Sunday 8 September 2013

Exactly What About The Internet Makes People So Darn Nasty?

That's the question I'm debating today and as I've just Googled the subject in hand, it appears that it's a very common occurrence.  Further to my earlier post about being depressed, I truly believe that it's lifting now, but it has been a pretty awful few days.  I have made the decision to suspend my Facebook account for the foreseeable future and it's now my policy to only exchange emails with people I actually know in real life, I think that it's easier that way.

So, what makes people feel the need to write awful vitriolic forum posts or send horrible messages?  Speaking as somebody who would probably have engaged in a bit of keyboard sparring in the past I can kind of see how addictive it can be, but there are real people sitting there behind screens and it's not nice.  When I hear on the news or read in the papers or read about those teens who commit suicide because of cyber bullying my heart goes out to them and their stricken families.  Whilst growing up in suburban London during the 1980s I was subject to a fair amount of both physical and mental bullying and it's soul-destroying, literally, believe me.  Sometimes I wonder what's behind it all and what exactly to the bullies achieve in the long run?  Being a bit different and slightly (well, greatly) eccentric isn't a crime.

OK, so you want examples do you?  Fine, as it's anonymous then I'll share.  Right, picture the scene: a suburban girls secondary modern school in the fashion-conscious 1980s and it's non-uniform day and we've all paid the princely sum of 20p for the privilege of not wearing the navy blue and red hues of our daily grind.  So, I'm stuck - my clothes have never been the height of fashion at the best of times and this is one of the worst times of the year for me because I just can't keep up with the Tinas or the Donnas who rule the playground (I think we can tell that we're not talking about grammar school girls here, can't we?).  So what do I do?  I had a best friend at the time, let's call her Caroline for reasons of anonymity and we'd recently been shopping at the local mall and I'd purchased a Betty Boop nightshirt from M&S and she suggested that I may like to wear that, actually looking back I'm not sure if she was setting me up from the start and her report did state that she had and I quote: 'a bitchy streak'.  Anyway, I wore it and it didn't look unlike an oversized t-shirt which were fashionable at the time, it was grey, but slightly resembled the image below:

Somebody discovered that it was indeed a nightshirt and I received ribbing about it thoroughout the day until I removed it.  You see, I really should have begged my mother to purchase an expensive Naf Naf suit from her limited funds, which I believe retailed at a whopping £40 circa 1988.  They were the 'in thing' then and every Nicola, Shelley and Angie was sporting them then. 

Yes, horrible isn't it and this is one of the only images I could find online.  I seem to recall that many were acid shades of pink, purple and green and some even had a dice print, which made them even more clownesque in my opinion.  Nice.  Such a shame that I still live in this borough isn't it?  However I did reside elsewhere for a great number of years but family ties plus low property prices made me return.  Sigh.


Friday 6 September 2013

Life Is Difficult But You Have To Embrace It Anyway....

What choice is there?  Well, we're aware of the alternative aren't we, but that just isn't acceptable - surely one suicide in the family is enough to bear?

I'll start by saying that depression's a terrible thing, a really nasty condition which creeps up on you when you least expect it, but I'll tell my story as best as I can.  There's a history of it in my family, so I've inherited a tendency towards it; the first time I ever recall experiencing it was one Christmas when I was about nine or ten - I'd contracted bronchitis and it laid me low, both physically and mentally.  I kept on thinking that my mother would die and as she was my only surviving parent, that was pretty awful.  From then on I've suffered from fairly regular bouts of it, it's improved as I've got older but it still creeps up on me.  I have cripplingly low self-esteem which is hard to deal with; in the 1990s when I dated I tried to make myself feel better by dating a selection of totally unsuitable emotional fuckwitty men.  Casual sex is awful: it tears out my soul.  One prime example of this is when my brother died in 1995, I was so depressed that I could barely function and the emotionally stunted tool of a bloke I was seeing at the time wanted to take advantage of that situation - how pleasant of him, I hope karma has come and bitten you firmly on the bottom.

I've never really taken much medication for clinical depression, often with a combination of exercise and a light box in the winter, it clears itself.  I have had counselling though, two tranches of it to be exact and like in a Woody Allen film, it's really addictive - just talking about yourself and your feelings for ninety minutes a week is really cathartic, albeit slightly neurotic.  I'm actually going to study psychology at City Lit - the course begins in a couple of weeks.  I think it'll be illuminating in so many ways.

So here's the thing, we all get sad at times, but sometimes it's worse.  What I really would like to underline is: don't use people - they have feelings too you know and it's never easy.  I keep on finding that people aren't particularly interested in the characters which surround them - it's seemingly getting much more uncaring out there.  Perhaps this is written from the perspective from a woman who has finally let all the tears out she's been hiding away for so long, but it feels good to be able to express it in words anyway.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

No Running, No Bombing and No Petting

I took my son swimming today in the local pool and it cost me the princely sum of £8.60 (pah!)  I rarely swim in pools as my favourite place to take a dip is the sea as regular readers of my various ramblings will undoubtedly already be aware.  This is of course, despite the possibility of being nipped on the bottom by a crustacean. 

The pool to which I refer is located in the council's sports centre and boasts two pools, a teaching one and a much bigger one for lengths and stuff like that.  I'd forgotten how warm the former was because, quite frankly, I don't think I've taken him since he had lessons as a six-month-old baby.  Why not, you may ask?  Well, I don't really enjoy it and today's experience only stood to underline exactly why this is - crowds - being unable to use the floats in the pool - pushy parents and most importantly, hairy tattooed men and whalesque women.  Yes, this is unfair and I'm hardly svelte myself, but honestly!

I did laugh though as they still have those signs from the past which we all used to snigger at, which I've reproduced above.  My son, being the strange autistic soul that he is, wanted to read the various rules over and over again, but me, being myopic, couldn't really make them out, which was nice.  Actually, recently he has become obsessed by the colour and design of the upholstery on the various different train franchises - yes, really.  Also, he likes watching YouTube videos which have been uploaded from EuroSport and pertain to a German language version of ten pin bowling.  Hmm.