Llandudno

So this week(end) I am in Llandudno on official UNISON business at the trade union's national LGBT conference. I've been looking forward to it for quite a while as it allows me to get away from the same old, same old of Bedford town and I get to explore a part of the world I haven't seen before.

Except the last few days, I've grown increasingly anxious. Anxious at going to the wrong train station and missing my train. Anxious about meeting a whole group of new people tomorrow. Anxious about hotel etiquette. The list goes on, and especially last night, I was really starting to grow quite worried about the whole thing; the thought of just not going crossing my mind. But as my branch have quite literally paid for the whole thing plus more, I decided I would be doing them a disservice by not coming and who knows, I may enjoy it?

I sit here typing this having just finished my three-course dinner of ham terrine, fish pie and baked Alaska waiting for the #TalkMH twitter chat to start, a great initiative on the social media site that connects mental health service users and indeed anyone else who may want to join in to talk, share stories and ideas and generally be a nice bunch of people for an hour.

The conference begins tomorrow and I'm having to psych myself up at walking into the world of the unknown. While it's billed as a fun and socialising time, there are heaps of official business to get through and having never been to anything like this before, I am quite nervous about what all of that may entail. Whether it entails anything at all? Beats me. But I lament the lack of confidence I once had. I regularly use my school days as an example of when my confidence was at it's peak, delivering monologues on stage and the like. Where has all of that gone? In many ways, my life is busy. A full-time job, charity work, trade union events, (attempting) to write a book and those Friday night blowouts, there should be more than enough to keep my mind away from the Black Dog. So why does it keep unleashing itself from the cage?

Or maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing, as usual. I'm currently reading Jonathan Trott's autobiography, 'Unguarded'. Jonathan Trott is a cricketer, who had a short yet successful England career before it blew up on a tour of Australia as he battled mental health difficulties.

Sound familiar?

He talked about how he fixed it by separating his 'human' and his 'chimp'. The human mind, rationalising everything that happens and putting it in the right context, not overreacting to every little thing by imagining the worst case scenario from it. And the chimp, the all-over-the-place, naughty and messy mind that plays tricks on you and forces you to think about everything wrongly. But I can tell you, having to consciously assess each situation and untangle it before you come to the right conclusion is both mentally and emotionally exhausting. I've tried similar methods in the past to no fruition. But it is interesting reading someone else's experiences of trying to untangle their own minds.

So while my small yet significant trip to the upper most regions of Wales is just starting, my journey to a calm mind has only just started.

When I go home from this, I will be two days away from another hour in what I have nicknamed 'The Chair', and another round of psychotherapy. I can't quite explain what happened on Tuesday. I was really, really nervous beforehand because I felt I just didn't know what to say, but once I started, everything just flew out. I'm feeling the same about this week...

Psychotherapy & President Trump

Well, what a week it has been.

I'm not going to sit here and speculate as to what the Trump presidency will entail as none of us can see what the future holds. But there are a few points I want to make.

The first of which isn't really an issue at all, but the polls? Is there now any point in the constant, ever-changing monotony of election polling when they've got it so wrong in the last three great political decisions of our time in the last 18 months? The answer is no, but probably more to the point is why they got it so wrong. The American and British public are now more right wing then ever before, but asked which way they are going to vote, they lie. Why? Because they don't want to be shouted down by an increasingly hot-headed and argumentative left-wing millennial who claim all voters who vote against them are stupid and/or racist and/or sexist.

Delete as appropriate.

In this social media world of ours, a lot of us were tricked into thinking that most people backed Clinton on Twitter so she'd walk it. Likewise with a No vote for Brexit. Yet the world is so much bigger than Twitter, and the voting booth is now the only private space left in it.

But while I bemoan the lack of argument from the political left, (Clinton's campaign had next to no policy in it WHATSOEVER), I also bemoan the right. Not for obvious reasons, but for it's sheer brazen nature of U-turning. Trump once claimed the Electoral College was "a disaster for democracy". I can't imagine he thinks that now. Nigel Farage claimed a 52-48 defeat "wouldn't be the end of the fight" and then tells people to stop fighting when it's a 52-48 result in his favour.

We cannot put up with this kind of behaviour.

But, while there are many reasons to dislike the events of 2016 politics, my mind cannot get past the sadness I feel for our LGBT community. On June 12th, a man killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 5 months later, the state of Florida voted in the man who didn't even mention the victims in boasting he was "right about Islamic extremism". 5 months later, Florida voted in a Vice President who wanted to see all 49 of them, and every other LGBT person, to go through gay conversion therapy. To "cure" them of being gay.

What kind of resentment is that? I cannot find the words.

So while I think the political left have contributed a bit to this culture we find ourselves in, my thoughts are with the minority groups. Hispanics. African Americans. Disabled people. LGBT people. Women. Anyone who hasn't felt the seductively easy world of the straight cis able-bodied white man. Because while Clinton was right; we do have to give Trump a chance, Americans have every right to be afraid. And what do people do when they are afraid? Some run. But some fight.

Much closer to home, I'm doing some fighting of my own. While some days are fine, some days I struggle to untangle the knots of pure disgust that have developed inside my head. A couple of weeks ago, I ran, hiding in my bedroom waiting, hoping for a chink of light to appear among the ball of mess that was my brain. I make no concessions of how torturous that week was. Many times I stared at the boxes of sertraline and quetiapine on my bedside table and wondered what it would be like to take them all and escape.

Another week later, I was sitting in the conservatory of a stranger's house, trying to come to terms with the latest episode. This psychotherapy the latest treatment to add to the long list of treatments in my past. She sat there in silence, waiting for me to talk. I struggled in that room, for I know things are wrong but I don't know what. But I felt like I had to say something. The second instalment is on Tuesday.

This world of ours is fucking horrible at times. One of my saving graces sometimes is that I remember that I am lucky. I am not living in Eastern Aleppo or North Korea. My mum is still alive. I have a bed. Perspective is important.

But we have to fight for better.