I Just Reached a Milestone!

Woke up after an hours sleep to find my 400th Follower greeting me, and what a blog! Thank you. Thank you to all my new followers and thank you to all my loyal followers :) I know some of you have been with me from the start. When I started this blog I never thought I would have so many wonderful people in my life because of it, not to mention the swathes of amazing art!!

For those who don’t really know me that well, Hiiii. My name is Jack. I’m now 25 (wow I’m old) and I study creative writing at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. I am the proud father of a beautiful little girl whom I don’t get to see nearly as often as I would like. I like to think of myself as artsy and my mum insists it’s from her side of the family. Recently I have been learning the ins and outs of my camera (which is a canon 650D, if any are interested) and for the past couple years I have been teaching myself to draw with varying degrees of success.

This is the basics, but what I would LOVE is a barrage of inboxes. Questions, comments, hello’s or even goodbyes (if perchance I have offended). I want you to pry, get to know me. Want to know what I think about something? ASK. Want some advice or a friendly stranger to vent to? GO FOR IT. Want to be my friend? Please?

Much love and a happy life to you fellow traveller <3

 

What it means to be a Mentally Ill College Student

allacharade:

I am a college student at a top university. I also struggle with mood, anxiety, and dissociative disorders. This list reflects (some of) my experiences. It is what I want to send to my professor who is being stingy with extensions and far from understanding. But I can’t. Feel free to reblog, share, heck - even email out to your teachers. If you do, please let me know how that goes. And of course, please add your own if you have more to add.

I am a mentally ill college student:

It means that no matter how much sleep you manage to get, you can never guarantee being awake enough or focused enough for work.

It means not knowing if the same coffee drink will do nothing, work as it is supposed to, or make you anxious and jittery for hours.

It means checking every syllabus for the lateness and attendance policies not because you are lazy but because you have to prepare for the worst.

It means that pulling an all nighter can ruin your ability to think, sleep, and function for days to weeks and having to make that choice anyway.

It means feeling like your excuses aren’t valid because they are all in your head, and it means getting that fear validated over and over.

It means that when anything goes slightly wrong, everybody doubts if you deserve to be there, if you should be where you are, if you should get this kind of education, if you are “well” enough to engage with the rest of society.

It means fearing for your freedom, your financial, familial, and social support, and your health care in ways you probably can’t imagine.

It means that the counseling center looks at you funny and somewhat frightened when you ask for help because they are trained for “run of the mill” college problems and you are out of their league.

It means not being able to stay up when you need to and not being able to sleep even when you can. It means working not only when there’s time in your schedule, but when that happens to match up with when your brain is able to. It means not being master of your own time management.

It means not being able to explain this to any professor because they won’t look at you the same, hold your opinions in the same light, even if they do take you seriously.

It means that when I mean to take an hour long nap or a 20 minute break, I can’t be sure that those times will stay that way.

It means spending some evenings you know you should be working, even wanting to be working, convincing yourself to move, or that you are actually there, or just quieting your brain. It means using distractions as necessity.

It doesn’t mean just being overwhelmed every once in a while. It doesn’t mean I fooled around and spent too much time slacking off or partying. It doesn’t mean I just had a sucky week. It doesn’t mean I am letting my social problems interfere with my academics.

It means I have to keep things in mind constantly that you never have to think about. It means I have to make choices that you’ll never have to make, it means that when I am down to the wire, it is because I am pushing my self to my limit just to be there.

Because it doesn’t mean, not even remotely, that I am not devoted, that I’m not interest, that I’m not in love with learning. That I don’t want to impress you, to get my work done on time, to do a great job. It doesn’t mean I don’t deserve this. I doesn’t mean I should be locked away. It doesn’t mean I should have to pay for extra semesters of schooling out of pocket that no one will give me scholarship or tuition benefit for.

It means you should, probably, work with me, give me the time I need. Realize that your assessments should be based on my understanding, not my time management. It means you should try to understand.

This is me. This is me for the past two years of university. This is me going back to high school. This is what I worry about when thinking about the rest of my life.

Deadlines

My mind murmurs. I roll around, feeling for my phone and getting lost in my own bed. Seeking hands find the cool glassy back. I prepare for what is to come, brightness, my eyes begin watering, in pain. Through the early morning fog I realize it is 8am. That single thought is enough for me to register the light seeping into my comfortable darkness. I’ve only had four hours rest, surely another sleep cycle (at an average of forty five minutes) will be enough to make today bearable. I close my eyes. I am tired.

It’s midday. The light is pervasive now. It illuminates my guilt. Yet another half a day wasted without anything to show for it. I throw the blankets off myself, a vain attempt at self-shock. It’s not that cold. I jump up out of bed and bounce around my room for a few seconds. Surely I just need a kick start, it works somewhat. So I sputter into the kitchen and start the kettle. Coffee in hand I sit, ready to consume my ‘morning’ dose of information. Facebook first and email to see if anyone wanted me over the few hours I slept. I check my bank, knowing nothing is in there. I go to my blog to seek some self-validation, it doesn’t work. I scroll through some other blogs, hoping for some ‘morning’ inspiration. It doesn’t work and I realize I am just wasting more time, it’s already 2pm. Maybe a shower will help. I am pathetic.

