When I was discharged from my section 3 and subsequently left hospital I described what had happened during those 10 weeks as the start of a journey. I didn’t know what the destination would be. I didn’t realise then how unpredictable and demanding the travel would be too. I describe this post at the theoretical possibilities of everything. Amidst all the disruption and problems I keep being handed I am desperately trying to complete some reading to figure of something of a theoretical framework,
From some of the reading I have discovered that my work is probably post-structuralist. Foucault and Irigaray are my bed-fellows. My life is certainly post-structuralist. Whatever structure I try, attempt, to maintain gets blown out by the gale force winds of change that inch themselves through the cracks and nooks of the stability. It’s a lot like living in the little pig’s straw house with the wolf blowing outside every hour of the day and night.
Everywhere I look the substance of my life dissolves. It is like sand running through my fingers. I am lost in a mountain range of ideas (theoretical) and problems (my life). Each one is bigger and less comprehensible than that which came before it. I really don’t know how to keep walking forward anymore. I don’t know if I am ever going to return to my PhD again. I feel lost and I don’t know which way is the right way to make a start towards. That journey I started. This journal I write. These feelings I write. These feeling aren’t right.
Foucault’s concept of a gaze fascinates me. He began with the medical gaze. Others have developed this idea. A clinical gaze. A neurotypical gaze. Being pinned in the sights of whatever monstrous part of the systems of power deny your menstruous difficulties. Expecting you to prove it, evidence it, assess it and review it. So much fuxking paperwork. That is what the mountain range of ideas is made from – paperwork. Paper. Work. Paperwork. So much so, that now I have realised that the quarter year that my institution has granted me isn’t going to be enough. I have to explore the possibility of an extension to my extension. How much goodwill can I expect from those post-structuralist powers, how much more scrutiny from the gaze of whatever monster’s eye I must meet in order to be seen? [oh Searows! oh Sauron!].
I am trying to keep to a basic structure. Walking every day. Yoga at least once. Not staying up too late. Drinking enough water. Focusing on the positives, the small victories. Staying out of sight.
