Stumble It!
And I’m back! Obviously. But I am, and I’m happy to be back, and I’m happy to be catching up on all your wonderful blogs too. Yay!
OK, now let’s press on. I keep a diary on holiday but this isn’t from it – I decided that I was in the mood to blog while I was away but I didn’t have computer access, so I just wrote it down instead. So, I wrote this post about three days ago. I’d put it in italics to give you a sense of time having passed since, but that’d play silly buggers with your eyes sooner or later. So I won’t. Here it is:
It’s really awful being on holiday with someone whose presence just sends me straight to angry muteness, and yeah, Rhiannon’s done it again. Right now, she’s a a couple of metres away singing along to Grease in a stupid high wobbly voice. There are problems occurring lately with her. And again it’s a yeah – I need to get ‘em out my system. Let’s go!
Just for starters, because she’s eating a carrot and it reminded me, she eats with her mouth open – but she does something with her tongue so it squelches like mating slugs. Like, I think she smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and she eats with her mouth as wide as possible and her lips pulled back off her teeth, like they do on I’m A Celebrity when they’re eating kangaroo balls or something, to try not to taste it. And she chews everything forty times. The sound carries on forever. Enough said already.
Her and the other kids I’m away with are veggie, and she’s apparently under the impression that I’m a slavering insatiable lamb-murdering carnivore, incapable of going a couple of days wihout meat of some form. And I’m not. But I smile politely and relieve her of her illusions by eating apples.
She told me and Tana about how she self-harmed for a while for attention and to try to fit into the emo scene, in the process uttering this immortal line, surely destined to go down in emo history: ‘The ones on my wrist are shallower because my knife had blunted’. I don’t really have much of a problem with that, seeing as how sooo many kids in her class have done the same thing. It’s just that Tana falls into the class of genuinely troubled self-harmer, currently in therapy for having her head stuck on in a generally weird kind of place, and as soon as she mentioned that Rhiannon immediately started qualifying her actions. She can’t bear to be wrong. She’s like Ricky Gervais in Extras, when he’s so desperate to be liked he agrees with anything and everything to put him in a better light. So, I’ll say “That’s a stupid way of attention seeking.”
“Oh, right, yeah, I wasn’t actually attention seeking, I was pretty messed up over moving bedrooms, it’s not like I was just doing it so people would notice -”
“You just told us you were only attention seeking.”
“Yeah, I mean, I was attention seeking, but only because I was really upset -”
“My mum had a terminal illness,” Tana chimes in quietly, looking down at her feet. “I didn’t get along with the therapist, though. I still can’t sleep. I hate it when people pretend to self harm,” and just as Rhiannon was about to open her big mouth again, she adds “like that.” Nice one, Tana!
“Yeah, yeah, I totally understand that, I mean, I was having a hard time at school, it’s not like I’d just do it for attention, that’s ridiculous, only idiots would do something like that, no, I know what you mean, it’s really bad when people pretend to be -”
At which point I do an impression of Rhiannon. “Oh no, don’t look at my wristbands, what, these wristbands? They’re nothing, nothing at all, d’you wanna get a look underneath them? Self harm marks? Ha ha ha, no, my cat scratched me, I mean, I cut myself, I’m so crazy no I’m not or am I just pity me, guys, have pity for me and let me join your little clique because I didn’t self harm but just cop a look at these wristbands!”
Then Rhiannon chucked a fit, and that is why I have so many friends.
So we were up A Mountain (no names, no names…) and, incidentally, Rhiannon is also under the impression that no one but her has ever seen a mountain before in the history of the universe and kept saying “I just keep forgetting how inexperienced you guys are.” Anyway, she kept going on ahead. Me and Tana were at the very back, because she’s terrified of heights and didn’t want to go last in the line of teenage mountaineers, so I was keeping her company. Rhiannon ended up way ahead of us, and decided we were evidently jealous and she would therefore rub it in. She kept stopping, ate her lunch, yelled hurry up more than a few times, sighed a lot and rolled her eyes, took the long way round, stopped repeatedly to take photos of herself posing, and sat down for a while to ‘admire the view’. Ordinarily I would have got angry at her showing off, but I was a bit dissociated and wasn’t relating much (like, I’m three thousand feet up but I’m not really, it’s impossible for me to fall and I wouldn’t be hurt anyway). Anyway, when we got back, she told us all about how she wanted to push us off the mountain ’cause we’d gone so slow.
“I’m a bitch, aren’t I? It’s such a bitchy thing to think!” She’s desperate to be ‘a bitch’. If she accidentally stands on your foot, it’s OMG! I’m such a bitch! I’m really sorry! God, I can’t believe how bitchy I am! Anyway…
“No, Rhiannon. Thoughts of homicide maketh not a bitch.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to kill you! Because you were so slow! That’s weird, isn’t it? It’s really mean! I’m such a bitch!”
