On Humility (and despondency)

C's chair last night was enlightening as well as her usual entertaining quirks.
And she talked about becoming aware of her quirks. I have quirks that are destructive and some that are just delightful and harmless. It's those that are OK to keep but my destructive quirks need to go, with God's help.

Humility. C referred to Bill W's quotes on humility and I wanted to take a note of them since she had done some research and noted them down. What a pity I don't have her phone number.
Eeew I felt discomfort when P talked about the P and pointed at me. Only very few people in those rooms know what I do as my work and where. But then the pride part of me was all sort of fluttered and flattered. Just as M intimated with his body language to describe that feeling of flattery and pride. But to then hand that over in the way he did in the meeting, to make it light-hearted and recognition of pride was release in itself. And I can do that. Laugh with others at the pride itself. As if people knowing what I do will make me any less of an alcoholic or a somebody. Oh no no no. I am fully aware that any good that comes from the work I do is all thanks to God and nothing at all to do with me. I am merely a channel.

Here is a letter that Bill W wrote to a friend and was later published in Grapevine apparently, January 1953.

EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY
"I think that many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.

Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible, and how very painful to discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round.

How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living. Well, that's not only the neurotic's problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all of our affairs.

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious, from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream, be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden ‘Mr. Hyde' becomes our main task.

I've recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones, folks like you and me, commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for another long chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions, it wasn't a bright prospect.

I kept asking myself "Why can't the twelve steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer ... "it's better to comfort than to be comforted". Here was the formula, all right, but why didn't it work?

Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.

Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any act of circumstance whatsoever.

Then only could I be free to love as Francis did. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.

Plainly, I could not avail myself to God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.

For my dependence meant demand, a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.

While those words "absolute dependence" may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.

This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.

If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love: we may then be able to gain emotional sobriety.

Of course, I haven't offered you a really new idea --- only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own hexes' at depth. Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine"


Bill Wilson

Attitude is Everything

This letter is meaningful to me. I particularly relate to the unhealthy dependence upon people places and situations. I depend upon people being nice to me to feel OK. I depend on money to buy things to feel satisfied, as if a holiday is going to be the only thing that could make me feel better. I think I was bodily craving warmth and sunshine though, so thank you God for this last week of sunshine. Maybe this is enough right now, you'll know best. It was chilly walking just now but sunny enough. I can depend upon external things to give me everything and yet I need to let go of that dependence without though letting go of dependence all together. I depend on the FA fellowship to support me in maintaining my strength. I need FA fellowship. I can depend on God to be there all the time and every time I reach out to God. I cannot do anything without the fellowship and without God. But when  expect then to start providing, then that's unhealthy dependence.
I was also realising that I could slip so easily into despondency when my unhealthy dependence lets me down. I think it's the external that has let me down but actually it's me that's let me down by being needy. So if I let go of that unhealthy dependence I regain my independence and can not be let down externally or by myself. Then I can stay away from feeling a victim or deprived and thereby stave off despondency (when it attacks from this particular direction, being mindful that it can manifest in many shapes and forms).
Despondency brings me to despair and hopelessness. And then I usually have given up and eat. When I eat these days there is no high anymore. From the first bite I feel even more despondent and this descends into a deep gloom and depression. I am usually then not wanting to live. I isolate, I feel miserable and everything appears to be bleak and benighted, as Bill says.
Of course there is still a feel good factor of using relationships and sex. But I also know that this quickly stops working these days and filters rapidly into the same black hole.
I raise this as it's crucial for me to be recognising my thoughts about G and P and D. My first thoughts are not literally but around the subject of potential. "Oh could this be a relationship?". Each of them offers something different when in fact I am not attracted to the whole of them. D is attractive physically and has a shy vulnerability that can appear attractive, something that can be rescued and nurtured. I can be the one to bring him out of this. G is funny and intelligent even if not cultured or maybe educated although he seems somewhat educated and there is something physically attractive about him. P has money but there is no physical attraction, he is the least attractive of the 3. But oh my gosh it's surely possible simply to be friendly and not try to go down the flirtatious route. The best think I can do is nothing. I am talking with them as and when they approach me and not pursuing my pursuit thoughts. Last evening I knew I could end up talking with P and did. I was thinking I would enquire if he's going to the convention he mentioned and could I go with him. Uh uh! No way Jose. It's not the right thing to do. Staying quiet about it and waiting was the break I needed to make. Thank you God. God please help me with this. I would like to be in a loving and lovely and comfortable relationship. I trust that if that's what you think is the right thing for me it will happen. In the meantime I am committed to no relationships until after my AWOL is completed. Wow! That seems such a long way away.
So you see this men thing can still appear to offer fun and lift me away from despondency.
I live on the edge of despondency. It seems to be a default setting still. I can feel a tangible pull. It would be s much easier it seems to give in to it and stay home, not facing the world and all the difficulties that the world and it's ways present to me. It is stepping out of taking responsibility for myself and can appear to be so much easier. And yet it's painful. It real has a physical pain and an interminable feeling of fight and draw on every ounce of energy.
So for today I am stepping aside of it. Every so often that feels difficult because the pull is alluring. Doing nothing at all, not having to deal with people, places and things. On the other hand I know that I can deal with any situation and pray to God that I will not feel fear in any situation. There is nothing to fear so long as I stay close to God. Thank you God for removing my fears and guiding me through any situation I am faced with. Somehow everything will be OK even though I have no idea how sometimes. Things always seem to work out just dandy.
There is also a grieving. letting go of despondency and depression. I have a close relationship with these twins.
I'm not sure I've written really about humility. Perhaps it's because T had asked me about despondency and the letter seemed to correspond across both topics. Humility is something to consider further from this point.

