“Knowing your mad, is a sign of sanity, the truly mad are not even aware they are mad” – M. Holmes

After a very self inflicted anxiety filled, stressful journey to Portugal, I finally arrived, I love it when when I know that me bessie is waiting at airport to take me away from it all. Ive been soooo looking forward to this weekend, spending quality un interrupted time with another person who “gets me” who I feel safe to share all the fucked up thoughts in me head. So trust me when I say me sharing this particular blog with you feels pretty scary.

I honestly have  questioning myself if I am having another breakdown? This is what I was like, before I lost it, questioning things, and I questioned EVERYTHING,  seeing signs and trying to interpret what they might mean. The only reassuring thing is that apart from Shauna and Mick, they make me feel like I’m not a werido, they get me, they get it! and I’m wondering if everyone else thinks similar thoughts,? but are just too afraid to say them out loud to people around them? Just in case like me they are worried people will think they are losing the fucking plot? 

Mick Homes called me this morning from hospital, smoking his fag outside hospital grounds after receiving cancer treatment, is as pretty fucked up as it gets. He was worried that the patients on the ward might be getting a little pissed off, because they were having to keep buzzing him back into the ward after his fag, this was clearly bothering him – NOT. But it was great hear, him sounding good, positive and keen to get back home. I shared some off what I’d written this morning and my fears about losing plot, and like alway’s, he comes up with one of his classic nuggets of wisdom. “Knowing your mad, is a sign of sanity, the truly mad are not even aware they are mad” 

---

i feel like i am  constantly trying to reassure my self that I am not going mad just lately.  I feel like I am seeing the world through different lenses, but this time its not drug induced. I feel like, being back on this journey of self discovery,  and I genuinely feel happier than I have in a long time.

All these words, spewing out of me, from my personal journal, the blog, the book must have been brewing somewhere in the pit of me, I just didn’t know it.

Then I get to wondering ‘how much more shit’ have I got buried inside?  Its invisible to the naked eye, but but I have been carrying a lot of emotional baggage around, without even being aware of it. 

For years i thought pat had stopped listening to me, but in fact,  i have recently realised that I had stopped talking and sharing how I was feeling with him.

Lately when I laugh, its proper belly laugh, but the only down side is the fucking questioning and self doubt I inflict on myself.

This is like me YING and YANG, like they say “what goes up, must come down” life can be like a rollercoaster, full of highs and lows, its just sometimes I wanna get off the fucker.

---

This sense of uncertainty, takes me back to, way back in the day, when I first started volunteering in Kickstart, a day rehabilitation program for recovering addicts. Supporting others in their recovery, from mainly Heroin, a well known downer/ depressant. My own personal experience recovering from my drug of choice was on a completely different spectrum,  speed/amphet had sent, lifted me to a fucking different universe.

During my time volunteering  there had been just a handful of people who had come to the service for the abuse of upper’s and I would normally be the worker allocated to them. And fuck me that even had its fucking moments! The one that stands out the most is the day one of my clients asked if he could “have a private chat” when we found a room, he sat down and then declared his underlying love for me. Nice eh?

Nah was it fuck!

I Shit me sen!

it was scary as fuck!

He sat opposite me reading from a note he had written previously, saying he believed that he’d been sent to Kickstart as a sign to meet me, it was our destiny, we were meant to be.  Even when I explained to him that I was already in love and in a happy relationship, i could see this wasn’t sinking in, i tried to remain calm whilst at the same time, trying to figure out how to get another fucking worker in the room to save me!

Because trust me, i’d been there me sen, so I knew how he “meant and believed every fucking word he was saying,’ I could see the illusion, but, he was still in the thick of it. How the fuck do I piss on his bonfire and tell him, “sorry mate ya not my type, your short for a starter, you have got yellow teeth and you could do with having a wesh occasionally” 

It took me back to my own psychosis days, when I had the same delusions about our dealer, (of all people, who wasn’t all that! neither!, short, old, bold and nothing to look at, fuck I must have been off me nut) i was under the very same illusion, thinking the very same things. I thought we were meant to be, buying our drugs from him, there had been a reason that we went to him to buy the drugs, (nowt to do with em being the cheapest) but no, I was utterly convinced this had been a sign to bring us together. I would listen to Cher songs, in the car, parked no where near him and was convinced he could somehow telepathically hear the song, that was “our song” – but less about this period in me life, I will talk about that much more in the book, this is what i am writing about this weekend.

So back to the day rehabilitation project, Kickstart, little did the clients there know that “I needed that place more than them.” I’d rock up everyday not sure, how the fuck I’d end up volunteering there in the first place, but at the time, it felt the right thing to do. It was the right place for me, whilst I was there I had a purpose, I was using others personal experiences of self discovery as a way to figure out my own and visa versa. 

I felt a fraud at times, (I still do now sometimes) I’d be watching and listening to staff around me, especially the guy who had offered me this ‘amazing’ opportunity to volunteer/work in this amazing safe place for people whose lives had hit rock bottom. I was like a fucking sponge, listening, applying the theories he talked about in the group sessions to myself, so I could then, stand and deliver the same workshops with confidence, sharing my own personal experiences as a tool to help reassure the guys in the group that, ‘they were not alone’ that it was ‘ok to feel vulnerable,’ it was ‘ok to be scared’ it was ok to say “hey I fucked up, but at least I am trying to do something about it?” 

I think thats why i love working with people in recovery, because ‘I know how, fucking scary it is, to be stripped emotionally to the core and have to find out who you are, sounds so easy, doesn’t it? but you’d be wrong. Its a scary journey, all you have got is your senses to guide you, you use your fuck ups, relapses to figure out “how not to make the same mistakes again” its a constant roller coaster of self discovery and i totally get why for some people, they are too scared to climb aboard.

My job is a privilege, to see someone climb on board that fucking roller coaster and take the rough with the smooth, hold on tighter when it gets scary and let go when its more fun, is priceless.

So, enough self indulgence for one day, its time to write “Blood is thicker than alcohol” cos i aint going to fucking write its sen is it!

Love Fordy x