No longer as truthful as should be deserved, some names, places and events deliberately vague to protect identities that aren't mine

Thursday 28 March 2013

Skim Milk Marriage

So I've been reading the transcripts from the recent Prop 8 and DOMA Supreme Court Of The United States hearings that have been happening over the last two days.  I'll highlight other gems in future, but this one particularly stood out:

Counsel for BLAG (i.e. the pro-DOMA side) arguing the merits in the DOMA case: "...No State loses any benefits by recognizing same-sex marriage. Things stay the same. What they don't do is they don't sort of open up an additional class of beneficiaries under their State law for -- that get additional Federal benefits. But things stay the same..."

Justice Ginsburg: "They're not -- they're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's -- it's -- as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage."


YES.  Justice Ginsburg TOTALLY gets it.  It's not asking to be granted additional benefits, it's asking for recognition of equal rights and benefits already existent.

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Murdering Sleep

A twitter rant I posted the other night regarding my sleep...

You know what I hate most about being tired?  This whole getting-to-sleep thing.  It's supremely time consuming and I'm crap at it :(
Unless I'm pass out style drunk it takes me at least 2 - 3 hours to get to sleep.  Every single night.  Since I was 12.
It doesn't matter where I am, how tired I am, what time it is, what side I sleep on, I close my eyes and my brain just doesn't turn off.
I've tried music, reading, meditation, breathing techniques, counting sheep, none of it works.
Hell even sleeping pills don't seem to work on me properly half the time.
I know other people have problems sleeping, but 2 -  3 hours just to get to sleep every night for 14+ years?
It feels like everyone else learnt this ability and I somehow just missed it.
Like how I don't walk right.  Somehow it just came out wrong in me and it's too late to really do anything about it now.
I don't understand how everyone else can sleep so easily and sometimes I want to practically cry about that it's so bad.
I just want to be able to sleep properly.  One night every 2 weeks even.
At least then maybe I wouldn't feel going to bed was such a battle.  That at least once every 14 days I could sleep right.
And I'd have that to look forward to.  But somehow, I'm broken.  Again.

Monday night/daytime I actually slept about 12 hours, including a solid period of 8 uninterrupted hours.  This is the first time I've done this in over a month.  |In fact over the last month I've been averaging less than 3 hours sleep a night and the most I'd had in one 24h period was 5 hours.  Of course the 12 hours were completely full of bad dreams but at least some kind of proper sleep was something.  And then naturally Tuesday night I was wide awake at 5am and unable to sleep again.

And yes, I've been to the doctors, I've told them about this, I've told them I work with high voltage electricity and a month's severe sleep deprivation (relatively speaking by my standards, technically I'm probably always sleep deprived given how bad/absent my 'normal' sleep patterns are) is having noticeable effects on my ability to do things, reaction times, thought processes etc.  They refused to do anything about it.  Well technically they told me to come back in 2 weeks (this already being 2 weeks since I first went to them with the problem).  So I went to book an appointment.  The doctor has no appointments before 4pm for the whole of April.  I start work at 4.30pm each day.  I love the NHS, but I really hate my healthcare at times, it's a constant battle against the multitude of ways in which I try to seek some actual help.  And people wonder why I hate going to the doctors.

Sunday 24 March 2013

Towels

The last time I wrote this many blog posts in one night you all panicked.  Guess it shows there's something in me trying to come out I guess.  Can't promise it will be good.  Or pretty.  Or come out on my blog first rather some more physical method.

Thoughts 2

I don't know why people say they wish they were on a beach somewhere when they need a time out from life.  Sure beaches are lovely, and great, but you can only spend so much time on them.  I'd rather be skiing, coming in from the cold, sore from where I've pushed myself too hard or where I've fallen, and grabbing that hot chocolate that's so hot it burns your tongue and you don't care, before doing it all over again, and then in the evening when you finally get home, you spend too long in a hot shower or bath, you go into an outdoor hottub and dont move for an hour because you dont want to brave the cold, or you find the nearest bar, drink like hell, and collapse before getting up at 5am to do it all the next day.

But where I want to go to relax?  I'd like to be in bed, with a cute boy - I normally wake up around 7.30 am when I'm with him, and I'd open my eyes and even in a half asleep state I'd know I was already smiling and happy, because I'd see him next to me, because I could stay in bed next to him, and curl up next to his body and feel safe and warm just having him there.  Because it's still so much of a rarity that I get to see him there, that I can appreciate it at 7.30am, even if I or he had to get up and leave the other in bed, even if the other never roused even slightly as we got up, he's there.  I spent my whole night sleeping next to him, and I might never get that chance again.  I wasn't even conscious or aware of it, but just waking up and realising that I've spent 8 hours happy and calm and safe because he was there, and he still is, and I can fall back asleep knowing that is the best feeling I can ever have, the most relaxing one.  We might even be angry at each other, and we'll still sleep together, and we'll wake up, and we might start arguing 20 minutes later, but for those few moments, that first bit of awareness when you stop sleeping, none of that matters, none of that is important, all that's important and all that matters and all that makes you smile and realise how lucky you are, is them.