Well I need to phone my friend JB. I wrote to him yesterday expressing my thoughts of being boring to him. I wonder if he read my email hence the text to speak this morning. Well lets see.

Bliss
XX

Mise en scene

Mise en scene - a little phrase I hadn't heard or retained before last evening when someone asked me the mise en scene.
T said she had written a whole long text on bi polarity and FA. Here's my response.
Oh I wish I had been able to read your text about bi polar and FA. I have been thinking about it some more actually. And I am remembering my own theory that diagnoses are always only moving hypothesis. Something to start out with and that the symptoms can always be shifting. So for instance the umbrella term of a mental illness can manifest in many different ways. I think with me it can manifest in many different ways. And to give it a name is a convenient starting point to seek treatment forms. Addiction too is a mental illness and I think it ebbs and wanes depending on how I a or am not dealing with life issues. There is some brain wiring that has been affected genetically (i.e. I have a predisposition towards functioning in a particular way) and also there are the things that happened in my childhood that infiltrated the brain wiring of mine to be received in a particular way sort of reinforcing the wiring. Neither exist without the other. And so - depending on the way my brain is chugging and the life forces of my daily environment is how this all comes together. I think it's problematic to call it a mental illness. But I suppose there is some sort of level that appears to be a norm - the problem is I truly don't believe any single person has perfect brain wiring - everyone to varying degrees has some kind of mental illness in that case. The difficulty comes when the "wiring" and therefore the ways of dealing with life situations becomes dysfunctional or in other words there are harmful consequences - harmful to self and/or others. It is then that change is needed to minimise the harm. Therefore if the "illness" is addiction and it starts to cause problems there needs to be a change. I can see that with my food. It has been problematic for years and causing me health problems at times but also increasingly contributing to mental difficulties - self-esteem, cognition to varying levels and at different times. There have been times when I will simply accept size and deal with the lack of self esteem that brings. And other times size will be so crippling I barely function in the world - skulking along in the dark shadows rather than be seen.
It's similar with the highs and lows. There have been times when I've relished the highs, enjoying the craziness and the risk taking. The crazy relationships have all brought adventures until the pain hits. But none of these things stand alone. They are not separate illnesses or rather one label doesn't mean that the symptoms are stand alone. No I think that the symptoms cross over each other and probably trigger each other. I am certain that my highs augmented my drinking so that I would keep uppping the extent of risk I would take. And similarly the lows were the necessary brain rest but almost obliterating life completely, feeling trapped and suffocated.
The funny thing is FA people do talk about this being a mental illness and so as I listen and really listen I see that they are saying "I'm a food addict and this is a mental illness". And I know that I have mental issues. Illness in my perception is something that then makes a person different from others whereas more and more I am believing that everyone is just on a spectrum of variation, no one in other words is entirely "well" if we use that ill well determinant. It's a continuum of varying and some are worse or better than others along that continuum.
The thing is when people use labels it tends to create a stigma. It's the same with racism or any other prejudives, it's people making other people different from and the same as. It could be linked with the days of living in tribes. There's my tribe and there's the other tribe and we become protective of ourselves in our own tribe for the Darwin theory of survival of our gene. Dawkins The Selfish Gene theory.
Anyway keeping it with the labels and so as not to digress too far down the evolutionary explanation - these labels or diagnoses can be helpful except when people then get stuck in the diagnoses. Using the label to explain everything away rather. I can use the bi polar one to excuse risk taking behaviour or even to excuse the desire to do absolutely nothing, the depression where I simply do NOTHING and therefore my house gets messy and I do not want to face the difficult situations in my life such as the fear I have around this woman at work - it's obsessive - this is all mental dysfunction whatever label I put to it - addiction, bi polar, psychosis, etc etc.
I am praying for you. I am certain you will be taking in useful information that someday - maybe tomorrow, maybe in years to come will be a part of your growth and enhance the already wonderful beautiful you I see.
I have to be careful because I can easily convince myself I'm not an alcoholic or drug addict. Especially as I am dealing with my primary addiction to food. I really, really know this is it as I feel a lifting of the compulsion and obsession. However it leaves me with the issues I have with life and people. I hear the messages of self hatred and doubt all the time. Now I think these are linked with being wired so that I am on the very sensitive end of that continuum. I guess that continuum can be at one end highly sensitive and at the other completely desensitised
both extremes can be as dangerous for a person in the sense that behaviours and attitudes can cause problems for the desensitised person (psychopath would probably be the extremest extreme). The highly sensitive or nervous person is caused problems by receiving behaviours and attitudes from others. And I feel sure we can all bounce from one extreme to the other bt often default at one extreme. Again theories but not evidenced through any research
