Today was just one such day when this happened.

The day started well with my journey up country to my hospital treatment being really enjoyable.  Instead of my being one of 14- 16 patients crammed in a hospital transport minibus I was the only one.

As can be seen from this photo (that I snapped en-route) it was a glorious day and being the only patient travelling meant I got to sit up front and talk with Jimmy the driver.

Jimmy is a typical Irishman and fascinating conversationalist and I really enjoyed his company.

These visits are a regular monthly visit and I go to take part in a clinical trial and for weight management.  I have struggled with morbid obesity for years now and the effect that it already has on my existing heart conditions has always been a huge concern.

The clinical trial, or at least my part in it finished today and I get the full results of it in a couple of weeks but we have already decided that I will (subject to anything major showing up in the final results) continue with the treatment which will now change so that it can be self administered.

Worryingly my LDL levels were elevated which I have to keep a check on but even more concerning my PSA levels (Prostrate Specific Antigen) levels are very high.  Apparently these are the levels which indicate the possibility of prostate cancer.

Now I was told not to worry too much about these at this time as more tests were done today as part of the clinical trial which ended today and that will give us a truer and more up to date reading.  (Yeah right telling a paranoid schizophrenic not to worry is like telling an injured haemophiliac not to bleed).  But I shall do my best not to focus on it too much.

Thankfully, but not really thankfully at all, I was then given other stuff to worry about by the other team members I saw.

It seems the problem with  my heart condition and my weight is now very concerning and they want me to consider going into hospital for treatment for six weeks and then having surgery or surgeries at the end of it.  Being seriously sick and morbidly obese makes the normal avenues of fighting weight gain so very difficult and removes limits your options somewhat.  So part of the treatment is to address my weight and to get me at last healthy enough for the surgery or surgeries that have been needed for a while now.)

The ‘it is entirely your choice but if you don’t you have to accept the seriousness of your heart condition and the situation and that you could be dead within 6 months’ was just a little disconcerting.  As was the sincerity and seriousness of the discussion and facial expressions during said discussion.

Now I have to be honest here.  Part of me is extremely worried and kind of scared by all this.

But the greater part of me is at peace over it.

As a rule, since this s primarily a mental health blog, I tend to keep matters concerning my faith pretty much low key on here but sometimes things are so serious that you just have to be fully open and who you are.

I am a Christian and I have faith in Christ and in my heavenly Father and from that the assurance that is provided.  To borrow the words of Paul from Philippians 1:21 “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

I am – despite the appearances you may gain from my online candor and openness  – a very private person.  So the thought of being stuck in hospital, in a ward full of people, for 6 weeks is almost as unsettling the whole surgery thing.  I hate hospitals and have a morbid fear of them, surgery and dentists.

At this time the only decision I had to make today was whether I would be willing to be put onto a list in readiness for this hospitalization and treatment and subsequent surgery/surgeries. Not actually to commit to anything other than being put on that list and so this I have consented to do.

We are, I am convinced, spiritual beings in as much as their is a spiritual aspect to all life and especially to us as humans. I therefore have the power of prayer on my side and to be perfectly candid – seeing as over two years ago I was told my heart could give way at anytime and I am still here – I do have some confidence in my ability to beat this thing.  And yes I am aware of the seriousness of the situation and no I am not being guilty of post hoc ergo propter hoc here.

I am scared and I am worried.  Not about where I will go or even what comes after the here for I am at peace over that.  But how I get there or rather how I stop being here, what happens to those I will leave behind, and how to be all I can be and fight this thing in the mean time does worry and scare me somewhat.

Some days ago now I wrote a piece called, “I don’t wear my underpants on the outside” in which I was saying that we need to afford ourselves the right and the freedom to be human and weak and imperfect.

This piece comes so clearly to my mind right about now and something else has been going through my mind all day too. We, I, am human not superhuman.

Many moons back, one of my Kids – Trevor, (who possibly knows more than any of my kids what I am going through with my weight problems and heart problems since he too has had to face similar things) introduced me to a group called ‘Five for Fighting’ and one of their songs – Superman – has been going through my mind ever since I wrote that piece and especially ever since my hospital visit earlier today.

So I leave you will that song and I hope you really enjoy it.  I am, we are human and we, I, have every right to be human with all the weakness, imperfectness and vulnerability that comes with it.

I am determined to fight this and in the mean time to accept that I am not superhuman but to do so with the sure knowledge that no matter how human, how weak, how imperfect, how vulnerable I may be.  I do not fight this alone.

I think Paranoia, Guilt and Insecurity can be some of the things that we find hard to talk about, or at least I do.  But I am at the moment in a terrible slump – amidst the nothingness as I put it – and so now is possibly a good time to talk about these things.

