Wednesday 24 August 2016

It's as clear as day

I stutter. This isn't right, I'm relatively well spoken. I try again, the words are stuck, caught on the edge of my tongue. I get told to take a blue pill. My legs are trembling, my hands are constantly running through my hair. Who is this man at the end of my table, I look back down at the wood and then look to my right.

All I remember is I screamed at my family, I think it was my Mum, Dad and Grandma.

The wood is familiar, I just stare at it some more like its the only thing in the world that really knows how I feel. just an object, motionless, locked in place for people to just walk around and lean on.

It's that fucking man again, who is he? did I just take a pill he gave me? What if this was the man from the garden, he told them where I was. Let's rip into him, I'm angry, I have a colourful pallet of words to paint a foul picture with, lets pull him to pieces and put him in his place with his tie preferably around his neck.

I still can't speak, I'm like a skipping vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl.

I choose to not speak at all. This frustrates me even more, why did they take my voice away from me?

Strangely this super power hearing that I had acquired decided to turn against me. The clock ticks, the man speaks, the dog walks around in the back room, the cars drive past my house. The hardest part about the world happening around me was it all sounded the same level to me.

So not only could I not speak but everything was washing over me like a flood, all consuming.

Larazopram became a stable part of my diet just like your multi vitamins you take in the morning, "Don't let him take this for more than two weeks, it's highly addictive, you don't want a suicidal pill popping super hero junkie in your house do you!"

I take it for a little under four months.

This was the little blue pill I'd taken, this was not the man in black from the garden, this was a man from a mental hospital. The only reason I wasn't hospitalised was lack of space, or I head to York to be locked up. I tell them if I'm put in a room where I can't have shoe laces I would go out of my way to kill myself on their watch, I'm pretty sure this is one of many times I see my family cry over the next few weeks.

The speeding bullet train of thoughts, emotion and static all come to a strange halt, I'm melting like an ice cream in the sun, I start to slip in my chair a little more. They make me give them all of my medication and they decide it's best to turn up at my house everyday with the medication I should take as they're rather alarmed by the 3 boxes of medication I had in my room, I don't know where they'd come from.

They put me on Venlafaxine which I'm still on to this day which had slowly gone from 150mg to 250mg this is a different anti depressant an SNRI instead of an SSRI kind of like anti depressant plus or a newer better model dealing with things differently in the brain.

I'm also put on Risperidone as he's worried I might be schizophrenic.

I also have Zopiclone which is the sleeping tablet that didn't work, when they upped it and mixed it with all those drugs listed above apparently I turned into a dead weight and looked like I was on a high.

I wake up in the morning feeling like I'd been hit by a train, one of the side effects of Risperidone is muscle and joint pains and my god was that pain apparent. I remember being forced to take them as I didn't want to because of how much I hurt.

My stutter doesn't get any better, I trip over every word I try and say when the person appears in the morning with a little white box, I do remember being obsessed with putting them in order, straight and regimented, probably because that was the only thing I had control of in my life.

One day I remember being 'good' because it was cake day Friday, I scream at the man that can't give me medication now, call him a cunt and go to my room.

My behaviour became more irrational over time, every day my dad would take me to get a mocha in the morning from costa and I had to hold his hand because I'd like to try and run in front of cars.

I play Dragon Age, My Dad buys me my preorders of Super Smash Bro's U and Pokemon Sapphire as I'm not working and have no money. I can only manage 3 hours and then the haunting feeling comes back over me and I panic, time for Mr Blue Pill.

I try and break all of my fingers, I try and pull all my hair out, I try to break both my arms, I lay on the sofa screaming because I just don't understand anything and I'm under a quilt, I've now decided I'd have some ticks to add to the acute hearing and stutter, My brothers spend that visit crying as it's the first time they see me. That's when they realise my illness is very real and true as they've fully realised it's potential.

