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The miserable thread

 
  

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Triplets
16:55 / 10.12.06
'Kin hell.

Hang tough, dude.

And take care on your new travels, Granddad K.
 
 
Princess
17:54 / 11.12.06
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's replied in thread or via PM. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply, and I'm sorry that I haven't replied to people's PMs personally. It's all very much appreciated, but I'm just finding it hard to make words come out ATM.
I'm mulling over everyone's suggestions, thankyou, there are some good ones. MW, glad to hear your feeling less -8 atm and I sympathise with you about the mother. Mine is being a 50\50 mix of encouraging and disheartening. It's like having a bipolar nun on my shoulder.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
19:01 / 11.12.06
Sorry Kali.

I felt similar to you, too, Princess ~ how nice we're going through this together! that I couldn't even get the energy to thank people. But I think anyone who was bothered about me deserves a bit of an update.

~~~~~
I am going to try the mental health "walk-in" tomorrow, as recommended, and see how it works out for me. I've looked it up online and it doesn't look quite as shabbily slapdash as I'd imagined, ie. it does have five proper psychotherapists or something.

I honestly feel my physical injury ~ my eye which was operated on because it had to be done within a certain window, but which they have positioned grotesquely wrong ~ is a big factor in how I feel emotionally. My eye has to be sorted out before I can (literally really) feel like myself. In the meantime the battle is not to get so low that I want to damage myself, or damage people around me with my problems and reactions, or damage my lifestyle because I can't work properly... things like that. This is still going to be a limbo for me but it's how I handle this unpleasant in-between period that counts.

Maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on THE EYEBALL... honestly though, if it was you. If your eye looked like Harvey Dent's bad side. If it can be fixed, I think I can get normal. If not, then honestly, I really don't know how I could go through life with such a fucked-up deformity. I know that's probably vain and trivial, but it's very hard to look at yourself in the mirror and feel disgusted.
 
 
Ticker
19:16 / 11.12.06
I had my lower face torn off in a motorcycle accident and stitched back on. It was a temporary sort of hell my being facially disfigured but it does force you to look passed the mirror's image of yourself. Really it is horrible and painful but being disfigured is not an automatic end to quality of life. And it isn't always permenant.

I remember riding the bus with my face swollen & scarred and people whispering to their children not to stare. funny thing was I remembered them doing the same thing when I used to have a mohawk or hold my same sex lover's hand.

There are so many layers to your experience you can't say it is any one thing, you've sustained multiple injuries and are trying to keep your head above water long enough to get the major ones seen to. The injury to your eye is a tangible thing you can measure in before and after images, the injury to your emotional sense of safety is less tangible but as epic. The visible one is most likely also being an emotional carrier for the less visible one. Just remember you are more than what the mirror has ever or will ever show.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
15:24 / 12.12.06
That all seems very true, xk. My "mental health clinic" experience today was a dry joke ~ it was some frosted-glass, barred-window institutional block down some dodgy backstreets. I had to go lamely up to the counter in a semi-crowded waiting room and say "my doctor told me to come here... about depression."

She told me they only had one "person" in today ~ I guess this was one therapist or whatever ~ and she was still seeing her first "person" (patient I guess), so they wouldn't be able to see me today. Come back Thursday!

Like many people, I have a job that doesn't permit me to jaunt around to mental health clinics twice in a week. So I don't think I'll be going back. I got a pretty bad feeling about it, to be honest. The whole routine with the doctor and his referrals was making me feel too much like a passive victim ~ and making me dependent on a health system that clearly isn't up to sorting me out or supporting me. I guess it was good to do it, but it wasn't making me feel better.
 
 
Ticker
16:18 / 12.12.06
do you have access to direct selection of a therapist?

would something like this help?
they're listed as a not-for-profit group.
 
 
Spaniel
16:40 / 12.12.06
How about paying for therapy, MW? Is that possible for you?
 
 
Essential Dazzler
17:24 / 14.12.06
I made a tit of myself by crying in my Digital Video Production lecturer's office earlier.

My group video project tit's have gone further up than they went last week. Our second extension runs out tomorrow, which is the last day of term, and on Tuesday, me and the only other remaining member of our group were advised to start from scratch with 3 days to go.

I left creative control in the hands of my partner while I handled all the studio stuff, editing, rushes and other paperwork stuff.

We'd hashed out an idea involving war documenary style coverage of a water-balloon fight, although my assumptions about his attention to choreography, lighting, sound, focus etc. were completely off. He thought it'd be a great idea to just run around with a £1000+ camera (booked out in my name) and run around following a group of lads ballooning each other, throwing beans and flour around MOSTLY INSIDE THE UNIVERSITY ACCOMODATION. So I'm left with a few shot's of introduction and conclusion and an 15 minute, single take shot of unsteady, out-of-focus vandalism on university property.

HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO EDIT THAT INTO A SIMPLE SEQUENCE DEMONSTRATING A GRASP OF CONVENTIAL NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES PAYING SPECIAL DETAIL TO SHOT CONSTRUCTION ETC. ETC.

This would go in the angry thread but it's going here 'cos it's coupled with other things like me having less than a week to find a grand so the University doesn't kick me out, and this being the longest I've gone without a drink for almost three years.

I just want tobe angry about this but all I can manage is to cry a lot and get snappy with the person I love more than anything.

Picked a bad week to quit.

Apologies for rambliness, have you ever had to do Rushes Logs? Fucking soul destroying.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
17:48 / 14.12.06
How about paying for therapy, MW? Is that possible for you?

It's financially possible (to the extent that I'd probably be paying at the higher end of a sliding scale) but I'd just... [thru clenched teeth] resent it... so much. It would feel like adding insult to the injury, injury, injury and injury I've received for me to have to pay out of my own pocket in order to try to get over what other people inflicted on me.

Maybe if I see some of the £4.5k the criminal injuries comp is meant to pay me, according to their leaflets. It takes up to a year for you to receive anything, but damage to the "orbit" looked like a pretty straightforward £4.5k. Of course that doesn't make up for any of this, but I'd feel better about spending that money on fixing myself up.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
17:50 / 14.12.06
So I'm left with a few shot's of introduction and conclusion and an 15 minute, single take shot of unsteady, out-of-focus vandalism on university property.

HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO EDIT THAT INTO A SIMPLE SEQUENCE DEMONSTRATING A GRASP OF CONVENTIAL NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES PAYING SPECIAL DETAIL TO SHOT CONSTRUCTION ETC. ETC.


I would do an abstract film from that; you know, about colours, shapes, movement and so on. Stan Brakhage or something. Peter Wollen's 2nd avant-garde. It's a bit of a stretch but... well, you're in a bind.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
18:59 / 14.12.06
This is anecdotal at best, Starr, and I've never been in a situation that's at all comparable to the one you're in at the moment, but a friend of mine has (he was knifed to within, literally, less than an inch of his life a couple of years ago; another fraction closer to major organs, and that would have been it,) and for what it's worth, I'd be inclined to hold off on any decisions about therapy and so on until you've had at least a vague sense of closure. In my friend's case it was a question of the police investigation taking off properly (this took a while, to the point where as witnesses, nobody was interviewed until two months later,) and in yours, I'm guessing, it'll be once you've had the second op. In my friend's case, there was visibly a weight off his shoulders once the ID parade was over with, and I'm hoping, actually I trust, that the same'll be true for you.

Best, as per.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
19:14 / 14.12.06
I think so too; thank you as ever.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
19:46 / 14.12.06
Quarter, (a) congratulations on three days; in the long term that is going to be a much more rewarding experience than the film; (b) the idea that springs to mind for me is a documentary on how quickly a film project can go wrong; try to snag one or two of the participants quickly, interview yourself, show the footage, show your original concept sketches (make some up maybe?) and just do a documentary on your failed documentary.

Well, it's a thought, anyway.
 
 
grant
20:05 / 14.12.06
So I'm left with a few shot's of introduction and conclusion and an 15 minute, single take shot of unsteady, out-of-focus vandalism on university property.

HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO EDIT THAT INTO A SIMPLE SEQUENCE DEMONSTRATING A GRASP OF CONVENTIAL NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES PAYING SPECIAL DETAIL TO SHOT CONSTRUCTION ETC. ETC.



Talking head interview with yourself, shot in the editing suite, I think.

If you can get the camera in there....
 
 
grant
20:07 / 14.12.06
There are no close-ups of hands, faces, impact that you can use as pick-ups/inserts?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
20:19 / 14.12.06
So I'm being massively hit on by the F@@@ing prof's at teh uni. They seem to think I've got the Slavic look. Dear God. Please, let them be oh so wrong...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
22:59 / 14.12.06
Compared to everyone else's woes this seems strangely vague and inconsequential, but I somehow seem to have landed myself in the sort of emotionally confused state I've managed to avoid for a good few years. Not really miserable, more... confused. I really don't know whether it's good that I can still feel like this (having basically succeeded in shutting down that whole area of my brain for ages) or bad, but it's weird. Which sucks, kinda. Hmm. I think I have issues of some kind.

