I did something very rash this afternoon. I paid to take Dad out to the local cinema to see the new Star Trek film. For those who aren't already aware, I hate public spaces. I hate the noise, the crowds, the mess, the stink, the brightness, the speed at which everything moves and well, everything about it.

It's not a mental condition to be scoffed at because it ruins your life and that's before agoraphobia has crept in through the back door.

Photo by MGL

I took it upon myself to do this today not for myself but for my Dad. He wanted to see the film but didn't want to go alone, and I felt bad for grumbling 'no' when he asked. I was also spurred on by Matt Haig and his blogs on Booktrust, which revealed what it's like to live with mental health problems.

After reading what Matt had to say, I did something that I find difficult; I thought outside of myself. I come across as a narcissist but it's not an option. I have hard time connecting to my feelings and understanding that people have feelings too, and how that feels. The will to empathise is there but the capacity isn't, not in its entirety.

So I paid a stupid amount of money for cinema tickets, packed my bag, dosed myself with Vallium, wrapped myself up (cinemas are always fucking cold), and donned my shades.

I made sure to book the seats just where I needed them too, just in case I needed to leave. We settled into the screen room with a drink and popcorn (I wanted an authentic experience for my Dad because it's been so long) and sat through the film. I'm sure he enjoyed it but I spent most of the time fidgeting and flinching. It was too loud, too bright and the things on the screen were too big and moving too fast. I'd forgotten my earplugs so pulled my hood up to muffle the sounds, intermittently plugging my ears, and distracting myself with a Chunky KitKat whilst trying not to vomit, and figuring out where I could vomit should the bile arise.

In addition to this massive sensory overload, I was sitting in a big, loud room surrounded by strangers. I found this abnormal as opposed to a natural human thing to do.

The film finished and to top off the day, I got Dad and I some nosh from a fast-food place. The whole experience, film, food and all, was hard. It was uncomfortable. It was something that I never want to do again because I gained no pleasure, confidence or strength from it.

There are many, including the mental health folk who presume to know what's best for me, who will argue, until the cows come home, that this exposure is a triumph. It's a great leap, a step forward, the beginning of my recovery.

No it's fucking not.

I'm exhausted. I'm stressed. I'm traumatised by having to be around people in the dark for that long.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is all about taking gloomy, negative thoughts, challenging them and turning them into life-affirming, positive components for the recipient to absorb and live by. What I did today is a typical exercise: face your fears, challenge them, destroy them. The only problem is, it's not that simple in my case.

Assessments for my mental health have been inadequate. There are things that haven't been explored that should have been, which makes for an incomplete and messy picture of what's going on. And in the meantime, I'm following the CBT rules because they're the only thing I have. Only, they're crap and don't work properly. I spend hours every week challenging my negative thought processes and, yes come out with more helpful alternatives, though I remain haunted by one thing.

It all feels wrong.

I've tried challenging this but the result is the same. Why isn't this working? This article explained a lot. Basically it says that whilst CBT can be really effective, it can sometimes leave a patient in disarray. Mental health issues might be too complicated for such a straightforward approach or the individual may have most likely been misdiagnosed. The therapist might not be looking at the bigger, humane picture. Psychiatrists might decide that an individual isn't 'suitable' (awkward, unpredictable, unwilling) for CBT; other conditions can also impact on the effciency and success of CBT, both mental and physical. For example, I'm totally confused as to how I'm meant to work within new cognitive parameters when my social phobias, agoraphobia and other health problems not only contradict the therapy but outright subvert it.

How is it possible to sit in a cinema and be happy, relaxed, feel safe, put your fears in place when it all feels so wrong? And why isn't it okay for all these things to feel wrong? Where are the rules, written in black and white, enshrined in law, stating that I am legally bound to be happy about situations I dislike with all of my heart?

Why is it so hard for people to accept that we are not all the same, that others thrive on things that a lot of people would lose their sanity over?

I don't want to be an isolated recluse for the rest of my life. I would like joy and close friends, a partner, a safe home and activities which both challenge and stimulate me. Oh, and a pug named Horatio. And a small, manageable garden.

I don't want loads of money, a flash car or fame; I don't want to go out drinking in crowded bars or eat at fancy restaurants; I don't want to be directly in the public spotlight; I don't want to go to the cinema again (seriously, I paid over twice the price of the DVD which will be out in a few months, on the tickets alone); I don't want to be part of the massive global world because I don't believe in it (I believe in small communities); I don't want to have the same cultural interests as everyone else, or the same sense of humour, or the same outlook on life. I don't want to fight or be manipulated.

