Nearly there.

For a while now I have been avoiding writing about my Canada trip. I have been terrified of it. Terrified of the magnitude of it, terrified of saying goodbye to the people, cats, things and places I love. Terrified of it all going horribly wrong.

Now though, slowly slowly, the excitement is bubbling up.

I have been very lucky to feel the full-on generosity of my family. My uncle came up to Birmingham and we spent a jolly day looking for a backpack for me. Then, this weekend,after being dinnered and breakfasted at some fine London restaurants, my Auntie took me to Ellis Brigham in Covent Garden and showered me with gifts for my adventure: waterproofs, walking boots, thermals, etc. Being given these things by my family and having their help to choose the right items has greatly relieved a lot of the stress of shopping for them, as well as freeing up more money for my trip. I’m not a good shopper, I make bad decisions, get easily stressed and often overwhelmed. So their gifts have been more than material ones.

I also got a final letter of invitation for a working visa to Canada. I think this relieved a lot of the pressure because I was so nervous about the implications of not getting it, what it would mean for my trip. As with shopping, I don’t do officialdom very well. Despite being one of the least criminal people ever to be born on British soil (I even worry about jaywalking) I am scared of the police. Such is my fear of authority. So applying for a visa was a terrifying ordeal for me, what if they mistook me for someone else and have me arrested for something? It’s the same kind of terror I feel every time I have to apply for a Criminal Records check which, as a care-worker, is pretty often. But, they found nothing wrong with me and granted me the visa. Overwhelming relief.

In fact I even received a letter from the embassy of Canada today wishing me the very best time in Canada and giving me advice on how to make the most out of my trip. I also received an email from a farmer in Northern BC asking if I’d like to help with the garlic planting in the Autumn, and I applied for my pre-paid travel Mastercard.

Actually, aside from getting a few essentials like tee-shirts and pajamas, having a cavity filled at the dentist on Wednesday and going for my ‘Well Woman’ exam at the Dr’s where they will take blood, weigh me, check my blood pressure and generally prod and poke me to make sure I’m not going to have anything horrible happen while I’m away (mega-fear about this, in case that wasn’t obvious: am both a hypochondriac and afraid of medical exams,) I am pretty much ready to leave. The list is almost completely checked off! Get me.

All I really have to do now is say goodbye to people and get on that plane. Easy, right? RIGHT?

So, as they say in Canada, ‘J’usqu’a la prochaine / until next time.’

Painful Goodbyes And Terrifying Things

So it might not help that I’ve just watched ‘Sarah’s Key’ (very good, but harrowing) or that I came on my period today and as a result have endured extreme agony and been sick twice, but I’m feeling a little bit....a little bit...ok, a little bit depressed.

But not depressed, not like how I usually mean it, more sort of sick with worry, dread, fear and...oh, lets say terror.

My trip to Canada has become very real. It’s not the trip itself that I fear, but the bit just before, starting in about a month and continuing until 3.30pm on the 6th July when I board a plane, one-way ticket in hand, to the farthest I have ever been away from home, all on my own.

I am dreading saying goodbye. To my mum and my step-dad and my four best friends (Adam, Emily, Emily and Chontelle,) my family, my other friends and, perhaps most of all, my beloved cat. But also to an easy life, extremes of comfort, familiarity, the BBC, cups of tea, and myself. Yes, myself.

That’s not to say I am planning on ‘losing’ myself or any other cringey backpacker cliche (or is it finding themselves that they do?) but there seems to be a sort of terminality to this new adventure, an end to one way of being and the beginning of a new one.

If everything goes to plan and my visa passes the final stage of the application (I only found out yesterday it had not yet been accepted but had just passed the first stage,) I may stay in Canada for a year. If things go really well I may be away from home for longer than that though, maybe 18 months.

I have never travelled abroad on my own before, and doing so for 18 months seems like a rather big step. I am now very pleased I chose not to go to Asia, which was my original plan before I decided I’d enjoy it more once I was better travelled. However terrifying the thought of living in Canada for a year may be, at least I speak both the official languages and come from a similar culture.

But, terrifying it remains to be. Not for the actualities of the journey itself, I look forward to those, but because the magnitude of this new undertaking throws my life into a completely different tangent The ‘me’ that I am dreading saying goodbye to is the me that has only ever dreamt of doing something like this.

It feels as I imagine it would feel in the run up to the birth of your first child: things will never be the same again. Sure it’ll be exciting and wonderful, but it is scary and huge and irreversible.

And it’s moving ever closer. Four weeks left at work (thank Christ,) seven weeks ‘til take off, and a whole host of painful goodbyes.

