…and I realised somethings are more important than money

“The purpose of the project is to get you acquainted with London,” the head of Middlesex University’s fashion department explained.
It was our first day on our fashion degree courses. Every first year fashion student was present, regardless of what fashion degree courses they were taking. I remember looking around the huge lecture hall and noticing how empty it was. I remember wondering whether I had made a mistake coming to Middlesex University. I had wanted to take a double major in, fashion design and styling and promotion. Middlesex had been the only university to offer the course that year.

A list of pieces of work we were allowed to produce was passed out.
“You must pick something off the list to show you can work to set instructions,” she warned us.
“What are you thinking of doing?” My teacher and ask me, when I had my first meeting with her.
“I want to keep it on theme with the projects you have set us,” I told her. “I thought maybe a map, so I could layer my notes, photographs and sketches on top.”
All our tasks had been collage based, design ones, so far.
“Styling is just collage,” my teacher had insisted.
“I think that’s a fabulous idea,” she beamed.

I cut up my notes, photographs and sketches, then made them into miniature flip charts. I added a store label to the top of each and sewed them on to my map. My mistake was not sticking the map to a cardboard base. On the day of the presentation I was the first student into my morning lesson. Little did I know my punctuality would change my life’s path.

“It’s ruined,” I complained, as I tried to stick bits of the torn up map together. It had ended up on the bottom of the pile, and pieces of it were everywhere.
“It’s fine,” my teacher reassured me. “You have found all your presentation notes, and the project is all about the research.”
“Seeing as I told you all not to do a map for this reason, I’m going to make an example out of you,” the head of fashion said, once I finished my presentation.
I wanted to point out that she had put map on the list, and that I hadn’t seen her since that day.
Her example making was not limited to my broken project.
“This is how not to dress… This is how not to speak…” She advised everyone.

“Take her advice, she knows what she’s talking about. It’s only a style. It’s only an accent,” my teacher had suggested.
“Yes, it’s only who I am,” I pointed out sarcastically.
“I’m leaving the course,” I told the head of fashion as I sat down in her office.
“You’re dropping out,” she laughed.
“No I’m not,” I corrected her. “I’ve been accepted on six other courses at this university, and three more run out of Stockport College.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” she advised. “I have a very large house in the… Countryside. I driver a…I bought that house and that car with fashion money.”
The details were lost on me. It was my turn to laugh. I had thought about it, long and hard. I had decided all I wanted was a job that made me happy, and I realised somethings are more important than money.

and they couldn’t stop laughing

“Remember the time you got your haircut like that?” Steve said.
It wasn’t that what he said was hugely inaccurate, it just wasn’t completely accurate. I hadn’t had the exact same haircut, but I could see the resemblance to the style he was pointing at. It was that initially I felt like his joke was a little bit mean-spirited even for him, even for us, but it probably wasn’t. I’d probably said for worse to him many times before. Wasn’t that a huge part of our relationship, pushing each other’s buttons?
Wasn’t that partially why I loved him so much in a brotherly way?
He wasn’t my actual brother, but he was certainly the brother I never had, and isn’t that what brothers and sisters did, push each other’s buttons?

I was too drunk when I met steve to remember actually meeting him, but I did remember him afterwards. It was the day I arrived at university, and I somehow ended up at the student union amongst a group of first year students who were all excited to start their art related degrees. I quickly realised they weren’t my type of people. When I managed to slip away and sat on the windowsill, it was steve, a second year film and journalism student that I sat next to.

Steve would recount the stories to people like it was the funniest story. I suppose it was. He’d boom with laughter as he told people how after only five minutes of conversation, I had leaned in and said, “You and me are going to be best friends.”
It wasn’t just funny because it was true, or because he was thinking the same thing. It was funny because the qualities that bonded us are the type of qualities you usually have to dig long and hard to find in a person, the qualities people on their best behaviour don’t usually reveal to each other. We both had deliciously, dark, dry, senses of humour.

The haircut was a particularly sore spot for me. I’d had a blue streak in it that I needed to get rid of. My previous haircut had been layered. The blue streak was only visible in the bottom layer. when it hadn’t fully come out I told the hairdresser to cut it up to the highest layer, which was just above my chin. I’d had shorter haircuts. The length wasn’t the problem. It was my full fringe, it made it look like a bowl cut.