I can't tell you any dates or when and what order these all happened, this is just how it came out in text, It's stitched together pretty well I think. This covered November 6th till around 26th December 2014, I know this because I posted a blog on that day about Smash Brothers. I have changed it though since it's first golden publishing. Don't know what that looked like!

The next nine months is spent in recovery worried I'm going to relapse at any point, I'm the sun, I'm well into my life at this point, I'm 25. Everybody's waiting for the Red Giant event to happen where I start to just consume everything close to me and destroy it, I'm not burning as bright as before and everything has a shitty filter to it. My facial expression is dead, I'm not eating, I spend most of the day in my pyjamas, If I leave my house It's to see some medical person and my clothes are over my pjs.

Dead eyed and gaunt, pasty white and sickly looking, white sunken black sockets where those judgmental eyes scan this fuck pit of a world for some way out. When I get told "Isn't Bipolar just having a bad day, get over it" I wish I could put them in that version of my life and see what they think, Just remember kids, no bandage, no problem.

The man I meet next hands me that title on a piece of paper, I notice the fact that it also claims I'd had amnesia for the past 6 weeks as I couldn't recall a thing that had just happened, I still thought it was October and we were well into January now, when I say I start to remember things it means I have a better idea of time and the way things are pieced together.

Bipolar Disorder Type II.

The title, finally. Nine years later and that title is on a piece of paper, that doctor that saw me 9 years ago should have listened to the ant that fully understood the world, the alarmed doctor that I fucked with had reason to be alarmed, the woman that told me I was having a bad day even though I filled in her stupid form could go play with a rock in the centre of a motorway, all of them wrong, every moment I lost control, every aspect of my life I changed because I was more informed than the qualified person in front of was all for this moment.

What's worse is that to get the appointment with this Psychiatrist I had to nearly kill myself on multiple occasions just to get the attention and acceptance in their books to get looked at, its not to say that I didn't have times after where I locked myself in the bathroom staring at a pair of scissors and a razor with the intentions to visit the worm infested box in the ground. Luckily I was with my Dad and within 30 seconds he'd realised I'd been too long and sorted things out but those 'Kill yourself' voices never seemed to go away.

I'm in that office with my Mum for I don't know how long but when he sits down with my Mum she asks "Is he Bipolar", "Oh NO DOUBT" this man reply's.

"It's as clear as day."

Come show some love

My Twitter is @winslowbateman
My Instagram is www.instagram.com/fi5h5tick5/
also I have Twitch www.twitch.tv/fi5h5tick5/profile

Peace and love.

Caleb, FI5H5TICK5 and every name inbetween.

Monday 22 August 2016

I wanted a Title, that Title came at a heavy price

When I blog I listen to music, the first day it was A Tribe Called Quest that started things off, the second day it was Low Roar, then the next two blogs where a combined effort split over a day, making it easier for people to digest. Bon Iver started me off and then I couldn't get out of that vibe, I'm rather excited for the new album 22, A Million.

Anyway, Sertraline, I started on 50mg, then 100mg, then 200mg. The 200mg period didn't last very long but I'll get to that and what I remember soon.

The 3-4 days of coming off one anti depressant and going onto another one was a strange one. One minute my parents turn up and I'm standing on the top of the sofa convinced I could fly and spinning around like a giddy child, then I would be in a ball on the floor crying for hours, my emotions use to over come me and knock me completely the fuck out.

I used to run, apparently this is a trait of people with bipolar as they tend to work out, I put on some music, and I'd pick it apart, layer by layer, track by track, then I'd go home.

Two reasons how I knew something was up. One was the fact that I left the house because the idea of stabbing myself was literally moments away from happening and second, I just plain fucking hate running.

What became more current was me having full blown anxiety attacks at work. I mean fall on floor, lose of sight, my hands getting stuck like claws, no feeling from my knees down and hysterical crying and hyperventilation that would last for potentially hours.

