratulations on pulling through.

- | 01.06.05 | 6:40 pm

What was the sign that told you you were out of it for good / not likely to have a relapse? [Edit: comment posted by Ysengrin]

- Emma | 01.06.05 | 7:23 pm

This is a fantastic post.

- Vanessa | 01.06.05 | 8:26 pm

Ysengrin - I honestly can't remember. Though I hated the pills and their effect, they switched certain things off for long enough for me to deal with them. If things are consistently unmanageable - not bad, or depressing, but unmanageable, I'd recommend speaking to a professional and finding out what your options are.

I came off them on this day last Easter. Looking back at the blog posts then, I can tell there's stuff I was hiding behind flippant stupid posts. As ever. But I don't remember when it was I decided to come off the pills. I do remember when I realised I was alright again - it's when I started blogging on this site, in September. But i really don't recall why.

Everyone else: cheers.

- Kat | 01.06.05 | 11:01 pm

To add to all the others: Well done. You are fucking brilliant.

- Lux | 01.06.05 | 11:15 pm

Can't think of anything else to add except, well done, you! Fucking brilliant.

- JoJo | 01.07.05 | 1:12 am

I remember having a drunken conversation with you at the end of March when you came to Birmingham. We were talking about what we wanted for our kids and you said 'for them to be kind'. You made perfect sense to me (that statement still does) and I'm sorry you were going through such a bad time and it went straight over my head - guess everyone likes to wrap themselves up in their own shit, eh?

Jo

- Vanessa | 01.07.05 | 1:23 am

Awww, Jo. I didn't think you were still reading. Thought Chris and Sar were the last intermittent remnants.
I was thinking about you guys tonight (can't access news on here).:)
I remember saying that, I don't for the life of me remember when/what year. I thought it was the year before. I seem to remember running out of the bathroom and flashing you guys with a drunken full frontal soon after, which suggests a certain level of tired and emotional.

PPQ / Looby: no, just the paper blog ending, at that point. Though I've stopped blogging now (it suddenly seems wasteful and pointless), you won't notice till April. :)

- Jo | 01.07.05 | 1:48 am

Ha ha, I remember the streaking when you decided you wanted a shower at 3am for some strange reason :-) For some reason, it didn't seem strange. You were probably saying something really profound at the time that took precedence :-))) To be honest, I was more focused on my lovely, tasty, greasy chips - you know me, sorry!

Course I still read your blog. I love to read about how you're doing and you know how useless and fucking lazy I am with Messenger.

Perhaps it's time for a CBB meetup - whaddyathink?

Jo.x

- PPQ | 01.07.05 | 2:07 am

Yeah well, just don't be surprised if come April you stop blogging and there's a mini riot on your blog...and I'm drunk and wondering where my bloody reply to 'what's a feeb' is?!!


Shyah.

- Jen | 01.07.05 | 2:34 am

Bravery is contagious.

And compelling.

And while there are difficult, nasty, heartbreaking days (and years) there is always one tiny little thing every day to celebrate.

Sometimes, you are my one tiny thing.

:)

- Jennifer | 01.07.05 | 3:27 am

"Though I've stopped blogging now (it suddenly seems wasteful and pointless), you won't notice till April."

I've seen you concur with this assessment elsewhere. PB's place, most recently, I do believe. I couldn't be any more vehement in my disagreement of it were I getting paid to be disagreeable.

But then I suppose it's down to are you blogging to live, living to blog or blogging because you have a life worth remembering.

- Jennifer | 01.07.05 | 3:32 am

And lest it get lost in the semantics, By 'worth remembering' I hardly mean as in memorable, unforgettable, enigmatic 'worth remembering'.

I mean worth learning from, worth growing from, worth reflecting on. For me, alone perhaps, the brain dumpage of yesterday fortifies and arms me for tomorrows. Hardly a wasteful and pointless endeavor.

- Vanessa | 01.07.05 | 8:49 am

Jo: I don't have enough money to meet up right now, I'm afraid. Funny - Sar texted me the same question as you at the same time.

PPQ: Feeb means feeble!

Jennifer: [comment edited by V]
In essence, I'm incapable of blogging at the moment, because there are more important places to direct my energies. Sometimes, you look someone in the eye and think: if I can't save you, if I can't stop you from this, then what's the point of anything else?
Sorry: if I analyse it, I'm just going to turn out to be stupidly cryptic. Something pushed my buttons, is all. Some good ones, and some bad ones.

- PPQ | 01.07.05 | 4:51 pm

Dullard.

That was easy.

Wow V, you are sonding cryptic indeed, and I hope you kick the-death-on-the-horizon in the arse.

Sometimes the hardest thing is realising that you can't always save everyone. It sucks.

But good luck - you sounds like you have the guts and the what not to be able to give it a bloody good try.

- Jennifer | 01.07.05 | 6:01 pm

Buttons of my own were pushed, evidently, but being clearer of head now, I grasp you're meaning. Though that doesn't prevent me from defending journaling/diarism/blogging as something more than pointless.

Sometimes, most times, you simply can't save someone. But by following their lead and falling into the trap they've set for themselves of then thinking: what's the point? you risk failing to save yourself.

- Vanessa | 01.07.05 | 7:45 pm

Changed my mind about that comment made this morning on no sleep. Jen, I emailed you the reason. I definitely didn't mean that I think blogging is crap. I think blogging per se is a worhtwhile endeavour - I've read stuff that's widened my eyes, made me laugh, hurt my soul, and left me immeasurably richer.
I simply meant that sometimes life events take over, and it's on occasion that the wrong priority is to blog.
Should things change, I'd be back. They have till April to change, so I think the blog's pretty damn safe. ;)