Lie to me

Go away.  Just... Stop.  Just like that.  It'd be nice wouldn't it.

Certain words in uncertain times

I know it's hard to tell how mixed up you feel, hoping what you need is behind every door; each time you get hurt I don't want you to change, because everyone has hopes, you're human after all.
The feeling sometime wishing you were someone else, feeling as though you never belong: this feeling is not sadness, this feeling is not joy, I truly understand. Please, don't cry now.

Please don't go, I want you to stay.
I'm begging you please, please don't leave here.
I don't want you to hate; for all the hurt that you feel,
The world is just illusion, trying to change you

Being like you are, well this is something else.
Who would comprehend?
But some that do lay claim divine purpose blesses them.
That's not what I believe, and it doesn't matter anyway.
A part of your soul ties you to the next world, or maybe to the last, but I'm still not sure.
But what I do know, is to us the world is different - as we are to the world, but I guess you would know that.

The world is just illusion...

Invitation

I'm just putting this out there, any crazed psycho murders wanna turn up in my bedroom overnight, I'm game.  For real.

Just saying...

Thrive

You probably know I pick my words very carefully.  My choice of one word over another is usually intentional, reasoned, planned.

'Survive' is a word I've come to hate.  It's something people have come to expect of me.  Friends, partners, strangers.  I'm unfortunately very good at surviving.  Against most things other people wouldn't.  I have this detestable habit of always landing on my feet.  It's not an ability I'm proud of, or even try to make happen.  When I seek medical help, it counts against me - despite depression, suicidal thoughts, hearing voices, the fact I survive - I get up, I go to work, I put food in me - gets me written off as someone who will cope, eventually, sooner or later.  It might get bumpy, but I'll come out the other end of it by myself somehow.  The mere use of the word is enough to get me angry these days.  You'd be impressed at the amount of sheer vitriol I can put into a single word when I have to say it.  I utterly hate the word, and the concept..

With that in mind, and the caveat that currently, I'm not so sure how sold I am on the title word of this song, I give you Switchfoot's Thrive:

Been fighting things that I can't see
Like voices coming from the inside of me and
Like doing things I find hard to believe in
Am I myself or am I dreaming?

I've been awake for an hour or so
Checking for a pulse but I just don't know
Am I a man when I feel like a ghost?
The stranger in the mirror is wearing my clothes

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
A steering wheel don't mean you can drive
A warm body don't mean I'm alive

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive

I come alive when I hear you singing
But lately I haven't been hearing a thing and
I get the feeling that I'm in between
A machine and a man who only looks like me

I try and hide it and not let it show
But deep down inside me I just don't know
Am I a man when I feel like a hoax?
The stranger in the mirror is wearing my clothes

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
A steering wheel don't mean you can drive
A warm body don't mean I'm alive

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive

I'm always close, but I'm never enough
I'm always in line, but I'm never in love
I get so down, but I won't give up
I get so down, but I won't give up
I get so down, but I won; t give up

Been fighting things that I can't see
Like voices coming from the inside of me and
Like doing things I find hard to believe in
Am I myself or am I dreaming?

Am I myself or am I dreaming?
Am I myself or am I dreaming?

Thrive, thrive, thrive, yeaah, thrive

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
A steering wheel don't mean you can drive
A warm body don't mean I'm alive

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive
I wanna thrive not just survive

Yeah yeah
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive
I wanna thrive not just survive
I wanna thrive not just survive

Feels like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive

A warm body don't mean I'm alive

We fell by the wayside, and slowly watched ourselves die
A lonely death in which no one cared and no one came
When the walls cave in, we only have ourselves to blame

Now even if it's perfect, I can't get carried away
And motivate my tongue in twisted ways
It felt like a good night, for dancing and the moonlight
In empty streets, well, everybody's got a reason why
If we could only just get it right

Maybe it will all work out like in the movies
But I know Romeo must die before the ending
With a final poison kiss delivered gently
Because you don't get lucky twice, and that's the truth

Sing to me sweet, just like my memory
If New York City still moves me
Then I found something real
I'll be okay, I could go on for days
But I just don't have the courage that it takes to be real

Stop the world, I want to get off.

I wish I had a way to stop all this.  All of it

Something just broke

...Because buses don't go fast enough during rush hour.

That was the answer I gave when asked why I'd come to A&E.

San Francisco is to far away.
I don't have any of the right kind of drugs around.
I don't have my car with me right now.  I don't own a parking garage.
A knife to the wrist, whilst very accurate on my part, didn't work last time.
Various other methods (such as turning the gas on) would unfairly endanger others.
The problem is, having failed last time, my mind isn't happy to settle on something unless I can guarantee 100% success rate. Learn from your mistakes.

Objectively, I'm in the best place I've been in a while.  I've paid off all my significant debts, I can pay my bills, keep a roof over my head, I went on holiday and still had a home to come back to this time, I have a job, I can buy what food I like, I have friends that care about me and people I care about.
All of that sounds great in theory right?  But it's not a reason.
I lost my will to fight.  That thing that makes you get out of bed in the morning, that thing that makes you strive for more, that thing that makes life anything other than just endlessly going through the motions, because it's what you're supposed to do, because if you do that, people won't see anything wrong, because you can't think of anything else to do.
I think I lost it a long time ago.  But for a long while, there was someone else.  Someone to work to be with, a life to aim for.  That's gone, I get it.  But when that went, it made me realise I was missing a reason for myself, and had been for a long while.  Now it's 6 months later, and I still don't have the slightest inkling of why I pay my bills, why I go to work, why any of it is in the least bit worthwhile.

I get angry at myself for even continuing to try.  Carrying on in some foolish hope that one day, I'll start finding some reason to keep going again.  Because I'm a millenial and I have to feel special and I have to feel like there is something that applies to me specifically.  Mediocre isn't good enough.  Half a success isn't good enough.  I can and should do better.  Other people don't need any of this, so I should be better than that.  I hate myself for pretending and trying, when at the end of the day, even if I achieved something, even if I got somewhere, it all ends up fairly inconsequential and pointless anyway.  For all my spiritualism, I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, at least not a practical one - one where you retain any sense of memory.  So whether it's now, or it's 50 years away, it all comes down to the same thing.  At least this way you get to choose.

Buses don't go fast enough during rush hour.

#TheWorldIsQuietHere

Geography is important. Different places evoke feelings and memories. The way people respond varies from person to person, place to place.

I occasionally use the hashtag #TheWorldIsQuietHere. As in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events it signifies a place of comfort and security. A place where all my worries and burdens fall away. A place where I find myself completely at peace, content, and able to sit and watch the world pass me by, happy to just be aware of that singular moment. More so than the safety of my home, or the quietness of a good mental health day, this is a feeling tied to a few very specific places (and times) in the world, that I find utterly beautiful.

Bethesda Fountain in the sun, listening to the singers under the bridge.

The Spanish Steps, 4am in the morning, when strangers talk to each other, share food and stories.

The Marin County Headlands, overlooking Golden Gate Bridge

A bare handful of spaces, but here, and only here, does everything in my head stop. Not just for a second, but for as long as I can spare to be here.

I lay awake last night full of abject terror. I can still remember that feeling, I can still remember all the things that prompted it. But here, where the world is quiet, I can think about and remember them and it simply doesn't touch me. I don't know what it is about these specific places more than any other. It's not a sensation I can replicate; it doesn't matter when I visit them; it doesn't how bad or good things are going for me, everything about the world just stops. Waiting for me when I'm ready. Patient, not insistent. The world can wait.

The world is quiet here.