When I was at work I was in my fortress, I was the loud, over the top, eccentric, centre of attention. Everything my real personality wasn't. I was a hyper exaggeration of myself and I sold that idea so much so that I was openly telling people when I was going home I was going to cut my wrists and they'd laugh and think it was some funny joke, no one thought I had this severe depression that had started to really claw its way into my work life.

I hid it so well, at least I think I did, It became even more apparent that shit was going south when I'd just say I couldn't work. sometimes my brain couldn't do what came very naturally to me, I'd start to forget things and make mistakes. Now if I forgot to take my medication in the morning it was apparent within two hours as everything would go full shit storm and I'd just become a nightmare to work with.

Three months into the year I had my medication upped to 100mg. Six months after that it was maxed out at 200mg. This brings me to September or October 2014. We would shuffle the rota around at work to make it work for me when I had these episodes that would lead to a week off work, just to cool my jets and calm my brain. Nobody knew a whole new beast was about to be born, a sickness so dark it was like staring into a pot of Marmite.

It should have been apparent, My speech was at so fast and erratic people complained that I made no sense. I'd gone completely over the top. Sleep became less and less but these conflicting moods had started to come back down again. I honestly think I was manic only for a few days but nobody knew or saw the signs, why? because I hid.

I stopped washing, my appetite had disappeared and I was sitting playing Dragon Age Inquisition, I remember that fact but fuck me I can't remember a thing about that game. I didn't go to work, I didn't tell anybody where I was and I stayed at somebodies house and just kept to myself, I was obsessed about a crack in a T.V so I spent £500 on a new one and sat. I hadn't realised or began to question the fact that someone was in the garden watching me, every time I changed my glance and tried to catch them looking at me they had gone, I spent a lot of time with the doors locked and the curtains closed after that because they were out there and I didn't like that they were apparently as fast as shit when it came to moving out of the way.

My parents turned up one day, I remember that. I think my manager had spoke to my Mum saying I'd kind of disappeared. where I was hiding had now been compromised, had the person spying on me told everyone where I was? No, the owner of said hiding place had rang my parents as well because I was scaring them. I don't know what I had done, I dread to think of it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact I hadn't slept in just over a week.

So a few facts I'd missed out up to this point is that when my medication was upped to 100mg I'd started telling the doctors they where idiots, that If you asked anyone that knew me and put the key factors of someone with bipolar in front of them they'd agree with my thought process and methods of deduction. I'm not Sherlock Holmes, I'm just smarter than most idiots reading personalities off computer screens that in my mind have frankly given up. They just tell you to move on until the next ant walks in convinced they're dying then tell them to take paracetamol and ibuprofen.

This doctor cracked and got me a one to one with someone from Danetree mental health team, this woman was a moron. I'd judged and assessed the situation before I had even sat down, I knew what was about to happen. I fill in a form and everything is red, this is apparently not good at all. She tells me I'm fine, Before I get up and walk out of the office I tell her I'm going to walk in front of a bus just  to prove her wrong. Maybe that was the day I tried to drive my car into something really fast. I can't remember If I'm honest but I'm not happy at all.

Now the doctor I saw when my medication had been upped to 200mg, I went back and saw a week later asking for sleeping pills, he was the man that was alarmed, I wound him up, he said I was a danger, I laughed at the fact his phone was broken, everytime he left the room I'd fuck with his stuff, un plug phones, pull out cards from his computer. move something. why? because he wouldn't tell me what I wanted to hear, I needed confirmation, a title.

Now the title came at a heavy price, taking sleeping pills and managing to stay awake for a week is something I'm pretty sure shouldn't happen.

I remember screaming and banging my head on the floor, I remember talking to someone on the phone that said my name wrong and called me Josh, This lead to her telling my parents on the phone that I'd made it up and she hadn't called me Josh, I went fucking apeshit, How could someone dealing with an extremely suicidal paranoid insomniac also claim I was a liar. Oh did I break, I remember being emotionally ruined on the floor completely broken in a pool of tears and spit. I'd just crack my head on the floor and scream more and more. My dad lost his temper when she finally said she'd called me the wrong name. I don't remember what happened after that. At all. Like nothing at all, I think that's when the cork had popped out, only with a lack of celebration.

