At the Click of a Mouse.

The last time this happened I was flying on the crest of a manic wave that had been going on for months. In my second year at the University I was at the height of my power in my powerless position. The news came through the day of the staff Christmas party, the day before I was due to pick up my brand new car the following morning. 2009 seems an awfully long time ago now. I was younger, more energetic, enthusiastic, passionate and not yet disillusioned.

When the crash came at the click of a mouse on a copy and paste e mail it was a spectacular fall. The effects hit me for many weeks to come. But as least then I had had a chance to appear in person and do the best I could.

Today more than 6 years later a click of a mouse on a copy and paste e mail from someone I never met in that same building has led me to the same place. I will not be going back to Cambridge. Didn't even get an interview. In my cynical, jaded, and disillusioned view of the mental health world of 2016 I was expecting that rejection.

Have I crashed through the floor? No. But then again I only just opened the e mail. In my manic arrogance of the past I rated my ability as a mental health practitioner highly. Now I doubt it completely. I long for a mini mania but it has been several years since that happened. I wonder if it will ever happen again?

Once more I doubt my past and my story. Should I still ask myself did I make it up? It is still a game of a simple click of a mouse on a data recording system that decides the fate of many of us. Ill or just fucked up? Treatable or just the problem? That is what we do in my profession.

What gets lost in the that is the humanity. It is not easy living with mental illness. I may have got further than some but tonight it feels no achievement at all.

Where next? That is the question that haunts my life. I don't know the answer. Today I'm resigned to what will be and will mourn what might have been.

I Heard a Voice.