Tag: death

Crime and Punishment

This week I watched helplessly as my niece nearly choked to death in my arms, and my sister nearly did the same on the floor.

I’ve had one client make a string of the most unreasonable demands, all of which I have met without complaint and in a timely fashion, despite feeling like death myself.

I have had another client try to charge me three times the amount they were paying me, because they had changed the due date of the piece and failed to inform me they needed it sooner.

I’ve had a permanent migraine.

And, perhaps worst out of all of these things, I did something I didn’t think I’d be having to do for several years to come yet: buried my first friend. By first, I mean it’s the first time I’ve had a friend die. I’ve had relatives die, mostly due to age or terminal illness, but I have never before lost a friend.

Lindsey’s death had already left me reeling. The thought of something happening to my niece left me in a state of blind panic. Add to that physical illness and a gruelling work load and I think I did pretty well just to survive the week. I think anyone would have done well to survive that week, whether they were bipolar or not, whether they were in the midst of a depressive cycle or not. These are difficult things to deal with. Dealing with all of them at once only heightens the difficulty. When you are already teetering on a knife edge, as I have been doing for a while now, any one of these things is enough to send you under.

And it did.

By Friday I felt like a walking corpse. I don’t feel much better today, but I have at least regained the power of thought, something which eluded me on Friday. In hindsight, given how I was feeling, I should not have been trying to work. Despite the amount I had to do, I should have simply said to myself ‘take the day, have a rest, and get your head together’. Me being me, I did not say this, because as often as not taking a day off when feeling like this makes me a lot worse in the long run. So I kept working.

Big mistake.

I said something on Friday which, in hindsight, was foolish, and I can understand why the person I said it to got so I annoyed about it. I realise that it was a stupid thing to say, especially to a client, and that I never should have said it. Hindsight, however, is a remarkable thing. At the time I didn’t see this. At the time I was simply trying to get through the day without falling apart, and I wasn’t thinking ahead enough to have considered that these words could be taken very badly. His reaction shocked me, for while I can understand that what I said may have annoyed him, I found his response as unprofessional as he had found my comment. Turn around is fair play and all that, but it was not only unprofessional, it was unkind.

There is a certain amount I can take, especially when I know I’ve done something or said something out of place. If someone feels the needs to pull me up on it, to tell me it’s out of line, then fine, I’m aware of the fact that I’m not always the best at communicating with people. I also find it helpful when people actually articulate to me what I’ve done wrong, so I can be more mindful in the future. Most bipolar bears will tell you they have trouble communicating, especially when they are at the extreme of one mood or another.

I do not, however, feel this is an excuse. For example, I didn’t say to my client ‘I’m sorry I said that, but I’m bipolar and quite ill at the moment’. The reason for this is very simple: it’s not professional.

Bringing my bipolar into a business relationship is something I simply do not do unless it is absolutely necessary. A lot of my clients are aware of the fact I have bipolar, but only because they have seen or heard of my column, not because I’ve told them. I’ve even discussed it with a few of them, but almost always because they have brought it up, or brought up a related topic. It isn’t easy trying to regulate your mood when you have a mood disorder, yet somehow I now manage to do so—the majority of the time—well enough that I can continue to function in the professional world. This often requires me to bite my tongue and let the other guy ‘win’ the argument, not because I think they’re necessarily right, but because I know my reaction to the whole situation has been marred by my condition. I’ve usually over reacted, and if I have over reacted, that usually means there should never have been a disagreement in the first place and I should be the one to end it, no matter how crappy that leaves me feeling.

I am the first to admit I have not been at my best this last week. I can apologise for that as much as I like, but at the end of the day it wasn’t my fault. Circumstances have left me mentally and physically exhausted, and when you’re in such a state, you do make mistakes. You forget to keep your business head on every second of the day. You say the wrong thing. It’s unintentional, but it happens.

I didn’t say anything horrendous this week. It was simply an unfortunate turn of phrase which the client took the wrong way. I meant it literally, however they took offense. I can understand why they took offense, and I would probably have been equally offended had our positions been reversed. Once I realised why they were annoyed, I completely understood, I apologised. I did not however say the one thing that was actually true: ‘I would never have said that if I wasn’t bipolar’. By which I mean, were it not for my current mood state, I wouldn’t have said something so easily misinterpreted, something that does, I have to say, come across as being patronising and very annoying. I can well understand why he was so irritated with me. What I can’t understand is what he did next.

