There is a new category I have created today, called “Diary”.
This is not going to be updated daily, but will be as often as I can.
You will find out more about me and my life day to day, it will mostly focus on my mental and general health more than anything else.
Why am I doing this?
To be honest I have no one to get certain things off my chest to, plus, I want people to understand mental health better, not just mine, but how it affects a person who lives with it as a whole – their ups and their downs and what helps them when they are this way and what things can make them worse!
I also want to show you how my mental well-being affects productivity. Sometimes I throw myself into my work and other times my mental problems make me hate my work altogether and the mere idea of writing anything just makes me cry.
This is not because I hate writing or I feel that my writing is failing in anyway – one thing I have kept to myself, one big mystery that people are trying to understand about me and I have never been open about before TO ANYONE until now – it’s like a coming out, but I have a personality disorder.
Yes, people know I have mental health problems, but I have always leant to telling them it was mostly anxiety and recovering from toxic relationships from my past, this is true! But not the whole story!
I have a personality disorder, a type of schizophrenia, I have anxieties, body dysmorphia, eating disorders that are erratic from gluttonous to starvation, and it depends day to day! I am severely co-dependant – suicidal – manic depressive – there is a lot to know about me. Day to day I even change my whole personality, what do I mean by that?
Well I consider myself bisexual, I mostly love being female and trying to be as feminine as possible, but some days I wake up and I want to cut my hair short and dress like a man, I feel more masculine at times, then I regret my decisions and go back into dark thoughts, because the mostly feminine me is back again. I don’t have the money and the resources to change the way I look dramatically day to day to match my fleeting desires. If I ever won the lottery it would be so much easier to just say, cut my hair, but a ton of wigs and buy all styles of clothes I love, just in case I wake up wanting to be like that tomorrow.
I don’t really know what this disorder is called, if it is a disorder at all, because although I have had therapists in the past for other things, I generally try to avoid any psychological help as much as possible, because I don’t want to be pumped full up with drugs. Various therapists in my past have suggested oodles of medication for me and I have refused – only to have them look me stark in the eyes and say, that if I actually do harm myself or another person to hospitalisation, then I will have the choice taken away from me!
I do self-harm, but not enough to become hospitalised… yet.
There are times where I am super social and I love being around people, but occasionally, though it is not that often, I just want to shut myself away and completely ignore the world. There have been times where I have been so used to living in a forced isolation (by toxic relationships in my past) that self-isolation comes so easily and I don’t fall apart like other people do when I do it.
I am also a germ-o-phobe, because of this, I am terrified to go out since Covid happened, because I have had pneumonia five times in around four years or something like that. I have only gone out six times since March 2020, to a doctor, a vet and the dentist.
All of this is the primary reason why I have not approached publishers and agents yet.
I will do so eventually and this is not idle talk, because I have a couple of good online friends who really believe in me and they are trying to teach me how I can become a published author, without being thrown too much into the deep end, because of both my disabilities and mental health problems – people who are actually within the profession themselves. Whether they will stay true to their word, who knows?
But this is the big mystery about me.
Not much of a mystery now is it? Just a revelation about just how sick I really am.
This is why at times my posts can seem very flighty – I find it easy to control at times how I behave around people, but it is all too easy to be spontaneous at times and post things without thinking about it first.
Most of the subjects I talk about are very controversial and I have never really learned how to behave and react around certain subjects, purely because I have been socially isolated my whole life. I am not using this as an excuse; I am telling it how it is.
I am a person who can seem heartless and blunt in certain subjects at times. I am one of these people that when I am in social situations I am often put into a situation where I have put my foot in it again – I tend to leave early and beat myself up over it for months! Some people are very forgiving and understand and have told me not to worry, but still, months down the line I am still punishing myself for my stupidity.
I’m not a loose cannon in the sense that I am overly insensitive and gun ho – but I am in regards to not thinking about how sensitive a subject can be for others.
Yes, this is an indication about my recent poll on here that I have now deleted. But I had hoped that the poll would spur on a friendly discussion about why such subjects pertaining to “suicide” as a theme for a book was so controversial and disgusting to readers and publishers, when someone like me who struggles with such a thing day in and day out finds reading characters who are suicidal, helpful in my own problems. I need the world to try and come out of their little boxes and help me understand society, because I have been shut away my whole life!
Is this so difficult to understand?
Is the concept of a person staying inside their house day in and day out and not socialising much their whole life offline – so alien to so many people that they cannot even empathise with the stuff that a person who has lived in such conditions haven’t experienced or learned to become?
What I mean is – when a person has been socially isolated their whole lives, they have never had the opportunity to learn from their mistakes as a child; to grow with a society and understand the rules that others take for granted.
I am in that situation, have been my whole life and I tell you now; I am puzzled by how “normal people” are and how they behave. I am puzzled by how society has progressed how it has, because whenever I have smiled at someone in a waiting room, they look at me nervously and back away, whenever I start a general conversation in a queue at a shop I am ignored or get a sarcastic remark as a reply! When I used to go to the school gates to take my son to school, most parents couldn’t be bothered to talk to me, but would talk in their small circles instead. I am confused how people have friends outside of their families basically, when in my experience, nobody wants to talk to a stranger!
How the fuck does society do it?
I am never rude, I am never gross, I always start with open ended questions, like self-help socialisation books tell me to, I never pry with personal questions.
I hate to say it and I could lose what little friends I have over this, but the only people who have maintain contact with me when I have done this are people with social awkwardness themselves who are more than thrilled someone has spoken to them first hand and they didn’t have to approach me first!
Out of desperation they invite me to theirs for a cup of tea, or in some cases a mutual café or library meets up, before introducing each other to our homes. I understand them, I feel the same when someone approaches me – I feel honoured someone wants to talk to me, oh my goodness, someone has spoken to me, try not to screw this moment up Tina and say yes to anything they suggest if it sounds nice!
I know I sound like a sad pathetic moron, but people need to understand how it is for some people. It is hard enough when you have social anxiety and mental health problems as it is, but when you throw in thirty three years of social isolation, it is unbearable!
Especially when you do socialise with people who have nothing better to do than to try and ruin your life, wreck your reputation before you’ve even got one and is just downright bloody nasty and manipulative to boot!
Because of my mental health and my lack of social hardiness, I have found some very rotten people who have introduced themselves into my lives more than readily in order to manipulate me for their own pleasure and amusement and in turn, it has damaged me more and more.
So this is the mystery of The Tardy Creative, Tina Victoria Cousins.
This is who I am, in my rawest form and these are my challenges I am sharing with you!
Happy reading!
tardycreative.com 