Self-love

Relax...

Focus on the breath, breath in through the nose and out through the mouth...

Let your thoughts just go, acknowledge them and then let them go on their way.

Breathe.

As an asthmatic I find the art of meditation extremely traumatic. I don't want to focus on the breath because focusing on the breath reminds me that I can't bloody breathe properly and now I'm having a panic attack. So thanks. Thanks for that. So look, don't be scared come back, I am not talking the kind of hippy self-love here but the really simple kind, the kind we eat.

I have not had a drink in two months, I decided to quit when I first went back on Citalopram whilst the side effects settled, which for me include dizziness, but then I found that I just didn't want to drink, so I haven't. And this has been the beginning of a realisation about my diet and my body image. 

This morning I read this brilliant piece by Amy Jones about how she is caught between body image and a healthy lifestyle and it resonated with me, as I am sure it will resonate with a lot of people. I too have hated my body but not for the reasons I thought I did.

When I went through my big breakdown five years ago I stopped eating properly mainly due to a fear of the supermarket but that then turned into something more destructive. The lower I felt the more crap I ingested, be it food or alcohol. The more I hated what I saw in the mirror the more I ate the food responsible for the figure staring back at me. 

Now I have to stress here that the weight I gained has bought me up to a size that most women would be happy with, a size that I wouldn't blink at on anyone else. In fact, I would think they were mad for thinking they needed to lose weight. Which meant on top of not liking what I see in the mirror I felt guilty for not liking it. I have never, ever looked at anyone in a swimming costume and thought they looked bad, but I have looked at myself and criticised every single part of my body. Why do we hold ourselves to standards we wouldn't dream of holding anyone else to? 

As I found myself replacing alcohol with sparkling water and forcing myself to make three meals a day my body began to change and with it so did my attitude. In the past when I have quit alcohol it has been because I felt I should, or because I wanted to lose weight quick, it was never because I truly just didn't want to drink. So what has changed? What has made me not want to drink? It was a recognition that just happened one day that I was drinking destructively. Not in the, “quick call the AA way”, I am not an alcoholic, but in the "I feel shit, I'll have a drink" way, in the "I know I don't need this next drink but I don't care enough about myself to want to stop" way, in the "I feel fat so I am going to eat an entire big bar of dairy milk" way. I was eating and drinking with self-hate.

Every time I have tried to force abstinence on myself for 'external' reasons I have replaced alcohol with sugar or sugar with alcohol. But this time I just started thinking about why I was eating or drinking things. The new rule is that if I feel miserable I can't eat chocolate or sweets, except during my period, I'm not a monster. What I have discovered is that I don't crave sugar half as much when I am happy as I do when I am sad but when I do crave it when I am happy, I enjoy it more, I appreciate it and I can have one bar of chocolate and move on. Whereas when I am sad, one becomes two, becomes four, becomes who cares? 

I have lost a bit of weight over the past two months but for the first time ever it isn't the motivating factor and it isn't the end goal. The end goal is to look in the mirror and see a person who cares about herself staring back, in whatever shape that naturally makes her. I can eat anything and when I want to drink again I will drink again, but I will only do it for pleasure, not to block out pain. I am beginning to like myself more simply because I am treating myself as someone who likes herself more. I have cellulite, my thighs still rub, there's still more weight on me than there was before my breakdown but I am learning to love whatever shape I am supposed to be naturally by being it through a healthy diet and not an unhealthy one. And by healthy diet I don't mean in the traditional sense of eat only 'good' things (whatever that means) but in the sense that I am learning to be healthy in my approach to why I eat.

So eat everything you like but acknowledge what actually makes you feel good. If I binge on sugar my mood crashes with it, if I know that, why do I do it, because I don’t care about myself. So when I do care and think about why I eat something I am still allowed sugar but not in the "fuck you World I'm going to eat all the candy and be miserable" way but in the "fucking hell chocolate, you are awesome, that was pleasant, it was good to taste you again, looking forward to our next date" way. 

Look, the point of this post is not to say, aren’t I fantastic having not drank in two months and being all holier-than-love-myself-thou but just to acknowledge that maybe the reason we don’t like what we see in the mirror, and this is definitely true of me, is because we know we are looking at someone who isn’t looking after themselves. Not because they should look a certain way for it to mean they are but that maybe we can embrace whatever shape and size we naturally come in, and we all do come in different shapes and sizes, when we know that shape is got through self-love and not self-hate. If you are eating all the ice cream in the World with all the joy in the World then carry on. But if you are eating all the ice cream even though you’ve stopped enjoying it but because you don’t care how crap you feel afterwards, then maybe it’s time to stop and think about it.