He went on his business page on Facebook – his BUSINESS page, I add, not his private page where he talks to all his friends – and repeated what I’d said. Now, he didn’t name me, and for that I am grateful, but he did insight an entire thread on Facebook consisting of numerous people—some of whom I know—to discuss this thing I had said by mistake, because I’ve been having one of the worst weeks imaginable. Naturally they all agreed with him: it was a terrible thing to say, he should tell me to ‘piss off’, he should never work with me again, I was ‘clearly inarticulate’, etc. etc. He said he’d ‘dealt’ with the issue, which is true he did. He got very annoyed with me for a while and said some rather angry things, sent me a link to a book about better communication, and then told me to forget about it.

Facebook-LogoHe then sent me a link to this thread on Facebook.

Right up until that point, I could deal with his reaction. I’d said something that had annoyed him and he’s reacted accordingly. Granted, in the world of professionalism you shouldn’t do this, even when someone really pisses you off, you should find a way to discuss it calmly, however I myself am not always capable of doing this and I know there are very few people who could say they can manage this 100% of time. Fair enough. I’d said a stupid thing because of my bad week and terrible mood, he’d reacted badly to it because what I’d said had put him in an equally bad mood. He came back to me a while later with the link to this book and told me to forget it. Again, fair enough. As I said, I know I have issues with communication. I’m fine when I’m writing, but conversations are not my strong point. So, although I found it a little patronising, I felt it was justified. And then came the link to the thread.

I didn’t read it on Friday, I’d totally had it by then and spent the rest of the day in bed, mostly crying. I didn’t look at it yesterday as I didn’t want a reminder of that conversation as I was quite sure it would have me, once more, in tears. I looked at it today, and it wasn’t what I expected. I assumed when he sent it that it was a blog post he’d written in the past about effective communication—it’s the sort of thing he’d write about. I was so shocked when I saw this Facebook thread that I have now completely re-evaluated my opinion of him, not only as a person, but also as a professional. There was nothing professional about that thread. It was venting, pure and simple, he had been annoyed by something and had needed to vent, had needed others to justify his annoyance and tell him he was right, and that’s all fine, everyone needs that sometimes, however that is what your FRIENDS are for, not your business acquaintances. This conversation should have taken place on his personal page, not his business page, and he sure as shit should not have made me privy to it.

Why?

Because it was cruel. The things written on this thread were aimed directly at me and they were very unkind. I can forgive the people who said them, because they don’t (for the most part) know me, and even the ones who do didn’t know he was talking about me.

I wonder when he sent that link, in the midst of his annoyance, his anger, his outrage at what I’d said, if he stopped to think just how upsetting it would be for me to read that thread. If it occurred to him that it was completely unprofessional of him to have had that kind of conversation on his business page, and then direct me right to it. And I find myself realising something quite profound. Those of us who suffer through the horrors of conditions like bipolar, and actively monitor our condition through MEDs, therapy etc, are in general far better at dealing with situations like this than the average Joe. Our conditions make our moods unpredictable, unbearable, and at times destructive, yet we are usually able to recognise reasonably quickly when we have said or done something out of place.

article-0-013F8F1000001005-154_468x286In this case, I apologised the instant I realised I’d said something wrong. With most people I know, that is enough for them—yes they’re annoyed, but once they realise you didn’t intend something the way it was taken, they accept the apology, they calm down. They get their own mood under control. They may later bitch about it to their friends, but that’s okay, that’s what friends are there for, and they’re perfectly entitled to do that. What astonished me in this instance was the fact he made the whole thing so public. I felt like I’d had a good hard flogging, in the town square, while shackled by the neck and wrists in the stocks, with the locals through rotting vegetables at me.

If I reacted like he did, people would tell me to calm down, to do some deep breathing. They’d ask if I was feeling okay, how was my mood, was I depressed. They might even ask if I’d taken my MEDs properly. They would—perhaps naturally—assume that the over reaction was the result of my bipolar. When a person doesn’t have a condition like bipolar however, I wonder what people make of them acting in this manner. I personally found it extremely cruel. I’m not ashamed to say it made me cry again, and yes, that could be part of my current state of mind, but I think a lot of people seeing a thread like that, so filled with venom, written all about them, would have felt similarly upset.

