Fry, Kusama and photo journalists

 - Stephen Fry at the Bafta's. He will be making a return to live stage later this year in Twelfth Night. Only standing tickets left on 2 midweek matinee's. He commands such acclamation.

The pic of Stephen fry looks as if he's in the bipolar if that's a recent photo but I think that's my own stuff - mood and too much food I think are closely associated. I'm not sure which comes first to be honest. I certainly haven't had lows since food has been in order. I do have flashes of just wanting life to be over and I generally welcome death mainly being surprised I'm still alive anyway - sometimes disappointed. It's odd that I exist on an underlying bleakness but still find joy and gratitude during a day. Sometimes I notice it's beyond joy and becomes exaltation which I know means irrational behaviour and attitude but I don't know it when in the middle of it. I have questioned the diagnosis of bipolar, really liking it at first. Mainly because it sort of gave me a sense of something bizarre as that might sound. I meant I was taken seriously in my crazy world. Having a label made me a somebody. How sad that seems now that I've written that. But since then I've thought differently.  I don't think my craziness is bad enough to be bi-polar and also I'm not sure what leads it all. Is it addiction or bipolar or just sheer fucking faulty wiring of everything. Sometimes I'm all OK - normal it seems. I think I've had extended periods of that in the last 90 days. But I can hear a little voice that is getting louder. It tells me that all the being good is tedious. Nothing naughty and fun doesn't happen. I've had this since a little girl. I wrote a tiny tiny list once to try and shut this inner voice up. I was about 11 or 12. Things like I will not tell lies, I will not be naughty, I will not make up worlds. I had fantasies back then. I can even visualise that little piece of paper now. But I would always renegade on what good me set up for myself. I don't think there's anything evil - I never ever have meant anyone any harm. I feel sad actually as it seems all do uncontrollable. Since starting this text I've since spoken with my sponsor and through talking got some more clarity. The naughtiness is so linked with my deep fury. I sexualise fury - even since little. I'm scared of that now. After the destructiveness of the relationship with JH and before him CY - I truly am afraid of that in me. I really am turning to God more but I'm furious with God too. So sharing all this verbally has brought more insight and I can feel calm returning. Interesting too how unconscious motives and thoughts are driving naughty me. .....and just then my dad called. I think subtly and not so subtly this is all linked. It's his birthday on Tuesday. I feel flustered about that. Then his phone call - frankly I don't believe his excuses but to begin with I was alarmed and fearing something dreadful by his tone. Listening for every little tonal difference I detected what gave me a clue it was a lie. I don't trust him and don't find it easy to let go of my lack of trust. He's lied to me for ever. So what? That's just the way he is but it's tapped into my broken heart and rage. I feel a need to rage but know I need to contain it. This feels very difficult right now. Thank God my food is weighed and measured. I need real help with all of this from God.

