It's My Lunchbreak and I'll Blog if I Want To

When things are going badly, you need a near-nerdish devotion to detail to pick out the little monads of mirth, those quirks and serendipities that make life worth living while waiting for homeostasis to work its subtle magic, or failing that, for the meds to kick in. You've got to have your metal detector hovering over the shifting sands and your binoculars at the ready to watch those trains come in or those birds fly away. And when something happens, write it down. If big birds make small birds, why don't big trains make small trains? 'Cause the big trains pull out on time. Ha ha ha.

The crew at Bipolar Chicks Blogging recently posted hilariously about some of the search terms entered on their blog... think 'poontang', 'fat sex', 'boob poking' and 'monkey butt itch' among others. So in order to self-engineer a similar level of amusement, I investigated the ways in which people have managed to google their way here, anonymously, that is - I haven't linked search terms to particular IP addresses. Naturally, faeces smearing, Jerry Falwell and good old borderline rage have made an appearance (more on the latter in a minute). But one of the more intriguing search terms was 'locking pants in a mental health ward'. I assume this refers to some kind of restraint technique or device, which I wouldn't know much about, since according to my medical records, I routinely "resisted restraint". (Somehow I'm pretty sure that when they wrote this, they weren't referring to any long-gone martial arts expertise on my part, but merely my reluctance to lie very still and quietly, whether it was in relaxation therapy or when I had two guys sitting on top of me while someone else had the much cooler job of pushing a big red button. My intransigence under the latter circumstances hardly needs explaining; but my inability to lie still on a mattress while some healing-power-of-crystals-proselyte asked us to contemplate the conduct of our own funerals probably had something to do with the guy lying next to me whispering "They'll bury me with a bottle of beer".) Gosh, I am rambling; I must be feeling better. Anyway, I just had to google 'locking pants in a mental health ward' myself, and the first hit was the Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Userwatch blog, at which

Sue Turner, CEO of Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust now offers one to one virtual (CEOBT) Chief Executive Officer Boxing Therapy for Mental Health Service Users who are getting plenty of rounds of useless treatments elsewhere in Birmingham and Solihull ....

Users who wish to indulge in this completely free therapy can use their keyboard to throw punches and create real laughs.....The Dept of Health is looking closely at combining their failing CBT programmes with this new costless therapy in an effort to save themselves from an eventual public beating ...

And there's a Flash game where you get to left jab, right jab and uppercut her until her eyes blacken and her lips bleed. Now, I don't know anything about this woman and punching her in the face sounds a bit like borderline rage to me, so I've instead generated a similar game in which you can throw cream pies at E Fuller Torrey:

Link: PlayMyGame

You can also spongecake your grandmother if you want, but I think you lose points for that. I trust that the folks at TAC won't consider a bit of sticky slapstick fun as further evidence of violent tendencies among the mentally ill, and hence for the need for broader involuntary treatment provisions. So, please do enjoy this bit of penny arcade arcana. Because, personally, I'm going to head back to Birmingham & Solihull and punch out that Sue Turner chick again, since, come to think of it, she does bear a striking resemblance to my shrink. Ah, never mind, it's just that borderline rage thing I mentioned. Why the fuck did I get up at sparrow's fart yesterday morning to spend ninety minutes commuting to see someone who has become increasingly obsessed with whether or not I like to hang around in bars in the hope of picking up strangers for sex? Not that I would necessarily pass judgement on those who do do that kind of thing - if that's your thing, then play it safe, keep it real, and good luck to you. I was just unable to grasp, as I sat in one of her farting leather recliners, why she would ask me if that was what I was trying to do, after I'd mentioned in passing how I'd gone to my favourite bar in the city after work the night before, ordered my favourite martini and curled up in the corner with a book. I mean, it's not as if I frequently regale her with lurid tales of anonymous liaisons conducted in alleyways under airconditioning units or in one-bedroom flats in one-supermarket suburbs. But how dumb can I get? Back on the train, I'm smacking my forehead:

4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5.

I suppose the martini (glass lined with Cointreau, and garnished with anchovy-stuffed olives) counts as substance abuse. And she did ask me about the 'self-mutilating' behaviour separately... "Er, no, why would I do that?" Fortunately the possibility of any symptomatic 'spending' was obviated when I told her I wasn't prepared to pay for CBT.

It's this cookie-cutter crap again. I've been fingered, and now it's her job to squeeze the incriminating evidence out of me. The me(n)tal outline of a gingerbread man is pressed down into a reality rolled as flat and permeable as tissue paper, and everything external to it is torn away, rolled up and rolled flat again to serve as the template for the trivialisation of someone else's experience. If you're in the dayroom and you're reading a broadsheet newspaper while sitting on the floor, because there's not enough room on the table to open it flat, that's called 'regressing'. And I do recall with affectionate bemusement the Secret Symbol in Blue Ink incident, where I was interrogated for hours about the real, talismanic meaning of a bit of scribble in the margins of said newspaper next to the crossword (my pen had run dry and I was trying to get it to work again).

Tsk, tsk, now I've gone and gotten myself all worked up. But all in all, what a splendid and absolutely necessary waste of time this has been, writing myself out and in and out again of the mood from hell. There are people out there who have happened on my blog 'feeling rubbery from Geodon' and looking for 'illicit sexual experiences' with a 'socially isolated genius'. But out of all of the search keywords used to locate my blog, my personal favourite has to be 'bipolar boss idiot'. You know how the song goes, now, don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad.

And if you've ever had anyone quote that Meatloaf song to you in a ham-fisted attempt at either justifying or consoling you regarding the withdrawal of their affections, you'll know how rotten I felt when I started writing this post.