A bad day in a bad week each year.

What follows is for me, a thing I need to say somewhere, an annual cathartis that's become a form of ritual for me

I love you. I know I always will.  I know we both did many good and painful things to each other. I wish I could erase you from my life. 

That's not a thing I say lightly.  I fundamentally believe you are all the good and part parts of you story.  You can't undo one without the other.

But I would have never known you if I could.  Even knowing how unrecognisably different a person  that would make me.

The friends I wouldn't know, jobs and homes I wouldn't know.  How much less capable I'd think myself. I realise what I'd lose.

You entered my life for 3 months last year somehow and I destroyed friendships, I damaged others, I lost any chance I had with either of the guys I had something going with at the time.  The small bit of my psyche I'd started to rebuild in the time since I barely kept together.  Even now the cracks are still there, threatening to split any second.

I know you're bad for me. I know you destroy everything around you.  You found ways to strike at me even after we broke up, from miles away.  I also know know I've learnt to project many of my own demons onto you to keep myself alive. I hate everything about you, and yet.  I don't, and can't, fall out of love with people.  My brain doesn't work like that.  Once you get in, you're there, till the last star goes out.  I love you and would do whatever you asked, if you simply asked.  I hate myself for that.

I miss many other boys right now.  I make many mistakes and hurt many of those around me this time of year it seems.  But I hate remembering that we fell in love this time each year

One day, I might be lucky enough to be half the man I wanted to be for you, because that man was wanted to do incredible things in the world, believed that he could, and was willing to at least try, even of it might mean failing, or getting hurt.

The man I was when we first met could not even have dreamed of those things.

And it's a far cry from the man you ended up making me today.

Clear as day

My mental health has deteriorated massively again over the past few months.

I'm doing a good job of hiding it in many ways, but I'm acutely conscious that without warning, one day, one of the many fragile glass baubles in my life is going to hit the ground and shatter explosively and disastrously.

My emotions and moods go through 50 different changes a day, and yet there's an undercurrent of white hot hatred sitting through it all in my head the whole time, even when I laugh and smile, it's at the world not with it.

The borderline personality disorder is running rampant these days. The constant sense, or fear of abandonment rife in my thoughts, my social circles closed down to pretty much 3 people that I feel I constantly have to tease contact out of.  It's probably nothing like that at all, but I see it in everything.

And then of course there's the constant paranoia, combined with my own hyper analysis; the curse of too routinely having your worst suspicions proved right in the past to be able to ever convince yourself your doubt is misplaced.  Trust is something that's usually too wounded in my now to be of any good use to convincing myself my head is crazy.

Work isn't helping to be sure.  The last 6 weeks have been pretty god awful in a variety of ways.   Worse yet is the constant stream of commentary from just about every person in my life telling me I'm being undervalued - frankly, my who knows I'm fucking good at the things I do in life and few people could keep up with me, but having every single person in my life comment over the last few months on what they think I should be doing, funnily enough, makes me feel god awful.

I still lack for purpose or interest in living.  I never had a strong one to start with but I havent ever managed to regain anything concrete the past few years.  And I still lack confidence in my ability to fix that problem after the last time to bother trying to again

It's one of the reasons I've thrown myself so hard into the Lib Dems - it's pretty much the only thing I'm genuinely enjoying recently.  It's a distraction from every other voice in my head and hellish day, keeping me occupied for a bit, even if I have to be somewhat fanatical about the whole thing in order to achieve this.  And I've rarely had my skills and curiosity recognised and encouraged so readily.  But it's ultimately a overcompensation and facade hiding much deeper problems.

I still lack for a purpose or interest in living, years later nothing convinces me to stay except for the utter lack of confidence still in my ability to fix that problem after last time - a fact which no doubt causes comfort to friends, but feeds my own sense of abject failure and hatred at both myself and the world.

I go to work, I pay my bills, I go out, I see friends, I eat food, I plan for the future, I continue to manage all these things when I have no desire to because I have no idea how to fail nor would I ever be allowed to by an array of forces I find hostile and unwanted.

When it crashes down, don't say it was unexpected.  I've seen it coming for miles.

Still wondering...