I felt like I had super powers, everything was heightened and this isn't a joke, my hearing became so good I could hear people pulling up, closing the car door and walking to my door before it had even happened.

I'd say things would happen before they would.

I remember the 6th of November 2014 and then I start to remember things from around the 26th December 2014.

I'll try and put a path together of pieces of what I remember but I'm clearly splitting this into three.


My Twitter is @winslowbateman
My Instagram is www.instagram.com/fi5h5tick5/
also I have Twitch www.twitch.tv/fi5h5tick5/profile

Peace and love.

Caleb, FI5H5TICK5 and every name inbetween.

The response so far has been amazing with the blog being read over 500 times just for 2 updates, which doesn't seem like a lot but it's something and the message that's started of small gets bigger with each update. I hope it shines some light on such a dark subject thats completely ignored in the work place, schools and every other social situation. 

Thank you again 

Friday 19 August 2016

Mr YES. The Egotistical, Arrogant, Narcissist.

The definition of a blog is rather varied and wide spread, it doesn't have to be a topical piece all the time and maybe that's where I've gone wrong in the past? Hell bent on talking about games journalism and what I wish I was, rather than what I really am in reality.

It's hard to talk about a topic when your the only person you know that cares that much about it and don't have any friends to go that deep into the mechanics and craft its self, that being said I have a lot of friends that play games, Some being part of the elitist P.C master race, others being your typical console monkey, but I don't feel I have that deep connection and personality to bounce thoughts and ideas off of.

This is why I'm doing what I'm doing, to find that personality and group of people that have a love affair with the topic on a whole and every aspect.

Then we have mental illness, another topic I feel incredibly strong about and opening peoples eyes up and educating them that just because you can't see the physical wound like a broken bone in a cast doesn't mean that it isn't actually there.

Now I touched on when I was sick, I've said I'm an open book on the matter at hand so I'm going to stop lying and tell the truth to the Internet, things I haven't told my friends or family, details that go missing when I'm sat in a sterile office with a stranger and expected to feel calm. The room looks like a fucking nut house, I don't feel comfortable, how am I suppose to open up about delicate things that have happened in my life when I feel like they could walk out of the room at any moment and that's me really being left inside a padded cell.

So I'll start at the beginning.

I'm 15 or 16 and I realise things aren't right inside my head. I'm conflicted and confused and I look up depression on the Internet. I try and educate myself on the matter at hand as I don't want to waste the doctors time if I can fix the problem myself. When your that age you feel like you have life completely sorted and everything is black and white, no one is going to tell you a thing you don't already know and I'm a fully formed adult, I was wrong.

I go to the doctors and say "Somethings up" I have dark thoughts, I feel I will be a nothing for my whole life, a number, an ant, I will march along with all the other ants doing the same thing day in day out and then I'll get stepped on. We are told to get a job, get a house, pay for everything you can't afford have a child and a dog, then pay for your box in the floor that gets eaten by worms.

I'm scared my days are up and those thoughts are so powerful that I'd rather end it now and save everyone the hassle of knowing me. I drop the words 'Bipolar' in to this conversation but I don't know how to articulate my point to this rather judgemental fellow and he hands me an A4 piece of paper he printed off the Internet about being sad and tells me I'm fine. Years later they'll all realise they where wrong.

Fast forward like 4-5 years and I'm still convinced I'm bipolar, the rapid changes in emotion that can be on a daily basis or last for days, weeks and even months with every oddity in-between that I hide and ignore. I think there must be a trigger that sets me off as most episodes are triggered by events and so on. So I break down my life into things that annoy me,

I can't drive, so I learn.

My girlfriend at the time is a complete fucking prick so Its ended, I throw a chair at a pub wall in pure anger and get barred.