Were this person simply a friend, I would have told them they had upset me. Since they are a client, I feel I am obliged to rise above it, to take it on the chin and never mention it again. That is the professional thing to do in this situation. And yet I ask myself, why is it that I must be professional, when he was not? Why is it that the person here who was able to see they had accidentally said something upsetting and apologise for it, sincerely, was then made to feel like utter crap, while the other party, who was clearly also in an equally bad mood and quite purposefully did something upsetting, is validated by his peers.

The irony of the entire situation is, of course, what I said to him in the first place: No offense.

Why did I say that? Because I was about to say something which I realised could be taken badly, and I wanted him to know that wasn’t my intent. I was trying to avoid offending him.

He was, of course, instantly offended.

A Painful Truth…

This week I must report both sad news, and happy news. I debated making two posts of this and keeping them separate, yet the two subjects collide in an odd manner, due to a shared theme: Death.

I have spent a great deal of my life contemplating death. I have, on several occasions, attempted to end my own life. The last occasion, in the summer of 2011, was so very nearly successful that I have found people have acted differently around me since. Friends, family, it’s like they caught a glimpse of something horrific, something so utterly terrifying that they are almost afraid to look at me in case they see it again.

I did not truly understand this reaction. I understood, in the abstract, the notion that people hate the thought of someone they love taking their own life, because it means they will have to mourn the loss. They will have to grieve. And that will be unpleasant for them. I have often heard it said that the act of suicide is one of the most selfish things a person can do, and I have been told—by more than one friend or relative—that I ‘have’ to keep living because it would be unfair of me to die. It would be selfish of me to inflict the pain of losing me on people for whom I profess I care.

Unquiet MindI have never seen it this way, and have in fact always viewed it from the alternate perspective: I have always found it utterly selfish of my friends and family to expect me to live through times in my life when I have wanted nothing more than to die. Since my diagnosis and the start of proper treatment and medication, as my life has so painfully slowly started to get back on track and I have begun, ever so cautiously, to hope that the worst is behind me, I find myself wishing less and less that I were dead. As I’m sure you can understand, everyone I know seems pleased by this, but I still find it incredibly hard to articulate to anyone ‘in the throws’, as it were, of an episode, exactly why it is a bad idea to try and kill themselves.

After all, it’s rather hypocritical, is it not, for me to sit there and say ‘no matter how bad it gets, you should never resort to that, it’s not an answer’, for I myself HAVE resorted to that, because at the time it felt very much like it WAS the only answer. When I was feeling like that I despised those people around me who told me I couldn’t do the one thing I was absolutely convinced would end my suffering. As a result, I feel useless when confronted by a person in that state of mind, because I know full well there is not one single thing—and I really do mean NOT. ONE. SINGLE. THING—that can be said to make them feel better, and anything you do say is likely to make it worse.

To that end—and here we come to my good news—I began writing a series of books exploring notions such as these, in an effort to provide something tangible to those people who felt like I had, both in the past and often during the time I was writing the first one.

Chasing Azrael is a novel about Death. More specifically, it is a novel about the obsession with Death, and how it can lead people to take their own lives, or spend so much of their time fixating on taking their own lives that they have no real life to speak of anyway. I began this novel in 2010, when I was first diagnosed with rapid cycling, Bipolar Disorder I. For the first time in my life I had a reason for some of the things that had happened to me, the way I had felt at certain times, and the possibility that it might get better. I was, to my horror, to find that it had to get considerably worse before things ultimately began to improve, but as I wrote my book, and tackled issues of plot, and dialogue, and characterisation, I found it was something I could hold onto in times when I was feeling impossibly low.

