Recently in I'm a Dumb-Fuck Category

Yesterday I tackled, or started to tackle a rather difficult subject. For me anyway. It would appear that it petered out towards the end there, which is poor. My rather lacklustre mind was in charge yesterday. The two issues that I am going to tackle today are two things which put fear in both my heart and my mind. They keep me awake at night. I shall begin.

Periods

Yeah, they're not good - we don't need some stupid scientific research paper to tell us that. What is the point in them anyway? I don't want children, therefore, why can't my womb just shrivel up and die like it does in old women? No more periods, yay! It's never that fucking simple is it? I have two main fears when my period starts. One is "is it going to hurt?" Invariably the answer is "no", well, it does hurt, but I think that I'm being a pathetic bitch and only the pain of death is truly painful. The other is "Will I stain the bedsheets tonight?" The answer, invariably is...yes. And I did just that last night. Bollocks. What's more fucking annoying is that I had one of the good, deep and bloody expensive sheets on. Thankfully we also had a mattress protector on. Now the whole lot is in the washing machine, desperately hoping that the stains will come out. Arse.

That's the biggest thing I hate about periods - staining things. I can't use tampons over night because I sleep for too long, or rather I'm in bed for too long. I ain't getting up for no-one and nothing. Because of that, there is a fairly high risk of me staining something as I cannot control the way I lie when I'm in deep sleep. Double arse.

Then we have to couple that with my next issue.

Dreams

You may recall that recently, I wrote about an odd, or perhaps somewhat scary dream that I had? In fact, I wrote about it not once, but twice. (If those links don't take you directly to the articles, scroll down).

Well, last night I had another somewhat nasty dream. I feel as though it was going on for far longer than the tiny snippit that I remember. I woke up sweating, and tossed and turned at least three or four times. I just wished that it would all end. I vaguely recall looking at the clock once at something after 5am. All that I remember from this dream is a tiny part that could not have lasted more than a few seconds.

I was sat in our bedroom on a bed, I was fully aware that it was our bedroom, however it looked like one of the rooms in my parent's house. I was not alone. Just outside the room was someone that looked like a Police Officer. An American Police Officer at that, you know the Law and Order type. I was not in this bedroom for sleep or pleasure, I was working. Sat on the bed nonetheless though. I got up, wandered around and then called to the guy outside the door. I believe I said:
"Hey. There's a creaky floorboard here".

What a fucking wonderful observation there dear. Wow, you smack of sheer genius even in your dreams, you absolute dumb-fuck.

The Dude came in and looked between me and the floor. I then added:
"Think there might be a body here?" I received a rather curt reply, as though I just suggested something absolute preposterous.
"I don't fucking care." However, having said that, he started to pull the carpet back. But he did it in such a way that it appeared to be a complete chore and utterly below him. He began to rip up the floorboard.
"Yeah. There sure is." He added, putting his hand over his mouth. By this point, I was back sat on the bed. I didn't bother to get up to inspect. I just squealed something.
"You mean I've been sleeping here all these years, and there's been a body underneath the floor? Not that it bothers me you understand. I'm not that shallow. But how? How did no - one notice?"

And there it ended. I mean please, where the fuck did that come from? I know that we have a squeaky floorboard on my side of the bed, but that means nothing. I haven't seen Law and Order for at least a week, and I certainly haven't seen an episode where they've found a body under the floor of a bedroom, I'm not sure I've even seen that in CSI. Please. Where did that come from?

Could it be anything to do with the Audiobook that I ordered yesterday? It's all about murder, most horrid I believe. Could it have anything to do with the rather grim image on the front cover? Or is it more to do with the synopsis?

Couple a bad dream that was waking me up sweating at regular intervals, and making me toss and turn, with a period that normally fairly heavy on the first night, and you get a recipe for a staining disaster. My heart sank a little this morning when I saw it. Ah well. It's just fabric I suppose. I can always hope that my saliva did truly help in removing it.

Now please, no more disturbing dreams. I don't like them, I don't need them, and I certainly don't want them.

I kid you not. That bloody dream is still bothering me quite a bit.