Finally though, between you and me, I suspect it’s the terrifying things that make life worth living.

The Bitter Taste Of Sugar

I am currently, in between worrying about going to Canada and dreading going to work, reading the second installment of Stephen Fry’s autobiography, The Stephen Fry Chronicles.

In it he speaks candy-dly (wait for it) about his sugar addiction. Hurrah. Finally someone else who shares the same weird, unsexy and unbelievable addiction as I.

Yes, that’s right people, My name is Anna and I’m a sugar addict. And, sadly, I don’t mean this in a light-hearted way, like one may describe their love of a Cadbury’s fest as chocoholism or their secret enjoyment of a few hours remote flicking as being a Telly Addict. No, I mean it like people who like to shoot diacetylmorphine into their flesh call themselves a junkie, or people who can’t get out of bed without a vodka call themselves an alcoholic.

From January 1st until March 21st of this year I went cold turkey and overcame my addiction. Unlike a heroin or alcohol addiction, it wasn’t that tough (as you can probably imagine) but it has been hard staying off it, and I have fallen off the no-sugar-wagon once again.

I know precisely when and how I became a sugar addict. It started when I was approximately six years old. I used to stay with a childminder (who, along with her husband, I am quick to ally many of my vices and shortcomings,) before and after school when my mum was at work. I won’t bore you with the details but will say that one instance in particular with said childminder and a brightly coloured packet of chalky sweets called ‘Tabs’ lead me not only to a lifelong, split-personality association to sugar as both the reward of a good girl, and of guilt, but also lead to me shoplifting a packet of sweets at the tender age of six. A criminal activity I was not to partake of again until, aged 11, myself and my best friend stole some bubblegum from Woolworths for an adrenaline rush. Happily in that instance the resulting horror of what I had done put an end to my career as any sort of thief.

This is not my only sugar addict story of shame. I once, when I worked at a cinema and my addiction was at its very worst, with full-fat coke on tap and bags upon bags of brightly coloured sharer-packs of sweets at my disposal, actually ate some sweets that had fallen on the floor of the cinema. Not my own, but some left by a customer after a film. I think they were Jelly Babies. Such was my craving. I’ve never told anyone that before. Oh, the shame.

The ridiculous thing is that I don’t even like sweet things that much. If I go to a fancy restaurant I’d rather have a starter and a main than a main and a dessert. To me, the sweet at the end of a meal is always a disappointment,a sweet but bland disappointment. Unlike the fine, orgasmic, surprising, and seemingly endless array of taste sensations that savoury food can conjur.

No, for me the chocolate bar, the tub of ice cream, the leftover rhubarb fool (sorry mum,) are not taken out of a sense of pleasure, out of a need for nourishment or to sample the exquisite delights of eating, but purely out of a need to satisfy a literally raging need for a sugar rush. I once was actually sick when I was about ten after eating a very large bag of pick and mix. I just don’t seem to have that thing, whatever it is, that other people have that tells them one bowl of ice cream is enough.

It’s not because I’m a compulsive eater. I do love to eat, and when I’m in a non-depressive state I find a pleasure in eating that makes me feel connected to the very force of life and all its exquisiteness, but I am not an over-eater. I’d rather have an expertly prepared salad full of different and well-matched but unusual flavours and textures than a Domino’s and I find fry-ups greasy and repulsive and can take or leave chips and crisps as and when I fancy. Except when I am ‘coming off’ sugar, and then, when my brain has sent enough signals to my body to say that however much it demands sugar, it isn’t getting it, I start to crave high-starch foods such as potatoes and pasta, I assume because it is the closest thing to sugar my body can get.

So, to get around, finally, to my point, after no end of waffle (mmm, waffles,) I have fallen off the wagon. It started with a trip to Brighton to see my very best friend (and cohort in the Great Bubblegum Robbery of 1995.) We drank, as we usually do in the bad influence of each other’s company, a hell of a lot. Breakfast on the second day of my visit was kahlua and coffee cocktails. Alcohol is the very worst kind of evil for the sugar addict, altering the state of one’s blood-sugar levels as it does so magnificently beyond the norm. It all went downhill from there and gradually, so slowly that I barely noticed it, I returned to my old ways, until finally, in an eye-opening state of desperation yesterday, I found myself finishing off an entire serving-bowl-sized portion of leftover rhubarb fool and raspberry roulade.

This would not be a problem if the sugar rushes and subsequent come-downs did not affect my mental state so badly. As you have probably guessed by now I suffer from a raging form of depression that can exalt me to the highest of highs and entrap me in the lowest of lows. Naturally, the sugar addiction does nothing but exacerbate that.

