Three Years Later…

It feels strange returning to my former lifeline almost three years later to the day when I haven’t given so much as a glance to LaBellaBorgia Speaks in just as long.  There was a time when I depended on this space for care, for self-help, for self-preservation and readers, sympathisers and even medical professionals came to me through this medium to support me and keep me fighting.  I am as yet undecided as to whether this hiatus was wise or no…for maybe if I’d come back and pushed some of my shame and sadness onto this page, the cup may not have runneth over (not the usual implication of that adage, but I’m running with it) and my mind may not have breaketh into millions of pieces.

Yes, as you will have gathered, only in times of disaster and near-death do I come to this space so my presence belies the tumultuous events of the past weeks and this post is a harbinger of death and doom (sorry!).

Let me give you a speedy update of life from 2015-2018 to paint the picture…

Upon my return from the USA, I began my career in the wine industry, which is my true second passion.  As you will recall, teaching did not pan out (when does Plan A ever?!).  This was a happy time filled with new experiences and the beginning of my true passion for wine and the industry that has been my home professionally thenceforward.  I now work as an Assistant Manager within the Jeroboams Group in which I’ve worked for just over a year and enjoy purveying quality wines to the discerning London drinker.  Personally, I still have not found love but I am not sure I’ve ever truly applied myself to looking for it or being open to it.  Also, I no longer live in a windowless room in Essex with my parents but am the proud occupant of a spacious room – with two windows, no less – in Leytonstone, London in a house-share with two of my dearest friends.  I still travel extensively and since graduating, have been to numerous places in Europe, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Israel and Palestine and am looking forward to visiting Ethiopia and Colombia in the near future.  I have more or less kept the same friends, though there have been some welcome and indispensable additions – yes, Jeroboams girls, I am talking about you here!

All-in-all, life hasn’t been too harsh a mistress this past three years.  Sure, I’ve had my skirmishes and battles, but who hasn’t who has chronic mental health issues?  I’ve wept with pride as I’ve watched this war-torn and wretched world make gargantuan strides in destroying the stigma associated with mental health and general acceptance of the shades of grey that permeate 21st century society.  Obviously, there’s still a way to go but this is one global issue that is been well-tackled.

I will say that despite these strides and new equal opportunities initiatives in the workplace, I have never once disclosed my disabilities.  I am no fool and my worldview is not so naive as to make me believe that if I did companies would be clamoring for my presence.  It is a secret I have kept in my professional life for three years and now I know what the shelf life is on that kind of repression…three years, funnily enough.  I wish to God I had and this whole sordid mess could have been avoided.

A month ago I began to feel the claws scratching away at the wall erected to keep away the crazy and keep it hidden from view.  I tried my damnedest to shore up the gaps and brace the wall but the fall was inevitable and I was always going to lose that fight.  Needless to say, when the wall came tumbling down, I went down notoriously, in flames and feeling the world of hurt.  When an anxiety disorder allies with dysthymia and overwhelms the mind’s defenses, the fallout is going to be nuclear and when you haven’t told anyone, the stress of your loved ones, your coworkers and those you respect finding out your shame, carefully concealed for years and buried deep, is the radiation poisoning that holds you down.

I don’t know that I’ve taken weeks to rally since I was eighteen or nineteen.  It’s a renewed and utterly unwelcome sensation to be rendered so powerless and so beleaguered by nervous spasms when I try to venture outside, by anxiety attacks so potent they leave my arms weak and trembling for hours after, by hallucinations in the night so real they scare the sleep from me, by periods of depression so acute my lungs hurt from sobbing.  I believed I was strong, so strong to keep all my shame buried far from the eyes of others but I was stupid, more stupid than I’ve ever been and now I barely see an end in sight and even if I make it through, I don’t know what I’m going back to on the other side.

There have been two things, two simple things that have tugged me from one day into the next over the past week since – big confession now, guys – I threw myself down the stairs on Monday (I’m fine, I have a bump on the head and some soreness but that’s about it).  Just two.  Neither of them are particularly deep or difficult to find, but they were everything I had and all I could find for myself in the moments when I truly and honestly knew there was no succour to be found on another shore or with another soul.  I think I’ve always known that in my darkest times, I am alone.  I have no partner, no BFFFFFFF, no kindred spirit that’s coming for me if I call.  I am made stronger because I and no one else pull myself up from the brink with whatever tools I can find.  This time round, I went to two things that have never let me down in the past: music and TV.

I started singing and playing the autoharp again, having let it sit and gather dust for a year.  I didn’t care that my window was open and I was singing the likes of ‘Wake me Up’ (Avicii), ‘Ten Thousand Miles Away’ (Bellowhead) and ‘Carry on Wayward Son’ (Kansas) to the population of Leytonstone at the top of my voice.  I didn’t care that my voice is not as good as it used to be.  I remembered happier times making music when I was younger and singing with people I loved and who loved me in return before we lost each other along the way.  It was a reprieve – a much needed, welcome respite from the struggle.  Step one of recovery accomplished: return to a happier place in your mind and “lay your weary head to rest” until “you cry no more“.  (See what I did there…?)