We are all beautiful, all of us and if we could see ourselves the way those around us do then we might not be so critical of that reflection. Body image is about a lot more than just diet but diet can be a quick indicator of how we’re feeling. Your body shape doesn’t have to change for you to start to love it, only treating yourself as you would treat anyone else has to change. That might have nothing to do with food or alcohol, but could be in the way you criticise yourself for insert today’s issue here. It’s important to remember that you are you, in your body, that is only yours and made for you and if you can find the thing that unlocks in you how to be happy in it, then please let the rest of us know, in case it can help us too.

We need to talk about the 'S' word

Shit! It turns out there are a lot of 'S' words that we really don't need to talk about, a few we do and a lot we don't like to talk about like shame, stress and struggle. We like to keep quiet about sex, generally, unless we're in a gaggle of girls where we review it in minute detail. We really shouldn't ever mention sleep to new parents and never, ever complain about sleep to them. No one should say soccer BECAUSE THE GAME IS CALLED BLOODY FOOTBALL YOU IDIOT. If you absolutely must then sure, add an English or British or European in front of football but under no circumstances is it called Soccer. Please don't say software unless you want to induce sleep in your audience, and you really don't want to say software around some poor sleep deprived parents because they are already battling to stay awake. And for everyone's sake let's just leave spiritual out of all of this shall we? I mean we know we all believe something even if it's simply evolution but let's not bang on about it to anyone else. Let's just agree we all have a right to believe or not believe whatever we like when it comes to the Great Spirit in the sky. Good.

As I searched for a list of words beginning with ‘S’ there was a word that was glaring by it's absence, mainly because it is a word we really, really don't like to say and that word is suicide. However as it is mental health awareness week this week, we really do need to talk about it.

It is a difficult subject to address because at all times the needs of those who might be vulnerable to suicidal thoughts must be considered. It is important that I stress here that suicide is always a tragic waste of life and that if you have suicidal thoughts you should seek help immediately, you can find out more about how to find help here. Everyone reading this and everyone around you wants you to live, unless of course you happen to live near a psychopath, because they might actually not want you to live but they probably don’t want any of us to live, so that doesn’t count.

For many reasons it is a really hard subject to talk about but does not talking about it help? We know so much more about mental health and mental illness today but we still don't really understand that at it's worst it can be and is a killer. In fact it is the largest killer of young men. Think about that; a huge number of people, who have presumably been wired the same way as you and I, with an instinct for survival, have taken action to not survive. 

Depression robs you of logical thought and the ability to process information whilst at the same time telling you all your nightmares, over and over and over until you believe you live inside them, until you believe you will never escape them and depression tells you that this is hopeless, life can never be good again. Depression lies and it lies very convincingly, it is a better liar than Tony Blair but maybe a little less smug. Depression wants to destroy you the same way a cancer cell wants to. The difference is depression is happening inside your thoughts instead of inside your cells; where cancer eats at your organs, depression eats at your conscience, your very sense of self. Which is why it is so important that we understand suicide is not something to be ashamed about. It is a symptom of an illness that wants to destroy the mind.

Last week I felt that the death of Sally Brampton was announced with a subdued quietness that might not have heralded her death had she died of cancer and that left me feeling deeply sad and worried for all those who had sought comfort from her words. Perhaps it is just me but I felt a sense of “being buried outside the cemetery” about it. Sally herself once tweeted that when questioned in interviews about a previous suicide attempt the question was always asked in a whisper.

It is unusual for someone like Sally, who had an incredible career in media, despite her debilitating depression, to be mourned so quietly. Many of those reporting her death will have known her personally, which must have been deeply traumatic. As a well-known writer Sally didn’t enjoy the fame of Robin Williams whose death by suicide was reported extensively. However she was a voice well known by the vulnerable people I am sure the media were trying to protect, I just wonder if the quietness around her death could inadvertently have a negative impact.

Are we afraid to talk about suicide because we fear it, because we don’t understand it or because we fear encouraging it? Suicide, for most of us is thankfully impossible to imagine, it goes against our very instinct to survive. But suicide has very little to do with wanting to die, it is about escape, it is the moment the heat of the burning building feels too hot, it is the moment before the firemen break down the doors to rescue you. It is the moment that no one wants to happen.