I have since overcome the initial issues that I had with dealing with the emotions that I experienced upon waking, the emotions being linked to the loss of our jobs and our home. That part I seem to have accepted. However, the part about the whole episode that bothers me now is somewhat more shallow.

I'm still haunted by what I looked like. Fuck me - it's not a good look.

Tom Baker as The Doctor




John Hurt as played by Johnny Sessions




You know, I get the strange feeling that it wouldn't suit me.

I had a horrible night in bed. Really, really hot, tossing and turning, kept waking up every hour.

But the worst part...oh yes, the worst part was the dream. It was quite truly a horrible dream and left me feeling rather unwell and drained when I was awoken at 8am. I dreamt that for some rather unknown reason, we were thrown out of our house, and we had nowhere to live.

Ugh. It was truly a horrible dream. I knew, in the dream, why we were thrown out, but I cannot remember now. The main differences between the dream and reality seemed to be that the house was in an open field, rather than almost directly on a street, as it really is. The village and rest of the setting was exactly the same however. But I had a strange feeling that we were actually in Cambridge, near the university. Meh.

I would like to try to work out where all of this came from. What real life events relate to the occurances in my dream?

We recently had a bit of a change in our rental agreement. Could that be where the fear of being turfed out comes from? It shouldn't, because the change actually means the exact opposite. Could it be an underlying subconscious fear about the new overall head that we are getting later this year? I suppose it could be. What if he wants to get rid of one or both of us? Surely he wouldn't get rid of the Boss - the place would be fucked without him. As for me, I'd just have to get a proper job.

The setting of the house, being in a field. There didn't appear to be a driveway, and we had no vehicles. We seemed to walk everywhere. We walk most places in the village anyway in reality, but there wasn't even a space for a car. How strange. And when we were walking around the outside of the house after being thrown out it was just green grass, like a playing field. It was the playing field that I walk across on the way to work, but nothing about it has changed. I don't get that one.

The larger picture, of where the village was. It seemed to be in Cambridge, almost amongst the university buildings. I might be able to answer this one. A little while back I had a crazy idea that maybe I'd be capable of doing a PhD in English. This fable rang around my mind for quite a while. Stupidly. I know, I'm an absolute dumb-fuck. Well, yesterday I eventually realised that it really was a stupid idea, and thought that any thesis that I could produce would just be 200 pages of rubbish and in all likelihood I would become rather depressed about the whole thing, even if I were to be studying at Cambridge. It would be a waste of money, and I would feel like an absolute failure. That answers that one.

I looked like a bag lady. Actually no, I looked like a cross between Tom Baker as The Doctor, and John Hurt in Stella Street. The long coat, the long slightly messy hair, and a scarf. I was carrying a few bags on my back, I suppose all of the stuff that I could carry out of the house in one go. Where did this come from? We were talking about the new tax banding last night. Yet again the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Also, it probably relates to too much TV I'm sure, and my ideas of what I may look like if I stumbled upon hard times.

It was a horrible dream. A bit mum and dad eh? Waking up feeling really hot, sweating and in pain only to go back to sleep and resume a really nasty dream is not what I call a good night. A million fucking miles from a good night actually. Ugh. Just, uber, double, triple Ugh. Roll on a good, dreamless night, please.

And, did you know, that there is a species of Penguin that can fly?

Following my entry yesterday where I wrote some advice for my older self, I thought I would do the inverse. Also as it is approximately 23 years since I was conceived, I could do with a little advice, I'm sure. Although, let us not dwell on the conception thing too much.

...

That's enough.

Dear 13 year old,

Wow. 13 eh? You're getting on a bit now, and I'm sure you feel that way too. You probably feel invincible, like you can conquer the world, no - one can hurt you, like you're the most intelligent person in your class? Yes, well, none of those are true - get used to it now. Here is where the letter starts getting a little difficult to swallow.