So, it’s back to cold turkey (not literally, I can’t stand turkey, such a dry meat.) I’m afraid cold turkey is the only way to come off sugar. There is no gradual letting down, because just the slightest ounce can inflame the cravings. I have found the best way is to find some sort of ‘methadone’-like substance. Perhaps some sort of disgusting, saccharine, sugar-free chocolate from your local health shop, and to eat it in however large a quantity is needed until the cravings disappear. Also, I eat as much as I crave, so long as it is free of sugar, for the first few weeks, so that my body still gets the energy it is used to, but without the brisk and damaging highs of the sugar rush.

Sadly, sugar is found in most food stuffs. Obviously sugar as a generic scientific term is in almost everything, but I am not talking lactose and fructose here, merely sucrose, that refined and intensely sweet sort of sugar that we think of when we say the S-word. A sucrose-free diet, sadly, means none of the following:

• Alcohol
• Ketchup and other table sauces
• Nearly all packaged food from bagels to microwave lasagnes
• pre-made sauces like Dolmio’s and Patak’s
• pizzas
• obviously chocolate, cakes and biscuits
• again, obviously ice cream
• nearly every yogurt in the yogurt aisle
• salad dressings
• baked beans and other tinned non-whole foods, like soup
• jam
• most peanut butters
• squashes and fruit juice ‘drinks’
• most flavours of crisps
• a surprising amount of bread
• any take-aways from Chinese to McDonald’s

You may scorn such diligence, but a recovering sugar addict eating a tin of heinz tomato soup is just like a recovering alcoholic drinking a vodka and orange, just because it has fruit in it doesn’t mean it’s OK.

So, today it begins. When I finally manage to pull myself far enough out of my current state of depression to have a shower, I will make an arduous journey to my local Holland and Barrett and stock up on my own special type of morphine, then make a very difficult trip to my local supermarket that will see me avoiding the biscuit aisle like it has ringworm and picking up various items of food only to read the ingredients list, audibly tut and return it to the shelves.

Wish me luck, and please, please, have pity for me. For that has been the point of this post.

Freedom OR The Limiting Stupidity Of Humanity.

In a previous post I shared with you a depression-era paragraph of my writing that explained the overwhelming magnitude of everything and how that contributes to my depression.

Depression is horrible, crippling and can lead to death. For a while this seemed like a pretty good reason to fight against it, but not any more. Because however horrible depression can be, I’d still rather have it than be subject to the narrow-mindedness of the vast majority of people that walk this good Earth.

Now, before you get up on your hoity-toity high horse, I’m not saying you have to be a depressive to not be narrow-minded, all I am saying is that my depression is how I cope with the vast unknown and ultimately with the pointlessness (although my non-depressed Taoist state does not necessarily condone this view point,) of my own humble existence.

Because I think I’m on to something when I say that fighting against the vast unknown, and our own massive insignificance, is what leads to people being complete arseholes.

All of us, from Hugh Heffner to Mary Beard, The Pope to Brian Cox, I am fairly sure have a glimmer of knowledge of our own insignificance. Some of us choose to embrace it (the Brian Cox’s and Mary Beards, who marvel at their own part in the vast magnificence of the universe,) and some of us (and here is where I get into the bit about arseholes) choose to fight against it by creating limited views in which to fit everything into and shunning the other 99.9% of everything else that exists. Of course, some of us choose to panic and curl up in a miserable little ball under their duvet, but we can’t all be like me.

The arseholes are the patriarchs, the extremists, the aristocracy and, more often than not, Jo(e) Bloggs down the road. We create cages: society, capitalism, etiquette, laws, feudal systems, imagined restraints on our own freedom, do’s and don’ts, conceptual institutions, religions, class systems, fashions, labels, I could go on. We create these cages to make it seem like there is some semblance of order in the universe, and by doing so we not only choose to limit ourselves, but the people and world around us.

Let me let you in to a little secret that my depressed mind has taught me: there is no order over which we can have control. There is an order, yes, a sort of magical, natural order that has its own laws like life and death and the spinning of the Earth, and the food chain, and a million more little wonderful details that we take for granted. But legal systems, capitalism, patriarchal societies, religious orders, class systems, fashion, these are all concepts, they are so fragile that all you have to do to break free of them is to stop believing in them. Of course some of them are fairly ingrained into our various societies, if you stop believing in the legal system you may end up in prison, which will physically limit your existence on Earth, but the laws of life itself limit your physical life quite a lot anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much, and in fact, if you live authentically and make good decisions, chances are you’ll live within the confines of the law.