An interesting call with my sponsor around all this stuff - my thoughts on Friday morning about feeling naughty. I am the little girl with the gilr in the middle of her forehead. I go along being good, good, good and then a little inner voice questions the goodness and says "where's all the fun? Let's use some energy!". Good doesn't burn up this energy inside of me. B asked if it was rebellion. And as I was talking about this is when I was identifying a burning rage in me. I'm not sure that the energy isn't just me. A fierce energy that needs to be directed because otherwise it can become a destructive force. I don't know if it's actually linked with any underlying feelings provoked by events of the past. That would make it very explainable but sometimes it feels free floating energy that needs to be expounded. And always it's been like a little thought change in my thinking.
Then B asked me this morning to take some quiet time to consider if that thinking was linked with my actions of yesterday, day 89, and then ending up eating my meal at 8pm. I wasn't going to tell her at all, then I wasn't going to tell the full extent of the lateness, then I decided I needed to take responsibility and face up to the consequences. I trusted that all would be OK whatever.
In truth I don't think this was a rebellious chain of events. I was in London and went along to the Tate Modern only to discover that the time slots they were selling would mean a 1 1/2 hour wait. I deliberated long and hard but my focus was on whether it would be acceptable to Abigail or not. I couldn't get hold of her to see if it was and so decided not to. I headed towards the photo journalism exhibition. This incidentally was free and with my current money situation should have been my choice anyway. However, I wanted also to see the Yoyoi Kusama exhibition based on recommendations from two people whose opinion I value greatly from their creative interests in the past. I went back deciding that I might as well get a ticket as I was going to mill around anyway. Now it was another hour later!!! But as I had made a decision and was not enjoying the indecision in me, I went ahead. What I didn't think about was when I would actually get home to eat my evening meal. It turned out that I didn't get to eat until just before 8pm a whole 2 hours later than I am required to eat. And I was hungry. I made my decisions all based on the wrong focus. I need to adjust that thinking. A focus on my clean food MUST MUST MUST come first. Then and only then is there room for spontaneity and freedom. After realising, I made a call to B to tell her the situation but I was unable to reach her.
In hindsight I could have better come to a healthy decision by calling out to other FA folk. However, having been at a meeting all morning with them I thought I was all "cured". Ha! I can learn from this too. It would make indecision less painful if I actually deliberated over choices with the help of others. I pray that I learn this lesson just as I pray I have learnt the lesson to make decisions with a focus on keeping my food clean as a priority. And this doesn't simply mean the food that I eat but the time as well.
Then the other great lesson is the ability to take responsibility, not manipulate the truth and through the honesty take the consequences willingly. At this point I have agreed to use some quiet time to really think about this situation. I think right now that I've become aware of a lot through the experience. Actually in writing I think I could be given the benefit of the doubt to see if I have truly become self aware and through being honest I think it has shown me a lot. I do think of my recovery as the most important thing but it just goes to show unless I remain alert and vigilant things can start to slip.
I don't know if my decision was linked with thoughts earlier in the week about wanting to be naughty. There is no conscious connection. I will keep an open mind to that though. Perhaps I wanted to sabotage the 90 days because I've been afraid of the 90 days ending and what that actually means. I enjoy my daily calls with my sponsor and committing my food to her. I don't want that to alter and she said that it wouldn't for the time being. I'm afraid that people wanting me to share has a pressure that I'm not dealing with and also that I've made a think out of not sharing for 90 days. I think others have made more out of it than I have but I wish I had been at bigger meetings where it would have slipped by less noticeably. And I've enjoyed the fact that I haven't needed to share, instead becoming more contemplative about subjects being raised. Furthermore, it's meant that I do call out more. I've seen a lot in the quietness from sharing at meetings. I have shared often for affect. I want only to share in earnestness and for the newcomer. I think I've had some realisations about that too. What that actually means.
And in my thoughtfulness about a mental disorder, am I, aren't I bi-polar? Did I manipulate the psychiatrist to think I am? Although I didn't have that in mind when I told him my story .... he said bi-polar and borderline. I was less "proud" of the latter and chose not to tell too many people, in fact only two, ML and JH. JH seemed to turn that against me confirming my need to hide it away. I know that fits at times though. And that's a point to be made that really ads weight to my belief that diagnoses are not to be used as a label to describe. By this I think symptoms ebb and wane. So in other words I am not bi-polar all of the time, I am not borderline all of the time. Maybe the wiring is the same but the symptoms are not always present so the diagnoses need to be allowed to be flexible. And psychologically that raises the interesting point for me as to what causes the symptoms to manifest? Is it cyclical thereby meaning that it is purely genetic and will happen anyway. Or are there cues that trigger the different ways it manifests? Or are the varying symptoms within the diagnoses actually part of the same thing at all? Lots of questions and I am truly not sure how I would even go about making the deeper enquiries into this. It would require I guess a longitudinal study of various populations and neurological scans would be helpful too. But how to monitor as a person is beginning to build up to obvious symptoms. They would have to be continuously under scrutiny and then ethically this would not be appropriate.
Hmm - interesting how much I've learnt from my degree so far to be able to even think along these lines.
And this thinking led onto me driving a long, contemplating whether I have these mental disorders or not when suddenly it really dawned on me that I have a mental disorder. Whether it's labelled addiction or eating disorder or whatever, it's mental. I inform clients everyday about their mental disorder, I study it, I go to meetings and hear it but I have never truly let that sink in. I have a mental illness. The hard-wiring is skedaddled and whether that's happened at birth or along the way is neither here nor there but it would be nice to know to be able to direct the anger accordingly. But there is no knowledge so I just have anger about that. But then I know intellectually and see more and more evidence of the fact that everyone is wired imperfectly in some way. How that manifests in the functioning can be very similar. So actually is it imperfect of simply individual differences of something that is so incredibly complex and I don't just mean the hard wiring. It's all so interlinked. The wiring, the environment, the people. None of it exists without the other.
Bronfenbrenner and ?? - forgotten the name so I need to look it up now .. hold on please ... Sameroff and the transactional model of development.