So remove the plasters I have used i.e. food, relationships, alcohol, narcotics, hedonism or any form of escapism and there I am exposed to the things I've been trying to cover up - high sensitivity. It really doesn't matter anymore how or why I am like this. I also theorise that it doesn't start of as chronic as it ends up. We get to that point gradually through the wearing of way of trying to deal with life.
So here I am highly sensitive - a form of mental illness. And feeling totally vulnerable and scared.
T: Hi I love reading what you write. I am at NLP course now and over the weekend. And have forgotten my Norwegian adapter to my English computer - meaning I will not be able to go on the computer till I am home if I don't find adapter - which is very difficult - already phoned shops. Well addiction. I feel lost now with no sponsor and no contact with FA except you. I love the break even if I am a bit scared where it will end. But I know I can go back whenever I like.
T you will be OK whatever happens. Of that I am certain. If you want to go back to FA it will be there.
T: Need to know more about my brain and mental illness as I have huge problems accepting - so find it mot=re intriguing and OK when you say that everyone has some kind of mental disorder.
You may find another way. It may be that you just become at ease just the way you are.
By the way I'm sorry for writing out my theories and thoughts as I have done this morning. It helps me to get my thoughts into order writing it and especially knowing someone else will read it and add new ideas to my ideas
T: I am wondering if NLP works on me at all. I did a commitment to not eating chocolate last time - but that didn't work. Previous in my life I have tried hypnosis to stop smoking - that didn't work either. I think these techniques don't get deep enough in me. It's like they just flush off the surface. I'm not bothered in a way. Scares me when other people come back and said that the NLP techniques of seeing chocolates as something disgusting kept them off eating it while I just didn't care thinking of it as disgusting when I wanted it..
Hmmm interesting. I wonder if it depends on what you want from NLP. Again this is simply a theory but if you want something to take the responsibility for the action then maybe you/I don't let the NLP in deep enough.
I see people come into treatment expecting the treatment to take away the desire to drink
T: Keep writing to me - i like reading your theories.. gives me something to think of.
of course that doesn't work - the treatment gives people information and helps them look at what the addictions have actually resulted in to strip away the euphoria
then they have to decide whether they are willing to go to the lengths required to stay stopped
T: Yes I want to stop being obsessive. But its like I am not interested anymore but just have to be here because it costed me a fortune and I can't not try it. But I don't have all of me in it - if you see.
Knowing what the "illness" is or the consequences of eating chocolate or talking about issues from the past are all just providing more self awareness
T: It's like I don't have all of me in anything. It's like being numbed for the time being. I'm not here if you see.
 the desire to stop has to come from deep within and then if open to that I see the info drop in too
T: Gosh how difficult to explain or maybe you just understand. I am here but I am not here
I really do understand that feeling of being numbed and not entirely present in any area of my life. I want to be but just can't seem to be.
I truly do understand that
just functioning. So many times I went to see SC my therapist and it was sitting in his room that I could really see how I was knowing how I should be but just wasn't totally with myself
I described it as being like a shell and my soul wasn't there anymore
I can still get like that of course. Difficult issues at work have switched off a part of me. It's as if I completely detach
I also know that going through menopause magnified that. It's as if I was blanketed because of an excess or maybe a decrease of hormones
And the hunger for food I had was just a power I had never encountered before.
T: Yes true. Shell without soul. And people kept asking me yesterday at the course where I was - hello Tone are you here? So I really understood that I am not present this time. And that it is affecting others. Shall I leave today?
It was worse than ever I had known it and it's been bad for as long as I can remember
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO don't leave
T: Bliss do you know why we disappear like this - you said you had the same feeling sometimes - why do you have that feeling or do it?
See it through. Keep showing up, take in what you can even if it's merely at an intellectual level. Don't give up on yourself
I think I disappear in this way because I am afraid. Afraid of what I ask myself?
I think it's also a way of dumbing down the emotions. I no longer have food, alcohol, drugs, men, partying etc to dumb down the feelings. I am a person (mental disorder perhaps) that has heightened emotions, I am very sensitive to the world and this brings on LARGE emotional reactions
T: Thanks I will be there even if it affects the others - they can take responsibility for themselves and just don't care with me. It is the most aware people that see that I am not alert.
I get overwhelmed by my emotions because I seem to over react - i.e. I behave to extremes in reaction or my attitude is massive or my beliefs become extreme which create catastrophising thinking or black and white thinking
so the only way I can deal with this it seems or in my belief system so deeply buried to the point of being unconscious is that I detach from my emotions. BUT