I'm over weight, so I go to the gym and get abs and arm muscles. I hate myself even more.

My job is trash so I quit.

I live at home so I move into a crack house with some friends.

All big things in my life have been drastically changed but nothings worked.

A year later they put me on medication for social anxiety and depression, guess I've bugged them enough at this point that they just gave me them to shut me the fuck up.

I stop drinking as my addictive personality leads me into binges and losing all self control isn't something you want to do when you think you've got some kind of split personality.

This works well for 6 months until it's my friends 22nd birthday, this also means I'm 23 in the same week. I call my doctor up and say "Its my friends birthday so can I drink on my medication?" Now over this 6 month period I've haven't touch a single drop of booze. I know if I have one sip then that's it.

He tells me it's fine.

This is the start of a tail spin 6 months and a period of cocaine, alcohol, MDMA and sex. I'm arrogant, I think I'm handsome because I've lost weight and for the first time in my life I'm going into clubs when I'm single and I notice people looking at me. I've always been oblivious to attention as I just don't care that much about it, my one goal when I'm out is to consume enough alcohol to kill an adult and then keep on drinking, people can talk at me all the fuck they want, If I'm honest I'd rather they all just disappeared.

I wake up in a university room and have no clue what the fucks happened, that was the first day of what we refer to as 'Charlie Sheen meltdown week' I think £1100 is spent on booze in total, I don't go to work for a week as I change shifts and I lose myself in some kind of indulgent fantasy where I believe I can do anything I put my mind too. Thinking about it now I think I was having some kind of manic episode as I'm a complete fucking idiot. I sleep for around 6 hours over that week. I then wake up in a house in Northampton, I have to call my friend as I don't know where I am.

I start taking too much of my medication to see what it does, I give my medication to my friends to see if it gives them a buzz. I lose the ability to say no and I live for YES.

Life is loud, colours are bright, nothing has repercussions. I'm invincible, I can tell anyone anything and they will eat every word out of my hand like a cheeky fucking Nandos.

I have a problem, My body stops pacing at 3000 miles per hour and reality hits me like a wrecking ball, I've ruined my life, I've pissed off everyone I know, I'm probably going to lose my job, I'm a completely paranoid nervous wreck and it takes me 10 weeks to get over it. I'm never drinking again. I start taking class A drugs instead.

Cocaine, MDMA, Jack Daniels and Red wine. Just reading it spells disaster.

I stop drinking on the 6th of January 2013 after a 5 month suicide run.

It's been nearly 4 years now and I'm proud of that achievement, only you can stop it. No one else can, you have to make the decision to change your life style for the better as the person I became was a version of myself I never want to be again.

Mr Yes.

An Egotistical, an arrogant narcissist.

Completely self obsessed and careless, killing everything he touches and corrupting it, I'm completely ashamed of myself but I was ill, I had to make that change happen, when I felt down I took to booze, you hide that version of yourself that's weak and vulnerable to the world, you put on the mask, you become a phantom, a beautiful monster.

You want to be accepted, just not like that.

I tell the doctors they need to change my medication because it doesn't work, so bye bye Citalopram and hello Sertraline.

It's a new start.

I'm doing better at work as I'm not on a come down or a week long collective hangover and I'm eventually promoted to Assistant Manager, I'm proud, over joyed.

To the one woman that stood by me like a sister I never had, the woman that offered me the opportunity that 10 months in the past I'm pretty sure she wanted to sack. I'll forever be thankful to her and she knows that.

I have many episodes over the next 2 years.

I'm going to stop here so it's more manageable and bite sized, as this is where it gets rather bad.

God, I just read through that with my fiancé. It's horrible to read through bad times in my life when I know I'm not that person at all, but I had to do all that to become the person I am today.

Come show some love

My Twitter is @winslowbateman
My Instagram is www.instagram.com/fi5h5tick5/
also I have Twitch www.twitch.tv/fi5h5tick5/profile

Peace and love.

Caleb, FI5H5TICK5 and every name inbetween.



