sleep

i usually find sleep relatively hard to come by i am much more awake than most normal people and with the addition of pharmaceuticals i often find that sleep evades me altogether. it is so nice then to wile away my evening sleeping. a natural sleep and for once to wake up at a normal hour (although for some seven am on a sunday still shrieks abnormally early) and not feel like i've run a marathon rather than nap.

the black rings are still there, they are semi-permanent at this stage and only layer upon layer of carefully applied under-eye concealer hides them completely. but they are not too visible with my glasses on they are mostly disguised. its hard to be bothered to put makeup on, its generally not really my kind of thing so people have grown accustomed to the purple look. when someone i'm close to says, 'you look tired,' i know that what they're really saying is you look like death.

recently i've looked like death. with all the goings on of late i decided to once more try the pharmaceutical approach and my doctor prescribed me citalopram...all i can say is what an epic adventure. and also maybe no thanks.

after the fainting i should've wised up but i didn't and it wasn't until i collapsed and subsequently lost all my memories of the evening and started hallucinating that i realised this drug was not for me. so back to prozac. good old prozac for me the drug kills my already teeny tiny appetite and i find it harder than ever to sleep. sleep almost entirely evades me. last time i tried this out i was awake for six days straight before taking many sleeping pills just to get any sleep. this time around it seems to be better. less of the sleeplessness. i'm just lacking in quality sleep. everyday i wake more tired than i was the day before.

i've always had nutcase-style dreams but i find that prozac heightens this and so i tend to get the more extreme version of my dreams. instead of dreams of everyday activities they become distorted and bizarre. and being a true dreamer they are in colour. vivid as hell and i invariably confuse them with reality. i am truly like the character in Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep."  my reality is distorted, ever changing and forever becoming less and less. i often used to feel that when on prozac the only part of me that truly lived was my dreams. i hope that does not become the case this time.

it is amazing though the rapid transformation that one can have from feeling far too much to almost nothing at all. for me some drugs seem to work too well. not so sleep medication. people with anxiety often have trouble sleeping. when i look back over the years and see all the sleepless nights i realise just how highly-strung i am. night after night of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. and i could never sleep during the day, the light seems to suggest some excitement that i will be missing if i stare at the ceiling for another second. its like a show and no matter how dull or dreary the show is i can't close my eyes to it and escape into dreams. this is where i am different from stephane. my dreams stay my dreams, no matter how much i sometimes wish for them to be my realities. my dreams are only dreams. they are in colour and sometimes i get them confused with my reality but they are still only my dreams. i am lucky i guess to dream in such detail such rich colour. i miss my dreams when i do not sleep.


i am a little damned if i do and damned if i don't really. for me sleeping pills mean the end of dreams. so does insomnia. nights like last night are precious.

happiness

i am almost certain that no-one reads this and for me that is almost good. i don't really want to spread my misery. But sometimes it feels much better to write things here, with the possibility that someone might read them than in my diary which is already overflowing with bits and pieces of misery.

i wish that i could be happy. more than anything i hope for happiness. well maybe not hope, its not really the right word. pray. maybe. that happiness is in my future. i just want it to be near enough that i actually make it. at the moment at the rate that i am falling if i hit the ground i might never make it.

i feel that happiness shouldn't be this hard to attain. it shouldn't be an epic struggle. i know that it is unrealistic to be constantly happy. all the time. today we would probably think there was something wrong with someone who was so constantly happy, they would certainly be annoying. but at the same time i feel it should be relatively easy to feel happiness at some point. a small joy not even for that long.

at the moment i am in such a cloud that i don't ever even remember being happy. i don't think that i have ever truly been happy. i don't even really remember feeling at all happy as a child and certainly not as an adult.

my whole life i felt totally suppressed like i shouldn't cry, like feelings were bad and the whole time i felt so sad. so grief-stricken and heartbroken all at the same time. when i was tiny. its all i really remember the stress of it all. is mum happy. is my brother happy. are all the people around me pleased with how i am performing. i always felt like everyone had so much else going on that they didn't have time to look after me. so i had to prove myself. make them love me. and i never really felt like it worked. when i was little i never really cried and until i was struck down by the reality of my depression i never cried in front of people. the fact that i can still make new friends and get jobs shows me exactly how good i have become at pretending.

i was never that moody child. i always looked happy, bright as a button. trapped in my silent private world where i was never good enough.

and i wish that my mother had said to me ever that she loved me in a way that i felt it. it is a very rare thing for my mother to say she loves me. people used to say that it was her actions that mattered not her words and that some people found it hard to say they loved people. the problem was she never really had much trouble saying it to my brother. she's all talk there. and she's never been particularly maternal with me either. so i guess i just didn't get to feel it. of course i know that she loves me. but i've never felt it. and i think i need to. i feel very starved of the deep caring love that most people would get from their mother. the nurturing. and i do feel that if dad hadn't died it would've been different. i think that i would be an entirely different person. maybe not so lonely. but i'm not that person.

i just am the person that is here. typing away. wishing things were different.

and its like i've thought before, the gaps that are in me, they are never going to go away. they can't be filled. it doesn't mater how well i do or how many friends i have. i will always have gaps. stuff that just is missing. i don't know whether i can be happy with all these gaps. and if there never going to go away then what real chance do i have?

how are you supposed to know when enough is enough? how are you supposed to be able to tell if the pain others would feel if you shattered and they each got a piece of your pain would be less than the pain that you feel. whether they would survive with that little bit of your pain. how are you supposed to know when to give up?

falling

like alice down the rabbit hole i am falling. for awhile there i was simply sinking in thick heavy mud, then faster in quicksand and suddenly there was nothing underneath me at all. i was suddenly falling. i still am falling. and there feels like there is nothing and nobody to catch me.

i can't tell whether i'll be falling forever or if someday i'll unexpectedly hit the ground. if i'll just not wake up one day. because no-one was there to catch me. what will happen to me?

my family does not understand. my friends must be sick to death of all the drama. the fainting the tears the panic attacks. i don't have anyone to hold on to. it is so hard to hold on to myself. i just want someone to look after me. to hold me and say that its alright. to catch me. instead of letting me fall all the way.

location location location...

i realised this morning that despite popular opinion, changing the location of my despair and depression is unlikely to help me. I spent all my years at school achieving. getting brilliant grades so that some day i might become something. never in my life did i imagine that what i would become is a mess.

i don't want to work. i don't want to see people who don't understand me and i don't want to see tomorrow.

i want someone to find me and know that i am at peace. i want to have a funeral with an open casket where i will lie naked so that people can see the beauty and pain that tore me apart. i want someone to come and look after me.

at this point a mental hospital does seem like my only salvation. i just don't know how to get into one. and i know what the opinion would be of all those around me. she's finally cracked up. there's no going back now. she's gone.

in my consideration of moving countries it never occurred to me that i might still be sick if i lived somewhere else. that less of my life might be perfect. how can i even consider the idea of going to art school when every time i look at a paint brush or a clay tool i feel like stabbing myself with it. i am probably at this point the least productive aspiring artist there ever was.

and i do wonder. if happiness is this far away, this hard for me to get to. is it even possible for me? is it there in my future? do i have any hope or should i just let go now? i do feel like my soul is gone. everyone else is spinning around me making their lives, going places and i feel like a fake.

like i should wear a sign to warn prospective friends and employers, this girl is a lunatic she has officially gone crazy. don't take any notice of her and especially don't become her friend. the person she displays is a mere shadow of the person she used to be. now she is just all twisted beyond recognition. a deadly disease, in a pretty box.