Paroxetine Withdrawal

Have you gone off paroxetine (also known as Paxil, Seroxat, etc) cold-turkey. If you haven't, you're probably thinking it's a bad idea, and you're absolutely right. It wasn't even on purpose - I was forced into this place by poverty. I literally had no money, not for bread, or milk, or bus trips or pens or pills. I was hungry and in paroxetine withdrawal mode.

It's like...the feeling you get when you have a sugar crash, when you haven't eaten for too long and you feel dizzy, the pavement is like rubber, your eyes throb and it's impossible to concentrate. And then imagine this feeling made worse by a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness, because it's chemically induced and there's nothing you can do about it. All you can do, is endure.

And a lot of the time thats been my mantra for my suicidal moments, and it works because you have respite and you can sleep some of it off and you can cry out the pain, wipe it away from your skin with a tissue; you could dispose of it quite easily. Yet with this enforced, stricken cold turkey process nothing is your own: I've been having fits of tears that won't stop and suicidal thoughts that I don't want, thoughts I barely consider my own and it brings back old scabs from my psychosis and I think the Devil has come after me again...
Sometimes sleep won't come, even when your best state of being is under a soft duvet with pillows cradling you, sleep stays away until dawn and then it's wanting and violent about it. And the dizzyness won't end no matter how much you eat or walk or rest...and it's driving me insane. Not to mention I've decided to write a 5,000 word essay on LGBT activism in the early 1990s instead of something simple and boring like Thatcher, or how shit Blair was... Insanity should be on its way soon :)

What Have I Been Doing to Myself?!

I'm a bit of a mess.

I'm this *fingertips* close to getting myself flunked out of university. My vocabulary has been atrocious. I've lost most of my revision notes and everytime I think of my extended essay due in three months, hardly researched and hardly a clue, I have to take another propranolol to stop myself having a full blown anxiety attack.

I also had sex with a guy. Without a condom, because I don't seem to give a shit. Dissociation rocks. At least it guarantees you regular sex. I've tried my best to move away from this one of my many forms of self-destruction.

But I've also done good things. I went to Egypt on a journalist expedition as a SPEAKER, at an international youth peace conference, and people were listening to me and asking questions. They wanted me to work with them on projects and I was somewhat awesome. The week was marred a little by the monster spiders and the hotel worker who tried to rape me (...trying to push me onto the bed, "it will only take 5 minutes..."), but otherwise the highlight of my year.

And I'm a real radical feminist. The good kind, I don't have vaginas wallpapered everywhere, that would be gross and go against the contract I've got with my landlord (I now live in a house in Manchester with three girls including a raving homophobic Catholic). No, I work on the magazine we're trying to restart - I have creative control - I get to write. And the whole dizzying brilliance of it all almost gives me a panic attack.

I've also found myself with an addiction to Doctor Who, Torchwood and a fist-sized crush on David Tenant and John Barrowman. I'm still a lesbian. At least it feels right and solid and frisky and proper when I'm with a woman than all the nervous sexual energy and the inherent beautiful wrongness than when I kiss a guy.

And in-between? I discovered foreign films, facebook, Rilo Kiley, New Order, Talking Heads and even more Regina Spektor songs. I found refuge in Bob Dylan, Kate Nash and Adele. I saw my friends, family and my mother. I had a good christmas and new year. And I'm trying to find my friends again, despite the dissociation, but because of it as well because I don't want to scurry away from my friends anymore than I have already. I'm talking about friends I actually like. Who's going to come to my 20th birthday this year? Being 19th 1/2 is no great shakes. And I'm mostly sorry to Lioness and Dana for neglecting them and allowing them to forget all about me. I'm sorry for all the chances I purposely missed last year because they could have made my life better.

And I'm hoping to start again.

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Begin to Hope

Begin to Hope
And all the colours start to change beneath the light,
You might forget that the worlds so sad.
You might forget that things are awful bad,
And its alright,

(Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope)

Time is flying past, and its only now I'm starting to achieve things. I haven't been up to much. I lost my virginity in an (extremely) drunken one night stand. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I remember, just (I had about 12 shots of vodka that night, along with 10 shots of other stuff) it was the morning of Valentine's Day, and she was asleep next to me, and although I was chuffed I did a good job, I never had felt so alone. And I knew I didn't want another one night stand, but I can't help think it'll probably happen again cos I hate the way I look, relationships are too damn risky...

I haven't posted because I've forgotten, and I've been way too crazy. And I've forgotten how lovely, and how easy it is to write out everything inside of you. So I don't expect anyone to read this. It's so likely I have no one left to read my stuff, which is fine. I've been very lax in that respect...

