Bumbling Cross Stitch No. 2

Some statements are so true you just want to stitch them on things.

Bumbling Poetry No.14

I got the train the other day and a weird thing happened or maybe it didn't but probably it did 

(Content note for swearing)

Camera Sound

Him, registered through my own adjustments

The pulling in of feet, the space we make

For strangers, still he sat diagonal.

Startled (his phone had made the camera sound),

Peering over my book to see his hold

Not quite right, the angle felt invasive.

Eyes on page but attention peripheral,

I watch him watch me, then type, watch me,

Then type. Creeps don't know about the edges

Of sight as they've never tried to use them.

Is he fucking tweeting about me?

Or just sending my picture to his friends?

I wonder what it was, my nose ring or

The colour of my hair, or just being

Female in public, that drew his attention.

I look down at his shoes for clues, bad

Shiny loafers and merlot trousers,

And decide all of the above. It's not til

I'm watching the back of his greasy head

Bob down the platform, I realise- phones:

They make that camera sound when you screenshot

As well as take pictures. And I find myself

Wondering, not for the first time,

If my bunch of neuroses have grown roots,

That entwining, flourished and bore some Greek-

Sounding fruit to the air. But then, I reason,

If anyone were to judge and mock me

Though invisible waves, because of my

Appearance, it would be some tosser

In bad loafers and merlot trousers.

Trivialising Mental Health - 'O.K.D.'

See this right here? This kind of thing needs to stop. this thing right here? This knting needs to stop

It’s difficult to watch TV, or go to a pub, or sit on a bus these days without hearing some person say ‘I’m a bit OCD’, normally because they are particular about things, like the cleanliness of their house or the categorisation of their record collection.

When I hear this, I sigh, and roll my eyes at a friend who knows why I’m irritated, which is all of my friends, because I tend not to make friends with people who are that clueless about mental illness.

This image however, this is my line in the sand. This has been reblogged into my tumblr feed by people whose feeds I otherwise like, who I have reason to believe are nice, smart people. A crochet version of this image has been reblogged by This is Not OCD -a great tumblr pointing out instances of this very problem, saying that it is an offensive comparison.

Let me talk a little bit about OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder in which the sufferer has distressing intrusive thoughts that they need to neutralise through some action or thought, sometimes that may be a cleaning task but it can be literally anything. If the compulsion is not acted upon the believed repercussions are catastrophic.

There’s an episode of This American Life that tells the story of Cathy whose OCD presented in the form of eating non-food items, resulting in many near fatal injuries and more than ten years of forced restraint in an institution. She believed if she didn't act on the compulsion to eat these items her or her mother would die.

I went to a BPS lecture on OCD a while ago and the psychologist giving the talk got us to do an activity, feel free to give it a go yourselves. He asked us to write the name of the person we loved most in the world in the middle of a piece of paper. Then he got us to write ‘I hope ___  is violently killed tomorrow’ around it.

When you've done this click read more

Schizophrenia, Stigma and Donnie Darko

It’s schizophrenia awareness week this week and I’m going to contribute by writing about something that may seem like a subtle, mental health pedant niggle, but is actually a big contributing factor to the stigma people with the diagnosis face.

So when I was 15 through to, oh…I guess 17, Donnie Darko was one of my favourite films. I love dark sci-fi, and it seemed obvious to me that Donnie Darko was a sci-fi, if you watch the director’s cut especially, this seems abundantly clear. So it didn't bother me too much in the fledgling years of my study of psychology that the character is given the diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia, of course the psychologist got it wrong, she couldn't possibly know he’s actually involved in a time wormhole thingummy.

The problem is that there are parts of the story where Donnie is taken over by Frank the rabbit, his ‘hallucination’, and made to do strange and violent things he has no awareness of.

Bumbling Poetry No.13

Stethoscope

Your tender chords are making
That galumphing sound again.
They'll put a metal valve in place,
Then we'll all set our watches by
Your ticks, and I'll dream of you
As Hook dreams of the crocodile.

Bumbling Cross Stitch No. 1

Hey internet,
I heard you like free things, how about this cross stitch pattern I came up with for my mum's birthday? 

pdf available here

I'm pretty happy with most of it but the DVD/CD isn't as clear as I'd like. Every self respecting crafter loves a charity shop so I'm hoping people will like this. I've only recently gotten into cross stitch after knitting too much gave me acute monoarthritis (!) and although it's a lot more effort for the eventual pay off I find it has a similar appeal. 

Armpits4August- Why Does Body Hair Matter?

I was once at a performance poetry night, everything had been going very well, drinks had been drank, poems had been said, everyone was in a friendly supportive mood by the time the open mic started. Then a very posh, floppy-haired young man took to the stage to read a ‘comical’ poem about how he had once gone home with a girl, only to discover that she hadn't shaved her legs, and that she could give no good excuse as to why not, so he left in disgust at her hairy body.

Now, I don’t know how many poetry nights you've been to, but the women there tend to be of the empowered persuasion, and this particular poem went down like a glass of cold sick.

If you don’t like body hair, that’s fine. Personally I’m not a big fan of hairy chests on men. But I would never try to publicly shame someone for being hairy, nor would I expect another person to groom themselves to my taste rather than theirs, and that’s really what I'm talking about here.