You're supposed to care. 
About life. 
In some way.
It's supposed to mean something to you.
To live.
You're supposed to keep wanting and trying to do that.

You try to connect with people, and pretend that things have meaning or impact any more than some artificial, ephemeral, momentary set of chemicals firing synapses lighting up neurons and assuring you that yes you do feel and care and for once maybe, or at long last it finally matters in even the most cursory and selfish way.

But it doesn't.
You don't.
Those moments and people go by and they have no more meaning 30 seconds later when out of view than they will in death.

We can all pretend and even get good at it and forget even to ourselves how insipid it is.  Or you can spend your waking and sleeping hours with a million different voices telling you every moment of every day how long ago you stopped caring, when you stopped believing, or trying, or finding a reason to fight and carry on, and now your existence is largely a product of resigned apathy that your lack of motivation has become so ingrained you no longer can bring yourself enough to care to change it in either direction.

You're supposed to care.
But I still can't see why on earth I need to anymore.

Skies of darkest blue

A friend posted this today which struck a chord:
https://unguardedweb.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/behind-dark-clouds-and-silver-linings/

I'm doing better than him.  Mentally at least.  But I have a whole host of problems, physical and mental, and every day I run up against blocks that remind me I'm forced to adapt, and in many cases, limit, my life.

There's the daily pills that keep my immune system from collapsing.
There's being audibly wheezing from he stairs to my friend's place after going up and down them twice whilst helping them move out.
There's the constant question in the back of my head, that maybe I have to accept that a mid level 9-5 office job is the best that's sustainable for me mentally, despite how that infurirates me in its own ways.
There's the days when I sit for 2 hours at a train station because I'm in so much pain I can't move to get home and I just have to wait it out
There's learning, long ago, how to get through 2 or 3 days at a time on no sleep, because it happens so regularly I couldn't classify it as sick time and keep a job.

He's right - you just accept it.  You have to.  You occasionally wonder at all the things you could do if you didn't constantly adjust your life just so you can get through your days without breaking down in some way.  But that doesn't stop it from being the case.

I tweet about my cramps
But I sit there, for 2 hours, in the cold and the wet.
Until I can move again.

Trying...

Could you let down your hair
Be transparent for awhile, just a little while
To see if you're human after all

Mutual respect; fun; understanding, he says, before walking off offended when I ask to be alone, because his mood swings confuse me and he scares me.

I realise, I'm used to winning, and I can never win with this one.  He's stronger, smarter, quicker, more stubborn.  The only reason I'm here is because I was the one to reach out in the stony silence.  And even now I don't get so much as an "I'll try"; no promises, we both understand that'd be false, but barely any hint at commitment.  And on every level I try to assert myself I'm reminded I won't win and he won't lose.  I can't remember why I started trying again.

The House Always Wins

Today I take a big gamble.  One I'm guessing I'm going to regret eventually.  I'm betting against experience and with zero reassurances things will change.  The stakes are catastrophically high.  If this goes against me it's of the nature of things that get added to the 'horrible past hidden traumas that colour every aspect of their life in some way'.  But the consequences of not placing the bet in the first place were a guaranteed sustained loss.  At least this way, I might have even some vague hope there's a future in which I come out on top.  This will probably seem ludicrous and inadvisable to anyone else, but honestly when I think about it, this is the only way any of my health issues, physical or mental, have ever seen any progression.  Sometimes I forget how ill I am on many levels, and moments like this remind me that serious health issues demand serious life or death gambles in ways unfair and terrifying

I'm not convinced.  That risks becoming a self fulfilling prophecy in itself.  I'm banking this on no confidence at all, just a tiny, unsupported random wisp of hope that lives somewhere in my mind.

Guess its time to jump and see where you land.

