Blog no. 2 - Impressive Layering

This is for me

I woke up. One of those mornings. Had to be about 5am. It's now 6.39am

Can't sleep. Heart was beating fast and my thoughts were racing too fast to keep up

I was thinking and repeating to myself some of my thoughts

and I thought I was mad, because you know, it would keep me awake longer.
How I want to sleep.

This week, as far as booze goes, it's gonna have to be a quiet one. I want some time off.

I actually didn't want to drink - I could tell on my second one.

I don't understand alcoholism. I'd die if I made myself drink all the time. Like now... I couldn't picture craving alcohol. The thought of it makes me ill

I would rather get some sleep and a regular pattern going again. Though this is just one night's sleep missed, I don't want to miss any more

I was just thinking - it felt like dreaming, but I knew I was awake. I hate those nights where I cannot tell the difference. I want to lie down and try again but I'm afraid I won't be able to sleep and then stress out - and fixate - that there's something wrong with me.

but at least if I do, I'll quietly acknowledge the thought

I'll try.

One more day, one more survival.

I'm tough as shit

Blog No.1 - The BIG One

this is for me.

it's not for anyone but me. Essentially, I'm talking to myself and that's just the way i want it.

I haven't been feeling well today. I don't know why. My mood has just taken a dive.

I often wondered would people understand me if I tried to explain it. So I always pretended to be the opposite

The Great Pretender - That's me

but I'm scared and I always have been

I don't want to blame anyone on it. I could say "My Da wasn't there to protect me" or "My brothers picked on me" but none of that means anything because I wouldn't be where I am now in a sense if it was any other way.

To be honest, whether they did pick on me or not, I still would have been sensitive

I used to cry for no reason

Now my mind says "you used to cry for no reason! you cannot concentrate! - Schizophrenia!"

I'm really afraid of Schizophrenia. I'm afraid of losing my mind, dividing my mind or developing a split personality and other things I don't understand

Me and my mind are at a stalemate these days. Well, it's not that I'm disagreeable with it, it's just that my emotions are fucked up. If I get so much as a pang of feeling bad, I start to believe that thought - no matter how ridiculous. I'm smart that way... I can outsmart myself.

This is the worst thing ever for me. I get good days and bad days. At the worst I'm afraid of stupid shit - schizophrenia, hurting a friend or killing someone or abusing children. I'm scared shitless of these things. Like I very much am against all of them. Everything that constitutes my principles I'm afraid of slipping into

My only way to reason it is; "I never have. I come from a big family, I've been around children since I was 10. That's never happened and it doesn't happen and so as well as I know myself (My emotions betray me, you see and I get "distracted") I never will. I'm also a very dignified and highly moralist and principled person. I care what others think of me (to a fault) so it wouldn't stand to my character or best interests to do that kind of thing. Also, When i see a sickly, disfigured, handicapped or crippled person (I make no apologies for using these words) I usually feel deep empathy for them. So how would I ever hurt or kill someone?"

See, I'm at war with myself. All my best friends know this. I am currently making a concentrated effort to fucking chill out. I'm seeing a cognitive therapist for the last year and a half. I also quit Facebook because I didn't like to stylise myself or pander to others. What I want - WANT is to relax, take a back seat. Go home and take it easy. Eat what I want without guilt. Drink whenever I want etc

And in the back of my mind and old friend "Oh Matthew (NOBODY calls me by that name any more!) you're not drinking AGAIN?" "Oh, you should watch your intake" (I know they mean well, but I don't fucking need OR WANT their suggestions) and it rings out all the time. My brother calling me FAT KID which affects how I view my body image to this day. I run and walk to stay thin and drink alone. Yeah, so what. I don't want friends who criticize, even constructively; because I do it myself way too much.

I consciously choose friends who don't argue or dispute my lifestyle now because fuck off, that's why. Sick of it. Sick of pandering, sick of being too nice and understanding and fucking sick of viewing myself through anyone else's eyes. It's fucking with my head. No wonder I feel like I'm losing my mind - afraid of an illness I don't understand.

