trisha

Following last week’s post, I decided to change tack and seamlessly move from whining anxiety-riddled bitch to positive, calm, centred, rational, compassionate soul.

In these troubled times, complaining and worrying won’t add joy to the world, I told myself. My self-obsession and acerbic crudeness aren’t what people need. They’re not what I need. But rather than tackle my mental illness and show how it can be conquered, I’ve sort of just relaxed into it, accepted it’s who I am, and mainly used it as a tool to generate semi-amusing anecdotes about my car crash of a life. And, by doing that, it means I’m not meeting the objectives of this blog. I’m not trying hard enough to beat it and provide you with coping strategies and mechanisms.  My first blog, The 39 Steps, was my first stab at writing in an attempt to address my issues, but here we are, two years later, and not a fat lot has changed.

I’ve had therapy sessions in the past. I completely understand myself and where I go wrong and the same mistakes I make, and the things I need to tackle. I know it all. But yet I do nothing of note to improve things.

Last Sunday I told myself I’d start afresh. Completely. That I’d make a concerted effort to work towards becoming the best version of myself I could ever be. I wasn’t going to make a big song and dance about it. I was just going to do it. And then make a big song and dance about it today. After a week of hard slog.

Unfortunately, by Monday afternoon, I’d developed a flesh eating bug. I was sat at work, just being brilliant and strategic, and decided to touch my cheek. It felt wet. I pulled out my mirror to be warmly greeted by two circular weeping sores. ‘Oh God,’ I panicked. ‘My face is disintegrating before my eyes. What the fuck is happening? How can I concentrate on creating an effective and engaging strategic narrative with this going on? But, more importantly, what about my modelling career?’

Its presence destroyed Date Night. I say Date Night, but it was merely a trip to John Lewis in Oxford Street to look at beds. We had a bit of banter with the salesman, (WOULD – although may have been influenced/swayed by the presence of fucking equipment), and a nice rest, testing out some memory foam mattresses, but my face was pulsating and I couldn’t stop touching it.

Calling beds ‘fucking equipment’ has reminded me that Barles and I had a discussion earlier this week about the extortionate price of sex toys. I suggested that you could spend £3 at Poundland and purchase items (three of them – that’s how Poundland works) that’d do the trick for the night. I settled on a table tennis bat, a fly swat, and a six pack of pickled onion Monster Munch for afters. Mind you, we still have a plastic speculum we purchased in Japan, eighteen months ago, and we haven’t pulled that out of the bag for Sexy Cervical Smear Night yet, so it’s best not to waste any extra cash at present. I don’t know what we were thinking either. We’d browsed for a good hour and I just wanted to get a keepsake, I suppose.

I digress. The mystery disease didn’t just destroy date night, it has ruined my week. It appears to be scabbing up and healing over (call me, guys) as I type, but its presence distracted me from achieving my goal. And I caught my sister trying to discourage my niece from kissing me goodbye yesterday, and brushing against my face, so that was hurtful. EXCEPT I CAUGHT TWELVE POKEMON TODAY, AMY, WHILE YOU WERE AT A CHRISTENING, EVEN THOUGH YOU WHATSAPPED ME TO SAY YOU’D CAUGHT PIDGY IN THE CHURCH. SO FUCK YOU. I AM NOT A LEPER. I AM A POKEMON MASTER. YOU TELL THE GIRLS THAT WHEN I AM GONE. WHICH MIGHT BE SOON BECAUSE OF MY FACE CANCER.

In light of my illness, this post will be much of the same, self-centred, nonsense I’m afraid. But there’ll be subtle changes. For example, I learned that one of Barles’ friends had sent him a link to one of my blog posts, with the comment: ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?’

What. A. Fucking. Grass. I tell you, if we were in prison, I’d be loading snooker balls into a sock right now. Barles, of course, had seen it, but it made me think that some of his friends must think I’m a right nasty cow. Even though many of them message me privately to offer condolences. Listen. He really deserves it at times. But I can be pleasant too. Half of the aggression I display is an act. I’m a pussy cat, really. Well, a pussy cat with rabies. Even so, I can muster up a paragraph of pleasantry, just for him:

Barles – thank you for still having sex with me, despite my haircut, even though you now have to turn the light out and put my whole head under a pillow. I quite like this, to be honest. Your performance has been exemplary. However, please don’t think that giving me orgasms has made me forget that you still haven’t put that last box in the loft, because it hasn’t. Yes, I feel all a bit weak and adoring and forgiving for a while, but it passes. So sort that out, yeah? Also, thank you for loving Ripley and looking after her and for making me laugh this week and for saying some lovely things. The ratio is still skewed in favour of insults, eg: ‘You look like an ageing Minnie Mouse with her tits out’, which you said on Friday as I left the house, but still. I love you.

