Friday, 26 February 2010

Hamlet quotes

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare

"O, That this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
And recks not his own rede."

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend."

"This above all — to thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"More matter with less art."

"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so."

"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"

"O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"

"The play's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"We are oft to blame in this, —
'Tis too much prov'd, — that with devotion's visage,
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself."

"To be, or not to be, — that is the question: —
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

"I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, — all but one, — shall live; the rest shall keep as they are."

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business, as the day
Would quake to look on."

"Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none. "

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go."

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions."

"Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get yet to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that."

"Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! "

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
The rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

The Media and Eating Disorders

"I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing."
- Mayra Hornbacher

I have been working on this for nearly two days and I still don’t think I’ve articulated myself as well as I would have liked. I’m not very good at writing out of anger or irritation; I tend to come across as harsh and bitchy and completely up my own arse which I apologise for. I’m not a journalist, I’m barely a fucking writer!

Today is Campaign Day and the whole of this week had been Eating Disorder Awareness Week, as well as the 21st birthday of b-eat, the UK’s biggest eating disorder charity which is a fantastic organisation that provides amongst other things information, help lines, and pressure on the government to provide more treatment. A lot of people are writing/blogging/making videos/promoting and generally making a noise and raising awareness about these diseases that are stigmatised, glamorised and still largely misunderstood by society.

I am happy and more than willing to give them my support and to take part, and something keeps coming up time and time amongst all the interviews and articles that have taken place this week that I especially want to contribute my own understand and experience to: That is how much responsibility the media have over the development and rise of anorexia and bulimia.

It has been said that the media are not to blame and that eating disorder’s have nothing whatsoever to do with girls wanting to lose weight. I disagree.

To say that a media that consistently promotes thin as in is blameless is wrong. They are NOT the cause of these illnesses; people are born with a predisposition to develop ED’s, just as they may be to develop cancer, but the bombardment of images of skinny, successful women, of the Special K diet and Weight Watchers, of Jamie fucking Oliver and his healthy eating plans for school cannot walk away scot free from the rise of anorexia and bulimia, from the average age that they develop dropping and from a culture that gives super skinny a pat on the back and makes perfectly healthy, average sized people feel clinically obese in comparison .

We all have problems in our lives that are at the root of our disorder; whether its trauma, bullying, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety or just the wrong thing said at the wrong time. But I honestly believe that the reason that some of us turn to food and weight loss as ‘the magic cure’ to everything is because of how thin is promoted and celebrated amongst our society and our media.

Beauty magazines promote low self-esteem, and if you’re young and vulnerable and feeling a little bit bad and insecure about yourself and the way that you look, this wall of dreams at the newsagents can easily fuel your distorted perceptions.

Every single person is an individual, with their own story, their reasons, and to say that it is never influence of the media that made someone sick is as big an invalidation to their illness as it is to say that someone is ‘too fat’ to have an ED.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Withnail and I quotes

"I want something's flesh!"
- Withnail and I

“I don't know, I don't know. Oh God, I don't feel good. Look, my thumbs have gone weird! I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose. Oh God. My heart's beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful, I feel really dreadful!”

“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”

“Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can't.”

“I feel like a pig shat in my head.”

“Don't threaten me with a dead fish.”

“We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!”

“I must have some booze. I demand to have some booze.”

“I could hardly piss straight for fear.”

“Right, here's the plan. First, we go in there and get wrecked, then we eat a pork pie, then we drop some Surmontil-50's each. That way we'll miss out on Monday and come up smiling Tuesday morning.”

“I'm going to pull your head off, because I don't like your head.”

“Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”

“I have a heart condition. If you hit me, it's murder.”

“This place has become impossible. Nothing to eat, freezing cold and now a madman on the prowl outside with eels.”

“-Those are the kind of windows faces look in at.”

“These aren't accidents! They're THROWING themselves into the road gladly! THROWING themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness! Throw yourself into the road, darling! You haven't got a chance!”

“A coward you are, Withnail. An expert on bulls you are not”

“I must say, that represents a level of hypocrisy in you that I'd previously suspected, but not noticed due to highly evasive skills.”

“Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing, and then all at once the frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores.”

“I have just narrowly avoided having a buggering, and have come in here with the express intention of wishing one upon you.”

“Nonsense. This is a far superior drink to meths. The wankers don't drink it because they can't afford it.”

“We've gone on holiday by mistake.”

“Give me a Valium, I’m getting the FEAR!”

“Politics man. If you're hanging on to a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision: let go before it's too late, or hold on and keep getting higher. Posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”

“There must and shall be aspirin!”

“How dare you. How DARE you!”

“You can stuff it up your arse for nothing and fuck off while you're doing it!”

“I'M GONNA BE A STAR!”

“How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold. Something's got to be done. We can't go on like this. I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum. I mean look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones. Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels.”

“I've got a bastard behind the eyes.”

“I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel in apprehension. How like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor women neither. Nor women neither.”