I want to be me.

I know that I have conditions to manage and that their certainty is a matter of opinion. I'm prepared to explore these conditions within parameters that stretch me but don't endanger my stability. I'm scared. I know what I want but everything that's meant to be helping me get there is leading me in an unsuitable direction. All the professionals in the world can insist but if what they say feels wrong, if my solar plexus aches and that voice in my head says

“uh Sam, buddy. Nah…”

I'm not about to do shit that I don't want to. Anything or anyone that states I have to and is not within moral and ethical standards, or within the law (this one worries me because mental health law disables more than it enables) for insisting that I should, can jump ship. They're breaching my human rights, that fundamental right to say 'no'.

I won't have that taken from me. And that attitude feels so, so right.

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Entropy – Copyright Sam Russell 2013

I think change is a beautiful thing. I’d hate to be stuck in the same pattern and denied variation.

I spend much of my time suspended between stasis and change, and I can become impatient – frustrated – when I have to wait, or worse, when I get left behind.

Getting left behind is what I dread the most. It happens when things change too fast, when the world speeds ahead for who knows what reason, toward an ambiguous and mostly undefined goal.

I’ve been distressed recently by the rapidity of the publishing industry, wh

ich I know pretty much nothing about. I’d say I want to learn more about it but that’d be a whopping great lie.

The fragments I’ve read about ‘getting published’ have done little more than convey despair, pointlessness and the steady dilution of the things I hold close to me: writing and books. That’s enough depression for one week, thanks.

I don’t know why it is but everything is now now now; writers come and are swallowed, impoverished by the system which insists that to be of value, they have to give everything and receive little. Writing has become prostitution.

I don’t agree with this, neither do I agree with the increasing digitalisation of reading and publishing.

For fuck’s sake, put the pissing phone/tablet/reader down and pick up a real book. Don’t buy it from Amazon; go into a real bookshop, preferably independent, and pay the RRP. Give a fraction of your money (it literally is a fraction) to the person who has spent thousands of hours working for you. The Writer.

This rapid sort of change makes me look at the world and think:

Shit, we’re really going down the pan with this one.

It’s change that happens too fast and without thought. I guess it seemed a good idea at the time to go the whole digital hog with books, but now that success is degrading the entire arrangement. It’s the equivalent of inviting your funny alcoholic mate to the party and not taking note of their raging alcoholism because you’re too busy enjoying their lighter, funnier side. An hour later, they’re wankered and pissing in the kitchen sink; they’re vomiting down the back of the sofa, they groping your gran, and you’re looking at this mess and thinking:

What have I done?

I’m looking at the chances of getting my work, my novel that is, published and am starting to back away. There are way too many drunks befouling my bathroom. The change is gathering speed at such a rate that I have no idea what’s going on.

When things change, we adapt. Sometimes it’s a sudden change and sometimes it takes a few years but the adapting part is never instant. It doesn’t happen the moment the world makes a U-turn. Adaptation takes time.

How then, can we adapt when things progress at a ridiculous rate? We can’t.

I had a breakdown about 5-6 years ago and I’m still not in a state where I can say:

I’m over it, have recovered and can cope.

I’m still adapting to the changes that came about as a result of that collapse. The same goes for my writing and aspiring to publish.

It’s got to the point now where I’m so uncertain of my readership and the industry people I’ll have to thrill (and I’ll have to meet criteria so don’t give me shit about being myself), that I don’t know where to place my fingers on the pen. I don’t know what words are the right words.

Writing has never been a machine. For all the prats out there who believe that computers will replace talented humans when it comes to writing, I’m sorry. You’re utopian future is bollocks. Even if robots do start churning out fiction, it’ll be weak, commonplace material aimed at a mindless demographic.

And humans will still be writing.

So what should be changing? That’s not for me to say, really. I like new ideas, forms and structures. I like writing which challenges and inspires, writing that splits the world open and makes me think:

That’s important. I must remember that. I must bring it into my life so that my perspective develops and my stagnant opinions can evolve.

There’s no escape from technology and I wouldn’t want to be rid of, say, my blog here. This is how I communicate with all of you lovely, unknown people. I wouldn’t want to dismiss my plans for a website either, or delete the Tumblr blog I have which is dedicated to the processes of writing my novel.

Technology in this form is helpful because it communicates. I know I’ve simplified that. Kindles communicate too but they’re so impersonal. I’m looking at my phone right now, knowing it’s helpful to keep me in-touch with the rest of the world, but feeling burdened by it because it doesn’t actually connect me to anyone. It’s a cracked simulacrum.

