Metamorphosis Felinus

...rain pounds the window pane. I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m so warm and fuzzy; I could remain like this for the rest of my life. The rumbling of my stomach is quick to subdue this whim: time for breakfast! I slowly peel back my eyelids, but the room doesn’t want to come into focus. From what I can see, grey light is filtering through the window; unusually drab light considering my bedroom is south facing – wait a second, this is not my room!

Gradually the room comes into focus - the utility room that is, where the cats sleep. Great, how on earth did I end up here? Sleep-walking maybe? Or perhaps thanks to a night of heavy drinking? Just to make doubly sure of where I am, I rub my eyes – but ouch! I really aught to cut my nails. Blinking the sudden rush of tears away, I gaze down at two tiny, black, furry paws.

I don’t believe my eyes (although I resist the urge to rub them again). The important thing is not to panic. Needless to say, this is exactly what I proceed to do…

…rain pounds against the window pane. This time I really don’t want to open my eyes. A longer deeper rumble issues from my stomach; I’m a growing kitten after all. How could this get any worse? But of course, now I need the toilet. I make my exit using the cat flap – straight into an horrendous downpour. Oh well, it’s too late to turn back now.

After completing my business without the slightest of ease, I return to the house. I am soaked to the bone. My little escapade has done nothing to silence my belly. At least I should have my breakfast before too long. No sooner have I thought this, than the utility door opens, I trill with delight. However, instead of going to the worktop, in order to prepare my breakfast, the figure enters and darts for the back door. ‘Click’ goes the lock of the cat flap.

I make a dash for the open utility door, but just as I make to move, another figure sidles into the room carrying something, and quickly closes the door to prevent my escape. I have been cornered, either way I turn the other person is behind me. Oh well, I decide to submit to their supremacy. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I am bundled into the cat box.

The entire duration of the car journey I am thrown around inside the box. Then, at the vets, a large dog eyes me up hungrily, obviously somebody else who hasn’t had any breakfast. Finally, the moment I have dreaded arrives; my name is called.

I am carried through. My leg is shaved and I am stabbed with a needle, I hiss in disgust. However I soon feel the calming effect of the sleeping cocktail entering my veins. The final words I hear before I lose conciseness are: “He won’t be a Tom for much longer”…

Don't let them get away with it

Our landlord is evicting my wife and I in two months. This is not because we are noisy or messy or uncooperative tenants who don't pay the rent on time. We are simply too much of a bother because we haven't been so easy to hold under his thumb.

Our flat is part of a converted building, which itself is very old and so contains no damp proof course. This has lead to rising damp and problems with mould (not to mention many other problems besides).

We went to the landlord with these complaints but he was unresponsive. We also went to the council since, as we were housed through one of their schemes (due to me struggling with a mental health diagnosis), we thought that they might be able to help. 

That didn't seem so be going anywhere so we sought the help of the citizens advice bureau. In the end the CAB pressed and got things rolling.

Not long after we heard that the Environmental Health Team were to get involved we were served our notice by the landlord.

All we are guilty of is not allowing a person to get away with being a bad human being. I guess that is the way of the world though - you can either compromise, play by the rules and accept the way things are, or hold with your values and get struck down at every turn. 

"I want to rape women"

I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia ten years ago and I have intrusive auditory hallucinations like the one in the title of this post.

It feels like these thoughts are put in my head because there is a disconnection in my mind; so I don't recognise the 'voices' as my own (even though they technically are).

The things the voices say are the result of my primeval brain attempting to grapple with the modern, let's say unnatural world we live in. 

I am fortunate in that I can separate these voices from 'me', so I can take a step back and watch them happen without feeling guilty about having things like them in my head.

This is important because ordinarially the thoughts would possibly get acted upon, whereas I am able to put them in a box for you to see.

I hope you will see them and realise that we are mostly (some people are just bad eggs genetically of course) not to blame for our actions as it is the world being unnatural and incompatible with our primeval brains that really fucks us up.

Are we on the same evolutionary wavelength?

I’ve been going along under the assumption that men and women’s natures have evolved to fit together – but what if this isn’t the case?

After all, evolution isn’t about evolving towards something; it’s about how suited you are to your current environment. We aren’t perfectly adapted to our environment; we’re just the fittest being that has evolved so far.

So what if, in the same vein, each sex isn’t perfectly adapted to the other?

Anxiety that you can't 'push through'

I used to experience a lot of anxiety and panic attacks not long ago. I believe they stemmed from the delusions that people could see inside my head– and the paranoia that accompanied this belief.

The delusions and paranoia developed because I experienced horrible auditory and visual hallucinations and was so fearful that people might be able to get inside my head and see them that I started to believe that they were able to doing so.

I was taught in therapy sessions that all I needed to do was push through the anxiety or panic and once I’d reached the other side I would see that there was nothing to fear to begin with.

The only problem with this reasoning was that the situation itself didn’t bother me – it was the belief that people could see my thoughts that was the problem; and that’s not something that you can disprove.

Sexual and violent thought infection

I hear violent and/or sexual voices about women. Sometimes it’s that woman's voice - saying inappropriate things that I don't want to hear. 

I brush them aside but they are persistent and they conjure up images in my mind like a virus causing you to get sick. Like if someone says "pink elephants" and you automatically picture a pink elephant.

I hear my voice too, but it doesn’t seem to be coming from me – as though it’s being injected by someone else.

Delusional

When I was younger I was delusional and believed that everything – the whole world and everyone in it – was just a creation of my mind. Hence I felt unable to trust people; including my friends and family.

I believed myself to be in some kind of coma and making up this world as one would a dream. I knew that there were scientists watching me, and they were doing so via a TV that was hooked up to my brain, providing them with a live feed of the world I was creating inside my head.

The thing was, although they could see my world, they were not privy to what I was thinking to myself. I therefore spent every hour of every day trying to act in such a way that they wouldn’t be able to tell that I knew what they were up to.

I never knew why such a need for secrecy though..