Chasing AzraelI designed the novel very carefully. It is not a manual for suicide, but rather a warning for those who contemplate it, and for the people in their lives who may—albeit unwittingly—be pushing them towards it through sheer ignorance. For years I had lived with friends and family who could not understand my often utterly irrational behaviour. My relationships with most of my family were strained, and the friends I had one by one fell away, until I was, at one stage, left with absolutely nobody but my brother, to whom I am eternally grateful for always standing by me, giving me a place to stay and a job. When I was diagnosed this changed. People became more understanding. Some of the friends who had abandoned me came back, realising that whatever it was I had done to upset them I had not intended, I had not meant, and more often than not I had not had the slightest amount of control over. The same was true of my family. My mother and sister are now a huge part of my life, something that was simply never the case before, as neither of them could understand me, and I resented them for it. My brother, on the other hand, went the other way. We have grown apart since, partly due to him getting a girlfriend, settling down, and us seeing less and less of each other, but partly also because the mention of my condition unnerves him. It makes him… uncomfortable. You can see it in his face whenever it comes up in conversation. I do not think he is consciously aware of it, but for whatever reason, he won’t talk about it. Almost as if, if he can pretend it’s not there, somehow it will go away and stop bothering his little sister.

This reaction is understandable, but it is not helpful. To a person who has a condition like bipolar, it is necessary for the people in their lives to be as understanding as they can manage to be, to have as much comprehension of their condition as they can, if for no other reason than to keep them from saying things like ‘well, we’re all down sometimes’, when you’ve phoned them from the railings of a very high bridge and are on the verge of jumping. The people in your life need to know what they can and can’t say when you are in the various states that overtake you. They need to know how best to handle you, and when they are really best not handling you at all. Perhaps most importantly though, they need to acknowledge that you have a mental health illness, that this is not your fault, that it doesn’t make you ‘wrong’ in the head, or any less of human being, and that it is no different, not really, to any number of physical condition such as diabetes. One involves changing levels of insulin over which you have no control, the other involves changing brain chemicals over which you are similarly powerless.

To that end, I also wanted my books to provide people who didn’t have any kind of mental health problems with a deeper understanding of what it is like to live with such conditions. It’s a tall order, but I would like nothing more than for someone with no history of depression to pick up my book, read it, and come away not only having (hopefully) enjoyed a good story, but also with the feeling that they know, at least a little, what it is like to live with being depressed, to such an extent that you regularly consider ending your own life, and that to you, that is not an abhorrent or selfish act to contemplate, it is the light at the end of a tunnel full of horrors, the glimmer of hope in an otherwise desolate landscape. I want them to come away understanding why to people like me, it isn’t the ones who commits suicide who appears selfish, but the ones who repeatedly keep a person from dying. In short, I want to pick my readers up, take them to the very brink of insanity, then yank them back to the world of the living, a place where yes, they can acknowledge how bad it gets, yes, they can understand the impulse to do it, the need to have it over, but they can also see that there is a way back from that place.

I want the people who have stood on that bridge to know there is a way down.

And I want the people who have been on the other end of the phone while they were up there to know that once they are down, they can find a way to have a life again.

Life Asked DeathIt’s a long time since I have actively contemplated killing myself. I had a slightly dicey few weeks around October-December last year when I recognised how I was feeling and I knew it was possible I’d get that impulse again. I handed my MEDs over to my mother who has had them under lock and key ever since.

You are probably wondering how on earth I can possibly class this as ‘happy’ news, and if this is the good, what the hell is the sad?

Well, the happy news is that Chasing Azrael is soon to be released on the world. As of the 26th of April it will be available in paperback and Kindle formats, from Amazon and a host of other retailers, as well as directly from myself. For those of you who read this blog regularly and enjoy my writing, I hope that you will pick up a copy, but more than that, I hope that you will let me know what you think of it. I am still writing the remaining books in the series, and I want to ensure the rest—one in particular, which is very personal to me—really achieve the effect I have in mind.

And this of course leads me to the sad news. I have begun to understand over the last week or so why it is my friends and family have had that look about them since my last suicide attempt so very nearly worked. On the 5th of January I lost a very dear friend. To say that her death was unexpected would be redefining the word to mean something infinitely stronger than its current denotation. She was young; she was healthy; she has three teenage children. I was speaking to her on January 1st. We were thanking each other for our respective Christmas cards and talking about AuthorCon, a convention of independently published authors which is taking place in Manchester, on April 26th, and at which I will be launching my book. Lindsey, also a writer, had booked a table and was planning to come up, along with another friend of ours (again, another writer, you can see a trend here…), so that it would be the three of us signing books at the convention. I was incredibly excited about this, not only because it was my book launch but because it meant meeting Lindsey in the flesh. The latter was pleasing because despite her being a very good friend, we never actually met. We knew each other only via an online writing group of which we are both members.