there is a price - the price is I am an almost an empty shell and then I cannot emotional respond to anything. If I let even a little emotion out I go back to explosion and extremity
T:Yes I am afraid of over reacting at work especially. There is going to be a meeting on Monday and I am scared but not willing to accept I am scared. I can't be scared coz I have to show up. But of course I can be scared and show up - as I will.
So what I am realising is that I have this mental disorder - mental that affects emotional and spiritual and physical. The physical comes out as addictive behaviours
You can be scare and take your fear to other people that can listen and even relate. I relate absolutely. The problem is I don't have solutions from my experience yet that I can share with you.
What am I afraid of? I am afraid that I will be seen as under qualified and incompetent. Is this pride? I am as qualified as I am. But I tell myself that I am dealing with peoples lives and so how can I possibly be doing this job with the little knowledge I have.
I have theories but the truth I truly see is that everyone only ha theories - no one knows absolutely
there is evidence to support that everything and anything works or doesn't
But other people don't know they are only working with theories. Their pride tells them they know. But to know that often means they have to show that others are wrong
I am glad to know I don't know but it leaves me afraid of being spotted as not knowing
I am then afraid that they will want to get rid of me
worse than that I am afraid they will be conspiring behind my back to get rid of me or reduce my salary which then taps into my fear of financial worries. I am struggling so much in this are. And I like to have things or be able to do things. And if I have no money I will absolutely bored. Boredom is a killer for me. I go into a deeper depression when bored or explode out of myself and build up debt which then causes me to worry more - you see nothing stands alone it's all so interconnected
I am afraid too that I will be a failure. And to fail means I am not respectable. I am afraid what others will think of me. If I have no money I cannot do things with other people and they will abandon me. If I am a failure at work people won't want anything to do with me. I have to have proof that I'm not a failure because I do not believe I am enough. And I need other people to see that I successful because otherwise they won't have any value of me and confirm that I am not enough. I would also add this perception of failure is external. Failure is simply a word for something that hasn't worked. That happens. Everyone has failure at some points or other. It eems that so many people use this word meaning that's it everything is over. So I might fail an exam. That's it for now but it doesn't mean to say that's it life over. There are many ways of dealing with a failure - get up and try again, try something else until finding things that I can succeed at more easily, take a break. Look at the elements that have gone well. Failure is used as so utterly defeating. It's not. Everyone makes mistakes, has strenghts and weaknesses. everyone is different. Some people have a btter capacity to remember than others - does this mean that one is a success and one a failure. Society has developed the world based on particular measures. It doesn't mean to say people falling under those specific measures are worthless and failures. It's the measure that set that up! The problem is people are people and if only we could lvoe each other for being who we are rather than what a few think everyone should be and if not dispose of them. Poop!
How intricate my thinking is and adds to my fear.
The problem is that before I turn on myself I turn on everyone else that I think is attacking me. I get resentful first and then in my defensiveness I get aggressive - verbally, or in my attitude and then I hate myself for being like this and then I turn that hatred on myself - evidence that I am a terrible out of control nasty person.
How much effort can one person put into all of this no winder I'm so exhausted
And I HAVE to prove that "she or he" is the baddy because then I'm not. But they are just being who they are. I am the one with a mental disorder. I just need to learn how to be OK. I think at work you see that they will find out they employed an incompetent. Someone just meddling my way through. I was like that in my last job and had made it through the ranks to the dizzy heights of middle management. Thought I was a somebody but inside was scared they'd see really I was a nobody.
Phew T. I relate to your fear at work. Hence I need to keep talking about it so that I can keep finding the energy to face it and learn. Learn how to take action and just be OK being me. If I keep running ( addiction, off sick, leave etc) I will never ever learn.
I am praying for you. I am certain you will be taking in useful information that someday - maybe tomorrow, maybe in years to come will be a part of your growth and enhance the already wonderful beautiful you I see.
Thanks for letting me ramble my thoughts. They get stuck in my head otherwise and I go mad. I am scared that people will just think this is the mental illness I have and none of it really is of any consequence as I'm just crazy. But actually I believe that my theories do have substance. I suspect my psychiatrist will have an opinion on this.
The problem is that I work in a unit that has a philosophy of the Minnesota model based on 12 step and there's little lee-way for me to present it with my understanding. I need to substantiate it somehow or find ways to present this to a paying public. This would be a part of my workshops for therapy groups. It's just using the info already gathered - big book, research etc and then creating the presentation. Any help? We could do this together. :) using art in workshops too.