Please, listen

I discovered the below poem in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul back when I was a moody teenager, and I continuously come back to it, for how it plainly points the importance of simply listening to the other person's feelings, views, opinions etc, and truly acknowledging the impact they have on that individual before jumping in with your own assessment

I always remember it in concern with the basic premise laid out in the popsci book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.  Men when faced with a problem go off into their mancave and sit by themselves and think about it and maybe smash some things and then think more until they've solved it.  And if they truly can't solve it, they will find another man and tell him the problem, and they are expecting him to provide solutions.  Women on the other hand are group focused.  They gather together and talk not about the problem itself, but about all the things around and related to the problem, and in doing so they build up a web of understanding about the problem that allows them to see the solution.  Massively overgeneralizing sure, but like all rules of thumb, it applies good enough on a broad rough basis.  Sometimes you need a friend to help provide solutions.  Sometimes you just need a sympathetic ear.  Both routes have merit.  The world would be a lot easier if we often prefaced talks with our friends with what kind of responses we were looking for from them.

And of course my mental health issues acutely remind me, that what is manageable and tolerable for one person may be very different from another.  We all experience stressors very differently and very subjectively to ourselves alone.  So often saying "oh you shouldn't think like that or some variety" is in fact very unhelpful and counterproductive.

I've tried at various occasions today to talk about things and feelings I keep very hidden and quiet about.  These conversations didn't appear any different to others in terms of tone or anything - quite purposefully, I don't wish to take time to properly consider the seriousness of what I'm finally admitting at the time.  But each time I was quickly shot down.  In jest usually.  A defence mechanism of the person I was talking to.  They deflect and deflect repeatedly in quick succession.  Leaving me emotionally winded having just built up the courage to say it in the first place.  Being ridiculed, or having my thoughts waved away as insignificant massively damages that confidence and I clam up from revealing anything for a good few hours and usually end up rather defensively angry as well, which causes its own set of issues as it comes across as if I have disproportionately reacted to a normal conversation.  Its hard, and the best I can manage right now is occasionally trying to discuss something else difficult instead at a later point.  But I'm losing my confidence a lot at the moment.

---------------------------------------

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why
I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem,
you have failed me,
strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen.
Don’t talk or do – just hear me.

Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get
you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham
in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering,
but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can
and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and
inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact
that I feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational,
then I can stop trying to convince
you and get about this business
of understanding what’s behind
this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear, the answers are
obvious and I don’t need advice.
Irrational feelings make sense when
we understand what’s behind them.

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes,
for some people – because God is mute,
and he doesn’t give advice or try
to fix things.
God just listens and lets you work
it out for yourself.

So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk, wait a minute
for your turn – and I will listen to you.

We're not done

It's easy to ignore you
When I see you down the hall
It's easy to be angry
It's easy not to call
To throw away this thing we had
And blame it all on you
It's harder to admit
I miss it too

It's hard when I come up with something new
And I can't show you
It's hard to see you suffering
It's hard because I know you
It's hard to find forgiveness
We've said all there is to say
What sucks is
I don't see another way

Quiet thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

There's a lot of things I'm not saying.

I miss my friends.
This is partly my own fault and partly not.  Between disagreements over previous repeated suicidal bouts, attempting to recover from such, insane work commitments over the last 12 months, intentionally shrinking my social circles to cope with the previous 2, and my just naturally overly busy schedule, I haven't had much free time.  A friend asked if we could do something on a Sunday not too long ago - over a 3 month period I only had 2 dates I could offer, the soonest being 6 weeks away even still.  Friends have, probably understandably, rather given up on trying to hang out with me except for special occasions like group birthdays etc.

I still have my Monday night social, which keeps me sane(ish) week and week, in so much as it acts like a stress reliever, but after 5 years of such and an ever decreasing size of the group that turn up each week my mind has partially desensitised to the effect of it - as I say, it works as a temporary stress reliever, but given its default regularity, doesn't seem to count a huge amount towards 'seeing people' anymore.


I'm supposed to be in Brussels this weekend.  A replanned trip for a good friend who wanted to go to Amsterdam but I told him I could only go as far as Brussels.  Clearly, we're not there.  Work got in the way.  Super long days, weekend work, getting home at 2am and going back to work at 7am, not eating, all of this meant I had to make the call that 6 hours of driving, half of it in a foreign country, was going to end badly, and so I cancelled the trip.  It sucks.  I feel horrible for cancelling on the friend who was counting on me for one of his first proper vacations in years.  Everytime he tries to tease me about it I get defensive and lash out at him.  I'm at work on Sunday this weekend already of course.