See? I’m capable of being kind and thankful.

I am also capable of being a quiz master. I am going to write the pub quiz and sing the pub quiz, at a local pub (as that’s where pub quizzes happen), in my new area. I am very much looking forward to it. Barles told me a local establishment was looking for hosts, so I applied. And they accepted. So that will be fun. I’ve enjoyed setting quizzes in the past. I’ve asked my dad to write a few sensible rounds for me, so that I can concentrate on the stupid ones. He was ‘Brain of Grimsby 2003’, you see. I once told Barles this in an email, early in our relationship, to counter his boast that his grandfather was Lord Mayor of London. However, due to his mild dyslexia, and failure to fucking pay attention, Barles just thought my dad was called Brian. And lived in Grimsby.

Anyway, that’ll keep my mind active and me off the streets. What kept me off the streets this weekend was a visit to see my mum. She’s still very weak and poorly and in quite a lot of pain. So that’s not nice. She’s also pretty depressed at being so ill and unable to do anything, other than sleep and dread her next shit, so that’s not good either.

And, even though she managed to criticise my hair and my shoes, and told me off ten times for not calling my aunts, and twenty times for picking at my scabby cheek, she wasn’t herself.

She talked of the mistakes she’d made in her life. How she felt she’d been a fool. She spoke of how she envied couples who had worked hard, together, to better themselves, and how she didn’t like to be alone. She got tearful when she relayed the stories of how her second husband had spun a web of lies, and how gullible and stupid she must be for having believed them. And how she regretted marrying my father, who was a bit of an arsehole to her.

I tried to change the subject and instead we discussed what we’d come back as if reincarnation existed. I told her I’d be a standard lamp and she said she would have chosen a dog in the past, but felt she’d end up with a family that would abuse her. So that plan didn’t work. She was feeling qute sorry for herself, basically. And that’s understandable. But she wasn’t seeing how she’d cheated death twice in the past four years. And how she must now embrace the life she has left. I know it must be miserable to be in constant pain and be too weak and tired to do anything. But I had to tell her that she needed to change her mindset. That she needed to stop dwelling on the bad things and think of the positive. I also had to tell her that the leader of North Korea is not called Ching Chong Chung and that saying it made her sound racist. She called the chef ‘Blooming Heseltine’ once though, so she has an affliction of some kind. She’s no Jo out of S Club 7 on Big Brother. Although her back does hurt.

I walked her to the pub for lunch one day, and she was slow and stilted – a far cry from her usual hyperactive self who can’t sit down for a minute. I worried that a driver would beep his horn at her for crossing the road too slowly, and I thought about how I’d say: ‘You sir, are a cunt’ and how well I’d come across for doing so. Sort of like a poor man’s Oscar Wilde.

I discussed mum’s state of mind and her health with my sister when we went out for cocktails on Saturday night. She’s going to get a cordless vacuum to make life easier for mum when she’s well enough to start cleaning my sister’s house again. It’ll be much lighter for her to handle, so that’s nice and thoughtful.

We did a little chuckle about that. We also laughed about the time we decided to go and watch The Trisha Show. It took us about five hours to travel to Norwich by coach, which was fucking painful, and my sister reminded me that I’d made her stand up and ask a question about whether the couple being interviewed had had time to consummate their relationship. The method I’d used to cajole her, was by telling her that it was what my nanna, who had died just a few months earlier, would have wanted her to do. She told me that we were both wearing tiaras at the time, which must have been issued to audience members, although we don’t know why. I wish I could get hold of the episode and relive the pain. But reliving pain isn’t always that funny. It is as Trisha show guests, but my mum reliving her past woes and the pain she’s been in isn’t helping. And the way I appear to want to keep myself in some kind of constant pain and anguish isn’t helping either.

So, as Monday approaches, I’ll try again to make a change. For once in my life. It’s going to feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it ri-igh-igh-igh-ight. As I turn up the collar on my a-favourite winter a-coat, this a-wind is a-blowing my mind. I see the kids on the street, not enough to eat, who I am I to be blind, pretending not to see their need? Oh. I’ve lost it, haven’t I? I know this isn’t my best offering to date, but I’m tired. And so are you. It’s work in the morning. So let’s just all have a nice rest and vow to give next week our best shot. 

Goodnight all x