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

"When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, "You can't be ugly! Be pretty!" It's weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too."
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Sometimes I feel like I'm good enough for someone to fuck or go on a date with or other or 'mess around with'. But I never feel like I'm good enough for someone to fall in love with and want to be with for any significant length of time or to find consistantly beautiful and engaging.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

The times they are a' changing

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall"
- Confucius

Uni is going well, at least Creative Writing is! Lit is not doing so well, not just grades wise but motivationally it's a bit of a struggle. I want to change to language but not sure how to go about it.

I'm doing well, better than I have in a long fucking time! At the minute it just feels okay to be and not overthink or overfeel all the time... I think for a while back there I was trying too hard to be better and to do it perfectly and it really wasn't the best way to go about it. I think because the people I was involved with before put so much hype on the fact that uni would change me, I felt like it had to be an instant, blindingly obvious shift and it really hasn't been like that. Yes, I have got better, but when you get hung up about all the details and all the things that are going wrong it really doesn't feel like you're improving at all when really you've come a long fucking way. I've stopped wanting to do this recovery thing perfectly and instantly and started just wanting to let go gradually instead and it’s definitely stopped me feeling like complete shit for having a bad day, which of course means that the bad days are easier to contain and control just to ‘a bad day’ rather than the guilt driving me to fuck up completely. That’s something that I’ve really not ever felt before and I wish I could pinpoint exactly how it’s happened but I really can’t.

It is true what they told me, even though I never believed it, that getting a life outside of being sick would be the only way to really make positive changes. I know some people probably think that you should wait until you’re ‘properly well’ to get on with things but really... I don’t think that’s the case for me. That wouldn’t have worked because having no life fuelled my destructive thoughts and behaviours and even though sometimes they are still there, but at least now I have something ELSE as well.

I think accepting that I couldn’t change the last however many years or make everything go away just by not doing it anymore was the big thing that helped. I sort of stopped resenting the fact that I’d been ill, or needed professional help, or medication and that stopped a huge amount of crap feelings.

I know it would be foolish to think that all the negative stuff isn't going to ever be a part of my life again, I have been sick for way too long and just not being ever again is an impossibility and even in the 'now' it's also a huge identity shift that takes some getting used to. To anyone on the outside it is apparent that the identity you had before, 'the sick person' is unfavourable to the 'okay' person. It is not always that obvious for you though and it definitely isn't that obvious to me.

For the first time in my life though I feel validated as a writer, not as an anorexic or a psychiatric exhibit.

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

Christmas and Eating Disorders

"He called it a freedom. A freedom you can allow yourself. Or not."
- Velvet Goldmine

Christmas and eating disorders are a match made in Hell. Regardless of whether you're starving yourself, eating everything and throwing it up or just eating everything in sight and hating yourself because of it.

Christmas when I was 14-16 were spent refusing treats and chocolates, only getting a fleeting happiness when I could fit into a pair of size eight jeans. Between Christmas and New Year 2003 I tried to kill myself. Christmas at 17 was one of those trying to be normal, putting a brave face on, trying to recover times. Christmas at 18 and I was on 'release' from an eating disorder unit after the worst bout of anorexia I've suffered from, anxiety etched on my parents faces, constant panic, torn between wanting to throw myself into the festive spirit and absolute terror of being out of that safe and controlled enviroment. I knew that if I gained weight whilst I was away I would have no one but myself to blame and that was absolutley unthinkable back then. Christmas at 19 and the years of starvation had caught up with me and I couldn't stop eating everything in sight, boxes of chocolates and biscuits littered around the house didn't help and my weight soared and soared. I spent most of the day on my own, my parents went out for dinner and I stayed behind, the thought of a meal out still paralysed me with fear. Christmas at 20 and I was back 'in recovery' after a pretty bad relapse, shouting at everybody not to buy me food or clothes and Christmas last year I was sick again, planning how I could bp and get away with it, throwin up my Christmas dinner in my sisters bathroom and spending far too much time checking the scales for the slightest change.

That's eight Christmases completely taken over by thoughts of food and weight, Christmases stolen by fear. Eight years of my life lost in the blink of an eye, Fuzzy memories, distorted photos, guilt, shame, anger, denial, terror and rage. I'm twenty two years old for fucksake and nearly half of my life has been consumed by calories and fat and mirrors and scales and a square inch of fabric sewn in the back of my jeans. Well, fuck that!

You have to built your life back out of this trainwreck and it hurts, fuck does it hurt, to have no idea who the Hell you are anymore because it feels like your only identity is being the thin one, the sick one, the 'special one'. Well, let me tell you something, I know who I am again outside of those bullshit lies. This Christmas I can say that I'm at university studying something I truly love instead of saying I don't work or I've been ill or blushing furiously and running away to eat and puke all of my nieces and nephews selection boxes. I am a young, incredibly passionate women who has bigger things to think about, bigger things to talk about than losing weight.

It's not eay being a trainwreck; parts of you are exposed and vulnerable and things get in the cracks that you don't always know how to deal with and it's terribly difficult walking around with a smile on your face trying to be BETTER and HAPPY and SORTED but y'know what else do you do? Sit around and cry about it, feeding on the nostalgia herorin of how good it felt when you weighed 100lbs, how good it felt when you were so hungry you couldn't even feel it, how good it felt when you were dying!? Because that's the alternative and from where I'm standing it doesn't seem all that appealing. Nothing is as bad as you remember it and nothing is ever good enough so why play the fucking game?

