Still Standing, Still Fighting.

Cast your mind back to late winter 1994. My life had been ravaged by mental illness for four years. Fred and Rose West has just been discovered and some of the most heinous crimes in British history were unfolding in the glare of the tabloid press. John Major was our Prime Minister. And Donald Trump was already a clown...a very rich clown. Mental illness was not talked about. And I was desperately lonely.

Back then I was waiting for admission to a specialist psychiatric facility in London. They took the untouchables. The ones who no one wanted to work with. The angry. The damned. The ones everyone else had given up on as too damaged and too toxic. I entered that ward in March.

When I emerged in the summer of that year my last hope was gone. Well it wasn't gone, I had simply not done what I was told and was thus forward too much for the NHS to deal with. Bernie Rosen once told me that I would never find a medication that would work for me.

Going back to my small world was soul destroying. There was no hope. Yet I was determined to do something and that was to read my medical notes. A few weeks later I did so. And it was like they were talking about an alien completely detached from my life, my experience, my emotion and my compassion. It told my GP that my prognosis was to kill myself within six months.

All these years later on World Mental Health Day I can say I'm still standing, I'm alive, I'm kicking, and I'm fighting. It takes a lot of courage to fight mental illness. I did find a medication  and it worked.

I have a life. I have a career. I have friends. And mental illness is now just a part of my life. Covid aside the last few months have been tough. All the doubt has come back. I feel all I have achieved is being swept away. And my legacy is crumbling.

Yet I must recall the words, the cards, the nominations and the kindness of my friends who have helped me, the students I have helped, the sun shining, having my own place, having opera and books. Having my kitchen. And having life.

Many of my friends from those days are dead. So on our day I bear testimony for both the living and the dead. I have no doubt that the few people who read my musings fight their demons day to day. I certainly do. If that is you please stand up and congratulate yourself for surviving. Keep fighting for that way we will prevail over our demons.

Take care out there.

I Heard a Voice.