I'm auctioning signed, personally dedicated copies of my new book, Crazy Lady (Without the Cats), in aid of Papyrus, who work to aid suicide prevention. As it is the third anniversary of my mom's death by suicide next week, please bid on the auction, so we can help others to stay alive.
Crazy Lady auction < click on link
Love Clare xxx

Posted on Friday 28 of April, 2006 [22:13:23 UTC]

I had the brilliant idea that I was better and should come off my medication. I'm on antidepressants and mood stabilisers, and have been for nearly 3 years. I decided to wean myself off by just taking them every other day. Bad idea. First I went hyper, which is great when I get a lot of work done, but crap when I can't sleep, get aggressive and talk over other people. Then, today I came crashing down, thoughts of suicide, and copious crying.

It's undecided what label I should have. I have features of bipolar (manic depression), suffer anxiety, agoraphobia, and dissociative amnesia. Fun at parties, you know.

Today, my son went missing. He's 9, and he'd been to the park with the kid next-door and her mom. After coming back, he went off with some kids he met there and didn't tell me where he was going. By 7.30pm I was seriously panicking, but due to a lovely old agoraphobia flare-up couldn't leave the house to look for him. Luckily, I had someone to go and scour the streets, and he was found (and had a strip torn off him for bogging off!)

But it's so frightening, being that scared to go outside that I couldn't go and look for him myself. If I hadn't had anyone who could go for me, I would have had to phone the police and report him missing. I think people have the impression that agoraphobia is kind of funny, odd, but let me tell you, it isn't. Imagine not being able to have a cup of tea because you are too scared to go to the shop and get some milk. And imagine standing at a window, hoping your child will appear, but desperately afraid that he has been taken by someone or hurt, and not being able to step outside to find out. I feel like a terrible mother. I do other stuff with him, but I can't cope with taking him to the park or go swimming like he wants to. I can go out if there is someone with me, just not alone. It must worry him, and I am trying to work on it (as part of my therapy I have to get on a bus alone soon). If I need to go anywhere, like my writing course, I have to be taken to the door and picked up from the door. I'm ok once I'm inside.

I try to encourage him to go out as much as possible, I don't want him being stuck in the house with me. But I do get overprotective, and I imagine his friends take the piss because he has to be in earlier than a lot of them. I suppose all I can do is my best, and try to make sure that his life isn't too affected by my mental health problems.

Posted on Friday 28 of April, 2006 [03:09:13 UTC]

I've just got back from my therapy session, and I feel drained. I'm doing cognitive analytic therapy, which is all about the traps (vicious circles) and dilemmas (false choices and narrow options) that I get into. It's all about breaking bad patterns in my life, my way of thinking and my behaviour and establishing good ones. It is quite depressing at the moment, seeing how many times I contribute to making my own life more miserable. One area has changed so far during the course of my therapy, I'm noticing how often I am critical of myself. I say how I feel and then practically disagree with myself, saying "that's ridiculous!" It must be quite bizarre sometimes, listening to me. I am starting to catch myself when I do it, now. So, if I can change one destructive pattern, I can change others, in time.
I have dissociative amnesia, and part of my personality has split off, kind of like multiple personality, but not as severe. Sometimes I literally don't know what I'm doing. It often happens that I will instigate sex while in a dissociative state, and then "come round" in the middle of it and start screaming or crying. Not very sexy, huh?
The way I'm different to my mom (who killed herself in 2003) is that I am actively working to change myself, not expecting everything to be done for me. The therapist is there to guide, but she can't make me better, I have to do that myself.
I'm going to lie down with a magazine and a cup of tea for a bit and relax.
Waffle over!
Clare xxx

Posted on Wednesday 12 of April, 2006 [11:53:44 UTC]

I read in my local newspaper of a wedding. Nothing unusual in that, but the man who got married on Saturday in Eastbourne, East Sussex, is a very special man.

Keith Lane has made twice daily visits to the 53ft high cliffs at Beachy Head - a notorious suicide spot in England - since his former wife, Maggie, died there in March 2004 after spiralling into depression.

Mr Lane returned to the spot where she fell a week after she died, and ended up grappling with a woman to prevent her rushing over the cliff edge. Since then, Mr Lane has saved 17 more people with his heroic suicide interventions.

Mr Lane has changed the world. What an inspiration to us all. I wish him and his new bride all the happiness in the world.

Posted on Monday 27 of March, 2006 [20:23:52 UTC]

I am mainly writing fiction at the moment, and endeavour to make my characters, settings, and plot events as realistic as possible. I sometimes, as many writers do, weave true events from my own life into my fictional character's worlds. Upon reading a piece in my local newspaper today I found an event that, hard as I try, I cannot imagine anyone believing as a plot line in a story, even though it is completely true.

