#to be clear i know the actual effects of hydrocephalus as well as the hand and eye but this is based on how the show presents it

[grinchwrapsupreme]

being super normal about White calling Billy "a dreamer"after the events of Maybe No Go

[gaiatheorist]

Reasons, and excuses.

I’ve probably used that phrase before, when I ‘worked for Royal Bank of Scotland’ (in a 24-hour freephone call-centre), my well-meaning manager had to toe the corporate line about my abysmal payment protection insurance sales figures. “Don’t give me excuses, give me reasons!” she barked at me during an appraisal. The underpinning reason, as ever, was that I’m too honest, for all my excellent listening and communication skills, for all my linguistic trickery, I’m just not a salesperson. The product wasn’t right for everyone, my customer satisfaction ratings were consistently high, my up-sell and add-on figures consistently low, I was ‘dragging the team down’ with my inability to coerce people into buying insurance they probably didn’t need. (Side-spin about the colleagues with high sales figures, who’d mumble the word ‘optional’, or actually drop calls where the customer had requested a high value loan without insurance.) 

I’ve just found an excuse for why I’ve been so unwell this week. My Facebook ‘memories’ thing has me goofing about, giving ratings on food, cleanliness, and staff for my ‘mini-break’ 3 years ago. I was in hospital, having brain surgery. The actual anniversary of the surgery was yesterday, today is the anniversary of my bizarre ‘escape from Alcatraz’ release from hospital. (Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the ex eventually leaving, I might buy a bottle of wine for that one.) 

The first brain surgeries really shook me up. Not so much the surgeries themselves, I have no recollection of having a groove drilled in my skull so surgeons could lay a catheter-type drain to draw out the accumulated blood from the ruptured aneurysm, and the CSF that was causing the hydrocephalus. I don’t know how long I was the induced coma before the second surgery, where a surgeon guided ‘coils’ into the burst aneurysm, via an incision in my femoral artery. I do remember the procedure of having the drain removed, probably because I refused sedation, knowing I’d ‘need’ the lovely-floaty Morphine later, to deal with visiting time. Calculating, even as I was having a tube removed from the surface of my brain 10 days after traumatic surgery. I have no idea why the ex insisted on bringing his parents to see me every day, or whether he’d made any attempt to contact MY family, to say I was in hospital. That shook me up, that he was in complete control, and I was only ‘allowed’ contact with the people he selected. (He brought his friend to ‘see’ me, all comatose and catheterised, I know the experience will have been unsettling for him, too, but, really? “Going through a bit of a tough time, mate, would you like to come and see ‘our lass’ in pyjamas?”)  

The larking about on Facebook is a direct result of the lack of control I had over anything during the first hospitalisation. Stone-cold about dates, and timings, and visitors, I frightened a lot of people, and then tried to humour-deflect. “Stop flapping, it’s only a bit of brain surgery.” (Then my predictable snark-smile, when I turned up back at work, and one of the receptionists said “Oh, did you not have your operation, then?”) I really, REALLY mis-managed myself, through my need to be in control. In-on-Wednesday-surgery-on-Thursday-home-on-Friday, I was ‘going with plan A’, and nothing was going to stop me, least of all the fact that the consultant wasn’t there to discharge me, he’d mentioned that he was on leave over the Easter weekend, but his notes said “Home Friday if well.” so I went with that. I hadn’t brought enough changes of clothes to stay over the weekend.

I’d asked my brother if I could use him as my next-of-kin instead of the ex. I’d been very clear (repeatedly) with the ex that I didn’t want him to visit, and, no matter how much he whined, and pestered, and said he cared about me, I wasn’t budging on that. I’d requested the surgery during the school Easter break so I wouldn’t ‘need’ any time off for recovery. I over-stretched myself, determined to prove myself.  

Hindsight is a kick in the minge. I prioritised getting the kid to the end of his A-levels, getting rid of the ex, and ‘proving myself’ at work. As much as I brushed off the concerned people on Facebook, telling me to ‘rest’ and ‘take care’, they were right, and I was wr w wro- misguided. I continued to do what I’d always done, running at life head-on, and it took me about six months of running on fumes to burn out completely. That didn’t have to be inevitable, I made my choices, and tried, but the cumulative toll of several life-changing events in a relatively short space of time hit me, and I broke a little bit. 