Me and steve were sat on the outside of our group of friends, as we always were when we went to the cinema. We talked a lot throughout the film, we couldn’t help it, it was another thing we had in common.
The person sitting next to us, I don’t remember who it was, laughed.
“What did he say? Somebody else asked.
“He asked if she remembered the time she got her haircut like Spock,” they replied.
Then they were all laughing, and they couldn’t stop laughing.

A time I was nervous

I thought he was a neighbour. I felt dread at the thought of having to interact with him, having to act normal, having to answer questions and ask him questions in a way that didn’t give too much away, didn’t pry, and didn’t encourage further interaction. I had only been living in the small block of flats for a couple of weeks. I thought about dashing back into my flat but he had seen me through the glass building door that he had almost reached. It was far worse.

I locked my front door and decided I would beat him to the building entrance. I would pass him before he entered and hurry off with at the worst a hello. That was my first mistake. I made it to the door and opened it just as he reached the other side. He entered the block forcing me backwards inside and the stopping so I couldn’t leave.
He introduced himself and asked me my name. I cringed internally and answered him.
He asked me. “Do you live there?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“With your boyfriend?” He continued.
“Just me,” I added, reluctant to let him know I was a woman living alone. “But my mum’s always here, always dropping by, she doesn’t live far, she even has keys.”
I edged around him, and was thankful when he moved and headed up the staircase towards the only other floor.

I turned to leave. He started knocking loudly and insistently on the only door out of the three upstairs that I was able to see.
Nobody answered.
“Hello!” He yelled. “Is anybody home. I need to charge my phone.”
My bloody ran cold. I froze partly in, but mostly outside. My anxiety grew.
“What flat do you live?” I said, trying to keep my voice low and calm, it was hard, I knew the answer, and I could feel the panic attack threatening to take control of my body.
He moved out of sight and started knocking on a different door.
“I don’t live here,” he confirmed. “I’m staying with a friend. I live just down the road. I was here last night at the party, and I just need to charge my phone.”

There were a lot of parties here, they kept me awake at night, however last night had been quiet. Hadn’t it?
“Maybe it started after you went to sleep and your medication knocked you out,” I suggested to my nerves.
“You know that didn’t happen,” they answered back.
“He’s going to ask you to let him into your flat,” a little voice in the back of my mind whispered. “Then he’s going to rob you.”
He was back knocking on the door I could see.
“You know I’m right. He could charge his phone at his friends, or at his house. If he had one,” That little voice whispered.
It was right he had no phone or charger.
In response I slipped outside and away from the man.

I walked to the edge of the street and around the block out of sight.
Outside, away from the chaos, I convinced myself it was fine. He hadn’t been knocking on all the doors just the two. Other people had to be home, the girl who lived opposite me who never left her flat, the man who worked nights who lived above me. Maybe his phone and charger were in his pocket. I forced myself to continue onto the shop down the street, but when I got there I roamed the aisles aimlessly afraid of the consequences of what I had done.
He knew there was nobody in my flat. Panic gripped me. He was probably robbing me right now.
I abandoned my plans and dashed back to the building going in the back way so that I could see the door to my flat before I entered the building. It was just as I had left it but the flats weren’t, they were quiet now and the communal hall was empty. He was gone.
“You and your nerves, that little voice laughed. “You make mountains out if molehills.”

Covid/ Stay in college speech

In a world that’s on fire, where it feels impossible to survive, how do we thrive? 

Especially when it comes to studying?

Whether it’s the whole world, or just yours, there’ll always be a fire.

Excuses to quit come easy. The most valid being restricted access to technology.

A bad workman blames his tools.

Unless you’re my mum, you likely have access to a super computer. Your smart phone.

Not only does it have the same apps as any desktop computer, it has many more; a camera, a dictaphone phone, and of course an actual phone.

Studying from home is difficult. There’s so many distractions; noisy neighbours, needy pets, naughty children.

Try earplugs or noise cancelling headphones. Change the place or time you study.

You have the advantage of taking breaks when you need, or want them.

I’ve managed a team of adults at work. I couldn’t manage one child, never mind while I did anything else. If you can, there’s no team you won’t be able to manage in the future.

Motivating yourself is difficult.

Did you ever wish you could hibernate during winter, or work from your garden during the summer?

That wish just came true, you just need to adapt to it.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re struggling, but also don’t be too easy on yourself. Motivation is like stamina, you need to build it up over time. Start by setting yourself achievable goals, like studying for two hours every day, on top of attending your online classes. Then gradually increase that time daily or weekly, depending on how heavy your workload is.