That segues into step two so beautifully I may cry (again)!  As you might have seen from previous posts, I fling myself into other worlds and fictional characters when Pippa no longer has the strength.  TV is a huge, humongous, great, large, monumental, gigantic, elephantine, immense draw for me.  I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it until the day I take my own life, TV is the perfect medium for anyone that suffers with anything like what I do.  This is naturally my opinion, but I swear by it and live my life by it.  TV has the power to draw your attention away from your trembling hands, heaving chest, pulsing brain for any amount of time you wish.  For a short recovery time, you only need a miniseries or a couple of TV films perhaps.  For a bit of a bender, you need something long, thought-out and completely immersive (not sure that’s the correct nomenclature, but I’m going to run with it).  I found Supernatural!  After many years of letting it go on and on, I finally delved into the depths of the Winchester Bros’ adventures and upon realising that no.1 on the call sheet for the 14-season strong show, Mr. Jared Padalecki, has had his own battles with mental health and suicide, it spoke to the very centre of my soul.  Yeah, it’s a show about battling demons and angels (really love it on a modern exploration on Christian theology by-the-by, but I digress!), but it’s a show about struggling with inner demons, family issues, work-related drama, nonexistent self-esteem and fear at its very core and that’s why fans adore it, it’s why the cast and crew adore it (I’ve watched more hours of Supernatural convention footage than is advised) and it’s why it’s the longest running Sci-Fi & Fantasy show since records began.  Other than the plot points and intricate character arcs that take place over the many, many seasons, the show comes with the real-life hero of Jared Padalecki, which, unusually has been more of a help than the fictitious elements he portrays along with Jensen Ackles et. al.  Going off-piste for a brief moment, I suggested a while back that the unfortunate souls who live amongst us with mental health issues manage to gravitate to those of like minds and not always knowing it is taking place.  I guess I feel this way about my own immersion into Supernatural.  I did not know that the show had such a direct and well-known link towards mental health issues and charities etc. until I reached season 6 (about 4 days ago.  I’m now on season 10 – make of that what you will).

Slogan from the March 2015 Supernatural/Jared Padalecki campaign 

Listening to the cast support their leading man as he visibly and notoriously succumbed but then rallied only to honestly vocalise his feelings and experiences and raise campaigns and funds to help others…there are no words I have that can express the irrational hope, kinship and inspiration to ‘Always Keep Fighting’ (the slogan for the J. Padalecki/Supernatural mental health awareness and support campaign).  Step two of recovery in progress: find something to obsess over that diverts attention from the pain and suffering and provides an escape hatch from an excruciating reality.

I am just over 1,700 words on this one and I’m tuckered out now.  It’s been so great to come back to LaBellaBorgia Speaks and I hope some of you give this post a read and it helps you with your own struggles or if you know me, helps understand a bit more of the disappearing act I’ve put on (I hope none of y’all think I’ve just gone to Bali or am riding round in sports cars).  I will be committing more to LaBellaBorgia Speaks over the coming months and we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading, thanks for supporting, thanks for staying x

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

25-08-2018

 

Life: The Masquerade Ball

Since August 3^rd I have been on a Contiki group holiday travelling from Los Angeles to New York.  At the beginning of this article, I am in a hotel abutting the beach in Panama City Beach, Florida.  For most people, this state of events is ideal and has the potential for wonderful times and indescribable adventures.  Sadly, as you will all have picked up by now, I am not most people.  Neither my brain nor my heart will permit me to compute the idea of a month of such glee or merriment.  I simply cannot stress enough just how frustrating it is to me that I so desire to join in the fun and have a great time with the new friends Pippa has made (for reason I address myself in 3^rd person here, see..) and yet, there never comes a time when control of the requisite organs to appreciate my situation rests in my hands.  My illnesses are constantly usurping my power and forcing me to conceal the true madness behind the mask (yes, I am a Phantom of the Opera fan!).

The Pippa I was before I became medicated and up-to-a-point subdued and diluted would have been standoffish and shy to a fault, but eventually she would have found her feet and met her lobster (Friends has been playing on the coach!).  Sadly, the Pippa who survived assault and constant mental, emotional and physical abuse with scant comfort to punctuate the suffering, attempts to fit in and finds her lobster but buckles under the strain of being so constantly watched and masked in front of strangers.  That is what has happened in the midpoint of this wonderful trip that has been eagerly anticipated for years.