Where was I. Adapt or Die. That’s harsh but sadly, applicable. If you don’t run up your own arse, you’re done.

I’m not running. I’m standing still because I know the real value of change coming slowly. I know that the old ways are old because they’ve survived and proven themselves over decades, centuries.

I won’t die because I refuse to follow the masses as they scream into the future. I might get some funny looks because I still use a pencil and notebook to write in instead of some expensive, rigid app, but I don’t give a toss.

I like walking. I like tradition, solitude, sunrise on clear winter mornings after a long night, the smell of salt from the river. I like things that endure, decay, recycle. I like how much time there is and how I don’t have to spend each second to the max because someone made a meme about it.

I like living slowly. I like adapting slowly. And everyone dies in the end, no matter the pace we move at.

Dilettante n.

This is a fragment of one of my bookshelves. It holds a variety of topics, though they cluster around a particular interest.

I wouldn’t call myself a dilettante; I have an intense preoccupation in what I do. It just happens that I have a broad web of interests. 

But like any web, there is a center.

My fear is that having my attention dedicated to so many different subjects dilutes my writing, and can deter others from taking me seriously. 

On my Bachelor’s degree, my supervisor was always telling me how I’m taking too much into one space, how I was all over everything like a wild fire. I didn’t disagree because it was true but in that moment, I felt as if I were less than my fellow students for having an interminable fascination with a diverse area of subjects.

To this day, the thing that I have never been able to state clearly is how all of my interests connect. 

The thing with my web is that whilst it has a center, it’s not fixed. Neither is it singular. It moves, duplicates, shudders from one dimension to another; I can be looking at it without realizing that I’m actually observing a shade that it has left behind, to trick me.

What interests me is undetectable. It cannot be pinned. It cannot be named. I follow the breadcrumbs it leaves behind.

If this leaves me open to scrutiny for not being focused enough, then I question why it is so important for everything to be sharp, on point and certain. 

Being diverse does not mean you can’t be an expert. It does not mean that I can’t become an expert in tracking, in feeling my way through a discourse that is in constant flux. 

It doesn’t mean that the way I engage with it is wrong because I don’t do it like everyone else.

My passion for this absence is acute. I challenge anyone, right now, to find it and define it.

The more I think about my circumstances, the more I am unnerved by how much they're costing me.

Two perspectives are obvious: the personal and the financial. How much is living with mental and physical illness really costing me? How much is it costing the services that support me?

On a personal level, the cost is enormous. Apart from missing out on all the things that a healthy individual my age would be engaging in today, like socialising and going to the gym, the deeper deficit comes in forms of things that are mostly undetected: my crippled self-esteem, the lack of motivation, bouts of confusion; the long-term effect of medication on my organs, the emotional damage that comes when another treatment / doctor / approach fails to deliver.

That's a mere handful which can be plucked from the pile. Other things too, things that we all take for granted, are missing. Smiling, for example. Feeling happy. Even when I do manage to muster a laugh or a grin from the depths, it's underpinned by the sensation that it's not the done thing – I feel like an outsider for expressing a positive emotion through muscular gestures in my face. Sometimes it's because I don't believe I should be smiling but mostly it's because there's more to be anxious, worried and depressed about.

My favourite 'positive thinking' fact that's been slung at me over the years is:

“You know, it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.”

Yes well, my face gets a better work-out than yours. And there's another few pennies thrown out: optimism, empathy and gratitude. And these pennies all add up in the end.

I recently did a quick psychology measurement scale to give a general idea of how much stress I experience in my life and thus how susceptible I am to potentially developing chronic illness. A bit of a no-brainer considering I already live with chronic health problems but I took it anyway, being geared toward bettering myself.

After tallying everything up, my score came out at a respectable 1,198 points. Then I read what that number meant and almost lost control of my bladder, partly from panic but mostly from amusement: scores over 300 are a general indication that the individual will probably develop some form of chronic illness in their lifetime.

Well blow me down. And the scale whilst you're at it.

It turns out that life experiences are stackable, which accounts for my high ( LOL, high) total. I'm pretty much up to my eyeballs in Stress Debt, which makes my overdraft look like a fluffy, goose down duvet. I'm not yet thirty – what is the interest on all of this? What is this going to continue to cost me and are the bailiffs going to come round any time soon?

