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

Thursday 30 October 2014

All the love's still there I just don't know what to do with it now

If [we] believe that everything's alright,
[we] won't be alone tonight,
And I'd be blessed by the light of your company,
Slowly lifting me to somewhere new.

...oh can you tell I haven't slept very well since the last time that we spoke?

Please understand, if you see me again, don't even say "hello".

Drama

Crazy stories are my thing.

You all have a passion that drives you; if I have a passion it's taking life and turning it into a series of crazy stories.

If you can do that without me, then I don't know who I am anymore

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Habits

A month on, and I still can't stop myself from saying "I love you" out loud into the void every time I get into bed.

Old habits die hard.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Skittles

The other day I found out I do not have melanoma.  It was my second cancer scare within 6 months.

I'm a pretty sickly kid, I have one health problem after the other, I'm on an array of drugs, I get a new health issue on a regular basis.

Currently I find myself wondering, having dodged this one, how many months do I have before the next big major health problem rears its head.  All my issues are pretty big, not quite life threatening, but severely life affecting and would only take one bad turn to become threatening.  I'm constantly on borrowed time and just waiting for the one that finally brings the house of cards crashing down.

Most recently, I've been not wanting to take my ARVs.  I've only intentionally skipped my dosage once before; it was shortly after I started them, and I needed to do it so I would experience the regret and panic that ensures I take them every day.  But recently I don't want to.  At least that way I know what'd get me, and with my other health issues chances are it wouldn't be long at all  before my HlV made me very ill. 

The fact that I am considering saying "fuck it" to my HIV meds is a very, very clear sign of how not okay I am these days - I'm religious in my taking of them, I've missed maybe 5 doses tops in 2 years of taking them, like everything else, I am sick and tired.  Sick and tired of waiting to see what I come down with next, how long it'll be till that happens, how it'll interact with all my other issues, how many meds that will take to control; it's all just another exercise in trying to survive day in day out and that is very definitely I am something I am tired of, so why not call it quits on this?

Monday 20 October 2014

Write off

You wrote me off long before that week in September.  One bad reaction didn't decide things for you, it might have confirmed it, but it didn't decide them.  You wrote me off so you didn't need to tell me you were marrying someone else, I wasn't entitled to that anymore.  You wrote me off so you didn't tell me I was fucking things up.  I wasn't worth the courtesy of it, or telling me I don't give you what you want or that you were gonna break up with me  You can sit there in be in love with me and I do belive you are, but you wrote me off in your head long ago.  You love me, but it doesn't make me worth jack shit to you any more

God you would have just said whatever you thought I needed to hear over hat week and longer if necessary.  I forgot what a manipulative bastard you can be.  I guess I figured maybe I wasn't subject to it as much as the rest, but then I have the horrible realisation I'm no better than anyone else to you.  I almost believed it for a second.  My perfect guy, the one my jaw dropped to the floor for, the one miles out of my league, who I didn't think would give me a second glance.  You did, you fell in love with me, from an ocean away, so eventually I got to think maybe I had something going for me to get a guy like you.  I believed it for a shining moment.  And then I remember you couldn't even do me the fucking courtesy of breaking up with me when you actually realised you wanted to.  No one is ever special to anyone.  I forgot that.

I'm having to remind myself every day not to hate you.  I could hate you so much for things over the last few months.  Really truly completely utterly hate you.  To the point I couldn't see you again, where I'd have to abandon all our mutual friends, where I'd not be able to go near Boston again.  I could hate you to the point where the mention of your name would get me as angry as I do when Brandon is mentioned.  I don't want to hate you.  I really don't want to.  So I try to remember not to.  But God I could.  So much and so easily.

Thursday 9 October 2014

A Light in the Dark

This has been pretty much the hardest week of my entire life.
If you can name it, chances are it's thrown me a curveball in the last 7 days.
I've been dumped by my partner of 4.5 years, I've attempted suicide, I've been evicted, I've lost the two best and strongest support networks I've ever known, I'm currently facing my second cancer scare within 6 months... things are bad.

Yet somehow (and by the grace of a fair few others) I've always had a bed to sleep in and a hot shower; I've gone to work in spite of barely staving off panic attacks and manage to not fuck it up - someone has even actively stated they want to employ me as soon as I'm available; tonight I cooked myself a proper meal for the first time since last Tuesday.

It's not much - this is still a Bullet train wreck going at full speed - but the weight on my chest breathes a little easier for a few fleeting moments.


And if nothing else, the first New York Rangers game of the season is tonight, and their home opener is on Sunday night.  Hockey is something very firm to grab onto right now.  Hockey is something I have no end of passion for, to the point where I've infected my friends with it and they (one in particular) love to see me when I'm in hockey-mode and actively indulge me in it.  I look at the NYR keyring I have and I KNOW that amongst all the other crap, I am a hockey fan: I love, live, eat, breathe hockey.  And today I can watch my team play the sport I love.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Survival

I'm still alive.  At this point it begins to count as surviving.  Surviving is what I do.

I don't know why.  Everyone who wakes up each day survives.  I endure far less than many others, but somehow people look at me as a survivor.  They know I will cope.  I always have.  Somehow I get by and find a way.  So you can trust that I'll survive.

Every day I continue to survive is another day I continue to fail.

I cannot express how much surviving represents failure to me.  The cast on my arm that practically screams it at me doesn't do much to help that association. It's impossible for me to consider one-day-at-a-time or moment-by-moment any kind of achievement because it so obviously represents everything I despise.  I survive because I do not have the resources to do otherwise.  I would very much like to succeed.

Monday 6 October 2014

Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I’ll help it presently.

Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honor bring.
Be not so long to speak. I long to die
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.