The truth is that all the crap we think is important, like having the right shoes (and I don’t mean the most comfortable ones you can run fastest in,) keeping up with the Jones’s, appearing successful and wealthy or praying to the right God, is in fact not important at all and is just a cage in which we entrap ourselves to stop us feeling so insignificant. When you do realise this life becomes scary, but you become free, and also less of a judgemental arsehole. You stop worrying about the little things and become thankful for every rotation of the Earth, and every beat of your heart.

Disclaimer: I make no claim to be free of said cages, I just have a good view out of mine, and I know where the gaoler keeps his keys...

A bit.

For those of you who have been following my Canada blog, I have taken it offline but everything is still going ahead. Everything is changing a bit at the moment and for various reasons taking the blog offline seemed like a good idea, for now at least. I might just continue writing about my journey on this blog, or I might put the blog back online. I haven't decided yet.

Secondly, I am in the process of moving all my writing over to Google docs to keep it safe and to have it with me wherever I go in the world. While doing this I came across the following passage that I wrote at some point in the past. I wanted to share it with you because it describes perfectly how depression is for me.

From the outside looking in depression looks like a shut-down, as if the person is half-awake, sleep-walking through life. From the inside looking out depression is like waking up from a dream, like having the blinkers taken off and suddenly realising that the path you have been walking along is actually a narrow and unstable bridge over a vast canyon, the sides of which are almost too far away to see. The blinkers are taken off and you stumble, stand stock-still for fear of falling while all about you people keep on hurrying over the bridge with their blinkers on, wondering what the hell you are doing cowering on the floor.

As a depressed person I do indeed retreat inside myself, but only because it is the safest place to go when the vast, unrelenting terror of everything is suddenly revealed to me.

So there you are. Hopefully a little something to help you understand depression a bit better or for those of you that have it, perhaps something you can relate to.

Later alligators.

P.S. the title of this post is dedicated to one of my clients who has a hawk-like eyesight but who, when something is too small for even her to know what it is, refers to it as 'a bit'. Like an amoeba, or half a crumb.

Another post about Facebook.

There is something about facebook. Something sticky and dark that repels us but, in our many times of shunning it, dramatically deleting our accounts, and bitching about the things people choose to put in their status updates, there is something joyous about facebook that it seems like we are all too cynical to notice.

Facebook often makes us feel bad about ourselves, like any social situation we wonder if we shouldn’t have said this or should have said that instead, and regret our unguarded outbursts of joy or rage, we become bored with certain people’s endless chatter and resent other people for having different views from us. In those things facebook is no different from any other entanglement of human beings. Perhaps due to the way in which our computers remove us from the immediacy of the situation, the way that we have only our words and punctuation to express ourselves, rather than the litany of facial expressions and body language at our disposal when we meet people face-to-face, facebook can be blamed for misunderstandings, but really we only have ourselves to blame for any ickiness in our social interation.

Because facebook is wonderful. This becomes even clearer when you are living out of short reach of your nearest and dearest, it allows you to stay connected, not just on a one-to-one basis, but to a whole web of social interactions that mean something to you.

I love my facebook today, the message from an old friend, the birthday wishes for ex-colleagues, the blog updates and insights into people’s dreams, the cute and funny videos we choose to send to each other, the photos and the comments and the jokes and so very much more. I can wake up to a whole world of updates from my friends and family about where they are in their lives right now, and that makes me happy.

There is, of course, the old warning about merging different aspects of your life, but I think if you are sensible, then that merely means you are forced into a life-wide state of honesty, and that can only be a good thing. Like most other people I have different ‘faces’ for different parts of my life, a work face and a family face and a friend face, and so on. I found that my non-work face didn’t work with my work colleagues so I deleted them as facebook friends, but will probably re-add the ones I like when I leave. However, I am friends on facebook with both my gran and the friends of mine who I have had the wildest parties with, and I find that works ok. Now these people get to see all aspects of me, they get to see the truth, and whatever that results in is for, I believe, the best.

I have been anti-facebook in the past, and then I just realised I can have complete control over facebook, it doesn’t need to be a negative in my life, but can in fact be an excellent way of staying connected to some of the things I love so much about life. I don’t need to tell facebook or my facebook friends anything about myself I don’t have to, I can remove my likes and dislikes so that, as far as facebook is concerned I just have a name, an age, a gender and a relationship status, and then I just get adverts about heels and dating sites, which amuses me (if only they knew.)