Paranoia.  Yes I suffer from paranoia.  Really bad paranoia at times and no I don’t often talk about it.

Why don’t I talk about it?  Well there are numerous reasons really. Some you  might understand even agree with and some you might think are just weird.  And hey ho that is ok.  We are all entitled to our own opinions.

One reason is that I don’t want people walking on eggshells around me.  I want to be treated for the me I am mostly not the freaked out weird me that happens every now and then.  And before my inbox is flooded with folk challenging me or reprimanding me for the “freaked out” and “weird” labels above, I understand how wrong and unhealthy they are but I also know how very real those self-applied labels are to me at times.

Another reason is that I don’t want to feed into anyone else’s insecurities of paranoia.  Trust me it can happen.

Thirdly I don’t want other to use my paranoia or mental health as an excuse to justify or excuse their bad behaviour and yes that can happen a lot as well.

The last reason, (or at least the last one I can think of at this time) is that as a Christian I am always concerned about seemingly being a bad witness.  A fear which is often fed into by well-meaning but extremely harmful Christians who ask such questions as “do you think it could be demon-possession?” or “is there something wrong with your faith do you think?”

And if anyone is out there thinking yeah that is how I always thought of it, let me share the words of Matthew 4:24 from the KJV with you…

“And his (Jesus) fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.”

In the above passage there are 6 different types of illnesses here and a distinct difference is made between  ‘demon possession’ and the others including ‘lunatic’ which is to say ‘moonstruck’ or as we would say nowadays – those who have mental illness. (Thayers also suggests that this could also mean the epileptic although it state this is dubious)

But no matter what reason I have for my seldom discussing my paranoia, the fact is that it is a very real and frequent part of my mental health and thus my life.

And paranoia is not a stand alone condition in as much as it never just stops at the paranoia.  It creates further damage and damage that seeps into so many other aspects of your life.

And it often undermines and fractures what little stability you have.

Insecurity is one of the spin-offs of paranoia.

It can be cancerous in it’s effects and can damage and harm your perceptions and understandings and even more than that it can cause behaviours and responses which can so seriously and detrimentally impact your relationships.

Anyone who has, despite their best efforts, reacted badly as a result of a severe bout of paranoia will know the intense and extremely disturbing sensation of being left naked, judged and vulnerable as a result of that reaction and the fear of how those who have witnessed it are now going to treat you.

Which brings me to the last of this trinity of torment that of guilt.

Guilt.  Along with that insecurity – that naked vulnerability and fear I spoke about above comes the guilt.  Guilt which can plague you and eat away at you.

Guilt in and of itself is not a bad thing.  It’s function is to motivate change. It’s unpleasantness is designed to cause us to address, repair or right any wrong that we may have done.  And having done so that guilt no longer serves any positive purpose and thus should be got rid of.

But what if your mind will not let go of it?  What if that paranoia, that insecurity, continue to fuel that guilt?

I have written about how harmful guilt can be in my post entitled Guilt-Edged Bonds and it really is something that I and I know many folk who suffer from paranoia struggle with.

When I do something wrong I want to make amends for it.  To right that wrong.  To face the consequences if you will.  It is a big thing for me and I am sure I am not alone in this.  I think it is all wrapped up in a deep desire to not allow my illnesses to have that much control or impact on my relationships coupled with an equally deep desire to not be treated ‘differently’ as a result of those illnesses.

So there you have it.  A trinity of torments that so many of us can so easily go through.

In the slump, the nothingness that I wrote of the other day, this is the next phase it seems – the torments.

Hm. Funny Word It Is…. ‘Lalochezia‘

Something most of us have done it is.

Emotional relief gained by using indecent or vulgar language it is.

From the Greek ‘lalia’ meaning speech and ‘chezo’ meaning to relieve oneself it is.

Next time your mom tells you off for cussing when you bang your toe, smile and say, ‘but mom it’s just lalochezia’ you can.

The nothingness (as I call it) is a barren wasteland devoid of emotions and feelings, energy and motivation. It is an emptiness.

It is a land where all the colour of life is suddenly bleached away and it is a land I can somehow sometimes fall into without warning.

It is also a land I fell into Sunday evening and which I seem to have remained in ever since.

In truth I had a fairly good weekend.  Saturday I spent some time working around the house, blogging and reading and felt perfectly fine.

Sunday I went to church and thoroughly enjoyed the worship there. Afterwards the friend I was with did a little shopping with her daughter and I accompanied them.

This of course gave me an opportunity to generally make fun, crack jokes and be slightly mischievous – as is often my way – (it is one of the ways in which I cope) and we had a good time.