I've also had countless anxiety attacks. I ended up resting under the desk because I was so anxious and I finally realised this is what has been messing me up so much over the years, even as a child. Anxiousness shuts me down, turns me into a zombie, a compulsive liar, an alcoholic, a cutter, a professional self-saboteur.

It's only now people are starting to listen to me, but not really. I'm on my sixth and seventh therapist (in three years!), and they are just starting to acknowledge my crippling anxiety issues. Yet, I'm being offered in-patient treatment for my compulsive eating. I didn't think it would get this far...well thats a lie. It's one of my greatest fears. Ever since things started to go wrong when I was 11, I was terrified beyond anything that I would get locked up in an asylum. And now they want me to go into one, willingly. I can't say yes. But I need to go, I know that. But not for my compulsive eating. I've got an eating disorder, so fucking what! Really. I refuse to be made into a shivering, fat, incoherent ball of anxiety because they want to analyse it and fix it that way. I am not something you strip down like wooden floors.

So now, everyone, including my Dad, both my therapists, and my Ria are urging me to go. How could I say yes? It's the only way I can hope for my life to be my own again. But at the same time they want me helpless. And I won't let them. I will never compromise myself like that, no matter how much I hate myself.

Ultamatums

So, what has changed during the exorbinate period of time between this blog post and the last? For one thing, I'm getting older - can't spell as great as I used to. I feel like I'm becoming more and more normal everyday - I have crushes on people, and stumble over my words and I never get my work done. It's a strange feeling, like I'm downgrading but it wasn't even a decision I made: I'm just becoming more normal.

Lots of normal people are on prozac, or have severe anxiety problems and fierce ambition and independence. Lots of normal people have eating issues, or mothers with mental illnesses, or they're gay, or fat and a writer with crippling writer's block - actually everyone has that, haha. Does it make me extra normal that I have all these things at once?

As for ultimatums, I have to get my act together and carry on learning. For a period I was pretty uncapable of doing academic, or even getting out of bed...now I'm about to embark on the memoirs of Peter Kropotkin, this Russian prince turned anarchist and wrote the encyclopedia of it. I'm reading him also because he reminds me of my Rich. His dad had an heart attack a couple of weeks ago and he's facing having to drop out of uni cos he's away a lot looking after everyone. Thing is, I didn't hear it from him. I heard this from Alex online at 3 am several days afterwards. I was devastated. Rich used to come to me for a lot of things - eventually, and now when he needed me, really needed me, didn't even try to come to me. We haven't talked for about a month now. I've tried to contact him in every way - text message, msn, email, facebook and I get nothing. And he's online acting quite untraumatised...it hurts a lot. I can't even help out one of my best friends. What does that make me? What does this make of this situation? He's pushing me away whether he knows it or not.

I don't want to have to let him go. But if I can't talk to him...it's not really a friendship. It's pining.

So, another ultimatum is that if I don't get a decent paying job by March I won't be able to pay the rent. My Dad decided for me that I wasn't allowed to have any real fun with my loan and that if I budget to live on £50 a week I'd pay off the rent myself and have £200 spare.

Well, at least I've been househunting with my friends and we've found a gorgeous house just off the curry mile with a proper lounge and a cute kitchen and a GARDEN - I could plant roses and a herb garden and bulb plants - yes, I already told you I'm getting old. I'm turning 19 in less than 4 months - ew! That means I WILL BE TWENTY IN 2008. Thats next year....when did this happen? Thank god no one believes me. xx

I've started to laugh at the sound of my own farts

http://www.ozthunder.com/photo/lchase9.htm

Hey. I've been doing a wealth of studenty stuff recently. This includes revising for and sitting exams - I read through like 30 books during revision (Don't worry - not cover to cover!) and I may have fucked up one of them.

I've done lots of stuff with my friends - saw the movie Babel (very good, funny, cultural, sad, dramatic with lots of gaps for you to fill in...if you're into that sort of stuff. Oh, and if you're just watching the movie for Brad Pitt or Gael Bernal, don't.) House hunting, but alas there's no such thing as a 8 bedroom house for students by any student centre. What else? I went to a foam party and nearly drowned in the (cheap toxic) stuff as mens hunkered over my large lathered breasts. I had never felt so sexually hunkered after! And my friend lost her cloakroom ticket and so we went home, cleaned up and returned at 2am...so strange to be all sensibly dressed and sober in a club covered in foam. I would really hate to work in clubs, just to ruin the whole atmosphere, you know?

