Flying On Clipped Wings

Last June, I was officially diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, as it's being referred to more often in a clinical setting. This diagnosis followed a long period of internal speculation, and a “most likely has it” from an assessment in Celbridge. It wasn't a life shattering revelation, but it did explain a lot of things. The fights and rows I'd gotten into in the past and how quick I'd go from 0 to 90. The pervasive feeling of emptiness that seemed to be more severe than traditional depression (not that that's a walk in the park). The impulsivity when it came to drinking, substances, spending. It made me fearful for the future too, even though I'd been able to secure a place in a DBT program. I'm weary of writing disclosure pieces on mental health. They always seem so futile, and with an undertone of “poor me” no matter how I try and avoid that. However, BPD is one of the most debilitating and ...

I'm a sad person a lot of the time, but there's a few songs out there that make me very happy indeed, and I'm going to share them with all you lovely readers here. They may not be your typical example of a "happy song", but they do make me smile at times when it feels like my facial muscles can't contort themselves into that shape. 1: tricot: Omotenashi First off we have Japanese all girl math rock quartet tricot, purveyors of the most lovely, warm, technical, beautiful, comfy yet powerful math-pop-rock in existence, This is a track off both an EP and their debut record,  T.H.E. , and honestly picking just one song is a difficult task, but it's a more straightforward cut, my first introduction to the band, and it packs such a punch. 2: Crossfaith: Wildfire Staying in Japan for this next song, we have Japanese electro-metalcore warriors Crossfaith. Despite how that genre description might sound, they do have a grasp of how to write songs, and pr...

(tw: mental illness, suicide, self harm) For as long as I can remember i've always dragged my feet when it came to different things, but in the end I'd always come through. Giving out about doing a farm job but still trekking up the fields in my wellies. Fucking around getting drunk most weekends out of the month during sixth year until the gravity of the situation set in and I went on to crush my Leaving Cert, a pretty crass boast at 21 in final year of college but fuck it, I tried to kill myself that April, I thought scraping arts would be lucky, but I pulled through when shit got rough. It's something I like about myself, and it's something that's held me back from getting proper help for a good long while. Well, that and the fact that mental illness fucks over your cognitive abilities, energy, all the shit you need to get better. The fact I've seen and heard enough to leave me deeply cynical towards the medical services and not want to put myself throu...

This article has a rather stark title compared to my other ones, no sly little joke or further expansion on the specific nature of my discussion. There’s nothing really humorous I can put there to alleviate just how fucking heavy a read this is gonna be, and there’s no short little summation of this article. It’s not just my experiences with suicide, it’s about how we handle the topic of suicide, how we might have put our feet on the moon, but when it comes to matters of the mind we’re still grasping at straws a lot of the time. There’s no hashtag, or foundation behind this to continue some sort of advocacy, I’m just a voice on the internet, opening up about something seriously traumatic that happened to me, in hopes it can open the conversation, in the hope that I’ll somehow come to terms with it, even a little bit. April 1st, 2015, a date that’s not gonna leave my mind any time soon. The explanation of the context that helped contribute to my attempt would take up almost another art...

For someone who’s obviously open about many things, due to the content you can view on this blog, I’ve never been good at accepting help or letting people in. Perhaps I saw it as further admittance of weakness and wanted to save what little face I had left. Perhaps I didn’t think I was deserving of help. Perhaps I was sceptical of what help could be offered and didn’t want to end up going back to square one with memories of better times burning a hole in my stomach. Perhaps I just didn’t know how to react, having gone through life relying on myself, dragging myself through whatever mess I ended up involved in. Whatever the reasons, that reluctance is something that’s held me back, something that has held many people back from getting help, making bad situations that bit more unmanageable. I dragged myself through a lot of shit, on my own, and while I’m still here I wonder if things would have gotten better a while ago if I hadn’t kept things secret from my mam, if I’d listened to m...

Sharebait. It’s a term anyone who’s spent an extended time on social media, particularly Facebook will be familiar with, generally referring to the likes of Buzzfeed articles, posts with purposely inflammatory titles and statuses packed with emojis urging you to copy and paste. While they may clog up newsfeeds, most dismiss them as being harmless if irritating pieces of code. However there’s a darker, nastier side to this, found both in the cult of the passive-aggressive not-quite memetic images and that of the faux-deep, faux-inspirational images. They’re intrinsic parts of a negative culture, which does no favours to your mental health or relations with others. It’s an unnamed phenomenon, while there’s a slew of articles that deal with passive aggression on social media and this excellent Vice article that covers some of what I’m talking about somewhat better than I can, it still is an ongoing thing, a loop of the banal we’re trapped in.   I’m not quite sure when the passiv...

While MRAs will frequently cry out “wut about the menz” whenever feminists dare to do something as simple as post a relatable meme for the purpose of likefarming, what many of them fail to realise is that it’s men that fuck each other over. The constant arms race to be “the bigger man” be it through whatever traditional image is in vogue or within a subculture, is a very damaging thing, for everyone. Herein are the chronicles of my experiences with toxic masculinity, my own personal struggles with trying to get out of it, a tale of much unnecessary bullshit. I’ll be focussing on interactions with people, because if I was to untangle the problematic messages in every piece of media I’ve experienced, I’d probably be at dissertation length. My introduction to toxic masculinity was at home. Despite seeing himself as a woke and unproblematic individual, my dad would still take part in those annoying tests of manliness. In front of relatives he would try and perform subtle put downs, knowin...