I expected this revelation to cause me even more problems but it's done the opposite. Like my Mum who quit smoking immediately after her first major heart attack (she wasn't much older than me), I've taken hold of the situation and started rethinking how I live, breathe, eat, walk, talk and think.

Change comes with a price but if it means I can settle some of these massive personal debts, I'm willing to spend a bit to save a lot. A lot being my life.

Stress and all of its associated diseases, kill.

On a strictly financial front, the cost of my being in such a mess is just as impressive. I'm not about to present a firm, sociological dissection of my care, treatment and support but instead, state a few realities and ask some questions about them. I'll start with something basic.

Drugs

In an unfortunate twist, I take minimal medication because I can't tolerate many of the options available on the NHS. My most recent foray into chemical rejection has left me heart-broken; an anti-inflammatory finally helps me to feel a bit more human but causes undesirable complications, meaning I have to stop taking them and go back to being in constant pain.

Bummer.

I hardly made a dent in the prescription meaning that at least three weeks of pills are now to be returned to the pharmacist and destroyed. What a waste. Although my other meds are basic, they still cost a bundle to have them prescribed and I take them every day. I renew my prescription every three to four weeks out of necessity.

I wonder how much money it takes to fund such a basic set of pills and then how much more is thrown away when left-overs have to be destroyed because they're not suitable for me. How much money could be saved if:

• My doctors made a conscious effort to make sure drugs they prescribe me won't destroy my innards or send me off on a psychotic trip. Okay so they'd have to spend more time getting to know me and reading my notes (doing their job?) but those are short-term chips compared to the long-term mess of dicking around;
• More research was done see which chemical-based treatments actually work.
  

Appointments

Every time I go to my GP or to see consultants, they get paid. I don't need to mention the scandals surrounding pay, do I? No? Fabulous.

When I do pay a visit to these people, and it's a regular thing, not a lot happens. There are no real developments, just the same old questions and techniques born from a lack of medical understanding and, I sense, a certain degree of unwillingness to take on board the criteria of another impossible disease.

Cancer used to be impossible. Now it's getting its arse kicked.

Hospital appointments get me thinking about how much time, money and resources would be saved if the doctors I saw went just that little bit further in trying to get to the bottom of my conditions. Late last year, one doctor did just that and I got some results which was fantastic until another doctor shrugged the new findings off as 'marginal' and sent me home in a bubbling pot of misery and pain.

Since then, I've requested a second opinion because I don't believe that dismissive consultant was right to leave me 'as is' and wait for things to develop beyond their criteria of what they clinically believe to be significant. I'm talking about a number here. What they're missing out in their opinions is my quality of life, the test results that all support one another and my roaring family medical history.

If I were a doctor presented with a case identical to the one I, as a patient, am facing now, I would throw the 'criteria book' out of the window and tend to the patient. Not every patient needs the same level of care and that's my point. Averages have turned specialist consultants into glorified GPs who do little more than order blood tests, recommend more drugs and then send you home.

Tests and Treatment

I lost count of how many blood tests I had last year. So far in 2013, I've had a routine check of the standard stuff: cholesterol, vitamin levels, liver function, and a specialised request to check my rheumatoid factor and for any rogue anti-bodies. I have these things checked every four to six months because things need to be observed. I have an illness of some description, after all.

After giving what I imagine to be nearly a pint of blood for such tests in 2012, I started pushing for more proficient investigations and got them. That's how I found out my thyroid gland is doing fine – an excellent thing to eliminate in the game of 'Guess the Mystery Illness'. At the same time, I discovered something that would have remained buried had it not been for my insistence that they check.

When you have a condition that can't be directly diagnosed, you do things in reverse. You make sure all other systems are functioning before sliding into acceptance. It'd be stupid not to but that's what my doctors have so far done with me.

It's only down to meeting an excellent GP who listens, and pushing consultants to their patient etiquette limit, that I've been able to get specific areas of enquiry addressed. How much have these hospitals wasted on pointless tests when they should have been honing in on trace abnormalities?

Yes, it must have cost a fortune to have an isotope scan on my thyroid but it doesn't matter; I have a prolific history of it in my family and to have found no hint of disease in that area is a blessing. A potential candidate for my trashed health has been eliminated and psychologically, I have been lifted from the folds of worry. Debt = settled.

That's only one example of the numerous avenues I'm exploring in order to find out what is going on with me. It could be that I have all of these other tests done and they still find nothing, but I'd rather just do it and know that my heart has no defects or blockages (again, this sort of problem is a good friend of my family. A lover, in fact) and be certain that I'm not walking around with a treatable condition that could be prevented from doing even more harm the older I become.

