Letters to Myself #7

Mental Health Awareness Week was from May 11-17th

I've done a lot of things to raise mental health profiles during this period over the last few years, but the one thing I've never been capable of achieving is an honest prose-based description of what my personal mental health issues entail. This week we are going to attempt to do just that.

I will refer at various points to childhood trauma, suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety. Please consider your own needs and act accordingly.

the Last Eight Years // three

I was going to do one more post after this, but it is now unnecessary. I've dreamt about times like these, about periods where all I was doing was new work, extending my remit and challenging myself to go past my last personal best in the Poetry Department. The events of the last seven days will live very long in the memory. Welcome to a VERY good year indeed.

The irony, yet again, is that I cannot really talk about ANY of it until the Art Trail happens in July. That's no big deal, and there is plenty of other stuff to cover the shortfall, including the Extra Special Bonus Round which was finally confirmed on Friday afternoon. We'll need to do some work for that as a matter of importance, before anything else of value is completed.

In fact, this week, a very great deal must alter for good.

I will reset this space in the next 48 hours. It's been a lot of making up as I go along since the start of May, and some harsh truths need to be addressed as a result. There's also a priority piece of work to finish and another two in progress which need to be completed this week, plus I've finally got a specialist on board for a health issue that I've been trying to address for a while.

Then we will return to scheduling, and doing stuff in advance, and preparing for what needs to be finished ahead of deadline, which is actually quite a lot. Mostly, at this stage, I am staring at things and moving them around in my head on an experimental basis and beginning to write stuff in my paper diary (because it does not stick digitally) and not panicking. Except, now a bit, I am.

If the last eight years have taught me anything it is to listen to my internal voice.

In fact if it were not for the insistence and strident nature of the internal voice since the latter part of 2016, we'd have not have gone as far as we have, and things will keep happening and we will continue to push and prod and encourage ourselves into spaces and out of comfort zones. My mental health issues will never be cured and are unlikely to ever go away.

Living with myself, therefore, needs to be a constant process of reinvention.