It's true: My brothers and sisters never knew how sensitive I was. neither do any of my friends, though they think something isn't right. But I fucking know. And it's this: Sensitivity. I WILL take on what you tell me and I will over think it. I will swirl it around my head until it makes me ill then I won't keep your company any more because you won't stop trying to give me advice or comments I didn't ask for or ever want. You know I love you guys, but fuck off. I now have to keep you at reasonable distance.

My brother says I bury my head - I say, I know how much bullshit I can take and I've had it up to here. There IS no more room. Sorry! You want help with your problems boys and girls? Office hours are closed. I stay away because I won't be able to help myself.

Remember, the key word is "Sensitive".

Nobody I get close to seems to understand what i want to give away, I never ask for return advice. How I look is incidental: I'm usually thin when depressed and normal size when happy. If I want to talk to you about an insecurity it's NOT for feedback - I just want someone to listen.

If you want a friend or sibling you can offload your advice/criticism on; it's not me.

at the best of times these days, I am on super high alert. My attention is way too high. I watch for flickers, I look for signs in speech and insinuation. God damn I am on high alert. It happened about 2 years ago and hasn't left my system yet. I have a lit fuse that won't go out. When it's like that, I stay away because I'm volatile: not prone to blow up on you; prone to do it on myself. I need head-space and TLC and I need someone to just be there... to listen, to my madness, my theories, my vents, my ideas. Not to tell me I drink too much (I fucking know I do) Not to tell me the stupid shit I don't want to hear. Not to mold me into their perfect friend. Just to be there. I'm tired. I may be sick, but I still have my wits about me, my paranoia under a microscope on FULL zoom (just in case I might be over-analyzing something, some one or some situation, or maybe believing in Jesus or Heaven or some shit) and ready to get that shit out before it burns a hole in my brain.

But these emotions. Guys; if you want to help, listen and shut up for a bit. Let me say my mad shit and feel relaxed so I don't turn it on myself. I might even help you.

I'm tired.

4.46am

I suffer immensely

I don't know what the cause of it is. There's a horrible pain that shoots through me, involuntarily.

It's not physical pain though. Maybe you would consider that I do not suffer like someone with, say, M.S does, because, though they are physically incapacitated, they still have the desire to get up and move about, if they could.

That is a fair assumption for them to make and I understand it. I know a lot of physically incapable people who would love the capacity to achieve more in their lives.

But my pain is not physical. It Feels like it.

It's emotional pain and it's Very real. I feel it. It's Not my imagination.

I'd so very much like to be able to explain to people; "Here, this is my problem and this is what it does to me". I'd like them to know, but somehow I feel that it would be like looking for attention.

I'd just like people to know how I suffer and that it's like some form of twisted addiction because when it goes away, I occasionally, involuntarily seek it out again. I notice it's gone or it's presence is easing off, then I think into it and it comes around again.

It comes around like a bad habit. And I still don't know what it is, why I have it and why it keeps haunting me.

But I really do suffer. And I deserve to be able to relay this

I'll wake up say, like tonight, after about 3 hours sleep and it just sits in my chest and hurts and hurts and takes all my attention away until I think my way inside it, believing everything due to the high emotional response it gives me, like a drug. It then wraps around me like a strait-jacket and i wrestle to get out but cannot.

Actually, that's an incorrect analogy. It's more like quick-sand.

The more I struggle with it, the harder it is to get out of it.

Yeah, It's more like emotional quick-sand.

Sometimes I think "I'll never get away from this, it's my dark passenger" (Thanks, Dexter!). Others, it's gone and I wonder where it's gone and when it'll come back. I'll think of something horrible that draws huge emotional response and then BAM, it's right back in me again. But mostly, it just happens and Then I'll think of horrible stuff.

And I so much want everyone to know I suffer with it immensely. I want them to know it happens to me and I have no control over when it comes and goes. It's shaped my personality into one of understanding any painful situation just because I feel so much personal pain that I really can sympathise or empathise with any emotional drama going on in a person's life. I understand pain very well.

but yet I cannot do it. I keep it to myself and act like nothing is wrong. I trap it inside me.