“Totally normal.”
“But I was going to kill you!”
“No you weren’t.”
“Yeah I was!”
“Whatever.” It’s the sparkling conversation, see? It’s why people flock to me.
When she talks that way (she’s done it before, going on about that dream where she shot Danny and laughed) I get concerned. Am I just like her? Jesus, I hope I’m not. What does she want to gain by telling me and Tana she felt like watching us splat on the rocks? A tough rep, like? Us to think she’s a wee bit dangerous, edgy, risky and wild? Not in this lifetime, Rhi. What do I want, with my own creepy thinking? I want to keep it quiet, unlike her, and I want to handle all the anger inside of me in a less weird way. So I suppose this is her new self-harm: kooky, out-there, individual, and designed to unsettle everyone she tells – which really is everyone.
I think for all her ha ha he’s schizo attitude (not condemning it, it’s how anyone not involved with mental health acts, I only expect it) she wants us to think she’s crazy. Interestingly, acceptably so. As in, the way of thinking that makes depression pale and enigmatic, bipolar disorder glamorous, and schizophrenia a word interchangeable with multiple personality disorder. I think she’d quite like a diagnosis. A safe, friendly one, not schizophrenia or psychosis; one that has a positive media image. She went off on one about ‘turning manic depressive’ again, a night or so ago, and I decided to tell her about it running in the family. Tana and the others didn’t really care, but Rhiannon went sulky. Yep. I reckon ole Rhi would quite like to be bipolar; or at least for us to think she is. I suspect the next stage will be her telling us at great length about her mood swings.
Otherwise? Nice holiday so far. I really do hate her, though.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | attention seeking, bipolar disorder, blog, carnivore, carrot, diary, dissociation, emo, grease, holiday, homicide, internet access, jealousy, kangaroo balls, manic depression, mating slugs, mountain climbing, ricky gervais, schizophrenia, self harm, silly buggers, terminal illness, therapy, vegetarian
That does sound annoying, especially the self harming bit. The attention seeking reputation realy does nothing for those who want help with stopping. Luckily for me my sister hasnt yet flirted with mentalism, but I am waiting for the day that she does.
Hannah x
Suzy: why’s your sister necessarily gonna flirt with mentalism? Or do you just mean the genetic likelihood she’ll be bipolar too?
Man, she must drive you up the wall!
Suzy: the wall is indeed a place I often find myself…
Can’t think of anything to say, but glad to see you’re back from your hol and blogging again.
Was this a school trip or an actual holiday?
Suzy: an actual holiday, although I guess it may not appear so from the moaning…
I did have fun, though, excepting time spent with Rhiannon.
Really reminds me of Emo’s in general. Scummy sorts. Ergh! When I was allowed to group therapy (I’ve since been kicked out) we used to talk about how these attention seeking little children totally deflected the severity of the problem. I mean, self harm is a real problem, making it a fashion trivialises it.
Ha you’re hit my achillies or whatever they say. It truly just drive me a little madder each time. ‘Nough said, keep safe missy x
Suzy: heh, she’s no emo. She’s a wannabemo!
I just think that she is very fragile and with my familiy’s history. But she doesnt seem the self harming type, she is just the kind of person who cannot handle much stress and if she doesnt get full marks she crys- aged 16. You never know she may surprise me.
Suzy: ahhh… I can’t handle stress either (considering this blog was sparked by my stress-related psychosis that may not come as a huge surprise to anybody). Here’s hoping!
Hope your sister will be okay. I worry about my own, she’s 16 too.
Wannabemo! Ha. I smiled. Silly silly girl she is.
Why the hell would you want a diagnosis. It buggers up things. For example I’m off to Australia soon for 2months and my travel insurance will cost £400 because of my illness. My sister on the other hand only has to pay £37. Madness is expensive!
x
Suzy: I think it’s got to be the glamour… like I thought I was something special to be hallucinating all over the place and then I met CAMHS. And then. Hm, and then. Oh, well. So long as I’m around to crush her self-esteem into the ground there’ll be no nonsense of that sort (erk, Suzy, show a little sympathy why don’t you?).
To my lasting shame, I once told a flatmate I had “mild schizophrenia” because I knew if I said “depression” she’d blink slowly and say something like, “Oh do you feel sad now?”
She was an idiot, it’s true, but I was an asshole.
Suzy: and instead she said “Ahhh… right. OK. That’s cool, yeah, uh, really cool,” and slowly backed away. And moved out the next day.
All the best people in this world are potentially schizophrenic, of course.
[...] wrote this in my holiday diary the day after sitting down and writing this post, the one all about just how unbearable she is. This is why I like to avoid my diaries after reading [...]