I always fail to articulate myself well at the times when I really want to and need to.
I am angry.
I am so unbelievably angry.
I am alive and I shouldn't be.
I'm supposed to be dead and I'm not and all I can do is be angry about that.
I'm exhausted with life.  I tried to stop that and I failed.  I'm fed up with fighting every day to maintain some kind of normality.  After 27 years I'm done, and out, I don't care to try anymore, but I'm stuck here till I can come up with something more effective.
I have to find a way to put anything other than anger and boredom on my face so that I can go out and earn money.  New plans require time and money.  And in the meantime I have to see friends.  I have to be social so that they don't watch me too closely, so that they forget over time that all I am is angry

I am not supposed to be here.
I do not want to be here.
No-one can really stop you from taking your own life.
But you have to be patient, and wait, and plan, and find a space, and in the meantime you need money.
And waiting is the worst part.  It's the part that gets me angry.
Because all I wanted to do was just.. go.
And now I can't.

I do not want to be here.
It's not that things are so bad I can't imagine them being better.
It's not that I don't have good things even now.
I simply do not care any longer.
I can't express that properly.  I do not care.
Things could get better, worse, it doesn't matter, I don't want to experience them.  I have done enough.  I have tried.  I have fought for as long as I cared to.  And now I do not care.  I do not want to be here.

Sunday 5 October 2014

Methods

Drowning:
Easy accessibility near river & docks.  Best done late night to give hours before discovery.  Would need to trap self underwater - instinctive sense of survival prevents self drowning.  5 - 10 minutes.  Likely to panic during drowning.

Drugs/Pills:
Effective provided using right combinations.  Limited access.  Would need to plan and stockpile over time.  Illegal drugs easy to obtain but would be stressful whilst experiencing overdose.  Prescription drugs harder to obtain but can construct more relaxed methods

Cutting:
Tried and failed, although method was accurate.  Very relaxed and pleasant method if done effectively.  Experience teaches me there is no panic at all for me using this method.

Hanging:
Requires suitable hanging point which is strong enough.  Ideally requires long enough drop to break neck.  Required drop for 8st mass is ~14ft.  Plus 5ft height.  Plus 5ft for fixing point/excess drop = 25ft vertical space required.  Death by asphyxiation is also possible and effective, but takes longer and likely stressful during experience

High speed collision:
Easy access to car.  Car safety features may reduce to serious injuries.  Impact in excess of 100mph required for probable mortality.  Collision with other traffic would double relative speed of impact but endangers others unfairly.  Fairly instantaneous with sufficient impact.

Tube trains:
Approx 30% mortality rate.  Not effective enough.  More likely to cause serious injuries.  11am most popular time.  Mid day likely to cause less inconvenience to others.  Would need to study probably locations in advance.  Overground blind corners at high speed best.

Jumping from building:
Generally effective over 10 stories.  Messy.  Traumatic upon others if done during day.  Access to buildings with jump points may be an issue, especially at night.  Only time of fall to panic during.  Likely to be less than 10 secs

Bridge jumping:
Would need to get to bridge.  Mortality rate generally very high.  Impact plus water means drowning often causes death if neck not broken upon impact.   London Bridges not high enough & current not strong enough.  Most personally desirable locations in USA - would require planning and money.  Only time of fall to panic during.  Likely to be less than 10 secs



There are many other methods, effective and available - it's fairly easy to gas yourself with household cleaning products or to make potassium cyanide gas using your home oven, both of which would be relatively easy ways to go (though the cleaning products method results in horrible respiratory pain whilst you asphyxiate), but the above ones are the major options.

Too hot

My fingers itch.

Today should not be happening.  It shouldn't exist.  I shouldn't exist today.  My right hand hurts from punching the wall.

My fingers itch.


Saved on my desktop is a note from 3 months back.  Things have not improved from this state.  Most of them have in fact got markedly worse.  Is it any wonder I'm falling apart?

1 housemate who's suicidal and recently told us all he's made a will, 1 who either can't leave the house from anxiety or disappears for 3 days at a time, 1 who is considering restarting steroids again whilst he's cycling back onto his SSRIs, 1 housemate with cancer, 1 friend who's so depressed his husband and I had to consider between us whether we needed to stage some kind of mental-health intervention, 1 friend who is almost certainly about to get arrested for drug dealing, 2 who I can't hang out with anymore because they're so wired 24/7, you're breaking down worse than ever, Johnny just had another surgery which automatically makes me worry like hell, 2 of my friends just broke up from a 6 year relationship and I'm quitting my job because my own mental health has divebombed so badly in the last 8 months.   

Quitting that job was seemingly one of those things that made things worse.  In trying to save myself, I destroyed one of the few good things I had going.

Saturday 4 October 2014

Surviving.

Warning: very blunt and graphic post about attempting suicide last Thursday.  Feel free not to read if this makes you uncomfortable.


So, I'm alive.  I'm not particularly happy about that fact, but I am alive.  I'm currently sitting at home in bed with a plaster cast over my arm, with a nice glass of wine by my side to write to all down.

A failed suicide attempt is unbelievably frustrating.  And worse it seems to reinforce the idea that no matter what, Eddie survives.  Even when I don't want to.  Even when I actively take significant steps to ensure I don't.  Fate somehow conspires to find a way that means I just somehow make my fucking way through it all.  It gives me some level of satisfaction and amusement that all of my flatmates, in the midst of rescuing me, thought: "oh man hes gonna be so pissed at us when he wakes up"

I slit my wrist.  I called in sick, ate a good meal cause there was no sense in being hungry, mailed some friends' belongings back to them, played some video games, and sat around with my housemates for a bit.  Then I went for a long bath.