Anyway- as always, best wishes to both starr and swashbuckling, and Kali, I'm so sorry to hear that.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
07:58 / 15.12.06
lol I'm going to cure myself through the art therapy of "miss wonderstarr at war" instead of going to the doc.

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:29 / 15.12.06
Go Miss Starr! I'm really sorry you're still feeling rotten about, and I wish I was more competent to advise, really. I'm ... what's the term? Pulling for you? Like that, anyway.

(And xk: cocking Hell. I am wincing in sympathy, be you ever so recovered.)
 
 
electric monk
16:43 / 15.12.06
I'm pretty sure you're more of a DC fan, but...

 
 
StarWhisper
17:08 / 15.12.06
I am a gregarious, fun and interesting whirlwind trapped in the body of a painfully shy misanthrope.
 
 
Ticker
19:25 / 15.12.06
I dig the bumper sticker, can we get some made up?

thanks Haus, but besides unnerving my dentists whenever they see the scar tissue on the inside and a bit of a pang when the weather shifts the face seems fine. The wee scar on the outside runs about two inches but few people notice it at all. It goes quite well with a eye patch.

I just never want to ask a stranger if I still have a nose again in my life nor run my tongue on the underside of my lower jaw. Full face helmets are now plenty fine by me.
 
 
---
02:15 / 16.12.06
It's that time of year again......

Guess it's time to do the annual image posting :

 
 
grant
02:50 / 16.12.06
make stickers.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
09:40 / 16.12.06
ha ha! thanks everyone. I am keeping up the good fight. Had some more passport photos done yesterday after having my hair cut ~ ten years of presenting myself to customs looking like a cubist-eyed, new romantic style soldier but it's better than the snaps I had in the middle of depressive slump a week ago. Now my grandma's phoning me saying she wants to pay for me to have therapy. I mean I count myself lucky to even have one grandma of course, but... you know, it's the kind of phone call people get in Woody Allen movies. I said I'd think about it. I guess I can't say I'll take the money instead and buy eyepatches or something.

 
 
StarWhisper
18:22 / 16.12.06

Shall I stop being glib and talk about how I have been unhinged? Oh no I can't. Oh all right then... I took some anti-depressants and they did something bad to my head. Really bad. I tried two different ones and the Doc says I can't have any more. Something more complicated than depression is going on with me. Apparently.
I have no life, I am shy and scared. Now this. I am failing college for fith time. Five years in a row. Everytime I try and do something I get sick and it goes to ruin. *Whine* I just want something to go right. Just once. I'm tired of living my life through somebody elses eyes. Everything that has ever happened to me feels like it happened in a dream. I'm always at a crossroads, always at a crisis point. It's not fair. I can't even talk to people about such things, about anything. Simply close all the doors, giving nothing away I build a fascade of a person around myself. I think I am bad for people. The look on the faces of people I used to talk to at my college when I ignore them is unbearable. I just don't know where to begin...
 
 
Mistoffelees
18:56 / 16.12.06
There are lots of similarities to what you´ve written and what I have experienced, eirdandfracar. For example, I was severely depressed while I had my three years of vocational training(?), a mix of office work and classes, and I had noone to turn to for support. That I managed to finish my education was mostly luck.

I am not good with advice and so can´t tell you, how to improve on your current difficulties, but from my personal experience anti-depressants don´t work. A couple of months ago, I also tried two and only one helped me marginally. But both had serious adverse effects. The only other thing that did work was St. John's wort.

And if you haven´t seriously thought of it, visit an information centre and get infos on what therapy might be useful to you. I did that and have recently finished two years of therapy and I´m definitely more stable and cheerful now.
 
 
StarWhisper
19:12 / 16.12.06

I'm glad your doing well! There is an end to this?
Thats what it feels like- like it will never end.

I will try St Johns Wort when I can, I know all about it and would have taken it already but it's too damned expensive. I'm scared of therapy. My college are making see a CBT practitioner. I don't want it and I'm sceptical about it and it scares me. I appreciate what they are doing and all, and I will go, it just seems so futile.

I'd say bad advice is better than no advice...but y'know In a weird sort of way- knowing someone else has been somewhere near here is comforting. It's extreme.

What therapy did you have? How did it help?

Is a support group a really bad idea? Not sure if being around load of other messed up people will be counterproductive or not.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:23 / 16.12.06
There *is* an end to it. You might dip back into the depression at times but you learn to deal with those times. You learn to recognise that this is a temporary thing, that it's not going to define your life forever. Even if a person has developed a relatively severe and chronic case--which is rare--the condition can improve a lot with time and with work.

This too shall pass, dudes. This too shall pass.
 
 
Mistoffelees
19:42 / 16.12.06
I'm glad your doing well!