And I don’t have to be facebook friends with anyone I don’t want to be friends with, either. I have 161 facebook ‘friends’ at present and, with a very few exceptions (maybe about 5 or 6 people who just have novelty value,) I genuinely care about what those people are up to and want to hear about their lives. Not all for the same reason, you understand. Some of them are close family, some of them are ex-lovers, some of them are best friends, some are old acquaintances from school or whatever, and some are just people I met once or twice but felt an immediate connection to. All of them have meaning to me though and all of them will have touched me in some way over facebook. And that is why facebook is wonderful because in its weird, fragmented way it brings us closer together, even if it is just for a moment, and there is nothing that is not beautiful about that.

On 'Derek'.

So, I just finished watching the new Ricky Gervais show, ‘Derek’ and have also just finished wiping away the tears. This time, unlike with other Gervais shows, these were not tears of laughter.

I’m sure no one gives a damn about my opinion but, seeing as I work somewhere very like the place in the show, and also as I was halfway through writing a sitcom of a similar nature (you bastard, Gervais,) I thought I’d give it anyway.

I know Derek is advertised as a ‘comedy’, and although it does have comedy moments (such as Derek sitting in a pudding,) the comedy in Derek is perhaps its weakest attribute. With better acting and a more finely honed script Derek wouldn’t need these slapstick moments, it could be an excellent and poignant dark comedy, and indeed it almost is. The true comedy in Derek is the truth behind Karl Pilkington’s lines and character and the moments when Derek points out the absurdity of some of the people who are considered ‘normal.’

Gervais insists that Derek isn’t ‘disabled’, but in fact, having worked with people with learning difficulties for two years, I would say he definitely is, (although as a fictional character, if his creator says he isn’t, then I guess he isn’t.)

In fact I think Gervais would have been a braver and wiser person to have researched LD and Autism more and been proud of Derek as a character with a disability. For the average Joe on the street who doesn’t have any training in LD or Autism, and I include Gervais in this, Derek isn’t ‘disabled’, just a bit of an oddball. This is, unfortunately, how many people with Autism and LDs are seen because people don’t realise that they do have a diagnosis. People think that in order to be disabled it needs to be obvious and unfortunately for many people with learning difficulties and Autism it isn’t, and so their ‘hidden’ disability just makes them seem like a weirdo.

When I say Gervais would have been a braver artist to have given Derek a diagnosis, this is because, as many people (Warwick Davis included) have said about ‘Life’s Too Short’, there is no reason why someone with a disability shouldn’t be the subject of a comedy. There is also no reason, such as with ‘Life’s Too Short’, why just because they are the subject of a comedy, the comedy would be cruel or mean, such as many people have said about both of Gervais’s recent shows.

For true inclusion and acceptance, people with disabilities should be the butt of a joke as much as anyone else. They should also be protagonists, and Gervais manages this in both Derek and Life’s Too Short, whereby the audience are invited to both laugh at and empathise with the main, disabled characters.

I actually didn’t find the character of Derek particularly funny. Perhaps this is because I work with people on a daily basis that are even weirder than him. What I did find funny were the times when Derek did something that the people with Autism and learning difficulties that I work with do, because it rang so true. (The bit with the worm could almost definitely have been based on a woman I work with.)

Derek is a lovely character: kind, lovable and honest. Unfortunately I don’t think Gervais did a brilliant job of acting him, perhaps because too much Gervais came through, as it usually does in his roles, but then maybe there aren’t any other actors who would be brave enough to play the part. What was brilliantly done by Gervais were the observations about other people that Derek makes, the honesty he exudes that only someone with Autism does.

The honesty, both of the observations that people with Autism make, but also just the honesty of their behaviour, is what makes working with people with Autism and LDs so wonderful. They are refreshing, insightful humans beings, and working with them has taught me so much about myself and the world around me. It is time they became a more mainstream part of our culture.

As to the rest of the program, there are certain things that Gervais got spot on about working in a care home. There are always jaded characters, such as Karl Pilkington’s, who also extol certain virtues about the job, such as the free meals. There are also always people whose whole lives become taken up with their work place, who really do go there for company and who become like family to the people who live there.

I think the script occasionally seemed a bit sloppy, the acting a bit wooden and the slapstick so terrible it was almost French, but this show managed to still be a true gem, despite all this. I think it touched me even more because of the job I do. To me it’s unfortunate that Stephen Merchant wasn’t involved because, although I think Gervais is a more intelligent man, I think Merchant is a better writer and manages to curb Gervais’s ego, and another collaboration between them may have resulted in Derek being better even than The Office.

I’d also like to thank Gervais for the bit where Derek’s friend headbutts the bitch in the pub. There have been many times when I would have gladly done the same but couldn’t because I was working. A thousand thanks, Gervais, for bringing this fantasy to life.