Your problem isn’t technology, distractions, or motivation, it’s bringing an old state of mind into a new situation.

Change your state of mind.

I know we’re not all in the same boat, only the same ocean. My struggles aren’t your struggles. However I’ve thrived in many storms, because of that I’ll thrive in this one, because I thrive in this one, I’ll thrive in the next.

If I can, you can.

More importantly we’ll do it together.

You wouldn’t tackle a real fire alone, so don’t tackle a metaphorical fire alone. Use that supercomputer you’re glued to, to build a community that shares knowledge, support and motivate each other, and more importantly thrives in this storm together.

Reading letters

Structure – Formal letter

You can recognise whether a letter is formal or informal by the structure.

Formal Letters

• Are written to official recipients

• Ends yours faithfully (meaning the writer doesn’t personally know the person that the letter is being addressed to).

• A letter to somebody that the writer doesn’t know tends to start “Dear [insert title so sir/madam or Mr/Mrs for example Smith].

A food memory

“I think!” I command myself but nothing comes to mind.
I knew that there would be things that I would struggle with because of my illness when I started this course, but this scenario never crossed my mind, and just because I am self aware in this area doesn’t mean it’s any easier to deal with the fact that I am struggling. It’s been almost a week since the task was set, I think. I feel as though I have been buried under the weight of this impossible task all my life. The majority of my attempts have ended with me staring at a blank page hours later, two ended with me feeling like getting it down to five hundred words would be harder then fitting an adult elephant into a shoebox. Then there was the worst attempt.

The mental anguish at drawing a blank got the better of me. I found myself driven by that familiar force beyond my control. This ritual was becoming depressingly frequent. Short of been shackled to the wall, there is nothing that would prevent me from acting on these impulses, and even then I have my doubts that would stop me. Going out into the cold, dark, rainy, night, wouldn’t deter me. I pulled my boots, coat, and hat on, then ventured outside, across the gloopy ground of the field, and through a treacherous alleyway. The sticky soil didn’t bother me, the second my feet hit the tarmac the rain seeped inside my boots, soaking my feet. They squished against the souls and squeaked along the leather. By the time I reached my destination I was drenched. it was only then that I realised I wasn’t wearing a mask.

I am mask exempt so this shouldn’t have been an issue, yet I took one from the employee handing them out at the entrance and immediately regretted it. It smelt like mildew an cigarette smoke. I felt nauseous, breathless and like the odour was clawing at my throat. It’s scratched, and stung so much that my eyes watered, and by the time I reached my destination I had ripped it off.

I’m dairy allergic, so my choice of chocolate, which was my current craving, was limited. I had wanted a particular brand of chocolate orange, but there was a deep space where the box should’ve been. They were obviously sold out. I stalked up and down the aisles searching for more for a couple of minutes until I finally dropped the pretence that the type I bought mattered. I grabbed a variety of different chocolate, small honeycomb bars, large white chocolate and almond, plain white and a different brand of orange. Okay, so I didn’t fully drop my present. You see I wouldn’t be tasting it.

I probably didn’t even chew it before swallowing it. The eight bars of chocolate that I jammed down my throat didn’t even fully satisfy my need to eat, all it did was kill my chocolate craving. Now I was craving savoury, salty food. Myself disgust, paired with my recently acquired, wobbly meat the tire, was enough to break the spell that food had over me, even if it was only for an hour or two. You see my relationship with food, like many sufferers of borderline personality disorder, is not a healthy one. I have never cut myself, or burnt myself, but on paper I am classed as a self harmer. I despise that term, it both oversimplifies it, and complicates it. The more accurate term, is to say, that I am a binge eater.

A time that I had an accident

If you have ever been in the Krazy House at the end of a night, when the bouncers are herding people like drunken cattle from the top floor down, then you have most certainly cringed or winced as you have watched someone fall down the metal stairs.
“Why do so many people fall on them?” I had asked Kate as I watched a man dressed in smart pants, a shirt and sensible shoes, bounce off every step. I felt sorry for him, maybe he had never been to the Krazy House before, he didn’t look like he belonged there, he probably didn’t know how dangerous those stairs were. I felt his pain as he bounced off each step.
Kate didn’t know either.

What I never asked was what happened when they stopped falling, and I had always lost interest in the morbid spectacle by that point.
What I didn’t feel was my own pain as my body bounced of every step. I was already far too drunk to feel anything.
“Do you want to go home?” Kate asked me, as I struggled to get my slightly swollen foot back into my shoe. I sat at the bottom of the stairs shaking my head and laughing.

