Tesco Delivery Man and I’m still in my dressing gown
What a few weeks. Where shall I begin? Insomnia. Two weeks of waking up two hours after I went to sleep, then spending the rest of the night thinking, putting two and two together to make four, four and four together to make exactly eight, a hundred and a hundred, and so it went on. Then it dawned on me. The Great Reset, and I researched more, about the founder/author, Klaus Schwab, who was brought up in Nazi Germany, then I’m thinking about Alice Miller, ‘For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child-Rearing’. And then I make more sums about Klaus Schwab’s childhood, he is 83 now, the book came out in June, how did he write that so quickly? ‘All the world’s a stage’, what are we really playing in the name of ‘For your own good’? Some think that the sequel to this book is known to all world leaders. It sounds like utopia but how will it happen? However it happens, whatever happens, it’s likely to be in the name of ‘For your own good’.
Our world has been gearing up for this. I became aware in mental health when our Southwark (and everywhere else) holistic therapists were got rid of from primary care. We fought to save our services, to no avail, of course. I didn’t lose my job because I did a CBT course at the Maudsley, and for the rest of my time in the NHS, I pretended, I complied, I made up the stats in order to keep my job, whilst offering my patients my ‘true self’ in the room. I was complicit to use this method, going along with something I resisted so much. It’s not surprising I became ill and had to leave. CBT is useful for a symptom, but it often stops there, mind control, changing your thoughts, why should we change our thoughts? CBT rarely explores, and EXPOSES the cause. Many years ago, I performed at a conference on ‘hearing voices’ at the Wellcome Trust, curated by the wonderful Dolly Sen. “We want our voices heard”, sung the crowds of patients and carers alike. In my CBT course I cried “What about dreams?” the tutor said “Dreams? We don’t do dreams”. Like we can’t sing in a church now, and I can’t swim butterfly in a public pool because my splashing may infect someone with Covid.
Boris Johnson belittled Muslim women not so long ago, we are now all letterboxes. Well, I’m exempt so I’m not a letterbox. I will not have rubbish put into my box. It’s time to stand up for ourselves, but how do we do it? Liverpool did it, they wouldn’t let the police shut down their gym, their fines paid by supporters. They are safe places and promote health and wellbeing. This is madness and is pushing us to our limits, how far will governments, the WHO and whoever else is pulling the strings go? It is far easier to comply and remain hostage, than challenge. Our internet sets us up to divide, algorithums take us to places that fracture our relationships, confuse us, keep us in fear. The vaccine, like Prozac, like CBT never was and never will be the solution.
Our world is reacting to a symptom, wearing the masks, washing the hands, it’s as insane as the sanitizers used, every few hours, or in some cases, every few minutes. It reminds me of working with an OCD hand-washer, red rare hands, a symptom of self-harm from childhood trauma. The world trauma, decades, hundreds of years of abuse, is coming out. The amount of people searching for mental health services is taking its toll. It’s overwhelming. I have never been so inundated with people asking for help. Today I needed to call BT, it didn’t take long before the Scottish technician picked up on my empathy and told me his story. He has been on a waiting list for 3 months to talk with a mental health nurse. His 20 minutes phone consultation is at the end of November, we were on the phone for 40 minutes. My daughter’s school ‘Place to Be’ has a waiting list too long for her to wait. The kids are saying they feel ‘dead’ inside. The older ones are getting drunk and having accidents, or rather ‘onpurposes’ (I studied the psychosomatics of accidents in my Masters degree), turning up in A and E. And I’m getting calls from as far away as Harrow, as us therapists are all so busy. And that’s just talking therapy, with the new lockdowns coming we will be more overloaded as body therapists will no longer be able to work, again, their businesses still not recovered from the first lockdown.
During my insomnia, I have become acutely aware of a higher consciousness, I am an interpreter of the unconscious afterall, it is my duty, it is what I was put on this planet to do, I cannot stop this process. Once you become aware of something, you can’t put it back, it’s out there, but others don’t like it and attack. “Stop watching all this conspiracy theorist stuff”. I will not let the lies seep into my body and become ill, I will not pretend, like I did when I worked in the NHS, obscure statistics so I obeyed the NHS ridiculous (sometimes harmful) protocols, and believe me, they are so ridiculous that the patient, the human, could get lost, and that was over a decade ago.
For the last 6 months, I have felt like the little boy in the Emporer’s new clothes, now I feel like the prince in sleeping beauty, trying to cut through the dark forest to wake up the sleeping kingdom. I have found myself praying and when the new moon came, my insomnia subsided. My homeopath calls me the ‘Unsleeping beauty’. While I am unsleeping, I am continually asking questions, why? why? why? Why did they put covid on my friend’s dad’s death certificate and then change it when she challenged them? Why is it that the press tells us hospital beds are full when some hospitals have as few as 8 covid beds anyway and NHS staff are saying otherwise? Why doesn’t the BBC tell us when the deaths are very low in one day? Why doesn’t anyone remind us that the flu has a vaccinne yet still kills between 45 and 65,000 a year. I could go on and on, but I’m cooking a nice organic chicken in a bit. Ultimately, I haven’t a clue what’s going on, but I’m exploring what’s going on in my mind.
Below is a photo of the print ‘Mad Bonce’ I bought from the amazing artist and editor of DAO, Colin Hambrook, it depicts exactly what has been going on in my head during all these sleepless nights. It was a no brainer to buy from his website, the last time I had so much fun shopping was buying underwear from John Lewis with my husband, just before lockdown. Blue Water was dead, that will be the last time I shall be trying on underwear in a shop. But, Colin’s website is very much alive. We can’t stop being human, our dreams are very real right now, I’d love to tell you mine but there are too many. Oh, sod it, here’s one, I go back to my old family home, my kids are expected to arrive and when I go up to the attic space where I should be staying with my family, there is no roof, I question the parental figure downstairs who I don’t seem to know anymore “How can we stay there, what happens if it rains? Why have you had no roof on this house, for so long?”
My friend has put a bet on that Doris will get on his Santa costume and ‘give’ us Xmas. All I know is that my two friends, one a Selfridges Santa, one a Legoland Santa, have no work this year.
I wrote this poem in 1988, it goes well with Colin’s print, methinks. And below is the original picture I drew for the poem. Call me a nut job, shame or blame me for not wearing a mask, tell me to stop reading conspiracy theories – but it is the nut that sews the seed, the’ nut’ that does the ‘job’. My nut is connected to my gut. My gut says this is NOT for our own good. We need to socialize with our loved ones, be at their sides when dying in hospital beds, care not control and protocol, connectivenesses has never been so important. I am the sanest I have ever been. The strategies and tactics for this great reset are alarming, but that’s for another time, right now I’m thinking of roast chicken and I want a good nights sleep.
Living in a Squat with Uncle Pervious (1988)
An opening head
An exploding brain
Is keeping me sane
An opening head, brain sane, not sanitised
‘Mad Bonce’ by Colin Hambrook
Liz Bentley 