I was supposed to be in Thiepval this weekend.  At the Somme memorial event.  I won tickets.  I asked my best friend if he was up for it.  War services seem to be a thing we do.  For someone who normally does not display the correct emotional connection during times of public grief, war services do have a connection with me, again, not so much an outward one, but inwardly they mean a great deal to me.  Brussels was the replanning of this Thiepval trip when that went awry.   Thiepval went awry, well because I fell out with my best friend I suppose.  Which sucks.

I miss him.  He fucked up pretty badly and did something pretty damning to be fair.  I would like to somehow reconcile, but that's not just about me forgiving him and forgetting about it, that involves him putting in a fair amount of effort in to try and make things up or apologise to me.  That effort seems to be... virtually non-existent.  One in person talk that he walked away from and a handful of text messages over 6 weeks.  He seems to have no interest in putting in the effort to make up with me.  Which is the way things go sometimes, but it still hurts a lot, I still miss him a lot.  He was a big and critical part of my life (and a very critical part of my mental health support over the past 18 months that has now vanished - at many times the curiosity of where his friendship might go over the years was the sole thing keeping me around) so finding out you're not worth making the effort for is never a nice position to be in.


I miss his husband.  He's someone who doesn't say a lot, and who doesn't reveal his emotions very easily.  But over the last year I've reached a point where I feel I can read him fairly well, that we have established some of our own connection.  We both realise that ultimately, our friendship will always hinge on my interaction with the (ex-?)best friend, but we had definitely got to a point that there was a personal interaction between us.  The messages he's sent me over the past few weeks have been heart-wrenching at times.  It made me realise I don't just miss my friend; I miss both of them.


This all leaves me in a state where I'm falling very free and loose mental health wise again.  I feel supremely disconnected from the world, there's no one I feel like talking to, seeing people is either a chore or they're no longer around or interested.  I've wondered about reaching out to the best friend - about once again, swallowing the hurt and being friends with him because I mentally need the stability.  But ignoring the problem would lead to internalised resentment down the line.  Brussels friend is also seemingly very concerned about any prospect of reconciliation - partly because of the effect the whole issue and its history have had on him personally, and I also get the feeling he just doesn't think the guy is any good for me to be around, period.  It's not hard to work out who each of these people are, so you'll understand why Brussels friend's severe reaction to me reaching out makes me give pause and consider whether he is in fact right and I should trust in his assessment of me far more than I trust my own.

But either way, I miss everything right now.  It all gets increasingly distant every day.

Bears

Bears watch over me I'm told.  Bears are on patrol in the South, protecting their charges.  Bears that like the winter.   Greater European Moosebears.

A jackal ranges far and wide for the charges I once gave it. 

But even bears don't watch as closely as we watch each other.  It's intimidating, so I'm told.  A near-palpable force that can be hard for others to break into.  A sixth sense constantly aware of each other, constantly keeping tabs and checking in.  Guarding.  Protecting.  An feat we can't manage for ourselves. 

He makes dinner and puts the rest in the fridge for the week.  He knows I'm not eating.  I put petrol in the car and keep my keys closeby in case.

Bears have been spotted nearby.  Out in the dark.  Marking their patrols.

Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?

Words from a good friend if mine:

"I know people who's islets of langerhans don't work. They need to take pills and injections every day just to perform as basic and human a task as eating.
I know people who's CD4 cells don't work. They have to take pills every day go perform as basic and human a task as getting over a cold.
I am a person who's brain doesn't work. I have to take pills every day to perform as basic and human a task as feeling love and feeling loved.

Sometimes I hate that I need that pill just to be human, but it's good to keep it in perspective."

#GTJDQFI

I remember the day you told me you were leaving
I remember the make-up running down your face
And the dreams you left behind you didn't need them
Like every single wish we ever made

I wish that I could wake up with amnesia
And forget about the stupid little things
Like the way it felt to fall asleep next to you
And the memories I never can escape

'Cause I'm not fine at all

It's going to be a tough week...

A real gets-inside-and-rips-you-apart pain

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

You know I still can't believe we both did some things I don't even wanna think about.
Just say you love me, and I'll say I'm sorry.