But these apply ongoing in adulthood - we are always in a state of development I believe albeit at a different pace and interface.


So when it's a mental illness I have that sounds so damning and something that I interpret as meaning I am not of a mind to be able to know myself. That is so Victorian - lock em up and throw away the key. It suggests that only other can decide for me. However, that's not the case. As I discussed with Dr G, it doesn't mean I am incapable, it means that I need to do things differently to check out what is the insane thinking and what is the sound thinking. I absolutely have sound thinking but it gets muddled up. I realise that this happens for everyone but it manifests in different ways and some people seem to make it all seem plausible because they are fully functioning and my stay that way until the end of their time.
What I am seeing is that I can go beyond just getting by. I can embrace the mental illness and find out more about being human. It's infinite within the finiteness. I am probably sounding a little crazy now.
The point is that I have a mental illness that thankfully is not beyond reason. I can embrace that fact now and by so doing I can more easily call upon help rather than wonder and wander about aimlessly.



So back to yesterday. I did get to see the exhibition. I found it fascinating, more so her recent work. It was bright and somehow charming although a sinister edge to it. I overheard someone saying how sensual he thought she was and yet materials suggested she was obsessed with sex. Someone else said that she had been forced to watch her father having sex with women other than her men. I haven't read that myself so not sure of the validity. I too though got a sense of her sensual side. What do I mean by sensual. I think there is/was a real sexual woman inside of her. Maybe it was trapped in her through the events of an abusive past and the trauma's of warfare. Apparently she was directly affected by the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. If so she lives on strongly enough it seems although now a little doddery. But yes her work is sensual too. I thought her penile sculptures were funny. Disgusting too in a way for me and what it represents. I could relate to them, penis's everywhere but like living creatures somehow, not needing a body attached to them.
This pic wasn't a part of the exhibition but sort of says it all to me. The sensual woman, sexy and capable of sex. That's me. I make myself sexual because I think I have to and even can enjoy it from a power point of view. But then looking at the penis directly, it has other meanings. It has control over it's man and over me. Hmm not quite getting the words to describe that yet. I don;t think the penis is thinking or anything quite like that but there are the sinister undertones, the power it yields over men and women removing sensitivity and reasonable actions.


This walk through mirrored room enchanted me. I want this in my life everyday. It was childlike and absolutely took me away into smiles and delight.

I didn't want to leave this room or the experience. It was moving yet still. Ooooh I want to be there right now. It's a feeling deep inside of me a sort of excitement.

These recent works really grabbed me. I was enthralled by their brightness and playfulness yet also saw something sinister, sharp teeth-like nastiness amidst all the play.




And the eyes - I draw lots of eyes. Looking out or being watched? I am not sure. I love eyes. It reminds me of the eyes in the monster hands in Pan's Labrynthe. I found that both enthralling and frightening as well.