Thursday 18 August 2016

Aim low, the sky's the limit.

So why do this, what is 'This'

I don't know, shall I honestly just write a diary for the world to read, that's not interesting, everything needs substance, everything is built on something, with a purpose in mind, guess mine's going to be a blog heavily relying on spell check and no natural light, actually no fucking lights, light helps me see what I don't like and I don't like a lot.

Is it strange that I'm not actually thinking what I'm writing, I'm just writing?

What is a blog? Now I guess that can be the first barrier to break down. I have an idea but I don't actually know what defines and makes something a blog. You just make a page and post it and that's it, a blog right.

I could technically publish the word Cunt 200 times and that's a blog I guess, If I wrote that on a piece of paper and left it on the floor in the Tate Modern people would be hard pressed to define if that was art or not?

It's all subjective, in the eye of the beholder, has deeper meaning than that, really read into it. Nope, just a profanity on paper.

I told you it wouldn't be for everyone, I'm a hard sell. Like the football team metaphor.

Now I've forgotten to take my medicine but that happens most nights so I'll just keep on typing in the dark.

A quick trip to Google then wikipedia tells me all I need to know.

"A blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries. Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject. Others function as more personal online diaries, and others function more as online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic."

I'm an online brand. I've already said I tried to sell myself, even though I can't.

Now we have a definitive answer for said idea and subject or subjects full of matter, it should be an easy sell right? Would you buy an item that's bitter and past its sell by date, I thought not, so why would you want to read this?

I have no idea. I'm terrible with words, Like I said I'm not trying to write anything right now yet sentences form in front of me that are semi coherent and people tell me its okay. Or are my deluded realities and real life becoming one in the same so much so I'm making the compliments up?

I'm trying to be real. I'm 27, I'm lost in my life, I have a loving and supporting family and friends, I have a fiance who I've already told multiple times I'm going to ruin her life. I have a job, a part time one that is. I'm over weight, I spend too much money on games and I want Deus Ex so bad!

I have a diary, well I have three, one I can't find, one I found and you don't want to read or know any of the contents of those pages, why couldn't I have lost that one, the other one was kind of an idea book, like this new one, It's red, an angry colour for an angry person, I told myself to aim for the floor as you can't miss, I keep shooting myself in the foot, I think that's worse. Wise words from a complete idiot that I miss, But its true, I know they say The skies the limit, but technically doesn't the sky start at the floor too? like ground and then all of thee above is sky?

So this red diary has some pretty epic stuff in it, truly inspiring words to keep me motivated, I think I wrote "The day you come back down to earth is the day you get a job at McDonald's"

Beautifully obscure. Different, I want to stand for the person that doesn't fit in, the reminder that different is normal, who can truly define what is normal? sometimes I can't even define what weird shit I see. I have a psychiatrist, I must be doing a really good job because I'm on my fifth in 21 months. considering I see them once every 3 months, every time I open up the next visit I have a new one, I thought it was odd that I had to sign in on the wall in someone Else's shit.

I'll be the fist in the air, the voice of many, or the many voices I hear, don't tell the doctors though I might get told to go back.

We are all different and different is good, you are the person that will change the way the future is seen, that idea you had, that moment of clarity with ones self, that thought whilst driving, that will always be the first step to changing how you and the person around you lives your life. Become the change you want to see. If you think you can do it then do it, if you fall down just remember the sky starts at the ground. I see no definition for what is and what isn't sky.

Aim low, the sky's the limit.

My Twitter is @winslowbateman
My Instagram is www.instagram.com/fi5h5tick5/
also I have Twitch www.twitch.tv/fi5h5tick5/profile

I've figured out my first topic I will be looking at, so far It's been split into three posts, It's too fucking long, I started off by splitting into two because of the length, Not that you can put a length on perfection but I heard It's around three pages long.

Check the back catalogue, It's awful. But you can see me go from failing English and barely getting a C, having no understanding of writing, then this scramble of words you see in front of you.

