Flapjack State

Sick of all my judges

I’ve got this energy beneath my feet
Like something underground’s gonna come up and carry me
I’ve got this sentimental heart that beats
But I don’t really mind that it’s starting to get to me now

And I’m sick of all my judges
They’re so scared of letting me shine

These lyrics are taken from the title track of Sam’s Town by The Killers. You may have one of three reactions to the mention of this band. You may be indifferent to them. You may love them as I’ve recently begun to. Or you may hate them passionately, and believe it highly suspect that I could find anything good about them at all.

For a long time I’ve felt an incredible stigma for listening to what other people consider to be shit music. I used to listen to a range of embarrassing stuff, but I kept it to myself. If I ever told anyone about it, I would be ridiculed. Nowadays I regularly show music to other people because I desperately want the validation of a shared music taste.

But somewhere I’ve forgotten that my music taste is personal, and doesn’t need to be validated by anyone.

It cannot be ignored that shit music expresses the way I feel almost all of the time. My emotions are cheesy, predictable and sometimes embarrassing. My latest shit band actually combines this cheesy nostalgia with confident defiance, which is what I have been missing. I need to have the security to say I’m incredibly sentimental and I’m proud to be this way. 

When people laugh at me, they laugh because they are uncomfortable. For someone to be genuinely in touch with themselves, even the embarrassing parts, is abnormal. It seems we uphold established ideas so readily that we end up hiding from our true selves. 

Every time I’m embarrassed of myself, I should know that I’m on the right track. The new approach should be a simple statement to those who make me feel ashamed: you’re missing out on great music. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t form their own opinions. They are the people crushed under the weight of social expectations. 

Not those they ridicule. 

My life is a huge adventure to me, and it needs a soundtrack that shows it! I can soar above everything that could bring me down. My path is only determined by these questions: am I doing justice to the person I want to be? Do I spend my time on things I enjoy, or do I spend it on things I want to be seen to enjoy?

I long to tell people in the same position as me to go out and find the music that speaks to them. It doesn’t matter what people think of it. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed by what you cherish. Music should be valued by how much it validates and explores your emotions. 

Only then will you feel happy and confident in who you are, only when you value yourself regardless of how socially acceptable that person is.

Here’s my favourite thing about this post. The points in bold mirror the bold lyrics almost exactly, but they were written before I  had listened to the lyrics. The song had been playing in the background. The first verse is also remarkably similar to the experience I described in Grounding. 

In other words, the sound and emotion of this music inspired this post. But, more importantly, it inspired me to express the exact same points as the artist, using some of the same words, without even knowing. 

And if that’s not a good illustration of why you should listen to music that reflects how you feel, I don’t know what is. 

365 days of my mental health

**Trigger warning for depression and suicide**

On the weekend of May 21st 2011, I became so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. It was the culmination of something that had come and gone for years beforehand, but I had never thought it to be an illness before. After all, I had no reason to be depressed. Other people experienced far more hardship, and subsequently felt far more depressed. I was just feeling sad.

Somehow I convinced myself that this was normal when I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom at university drinking whiskey. But now I knew something was wrong. Now my body was physically refusing to function, and this had never happened before. I made the decision to make a doctor’s appointment, and I went there with the intention of getting antidepressants. I was dissociated beyond belief.

I walked to the campus health centre in a complete haze, frequently walking out in front of cars. Though I’d been having suicidal thoughts for some time, it was mostly my lack of grip on reality that caused this. But I figured that if I did get hit by a car, it wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps the pain would break me out of the dream my reality had become.

The summer was incredibly difficult. I wasn’t really capable of positive experiences, only ones that were less extremely negative. I went back to university with the intention of doing my best, but I quickly fell behind. I stopped attending my practical module, and my tutor suggested I take another one in the second term. This didn’t help, and it wasn’t long before I had to tell my group about my mental health issues in order to justify my absence.

In January 2012 I experienced my first major highs since the previous May. In fact, they were the biggest highs of my life. This is what convinced me I was bipolar, and my doctor believed me. In late March I started to think about the Autism Spectrum. Tests, research and conversations with autistic people confirmed my suspicions, and managed to explain so much more than any of my previous diagnoses.

Tomorrow I am being assessed for autism by an educational psychologist. One year after I realised I was neuroatypical, I may be about to have concrete proof. My theory is that my depression was caused by extreme amounts of anxiety, as I forced myself into the stress of university life. My elevated moods, on the other hand, were caused by hyper-focusing on an autistic obsession.

I’m about to have an explanation for everything that has happened in the past year. When I know the reasons I’ve been depressed at various points in my life, I can prevent it happening in the future. A year ago I did tests to see if I was autistic, but I over-scored in social measures because I answered with how I wished I was.

The same tests now reveal a fairly unambiguous picture of autism.

Everything has come full circle. I always felt like I was in control, but then I totally lost it. Now I can feel when I’m becoming anxious or over-stimulated, and I know not to push myself any further. I’ve found myself back at the place I thought I was to begin with, with the diagnosis I had suspected all along.

Real control doesn’t lie in pretending you’re invincible, but in taking good care of yourself and knowing when to quit.

I guess that’s the lesson for this year!

A Dose of Dissociation

Today’s gratuitous self-diagnosis is related to dissociation. There are a range of experiences with dissociation, and this made me realise I’m down the more severe end. Today nothing seems real, and I can’t seem to connect with reality at all. I originally thought this was part of depression, but not all my friends get depersonalisation too.

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I really don’t need to be threatened

I’ve just been lounging in my room today, steadily tidying the room when I have the energy to do it. My brother is coming back after a weekend away, and I have the room back to how he left it (however untidy that may be).

My dad comes in and says “That’s not really straight is it! Fucking tidy it! Put that back in the loft. You shouldn’t need telling three times!”

“No, I know, I don’t,” I reply sarcastically, with an underlying irony he fails to detect.

A minute or so later, I haven’t moved an inch because chores are taxing enough without people shouting at me to do them. My willingness to co-operate has been reduced to zero. He shouts up the stairs, “are you doing it?”

“Yes,” I say, still not moving from where I was originally sat.

“You better do it,” he says, “or I’ll kick your ass!”

Is the location of several inanimate objects in my room really a reason to threaten me? Is it really a reason to walk through the house shouting about how fucking useless I am? Every time we have these arguments I remind him that I don’t actually need telling at all, because I do things in my own time. Shouting at me just makes me feel terrible and even less likely to carry out the request.

People who threaten violence do not deserve favours from other people.

I put the sleeping bag back into the loft, trying not to let the negativity bring me down. The level of unreasonableness is off the scale. I shouldn’t need threats of physical violence, however empty they may be, in order to be motivated. My mum came in and, seeing the room, said “that’s not very good is it!” 

I know that my brother doesn’t want to come back to an untidy room. I was planning to finish it off when my dad is out collecting him from the train station. But, of course, the proof of my inadequacy is that I don’t do it when under pressure from my parents and at the precise time they give the order.

I’m 20 years old. What kind of adolescent shit am I being put through.