I was eighteen, borderline and undiagnosed. My decision making skills weren’t the best even when I was sober. I insisted on staying even though one of my ankles was already twice the size of the other. Even now sixteen years later and sober, I sometimes forget that I actually fell twice that night on the same set of stairs. I forget that there are a couple of missing hours and probably many more drinks in between. At some point I had taken my shoes off. I was safe in a corner on the K3 with other friends who I had bumped into, not the ones I had arrived with. Somehow we had all gotten separated. It was a rare and worrying occurrence, so when I got the message from Kate to meet at the dice, I jammed my shoes on and hurried off relieved.

As I took my first step down, my shoe which I hadn’t realised was only half on my now enormous foot flew out from under me. I tumbled forward managing to only sort of catch my balance, half skidding and half stumbling down the stairs. When I got to the bottom I was still on my feet. I couldn’t believe it. I was fine, but I was missing both my shoes. They were black and it was dark so I was surprised when I found them both. It was time to go home I decided.

I saw Chip approaching and hurried towards her. As I did her expression changed. Her face kind of fell. She had this sick look I had never seen her wear and never would again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned about her.
You see, when I fell the first time, I had answered that question Kate couldn’t. People are always falling on those stairs because they’re wet, and wet metal is slippy. What I hadn’t thought to ask when I realised this though, was why they were wet. However, Chip was about to answer that question I hadn’t thought to ask.
“Oh my God, Rachel,” She gasped. “You just stepped on half a glass bottle.”

Introduction to todays blog post

Today I am posting another one of my english language writing assignments.

This assignment was to write about a time that I had an accident.

It really wasn’t the result I was looking for…

It really wasn’t the result I was looking for. I hadn’t even been at the house viewing for two minutes, and the landlady’s dog had already bitten me. Twice. It was an angry looking Shih Tzu that yapped constantly. Worse still, when it ran out of sight it was impossible to tell exactly where it was hiding, as it blended in with the white shag carpet, as though it was a soldier in camouflage hiding in the trees.

When I decided I was going to stay in London over the summer holiday, rather than return home like everybody else, everybody you told me, “You can’t do it.” It had spurred me on, not that I hadn’t already been determined to stay. I had been so determined to stay that I had already gotten a full-time job. At only twenty one it meant that I was receiving far less pay than my older colleagues, and so had no disposable income and was on a tight rent budget.

“There are houses with the cost of utilities included in with the rent,” the estate agent had told me

“I’m looking for a student or young professionals house,” I told him.

“I’ve got the perfect place for you,” he had answered.

What was he thinking?

Firstly, it wasn’t a student house.

Secondly, it wasn’t a young professionals house.

“I’m looking for a lodger,” the maybe fifty something landlady had told me. She was head to toe in lycra apart from her bare feet. “My daughter has just moved out.”

I looked at the estate agent as if to signal to him that there had been a mistake, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the landlady, nodding and smiling. At twenty one I was still too polite to say, “No thank you,” and walk away.

“Take your shoes off please.”

I did as I was told and stepped inside. That was the first time the dog bit me.

“There is a 10 o’clock curfew,” she informed me, as I sat down on the sofa. “No boys, no friends, and certainly no alcohol.”

This woman wasn’t looking for a lodger, she was looking for a replacement daughter.

That’s when the dog bit me again.

“I will be working past ten sometimes,” I responded. It was my way of trying to end the viewing.

“Not if you live in my house you won’t,” she snapped.

The rest of the viewings was a blur.

I nodded and smiled just like the estate agent was, but I wasn’t listening to a word she said.

I was relieved when I found myself back outside with the estate agent, the door closing behind me and my feet back safely in my shoes.

“So should we go back to the office and sign the contract?” He suggested cheerfully.

“No,” I said. “Not a chance.”

I’d like to say I learned a lesson about being assertive that day, but I didn’t.

Introduction to this weeks Wednesday blog post

Months ago, I promise you all that I would start posting some of my English assignments on a Wednesday, in particular the writing assignments. Then a few weeks ago I promise to post the story that I achieved my grade seven on, in my mock exam (apparently a grade 7 is an A to A*).

Well, here it is, I am finally making good on my promise.

This story is based on real events, but is not one hundred percent accurate…

…so I decided to write some autobiographical companion pieces. The first of which will be released in place of my Sunday autobiographical post.