Precisely halfway through my sojourn abroad my mood took a nosedive.  My sleeping hasn’t been too bad, which can sometimes lead to depression, yet just before a wild night in NOLA (New Orleans), most of which I do not recall, I felt as though I had no reason to live.  I had just seen the most beautiful natural sight I’m sure I’ll ever see: the sunset over the bayou in Louisiana from an airboat floating on calm waters.  I’ve included one of the pictures I captured of the moment that nearly brought me to tears but though it is a cliché thing to say, you really did have to be there sitting at the front of the boat with spray hitting you and showing you just how alive you are at that moment in time.  I felt free and alone in a crowd.  It was perfection.  There was no pressure, there was no suffering, there was no thinking or living.  There was just being.  I thought it God’s gift.  Sadly, as I have previously said, the greater the gift from God, the harsher and greater the payment owed to the Devil.  The Devil took his payment in full not three hours later (even Faustus had more time to settle his debts!) when I determined to drink my way down the notorious Bourbon Street in New Orleans.  It has been said that I was “drinking like I didn’t want to live” and I am forced to agree with my travelling companions.  I did not want to live.  Life will never be as perfect or easy to deal with as it was on that boat in the middle of the swamp seeing a spectacular sunset, and somewhere, subconsciously, my broken brain told my broken heart that both should go down after a high like that and then my entire system was in agreement that Bourbon Street would be a location where I tried to die happy rather than England where I have attempted to die miserable many times.

Louisiana Sunset

I remember the entirety of Bourbon Street, including the bulimic attack I had during a helping of gumbo.  I even remember being cogent enough to request the Uber to take me and my two friends back to our hotel.  The last thing I remember is getting into bed at probably about 2am, but after that, I have no clue what befell me or my roommate, though I am told I was a very abrasive drunk.

Drinking like I didn’t want to live…

Since then, I don’t know if I am almost disappointed that I am not dead or if I am just reacting to the poor opinion of me that the other passengers now have, but my mood has refused to be improved.  Despite my proverbial inhalation of my SSRIs and antidepressants, my bulimic attacks have not slowed up or gone away and I cannot get into the spirit of the trip as well as I was before I grew tired of wearing the mask that showed the rest of the world the portrait of a sane person, while beneath there resides a broken, bat-shit crazy bitch.

When I am back home, I wear a mask to a certain extent with people I do not trust or have only just met, but when you are spending a month in the company of the same people and without resorting to Facebook and Instagram stalking – something I refuse to do with my time – you have no idea who they really are as much as they cannot tell who you are.  When it’s a fortnight or less, it’s not so bad because I can keep it together (more or less…) for that duration of time, but I’ve never had to maintain a constant mask for over four weeks and to paraphrase the great Tennessee Williams, I’ve never had to depend on the kindness of strangers for so long.  It’s exhausting and it made me think about how often I don the mask and thereafter how long I wear it in the company of others.

I have since made up my mind and decided that none may know me as long as I live, save my children and the only love of my life.  They are the only ones with whom I feel – or will feel – safe.  As such, I wear a mask to all others to protect myself from being further broken and rendered unable to show my face to those who have to see it, who deserve to see it, who must see it.

Anyway, I’ll leave you all with that thought as I sit watching my roommate get ready to go to a club in Miami Beach that according to a club promoter I am too ugly, too big and not sufficiently “Miami” enough (yes, I am using Miami as an adjective that’s how low my self-esteem is currently, that without the mask I’m still too warped physically for the world that the Grammar Nazi in me has checked out for the night!).

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

20-08-2015

Music of the Night

Softly, deftly music shall caress you

Hear it, feel it secretly possess you,

Open up your mind,

Let your fantasies unwind

In this darkness that you know you cannot fight,

The darkness of the music of the night.

So often I feel that life and living is simply a run.  It’s a run from the time you’re expelled from a womb to the time when you decay and die.  To get from A to Z you have to run, whether you choose to run towards death or away from it.  The irony is that I am as bad at running as I am at life.  Somewhere, sometime before my brain and heart broke, I couldn’t keep up with life’s pace and I slowed down, then stopped altogether.  Now, whether a hurdle tripped me up or I wasn’t fit enough or I ultimately decided I would not run, I got left behind.  Life, the living and all that encompasses left me behind.  Others who fall and fail and struggle through life, who cannot keep pace with the run of life, are tugged along by the other runners in the race, those who knew them, loved them – who would miss them – and saw them fall.  Nobody saw me fall.  Nobody looked back at me lying in their wake.  Nobody realised I was no longer in the race.  Someone had already won and I had already come last in that instant.  Now, I’m up and I am walking.  I am walking but nothing I, or anyone else, can do now will lessen the distance between myself and those ahead of me who might have knelt down and given succour.  So, when humankind forgets you are part of it and is complicit in your survival or lack of it, to whom or what do you turn so that you can keep walking towards death and find an end to the journey?  What is it that keeps you company on your long, dark, solitary odyssey that your life is to you with a broken brain and a broken heart?  The caress and possession of your mind, heart and body by music, the sweetest and darkest music that lets the burning in your muscles dwindle and is the balm to the crushing weight of the world’s dismissal and apathy of you on your shoulders.  Music is the door from this world where Pippa trudges to Calvary alone, no longer able to run with life, to the sacred world where Lucrezia and Cordelia sing with angels and thrive away from the great race in the night no longer “dark and full of terrors”.