She went out for a walk with her family later that day, came home, began complaining of back pains, and was rushed to hospital. Despite an operation that appeared to be successful, she was placed in a medically induced coma. She never woke up. I cannot adequately describe the utter shock, and horror, that I felt when I was told. I have lost people before, but only elderly relatives, people who had been ill for prolonged periods of time and whose death was, while still terribly painful, not unexpected and in some ways a relief, as you knew it was inevitable, and hated seeing them in that amount of pain.

Now I know what horror it was my friends and family glimpsed, that last time I tried to die.

Now I understand why people say it’s selfish.

DominosIt’s not because they enjoy seeing you in pain, not because they think it’s better that you suffer than they do, it’s the sheer fallout of it. The impact one death has is as a fall of a well-placed domino; one goes down, the rest soon follow. I do not know Lindsey’s family, although they have been in my thoughts a lot these past days. I do however know a lot of her online friends, many of whom were in our writing group, and many of whom are currently feeling as lost and broken as I am over the whole thing. The shock is bad enough. The loss when you have actually managed to process it is unbearable.

The issue that I have here is that I only ever knew Lindsey online. I found myself sending her an invitation via Facebook yesterday, because for a few moments I forgot. It was second nature to me, to include her in the things I do. I hit the invite button and immediately felt a fresh wave of grief, as if being told for the first time all over again. There is an oddness to the internet. Her profile is still there, so in many respects she has the appearance of still being there, as much as she ever was previously. It takes a minute to recall that she is no longer on the other end of this infinite thing we call ‘Internet’.

And that thought got me wondering. If my entire friendship with Lindsey can take place across the vast void of cyberspace, can it not somehow continue across the void that now exists between this world, the ‘living’ worlds, and wherever it is she has gone?

I am not a religious person, but I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what happens to a person after they die. Chasing Azrael can be described in many ways. It’s urban fantasy; a supernatural mystery; gothic literature, but at the heart it is one very simple thing: it’s a ghost story.

Not Finished

Throughout the book I explore why people die, as well as what happens to them afterwards. I have often wondered what, had I been successful in any of my attempts, would have happened to me after. Would I truly have felt any better? Would the bipolar be gone once I no longer had a physical brain with that pesky chemical imbalance? If I no longer had bipolar, would my personality alter drastically, or would I still possess all the same flaws I currently have, because the bipolar did not cause them, but merely amplified them, the repeated trauma experienced as a result of my mood swings affecting the person I was to the point that, even if you took the bipolar away, and I no longer had that awful pendulum in my head, I would still be as I had become as a result of my experiences. It’s easy to blame it all on the bipolar, but one must also take responsibility for one’s own actions, one’s own faults, and acknowledge that while you may not have developed them were it not for the bipolar, once you have them, and are aware of them, it is your responsibly to control them wherever possible.

This week I have found myself thinking about Lindsey, and whether or not she is ‘out there’ somewhere, in a world such as the ghostly world I have imagined for my novels. I wonder if she can see how much she is missed, and how much she is loved, and I wonder if that would make it easier or harder for her. I am still working on the final edits of the novel, and I have to say that having so recently suffered the loss of a friend I find myself looking at it with new eyes.

Lindsey was a great writer, a wonderful friend, and a great help to me at a time when I was very much alone and my life was a complete mess. She read several drafts of my novel, offering comments and help on each, and was supposed to be present on the day it was launched. I will miss her terribly, and although I look forward to the release of my novel, I know the day will be tinged with grief no matter my excitement, because someone who should have been there, won’t be.

Or will she?

I realises this has been a much longer post than usual, and I thank those of you who have taken the time to read to the end. I would also like to leave you with a final thought for consideration:

Death can only be an answer if you fully understand the question, and it is difficult to understand anything fully when you are in the midst of a depressive episode.

Moreover, death may not be the end you think it is, and if it isn’t, if you wake in some new world to find you’re just as broken in that one as you were in this one, what will you do then?

There will be nothing to do but stare down at the ones you left behind, and watch them all fall after you.

