Dead dogs and drugged-up bumble bees

Rhiannon is riding for a fall and how. She thinks she’s a bit cool. She thinks she’s more than a bit cool. She thinks she is not just the bee’s knees but also its head, thorax, and abdomen.

You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline…

I guess you know things are getting interesting, mental health-wise (or not so healthy-wise) when you see ‘-ersonality disor-’ on your GP’s screen when she thinks you’re not looking.

OK, I know I occasionally sound very crazy in my posts. I don’t do it intentionally, but when I notice I’ve done it I don’t try to cover it up. I mean, that’s me. That’s me who wrote that, and if it’s what I think, then there’s not much point trying to hide it. I post one day about how glorious life is and just how amazing I am and you are and life is and I am and life is, and the next day it’s some disturbing post about my deep, deep hatred for Rhiannon, and how I know everybody is talking about me and how I can’t help but imagine killing them. I do believe that people talk about me; I do believe that they plan together to alienate me; I do believe, on an unconscious level, that there are cameras. It’s one of those things I never question because I know it’s true, because I’ve always had to believe it – like the existence of God. I grew up being told He was there, so I don’t question it. I grew up terrified of the constant surveillance I was under, so I still am. I know it’s there, on that fundamental level; while at the same time I know it’s ridiculous. I read an amazing post on AbysmalMusings the other day about insight; about how being aware you’re hallucinating doesn’t mean you’re not actually hallucinating. He’s an excellent writer. Read the post.

A classic fairytale ending

It’s not everyone who can wonder whether they hallucinated their hallucinations in the first place. I lie. I lie to others and I lie to myself; I lie so convincingly to myself that there are very many things I’ve still got no idea whether they actually happened or not, and if they did, whether they happened the way I think they did. I think I heard voices. I know I heard voices. But I don’t know whether I heard them because of my lies and my obsessions and my tangled wishes or because of something else; something vaguely more acceptable, like honest-to-God psychosis.

My crazy plans. No, really, I mean crazy.

When I’m in an irritable, unsociable kind of mood, sending off that notorious ‘drop dead’ aura to everyone within a thirty mile radius, I’m an even worse showoff than I am generally because I want to put people down and make them feel small.

I’m pretty well-up on mental illness, unsurprisingly, but in front of people I can’t show this. It leads to awkward questions. Why do I know so much about that? I’m expected to be generally knowledgeable, but why am I able to list the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder off the top of my head? What the hell is borderline whatever you said, anyway? Freak.

Danny is obsessed with Stephen Fry. She watched The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive when it was on and now considers herself the school’s expert on bipolar disorder. All my friends go to her when they want to know something about being crazy, because she’s the closest they’ve got to a real live nutter. Yeah. I guess I used to be like that, too. It’s scary I could be so ignorant. It’s scary they’re so ignorant, and that it’s normal to be that way.

I have a very smart, very competitive friend name of Rhiannon. She’s got to be right, even when she’s wrong.