I took 40 tramadol.  Tramadol is not the drug to try and overdose on.  You need bucketloads of them.  the pharmokinetics also aren't suited to overdosing.  If you do manage to take enough to kill you its a long drawn out painful process over several weeks from destroying your liver.  I didn't take tramadol to die.  I took tramadol to numb the pain and give me a nice light headed pass out type feeling.  I slashed my wrist to die.  I wanted to bleed out in a nice warm bath, just.... slip away.

It doesn't hurt as much as you expect.  I mean yes I had a lot of painkillers in my system, but threes an intense sharp pain as the blade suddenly pierces through all your skin, and then you re through all the nerve endings.  I knew I hit the artery because blood was spurting a good few inches out in a pulsing fashion. It was nice to watch.  I experienced no panic.  I was content.  All I had to do was watch the beauty of my blood swirling underwater and wait.  It's so easy.

When you do it with a sharp scalpel it's a really clean cut too.  The skin just parts.  No inflammed distressed layers, all one clean incision that naturally pulls apart.  The psychs were really concerned about where i got the scalpels from - you can buy them freely online; it's easy.  I have a supply from my edgeplay kink.  The plastic surgeon who fixed my hand is very disturbed at home accurate I was; I told him categorically, I did not cut any tendons.  It's really obvious what tendons feel like - they're stringy and elastic and push back and pull on nerves designed to sense pressure.  Arteries don't do that.  Anyone knows me knows that while I have no formal medical training, I have a very good working knowledge of anatomy.  I deliberately made the incision in the gap between the wrist tendon and the thumb tendon, towards the radial artery, knowing that artery is protected behind the wrist tendon.  I knew full well what I was doing.

In the end, I avoided any tendon damage.  I did cut the radial artery but it was repairable.  The bleeding was eventually staunched by the trauma to the muscles in my wrist at the incision point causing swelling to close underneath the wound.  I nicked a small nerve causing very minor damage to the base of my palm.  A 1cm line feels numb.  This may heal over time or may be permanent.  As collateral damage goes it's pretty inconsequential.

I never fully lost consciousness.  I was very out of it, and perhaps with a bigger cut, or 20 more minutes before my flatmates found me, I'd have gone under enough for it to have been too late; I was certainly slipping into the depths of respiratory depression by the time they found me.  The last 2 days in hospital are a haze.  Let me be clear though - I'm not happy to be alive.  Surviving was never my intent, this was not a cry for help or attention, surviving is, for lack of a better way of putting it, is supremely inconvenient.  The feelings have not gone.  I still feel no desire to fight it all any longer, nor do I have the inclination to try and find a new reason.   I am done.  I am still suicidal.   Just because I have not picked up the first knife I've come to does not mean I'm no longer actively suicidal.  The only thing I've learnt is I simply need to be more effective next time.  If you're going to do it, don't settle for second best (this was not my preferred method of suicide you must understand), get it god damn right.

Obviously, I've hurt friends with my actions, in fact I've probably hurt them more by surviving.  This was never about friends.  I know I have friends.  I know they will listen to my woes.  I know they love me.  I know I inspire them as much as they inspire me.  But even with all that, I'm fed up, I'm tired, I'm bored.  I have given the very best I knew how to or thought I could and it has not been enough.  I am dead on the inside.  I have no investment in feeling alive again and I've realised that I honestly haven't for  10 years now.  Things have cropped up to hide those thoughts from me, but the sentiment has always been there, rearing its head every few years at the first opportunity.  I simply do not have a strong desire to live.

That said, I still very much appreciate and recognise what people have done the last few days.  my flatmates saved me.  I don't have to like it but I can appreciate the actions of them all.  My roommate has practically not left my side for 3 days.  People joke that we're a couple.  There's no romantic love between us, but platonic love does not cover it enough.  He best puts it as "I'm accustomed to you".  He has spent every moment he was allowed to by my side, holding my hand, even out of it, i remember him telling the rest of my house HE would be going in the ambulance with me, a friend wrote me to say just how much he admires me, a twitter friend who I've never met but we share a lot of common interests and so seem to get on well has been following my twitter feed for days and messaging me constantly.  He's seen me grow increasingly dark and immediately put two and two together.  I am not happy to be alive, but I fully recognise what these people and more have done for me the last few days and I am grateful to be surrounded by such people.

I am not an immediate danger to myself.  I will, unfortunately, survive for now, just as I always do.  I may have to wait, and plan more, but I will simply ensure there isn't a chance for failure next time.  It's so very easy after all.


Signing off

EDIT:  I'm alive.  Below is a scheduled post that should have appeared after my death.  I have more to say on the matter later but for now I'm leaving it unedited as below.



I'm done with fighting.  I'm known as a survivor.  I don't really know how that ended up happening.  I never wanted to be.  Finally I find myself completely alone, all avenues have been exhausted, there is no cavalry or white knight coming.  And I don't want them to.  I'm just plain tired of finding a reason to fight.  I have no interest in it.  I fought because others inspired me to.

Of course I didn't tell anyone.  They'd stop you.  But it's calm and easy and just hard for a bit and then you don't have to worry.  Things were getting harder.  Every day.  Each week there was a new major drain on me.  And all the reasons to fight just vanished.  The reasons that had kept me going this long, which was far longer than I expected, have been whittled away one by one until finally, I have lost my fight.

This is how I view the world.  It was always just a matter of finding the right balance of how quickly I could do it, how much it would hurt, and how certain the method was.

27 years was plenty enough for me.  I've done and achieved more than most people dream of.  I've inspired others.  I've known true passion.  I'm very grateful for the past 5 years which were never really ones I should have had.  Those have been the best and the worst years of my life and when I look back at them all I do now is smile.

Thank you for making my life what it was.