Oh can you tell, I haven't slept very well since the last time that we spoke.  Please understand I've been drinking again and all I do is hope...

Containment Breach

Pressure is building.

Today is another day where dark thoughts cast a long shadow over my mind.  This has been continuing to build for a few weeks now.  I can't entirely say why.  I have some ideas.  But nothing concrete.

I yo-yo a lot at the moment.

When I'm okay, I'm totally fine.  Things may be bad, and things may continue to be bad, but I know that there are new things to come.  I want to see what they are.  It might all go to hell and I might crash and burn even more spectacularly than I have before, but I'm excited for the journey, the discovery, of seeing how it pans out and where I'll end up.  I catch myself laughing at nothing in the shower.  I dance in the street.  I sit awed by the developments of the last few months.  I live.

When I'm down, I'm teetering on the abyss.  I'm one day away from disappearing again.  I'd give up if I could find a way.  It all seems rather pointless, to keep trying, to carry on, it's not going to end anywhere good.  It's stretching out rations pretending it will help you them last longer, when all it does is cause hasten the day problems kick in.  My hood stays up.  My cap is pulled down low.  I'd miss the things to come, truly, but I just don't have the energy to keep going.

There's nothing in-between at the moment.  And there should be.  Because I don't feel that bad somehow.  I don't feel hypomanic, or suicidal, , or rather some days I do, but not everyday, however my emotional state begs otherwise.  I go through both of the above 20 times a day.  It makes it hard to know if it was a good day or a bad day.


Something is going on in my head, or my life, and I don't know what.  I don't know how to fix it, or remove myself from it, or just make it a little more bearable.  I couldn't tell you anything of consequence about it, no specifics.

I'm acutely aware the support network I have that I feel comfortable talking to about these things is a grand total of 2.  That's problematic.  They can't be around all the time.  They have their own lives, their own problems to deal with.  I fundamentally have issued trusting people who used to be this close to me for various reasons.  It sucks but it's the truth.  There are other things I trust them about.  Important things.  Just not this.

I carry on.  Pretending to make it through work.  Trying to get to my weekends.  Convincing myself that various things to look forward to in the next few months aren't impossibly far away.  Tired of feeling stuck in the middle - neither determined to give up, nor resolved to move on.


Pressure continues to build, no longer in the back of my head, but encroaching forward.

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

People have been rereading my blog and commenting, making me reread my blog and prompting me to actually write something

6 weeks ago I ended up in hospital.  I disappeared for a few days, and my parents eventually tracked me down,  turned up, got me discharged and took me home.

Not home.  Their home.

A place I will always have a bed, for sure, but it is not my home, I didn't grow up there, I've barely slept 2 weeks worth of nights there combined, and it's in the country.

It was the worst possible place I could be.  I barely spoke to them, I beat my hands against the backseats of my car as I was taken home because the voices in my head were screaming so loudly.  When I finally slept, I had bad dreams, I woke up early and immediately asked to be allowed to go home.  My home.


A few days later I was staying with a good friend and #superaggressivefb.  It was probably the first major incident of my mental state he's had to deal with, at least directly.

And so, very quietly and calmly, at one moment we were alone, he simply said: "And next time, you will call me."

I grumbled non-commitantly.

"The next time, you WILL call me."

"Fine." I whisper, resignedly adding him to the mental list of people to inform in the first instance after the event.

"So next time, it won't be your parents picking you up, it will be me and you'll come here."

20 different thought streams fire off in my head at once.  Huge senses of anger and relief.  The imagined conversation between my friend and #superaggressivefb where he explains how my parents are a trigger.  Irritation that #superaggressivefb knows me so well already as to use my own though process against me.  Frustration.  At him.  At myself.  At my friend.

...#superaggressivefb smirks.  That smirk that he knows all of the above has passed through my mind in a heartbeat.  The smirk that makes me want to see him bleeding on the floor in front of me.

"I will." I say, conciliatory, lacking the grit of teeth my previous response had.

