I’ve been a bit quiet the last few days, I’ve been so knackered that I haven’t had the energy to write much.
I’m feeling a bit discombobulated.
A bit all over the place.
A bit like perhaps I’ve taken on so many different things that I can do nothing well.
They say it’s the skill of the Nurse to mimic a swan – on the surface elegantly and effortlessly gliding through life, whilst underneath the surface you’re frantically paddling to save it.
That’s always been a bit of an art of mine - feigning confidence. So when you plough on regardless with the mask fixed in place, it’s a shock when it falls and you’re left exposed.
You flounder.
You flap.
You fumble.
Trip over your own thoughts and words, or just can’t even find them, lost in the din of panic.
I once had a training session on mental health problems and one demonstration they did really stuck with me, when I was at my lowest I felt I gained a real insight into what they had been trying to teach us.
For the demo we sat opposite each other in pairs and tried to have a conversation – whilst this was going on about four other people came behind one of us and started talking, shouting, whispering random negative things. As you can imagine it quickly becomes so distracting you lose your train of thought, you’re overwhelmed, your brain can’t compute all the information it’s receiving, you struggle to distinguish the conversation from the background noise, it’s near impossible to block it out enough to form a coherent response.
So that was a demonstration about Schizophrenia, about the difficulty of hearing multiple voices in your head. With depression the voice is usually yours, as it was with me. That irritating inner self that won’t shut up sometimes, often putting a negative spin on things. Sometimes battling with the more rational side of yourself so you can hear both of you banging on about something.
You become distracted, preoccupied by your own anxious inner narrative, these thoughts spark emotions and feelings which leave you on edge. You struggle to organise your thoughts, your brain buzzing with noise you struggle to retain information and make decisions. Lost in your own head, or trapped by it.
With these feelings starting to seep back, my writing took a bit of a dark turn, spilling some serious beans. It wasn’t really for public consumption, it’s been a bit of a learning curve writing this blog. Writing in this way and being brutally honest has become a therapy for me, there are things I say in here that I struggle to say face to face. Like the whole keyboard warrior thing, there’s a confidence and freedom to this, and it has the potential to be dangerous.
Although I want to tell my truth, it involves the truth of others, do I have ownership of that story to tell?
Especially when it may shine them in a bad light.
Do I want to risk hurting people with honesty?
Do I want to stir the pot?
Now there is one pot I will happily stir – politics.
You can thank Matt Hancock for giving me the kick up the arse I needed to get back on the blog, the one thing I can count on him for is to rile me up enough to get on my soap box.
Cheers Matt.
So it was Health Questions in parliament yesterday and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan dared to challenge Matt on his piss poor handling of the crisis so far.
Rosena is an ED Doctor and a Labour MP, I will add a link to the clip of her question and the response so you can judge for yourselves. She basically says the lack of testing has led to increased deaths, they’ve fiddled the figures on testing, and can we be assured that they will actually be testing 100,000 people a day. In my opinion this question was delivered in a far more respectful way than I’m sure many of us could have managed.
However Matt threw his dummy out, and whilst stuttering his excuses and tired script - he told Rosena to mind her tone!
Now I don’t know if Matt woke up yesterday thinking he was in the 1950’s – but someone needs to tell him we’re not. Typical patronising, misogynistic power play bullshit intended to belittle women who challenge you.
Grow up.
Even referencing Mr Bland sat there twiddling his thumbs as a commendable role model, and as someone ‘you little girl can only hope to aspire to be’.
It is such a primitive way of trying to win an argument – and all it shows is that they are desperate. When an animal is backed into a corner, it lashes out – like Matt did. Scrabbling to prove his dominance over the situation, he belittles an ED Doctor who has experienced the frontline.
It’s clear to anyone with half a brain which one of you needed to mind your tone.
This archaic, hierarchical, ‘I’m untouchable‘ attitude is proven to breed contempt and distrust.
Do you think so little of us that we‘re irrelevant in this conversation?
Do we have no right to ask questions?
It’s a sad state of affairs when the only person who seems to be putting the government under any serious scrutiny is Piers Morgan. With reports of Coroners being restricted into investigating PPE shortages as a cause of death in Healthcare Workers- the government wriggle out of any responsibility, yet again. All whilst they use COVID-19 as a catalyst for privatising NHS services, making sure their mates got tenders whilst we waited for tests and PPE. Our death rates are the highest in Europe – yet our PM seems to think we’re over the hump.
Nice try.
But it’s not as simple as job done I’m afraid.