Sunday afternoon and early evening was also spent with them (and the rest of their family). Plus some old friends from the church I used to attend also came over and again it was an enjoyable time.

Sadly, as can sometimes happen, there was one statement (which was made in total innocence) which launched my paranoia into apoplexy (figuratively speaking that is) but even then I thought and felt like I was having a good time.

Coming home I still felt fine and indeed, despite the fact that I was so incredibly tired, I read some emails, caught up on some blogs and then suddenly just sat looking at my screen as everything seemed to have drained from me.

It was the nothingness.  This colourless, grey, barren, wasteland.  No feelings, no emotions, just an emptiness. A void.

And that nothingness has remained ever since.  Well almost remained.

For the mind, or at least my mind, doesn’t like nothingness. It can’t cope with it.  Has to fill it and it chooses to fill it with unsafe or harmful thoughts.

Will I respond to these thoughts?  I seriously doubt it (although certainly I have the means to do so).  But no.  What I need to do is to just survive this latest barrenness  this latest slump.

Means ‘having an upset stomach or even diarrhoea’ it does.

More often used to mean ‘feeling very or intensely nervous’ it is.

Mixture of ‘collic’ and ‘wobbles’ it is.

Lassie having eaten too much jello it isn’t.

(You can see that video either in that article or on my YouTube page)

But whilst looking for it I came across this video concerning Bipolar Disorder and a program called ‘The Answered Patient”.

It is, I think, a very interesting video and so I wondered what others thought of it.

Let me know your thoughts and opinions

Hm. Funny Word It Is… ‘Cleptobiosis’

Means ‘an ecological relationship in which members of one species, as of ants, steal food from another’ it does.

From the Greek ‘klept’ meaning to steal and ‘biosis’ meaning life.

Hm. So when your partner gets all grumpy and complains about your ordering a salad and then taking his or her fries smile and say, “Hey its just Cleptobiosis” you can.

After all, sometimes men and women are almost like being of a different species they are

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men to do nothing.

(The above quote is attributed (perhaps spuriously) to the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke.

Day Twelve in my Passions Profile Challenge and today I am looking at Social Justice and Social Injustice.

And it is a topic that I am deeply passionate about as I have in my life seen far too little of one and far too much of the other.

But perhaps I come at this in a different way or from a different perspective to some?  In fact in many ways I am not only concerned about social injustice but about any injustice.

Social injustice has been defined as “a concept relating to the claimed unfairness or injustice of a society in its divisions of rewards and burdens and other incidental inequalities” ¹

As a mental health writer, mental health and all the injustices served on those of us who suffer from poor mental health, such as; a failure to hear or afford credibility to our voice, opinions and experiences, the stigma all too often attached to mental illness, the way that that media portrays and represents mental illness, etc., are of course a great concern to me.

But the truth is that there are just so many injustices happening in our world today that I would find it very hard to pick any one above another and indeed am I not more that just someone who suffers from mental health issues?

I am a Christian and there are so many awful injustices being inflicted on my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world which I could write about.  I am disabled and see how the disabled are often so unfairly treated.  I am a parent and see so much injustice being inflicted on the young. I am a citizen of the country I come from and the country I live in and see so many injustices happening there also.

I have, in the past, worked with addicts, runaways, mental health clients, teenage parents, single parent families and many other social groups and have seen injustices in how many if not all of them have been treated at one time or another.

So which one do I choose?  In deed would I by choosing one be doing an injustice to the others?

The truth is that wherever you have people you have human nature and wherever you have human nature you have the potential for both justice and injustice. ‘Utopia’ – no matter how appealing it may seem – simply doesn’t exist in our reality.

So what should we do therefore?  Simply accept things the way they are and not strive against injustice?  Blindly accept injustice as a fact of life?  Let’s go back to that original quote…

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men to do nothing.

No, I am convinced that we need to fight injustice whenever and wherever we encounter it and in fact to do even more than that.

I am convinced that actually we need to be teaching the whole concept of fairness and justice to our children and those in our care and to do so from the earliest age possible.

Let me share another well known quote with you…

Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future

It is I believe a JFK quote and is probably (along with numerous variations of it) extremely well known.

I agree with him and can see where he is coming from.  But let me offer an extension on this quote wich will perhaps afford another perspective on this…

Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.  But let us not forget that we, in many ways, shape both their present and their past and the very foundations on which they have to build upon.

How many of us as parents, are actively mindful of teaching our children about social injustice?  How many of us take time to introduce a good understanding and approach concerning justice and injustice and an awareness of social justice/injustice to our children?  I wonder how many of us simply place that in the ‘things to be learned at school’ column?

How many of our children actually hear us discussing these things, making comments about these things, getting upset when we see injustice – thus learning from our very approach what it means and how wrong social injustice is?