It was the moment that he went from someone I was becoming really good friends with, to getting catapulted into the upper echelons of my trust.  However he knows it and uses it, someone who can gauge me that well is fully capable of walk through every defence I have if they so choose to do so, so I inevitably trust them when implicitly when they demonstrate only a judicious application of this skill.  

(As an aside, the fact that #superaggressivefb has this total level of trust from me, and yet still instils fear and uncertainty when he asks me if I'm sure before he hits me, is the exact thing that turns me on the most about him.

It was also the moment I realised not only was #superaggressivefb a good friend, he was a support network I didn't even know I had.

This weekend I ended up in hospital.  Through my own stupidity more than anything else.  And waiting there, when I awoke, was #superaggressivefb and my other friend.  They took me home.  To #superaggressivefb's home.  They took care of me.  And then they made sure it didn't ruin my weekend.   I remember giving their names as my emergency contacts in the ambulance, but it took me until this afternoon to realise that I didn't have to think who I'd contact, I was just asked and those were the two names instantly in my head.

10 weeks ago I was struggling to rebuild the close support network I'd surrounded myself with over 2 years and lost all in one week.

Now I have the first block to it.

I still don't have my reason.  I have something keeping me interested however, something that for now, I choose to keep very personal.  I'm angry more days than I'm happy.  I bailed midway through a friend's birthday this weekend because I couldn't handle that much social interaction.  Work continues to help distract me from my problems, and exacerbate them as everything bottlenecks at me.  Today is a struggle and time just stretches on and on as the clock refuses to budge.  But it's perversely reassuring to know that when it all goes wrong, I won't be so alone next time, there'll be someone there beside me.

And on and on...

I have to make it through I tell myself.  I have to get through this.  By why?  Why do I tell myself that?

Because it's what's expected.  Because it'd look bad otherwise.

You have to deal with it.  Just till then.  After that, you can collapse for a bit, let a little bit out, before you have to make it through again.

Don't run.  Don't hide.  Don't look for a way out.  Where would you even go.  Where could you go.  Where could you actually go and not need to come back.  So don't run.  You can't.  There's no point.  You just have to get on with it.  Stick it out.  You can't leave. Even if you tried, you know you can't.

Giving up.  Stopping.  Failing.  That's pathetic.  So keep going.  Get on with it.  Do it. Until you can break just a little bit.  And then get on with it all over again.

Living for the weekend

My old roommate came to stay.  We have a joke that we're not boyfriends.  I don't have any kind of romantic love for him.  He's not a soulmate.  But he's... a part of me?  ...a kindred spirit?
I realised how much I missed him.  How much I need him.  How much the little, quiet things he does became critical parts of my coping mechanisms.  He's so emotionally astute he acts before you even knew you needed him to. 

I remembered just how much of my support network I catastrophically lost within a matter of weeks.  How much everything fell apart at the same time.
I realized how I haven't managed to rebuild anything even resembling one facet of that structure.

I'm living for my escapes right now - a weekend off away from the world; the pain of getting beat up for sexual gratification; an afternoon where a fake world on a boardgame is the only version of reality; the heavy, struggling-to-breathe ache of a little too much hard liquor to 'celebrate' another week I've got through; a hockey game that feels as if I have an identity aside from the ones I absorb from other people.

I smile, I laugh, I experience the incomprehensible love my friends have for me. 
There are momentary brief incandescent flashes of blinding life.
But I still can't find a reason to fight, a reason to live for, something to strive towards. 

No one can say a word and give me that, I don't expect them too, it's not some misunderstanding that there's nothing good for me.  Bright burning moments just become anomalous data points in a generally declining lifeline. 

I still think about suicide daily.  I'm still trying to work out a plan that will succeed, that's viable, that's accessible.  Still just going through the motions until then for lack of anything else to do.  To keep occupied.  
If not I'd sit there, passively depressed.

I don't want to be passively depressed, I actively want to not be here constantly doing everything that is living. 

Even sleep.  Sleep is easier than most admittedly, but it's still something you do, and I'm seemingly more aware of my sleeping than most people, I notice the time pass while I sleep, and its something that takes effort, exertion, time, commitment, concentration.  Its less demanding, and importantly usually less taxing, than being awake, but it is still living.
And I am tired of living.

Lie to me

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

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