As you are now 13, and it is now March, it will soon be Easter, as Easter fell in April of that year. On Good Friday you will board a coach and be taken to Austria for a school skiing trip. You leave the UK with hopes and dreams of a good time. Your parents will wave you off and look forward to seeing you return in 10 days. Everyone is hoping it will go smoothly. Well for starters you won't sleep at all on the coach, you won't eat properly and when the gearbox falls out of the coach half way up a mountain and you have to wait for a ski bus to pick you up, you will pass out. Enough of that. Easter Sunday will make its way round and all seems well, after a relatively good half day on the slopes something will occur that will change your life forever.

You will have a skiing accident, and a pretty fucking bad one at that. It will hurt and you will lose consciousness for a while. You will come round hanging off the edge of a catwalk ready to drop onto a bare rockface. Despite the minor inconvenience of losing one of your skis on the other side of the catwalk you will be thankful for it eventually when you realise that it was the tiny thread that stopped you from being dragged over the edge and dying. You will get up and carry on. Later that day you will call your parents and tell them about the accident. Over the next couple of days you will spend a lot of time in hospitals and trying to explain to your teachers what happened and what hurts. After two days of forced rest you will return to the slopes unfazed by the whole event. You dumb-fuck.

Life goes on, you return to England, to school and to normal life, but something is amiss, you feel like shite the whole time. You will start to spend many days whisked between the GP and the paediatric wards in various hospitals because all of their first thoughts are that you are dying, mainly from something like leukaemia. After months and months of tests and hospital visits, and of course the obligatory shouting matches between your parents and various doctors, you will get a referral to Great Ormond Street. In the May of the year that you are 14 you will sit your final SAT test, you will go home and you will never set foot in school again. Do it, don't try to carry on.

This is where the real advice starts girl. That was just an appetiser.

When you are seeing doctors, especially at Great Ormond Street, answer the fucking questions for yourself. Don't just sit there with the eponymous stupid dumb-fuck look on your face and wait for your parents to answer for you. I don't care how bloody ill you are, I don't care if you are struggling to stay upright in your wheelchair, just answer the fucking questions. If you don't, you will waste almost six years in hospitals being too scared to answer the questions for yourself and you will end up a slave to your parents' ideas of what is wrong with you.

Be open with medical professionals and with your parents. When they tell you that you have M.E., or CFS or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or whatever they are calling it now, do not just openly accept it and crawl back to your little hovel. Talk about it, tell them how you feel about hearing those words. Tell them how devastating the past year of not knowing has been. Tell your parents to shut the hell up and stop feeling for you. Don't try to hide from or shun psychiatric help, because despite what a lot of people with M.E. would tell you, it actually will help you.

Realise now that your school, Dover Grammar School for Girls, really do not give a flying fuck about you. They only care about their results, and because you weren't going to score them the 13 A-Grades at GCSE they will just dump you in the shit. Realise that now. Don't dwell on it. They are not worth the energy of getting angry. And they are also lying when they say that you are required, by law, to take a Modern Foreign Language at GCSE level. And that distance learning course that you are going to take when you are 16/17? Yeah, don't bother. A GCSE in Modern World History might sound interesting, but you will lose the certificate and it will be worthless. Also, by the age of 22 you will have forgotten all of it.

Relish every second that you have with your therapist when you start to see her. She will be the one woman in your life who will unlock all of your secrets and help you to understand both yourself and the world. She is worth more than her weight in gold. Don't hide anything from her, it's not big and it's not clever. And when you get onto the adult mental health services at age 16, enjoy your time with that woman, she's nice and quite helpful, she did in fact start a new track in your life. Thank her for it more than you think is possible. And while you will spend a year pretty much completely bedbound and totally reliant on anti-depressants, life is not that bad. They will help you realise that.

You're now getting into your later teenage years. Enjoy the cruises that your brother takes you on - they are fun, you have to admit. Start to act more like an adult and less like a pathetic little girl. It's in there somewhere. And TALK TO YOUR PARENTS for fuck's sake. I know they aren't the most open or easy to talk to people, but please, you will have a far better relationship with them if you talk, and now that you're almost an adult, when better to start? They feel as though their little girl is slipping away, and their last few years of having a "little girl" have been marred by illness, just be kind and open to them.