• I realise at this point that I am referring to a lot of media excepting music, but they’re all expanded upon in other posts on this blog or media files elsewhere
  • Me, Myself and Cordelia: https://labellaborgia.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/me-myself-and-cordelia/7
  • Brothers & Sisters: https://labellaborgia.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/brothers-sisters-3/
  • The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/R’hllor

My extended metaphor aside, I want to write about music today, seeing as I’ve been crying (inexplicably, I might add!) through three episodes from season 2 of Glee!  It was nothing in the show particularly that elicited such a visceral response from me but it’s a show that, despite being cliched, unbearably American and full of unrealistic teen drama (even from the adults), is about music and the joys of music healing people and bringing them together with other people, who would have left them behind or never known them and made a difference in their lives.  Can you see how this fits in with my metaphor dragged out above?  Just in case I’ve been too cryptic, I’ll spell it out: it’s a show about people falling, failing and fumbling their way through life but more than that, it’s a TV show about others picking you up and being aware that you matter, especially in the episodes aired in the aftermath of Cory Monteith’s tragic passing.

Anyway, back to music!

The first tunes I remember and the first moments of insurmountable joy I experienced during a melody were those of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s composition.  I used to adore musicals and Kid’s Week in London was the highlight of my year.  Now, I find them just adaptations of better works and overly sentimental romances, but Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s works still hit a resounding note with me, despite the fact that I listen to them less and less.  Just to give you a rundown, of all his musicals, I have seen (though, even where I haven’t seen the show, I know of the songs, e.g. I have never seen Song and Dance but I have sung Tell Me On a Sunday):

• Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968)
  • NB. also my first exposure to Donny Osmond, whom I love also!
• Jesus Christ Superstar (1970)
  • At Chigwell School, this was one of the shows and I played trumpet in the orchestra
• Evita (1976)
• Cats (1981)
• The Phantom of the Opera (1986)
  • I believe, other than the Joel Schumacher film, I have seen the show in London’s West End over ten times
• Whistle Down the Wind (1996)
• Bombay Dreams (2002)
• Love Never Dies (2010)
  • NB. I saw this twice and the original ending (SPOILERS!) was that Christine dies and Gustave resides with his natural father, the Phantom, after losing his mother and I LOVED THAT!  Then, after a cast change and alteration to the musical, I saw it again and the ending was changed so that Raoul returns after leaving his wife and “son” and the Phantom lets Gustave return to the father he knew rather than stay with the father he knew no and I HATED IT

I have also seen all of the BBC 1 talent show-auditions for Andrew Lloyd-Webber productions and adored them, but I’m getting sidetracked by a delineation of the history of my fanatical following of Lloyd-Webber.  I’ll get back to proper writing now!

For my third form prom, I sang The Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera and for the reason that it speaks of how music brings a lonely, scarred, incomplete man love, a vocation and a life, I have never found another song to replace it in my heart.  Those lyrics that opened this article are words I long to sing and love to recall when nothing but music for a while (kudos to any music lovers who get that reference!) can soothe my achy, breaky heart.  (I am on fire with these references!).

The lyrics of the entire song are about transcending out of this banal and brutal world to one where fantasies can come to life and you can be who you are, not who you appear to be.  That is my life, through television, through film, through whatever I can find.  My need is to leave Pippa behind and become someone else who can feel love and give love in a world that is not going to find pitchforks and cages with which to punish me for being ugly, for being evil, for being a monster.  For, that is what you become when you fall and the run of life leaves you behind because no one living, who runs away from death and towards life itself, remembered to look for you or reach for your hand to save you, who are forced to begin the long march to death.  You become a monster and a beast with no salvation other than that you search and yearn for beyond this life and away from this earth that has forsaken you.

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

28-06-2015

 

Depression Awareness Week

Some people may not know that this week is Depression Awareness Week, and while I have always been a few days late to the parties for mental health awareness scheduled events because I am in a state of constant vigilance (hats off to Alastor Moody!), it’s important to mark this one.

I’ve been having a rough time where pain is at a constant eight and every day I wonder what’s the point of getting out of bed when the duvet just seems too heavy to even bother.  My dissertation and pressing exam revision are not helping this any…but that’s beside the point.  The point is that the more people that are aware of depression and willing to put a stop to the stigma surrounding mental health afflictions and treatments, the more people will be open to caring about those who suffer from those diseases and the less people like me will feel ostracised and isolated because their pain never ebbs away from an eight.

So, I guess, I realise why there isn’t a greetings card that wishes people a Happy Depression Awareness Week but there should be, because it’s a time when depressed and other mentally ill people feel like the world gives a shit and is at least attempting to understand the fog of rubbish that percolates in our broken brains.  This is why I’ve designed my own card and am sharing it with all of you, with my best wishes and hope for the summer of 2k15.