Having established that the ‘anniversary’ is an excuse for having effectively ‘lost’ this week, the date makes no difference to anything, I’m looking for a reason. I’ve been physically unwell, and emotionally unstable for a week, the two do tend to go hand-in-hand with me. The migraines tended to be enforced shut-downs, when my brain would ‘just say no’, and I almost-always ended up with something vague-and-virusy during school holidays. I’ve had a throat infection, and it has been a doozy, bypassing the usual crappy tonsillitis that hits me 3-4 times a year, and going straight to what looked like laryngitis. Painful days, and sleepless nights, leading to nodding off on the sofa, or in the armchair. Rest, fluids, paracetamol, I know the drill. It probably was psychosomatic, I can’t divorce my muddled mind from my injured brain and dysfunctional body, it comes as a package. 

I’d wound myself up about the mental health assessment, paranoid-convinced that I’d be prescribed anti-depressants, and told to ‘get on with it’. Already slightly-wobbly, the appointment came at a huge emotional cost to me, and sent me into a spiral of am-I-a-bad-person? I make questionable choices, and I’m a snarky bitch, but I don’t think I’m a ‘bad person’. ‘Bad’, little linguistic flip, there, because I need to get ‘better’, and figure out what I’m ‘good’ at. I don’t have a date for the therapy, I do have an appointment with Neurology next month, which might reduce some of the physical issues that drain my cognitive capacity. I hope so, anyway, life as it is currently is a bit like trying to run a marathon in stilettos. The therapy, when it eventually comes, will hopefully pick-apart, and re-route some of my disordered cognitive processing. The disordered thinking is a natural response to long-term traumatic experiences, that’s a reason, not an excuse. My paranoia that ‘everyone’ is looking to trip-me-up and catch-me-out is a learned behaviour, but it has proven quite useful in dealing with DWP so far. I used to describe myself as ‘Teflon’, but underneath that bollocks-bravado, I was your classic ‘swan’, appearing to glide through whatever life threw at me, but paddling frantically under the surface. Oh, and probably able to break a person’s arm. 

Along with the big petition, to revoke A50, there’s another one, to investigate DWP’s systems and processes. I don’t want to be ‘unemployed’, or ‘disabled’, but, for now, I need the ‘social security’ payments for heating and eating. It’s highly probable that DWP/PIP/ATOS will decide I’m not-disabled, whether I’ve accessed any treatment or not. I’m not scamming the system, I have brain injuries, and ‘mental health issues’ as per ATOS’s notes, ATOS have exacerbated them. I’ve managed to ‘buy time’ in the systems, to at least start to address the issues that my disabilities cause, but I doubt I’ll be given an extension, and a terrifying number of people don’t manage to even qualify for the ‘award’ at all. My last OU course was ‘Introduction to death, dying and grief’, which contained a section on assisted dying. A medical body within the UK has just relaxed its stance on assisted dying, at the same time as the insidious UC and PIP systems continue to steamroller ‘us’. I’m safe-ish, I know that, for now, I’m a drain-on-resources, and, as much as I hate it, I’m justifying it against not having had three years of free tossing-it-off at uni, and only having four months of ‘maternity leave.’ What about the people who can’t formulate a reason/excuse, and less-than is not-enough? An individual able to give fully informed consent should never be prevented from ending their own life, but the ‘informed’ is the issue. The ‘making work pay’ rhetoric is fine in theory, but the universal-assumption is catastrophic. As I am now, I would present a risk of harm to self or others if I was compelled into ‘any/all suitable vacancies’, my bought-time is the only thing preventing that from happening. That’s a reason, not an excuse. 

I’ve had a bad week. I have two weeks before my son is back from uni for his Easter break, and I need to do whatever I can to re-stabilise myself before Mr Sticky and his noises are ‘back in the building’. I have many reasons ‘to be’, and I need to stop making excuses.