As for treatment, it's hard to see where to turn when you don't know what's wrong with you, which is why proper investigation is so important and why doctors shouldn't be so dismissive of approaches that fall outside of a fringe department, the ones specifically designed to send people like me to when a doctor's face hits a brick wall e.g. pain management clinics.

I had a physiotherapist declare outright that no amount of massage therapy or acupuncture will help with my lower back problem, or any of my other conditions. I didn't get a say in that announcement which was a shame because had they let me, I would have explained that:

• Previous acupuncture therapy had not only helped my bad back, it had also eased the pain I was experiencing throughout my body and induced positive outcomes with my mental health. My nerves had been soothed, my muscles relaxed and my depression alleviated. It wasn't a cure and it didn't happen overnight (it took around four session until I noticed how well it was working) but it was the best two months of treatment that I had ever experienced. It still is.
  
• Deep-tissue and muscle massage has been shown to help reduce pain, inflammation and and stress in a variety of illness. It's particularly promising in my own conditions.
  

I state again that alternatives to drugs and clinics are not cures. What they are however, are a different attitude toward chronic illness. They manage conditions instead if dumping them in the corner until the next appointment comes round. I think that, despite being sniffed at still, these forms of treatment, at the very least, freeze the interest on the growing debt of failed medical care.

I realise that I've given less attention to the personal costs of living with chronic mental and physical health problems. There are some things that I don't want to bring into the light just yet, perhaps because I'm ashamed or because I'm frightened of what they entail. I'm not ready to explore the price tags that are tied to all aspects of my life.

Though I'm inclined to dismiss my inner Drama Llama, I have to acknowledge the creeping dread that this kind of oblivious secrecy produces: not knowing who you are and what little buttons that, when pushed, set you off, is a state of being that all of us should be weary of: ignorance is bliss. So is sleep until carbon monoxide comes into the equation.

If I've decided anything after thinking about all of this, and more, it's that I'm going to make sure that I'm not side-lined any more. Speculation aside, I am living with chronic illnesses and they are preventing from living a fulfilled, purposeful and productive life. They are degrading me both mentally and physically. I may not be dying but I'm not exactly living and life is about living, or so I believe.

I'm going to invest in my future. I'm going to refuse compromise and 'come back in six months' in favour of commitment and 'do your job right'. Professional will baulk at me, some will probably tell me I'm being paranoid, but they're not the ones who have to pay for all of this in the end.

I am.

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I'm a scatty writer. I have around 150 words on a sheet of paper at the moment, a piece of flash fiction under construction for a competition. My bid to fulfil a promise to myself this year: get some fiction published. Anywhere.

I'm not lacking in opportunities.

What gets at me is that when it comes to sitting down to write, I dedicate myself wholeheartedly to doing so. But then I end up doing this – distracting myself with some other medium – instead of focussing on the goal.

Why?

It's no mystery and nothing to worry about. What I'm doing is simultaneously discovering and destroying the self-imposed myth that writers sit down and write, like a river cuts a path and flows, unrelenting. Now when I get into a groove, the words come quick, but most of the time I start off doing something I imagine to be the staple of most writers: staring into space.

It's my bread-and-butter, watching everything and nothing in my peripherals whilst fragments of what I'm writing float about and join up, decide they're not right for each other and break up. Between those thoughts are other things: this post; which vinyl album I'd next like to invest in; whether I've messed up a quest on Skyrim; how can I connect two elements of a story to make them symbiotic; I'll email about that short course to give me a leg up; what should I write for this bit now that I can't identify anymore rogue thoughts.

And whilst all of that is drifting and colliding, the story I'm working on is fermenting. I don't believe that procrastinating (as I am now) is detrimental to my writing. I think, without it, I'd write a lot more crap than usual.

It's a trick though, to find the balance between procrastinating and doing nothing.

I blame a lot of my inactivity on my health. It's true: some days are just nasty and those are the days where I need to pea-bug in order recover and prevent myself from getting worse. That sort of behaviour becomes tattooed onto me and results in days where I 100% believe that I can't lift a pencil, that doing so will be pointless because whatever I put down on the page will be empty and worthless.

'Pea-bugs', by the way, are what I used to call wood lice when I was a kid because they curl up and look like peas when threatened.

No writing is worthless. All writing, whether it grows and is sent out into the adult world of scary, discerning readers or is screwed up and tossed away after five minutes, has value. It has value because of the effort it contains, the thoughts that have happened around it and the decisions that have been made about its future. These are all essential processes with which, at least for me, writing would be dead without.