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

24-04-2015

Pippa AKA River Tam

I was watching the episode War Stories from Joss Whedon’s AMAZING series, Firefly, when it occurred to me that the quote in the little spotlight I put together is such a good expression of what I feel 99% of the time and what I am sure other people who suffer from depression and other mental health illnesses feel too.  For those of you who have never seen the show (and therefore have not lived!), it is only fourteen episodes long, plus the movie Serenity to tie it all off, because FOX cancelled it prematurely and a decision that is rage-inducing to all its fans still going strong today as Browncoats.  River Tam is the character played by the glorious Summer Glau who has her mind altered painfully by the government, leaving her lobotomised but clever, agile and more perspective than her other shipmates.  It never occurred to me until today how good a character she is for mental health illness sufferers to relate to, but I guess I’ve found another kindred spirit in a TV show.  Let’s face it, no matter how much I tried to believe it, I was never going to be the eternally happy Kaylee (Jewel Staite), was I?  No, best make myself into the lonesome, ostracised and damaged young girl that is River Tam.  That’s realistic thinking for you.

Hope that speaks to you as much as it does to me!

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P.Mistry-Norman

02-04-2015

Many Happy Returns

I have had somewhat of a Jonah week and as such, I have decided to wish myself a happy birthday and congratulations for surviving yet another year of my existence without succeeding in topping myself, something that is in a big way due to LaBellaBorgia Speaks.  I do hope you like the little card I’ve designed myself and will wish me all the luck and pray for me to make it to my 23rd birthday!

 

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

16-03-2015

The Day My Heart Broke

As you will have realised by now, this is the place where I share my darkest and innermost secrets and memories and experiences.  I have written of my virginity, my mental health illnesses, and the demise of my family and the dashing of the majority of my dreams.  So now I am going to share a very poignant and traumatic memory as I have currently gone off my pills in a social experiment to prove – somewhat self-destructively – to my mother that every time she takes away my tablets or chides me for taking them or the like, she is more or less instructing me or relegating me to suicidal tendencies and periods of severe and excruciatingly painful depression.  This memory came to mind particularly as I am getting a tattoo on the day after my birthday which has the date when my heart was broken irreparably.  29^th May 2013.

Basic Hand of Fatima with Heart tattoo design by Ellie Hall

So, as you can see from that date I survived it and have resigned myself to an unhealed heart and a life without the love of a partner.  People have called me weak, lazy, sensitive, crazy and a plethora of other negative and hurtful things over the years, but I may be all of those things (from time-to-time!) but my one redeeming aspect is that I am still here, I’m still fighting and I try every day to convince myself that driving a knife through my ugly body (seriously, I could be a study on physiognomy!) is a bad idea.

Many people with depression and other mental health difficulties fall when conversations like the one I’m about to share with all of you – and I hope you’ll read it with an open mind, as usual – occur, but I put myself out there and opened my breast to the dagger that was thrust into it.  I asked for it and though before I was dealt an almost fatal blow (I won’t lie, my emotions in the aftermath of the final part were all over the place and in the time directly after I read it all, my death was not far off) I am now glad I was told the truth so candidly.  For, although the 29^th was one of the worst days of my life, in the beginning of June ’13 I had no false hope where the love of my life was concerned.  Yes, I still call him the love of my life because he is and will always be but now I do not live in the expectation of my feelings being mutual or reciprocated in any way.  I am content just still to be as much a part of his life as he’ll permit me to be.  So, when in films and television shows and books, some hero or heroine professes that they’ll be content just to be friends or a part of each other’s lives (Angel and Cordelia spring to mind initially…), most of them end up giving in to their feelings or someone inevitably will come round, the reality is that sometimes that just doesn’t happen and the heroine is left on her own and the hero finds his true love.  David Copperfield in this way is a fairytale, for in real life, Agnes would never get her David and the family she has with him.

Now, I guess I should stop stalling and writing about age-old books and Cordelia again and actually speak about Pippa.  This blog, after all, is called LaBellaBorgia Speaks and that’s me.  So please dig in to the following online conversation (so don’t worry about me recalling it all accurately or with exaggeration).