And sometimes I feel trapped inside with it. I feel trapped in my body MY TEMPLE with something I don't want, in here with me and I so very much want to escape, but I cannot. It's an inexplicable sensation.

So I would like this story, this page to somehow become known and read by everyone in my life, but like not by my own volition. For some reason I believe I would be thought of differently if everyone knew but also, at least, that I would be understood more too.

I guess I feel trapped with it because I won't let it out or have no way of transmitting it outwardly.

I suffer a great deal and it makes every problem that I can think of seem somehow real and relevant.

Here's something that kept me awake. It's silly and irrelevant but because of the emotional response I got (and for no reason I might add) made the experience of the thought unbearable:

I was dreaming of something... just random and it made no real sense as such (as a lot of dreams do) There was no emotional attachment to the dream and I woke up, needing the bathroom. I then thought of some shit and was very wary of awakening too much to get back asleep. Then my emotional response kicked in and I thought "if thoughts are random and dreams are random, and dreams can be psychoanalysed to mean something, can my thoughts be, and does it make them as relevant?"

None of it means anything. I know thoughts are just random and they just happen to you and you have a Choice to make them matter or not. Like, you can think of stabbing someone, but it doesn't become real unless you consciously decide to act on it. So it's just a thought. With an emotional response, like mine, it somehow becomes relevant because you feel something for the thought and it washes over you. A dream on the other hand, is just a process your brain goes thorough to filter experiences and information. It's involuntary, but necessary. Not much is known about them and chances are they'll never be real, because there's some crazy shit going on in them. Look, you all know how dreams look, I don't need to explain!

But I don't understand it much, The emotional response thing. I don't know if I ever will. But venting it seems to help; like a noxious gas in a room. Ventilate it a little, and the air becomes more breathable. Maybe not entirely toxic, but less dangerous. I know emotional responses aren't always healthy things to act upon and that's what makes it hard to deal with. It just feels like they should be and letting go of bad emotional experiences, as you know, is a hard thing to do. I just keep learning and learning about it and it seems endless. But I'll persevere I suppose. There's no choice if it will or won't come back again. It just is. For now, at least.

Now I wish it would just Fuck Off and let me sleep a while.



Even people with moderate physical suffering can at least do that

RAGE

When people say you should always be nice

I think this is easily taken for granted. No one needs to be nice. It's a privilege, not a right.

In work for example... I'm nice to strangers for the entire duration of my shift
There are people I have known for years who I am barely ever nice to. That doesn't seem fair except briefly, for the fact that I am being paid to be nice. I don't think I'm being paid enough for that privilege. I sell my niceness too cheaply. I don't have to be nice. Fuck that

...and myself. I'm awful to myself.

When someone says "you should always be nice to people, to strangers" it now, at this moment, makes me want to punch the offender in the face.

Be the person you'd like to meet. Bullshit. You don't "choose" who you want to meet. You just meet people. you don't get a choice

Be nice.

No I should not. And neither should you. It's a choice, when I'm feeling like it. I don't "have" to be nice if I don't want to be.

Yes, I am arguing with myself. I know this. I am aware of it, so that makes me happy.

Anyway.

I asked a girl out a long time ago, and I could never let go of the fact that she confided in an associate, that I was "too nice" and "not her type"

or some bullnut like that

what I guess annoys me about that is the fact that I CHOSE to be nice to HER PARTICULARLY and this was seen as a BAD thing.

Moral of that story? I could have been an absolute cockbag and it wouldn't have made a difference except how I felt about myself.

Now, that example should not be taken in isolation for the point I'm trying to make which is just that, if you choose to be unpleasant or just ARE as a RESULT of how you feel because of whatever is going on in your life, don't be bound to a false ideal of how you OUGHT to be rather than how you actually feel. No price tag is high enough and no outside opinion large enough to merit a change that significant.

Fuck everyone else and their ideal of how YOU should be. If they don't like it, it's their problem.

and if you walk into a store and the cashier smiles to you and is outwardly chatty?

APPRECIATE it.

It's a privilege, not a right. Sometimes the customer can be an asshole too

an asshole who, has possibly had experiences just like the cashier. Another human being

Over The Edge