Suicide is avoidable and preventable but surely that starts with being open, with sharing our grief, with lamenting that anyone ever feels that help will never come, when help is always there. It might be around the corner but it is always there when we ask for it. Perhaps it is time we let those who are vulnerable know just how much we value their lives by mourning loudly for the people we have lost to mental illness, by speaking the word suicide with sadness but without shame, by letting them know that we really want them to live.

If you are worried about yourself or someone you know then please contact the Samaritans who offer support for anyone who needs it.

Quick Hello and a sad goodbye

The blog is on holiday this week but I wanted to pop in and say two things:

One - this Thursday has not defeated me! 

Two - I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Sally Brampton yesterday. If you don't know who she is, she was a very talented writer and editor and an important voice for people with depression. I urge anyone who has or hasn't had experience of depression to read this brilliant article she wrote after a suicide attempt.

Click here to read it 

Thursday

I had planned on writing a post about running this week, in fact I even wrote it this morning but I was bored whilst writing it and feeling very much 'meh' about it. And that is because today is Thursday. 

Thursday, for reasons I am yet to understand, has become my weekly anxiety day. Some weeks I am blessed (ahem) with more than one anxiety day but every week, for whatever reason, I wake on a Thursday feeling useless, anxious, tired and a failure who will never achieve anything ever. And because I am a fan of the old deadline pressure and Thursday is the day I have to post a blog, which I never write in advance, I have to force myself through a blog post before I can go and hide in a hole and pretend the World does not exist. This Thursday I cannot do that as I am writing for a competition and the deadline is tomorrow, me being the deadline Queen, I probably need to do at least another four drafts till the blasted thing is ready. So Thursday or no Thursday I have got out and voted and I am bloody well just going to have to work until I cry. 

As I walked back from the poll station with my existential Thursday head feeling that my little X in the box really doesn't mean much and reflecting that it's bad luck that voting always falls on the evil day of Thursday, it's probably the entire reason the Tories keep winning, I thought to myself, why Thursday? What is it about Thursdays? I shall get to the bottom of it, I thought, like the journalist I am trying to be and thus was born, the history of Thursday.

Our journey begins with the name itself, Thursday is named Thor who is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder and lightening. I mean, I could rest my case here but this is the history of and not the 'reasons why Thursday's are evil' - although they are evil. Thunder makes you jump, lightening can kill and hammers are pretty violent when wielded, so no wonder I wake with anxiety and the Tories gain power on Thursday's. 

Even the nursery rhyme dismisses Thursday's child. All it can say about Thursday's child is that it has far to go. So basically, if you were unlucky enough to be born on a Thursday you are going to spend your life chasing behind everyone and not quite being good enough: you poor bugger. 

Oh fuck...Mum...I wasn't born on a Thursday was I? 

Do you know what, I've got enough problems as it is, just say no. 

But what about events that happen on a Thursday? Well, there was the Last Supper; that happened on a Thursday and we all know how that ended don't we? If a friend kisses you on a cheek on a Thursday, be afraid be very afraid. Black Thursday was the start of the Wall Street crash of 1929, which sparked the great depression. The terrorist attacks in London 2005 happened on a Thursday. James Horner of the Titanic soundtrack fame was killed in a light air craft crash on a Thursday and Prince was found dead on a Thursday.

After an hour of googling Thursday's and then googling "What day did 'insert historical event' happen" that's your lot, that's all I could find.

Do you know why? Because Thursday's are evil, so evil that they have stolen the cloak of invisibility from Harry Potter's ridiculously named son Severus and they are now using it to hide themselves from history, like they don't even exist. 

But lookit, I have learnt that Wednesday could well be Thursday in disguise and if you're booking a flight, I'd avoid Tuesday's, there have been lots of crashes on a Tuesday in the last six months.

Still, any day that could bring a thunder storm is a day worth avoiding. 

In Grief

When you walk through a storm
hold your head up high
and don't be afraid of the dark 

I hope you will forgive me as I side-step depression this week to talk about another universal emotion, grief. Grief and depression is not the same thing, although some of the feelings within both can crossover. 

There are five common stages of grief:

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

These are common but there is no blue print to the emotions we feel as we grieve the loss of a loved one. We may not experience all of the stages, we may find we flit between them all in a day, we may find that the order is wrong, and we may find ourselves languishing in one state for a long time.