---

I know I’ve been distant lately and I feel I owe you an explanation, one which I am ashamed to admit I am too much of a coward to give you in person.  Please do read this in its entirety though I fear it will be lengthy because I do, more than anything and with no melodrama, wish you to know everything I have been feeling for years, which I have kept hidden, but I can’t anymore because to put it quite simply, it’s killing me.
I have always had few friends and God knows I can’t keep a new friend to save my life and understand me fully when I tell you that I seldom leave my house or flat if it is not with family or you.  To me you are my family and that fact has plagued me more than it has consoled me, for it has been apparent to me for some time (and I do not intend to be harsh, I merely say what is true) that I see you as vital to my existence, whereas I am not as important to you, which is the result of either you simply having more friends or it is because I am not the kind of person who can be needed to carry on each day, as you are to me.
I know my shortcomings.  I am difficult to know, needy, intolerant, deceitful and a whole host of other things and I know I exasperate you, but know that I could and would give anything for you and some of the most frightening night terrors I have are ones in which you leave me and I can do nothing to stop it.  That is the thing that frightens me most and so I hope you can grasp how hard it is for me to make this confession.
Recently I had lost my faith in the God who has kept me alive so far, yet when it seemed that something supplanted that faith I was confused.  It was the realisation that I believe in something much more powerful and much more personal than God and that is the power of you, me & x.  The belief I had that our friendship would be the strength of my life and the love that I clung to above all others was misguided, I see that now, because I expected too much.  I hoped you would be as devoted to me as I am to you two, but I overlooked a few things:  I am a woman and my nature is to be devoted (I did not get Materfamilias tattooed on my right arm for my own enjoyment); you two have so much more to live for than do I; as a woman, I am inclined to see others’ feelings and you two have never truly been privy to my own.
What I am about to say here has the potential to shake our friendship to its core and possibly to tear it down, but I am willing at this point to risk all (yes, I have been watching The Borgias too much!).  It pertains particularly to you.  I have never been particularly discreet about the fact that I love you and as more than a friend, but I don’t believe I’ve ever actually said that to you.  I do not confess this with any spirit of hope that my feeling are returned or may ever be, in fact it would please me greatly if you never loved me ever.  I would never want to ruin your kind, trusting and lovely soul, which is what I would do to it were you ever to allow me to and that would break my heart and spirit.  I feel so much for you that when you hurt and your nature doesn’t permit you to hold a grudge or bear ill will then I hate for the breaking of my own heart and then for yours.  The months after you and Lily hurt me in a way more than the months when you wanted her and that – believe me – is saying something.  The only and I mean the only reason I tell you this now is so that you understand the very heart of me and why I have done what I have.  When I couldn’t have you, I went after someone else and now I have terrifying flashbacks that have on occasion led to sedation and I’m not pinning blame, it was above all my own fault, but I settled and in doing so I made sure I would never be able to love anyone else but you.  I have spent years of my life learning you: what you eat, what you drink, how you feel and think, so that I can feel as though I am the one person who knows you above all even though I know that’s not true.  When you tell me that we can’t hang out, the thought that immediately falls into my paranoid mind is that I have done something wrong and I am hurt much like a girlfriend would be.  I know I’ll never be that to you, but I would ask that you don’t shut me out because of what I’ve just told you and know that every time you do my heart sort of breaks.

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Well that certainly is a lot to go through, and I’m not going to lie, it takes a lot of guts to say all of that, it really does, and I respect that very much honestly. I don’t think I could do the same.

I guess I don’t really know exactly how to respond, I’m no expert at this stuff, but here goes. First off, I must admit I’ve known that you liked me as more than a friend for some time, and I do think, through nobody’s fault, it has caused something of a wedge between the two of us. This is not your fault, I know that when you like someone, no matter who they are or how ridiculous it seems, you can’t help it. You just do. And that’s totally fine. And I am only sorry that I don’t feel the same way. In a way, I do partially blame myself for this, perhaps it would have been the mature thing to tell you I didn’t feel the same way years ago, but for whatever reason, I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that. I love you like a sister, and that is God’s honest truth.
I also feel partially responsible for how, and it does feel this way, that we’ve drifted apart in recent times. I can’t make excuses, I think it is just, unlike both you and x, I am not someone to who emotion comes easily. I’m not good at expressing emotions, in fact I’m rather embarrassed by it, and so it is true that I sometimes choose to hang out with people who, like me, do not deal with things emotionally. Call it a cheap move, it’s just the way I feel sometimes, I’d rather avoid issues than solve them, and that isn’t fair. I feel I owe you an apology for several years of that.
But there’s one other thing you need to know, and that is that none of this will force us apart. I think this stream of confessions, bearing the soul and all that, will help bring us back to a kind of harmony that seems to have gone missing. We’ll all know where we stand, as such. Pippa, you are the older sister I never had, and though I’m afraid I do not see you in a different light, and that isn’t going to change, I would not want to be without you. I would say to you, and I accept how empty the words can sound, that you shouldn’t shut yourself off from people. You can make friends, I have seen it, even if you do find it hard, and you deserve to find someone special more than anyone I know. I accept it’s hard, and I do not expect you to change that overnight, but there’s a whole world for you out there, you just need to explore it, and I only wish you could. And now we’ve all laid our cards on the table, I have every faith that it’ll clear things up. There’ll be no more need to feel awkward or smoke and mirrors. We know how all three of us feels, in all honestly, and we can accept that as the way things are. I have every faith it’ll only make the three of us better friends.
So uh, I guess, that is me, doing my best at talking about stuff. I hope everything made sense. And hope to see you both soon

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I’m now crying so hard I can barely see through my glasses, but it’s so worth me reading all that again.  It’s so cathartic for me.  I will just say that I know most of you readers will have no clue who this is, but I fear, that despite my preventative efforts, some of my acquaintances will surmise to whom I was talking, so please – for ME – keep the confidence of LaBellaBorgia Speaks, as he doesn’t read it and I doubt he ever will, but it’s where my soul and heart lies now.  It’s a broken heart but it beats here and thrives in the honesty and true life I can’t find away from the blogosphere.