I welcome distraction but am vigilant against despair. One stops me from being too serious whilst the other makes me so serious, it disables me.

If there is one thing I can do, it's find a pencil and a sheet of paper, and commit acts of words. That ability is open to the elements of life, like everything else, which is why I always take the time to follow a stray thought, avoid the issue at hand and spend some time exploring so that the creative brain in me can bubble unconsciously.

Watching a kettle boil doesn't make it boil any quicker or better.

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I have completed reading thirty books and have thumbed through twenty or so more. I spent two months bed bound because of Fibromyalgia and ME. Those were pretty miserable times. At one point, I got carted off to A&E because I was having real problems breathing.

This year I have become more of a hermit than I've ever been and experienced some of the worst episodes of anxiety and panic than I have in my entire life.

I've spent days thinking about quitting my novel and hours writing crappy short stories. I've had an article published in InkSpill Magazine, something that I'm really proud of. I've had three rejections. I was hoping to have got myself out there a bit more but considering my circumstances…

After my time stuck in bed, which lasted from the end of July to the first two weeks of September, I found my mobility to be less than ideal. It was less to do with muscle deterioration and more to do with the Fibro relapses which have become more potent, resulting in me moving around less and when I do, having to use a stick to give myself some extra stability.

Since September, because of the relapse, I have been undergoing as many tests as possible to find out if there's nothing more to this Fibro / ME / CFS lark. Turns out there's something concrete going on after all and I still have further specialists to consult. Bases = covered.

This year I've gone mad twice and suffered from serious bouts of depression. I've put on weight due to not being able to move about as much and comfort eating because I feel terrible.

Speaking of food, I've adapted my diet. It conflicts with my ideas but I've taken to eating meat produce again to see if it helps with my conditions. It has and it hasn't. I've discovered a possible sensitivity or intolerance to wheat and gluten which comes with the job description when you have what I have. Yesterday I found that quickly cooking up diced mushrooms with cumin seeds and layering them in a whole capsicum pepper with brie and a bit of seasoning, then baking the lot for ten minutes, is an awesome dinner.

I turned 28 and enjoyed my birthday for the first time in over a decade. I've spent Christmas with my Dad. I've lost friends, realised acquaintances, made new connections and seen for myself who my true friends are.

I've given too much of myself to others and am yet to develop the ability to create stable boundaries.

I've seen complete crap on TV and read some utter tripe. But I've watched the Harry Potter films over a dozen times, and fallen asleep to the sound of Brian Cox talking about the universe more times than I can recall.

I survived the end of the world, along with the rest of the world.

A woman in a hospital waiting area made a comment about my being in a wheelchair on my way to the outpatients area, and 'clearly having nothing wrong' with me. I took that one to heart.

I've looked in the mirror and seen myself as what a heroine addict might look like in a film: pale, bloodshot eyes, black rings, miserable.

Two of my dogs have passed on.

My Dad and I have spent a lot more time together and had some real laughs. We switched rooms so that I have a warmer environment. Not that the room I was in was ever cold; it was me – the ME. Dad has gone above and beyond his mortality to be there for me.

I've found my way back into therapy and watched it fail because of conflicting requirements.

I busted a gut for one of my dearest friends and helped her reach the first stage of her dream. Because to me, that's what friends do.

I've met my great-niece and fallen for her even though I'm not a 'kid' person. She's just like her Mum.

Despite all of my efforts, the calls to the Samaritans, the drive and desire to learn, write, improve my lot and get my life back, I have never felt so isolated, frightened and dejected.

These are the things I can remember about 2012.

What do I want in 2013?

Treatment. Friends. A new home. A fresh start. A finished book. A published story. A pug. The ability to walk for more than ten minutes before feeling extreme pain and exhaustion. Decent nights asleep and pleasant dreams. Love. Recovery. Privacy. Books. Knowledge. Memory. Self-security and confidence.

That and probably some more. A handful are material.

I was in a local coffee house with my Dad the day before Christmas Eve. We overheard a conversation where an individual was describing exactly what they were getting for Christmas: very expensive, pointless items basically. I turned to my Dad over my cup of mint tea and said

All I want for Christmas is my health back.

I'm grateful for everything that I have and all the things that have happened this year, both incredible and difficult. Everything has helped me grow and decide my path for not just 2013 but the rest of my life. My life.

This year I lived to the best of my abilities and to my own standards and ideals.

Photo: Copyright by Moyan Brenn

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