Shameless

I didn't ever see this. I think I got a couple of glimpses of Shameless but my first clip was of Frank (although I didn't know him at that point) and he seemed like a pissed loser. Well he is but the entire show - Series 1 and 2 and the Christmas Special have been great. The characters are wholseome. I have noticed that in the first series, everyone was pretty much involved with everything. Whereas in series 2 different characters are more involved in differetn espisodes. There are some people who do seem to disappear without further explanation. Overall, Shameless is horribly good. A impression of an underclass life on a estate somewhere near Manchester. I hate using the term underclass because actually there is a family unit, togetherness and support. They get by. Of course real hardship isn't obvious. It's inferred. Petty crime is the way of life. And covering up for each other. They do awful things and yet here I am championing them to be able to get away with it. I have to ask myself about that. Yet I empathise with the mess that they are representing. I have not lived this directly, however I have witnessed it closer than I ever imagined when I stayed on the estate in Poplar. Wow that was a frightening place. A's bike was nicked. The life never worked. It was dodgy and I am not or never was scaredy cat. I was very aware of everything around me. Anyway I didn;t experience the hardship. I was earning good money and there for the relationship. It was another odd situation really. A was living there with his cousin and her nurse friends. A great flat, on two levels - high rise block. I am not sure how his cousin had the tenancy but she di and I never asked but always wondered. Later she left the flat and moved into nurses residence. That was strange. Anyway back to Shameless. I suppose the characters are at times charicatures and yet in their exaggerated portrayal is a lot of realism too.
I am looking forward to series 3.











The love story between Steve and Fiona is really lovely. And it makes it ever so special as in real life Jame McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duffie are a couple and have been married since 2006. He has been quoted as saying he married the woman of his dreams. Certainly I find myself wanting them to celebrate their togetherness in the series and wasn't really feeling it between Fiona and Craig. That intensity is really there.

So whilst I am awaiting the arrival of Shameless 3 and 4 I will watch Atonement, which is I would say the big film for James. Although he was in The Last King of Scotland before that and actually he played a similar role of clever conman if I remember that correctly. I didn't rate the film overall.

Still very ill!! Hating it. Can feel a negativity in my thinking  the cabin fever feel that turns into what's the point. I do not want my mood to lower just because of a flipping flu. Life stinks. I can feel myself teetering on the cusp of thinking blackly and desperately holding onto all that is good and great in my world. It is what is it and to observer this right now seems a real challenge. This is what seems to happen to me. I don't like it. I guess nobody likes to feel ill or depressed. So Atonement - ha ha just to brighten the mood. Actually maybe I will watch Inglourious Basterds instead as it's meant to be comedy and will be a little lighter than Atonement, when I am feeling grief and loneliness.