Sunday 21 September 2014

Grosse Point

I've never been great at reading social cues and knowing how to interact appropriately.

Throwing in a whole host of mental issues can make this almost impossible to do.  I'm certain I'm doing the exact wrong thing, I'm just not sure what that is or what it's in response to, so I don't stand a chance of adjusting it.

Well tonight was one of those occasions where someone eventually switched from dropping hints which had gone over my head to having to point blank tell me I'm weirding people out and should excuse myself.

This after I'd had some severe anxiety and paranoia issues so all in all, it's been a pretty crappy day.

Of course I'll try to be better next time.  I'll try to control my crazy better.  I'll try to put on a better mask.  I'll try to understand better and not make others uncomfortable.  I'll try not to end up closed off in a little room by myself.  (Do you remember sleeping in a different room at a parent'a friends house as a kid? The world around you is alien and doesn't give you that same sense of solace your own bedroom does.  You're shut off from the world you know and you can hear fragments of your parents and their friends still up, but it's a world to which you're not invited.  It's a very similar feeling.)

My only destiny is to be a world class frak up.

Saturday 20 September 2014

Love/Hate

I forget if I've posted this before, but either way it's relevant now.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” 
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

Monday 8 September 2014

Bathhouse Etiquette

I have a larger post on bathhouses\sex clubs to come, and there are important differences between the two that arent covered in the following, bur Ryan Cummings has written a brilliant post on what to do\expect at the bathhouse.

http://flyinryan-studlybottom.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-ins-and-outs-of-bathhouses-and-sex.html

The above link is just a blog post full of text; anywhere else you navigate to on that blog almost certainly has NSFW porn pics on it.

Like I say I have more comments to come, but wanted to bring attention to this.

Tuesday 2 September 2014

A to B

This is the San Francisco public transit map.


Actually, this is the zoomed in version; the proper version is even more hideous and boggling.  San Francisco is the best connected city in the US I've been to, but it is the worst possible one to navigate.  I travel a lot, I've visited a lot of places.  I've become adept at working out public transit in places that don't have a lot of it, and deciphering maps in countries where I don't even speak the language.  And it took me 4 years to finally crack this map.

San Francisco runs a lot of  public transit, but it only intersects at a few key points, there are many different public transportation systems, and a lot of them have names that are all too easy for an unfamiliar tourist to confuse.  There's the buses, the various cable car routes, the old F trolley, the trams,  the MUNI trains, the CalTrain, Amtrak, the AC Transit, the SamTrans  if you go far enough and the Transbay Terminal which incoprorates some, but not all, of the above.  Not all of them run the same ticketing system (improved in recent years by the Clipper Card), and not all of them run the same fares - the BART for example operates on a distance fare method, so 'season tickets' in the standard way don't really exist, but it does accept clipper, which does run a season ticket, but the BART clipper season ticket is only valid within the SF area, not its full route - confusing huh?

The SF transit map suffers from a problem of trying to display everything at once - this is partly necessary given how little area the Trolleys, MUNI trams & BART trains actually cover outside of the downtown area, huge swathes of San Francisco would simply fail to exist on a map that only included these routes - for example the Golden Gate Bridge is only accessible on public transit by one bus route within the city, and that bus doesn't go from the major tourist centers.  But this means its virtually impossible to pick out a route.  Added to this, many routes which run along the same roads are conflated together, so the route number  might only be given once, and its not obvious where they run to or from.  And depending on time of day or whether it's the weekend or not, your route may not run at all.  It might get replaced by another similar route, or you might have to get there a different way altogether

If you know where you want to get to, where that is in relation to SF as a whole, and what major routes might be nearby to give you a starting point, then you're fine.  The map is actually fantastic as it shows EVERYTHING, and you can see every possible connection and work out any number of crosstown routes.  The top level monthly Clipper pass is $80, compared to ~$200 for the cost of a monthly Z1/2 travelcard in London.  The efficiency of London bus stops showing you everywhere *that* stop goes to only, makes for easier immediate navigation, but means if you don't already know your connection, you have to guess where to pick it up; that's not necessarily in SF and the city runs an extensive night service along a lot of routes so no complaints there.

Also the bus route called the same thing regardless of whether it's headed inbound or outbound, which can mean you easily get on the wrong bus.  One of the major upsides is the fact that so much of the bus routes are zero emissions by means of overhead wires which are installed throughout the ENTIRE city, which must of been a massive public works undertaking.  The downside of that of course is buses can't really stray from their routes, and if one line down market street snafu's, they all do, and no-one's going anywhere till that problem is fixed.

It took me 4 years to learn the neighbourhoods, roads, and major routes of SF well enough to be able to properly utilize this map.  As a tourist, you're probably stuck with the F line trolley or a cab,  trying to get to Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Berkeley, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Presidio, Fort Point, Haight/Ashbury, Treasure Island, etc is just a nightmare.  Mission Dolores is just a short walk from the Castro, which is doable, but beyond that, good luck!


On a side note - the problem with Uber compared to established (and heavily regulated) taxicabs is very apparent here.  In London, to my experience, they have always been Addison Lee-esque.  The cars are relatively top end, and new, the drivers are usually dressed smartly, it's much closer to a private limousine style cab rather than just a generic minicab service that whilst prebooked, is often just any suitable car and a driver.  Here the Uber vehicles are basically any car for a driver registered with Uber, dressed how they like, and with a black Uber 'U' sticker in the front windshield.  It doesn't feel very high class.  And it certainly feels unregulated, which as a brit/european automatically makes me feel unsafe, whereas I'm sure plenty of Americans would happily extol the virtues of unregulated, 'free' industry.

Monday 25 August 2014

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

I'm in New York again.
Finally.  

