I still feel a recluse. Seeing the mental health doctor has not helped in any way shape or form. I just looked up help for depression on a youtube video and disagreed with all of i so I just got angry. I went into town on sunday for the chinese new year celebrations but did not take any pictures as I felt bad in the crowds and wanted to escape.
I recently watched After life again on Netflix with Ricky Gervais and realised I feel the same way as him and that everything feels hopeless and meaningless. The difference is that he lost his wife so has total sympathy whereas my hopelessness is due to a totally F**cked up and wasted life due to mental health so people only blame you for not doing everything to put things right. The loneliness is still there but when I look at mental health forums online I am put off from joining any due to bad experiences in the past. I find so very few good people among the many.
A few from the botanic gardens. The spring crocus are always stunning here although after days of rain and cloud it was a rare day of some sun and even then it clouded over during the afternoon.
Reblogged from 27th July 2015. With some minor adjustments. Governments may have changed but not much else.
And yes rejection does start this young! I distinctly remember having no one to play with in infants and junior school at break and that girl Mary who only played with me at break if I had any sweets and then left me when they were gone!
Two of the biggest problems in a socially phobic person’s life are finding a relationship and a job. The first not being essential does not always happen and I assume many such people end up totally alone for their whole life. Forget the 40 year old virgin, there must be 80, 90 and 100+ years old virgins as you get uglier every year past 40 ish and more set in your ways so many give up. Others have a fear of intimacy and sex even though they still crave friendships. I dont believe the statistics where they claim over 98% of adults have had sex in their lives..I think lots of people lie or dont answer the questionnaires truthfully. After all there are loads of very strange adults around and I simply don’t believe they all find a sexual partner as if its as easy as buying a packet of biscuits at the supermarket.
Getting a job is equally as hard and you may well end up in a low paying dead end job like I did for 20 years, if you manage to get anything at all. I was too mad to form any social network within the company and get promoted and then convinced myself that I was disliked so much that there was no point applying for a position within a different department. This again is not all paranoia as lots of normals dislike people with SA, you’re weird, you’re no fun and you’re hard work as someone once said about me. I remember the shock on my supervisors face when he suggested I try to get a place in the darkroom( I worked for a large photography firm) and I said I would but I knew several of the girls in there hated me. Well, they did, one of them had previously called me a zombie! Another one gave me dirty looks like she had seen me eat my own shit.Getting a job could be seen as more important than a relationship of course as nobody can survive without money and the way all governments are going on at the moment they intend to treat all people on benefits like they are just lazy scum. One minute take mental health seriously, next minute get a job you lazy bast**d.
Of course the reason these two things are so hard is that they are in many ways similar. In both its very important to sell yourself and so be confident and in both other people have the choice to reject you and are often very picky if they classify you as not good enough. To get a girlfriend I would have had to find one( work was the only place I ever came across females regularly), approach one without seeming creepy or weird(dont act shy then!), make WITTY BANTER, chat, talk etc. (Some Hope!) then ask her out and then decide where to go probably with lots of humour when in reality my anxiety was so bad I would have been on the verge of passing out and probably mumbling incoherently. and as i have said many times no female ever came on to me in any way shape or form so I simply don’t believe that women go round befriending men. She if normal would have to first like the look of me and then like my personality and not think I was mentally insane if I was very nervous and then still agree to go out with me. The first date would have been just as traumatic and awkward. very awkward no fun.For most people this is normal and yet for someone who has SEVERE social anxiety even the most basic conversation is strained and awkward which is why going on any internet meet is so hard and also especially speaking to females as I have found them to almost never speak first to me in any nice way anywhere, ever.
The job situation is similar in that if you have long term unemployment or mental health problems the vast majority of firms will throw your CV straight in the bin or put you at the bottom of their list. Just like pretty girls (normal ones, not ones with mental health problems) they have so many people to choose from that any defects are not worth the effort and they reject you. This is even before you get to the dreaded interview stage where again if you come across as too nervous you are seen as weird and rejected.
