{un}Safe places.

Hello.
Safe places. A lot of people have them. Years ago, when the world was turbulent (different sort of turbulent to now, back then people could only kill you from about 300 yards, not the other side of the world) people built castles, hill forts, etc. as their safe places, because you didn't know when bandits were going to take a fancy to you herd of cattle, and burn your hut down in the middle of the night. Now in our modern policed, cctv riddled, grass on your neighbour, fear the immigrant culture, most peoples safe place is their house.
I like my house. Good thick stone walls, old and cottagey, and in the arse end of nowhere. Hell, I think with a bit extra planking over the windows, it would hold up pretty well in a zombie apocalypse. It is full of sharp things (At least a sword, axe or mace hung up in every room), so any of the undead stumbling upstairs are going to get shorter by a head. The same goes for intruders. So it's a safe place. To a degree.

Anxiety and depression lead to neural shenanigans. This includes the terror of talking to people. So sometimes I can't answer the phone. Hell, sometimes I can't even reply to emails. This degrades the safety level of my house.

Even  interacting with people from within a large stone box, with them miles away doesn't stop my grey matter from shouting "stranger danger" at the top of its ..wait....no, no it doesn't have lungs. Forget that .

Suffice to say, it is really annoying.

Since I was a kid, I've been into fantasy. Books, games, dungeons and dragons. You name it, if it had swords and armour, it was relevant to my interests, I even liked Hawk the slayer. I always did wonder why women wore chainmail bikinis though. That can't protect your squishy bits from stabby things, and it must chafe like sandpaper pants. But I digress.

After years of fiction and tabletop gaming I was introduced to L.A.R.P. The ultimate manifestation of the fantasy world.  For those of you not in the know, it stands for live action role play. Think...........lord of the rings meets paintball, or laser tag, with the added advantage that you get to be someone cool, your character, for a few days in a field. Its dress up for big kids. PEW PEW!

This is my safe place.

Yes, a world populated with thieves, demons, monsters, and all of the bad stuff you have ever read about in a fairy tale. In the real world I'm a forty something, mostly blind cripple. But in the fantasy world....well....I'm confident, a warrior of sorts, I can talk easily to people, and if I have a problem, me and "the lads" can go and reduce the problem in scale. With swords. Lots of swords.

Problem solving 101

I'm not sure what that says about me. I think it is a good thing, that the broken minded have a place they can go to. Even if that place isn't really real.
One thing though....I'm still not going to wear a chain mail bikini.

Four become three, a retrospective.

So, yesterday was a not so good day. In fact I would go as far as to say, it was shit.
Our beloved mystery cat finally gave up the fight after thirteen years, two punch ups with cars, and a life time of putting his face into sharp places, where faces should not go. Mainly through barbed wire fences, and encounters with the pointy bits of other cats.
BUT! I'm not going to dwell on his last few sad days.
I think pets are great to have about. They are like hairy, or scaly, or feathery, confidantes. They do help with daily life, even though they poop and wee where they are not meant to sometimes ( a lot), and they wreck furniture and ornaments, (quite often), and try and trip you to a premature grave (disturbingly often). It's just what they do.
I was pretty ill a few years ago. Had to have a brain tumour out, and it was a whopper. Stuff happened and things went wrong, in short I was pretty messed up. However, through my opiate haze, one of the main things I thought about was getting the hell out of hospital so I could see my cat. It became something of an obsessive element in my life for the best part of a month. when I DID get home, he proved a great nurse, staying by me, on my pillow for days, trying to lick my scars better (not recommended, cats have scratchy tongues), and keeping an eye on me whilst my wife was at work. He wouldn't wear that little white uniform I got him though.

Not even going to wear that hat. Don't demean us both.

When he broke his pelvis, wrestling with a passing car, he dragged himself over several walls to get back into the garden, to inform us of his victory. He then proceeded to chew his cast off, barge his way out of the wooden chest we had him in as a recovery suite, and hop round the house at high speed, trying to escape to wreak his revenge on passing vehicles.