I'd forgotten what an onslaught New York is.
It's a big city in the way only Americans could do a big city.  It's loud, and it's grimy, and the drains don't quite take the smell of sewage away.  There's dirt everywhere and the heat from the subway rises up through great grills in the street and washes over the panting pedestrians.  Oil and bitumen assails you from roadworks and construction projections.  The traffic is constant and everywhere and they all honk their horns and no one moves.  People stand around, hordes of them, outside buildings and on corners and places that don't seem important.  Seven here, twenty there, a dozen waiting on the next street.  They don't move.
It's oppressive.  God it's intimidating and terrifying and so beautiful.

The buildings rise up and up, they tower over the chaos of the streets and hem everything in, keeping it tight, pressing it closer together.  It narrows your view and focuses and channels even the daylight in a way architects and designers dream of.  
Rocketing, rattling tin can Metro cars with their 70s era shades of desperately happy and comfortable orange, so perfectly like their city; grimy and noisy and fast.  Chrome reflecting off everywhere, dazzling, like the city.

The constant traffic blocks up roads alongside sidewalks that are wider than the entire Strand.  The overbearing towering blocks are gleaming and golden and gilt in beautiful, indulgent art deco styles.  It screams decadence and tragedy and desire and something that refuses to die and you don't want it to..  Golden and Silver Age Hollywood.  Rapture.

The women, my god I never get over the women here.  Runway fashions.  The kind even supermodels only wear for that one catwalk because you can't actually buy them, and no one would ever wear them, you cant even walk in them.  Celebrities on the red carpet don't have them.  New York women are wearing them all.  The Carries and the Samathas and Mirandas and Charlottes who hate that that's how everyone only ever thinks about them anymore but love that everywhere does a Cobb Salad and lets you talk about sex openly nowadays (and why shouldn't they?!).  Dear god the women here are stunning and powerful and determined.

New York scares me.  I can't even imagine what it must be like if it's your first big city.  Your first proper city.  But god its beautiful and stunning and intoxicating and addictive and just try to stop yourself from whirling around it.

Thursday 14 August 2014

Wednesday 13 August 2014

The Worst Thing

Do you realise how hard it is not to punch and throw every single thing you own, even though your hands are already bruised from repeatedly hitting your car earlier, because your roommate is sleeping, and the worst thing you could have to deal with right now is someone to actually ask you what's wrong?

You are the part of me I wish I didn't need.

Bear with me, this is likely to happen a lot over the next few days and weeks....

Augustana - Either Way I'll Break Your Heart Someday

Charlie Puth - Clarity (cover)

Boxcar Racer - There Is

Anberlin - A Day Late

Tuesday 12 August 2014

The Other Guy

The selfish part of me needs for you to stay
'Cause boy you keep a smile stretched across my face
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now
The way your lips move when you say my name
The smell of your hair on my pillow case
And I would give anything now
But you would lose everything now

If I'd had it my way I'd never let you walk out the door
But my heart is heavy with something that I just can't ignore

Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby who am I to be that other guy?

This could be our home boy, a special place
Something much more than your great escape
Boy I would give anything now
If you didn't had everything now
It doesn't have to be that you feel the same
You're telling me your love for me would never change
Unless you change everything now
It doesn't mean anything now

If it's him that you've chosen, then we need to stop closing the door
'Cause while he's at home waiting, then we can't pretend there's something more

Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side

Ooh oh, I know it's not an easy choice to make
Ooh, 'cause no matter what you do
A heart will break
Boy, I'm sitting here wondering what it is that we've done
Baby who am I to be that other guy?
'Cause I've seen tables turned, a world of hurt
I'd never wanna feel twice,
I know what it's like from the other side
So baby you decide who is that other guy?
'Cause baby, who am I to be that other guy?

Jesse McCartney - The Other Guy (with some gender edits)

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Warning

Some of the more hilarious extracts from the diary I was asked to keep by the psych for the last two weeks:


"Lots of new people to meet today - stuck with my head constantly analyzing every thought and action wondering if it was correct.  Should I stay and talk?  They're not here to see me.  It'd be rude to leave.  I really want to go but now I have to talk to them.  I don't know anything about this person.  This is not a good time for me to he trying to make an impression on people.  I never know what to say here.  Oh sex, this is good, this I can do, sex is easy, I'm good at sex.  Oh god they're going to want to sleep or talk after aren't they.  I'm rubbish at both.  I'll just lie here till they're asleep and then go to the bathroom and then back to playing my game."

"Everyone is dumb.  Everyone annoys me.  God why can't they all just fuck off and die, can't they see how much I hate them all ... I smashed 2 glasses.  Threw them at the wall.  Had to clear it up of course.  Don't want to warn them."

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Other Worlds

Whilst on blogs about dealing with mental health issues, I fully recommend my friends blog: Nervous Type


Honestly, until he started this I had no idea how good his writing style was.  He describes the experience of hypomania far better than I ever could, and the syncopated nature to his writing manages to perfectly express both the overbearing, never-ending, demanding, increasingly fast runaway nature of depression, but also the distracted, blissful, wondrous ,amazed, boundlessly energetic nature of mania.

The jury in my head

I haven't really know what to do with this blog for ages.

Occasionally I have ideas, but I'm not near a PC to blog them, and by the time I am the idea is gone.  The way my thoughts come out is far more random than my presentation of them suggests - a lot of reordering, and editing happens before I post that you don't see, and this means my writing doesn't lend itself to a pen and notepad format.  Even for those ideas I do tend to get onto a screen, for most of them I get half way through before realizing that what I've written says nothing like what I want to communicate, I'm in no way happy with it or even willing to accept it as a good effort - again, behind the scenes of this blog is an endless set of draft posts that remain in an unfinished limbo that no matter how many times I return to I can never quite get what I want to say out.

