How do you know that you are sane?

I expect what I mean is: what is it that stops people from seriously
doubting that they are anything other than "normal".

People are constantly shrieking things like "AGgghh! You're driving me Mad!" "Hell! Now I'm losing my mind!" "I'm going insane!" They might even legitimately feel that they are - the levels of stress they've gone through are overwhelming their thought-process. It's madness-for-a-moment.

They accept that the human condition is to do mad things, and behave in mad ways, but that this doesn't define a person as "mad". So then, how does one know when one has just enough eccentricities? phobias? aberrations? How many of the afore-mentioned are the tip-over point into lunacy? How do we - you - me know what the acceptable "norm" is?

Lest this sound for a moment disingeuous - it's prompted by genuine feelings: I'd thought I was starting to get though the fog and, well, horror of the last few years. I've finally been forced to recognise, without ducking, that I haven't.

Yet, I've been marking the last two years by "steps".

Step 1. Committing to coming back to work
Step 2. Being able to take on more: - more research, more writing, more Social Media.
Step 3. Letting my protective guise down a little - wearing jeans & t.shirts again every once in a while.
Step 4. Holding on to my opinion in the face of (any) criticism

...you get the drift. It pleased me privately to count up these achievements. Every once in a while I'd share one on Twitter a propos something else.

But it seems that, all the while these bits of things were happening, nothing had changed underneath. Deep in the unknown mind of this Cireena, the well-worn treads of 'unstable' Cireena were scored indelibly.

How the hell, after years of living with a mental illness, could I not recognise that I was heading toward a point where red lights should have been flashing, bells shrilling, - or at the very least an old man with a hand-held plaque with DANGER on it should have alerted me. How do you know, faccrissake, when you are an acceptable part of the human condition and when you aren't?

In the end, last Friday, it wasn't I who brought up the question of my mental health. It came from within family.

And I almost felt a sense of relief.

It actually is really simple. I am broken more thoroughly than I had allowed myself to admit

. I'm facing two choices: either -

1. I'm in a state of mental collapse. I don't have the strength left any more to fight through that.

2. I'm in the early stages of Alzheimers. There is nothing I can do to fight through that.

Whatever - this is a whole new version of Reality to me.

It's rather scarey.

Comments

How I Turned into an Acorn.

....in the beginning. I came to England directly from China where I'd been Lecturing for 7 years. A chap who contacted me while I was there & said he was doing so because he was a friend of a friend of mine at the British Council,, suggested we work together: he had the premises for a school in Eton and I would bring over a couple of teachers & contacts from China to help teach at the school. It was all lined up & I saw this as a kind of Wonder-Job: I couldn't wait to get started. (And the plate glass windowed flat high up at tree level was all blonde wood & brushed-steel kitchen appliances.) The fourth day of being in England my putative "partner" declared bankruptcy. And I also discovered that the person whom he'd cited as a mutual friend at the British Council had never heard of him.Thus the whole reason for me being where I was, at that time, suddenly disappeared. And now I had no accommodation,

re cycling

The Brighton & Hove Circular Economy Action Plan 2020 - 2035 https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/business-and-trade/brighton-hove-circular-economy-action-plan-2020-2035#tab--promoting-circular-economy-activity-across-the-city This jargon-filled mission statement regarding recycling is published by Council. Full of momentary fashionable misuse of perfectly simple but unexplained concepts such as 'stakeholders' and 'circular economy', it is not aimed at local residents, small business and shop owners, those for whom English is a second language, or, importantly, the 'average' person . It is a mangled word-fest presumably aimed at other Councils, as was so much of Brighton & Hove Council's public communication under the previous administration. So as is usual with many of Councils "public" documents, two thirds of the population are confused - and bored stiff - by them; others are intimidated, and still oth

I finally Get why Alice's sister Fell Asleep in the Shade!

Yes, I do mean Alice as in Alice in Wonderland. She who, 150 years later, was to inspire plot-lines for Soaps and B-Grades with the (now) evergreen It Was All a Dream- ending for years to come. And the reason I am referring to Alice is because, until those hot days we had recently, I never had completely understood how, on a hot summer's day, anyone could really fall asleep under a tree? Not that I ever breathed this puzzlement to a soul: nothing I had ever read, seen or heard over an increasingly longer period of time, seemed to indicate there was a flaw in this reasoning. Everyone else obviously understood. As this has undoubtedly been the status quo for around three quarters of a rather peripatetic life, one sometimes one has to get a grip on asking too many questions. The line people draw between eagerly intelligent fact gathering, and total imbecility, is shorter than you may realise. But now, finally, like a bucket of iced-water over the head, I discovered that shade

Benefit Street, Brighton.

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