Community? What community?

OPINIONS ARE LIKE ASSHOLES.. Everyone has got one. But like most people’s ass holes they are not something to shout about. If you want to have a conversation about “mental” health or trauma related illness feel free to reach out. I’m an unqualified expert from experience. I’m also a certified EFT Practitioner and can guide you through and out of your own painful experiences. I find lack of personal experience just leaves people with opinions about something they know little about. OPINIONS ARE LIKE ASSHOLES.. Everyone has got one. But like most people’s ass holes they are not something to shout about. Mental health doesn’t need to be as secretive as what your asshole looks like. It’s OK to not be OK, IMHE. (In My Humble Experience)

*My AC Patrons who saw my latest AC Vlog from my desk, here is the writing I posted on Facebook I mentioned writing...*

How come you moved from England? I was asked the other day. Well, London actually, I replied. There’s a difference. A big difference. London is concrete loneliness. Loneliness is a word that spell checker always has to correct for me. Despite being an experience I know too well, the spelling always escapes me in the way that it always escapes me those people that loved London. I never loved London. I only went there to go to The Royal Ballet School and ended up there for twenty years trying to make it. The Royal Ballet was a dream I had held since the age of 11 and finally my dream came true after nearly 5 years of sacrifice and dedication. While my friends were snogging boys on the end of the pier, I was in bed by nine to get up to leave for London and dance my classes at the Royal Academy in preparation for four and a half years time when I would be ready for my audition. My experience at The Royal Ballet School quickly became a nightmare. One I have never shared publicly. Had I published anything at the time, my only friend there argued it would make me look bitter. I’m not bitter now, it’s all too long ago, and anyway my time there was so traumatic I seem to only remember snippets. I didn’t start writing today to talk about The Royal Ballet School. We’ll leave that for another day when I’m drinking a good red rather than this decent organic coffee. Another day when it’s easier to type because I’ll have removed the bright red Christmas shininess that are my acrylic nails I had added for the gig I performed three days after coming out of the Gozo mental hospital on the 20th December and the gig was the 23rd. Crazy I know. Being able to perform three days out of hospital I mean. Not mental hospital. That’s crazy indeed. Crazy making. Completely the most ridiculous form of treatment for someone who suffers from CPTSD. CPTSD is Complex or Childhood PTSD, for those not informed. Usually the ones not informed don’t believe in trauma, simply because they’ve never experienced it for themselves. These people generally read one chapter of Eckhart Tolle and start preaching about the “pain body” and then make out like trauma doesn’t exist. These are also the people that were snogging girls on the end of the pier while I was racking up my trauma well into my teens. I don’t remember my time at the Royal Ballet School because the girls were bitches and the boys not that much better. Thank God for my gay friend Martin in first year and my star friend Kate in second year who said “Well, you could leave and everyone would understand after what you’ve been through” (public humiliation on a daily basis, your life being a daily cycle of Simon Cowell brutality but with russian accents. Staff that you turn to when you really have no one left to turn to because everytime you call home to ask to go home your mother tells you to do your hair, warm up and get to the studio because “you’ll feel better” Even though it doesn’t make you feel better. And the one staff member you think will understand when you finally pluck up the courage to ask for support says “Well, you know where the exit is” The Royal Ballet School is basically like the army. Sink or swim, bitch. You go from a home where the students are ignoring you for something they said you did that you didn’t do and the teacher is yelling at you everyday because who knows, maybe she has a bad sex life and her career as a dancer ended early and she would rather be doing anything then teaching, but she’s got bills to pay and probably didn’t pick a rich enough husband. “Or” Kate said “You could fuck them all and graduate.” So I did.  But I didn’t start writing to talk about that. I wrote to talk about why I moved to Gozo and why I am  thinking of leaving Gozo. My inner child wanted to live near the sea. Nope, not my biological child for anyone who has never heard of inner child work. The child within me who still has dreams and desires that need to be fulfilled if I don’t want my soul to die. That child wanted to live near the sea. I grew up by the sea. I thought about moving back to the South of England. Hove is a beautiful place and I love the North Laines. But for an artist like me, with her mishmash of jobs, it's too expensive. When I called the council to ask how long it might take to swap my London Housing Association home with a Brighton one, they said, try twenty years. I thought about living in the Dominican Republic. Also expensive if you want to live somewhere safe and safe was big on my list after spending my London life looking over my shoulder to check I’m not being followed home.

And then a friend invited me to Gozo in 2018. I hadn’t been there since a retreat in 2015, but now I worked online I realised it had become a possibility. It seemed to have all the things I was looking for; sun, sea, cheap to live, community and there was a fifth one which I can’t remember now. But this year I couldn’t believe it. I had a breakdown out of nowhere and ended up in hospital. That’s when I discovered; community in Gozo! What a joke!

What a joke indeed. I discovered I live on an island far away from my family where I thought I was surrounded by big hearted community type people. I tell you something, I didn’t even have a toothbrush for three days. I had no idea who was caring for my cat. The only family I have here on the island. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love my cat, and people who I have known for between 3 and 6 years couldn’t drag their precious asses 8 minutes to drive to the hospital and say hello. I found out my landlord was “looking after” my cat! He left my cat outside for days. Not his fault necessarily, he hardly knows me and obviously not a cat person. Finally someone who I barely knew, only to say hi to down at the beach was the one who stepped in to become my “responsible carer” This amazing woman brought me clean underwear and a bag full of her clean clothes for me to borrow until she could gain access to my home, who had the keys no one knows. Was I able to be responsible for myself? Of course not, I was unwell. Did some friends take it personally. Yes. Because no one has any education on trauma related illness what the system refers to as mental” health. Yet the mental part is a small part of the problem. The large part of the problem is emotional. The large part of the problem is my heart keeps breaking because the world is the way it is. I was also on my period and was having to turn my underwear over like a student and feeling ashamed and embarrassed because I smelt. Gozo broke my heart. I gave up my council flat in London to live on an island with people like this? I don’t want anything more to do with these people. My handful of actual friends are the ones who showed up. One friend came all the way from Marsaslokk in Malta with a bag of food. When I came out of hospital, I learned that my gossipy neighbours knew I'd been taken ill. Funny, I haven’t heard one of them ask if i’m OK since. Oh, but one did pop round to complain about there being music played in my apartment on Christmas Day. To me, of all days Christmas Day is the last day to be treated as a school night. I’d have no problem if people were partying all night. But yes at just 10.30pm the music was being told to turn down. Luckily for once I was hosting a band from Switzerland on Christmas Day and they made it very clear to this girl to F Off, in the nicest possible way of course. I was so grateful to have someone have my back for once.

So, yes, Gozo, you’ve made me sad and disappointed and you let me down. And I’m looking for a new home now. I’m thinking of Florida. My American and Canadian friends are generally warm.

Trust me, I’m OK, Thanks for asking. And yes I did perform at a gig three days after coming out of hospital. What did you think I was doing in a mental hospital, singing? Don’t be crazy!!! Ha, you wouldn’t dare, it’s your biggest fear, but not mine. I find most of the people calling others crazy are the real crazies, they are the ones hiding their crazy, meanwhile projecting all of their crazy onto the ones courageous enough to take those projections.