Imagine if you will, that you have lost a husband, a child, a brother, a son, a daughter or an aunt. Imagine then that as you work through the shock of this person’s loss, you find people saying things about them that are untrue, imagine opening a newspaper and hearing stories that insinuate they deserved their death. 

What stage of grief is that? 

It could be denial; this isn't happening, surely no one believes this? But they do because they are being told it by an authority paid to protect them from the likes of society that your dead loved one is now associated with, and the newspaper that champions the working class football fan is the very paper telling them that your loved one was scum. 

Would you then feel anger? Anger at this betrayal of their memory, anger at your own helplessness in the face of this swarm of untruths, anger at the very people you trusted to keep you safe. Oh you would feel anger, you would feel anger every time you thought about them, you would feel anger as you watched the news, read the papers, saw the story fade into obscurity with people believing the lie that they've been told. The anger would be very real.

But whom can you bargain with now? God? "Please help them see this isn't true?" you pray. Years pass and still the lie is upheld, God seemingly has no power here. If even God has no power against the words of an earth bound authority, then what hope have you? Who can you bargain with? How can you stop this lie? How can you move on when the Nation thinks your loved one deserved to die? How can you accept that anyone, drunk or otherwise would have deserved to die? How can you accept that it is ever okay to lay blame on the victim of a crime? Her skirt was too short, she was wasted, she had been flirting all night, and everyone knows she is a slut. The blaming of female victims is so commonplace we barely even notice it. It happens because the power is skewed by the patriarchal society we still live in. So too the blaming of the poor, the migrants, the people on benefits, alcoholics happens because the power is skewed out of their favour. 

Imagine a bad day, whatever that would be for you, a bad day at work, a fight with a loved one, a day spent at hospital as your veins are pumped with chemicals to fight the cancer eating at your organs, finding a needle under your sons bed, being betrayed, learning of an affair, or simply that you broke an ornament that was beloved, how do you respond? What do you do to comfort yourself? Do you come home from work stressed and angry and open a bottle of wine, maybe two, do you sit and eat chocolate in front of the TV, do you cry to a friend? Imagine that bad day, whatever it is, imagine it happening every day, for a week, a month, a year, two years, like Groundhog Day over and over. What is your response? Do you drink the wine every day? Eat the cakes? Is all of it your fault? Say you drink the wine; imagine you drink it every day because this bad day happens every day, each day you drink a little more, because each day feels heavier and heavier. The drinking starts to affect your concentration, you start to rely on it, the people around you start to get angry, you are drunk more than you are sober, the bad day you keep having is now added to by the fact that the thing you turned to, to help comfort you is hurting you too, but you can't stop doing it, you can't cope with the constant onslaught. Is it your fault? Do you deserve everything you get?

Congratulations, you now find yourself amongst the members of society where the power is skewed against them. Before you even get a chance to explain why you have got into this mess you are judged and dismissed. You are guilty unless proven otherwise, but how do you prove yourself otherwise when no one will listen to a drunk like you? And so now, in the silence, you start to believe what people say about you, you begin to think you deserve everything you get, because that's what everyone else thinks. You don't bargain with anyone, instead you accept this worldview and you treat yourself with the disdain that is your due, you drink yourself to oblivion, to death, because that is what is expected of you. 

This is true if your comfort of choice is food, either the eating of it or the not eating of it. In your health crisis, your self-comfort that turns to self-hate, you are invisible, you are shameful, you are something society turns an eye from. 

But I digress in order to show how control and power can easily be lost, we don't believe it can ever happen to us, but it can, in moments. In can happen because our loved one has been killed whilst watching a football game, it can happen because the football team they support represents a city that is poorer than most. It can happen because the media tells us that the poor and vulnerable in our society are lazy, idle, and good for nothings, probably drunks and if they happen to be a migrant who is poor, scrounging terrorists, probably. It can happen even though the fans that were watching and the fans that died were from all walks of life and even children. They found themselves in a narrative that held more weight than the value of their lives. It doesn't matter who you were or what you did in your life (or didn’t get to do in the case of the children who died), if you were there that day you were drunk and violent and you deserved it, simply because the Police said so, simply because the Police knew they would be believed over football fans who supported Liverpool. 

It happened to Liverpool, it could have been any club that day but the blame story would only carry if the football club were from a poor area. But football itself is associated with poverty, the elite in our country (as David Cameron's Aston Villa, no West Ham, no Aston Villa has proved) don't like football, football is a sport for the plebs; the posh boys like Rugby, or Polo, or cricket. If the 96 Liverpool fans had been Rugby fans, this story would not have been possible. It was possible because the poor deserve everything they get and if you happen to get lumped in with them, even for a moment, even as you die, crushed against a railing; then you cease to be human as your body collapses beneath you. With your last breath, your humanity is exhaled. 