Should, in my opinion, the right approach to the whole subject of justice and injustice and social justice and injustice be taught to our children in their schools?  Absolutely it should.  But it should also be taught and learned and witnessed in their homes.  Because you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be experienced in their lives somewhere along the line.

Trust me, it tears at the very fabric of my happiness and steals a part of my joy when one of my children or their friends tells me how they are being bullied or mistreated for; not having the right designer label on their clothes,  the wrong kind of shoes, the wrong hair colour or skin colour, for looking slightly different to the rest, for having voices in their head, for having a twitch, or for being a young mom, or for being a Christian, or for…….

If we are truly going to fight Social Injustice I am convinced that we have to begin in both ourselves and our children.

Once again I didn’t sleep well and once again I awoke early.  But I did at least do so with the resolve that today I would achieve some things despite how I was feeling.

After getting up, washing and dressing I made my customary cup of coffee and then started answering my emails and blog comments wishing to finish all of these in order to get them off of my mind so that I could concentrate on other things.

I was determined to look at my bedroom television which had broken over the weekend and see if I could fix that and also to attend to the broken light in my lounge.

Additionally I thought I would clear up (since it was daylight and I could see better) the smashed glass and coke that I had spilled on Saturday evening and since I would be mopping that floor I thought I would also mop all of my floors.

Sadly the TV was beyond my repair and will need to be replaced.  Since I spend a great deal of time in bed with my illnesses it is quite a well used piece of equipment.

Unable to fix the television I turned my attention to the light in my lounge and after having limbed up on stools and coffee tables several times I finally gave in.  I am not very mobile and m,y standing on stalls and coffee tables is like a hippo riding a unicycle on a tightrope.

Picture by Jed Henry of Will Strong Art.

But no matter how hard or often I tried the light was not going to be fixed and that darned lightbulb was not going to be budged.  Finally I saw sense and given the precariousness of my balancing act decided to give up and ring my son for help.

On a more positive note I did manage to move the furniture, get all the shards of glass and spilled coke cleaned up and even mop that floor but what with every thing else I was too tired and too weak to mop the rest of my floors.

Thanks to the kindness and thoughtfulness of a very dear friend, I even managed to get a new Television ordered for my bedroom and my son is kindly taking me to pick it up tomorrow.

My son also came and looked at the light for me and actually managed to remove the old bulb but since the bulb had melted into the light fitting (not a good sign I know) he wants to get an electrician friend of his to come and take a look at the light fitting and get it fixed for me. In the mean time he has sorted out a decent lamp for me to use in that room.

As for the rest of the day, well it was pretty much a mixture of sleeping and resting.  Either I was in the bd sleeping or in the bed just reading and resting.  But that is all part of the physical illnesses and conditions which are often just as up and down as my mental health.

And that is the thing about Bipolar Disorder isn’t?  It is those constant up and downs that we experience.

This evening my family in the states and I had another of our family bible studies, thanks to the benefits of Skype and this really blessed me.  But during it I was thinking about the ups and the downs that we all experience in life and which often, for those suffering with poor mental health and especially Bipolar Disorder, are often so much more intense or severe.

As I reflected on this a song from the Muppets came to my mind – Hence the post’s title – and I thought I would share it with you.

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit.
There isn’t any other stair quite like it.
I’m not at the bottom, I’m not at the top.
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs isn’t up and isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery, it isn’t in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts run round my head.
It isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit.
There isn’t any other stair quite like it.
I’m not at the bottom, I’m not at the top.
So this is the stair where I always stop.

And as I reflected on it I thought – what would it be like if we changed the lyrics slightly?  So, since I couldn’t sleep I knocked up this very simple short Bipolar Disorder Version and have uploaded it to my Youtube Channel in the hope that folk who see it might just stop and think about Mental Health.

Here are the adapted lyrics. I hope you like it.

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I’d sit.
There isn’t any other stair quite like it.
I’d not be at the bottom, I’d not be at the top.
So this is the stair where I’d like to stop.

Halfway up the stairs isn’t up and isn’t down.
It isn’t in the mania, it isn’t in the frown.
And all sorts of funny thoughts run round my head.
It isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I’d sit.

Hm. Funny Word It Is… ‘Gymnophoria’

Means the sensation or feeling that some one is mentally undressing you it does.

Curiously weird that it should be called ‘Gymnophoria’ since women often get this feeling whilst at the gym it is.

But actually comes from the Greek ‘Gymnos’ meaning naked it does.

Also called ‘Apodyopsis’ it is.

Last time the owner of this blog was alone with someone and felt they were mentally undressing him was when that person was rolling about the floor both laughing and crying at the same time they was.

‘Gymnophoria’ it is.