The results of this constant rejection from other people and also possible employers is abject misery and depression and total humiliation making you feel even worse and less confident which of course is why so many people have probably given up on relationships. It can lead to a constant spiral downwards. Then before you know it you get old and its tool late and quite surprisingly I did not suddenly become attracted to older women when I got older myself so yes, age definitely matters as attractiveness is dependant on age, obviously.. Unfortunately giving up is not possible with jobs and the government is now quite literally hounding people to death with suicide rates going up as desperate mentally ill people decide that even non existence is better than such treatment.
The conclusion is that if you have severe social anxiety its is indeed a major problem and then everything including the most basic and important aspects of living which are vital to good health and happiness become much more of a struggle or even impossible. There is no simple cure, its a lie to pretend otherwise.
“In Whittlesea, from when no one quite knows, it was the custom on the Tuesday following Plough Monday (the 1st Monday after Twelfth Night) to dress one of the confraternity of the plough in straw and call him a ‘Straw Bear’. A newspaper of 1882 reports that “… he was then taken around the town to entertain by his frantic and clumsy gestures the good folk who had on the previous day subscribed to the rustics, a spread of beer, tobacco and beef”.
I particularly like strange and unusual traditions and customs. Things like people chasing cheese down a hill in Gloucestershire or the Ashbourne shrovetide football. I would have liked to have gone to many more if I had been able to drive and liked travel. I first time I went to the straw bear near Peterborough in 2008 and saw it as nothing more than a good chance to get some interesting photography. After 15 visits over the last 19 years, (2 were cancelled due to covid and 2 more missed due to flooding and illness)it now feels almost part of my DNA. It’s like the new year only truly starts after this is over. On the day after the day of dancing they have a straw bear burning ceremony in a nearby field. Sometimes they even let the man out first.
I got back yesterday from my christmas visit. It was mostly good although i still had the same overwhelming anxiety on the last day before I left. It’s almost every time I leave her I feel that I am going to my death or we will never see each other again. Today I had the mental health doctor phone me from the surgery. He wants me to go out and do more stuff and suggested going to the gym. I understand this is behavioural activation but if you are folked in the head it often backfires and reinforces being hated or weird. Going to a gym alone does not make me want to initiate conversation or social interaction with strangers after years of madness. It just makes me feel awkward and then gets worse every time not better. I have always had trouble making pleasant, I mean normal conversation even if someone speaks to me first and that has almost never happened and at my age I will soon need to join the pensioner club.
A last attempt at a sunset for this year on Saturday afternoon before I go away to stay with my friend for Christmas and the new year. Not particularly great picture again, the sun setting behind the university buildings but I did take another of the most impressively illuminated shop in the city on the way home, a jewellery shop called Pragnells.
A visit to the larger lake on Friday afternoon. I have not been here in over a year now. It was nice to watch the sun setting close to the equinox and all the birds flocking together to roost. However sunsets are a lottery. Too much cloud and there is obviously no sun at all and too little and they are not very interesting.
Another trip to the local park to capture the sun setting. By no means perfect but better than the other day. With only one more sunny day forecast this week it might also be the last chance I get to see a sunset until next year as hopefully I will still get to stay with friend over christmas. Surely it’s too late for a flu pandemic to stop christmas now. Dont bet on it.
It’s common to think of British history starting with the Norman conquest of 1066 but of course people were living here for thousands of years previously as stonehenge and other ancient artifacts prove. The above Jewry wall is part of a Roman building dating back to the 2nd century with baths nearby. In fact the Romans has quite a large settlement here with many large buildings including a forum before the collapse of the Roman empire and its gradual decline. Many of the building were abandoned and later ransacked and their stone and bricks used by local people in much smaller houses which have now been lost over time. Its believed that some were used in the building of the above church of St Nicholas nearby which itself is over 1150 years old. I recently found that my great grandparents got married there in the 1880’s.
Yesterday I went to the local park to see if I could get the sun setting over the lake. Unfortunately it clouded over again and was quite boring but I did get the geese come to see if I had any food. However, there was an event for stand up to cancer charity with 5000 lights turned into lanterns with personal family tributes to cancer victims along the paths and across the bridge. Each one someone who has passed but is still remembered and missed by family and friends. Another poignant reminder of how fleeting life really is.
Random Pictures with a Restless Mind 