So although the exhibition may have cost me my 90 days recovery, it was so worth going to see. Apparently Ishiguro wrote one of his novels based on her ... I need to check this out as it is just hearsay at this moment. A Pale View of Hills. It is his first novel and the themes running through it seem intriguing to me - loss, guilt and responsibility. Wikipedia says " It examines what we know, what we tell, and what we deny about the truth of our own history."
I am seeing as I learn more about myself these exact things. I have a story in me to write and would love to have the imagination Ishiguro has to tell the story away from my own personal self yet examining these very things within me. It has to come from within I would imagine to be ale to write so profoundly and at the same distanced from self.

Oh I also visited the photo journalist exhibition.

Mich Epstein. The sharp edges really attracted me. Not only this though as the powerful extremes of beauty and destruction, side by side in an image. The hurricane photo for example was absolutely beautiful yet I knew that it had been devastating. It looks like the human stuff is meant to be strewn about. And the pollution of the fumes yet looking so beguilingly formed and solid. Then the charming home garden over shadowed by giant chimneys silently in charge over later ruination in a little child that might play in that garden, innocent of the dangers as it's just there. Sinister.








Luc Delahaye - focused more on war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq

This could almost be a holiday snap apart fromt he content of it.


Speaks for itself.

Guy Tillim
A candidate entering a stadium. Imagine the sounds and smells and I feel fear too through a throng of emoted people



He really does tell stories with his photos.

Boris Mikhailov - the Tate Modern describe having two of his important images from earlier works of his. I'm not sure which two they are referring to but this struck me.


He had many there all featuring something red which was described as him displaying how much "red" plays a part in daily Ukraine lives. It was a huge wall of photos. That to me showed everyday scenes of hardship and yes something red was in everyone sort of being a sub-them of attention focus. The harder theme was the hardship.





There were a series of these blued photos. Just little scene snapshots of endurance I thought and blueness.

And Akram Zaatari - people people people - in studios. People of Beirut ....


There were some with guns - playfully modelling with them. But again it seemed indicative of how normalised people are to having guns about the place.



So all in all a good day except that I didn't put my focus on my food. I pray to God that I take the lesson from this and can alter my focus of attention. I want to remain abstinent and that means making my food recovery the first thing I take care of and then I can be free to enjoy living life.

Thank you God and Universe for this lesson. I have certainly taken something from it.
What's the fictional story that lies beneath the reality please God?

:)


.... and finally. Much to my shame and embarrassment, I am shredding off what are for me unhealthy relationships. I have had a text friend since the end of the relationship with JH. It's been nothing more than socialising but the circumstances are not healthy for me. I feel dreadful having not done this sooner but have known it's not OK for me right from the start. Discovering that he was married and yet having sex outside of marriage and contact with other women under cover I should not have continued. But I kept telling myself it's all so innocent, there is nothing more than text flirtations. But I do not agree with this and I am party to something I don't agree with. Making friends with people is one thing but it having to be a secret suggests something else to me. I feel sad as I truly have enjoyed the contact and sharing of ideas and music. But it's not healthy for me. I am not suggesting it's unhealthy for him. Indeed it may be the very thing that keeps him and his wife together. I feel absolutely dreadful that I've put off dealing with this by ignoring recent texts etc from him and today have committed to sending an email. I need to send it before posting this because actually although I don't think he knows about my blog it is not respectful for the world to have access to information before he hears directly from me. You see this is the sort of destruction that I cause and do not want to be involved in any longer. If I meet people I want it to be above board and decent. I can get into a lot of trouble if I do not behave according to my highest morals. I easily slip into the grundge when it seems like more fun. It is sexualising feelings that I'm not even sure I'm fully aware of. Somehow it suggests and anger to me; perhaps with myself or with others.
I feel so relieved that I was honest about this with B and a couple of others.

Please God help me to send the gentlest of words but speak my truth.

Bliss
XX