Aged 17, you will start to assert yourself a lot more. I would not normally advocate keeping secrets, because that is the kind of thing that gets you into trouble. However, there is one secret that you will keep from everyone except your Therapist, your Brother and your future Husband. When you feel well enough you will travel to London regularly on the train. Why, you may ask? You feel the urge to. You feel calm, free and at ease in London. It will probably the one of few things that makes you carry on with life. Because of all the years that you have spent keeping your mouth shut over your true feelings, waiting for your parents to answer for you, it won't be difficult to keep it a secret. You will grow to realise that London is the only place on Earth that you feel truly safe in your own skin. You will never tell your parents about your jaunts to London because they would not approve. To them you are still a vulnerable, scared and pathetic little girl - running away to the Big Smoke is not the best way to win their approval.

As you are now in your late teens, you are at the age when everyone makes some stupid mistakes and they learn from them. They might hurt people, they might not. You might be able to keep them secret, you might not. I won't advise you on these mistakes, but I would hope that from having read this far into the letter you will realise that you really need to think before you make your decisions. Snap decisions are stupid, and while they may feel great in the short term, a few weeks later they could ruin everything. Go ahead, make those mistakes. Some of them might will hurt, but you will learn far more from them than if you never make them.

Aged 18 you will be introduced to a man a couple of years your senior. He will live 100 miles away from you, but that's fine, you can visit, after all you are well versed on how to use transport to and around London. Ponder for a moment, why didn't your parents suspect anything odd when you signed up for an OysterCard despite only going on sanctioned visits to London a few times each year? I vehemently recommend that you start dating this guy. One day, after visiting him you just won't return home. You never officially "move out", you just don't go home. Your parents never say a word about this to you, they just silently accept it.

A little over two and a half years after you meet this nice dude you will marry him. In the lead up to your wedding ignore every crock of shit that your parents trot out about how your wedding should be. It's your wedding. Fr. Peter will die when you are 19, you will be devastated, as you should be, he was the grandfather you never had. Without Fr. Peter anything that your parents have to say about your wedding is bunk, just ignore it. Get married and live happily ever after. Love him, because he sure does love you.

While this may seem just a letter telling you what is going to happen in the next nine to ten years of your life, it isn't just that, there is some advice in there too. Plus, I left a huge amount of stuff out. If I could chronicle every experience, good, bad and ugly to you, then I would, but that would be boring. There should be no shame in making mistakes, but when you make a mistake do not hide it from everyone, that is really stupid. Do not regret the things you do, only the things that you do not.

Life may seem hopeless from the age of approximately 14 onwards. Trust me, it isn't. Don't bother considering taking those pills, nor running away from home because of arguments with your parents. Stop resenting your Father when your therapist tells you that you should. Learn who you are first. Write more, even if it is just your feelings. Write stories and poems, read them to people or allow people to read them. Realise a bit younger than 20 that you don't like people, and you like women even less - don't try to force yourself into friendships that you are not truly interested in. Be yourself. Talk to yourself. Don't be scared of your visual thinking or the photographic way in which your mind works, don't be scared of the colours you see everywhere, just remind yourself that you feel sorry for everyone else who does not think or visualise like you do - their lives must be really insipid.

Don't ever think that you know what you want to be because you don't. Don't take the OU Course DD100, it will be a waste of nine months. Read more books. Read more poetry. Don't be afraid to sing in front of people, or to attempt to do accents or impressions. Secretly you know that you have a good voice, and you also know that you have a huge range. Don't resent your teenage years, nor your family. Your sister, yes, she's an evil cunt, but not anyone else. Don't do things just because you think that is what everyone else wants you to do. No - one else really matters when it comes to life choices. Realise that you cannot learn in the normal way that everyone else does, you just cannot learn or think in words. It will distress you and you will think that you have not learnt anything. Trust me, you have.

It might not seem possible, but try to enjoy this decade. You will come out of it as the slightly harder but more reflective 22 year old that I am. You will have better thinking and learning skills. Assert yourself and do not be afraid of telling people that you are a free spirit - there is no shame in it. Use that utterly huge, vast and ready-to-go brain of yours. You will get there in the end, and you'll be pleased about where you are aged 22. Being ill wasn't actually that bad, you have to admit. It sucked at the time, but without it, you wouldn't be half the person you are now. Don't fight it, you won't win.