Peace and Love.

Thanks for the feedback, hopefully people will come forward and start talking with me or just saying hello. who knows?

Till next time,

Caleb. FI5H5TICK5 and all the names in-between.

Wednesday 17 August 2016

A half painted portrait of a glass half full.

Hey kids, lets do something fun today. Lets learn about me, a 27 year old failure that's destined for a life of nothing, with the imagination to be something and the promotional skills of that football team you haven't heard of, exactly, that made no sense, why? because you haven't heard of them and that's the point I'm getting to.

I can't sell myself, maybe like that, but probably not because I'm getting fat in old age. I convinced someone far to beautiful and clever to marry me, so much so when I proposed I told her I was miserable but the only person I wanted to be miserable with was her. Charmer right! Get in line.

So why this post? Because every so often I realise I'm a wasted talent, and how do I know that? because I tend to know more about games than the people working in the games stores. I consume so much media in the subject it frustrates me that I have no way of sharing it with anyone. I talk at my partner, 'At' being the key word in that small sentence.

So for probably the fourth or fifth time in my life I had a 'Fuck it' moment and decided to try all over again. Now I've suffered a lot in the past two years, I'm incredibly open about the subject matter because I don't let my illness define me, until it defines me and I become a living nightmare, but after that experience and years of being told to express myself I wrote a blog, It was terrible, badly spelt and I can't even remember what it was about, but after all that I'd done it.

Seems as this is a relaunch like Marvel Now or DC Rebirth I'll fill you in with the fact I'm Bipolar. Don't know what that is? Google it. It's awful. I love it.

Step one done, It had been read, when I logged in the next day not just once but actually 100 times in total, that blew my already blown up mind.

My anxiety of expressing myself had disappeared as I'd taken a step, a baby step but an incredibly theraputic one, an incredibly brave one. It helped me so much over an awful period in my life where I felt lost and helpless, an outlet for an incredibly frustrated, outspoken and anxious person. I stuck too it for months, I kept at it for months, every day, every other day, every week, once a month, now.

Now in that time i'd had some experiences with different things, all hugely positive but then the defining illness came and fucked me hard and forgot the lube. I was writing for an American website, a start up. I covered news and reviews for games, I adored it. I stopped.

Twitch, oh man was it addictive! I got to be myself on camera and people loved it, I played games, I got angry I gained a small gathering of 300 followers in 2 months. I stopped.

So when I was fucked by illness my brain shut down, basic things are impossible, all my aspirations and dreams fall away from me and reality becomes a dream. Life is better when your living in your own deluded brain, Joke all you will about Bipolar. Every person I've ever told has no fucking clue what it is. They tell me to smile and get over it.

I remember thinking someone was in my house and saw them in the kitchen, I remember trying to jump out of a car on a dual carriageway, being under 24 hour care, every time I was in public I wanted to run in front of a car and just fucking end it. I remember everything being brighter and talking so fast and nothing making any sense, I remember being awake for a week, I don't remember my brain being put under so much of an emotional beating that according to my psychaitrists record I had Amnesia for 6 weeks. I'll smile and get over that alright, sure my family where thinking the same thing whilst going through that experience. Thrown into the mix whilst this is going on is an addictive personality that over consumes everything and over analyses every small detail.

100% or 0%. I have no in between. I stopped.

Here we are again, after stopping when things were going the right way for me I decided to start again, I know right. Does it matter? Will I do it all over again? Maybe, but I have to try.

So what will I be doing? Well I'm obsessed with Gaming. I want to write about it, how? However I feel relevant. Reviews, discussions, very informal and all over the place like a Childs story. Mostly on a wall in crayon. I'm also interested in discussing my illness, games, routine and how to manage things when they seem impossible.

Basically I want to be blunt and honest with myself and everyone else, It might be polarising and not for everyone, but every time I have an opinion on a matter it is normally backed up by a fact, I look into what I disagree with also so I can see the opinion from both sides. Sounds like something everyone should do, but I've got into heated conversations with people when I've known more about their opinions point than they have.