Sweet warm nothingness, the water runs over me. I visualize the steps I should be taking today. Housework can be done tomorrow. I really need to do that assignment, it’s three days late. I should eat soon. Right, food, coffee, and then I am going to write it. I WILL get it done today. Ten minutes in the shower is a waste of water, but I’m still there. It takes half an hour to wash, think, dry, dress and make it back to the kitchen. I make my breakfast at 2.30pm, eggs on toast. A bit of coffee to wash it down and I sit back down. Facebook, email, blog and it is 4pm. I am wasteful.

I open Word and stare at the void for a while. I know I have a lot to write, I have been reading so much. I know exactly what I need get across. Maybe if I read some more I will do better. I start skimming articles. To begin with they are on topic, but soon delve into random bits of trivia and interesting ideas. I think of stories I can write, of conversations I can have. Oh but what about this? I end up researching my new ideas. My head is swooning with possibility. I still haven’t started and it is 8pm. Now there is too much in my head, focusing is impossible. I try some meditation techniques I learnt years ago, they work to clear my head but as soon as I stop the cacophony starts again. I put a movie on, that will quell the noise. I am hopeless.

Unfortunately it’s midnight. One movie turned into two and some dinner. Now I am too tired to write coherently. I close the blank Word document and stare at the screen for a while. Maybe if I get a decent sleep I will write it first thing in the morning before class. I get into bed with trepidation. I know where this leads. I lay, thinking. Hours pass as I worry about everything I didn’t get done today. I worry about the building pressure. I worry about if I’ll cope. I worry. Every thought of the day turns dark when the lights are out. It’s about 4am when the morning fog seeps in, blurring the thoughts enough to sleep. I will get up in a few hours. I don’t and then it is time for class. I am failing.

Every thought I have is lie. I must admit this.

Last Day Deals

As I write blood drips from my lips to the page. I wonder if they will keep the stains in the final print. My blood is important to the tale after all. This blood is old blood, from ten years past. Blood from the day I died.

It was a Thursday in February. The summer had lost its edge but warmed my fingers, curled around the wheel. I was driving home after a long night guarding an empty factory from the possibility of bored teenagers and idiotic criminals. I may have been driving a tad too fast, but who is on the roads at 3am? So as the bitumen sped beneath me, the desolate road spread out in front of me.

Until, all too fast, light crossed my path. In less than an instant, the monstrous muscle car was crushing my mousy hatchback around me; then, nothing.

I was standing in absence, a lack of anything as far as my eyes could see. I am not even sure upon what I stood, or if in fact I existed to be standing. Time meant nothing as I was, so I cannot tell you how long I waited until something appeared. I could simply say it was a little boy and leave it at that. But it wasn’t, behind the frail body and baby blue eyes an intelligence shone, and a malevolence emanated.  His head cocked to one side, a displaced grin on his face. ‘Do you want to live?’ I heard without ears, stranger still he said it without speaking; in a melodic, cheerful voice.

‘Yes!’ I cried, I could not hear myself.

‘Good, I will give you ten years. But you have to play nice’ he almost giggled.

‘What?’ I tried in vain to understand.

‘I’ll trade you ten years for -umm- yourself?’

I felt as if I was in a schoolyard being swindled out of my lunch money.

‘Deal’ I couldn’t help accepting, I didn’t want to die.

‘Deal’ he shot back, his grin growing impossibly wide.

He disappeared in a blink of distorted red light. My body came back in a blink of cracked blue. The lights alternated until I realised I was what I was staring at, police lights through a smashed windscreen.

I did a mental check, nothing hurt. I moved, taking of my seat belt and stepping out of my wreck of a car. There was not a single scratch on me. I was fine.

The six months is a blur, a myriad of confounded specialists, opportunistic journalists and overcompensating friends and family. I told no one of my deal. They would have thought I was crazy. Worse yet, some people might believe me. So I acted the bewildered fool; then went back to work.

It was after a year I started to write. My job allows me a lot of down time. So between duties I scribbled away in note books. In less than a year I was publishing my first book. If I knew what I knew now, I would have burnt them all.

[A short writing task for uni, we wrote a sentence, then passed it on to someone to write the next sentence, ect. Then after we did that 5 times we had to write a draft for a story idea using the idea’s produced. This is what I came out with in an hour.]

When the Rain Stops Falling

Had an amazing final show last night. Our director cried with pride and I felt like I nailed every line. It was acting nirvana and I am feeling pretty chuffed (and just a little hungover). Good fun getting drunk with a teacher :p