At the moment my struggle to exist is difficult. I am some one who does not find the managing money or their affairs generally easy. I feel this is linked to long standing depressive anxiety more than anything else and this is not an excuse it is a reason. There is a difference. A lack of confidence and sense of direction are also relevant yet, I do not recall much in my life that could ever be seen as wise and kindly guidance linked to being my true self. Not much at all.
Yes, there has been downright carelessness on my part. I am human not divine and I do make mistakes even at times serious mistakes. I have also been damaged by a system that among other things will not accept that stress and its accompanying anxiety are very dangerous. I am on a well known anti depressant called Citalopram and have a past history of suicide attempt and ideation. My memory is also affected and has become unreliable and fragmentary. No, this is not just a sign of getting old.
A local housing association wants to take me down a road that could lead to a confliction situation involving court appearances/ eviction and God known what else. They want documentary proof of everything I say and this is (to my way of thinking) inevitable stressful. I have thought of suicide and do not feel safe as I write. Do I want to die? yes I do for the straightforward reason that this is no way to live.
The ignorance and indifference to the harmful effects of stress is, to say the least, unfortunate. Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is ignorance. Here, as with anxiety and depression we are not just talking about a mood experience, we are talking about an illness.
We are not talking about a flaw in one’s character (yes, I honestly do mean that) we are talking about debilitating conditions which can be and indeed often are life threatening.
The housing/benefit system must be made much more simple and less stressful. I have heard recently that this country has the highest suicide rate in Europe and I am by no means surprised.
Yet, what kind of society do we wish to live in? This is something many people will never have thought about. If we want something resembling a good society many accepted social norms must go. One being private property, common ownership would save time, health hazard and a good deal of the ‘common purse.’
Distribution of ‘the goods of creation’ should be based upon need and not greed. Occasionally I go out to local homeless people who sleep in car parks and doorways all the year round. Not long ago I approached a young man who was known to me. He was dead.
If the ‘curse of capitalism’ and its attendant greed, selfishness and inhumanity were replaced by common ownership and an ethic of social concern that young man might well be alive today. I might not be as unwell and close to suicide as I am and have been in recent times.
Too many, including the church I am afraid uphold and legitimise this institutionalised savagery. Then, the least said about the justice system the better perhaps. I have seen, heard and experienced far too much to know that an underlying problem is that we have no clear ideas as to what exactly we mean by justice. Justice can have nothing to do with revenge. Crime equals understanding not punishment and is it not the effort to understand that sends out the worst vibrations to the better of among us? Think about this. Between punishment for doing it and not doing it again there is a shadow. We need to enter that shadow with humility rather than continually walk by on the other side.
Community care for the mentally ill is not good. Too many vulnerable people slip through the net. I have had previous difficulties in this area and nothing has been done. I have had that feeling of being lost in a maze far too often. Call it mental illness, mental distress or whatever the words don’t matter all that much what matters is the stark and horrifying reality. Many years ago I read a book called ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ we need to be careful here, this is not an issue of social definitions it is stark reality and as T.S. Elliot once wisely reminded is “Human kind cannot survive too much reality” No, and social reality being what it is this any wonder?
Is it socially conditioned. To a large extent yes. There are such things as sensitive dispositions and I am glad there are. Yet Shelly’s ‘sensitive plant’ could not survive let along grow in many gardens and certainly not in the cruel concrete jungles that constitute social experience for the thinking, alive and aware period.
Do I want to die? I honestly do not know. The question is like a door slamming in my face. Yet, I do know that this is no way to live.
There are many like myself I am sure. Behind locked doors, along back streets, among many outcasts there is much weeping while the other side which people walk by on is populated by growing numbers. The law of the jungle seems to pervade every area of existence.
Well, I hope this will help someone in some way. Writing it has left me tired and in many ways deeply disturbed. I may add to it later.