So here your family finds themselves, in shock and quickly anger and disbelief, without the power to bargain, surely next comes depression; the plunge into the pointlessness of life, the hopelessness of your situation, the deadening of the desire to keep going. But as you plunge into the depth of your despair something happens, a voice nags at you. I can't let this ‘truth’ win. I can't let my loved one be dismissed as a person who deserved to die; who did it to themselves who isn't human. I can't, I can't, I can't. 

And so you gather your strength and my goodness it takes a lot of strength, and you walk out of your front door and you stand up and you say, "This is a lie." And you repeat those words, over and over and over and over and over again. You repeat them as people turn their face away, you repeat them as the authorities turn a blind eye, you repeat them as you are accused of being in denial, you repeat them, over and over and over again, you repeat them until the noise gets too loud, you repeat them until it becomes embarrassing for people to keep ignoring you, you repeat them alongside the other families, the fans, the people of your city, even the rival football fans, you repeat them until the words are heard. You repeat them until the words are heard in a court that matters, you repeat them as the people who lied are stood before you, lying still, you repeat them until every single person in the Nation has heard your words and until every single person in the country now believes your word over theirs. You repeat them until your voice runs coarse and your tears have run dry. You repeat them until your words carry a weight. You repeat them until your words are accepted. 

You repeat them until the person you loved is a human again, a person who loved, was loved, knew joy, knew pain, a person who went in excitement to watch a team they loved, play a game they loved, in a tournament they loved, a person who found themselves crushed till they couldn't breath, a person whose body broke as vomit was forced through their mouth and as their eyes almost broke through their head as the life was squeezed out of them, as Police officers stood and did nothing. As people behind them were ushered in to crush them further, as a football game started before them, a human who died on a day that wasn't meant for them, a human who did nothing wrong. A human. 

So where are you in your grief now? What stage comes next? Do you finally have acceptance? Can you ever accept that it happened? Can you ever accept that not only did it happen people said it didn't happen? People left you alone; can you ever accept that? So what next? Anger? Depression? What next for you? The family members who have fought and fought through their grief to find justice in tragedy? What now? 

What victory is this when death looms over it? When lies and pain and fights and despair and silence loom over it? What victory when the paper you have long since rejected, continues to reject you? What next when other football fans continue to read the paper that holds you in contempt? What next when it doesn't matter that they don't care, still, about the damage they did to you and seemingly, neither do the people who continue to pay for a paper that doesn't just hate Liverpool, but hates everyone who reads it. A paper that markets itself to the poor, the working class, the football fans that Politicians wouldn't mingle with, the paper that pretends to be one of you whilst laughing in your face. The paper that tells you that because you don't have access to the education of the elite that you need to be told your news in a sensationalist manor, the paper that tells you, you're such an animalistic man that you need boobs with your morning coffee otherwise you probably wouldn't even read the news, a paper that tells you who you should vote for because you can't decide for yourself, a paper that tells you football is the greatest game but holds it's fans in contempt; hooligans, scum, drunks. 

There is no victory in death, there is no victory in grief but there is victory in being heard when all the odds were stacked against you, there is victory in being the voice that breaks through the power barrier, there is victory in making the silent be heard. Let us not accept this balance of power, let us not allow victims to be blamed, let us not buy papers that insult us, let us not let Politician's tell us what we are worth and let us not ever, ever forget, that the balance of power can always be skewed from our favour in just a moment. Don't let the power take from others what you wouldn't want to be taken from you.

We are all human, even the Policemen who lied, even the Editor who wouldn't give the front page to a tragedy their paper perpetrated, even the drunk on the corner, the homeless man that you passed this morning, the Junior Doctor who cares about his job, we are all human. Some of us are cowards, some of us have strength we cannot know until it is called upon and some of us have had bad day, after bad day, after bad day but we are all human. 

Don't let a newspaper tell us otherwise, don't let a force of power tell us otherwise and don't forget that it could have been you; it could have been your brother, your child, your parent. It could be 3000 migrant children now in danger of trafficking, children who we might read about in five years time as we let another Rotherham happen in the silence that comes when we forget the horrors we've witnessed.

It could have been any one of us, and if we let it, it will happen again, and again, and again, to those we allow to be silenced.