Launch for doors
An opening ceremony is to take place on April 15 to celebrate new permanent doors at ****** Shopping Centre's toilets. Traders and shoppers will be invited.

I have an image of someone swinging a bottle of toilet cleaner on a ribbon to launch the doors. One does have to wonder - 'What was there before the permanent doors?'

You just couldn't make it up.
Clare

Posted on Thursday 16 of March, 2006 [14:33:16 UTC]

Deadlines, deadlines, creeping ever closer. An article due for a magazine - luckily I have help from an experienced features editor, who is one of my tutors on a writing course I was lucky enough to get picked for. A mental health anthology for a support forum I belong to needs editing, collating, and the full Lulu treatment - watch this space - and I have poetry homework. Performance poetry, moi? If you can class just reading something out as performance, then I may just scrape by. Although my reading out isn't great, 'cos my head reads faster than my mouth can speak.
There are loads of competitions I want to enter, so I'm really busy at the moment. Check out www.prizemagic.co.uk for writing competitions, it's a really good site that is updated regularly.
I'm planning updates to my website www.clarehill.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk soon, though I'm not sure when I'll have time!
I've got an interview with a newspaper coming up, and am desperately trying to get rid of spots before I have a photo taken. Toothpaste - the tip in every magazine I've read lately - has made me even more spotty!
Clare xxx

Posted on Saturday 18 of February, 2006 [22:54:05 UTC]

Well, now I have been diagnosed with dissociative amnesia. Well, now I have been diagnosed with dissociative amnesia. Okay, not funny, but it could have been, if Peter Cook had done it.
It means that sometimes, although I seem fine, it is actually another part of me who is operating the machinery - not "the lights are on but no-ones home" but rather "the lights are on but I have squatters". To illustrate - I had an appointment at my son's school, went to reception and told the woman there that I had an appointment with Mrs X, to which she replied, puzzled, "yes, that's me" I have seen her before, but it's been filed in the black hole in my mind.
As long as I remember to put my trousers on before leaving the house, it should be fine.
Clare xxxx

Posted on Thursday 02 of February, 2006 [16:37:36 UTC]

Well, I last saw a psychiatrist in February. My next appointment was in May, which I didn't attend as I was very ill at the time, and was suffering with agoraphobia at that point. After repeated contact from my social worker, my CPN and my psychotherapist, by phone and letter, the psychiatrist deigned to give me an appointment for this morning, 29th November, at 9.45. SO I walked into the hospital, went to the first reception,waited my turn, then went to the second reception, waited my turn, and was told that the psychiatrist wouldn't see me, and then the receptionist wrote DNA next to my name. It was 9.55, and he had taken in his ten'o'clock appointment, so refused to see me. Apparently, the woman before me was also refused on the grounds of lateness.
The roads are icy, it's been snowing, and the hill where the hospital is located is like a skating rink, so you can only drive at about 5 miles an hour. I checked the clock, I was four minutes late when I entered the hospital.
The fact that I was only to be given 15 minutes is disturbing, as is the fact that the record now says I did not attend. The receptionist said that she would put me down for another appointment, when I asked how long that would take she told me their computer system would be down for the next week, and that they would reallocate appointments when it was back on line. So it's ok for them to make excuses, then, but not the patients.
I feel completely dehumanized, I ended up on the pavement in tears waiting for the person who had dropped me off to come back for me.
I thought psychiatrists were supposed to make us feel better?

Posted on Tuesday 29 of November, 2005 [09:31:34 UTC]

My first copies of Crazy Lady (Without The Cats) arrived this morning, and they are gorgeous!

Posted on Thursday 24 of November, 2005 [09:55:34 UTC]

STOP PRESS!
In my book I make reference to the fact that the only famous people that I have ever met are Jimmy Cricket and Eileen Downey. I'll explain: Jimmy Cricket is a British comedian from a long time ago who had a trademark of wearing wellington boots with L and R on them so he would know which feet to put them on, and Eileen Downey is the manager of a hotel in Liverpool which featured in a documetary series. We English, so strange, yes?!
Well, now I've met Ricky Tomlinson, who is an actor. He appeared in Cracker (I think Americans had a spin-off version called Fitz) and a comedy programme called The Royle Family, he is famed for saying "My Arse" which ,as a catchphrase, is pretty cool, don't you think? I was just browsing in the bookshop and there he was. Okay, that makes it sound like I just bumped into him. What I actually did was queued for about ten minutes to get him, to sign his new book, but hey, I still got to shake the mans hand!
Love Clare xxx

Posted on Sunday 13 of November, 2005 [20:04:06 UTC]