Bye for now
Bliss
XX

Meeting

Well I met with SH today. Right now I feel so sad. Glad and also sad actually. It was friendly. He made amends to me for his behaviour. I must saying the timing was a little clumsy. There I was meeting and greeting clients arriving at the reunion BBQ and he asked if I had a minute. I should have said not right then. Anyway I listened and we talked for a while. I thanked him graciously accepting his apology. I said that we both had out part to play. He apologised again as if insisting I receive his apology again. It was nice of him. Later we sat next to each other with P as well and ate our BBQ lunch. We chatted and laughed. It was pleasant and very friendly.AT one point someone came and talked to me and it seemed so right to be there. At the same time I am aware that it wasn't so right either. It was a moment of nostalgia really.
I am so relieved that there is the opportunity for things to be friendly between us. I can let go finally.
It is odd though at a time when I am writing out SLAA Step one and observing the patterns of destruction and so on. We had a great time together for so long. But it was also so wrong for so long.
I am so so sad because all this time I can see that the bi-polar has been involved as well as addiction and a lack of worth. No one has ever helped me with the bi=polar and managing the highs or the lows and so there has been havoc wreaked. And no help in being able to sustain relationships that I value. No one has understood and not loved enough to stick with me. Or me with them. Even my parents just thought I was bad and useless. I feel so so sad about this. I wonder if it truly is worth any future. Odd, serious thoughts really.
I am taking the meds but feel really as if it's time to give up.

Plath

The BBQ went off so well. I am delighted for P. So many people and so many thanks especially and directed to him. He is a remarkable man!

I flitted and chatted amongst as many people as I could get to. There were a couple of people that I was concerned about. It was lovely to see people getting well and getting a life that they wanted. One lady came over to me saying that she had thought I gave her a hard time at times and yet realises now just how much loving and thoughtfulness I was giving her. Wow! She didn't think I would remember her. I remembered her well. I looked around the crowds and reflected on how much of each of their lives they had shared with me. I felt very honoured and pleased that some healing had taken place for them to be able to move on. I can't believe how the years have passed so swiftly.

I will be 10 years clean very soon. It is amazing really as it isn't what I signed up for. It's been a wiggly wobbly journey with many experiences and adventures. I feel tired of the painful emotion though. I miss my mum today. SH was there when she dies and that came back so strongly. I miss her so so much. An incredible woman!

Bliss

XX

Moon rise

There is a beautiful silvery light breaking through the darkness. A darkness that is more than just a room with no light. It's a darkness that actually has removed the light. A darkness that is not just around me it is actually a physical being that is upon me, all around me. And it's lifting. I feel more engaged with me recently. It is with relief. And with the silvery light I feel awe and wonder in not just the world and Universe but with my path.
My heart is singing and my soul is flying. It is sure to pass but so does the darkness.
I want to dance and play in the silvery light whilst it glistens all around me.

I am about to embark on  new set of step work. I know already that it is a look beneath another layer of the onion skin and am excited to discover and new depth of myself.

I would so like to be brave enough to put the writing on this blog but bloody hell that would require me to truly trust andyou know what? Sadly I am afraid still.
Perhaps there is a way I can use the awareness in another form, maybe fiction.
Crikey! This will be the most personally revealing stpe work so far. The layers are peeling away.

I am sad about the bi-polar though. I am sad what this can do. I LOVE LOVE adore the highs and even the nuttiness that this can involve. It's just adventurous although at times quite dangerous and potentially destructive. The lows can kill in another way. I really don't find it wasy how they seem to blacken the flow of spirit and will to live.

I can't truly begin to put into words how wonderful it feels to be showering in silvery light. I know it can be a fleeting moment. It could be longer but I amwriting this to cherish the moment.

It' a funny, wiggeldy, piggeldy path ......





Life can be hell, or life can be heaven, all dependent on your own outlook and vision

Bliss
XX

Getting there

Ramakrishna and Baal Shem Tov goes like this; Ego and depression are crows that nest on the branches of your tree. They fly away when you shake the tree by dancing and singing for God. [I dare add, the inner disco completes the job.]