He once dragged a seagull he'd killed (a fully grown herring gull - those things are like turkeys with daggers for faces) through the utility room window, and left it as a gift in the kitchen. He did the same with a huge buck rabbit, but left it aliv-ish. I dispatched it and buried it, distracting him with treats, and buried it in the garden, then let him out. The furry chancer went out and dug it up ( I buried that rabbit DEEP) Then bought it back in, covered in dirt, sans head, and demanded reward.

Such a chancer, and a total badass.

Master and derpish student.

But now he is guarding the oak in the garden for all eternity. The other three, Mim (serial killer of mice), Mr Pie (seventeen years old, orange, leaf mauler), and Sparrow ( furry black dump truck of a cat, not gifted with any form of intelligence) carry on.

I think all I'm trying to say is, even though my brain is a dick, and things can be pretty bleak a lot of the time, I do try and pick the good bits out of the life I have.

TTFN

Good hunting, boy. <3

kicking off.

Not sure how to kick this off really.

*sits and scratches beard thoughtfully, a slight frown furrowing his brow*

Hmmm, a bit about me? A bit about my shed? I spend quite a lot of time in my shed, partly because I really like it out here, and partly because I'm a "mad old hermit". That is the point of this I think. Not the hermit bit, I'm fairly ok with being hermity, but the mad bit. It is a word that gets thrown about a lot. I'm not actually "mad", I suffer from depression. I have screwy neuro chemistry. To be brutal, my brain is a bit of a dick to me on a daily basis.

Depression is weird and nebulous. It affects different people in different ways.

 "Tell me how it affects you! Go on I'm really interested " I hear you say. Well ok then, I shall.

1. I find concentrating difficult, because it is like the world is on the other side of a glass screen, and my side has been stuffed with cotton wool by some unkind god of bathroom sundries.

2. I find concentrating.......wait, I just did that one.

3. I can become very reclusive at the drop of a hat. One minute I'm fine, the next, I won't even pick up the phone.

4. I tend towards fatalism. Its the glass half empty/full scenario, but with option three.... the glass is going to get smashed one day.

5. Fatigue. Even when I'm fully awake, I am still asleep inside. I don't sleep well. I have horrific dreams a lot, and consider a night when I just have an unsettling one a win.

6. Anhedonia. I know I should be enjoying things, and because of that, I may appear to be having a great time, but that is my body making it up. It's not that I'm having a BAD time, and hate you all, or anything like that. I'm just generally not having a time at all. The best I can generally hope for is little flashes of happiness.

7. I am kind of really grumpy a lot of the time.

8. I fear the world.

9. I hate myself a lot of the time. This is both physically and mentally, but i will post about that another time.

This is with medication. Without it, I resemble the classic image of a cave man, grunting, filthy, and hunting mammoths. Well, not the mammoths bit, but the rest is true. I have lots of ideas, and pretty much 0% "oomph" to actually get off my caveman arse and do anything about them, not because I'm lazy ( I used to work three jobs at one time - call me lazy and I will most likely get angry and go off on a rant of massive proportions, complete with arm waving), but because my brain puts the brakes on me the second I try. Tiredness, distraction by cats or shiny things, the all prevailing feeling of doom and worthlessness, or plain old fear seem to stop me. Like I said, my brain can be a total dick about stuff.

This corner of the blogosphere is mine to rant and wibble in though. It is as much for me, as it is for anyone else to read. I don't want anyone to think it is all doom and gloom though. My mind does wander a lot, and it leads down all manner of strange avenues. Ever wondered what the marmite and chocolate spread puppet show was? Or why the "table people" reenacted the Nuremberg rallies in my local branch of the works stationers? Or what cats say to each other? I have four cats, and by the gods, they get up to some odd things.

Yeah...that sort of thing.

TTFN xxx