Changes to the law on dangerous dogs

Amidst news of the death of Margaret Thatcher, the death of the young girl Jade Anderson, who was mauled to death by dogs when she went to a house to visit a friend, was largely overlooked. Yet this story is of great significance when it comes to light that no crime was committed and so there will be no consequences for the owners of the dogs.

The problem with the current law

The Dangerous Dogs Act was introduced in 1991 and attempted to set out what a ‘dangerous dog’ is, as well as allow for the prosecution of owners, or people in charge, of the dog if the animal were to attack somebody.  The law has come under heavy criticism for not wholly achieving this aim.

Certain types of dogs were made illegal to own: Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Braziliero. However, the legislation recognises that it is not so much the name or breed of the dog but its temperament that makes it dangerous. Therefore, it is the characteristics of the dog and whether it resembles any of the four types of banned breeds that will determine whether it is dangerous or not. If any breed of dog were to demonstrate violent tendencies then the courts may insist on its destruction; however, owners may also request that the dog be exempt. It was also made illegal to breed any dog for the purpose of fighting.

The legislation also makes it an offence for a dog to be out of control in a public place or a non-public place if the dog is not permitted to be there. This would include any person’s house who had not given their permission for the dog to be there. ‘Out of control’ is not specifically defined in the Act but references to injuring a person or there being reasonable belief that a dog may injure someone are made. It has therefore been interpreted that ‘out of control’ means either that the dog has attacked or attempted to attack a person.

This arguably leaves a huge gap in the legislation, namely the situation where a dog has not been categorised as dangerous but nonetheless attacks somebody on the property on which it is housed. This is the unfortunate situation Jade Anderson found herself in. She was attacked by dogs at a house she went to visit where the dogs were permitted to be.

For this reason no actual offence has taken place and so the police are not looking to make an arrests as they are bound by this wholly inadequate piece of legislation.

Does the law need reform?

There are hundreds of thousands of dog attacks in Britain every year and many of these will take place in areas where the dogs are permitted to be and so will not be covered by the legislation. Thankfully the majority of cases will be minor, however, when there are no consequences for the owners when a person is killed by dogs there is a deep injustice in the system. This feeling has been reflected by an e-petition entitled ‘Justice for Jade’, which has received over 9,000 signatures.

Whilst the law is arguably fairly adequate for classifying dangerous dogs and prosecuting owners of dogs out of control in public places, there is a strong argument that any dog in the right (or rather wrong) circumstances could be dangerous, whether it has demonstrated characteristics of the four types of banned breeds or not. Allowing people to have potentially out of control dogs on their premises not only puts themselves and their families and friends at risk but also unsuspecting people who are required to visit the property – the postman/woman, a delivery driver, gas or electric meter reader. There are numerous people who are legally allowed access to private property and the law should protect these people. Of course, changing the law so that owners can be prosecuted will not stop people having out of control dogs on their property, however it may make some people reconsider whether their dog is safe to own if they are aware that they face prosecution of a fine or imprisonment.

What is the government proposing?

The Government has been proactive since the death of Jade Anderson and has published draft proposals for new legislation. These proposals allow for owners to be prosecuted if their dog attacks somebody on private property, whether it be their own or someone else’s. The requirement that the dog is not allowed to be in the area has been removed, which should, in theory, close the loophole. The consequence of a conviction under this new law would be a maximum of two years’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

What about trespassers or burglars?

At this stage the new law will still not cover situations in which burglars or other trespassers are attacked. The debate surrounding this issue is still ongoing as many believe that people should have the right to protect themselves and their property, using dogs a guard if they wish. Others believe that if a person trespasses or commits an offence they should still be owed the same duty of care to be protected from dangers such as dogs. It will be interesting to see whether this part of the legislation changes on its way through the process or whether it will remain that burglars and trespassers are not protected.

The proposed reforms appear to keep the satisfactory parts of the law – any dog may still be regarded as dangerous, regardless of breed, if it demonstrates the correct characteristics.  It also appears to rectify the unsatisfactory law currently in place by closing the major loophole was left open by the previous law. However, there is no timetable for when this new legislation may appear on the statute books. Hopefully this draft proposal will not merely be a reaction to the tragic death of a young girl and will be taken through the stages as quickly as possible so that people can be brought to justice and workers who are required to enter private property can feel safer in their work.