Hello again.

Hello. I'm sure you all remember me. I used to update this. At risk of sounding like everyone else who has ever done this, including me in personal journals multiple times, I will try and get better at updating this and generally re-engaging with LiveJournal.

So, for the past few months I've been, you know, existing. There's not a lot to report really. I have a bunch of pictures from my holiday at home last September that I meant to document and never got around to. Assuming I continue the never getting round to it, they are here (Imperial War Museum), here (Howletts Wild Animal Park), here (Rochester Castle - terrifying experience going up [and down - I came down on my bum]) and here (Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway & Dungeness Lighthouse).

We have also bought and had delivered a new sofa, the installation of which was rather more of a saga and full of fail than it needed to be. I really hope I get around to writing that one up, because benc was awesome and manly ;)

I got some new woolies (here) because I shrank my old ones in the wash, and I got a shiny new mobile phone (here) which works much better than the old one.

I've also been growing my hair out. Had it trimmed last week so took a picture, and here it is:



Before the trimming it was about an inch and a half longer than that and easily reached my waist.

So, yes, hello again. Hopefully my next update won't be so tardy. In fact, I know it won't, because I already have something prepared...

M*A*S*H Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

I actually wrote this about a year ago, but I'm posting it now, just because :)

I saw Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, the M*A*S*H finale the other day. It's not the first time I’ve seen it – when I was first at University some kind American recorded it for me from cable TV over there (on a PAL tape even!) and sent it over, for which I was very grateful. It was however, the first time I’ve seen it for about 5 years, and this was certainly the first time since I’ve been ill. It must have really spoken to me, because I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since.

In it Hawkeye, a character who had been teetering on the edge of some sort of mental illness or combat stress since the start of the series 11 years before, has a sort of breakdown and ends up under the care of a psychiatrist in a hospital "pulling shrapnel from [his] memory".

Over the course of the episode the psychiatrist got Hawkeye back to his job, patching up wounded soldiers at the M*A*S*H unit, though he was by no means the same man, and was clearly struggling with life and his job.

All I’ve been able to think ever since (and this is ridiculous given that he is a fictional character) is how that man is never going to be the same again. Maybe it is because I am struggling with these issues myself at the moment, but I can’t stop thinking about how he will be forever changed, more fragile, lower self esteem, never as sure of himself again. The constant doubt that he is getting better, he will get better, he will ever be really better. The constant sense that something, an indefinable something, has been lost. The inability to remember who he really was before.

And it makes me want to cry.