I look at the Idea of video games through a magnifying glass. I often take to Twitter to say thank you to Indie developers for an amazing soundtrack or piece of art, sending them my reviews so they know what I thought about my experience, I want them to know how I got to the final result.

I buy the soundtracks, look into the history of the studio and try and buy the back catalogue, the artists involved with creating the feel and tone of the game and the writers telling the overall story. When you look deeper you get more of an appreciation for whats gone into it, tying that whole experience together.

Take away the music and background sound from Bioshock and play it, The game becomes so much easier, what you didn't realise was dictating your pace and that anxious feeling in your gut was the one thing you pay no attention too whilst emerged in that experience, take it away and it becomes a shooter with no jumps or build ups through sound alone.

Probably the most memorable soundtrack that I've brought recently was 'Everybody's Gone To The Rapture' by Jessica Curry. That soundtrack alone is enough to make you cry it's that beautiful, tied with an experience that is literally out of this world. She won a BAFTA for the soundtrack after I'd tweeted her, not that my tweet made that happen but, understandably so, its absolute bliss.

Other stupid facts about me are I have a huge tattoo of Cloud on my forearm, Final Fantasy VII is my ultimate favourite game, Being told not to play something because you won't understand it is all the fuel I need to play a game. I may also want to Call my Children Cloud and Ruby. Nothing to do with Final Fantasy VII at all!

I live in a small room in my grandparents home surrounded by comforts, firstly art from games framed on My wall. The Iconic Image of Joel and Ellie from The Last of us and an A3 image of Elizabeth falling from Columbia whilst Booker tries to catch her.

Drake also lives in my room. One form poster and the other a 3ft Cardboard cut out I may have borrowed from GAME.

I love collectors edition and art books also, I wish I could draw like those talented people. Probably my favourite is the art book for Witcher Wild Hunt.

Slowly I'm collecting more models but my favourite I own is Red from Transistor, Artists Jen Zee is literally insane and anything Super Giant Games touches I will throw my money at! I'm looking at you Pyre! Annoyingly though after again tweeting her to see if I could buy some original art she informed my its all digital, I cry.

Then we have all those Andrzej Sapkowski books, Oh how I love you. Next tattoo is for sure the wolf medallion on my hand. A polish writer who originally wrote the novels and short stories about Geralt before CD PROJEKT RED, a polish company also, Created that amazing world in real life.

So thats it, a small informed look into my life and the thing I love, GAMES.

One day I will make a name for my self, I don't want fame, I don't want fortune, I just want to entertain and help people.

Not sure what to call this? A diary in a sense. A half painted portrait of a glass half full.

A relaunch.

So yes I do have Twitter and Instagram, Currently I'm writing angry emails to Hello Games for selling me a game that's so broken its's crashed on me 18 times in 3 days.

Fuck you Sean Murray. I've got beef. You looked like the coolest person in the world selling your stolen Ideas. Then when it releases you change your tone immediately.

No paid DLC! free updates for every one, 7 days after launch, Might have to pay for that DLC ladies and gentlemen, maybe that'll contain a finished game! we all know it's Elite: Dangerous meets Minecraft and Johan Gielis's "Superformula" anyway. All I wanted was Joe Danger 3. I will get a refund. It may take a while but I will get my £70 back. why £70? because I brought the collectors edition because it came with an art book and steal case/comic. Fix it!

But enough about me being so mad I nearly broke my TV.

My Twitter is @winslowbateman
My Instagram is www.instagram.com/fi5h5tick5/
also I have Twitch www.twitch.tv/fi5h5tick5/profile

So come give me a follow, comment on what you like and share if you can as it would mean the world to me, I have a crappy back catalog of 71 posts on my blogspot so I'm sure one thing might entertain you.

Till next time people,

Caleb, FI5H5TICK5.