Oh, and I've been smoking shisha! My lovely arab habibi (I don't remember the female version!) has introduced me to this. It's so fun and relaxing and just a great way to spend your time in a cafe, with some arabic mint tea and chocolate cheesecake...especially when you haven't been eating all day (someone said I looked slimmer and I want to keep it up)

I've been ok, as well. Recently I went through this storm. It was terrifying, not only because it was the January storm which are usually one of the worse ones, but I still all of the dark cloak me despite the medication, as if my depression can punch through walls. And, my Salesmen have gone missing. I have new people in my head now, and to have a new enemy in your head, with the volume turned low so I can't hear them, is unsettling. And during these storms I like to be swept off to my Motel for some drinks and inner peace before venturing back out but there was so much going on I had to venture out into the storm on my own. In the end I had constant panic attacks and ended up sleeping under the desk because....

There's no because! Hahaha. It was just agoraphobia, OCD, whatever.

And I cut myself. But a small scratch, and its not happening again. The storm has passed and next year I should be better equipped to deal with it. With the storm passing, the sky is a lot clearer than it has for a while. Dust is back in the Manchester skies when it had been gone for months. I had been having serious concerns about my the state of my imagination, but it seems alright!

In fact so alright, I was just on the toilet, thinking about chocolate, the universe and everything where my fart made this "ARF"! sound. Like a happy seal. Yes.

And it reminded me of all the times I talked to Ria and made the Arf! sound from my own nobel vocal cords. (Believe me, its killer - its guaranteed to make anyone laugh, ever!), despite the fact I still can't sleep and my period won't end and I haven't had an orgasm in five months (WHY is it that I can tell random netters and not my doctor?) and I won't eat...I guffawed. I cackled. I put the laughing cow to shame in all my mirth and it was wonderful. So, the fact that I have to laugh at the sound of my own farts has to be a good thing!

What kind of fuckery is this?!

(You see this wonderful picture of Regina Spektor? That is exactly how I feel. Exactly. That's it. Perfect)

If you ask what I've been up to, I've been quite a lot of old television. So far I've been getting into the first series of House, Xena the warrior princess for it being hilarious (script-wise and man-shouting-in-background wise) and most recently, The Twilight Zone - love it. I love the stilted narration voice, the black and white, the great acting, the simple twists, the fact that it requires your attention, and doesn't keep repeating things over and over again. I just love that.

Lots of things have been requiring my attention at the moment. Despite the prozac my moods move up and down, and staying in my uni sucks the life out of me. Really, the only thing keeping me going are my friends in flat nine. We went house hunting today, and went walking for ever looking for a house that will house 8 people...so, twenty minutes later in a part of manchester I did not recognise and the landlord not having bothered to meet up with us, we realised we had a long, long way to go. But at least I have my own northern family I can hug with and laugh with and watch movies with, dream of creating my own vegetable patch and creating lesbian-themed vegetable chillis (*gigglesnort*).

To tell you the truth, my life is readily forming into some sort of drama - you know, the ex-self harmer eating disordered black lesbian londoner lost and alone in Manchester which they really should do but don't. I say this cos I have interesting friends...and we have lots of drama, and loves and Bop-related incidents (Bop it! Pull it! Twist it! Ohhhh man, not good! Fucking jocks...). And I've been revising for my exams - 4 hours a day, which is 3 hours and 15 minutes more than I ever do for my exams. So surely something quirky and life-affirming is coming soon???

1) Eight gorgeous smart girls living together in Manchester

2) Got the token arab, token indian, token chinese, token northerner, token Londoner, token welsh lady, token black lesbian....

3) The token black lesbian is too lonely for her own good as everyone else on her course has managed to create cliques without even giving her a chance, meaning she has no study buddy...or any other kind of buddies for that matter.

4) Token black lesbian is listening rom-com songs everyday - we're talking motown! (Amy Winehouse, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke?...) A perfect soundtrack to a feel-good, "womynly" movie.

5) The cute lesbian token black lesbian has a massive crush on (she likes both Regina Spektor and Six Feet Under - these people practically don't exist!), has already snogged her gorgeous blonde straight best friend, and she boy troubles of her own.

6) Don't forget token black lesbian is a total clutz! (Knocked over someone's exam paper on wednesday...)

7) Token black lesbian has been having quite a shitty time but there are lots of changes round the corner (new modules, having to get a new job...) and surely, to prove true love does exist, shouldn't she find hers when she really needs it, especially as she won't dare admit how lonely she is?

I just don't know what to call the film...