I like this but ..... I find it difficult to shake off depression. It's clinical. And that means it's brain chemicals so not something that can simply be shaken out. I do agree that as the chemicals start to flow or regulate (with the help of medication) then it is necessary to dance and sing for God and it can come from within.
As for ego - I don't know how ego manifests during depression. I am usually too dark and stuck to see it. I suppose the fact that I just want to leave the planet is a selfish manifestation of ego. I basically can see only gloom and pointlessness. The narrow path, avoiding things and people that are destructive forces. And at the time all I can see is a majoority of people and things that are like that. It feels lonely and difficult. Even so this time I am able to see a bigger picture - God, universe, Higher Power. I am in touch and want to be outta here and simply a spiritual part of it - not having to deal with the narrow path. That's probably ego isn't it?


I have completed a 2nd draft of my essay and altough it will need some rearranging it is such a relief.
I need to get started on question 3 so at least the whole thing is complete ready to finalise with amendments and corrections tomorrow and send.
I will not go to the Write Angle at the West Meon book festical at this rate.
Need to walk LouLou and so on .....

Well lets see how I get on - it's 5pm until 7pm so I could get there for some of it I suppose.

Bliss

Walls and lives

The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

(story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, originally published in May 1892, in The New England Magazine.)

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity--but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency--what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus--but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.
There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden--large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself--before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.
He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the nursery at the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off--the paper--in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.
There comes John, and I must put this away,--he hates to have me write a word.
We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.
I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.
John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able,--to dress and entertain, and other things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!
And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!
At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.
"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental."
"Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there."
Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.
I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.
Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it KNEW what a vicious influence it had!
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.
I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.
The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother--they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.
But I don't mind it a bit--only the paper.
There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.
There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so--I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.
There's sister on the stairs!
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.
I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper.
It dwells in my mind so!
I lie here on this great immovable bed--it is nailed down, I believe--and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.
Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes--a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens--go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.
But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.
They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.
There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,--the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.
I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to.
I don't feel able.
And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way--it is such a relief!
But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.
John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.
There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper.
If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID move, and when I came back John was awake.
"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that--you'll get cold."
I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.
"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave before.
"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!"
"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"
"And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better!"
"Better in body perhaps--" I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.
"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?"
So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.
On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.
The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions--why, that is something like it.
That is, sometimes!
There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself,and that is that it changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots in through the east window--I always watch for that first long, straight ray--it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight--the moon shines in all night when there is a moon--I wouldn't know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake--O no!
The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.
He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the paper!
I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.
She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper--she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry--asked me why I should frighten her so!
Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she wished we would be more careful!
Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!
Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.
John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper.
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper--he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.
I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough.
I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.
In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.
There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.
It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw--not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paper--the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.
It gets into my hair.
Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it--there is that smell!
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.
It is not bad--at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.
It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house--to reach the smell.
But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell.
There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over.
I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round--round and round and round--it makes me dizzy!
I really have discovered something at last.
Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.
The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!
Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.
Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.
They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!
If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.
I think that woman gets out in the daytime!
And I'll tell you why--privately--I've seen her!
I can see her out of every one of my windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.
I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!
I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.
And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.
I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a time.
And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I can turn!
I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.
If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.
I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.
There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes.
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.
She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.
John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet!
He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.
As if I couldn't see through him!
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won't be out until this evening.
Jennie wanted to sleep with me--the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.
That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.
And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day!
We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.
Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.
She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.
How she betrayed herself that time!
But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me--not ALIVE!
She tried to get me out of the room--it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner--I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.
How those children did tear about here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.
I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes.
I want to astonish him.
I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!
But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!
This bed will NOT move!
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner--but it hurt my teeth.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!
I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.
I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even--there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you don't get ME out in the road there!
I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.
Why there's John at the door!
It is no use, young man, you can't open it!
How he does call and pound!
Now he's crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!
"John dear!' said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said--very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't", said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!"
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!


This poor woman. Apparently Charlotte herself suffered from depression. It's described very well I think. I wonder if all children would relate with me. I used to see people and faces in the patterns in curtains and in wall paper. So I could relate. I especially remember being at my Nana's and seeing faces in the wallpaper as I laid in bed. I would look at them and listen to the tick tock of the clock but heard more than a simple rhythmn. At times there would be a complex sub rhythymn within the tick tocks. I would beat out the patterns in my head, just lying there. I did that rather than be alone there I think.
I always felt a long way from my mum. I loved my Nana but I don't recall ehr ever being tactile with me. I slept in her bed with her and don't ever remember a cuddle. The faces in the patterns didn't ever scare me I don't think.
I liked this story in it's tragic sadness. So many people even today do not recognise depression. People suffer in a loving prison. Sad!

Going to bed.