So the blog lies here dead and quiet until something pivotal enough happens I'm compelled to commit something to binary form just to alleviate some of the pressure in my head.

Well tonight is one of those times....



Tonight I'm intentionally staying awake, because the thoughts in my head are so bad that sleeping would only grant them full-colour, stereoscopic natures.
I had a 4hr long nightmare in a series of dreams this afternoon.  It wasn't a nightmare in the sense of horror-movie elements of terror and suspense.  It was a relatively 'normal' cinematic rendering of the thoughts plaguing my head.  The worst thoughts I have, leaving with me the feeling of being trapped, of failing, of not having control, with no escape and being right back where I used to be.  Frustrated and unable to make anyone understand how I'm dying inside.  This was a nightmare in that it was a representation of my worst fears and experiences, that leaves you with those terrible sensations and feelings all day after waking, you can't shake them; the memories you'd suppressed and left behind, the scenarios you've imagined and suddenly had to live and experience in your dream.  And the fact I couldn't wake myself up on it just serves to prove how much I'm struggling with mental control right now.

Right now I'm stone cold terrified of the concept of 12pm.
12pm is the the best culmination of years of trying to find something that can help the runaway trains of thought tearing through my head 24/7.  A journey arguably started 6 years ago, and has been in it's most recent iteration for 18 months and counting now.  I'm trying.  REALLY trying to get some help.  Because it's so bad it scares me.

It's hard to explain how much of trial just 1 appointment is in itself because it seems so trivial.  There are barely a handful of people who actually understand how severely I have problems pursuing mental healthcare, by virtue of being the ones who have been around long enough, and close enough to me, to see the effects it has on me - the immediate suspicion of their questions, the manipulative line of my responses to test the psychiatrist's intelligence against mine, the violent shaking, sometimes retching, in the waiting room and making it worse by trying to suppress and control it so I can look 'normal' (which is clearly absurd given the entire reason why I'm there, but hell I don't want to actually appear like an uncontrolled raving loon to them do I?!), the hyperventilating on the bus to get to the doctors, the nausea and panic I feel for 3 days solid before my appointment, the bad dreams and insomnia I have for weeks before it, the anger at myself for each and every one of these sensations, that they exist, that they are so ridiculous and counter productive, that they are so necessary and obvious.

And at 12pm I have an appointment with the man who gets to decide whether I'm eligible for drugs to try and help this or now.  Whether my symptoms are bad enough.  After falling through the system or being refused without actually being told such 3 times recently.
It's not that I want to be on drugs.  God, who WANTS to need anti-depressants, or anti-psychotics, or anxiety meds, or any of those options?!  For years my healthcare providers and I both agreed that drugs were not the answer for me - the way my mind works and copes with my mood swings means things like anti-depressants and mood stabilizers are pretty much the worst possible option for me.
The reason I'm now asking to consider them, the reason I've pursued treatment repeatedly this time despite numerous setbacks and constantly falling through the gaps of the system, is my current coping mechanisms don't work anymore.
I get memory blanks, I have visual hallucinations that interfere with my ability to do things, I get inexplicably and uncontrollably angry - a kind of unprompted anger I haven't had since I was 17.  I find myself so overloaded that the simplest additional stimuli - like a friend on a phone in the same room, makes it impossible for me to focus on the world around me.
These are all problems that developed since my current coping mechanisms stopped being effective in helping me to manage the various bits of crazy I experience.
And the fact of that scares me so badly I'm willing to say: "okay, I need help, I don't know what to do, I can't deal with this, when you're struggling this much with this kind of stuff you're supposed to go seek help so here I am, won't someone please help me do something about this, so slowly, bit by bit, I can maybe get back to a place where I can manage myself?"

But at 12pm, the answer may be no.  I'm not saying drugs should be the answer.  But I've never found counselling style therapy to be that useful, or CBT, because I tend to be quite aware of my own behaviors and how to recognize their incipient state and how to develop and instigate coping mechanisms to help alleviate them where necessary and by and large, I've already done that  And they're not working.  I've been told repeatedly I'm not eligible for them anyway.  So at this point drugs to forcibly restore some kind of barriers in my mind seems like the option that's left.

And if I get told no, I'll understand.  Because they have to draw the line somewhere, because I'll have gone through that process of assessment and the people qualified to make such a judgement will have done their jobs and appraised me accordingly.

But then, I'm habitually bad at emphasizing the severity of my medical situations.  Digestive pain to me that I just accept and deal with because its a daily occurrence would probably have someone not used to it in tears and considering A&E.  These mental symptoms have been there in increasingly worse states for approaching 2 years now.  So even with the failing coping mechanisms, I've just got used to them.
And objectively, I go to work, I eat, I maintain social relationships, I didn't come to them through the A&E psych team, I haven't been sectioned, and they have to prioritize, so I understand.

Subjectively I'm just a good liar, who puts up a great front because most of my life involves appearing in complete control of any situation.  Without a serious alternative, its saying "you're falling apart inside, you're hallucinating, you are probably going to get progressively worse or it might blow over in another few years, but we wont or can't help you.  You are in fact, on your own, you have to deal with this without professional help."  And that raises a further problem beyond the immediate repercussions in that it's likely to create an association in my mind of "okay, when you need help you ask for it, and you expect it to be given one way or another, but it wont, so there's no point in asking, no matter what happens in future."

I really wish I wasn't good at putting up a front.  Because its one of those horrible situations where because I'm trying, and objectively having partial success, it in fact works against me.  Did you ever wish you weren't the A-student, because then you wouldn't have to get A's all the time?  If I could lose that constant holding back of the worst of it, if I attacked someone, or myself, or if I just ran off till someone came looking, or climbed into a dark comforting crawlspace and refused to come out, then they'd say "you're sick, you need help, come with us."