Thank you.

There is an end to this?
Thats what it feels like- like it will never end.


Yes, I know that feeling. But it can definitely get better again. The problem is the passiveness, the inability to get things going. I only went to therapy because I was under tremendous pressure at work and couldn´t bear the stress anymore. And these days I also don´t do much of anything, because I´ve only reacted to stress and pressure and I am not used to taking the initiative.

I will try St Johns Wort when I can, I know all about it and would have taken it already but it's too damned expensive.

Yes, that sucks. The cheap stuff from the drug store doesn´t work for me, and I also had to buy the expensive alternative. Also it takes about two weeks, until it starts working. But in my experience it is more useful than those chemical anti depressants and has almost no side effects.

I'm scared of therapy. My college are making see a CBT practitioner. I don't want it and I'm sceptical about it and it scares me. I appreciate what they are doing and all, and I will go, it just seems so futile.

It only seems futile because you´re depressed right now. Try to trust the judgement of these people, who must be experienced with depressed people. It can´t hurt (I guess ) and at least it is a change of pace.

What therapy did you have? How did it help?

It was supposed to be me lying down and freely saying what came to mind, but I didn´t like that. So instead I visited once a week and sat down and talked about my issues and sometimes she would comment, ask questions or give some advice. That was good, because I knew she wouldn´t tell anyone, what I told her and it is different than talking to friends, to whom you might not be so candid.

Is a support group a really bad idea? Not sure if being around load of other messed up people will be counterproductive or not.

I only tried this once and went to a meeting of relatives/spouses of alcoholics. That was very depressing. But I have no idea what a "normal" support group might be like.
 
 
StarWhisper
20:07 / 16.12.06
hmmmmmmm......

Oh ta. I am feeling marginally less like a waste of space.

Yes, I know that feeling. But it can definitely get better again. The problem is the passiveness, the inability to get things going.

I had a brainwave earlier today about getting things started. It involves doing and saying anything I want regardless of how fearful I am and how innapropriate it might be (seem). Might break the cycle of hermit but also might land me in trouble. And first I have to want something. It is a bad idea isn't it?

I made a timetable and that has helped a bit. I force myself to have a coffee in a coffee house once a week. And feed the Giant Koi in the park on sunday. Any suggestions for daily activities of simplistic and nice nature welcomed. It's relentless it is. Oh and tomorrow is sunday. Good. I hope the Giant Koi are awake. They don't like to eat after it's rained.


It was supposed to be me lying down and freely saying what came to mind, but I didn´t like that.

No I wouldn't like that either. I'm such a monster. I guess therapists have experience though...and can steer me in the right direction.
 
 
charrellz
03:13 / 21.12.06
Looks like I might not be able to return to school in the spring. Fall term grades just came in and I'm less than .01 GPA points under what I need to keep my scholarships, and no scholarships pretty much mean no school for me. Given my employment history to date and lack of real skills, no school means no decent job in the foreseeable future. I'm at a total loss to begin comprehending this yet, and I haven't even informed my parents who have been picking up what scholarships don't cover. Granted, no official word from the school yet and there is still always that chance of negotiations with professors/dean//etc., but it still doesn't look good. I can probably go ahead and scrap that grad school/phd plan I had cooked up for my life.

Throw in some other things going on (increasingly bad chronic headaches, noticing this morning that I've advanced past "a little chubby" into "fat", slight problems with friends, realizing that I'm whining on the internet to people who don't know me all that well, huge credit card bill looming on the horizon), and I'm having a pretty miserable day.

Where the hell is my Joy Division CD?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
09:17 / 21.12.06
Dude, 0.01? Surely to God you can demand a recount? Or pick up some extra points somehow, somewhere along the line?

Good luck.
 
 
StarWhisper
09:32 / 21.12.06
It's too cold and the fish are not biting. Rubbish.
Oh yeah and the anti-depressants I took damaged my eyes so my vision is blurry.

And I slept in too late to get to the eye hospital.
Oh well. I look cute in glasses.

Looks like I might not be able to return to school in the spring. Fall term grades just came in and I'm less than .01 GPA points under what I need to keep my scholarships, and no scholarships pretty much mean no school for me.

That's horrid. Education shouldn't be a privilege of the rich it should be open to everyone. Go fight your corner! I'm sure you can swing it, especially since you just clipped the grade margin.

I haven't seen your Joy division C.D., honest.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:38 / 21.12.06
I really really hate being paranoid. I don't like wrestling with the desire to grab various people by the lapels and scream "WHAT!?" at them when they almost certainly aren't doing anything wrong.
 
  

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