Interlude

I'm aware I haven't posted on here in a good while.  It's been a very bad start to the year.  The last 1/3/6/15 months, depending on where you want to start counting from have been particularly vicious to me, and I know they've been just as bad or worse on a lot of others too.  A lot of the people that I would normally turn to in instances like this are barely holding it together themselves.

I have a lot of stuff I want to write about, it would just either take too long, or I'm honestly not sure how to put it down into words, they just wont come out, not because I don't have the vocabulary to express it, I'm just not sure they're feelings and sentiments that can be expressed in written or spoken form.  Like linguistic translation, the nuance and specific meaning of what I'd be trying to get across would be lost in the act of communicating it between people.

Maybe I'll get round to it eventually and take a stab at it, maybe I won't.  I'm still here.  And when I can work out what to write about, I'll put something down.  I just don't know when that will be.

When I have time I guess.  Time is not forthcoming at any point in my life for the next 3 months that I can see...  In the meantime, have a block of solid text about something that's been in my head today:



Someone made me laugh the other day - they said things were bad but at least they hadn't packed their 'running away' bag yet.  I laughed because I have the same thing.  There's a specific bag that's under my bed.  It's the bag that comes out when I need to bolt, for whatever reason.  When I was younger, at various points my relationship with my parents was strained (whose wasn't), and I got into a certain habit - my shoes, keys and a jacket would always be near the door or together in my room, my wallet would always be in my jacket pocket, and my mobile phone once I got one, was almost always on my person.  I was always ready to bolt straight out the door if needed.  And this continues to this day.  My phone, wallet, shoes, jacket and keys are almost always kept in the same place, either in my room or near the front door, all more or less next to each other (or in a line that means I can grab each in turn), and ready to go.  And as I grew older, and was living in places of my own choosing, this also grew into a bag.  Technically I have 3 of them, but some double up for other purposes.  One bag is for getting away for a few days, when I just need to run and hide somewhere.  One bag lasts me about a week, it's the bag I take when I go back to my parents or am on holiday etc.  And one bag, the bag that I can run and never look back with, the bag that's designed not for hiding, but for just simply running, fits about a month's worth of clothing in it, it can keep all the basic toiletries, electronics, and items of supreme sentimental importance that I refuse to let go of in it; everything needed to pick up the absolute basic essentials of my life and I can take it anywhere with me.  I don't keep this bag packed.  I can pack it in under 15 minutes if I have to.  And recently I've wanted to dig that bag out from under my bed so much.  As I say, I'm not looking to run and hide, I want to run and never come back and forget everything that I am.  And whilst it's not a good reflection of either of our mental states, it is in its own warped and twisted way, comforting to know that someone else has this same bizzare secret ritual.


No Capes

Today I was the unreliable one.  Today I didn't get back to people.  Today I didn't save the day.  Today I didn't do it because no-one else would.  I said no.  And I don't feel guilty about that in the slightest.  Tomorrow I'll put my superhero cape on and swoop in and fix everyone's problems once more.  But today I didn't.

Because in the last week, I've almost smashed the TV, thrown my phone across the room straight into the glass patio doors, punched the fridge, turned the stove on just to burn my hand on it, and drop kicked every plate in the house whilst wearing my boots to smash them.  I've come dangerously close to all these things.  The only way I've avoided it is by gripping onto the arms of my computer chair so firmly I couldn't get up because my entire body was too tensed; by walking out of the room so I couldn't do what was going through my mind right then; instead of throwing my phone across the room I yelled out fuck in a room full of people.  Loud enough, but not screaming, but firmly and strongly enough every single one of them dropped what they were doing and stared at me in shock.


Right now I am far from mentally stable.
Right now I am not thinking normally
Right now I am occasionally proving a danger to myself and others by virtue of not thinking properly, or being too sleep deprived and making mistakes.
Right now I am really not okay.

I haven't been okay for a good few weeks.  But the last week I've barely managed to maintain even a pretence of self control.  This isn't a good sign.

Eyes

Sometimes I can just close my eyes and imagine you lying here with me so easily.  And part of me is so eager to open them and see you smiling back at me again.  And the other part of me knows to never open them and pretend you're there for as long as I can