...But for the next 8 hours, I just have to hope that my sleep logs, the mood diaries, writing down all the voices in my head is enough to justify not having to be on my own



N.B. By 'on my own' I am not ignoring my support network of friends etc.  I know you are there.  You are part of the coping mechanisms that no longer fully function because things are worse than you can help me these days.  By 'on my own' I mean without professional help.  I mean stuck with the strategies and coping mechanisms I devise that certainly involve you, but are no longer sufficient.





Friday 14 February 2014

VD (might wanna be careful with that)

Honestly 90% of the stuff I see concerning Valentines is from single people bemoaning that they’re single/how insufferable couples around this time are /how fake it all is/how they hate it/etc  I see very few posts from people in relationships relative to the amount of sickly stuff you’d think they were posting.
 
I’m not a fan of Valentine’s, but I don’t hate it.  Even when I have a boyfriend more often than not I’m not in the same country as him to celebrate even if we wanted to.  I don’t need a day to remind me to do something nice for my partner, if I take them out or cook something special or whatever for them I’ll do it because I want to see them smile, I don’t need any more reason than that.
 
I have only a handful of issues with Valentine’s and these could quite fairly be applied to any holiday
¨       The colour scheme.  Don’t get me wrong, I like red, especially deep reds, but RED EVERYWHERE is oppressive.  Like the blue/pink split you can get in Disney stores or the like to say boys/girls, it’s just a horrible onslaught on the eyes more than anything else.
¨       It’s busy.  I avoid going out on Valentines simply because EVERYONE is going out on Valentines.  It’s hard to get a booking anywhere, places sell out weeks in advance.  Places overcharge for whatever valentines package their offering, or else offer those last minute cheap deals that are oversubscribed by people who forgot to organise anything and they’re inevitably grossly subpar.  Restaurants are terrible, the wait staff are understandably sick of demanding couples who want to know why their perfect evening isn’t the sole focus of the venue, as previously stated, you’re usually paying over and above the odds, it’s not special because every other person in the place is there for the same reason and probably dressed up too, and most restaurants are eager to rush you because the more sittings they can get in the more money they can make.  I’m not blaming the restaurants or the staff for this, it makes perfect sense, I just don’t want to be in that environment.
¨       The complaining.  There are two types of complaining.  One is from the couples, who are upset that their valentines didn’t match up with their perfect fantasy vision they had in their head.  To be honest the people that make these complaints normally make them throughout the relationship, they’re just those kind of people so I ignore them fairly easily.  But most of the complaining comes from single people who start bitching sometime before Christmas when the winter boy/girlfriend season kicks off, and usually don’t stop until at least the end of February when Easter merchandising and Spring menus finally kill the tail end of the Valentines ‘period’.  Also it’s acceptable to be single then because it’s the interim between the winter-partner and summer fling seasons
 
In my mind, there are 3 acceptable ways to spend Valentines Day and these are great ways to spend any evening or weekend regardless of what time of the year it is
¨       With friends, watching movies.  The staple of bitter single people everywhere, but misery loves company and friends love bad movies.  Put on Bridget Jones’ Diary and sing out ALL BY MYSELF with full pride while devouring pints of ice cream.  Try not to make blue soup.  R E S P E C T.
¨       With your boy/girl, curled up on the sofa at home, watching dumb movies.  Cook something that takes a little bit effort but isn’t stand out special.  Put on your most oversized hoodies and grab the blanket or strip down to your skivvies and wrap your arms around each other for a nice quiet night in where you don’t have to do anything
¨       Spend a fortune and go to one of those period costume balls the likes of which you only see in movies.  They’re limited in terms of people, it’s different to 99% of people’s plans, they last all night so you don’t feel rushed, and you get to dress up in a really fun way.  Even if you hate dressing up it’s something quirky and different and a good bucket list item for most people.  But this option usually has a price tag of several grand if you’re going to do it properly, so stick with option one or two

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Why I'm smiling

Everyone knows it's when I'm smiling you really need to worry, and here's why.

If I'm angry, or upset, sure I might do something terrible.  Because at that moment in time I won't care about the repercussions.  I've disassociated myself from my normal emotions on the matter.  That's not to say the shock of those won't hit me later and even though I'll know why I committed those actions at the time, I may actually come to feel guilty about them once whatever blinding extreme emotional state has passed.

If I'm smiling, that's the dangerous time, because then I am acting out of calculated premediated thought.  I have considered the consequences of my actions, I am well aware of what I might bring down upon myself or those around me.  I have weighed them in the balance and I have not found them wanting.  I am perfectly settled on whatever course I have set me on and I have already prepared myself to face the fallout.

That is why just because I am smiling does not mean everything is okay, or you should ever let down your guard.  When I smile I am acutely conscious of both myself and what is going on around me, and you forget that at your peril.

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Turn it off...

So I have this wierd thing about when I sleep. - I sort of exist on 3 levels while I sleep.
 
There is dream-me.  The me that completely believes in the dreamland it inhabits and doesn't argue with whatever quirks of dreamlogic choose to present itself because of course it's completely natural than bunnies suddenly turn into zombies or whatever.
 