Why not have the strength and the energy to go out and drink all night and walk home without your shoes on. Or to queue outside on a freezing pavement all day and then stand up all night with three thousand bodies pressing against you whilst watching the songs that changed your life come alive in front of your eyes. Whatever it is that makes you happy, truly happy, isn't going to be found on the nutritional infomation of a packet of crackers or at the bottom of a toilet.

I guess I'm writing this to say that it is possible, that you can start to build a bridge between you and the ED and you and the rest of your life and that you can start crossing it. It's hard and it hurts and it all goes terribly wrong sometimes and you forget why you're putting yourself through this Hell, why you're bothering to fight day after day when it's always there, creeping round your neck, whispering in your ear, all the temptation and nostalgia and sheer preassure of life stacking up on you.

I never thought that I would be able to sit here and say that striving to be a better person, a healthier person, is more important to me than striving to be a skinny person, a sick person. But this year, after all the years of misery and failure and unfulfilment, I think I'm ready to say it and mean it.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

My first Placebo gig - Manchester Apollo 3/3/04

"If Placebo was a drug, they would no doubt be pure heroin - dangerous, mysterious and totally addictive."
- Brian Molko

It’s finally here, the day I’ve been beside myself waiting for. Weeks and weeks of anticipation and excitement all boil down to the two and a half hour car journey ahead of me. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been this excited in my life; I’ve certainly never wanted anything as badly as I want this. I was devastated when my first attempt to get tickets failed; it took all my powers of persuasion to get my Dad to agree to drive up to Manchester. I’ve only ever been to one gig before and that was only just before Christmas. I don’t know what to expect as we all pile in my Dad’s trusty old Volvo and trundle up the M6 but I know it’s going to be brilliant.
I know it’s going to be the best night of my life. The journey is excruciatingly, painfully slow. Right up until I was seven we used to get the coach to Spain every year, a whole twenty two hours on a coach, but even that can’t prepare me for this agonising, hundred mile trip.
We finally arrive, about an hour before doors open; it takes ages to find somewhere to park. Everything either is either an abandoned factory or warehouse outlet or looks like a squat or drug den, I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere look quite so much as a relic of industry. We finally manage to leave the car somewhere – my Dad constantly muttering to himself that the windows are going to get smashed – and make our way to the Apollo.

As I see the sea of people huddled around it I know that I have found the place that is truly my world. There are a lot Placebo shirts, some positively vintage and some that look they were only brought that day. It would be hard to say what the average hair colour was; pink, blue, green, jet black, bleached blonde, name any shade and someone here will have it. Every generation is represented, I hear snatches of French and German, we are a truly international gathering. There is a very strong smell of weed which faintly annoys me; it’s such a cliché that the alternative are into drugs and I hate the idea that we’ve submitted ourselves as a stereotype.

It feels like coming home to a place you’ve been to a million times before. These people are my people, we (rather obviously) like the same music but Placebo is so much more than that. It transcends the definition of a band. It is more like a religion, although more tolerant and accepting than any that conventionally exist. In the words of the lead singer it is a convention of outcasts. A gathering of people brought together through music but with so much more in common that their favourite band.
The weather is unforgivingly cold, it’s barely turned March and there’s no hint that spring is on the way, and yet more than anything I want to stay outside in the bitter chill with these people. I want to talk to them, be around them and soak up every last drop of atmosphere. The effect is perhaps ruined, or reinforced, by my Dad’s assessment of the crowd, “This looks like a bunch of freaks!” I smile to myself not in the least bit offended. Yes, it is a bunch of freaks, but it’s a bunch of freaks that I belong too. I have never in my life had such a feeling of belonging. I haven’t shared as much as two words with any of these people and yet I feel totally accepted by all of them.

As my parents don’t quite share my enthusiasm for me fellow fans and my passion to want to freeze myself to death in the name of fellowship, I’m quickly lead to a pub round the corner. It smells horrendously of stale beer and sweat, I’m not a fan of pubs at the best of times and right now I want to be OUT THERE savouring the moment. I spend my time staring at the walls, covered in old Access All Areas passes and signed photographs, I wonder how many bands have drank in here, I wonder if the band I’ve come to see have been in here during the day I start to melt with excitement all over again. I AM GOING TO SEE PLACEBO!!!!!

I drink my drink in about a second and wait impatiently for it to turn seven. Two old men come over to my Mum and me and try to chat her up and she laughs that it’s been a long time since anybody did that. However, I’m not taken by the idea of drunken men leering over us and convince my parents that it’s time to leave. They say that they’ll be in McDonalds, the only source of civilisation (us freaks aside) that’s remotely close to the venue, tell me to take care and enjoy myself and they’ll see me later.

Enjoy myself, I think; I want to commit every last chord they play into memory. I’m going to get stupidly over-emotional and cry in front of three thousand strangers. I’m going to see the very reason why I’ve been breathing for the last three months stand on a stage in front of me. But enjoy it, I’ll try.