I know I am once again straying from my planned posts, but these pieces are a very good look into how Borderline Personality Disorder can effect your day-to-day life, especially when you are undiagnosed.

Describing a room in my house – The kitchen

The kitchen is the most deceptive room in my flat. View it quickly and in isolation and you might be fooled into thinking this flat is safe. Spend a little longer looking and you will begin to at least feel if not see that there is a lot that is wrong with this flat.

The grey tiled floors, matching work tops and wooden cupboards give the room a new fitted kitchen feeling. They are very similar to the kitchen that me and my ex partner excitedly chose when we bought our new build house that didn’t yet exist. That was another life, another property, another kitchen. Take a closer look and you will see the differences and not just in the colour of the floor tiles which aren’t white, but in the white mismatched unfitted electric cooker I bought when I moved into this flat almost two years ago. Theres no fitted hob and oven here because it’s not a kitchen lovingly chosen for a new build house, it is a bare basic rented social housing kitchen.

Look behind that mismatched cooker and the silver fridge or washing machine and you will see the tiny white and red cardboard boxes filled with green mouse poison. This poison is for the mice I discovered in march last year and have been reporting to my landlords ever since. The required work to stop them coming into my flat has still not been completed. I leave the boxes there, despite being told by pest control that they are useless, because I don’t know what else to do. “Mice eat where their nest is and their nest isn’t in your flat,” Pest control told me.

Here in the kitchen the only signs of the damp and mould that is currently destroying everything i own, everything that i worked so hard for in all my previous lives, are abstract. The strong smell of the bleached work tops and floor. The lingering smell of vinegar from trying to treat my clothes and bedding. The constant sound of the washing machine. Even the empty space where my clothes dryer used to be before it caught fire from over use wouldn’t immediately be connected to the damp and mould.

There are no giant brown cardboard boxes packed in anticipation of moving to

somewhere safe, which never materialises, in this room either.

The kitchen is the most deceptive room in my flat. It keeps all this properties secrets but then it also keeps some of mine.

Describing a day in the life of- me

It’s Saturday afternoon and I am trying to tackle a weird and stressful problem. It’s a problem that I have admittedly brought on myself. It’s a problem that other people probably believe they have but don’t. I have to write about my day, not even my whole day, just the most emotive part of my day.

For me this is a genuinely impossible task.

Why?

Because I’m Borderline and not in recovery, in fact I am so far from recovery I am in avoidance.

The first problem this causes me is that living life in days is just a concept to me right now. It’s a concept I would love to be a reality for me but its not. I live my life in and in between episodes.

The next problem is that being Borderline means that I spend my day in a constant emotional state that would be overwhelmingly notable to a none Borderline person. When this emotion gets too much for me, which is often, I have an episode. For me an episode can last anywhere from a couple of seconds to a couple of months. Some episodes i remember fully while others I have no memory of at all. Mostly though what i have is partial and out of sequence memories. The best way I can describe this is if you imagine an episode is the alphabet and what I have is letters b,g,l,r,v and some times the way remember it is as b,l,r,g,v. This can make explaining what happened during an episode difficult at best. The episodes i hate the most though include pseudo psychosis and pseudo seizures.

Lastly recovery and avoidance.

As a person with co-morbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder the reality is that i will never be cured. These are live long illnesses and so successful management is the best i can hope for but that day is a long way off.

Trigger avoidance is a management technique which I believe is only used with Borderlines and is put in place when you are severely unwell and unable to cope. There are many reasons why a Borderline person may be put into avoidance and what avoidance means is different for everyone. Like many Borderlines avoidance for me means I can’t work, can’t be in a relationship and I don’t drink alcohol through choice though this is advised as a life long thing to avoid even when in recovery. For me though and what makes this even more difficult is that avoidance reaches into every area of my life, even those areas others see as a relaxing a escape. I can’t read a book and sometimes have to reread short pieces of writing over and over again to take it in. I rarely watch anything as this is a massive trigger for me and when i do it has to either be short and limitlessly rewindable or something I have watched a hundred times. I mostly listen to things and when I do it again has to be limitlessly rewindable and usually in small broken up pieces.

To put it simply I purposely aim to keep my days as uneventful and emotionless as possible and when that can’t be done I usually struggle to explain what happened and how I felt during it and this is why a task as simple as telling you about something that happened during my day that was emotive is a weirdly impossible and stressful task for me.