In ten years time, I will write you another similar letter. I hope that you will take my advice on all of these and that when I return in ten years time I don't want to see the myriad of different mistakes that I made.

Oh yeah, and I expect a few postcards along the way.

This is an issue that has plagued me for years, quite possibly since I was a child. I have always been quite hard on myself. That is, in terms of self-denial and self-denigration. When at school and of course, like everyone else trying my hardest, I never thought it was quite good enough. Now, doing this OU course, trying my hardest, it still isn't good enough. I'm sure that to most people 80% is a bloody wonderful mark and I know that there are some people who, no matter how freaking hard they try, they cannot get marked at 80% and tend to fall somewhat short. But you know, 80% isn't 90%, nor is it 100%, therefore it is not good enough. I also appreciate that by sustaining a mark at 80% and above I will in all chances graduate with a first class honours degree. Absolutely wonderful.

However, I know that I have it in me to do far better than 80%. I know that I can get 90%, and I'm sure that if I ever do get 90% I will be convinced of my abilities to get 95%. I just know that I have it in me. It is nestled safely somewhere in my brain, quite possibly between the cortex that is attempting to animate my voice some more and the other part that is attempting to release my sense of humour. It's okay now, you don't need to be scared of your sense of humour any longer. But my problem seems to be that I think about it all too hard. A case in point will follow.

This morning, before 9am I was sat at this very desk, using this very computer and staring at a blank Word document wondering where the hell I was going to start. I had my best gormless, or what I really much prefer to call my stupid dumb-fuck face on. I must have looked like a grade A retard. Over the subsequent five hours I went through a myriad of emotions, including dumb-fuck (for me, that's an emotion), through to worried, and then it all subsiding and easing off. And then, an epiphany! All of a sudden, out of nowhere, 1pm occured. Fuck me. 1pm. Earth shattering. And this "1pm" brought with it some amazing prophecies. I watched a couple of things on YouTube (I am becoming far too reliant on YouPube) to take my mind off the essay, and this seemed to change something in me. Immediately, on the stroke of 1pm I reopened the Word document and proceeded to write approximately three pages worth of coherent, logical and almost scholarly prose on globalisation. In fact, in about 20 minutes I wrote a third of the entire essay.

This is not the first time that I have noticed this phenomenon. Many times throughout my life I have found that when I stop thinking about the subject in hand, then I am able to come out with some good stuff. It works for humour, memories and it would appear, essays. My subconscious seems to be far more powerful than my conscious. Perhaps my problem does not stand in not trying hard enough? Maybe I should try less hard than I do? In fact, the first essay in which I got 80% I wrote the vast majority of while half pissed and very late on a Friday evening.

During the forays of my mind, which are far more common than me being totally conscious, I attain some pretty high standards of ideas. Once I become fully conscious again they tend to depart. I am beginning to conclude that thinking is not my forte. I could never be a philosopher. If I were, I would have a permanent dumb-fuck look on my face.

And I am beginning to realise that my mind is capable of far more than I understand. Even just the vast amount of information stored in there scares me. On my current playlist I have 51 songs with words. I know every single word to each one of those songs, I also know every single little nuance of each piece of music. And, subconsciously I have probably taken in all of the information about globalisation that I have read over the past few weeks, I just don't realise it. It's in there, and it's waiting to come out. It will come out when it is ready. I hope that it won't wait until after 8th April, when the essay is due.

I am capable of far more than I could ever imagine. I would probably be capable of a PhD, but I don't think I would ever seriously attempt one. I don't want to push the boundaries of accepted scholarly knowledge about Victorian Decadent literature, poetry and prose. No. I would much rather entertain. Even if it is just a giggle from the Boss. That's better than three letters after my name.

If this were a letter to my future self, aged approximately 25 to 30, I would say:
Stop being so damn hard on yourself. It's not worth it. You will only end up with a poorer relationship with yourself than you already have. Trust me, those little moments of genius are going to be worth hanging around for.

Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.
— Robert Louis Stevenson