I will say this final thing…I took some of his advice that day.  I have travelled and will carry on travelling the world searching for something to fill the void that is in my heart.  To name but the most memorable: I have seen the ruins of Carthage, inhaled the tanneries of Fes, glimpsed the Misty Mountains, felt Apollo’s sun beating down on me in Delphi, drunk Jack Daniel’s in Piazza San Pietro and watched the sunrise where the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea meet.  That was good advice and when I spend the summer in the USA and January ’16 in Tuscany, I’ll be following orders, but one thing I would say now again is that to wish me on someone else and to want me to spend my life unhappy trying to love someone else with a heart that is not mine to give away is worse than what my mother does when she tells me to stop taking the tablets that keep knives in the kitchen and out of my bedroom.  What my mother does is condemn me to a painful, self-inflicted death, but what the love of my life does – unwittingly, as ever – is condemn me to a painful, living death that would be drawn out and have not one…but two victims.

That is something I’m not strong enough or malicious enough to survive or inflict on someone else and I’m so glad of that.  It means that tomorrow will be better and that I’m keeping someone else’s heart safe even when mine has been so amicably crucified.

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

25-02-2015

Fifty Shades of Fucked Up

I saw the world through new eyes yesterday…unexpected, frightening eyes.  The eyes belonged to a man…a man I found in a movie having met him first in a trilogy of books.  The eyes belong – of course – to Christian Grey of Fifty Shades of Grey.  The world I watched was the one I recognised, the one in which I am imprisoned and to which I am shackled but seeing it through such disturbing yet similar eyes was both beguiling and terrifying.

Usually, I see through the eyes of my choosing and eyes of wounded, maternal but resilient women, such as Lucrezia Borgia or Cordelia Chase (to name the eyes I use for comfort most often).  Last night, I was a domineering, scarred and dangerous man.  I cannot fathom if this change in delusionary material is due to the conversation I had concerning relationships or if the (truly terrible) dialogue and cinematography of the movie just resounded with me.  All I know is that during the moments when I was not in fits of giggling with the girl beside me, I was on the edge of my seat in the cinema feeling, understanding and spectating through the nerves, mind and eyes of Christian Grey – somewhere I never wanted or expected to be.

To give some background regarding the debate I had with a friend à propos relationships, I will tell you that I made the following statement: “I am too independent to be in a relationship with another human being”.  Quite surprisingly, this incited a bit of a debate over what – in my opinion – was a misinterpretation of my words as a decree that only dependent people enter into relationships.  I view relationships as things of compromise, sacrifice and needful of consideration, for in my experience, relationships only function when the two parties involved commit to their partner.  This simply cannot be done without being careful of their feelings, hopes and dreams, plans and ideas.  The majority of the global population, thankfully, have the capacity for this kind of life, love and affection, but as for myself, I am accustomed and value too highly what some might call inconsiderate spontaneity or “lack of intimacy and closeness that comes with a romantic relationship”.  I would not put the latter quite like that but would say instead that my business is mine alone unless I choose to divulge it on my own terms and most definitely not because I have deigned to be intimate and secrets are unhelpful in functional relationships.  That is my life and as you will notice, in my statement I made no presumptions on the life choices of anybody but myself.  For those fortunate souls who manage to have their cake and eat it too, I salute them in good spirits and congratulate them on the hand Tyche dealt them.

So, there you have it…a succinct insight into what weighed on my mind and thoughts before I entered the auditorium and perhaps contributed to the delusion that swiftly made its roots once the feature film began.  Now, on to the workings of my addled and defective brain that gave me eyes that find pleasure in pain.

Anastastia Steele is a passive, Vestal Virgin, manipulative character who asks Christian Grey to “enlighten” her.  So, in that regard I am relieved that I was not flung into her mind.  Christian Grey, on the opposite side of the coin, is complex yet straightforward and sad – a much more suitable vessel in which I can vicariously live.  The sadistic aspects of his life are not as strong with me but I too had a “rough start in life” and am still in the process of finding my ground on which I can base the rest of my life.  The dark heart of Grey is a mirror image of my own torn and broken heart.

I enjoy inflicting pain on others despite my general desire to do good in the world.  Long ago, I found that no matter how hard I tried the sadness, blackness and putrefaction in my soul destroyed that which I held dear and loved.  I am a true soul-destroyer, which is why I would never give myself to any man or woman again.  I do love someone as dearly and fiercely as Christian loves Anastasia, but as much as he flays her body through love, I would – unintentionally and unconsciously – take my pound of flesh straight from the very essence of the man I love, from his most prized possession…his heart.  The one thing I have better than Mr. Grey is that my willpower is made of sterner stuff.  “Fuck the paperwork” comes too quickly.  I value the innocence and happiness of the one I love with all my grey heart to put my own desires above that.  If I did not have this one selfless bone in my ruined body, I would have nothing, for if he wasn’t the only light in my life, if I blotted it out, there would be nothing to stop me from succumbing to the darkness.