Then above that there is a god-me, that sees and controls everything within the dream world and is completely aware of the fact that it's a dream.  It's why I don't have a lot of nightmares.  90% of the time if something is about to turn nightmarish, god-me can instantly create a convenient door to elsewhere, or put a wall in front of oncoming charging zombie bunnies or whatever it is, and dream-me will instantly understand what has happened and use said door to escape into a completely different dream.  I can, if I so choose, exercise almost total control over my dreams.  In practice, I tend not to, just because otherwise it gets kind of dull and boring when you force and dictate every aspect of the environment and narrative every single night.  I tend to let dreams run naturally, unless I want to avoid a nightmare, or find a cute boy in my dream and decide I now want to have sex with him in my dream.  And sometimes this ability to control my dreams is hampered if im particuarly stressed or my head is feeling particuarly crazy that night (this has admittedly, been an increasing problem the last few months).
 
And then a layer above all of this, is sleep-me.  Except that's a bad name for it.  It's a me that is very well aware that it's asleep, and that it's dreaming (or even if I'm not dreaming sleep-me still knows it's asleep).  It's the me that when I wake shifts to conscious me.  But when I'm asleep, that stream of consciousness is still there for me.  It overruns everything.  This me doesn't have regulate breathing or anything, just as conscious me doesn't.  But it's far more aware of what's going on than it should be.  Dream-me is very much sleeping, it has no ability to turn my dreams on or off, or control my awareness, it is simply a god architect that controls the sandbox that dream-me plays in.  Sleep-me knows how much time it slept.  It knows how close it is to waking up or how long since it fell asleep.  I know when dawn happens.  If things go horribly wrong and I genuinely do start having nightmares, sleep-me simply says "wake up", and my eyes open.  This sounds like a great ability.  And being able to avoid nightmares is.  The rest of it is horrible.
 
I know how much time I slept.  Because I was thinking throughout it.  I get some rest from my body shutting down a lot of externally focussed processes whilst I sleep, but I'm not unconscious; my brain doesn't actually switch off.  So that period of my day (night, whatever) that is supposed to be respite, is only a sensation of being halfway there.  I'm deeper out of it than the equivalent of lying on my bed for several hours with my eyes shut, but my brain hasn't shut off, that stream of consciousness never really stops.
 
I've had this 3 layered sleep-consciousness ever since I can remember, which is to about age 6, before that my memory gets rather patchy unless it tends to be about school friends, and I also know from my parents that until about age 3 or 4 I slept fine, in fact getting me to do anything but sleep was an issue!  Maybe I did have this even then, but I have no memory of it and it certainly doesn't seem to have affected my sleeping like it has since.  I remember lying in the bed at 6 years old, struggling to get to sleep, and learning to control my dreams when I did.  And I can remember the bed I did this in at 7, 8, 9. 10 years old (I moved a lot, so different beds for each year, handy for marking things like this at least).
 
Like I've said before, I seemed to fundamentally miss the day at evolutionary school where they taught you how to shut off your brain during sleep.  There are admittedly times when it does shut off, because of large amounts of alcohol (yeah depressants will do that!); because of sheer, unavoidable exhaustion (and remember this is me, so that usually means being up for 3/4 days straight); and occasionally when it is happy and peaceful because I'm sleeping next to someone I love (alas it doesn't do it every night I sleep next to them, but occasionally it does and that's the best sleep ever and just makes me love them even more cause I sleep smiling).  But the vast majorty of the time, I'm all too aware of the fact that I'm sleeping and it's not just that I wish I knew how to stop this, I wish I knew WHY my brain does this, and has for certainly the vast majority of my life.

Sunday 19 January 2014

I guess I'll stay awake then.

I'm lonely.

Everything tonight has felt a little off somehow, and I'm not sure why.  It's not that things were wrong.  Like everything was right, but was somehow soured a little. 

I guess I've been in suspense all day and I still don't know where I stand. 

I think maybe my subconscious is trying to preemptively shut back down my emotional response in preparation, but it doesn't know how long it has.  And even if it did, it seemingly can't decide if it might as well start now or not.  I don't know why and no conscious thought process seems to stop or change that.

Of course I'm not sleeping.  I get so worried and frustrated with sleep these days.  I don't even have the option of knocking myself out.  I've tried for years to get pills or something but no doctor will give me anything.  None of the sleep hygiene stuff works.  Anything that does affect me leaves me out of it for days.  I dread bedtime now and that makes the problem worse.  What I wouldn't give just for the though of a little silence to look forward to.  For all my problems the thing I feel most broken on, most like I failed at being a human being, most like everyone else got something and I missed school that day, is sleep.

Even here, I'm not sleeping easy, and I'm not sleeping well, I've been having bad dreams all week.  Normally I'd wake from these and remember a boy hugging me  smile and drift back to sleep with new dreams.  Now that's not happening.  The lies in my head won't go away even though I know they shouldn't be there and they keep cropping up.  Like at night, so I can't think of that boy and smile, all I remember is the fake bad stuff that I put in my own head to start with so when i fall back asleep, I'm fearful and paranoid and insecure and my dreams run back to that.

It's better to be here with this, but I still don't sleep, hear voices, have bad dreams, zone out.  Just what passes for normal now.

6 months...   How am I gonna cope with that.  Same way I do every night I guess pinky.  Smile and lie and pray you can keep going another day on nothing.  I hope it goes away after that.  I hope I can eventually send half of this to some distant corner of my head marked the past and go back to what I was, which wasn't great by any means, but it was so much better than this.  I'm not that hopeful though.  Which is scary.  I don't wanna get stuck like this.

*sigh* ...I'm never gonna get to finish that conversation am I?

The formatting via the blogger app is terrible.

Sunday 12 January 2014

Paranoia

Today, my brain took a dark, confined warm space that is one of the places I feel most loved and protected, and twisted it into somewhere I now feel to varying extents scared, guilty and intimidated, of what I don't know, and I suspect the change though completely bullshit and false, may be permanent to a lesser or greater extent.  :(

Hallucinations SUCK.