Through Christian’s eyes, his deeds, his perversions, I inflicted harm on Ana, the representation of all those who cannot understand suffering because their lives have been plain-sailing all the way.  Of course, everyone suffers in their own way, but Ana is the exact way I see those who cannot understand or underestimate those who have endured childhood trauma, mental illnesses.  She does not understand Christian, she changes Christian (and not for the better, according to me), she willingly misunderstands the man and then finds him culpable.  See, the problem with delusions for me?  Most people find Anastasia the victim, the put-upon girlfriend of a psychopathic control freak, but I – in my mind – empathise with and am drawn straight into Christian.  I heard “bastard”, “dick” and other such terms spat at poor Jamie Dornan on-screen, but Ana, who teases and leads on and knows not her own mind, was just the target of scoffs and pity for her poor decision-making.

See it’s not sexy, is it, the lip-biting? (P. Mistry-Norman, Odeon Exeter, 15-02-2015)

I found very little of the movie erotic or in anyway romantic, particularly not biting lips, but in its own way, despite the abysmal screenplay or plot, it spoke to me and pulled me in.  It gave me comfort, to be out of my own eyes and those of Lucrezia Borgia and Cordelia, and into new ones with unfamiliar sights and thoughts behind them.  For, after all both Christian Grey and I are fifty shades of fucked up, and there’s no one to help or to change that fact.

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

16-02-2015

To Get You Through the Day

As anyone who knows me is aware, a telltale sign that I’m spiraling or trying desperately hard to get through the day to tomorrow is that I drown out whatever thoughts or feelings that are percolating in my errant brain by playing certain songs.  I have a chosen few songs that are so poignant and meaningful to me and often – and without exaggerating whatsoever – are the difference between life and death.

I would like to share with you just the most memorable of these.

• “Light Outside” by Wakey!Wakey!
• “Vande Mataram” from “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham”
• “Portrait of My Wife” by Seth Lakeman
• “Shame” by Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow
• “11” by Cassadee Pope
• “Kiss It Better” by He is We
• “Gravedigger” (Acoustic) by Dave Matthews
• “Breathe (2AM)” by Anna Nalick
• “You are my Sunshine” by Frank Turner
• “Starbuck” by DeathStar Disco
• “Imba Wimbo” from “Mighty Joe Young”
• “Runaway” by The Corrs
• “Main Title” from “Free Willy”
• “Childhood” by Michael Jackson

These are the songs that are probably the most likely to be played in my room during times of crisis, but it’s dawned on me (once more) that this blog is about media, so I’ll also share with you some of the films and TV shows (as I’ve just come back from seeing “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), if you care to read on…

• “Bright Star” (Jane Campion/Abbie Cornish/Ben Whishaw)
• “Pitch Perfect” (Jason Moore/Anna Kendrick/Skylar Astin)
• “The Phantom of the Opera” (Joel Schumacher/Emmy Rossum/Gerard Butler)
• “Frozen” (Jennifer Lee/Idina Menzel/Jonathan Groff)
• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (Stephen Chbosky/Emma Watson/Logan Lerman)
• “The Blind Side” (John Lee Hancock/Sandra Bullock/Tim McGraw)
• “Firefly” (Joss Whedon/Morena Baccarin/Nathan Fillion)
• “Stargate SG-1” (Brad Wright & Jonathan Glassner/Amanda Tapping/Christopher Judge)
• “The Borgias” (Neil Jordan/Holliday Grainger/Francois Arnaud)
• “Angel” (Joss Whedon/Charisma Carpenter/David Boreanaz)
• “Grey’s Anatomy” (Shonda Rhimes/Ellen Pompeo/Justin Chambers)

Today, I found myself feeling as though my voice was being taken away from me and that is what prompted this mini-article/list.  There are so many films, TV shows and songs about having a voice or finding your voice or some such notion, but when I sense it being diminished from the outside or just moving further and further away, I dive into films, music and television so I can find it again or replace it with Cordelia Chase’s voice, or Lucrezia Borgia’s voice.  In those moments, when my own voice, identity and mens sana desert me, I turn to the ones I know never will.  The ones that will always get me through the day…

LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

11-02-2015

Help from a Housemate

I just wanted to share with you all another bit of kindness and love that someone gave to me yesterday.  My house-daughter and flatmate, Katie, came back from a weekend in Totnes and brought me back this postcard just to help me not be depressed and feel as lonely as I ever do.  I am always mildly surprised by the way my flatmates put up with my nonexistence and ornery presence in our home, but this a lovely thing to do that she didn’t have to, which makes it all the more special.  So today, after the success of Jack’s article about talking openly about mental health and helping people just because you can – and you know you can – I want to say thank you to someone who has helped me just by being their usual kind and lovely self. I’ll be sure to bring you something special back from the Game of Thrones Exhibition today.
LaBellaBorgia Speaks,

P. Mistry-Norman

10-02-2015