Over the Irish Sea

The last litre of rum hasn't even lasted a week.

This is probably not good. I don't really have a frame of reference. I don't really care. As coping mechanisms go, drinking is hardly the worst thing I could be doing. Hell, this is probably the most normal, the most socially-acceptable, coping mechanism that I have.

Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But the burn in the back of my throat is a sweet partner for the burning behind my eyes, and somehow it's easier to be broken when I'm wrecked to pieces.

I've often wondered which is the worst to deal with, insomnia or nightmares. Of course, sometimes the universe decides to throw both my way, just so I don't have to choose. It's a neat little love triangle we have going on. I haven't slept properly in over a month now. Even when I manage the hours, I still wake up without much inclination to drag myself out of bed.

Monday night the insomnia kept me up until half five, and then I woke at seven shaking and so drenched in sweat that at first I thought someone had thrown a bucket of water over me. The worst part was that I had no recollection of what I'd been dreaming. Sometimes, dreams, they slip away from you as the day goes on, and sometimes they come back to you in more details, but to not remember a thing, to have no idea what provoked that kind of a reaction, it's terrifying, it really is. And it leads to the hideous guessing game where I try to dredge up anything I can imagine such a dream could be. Last night at least I remembered the dreams, even if they woke me every couple of hours.

I am just so tired.

Fear

If I could search my mind for 'most common thoughts', I think I know one that would rank pretty high:

I'm scared.

It's an odd thing, fear. I don't actually have any of the 'normal' phobias. I'm not scared of spiders or heights or enclosed spaces, insects or blood or clowns, the dark or aeroplanes or snakes.

The thing I'm probably most scared of is hurting people.

I practically have a professional qualification in guilt, and whilst I have enough self-awareness to know that I blame myself for lots of things that probably aren't my fault, I also know well enough that some things are. That there are many, many things I could have done, or not have done, in my life that would have made the people I love happier, or less sad. I can name people who would undoubtedly have had a much less screwy time of it if we'd never met. I am scared that in the end I just end up hurting everyone I touch.

It's probably part of why I find it so hard to get close to people. It's not that I'm not friendly, or that I don't want to spend time with people. I do. Christ, I am desperate for friends, and there are so many people I would dearly love to be with. The problem is that: a) I genuinely believe at a very deep and psychologically stubborn level that people do not want to spend time with me, they do not want to talk to me, or know me, or have to waste their time on me, and why the fuck would they because I'm pathetic and cowardly and needy and insane and blah blah blah etc. etc. b) I will only end up making them awkward or offending them or hurting them or telling too much truth or confiding too little or coming across as fake. c) I have zero social skills and no idea how to communicate 'I think you're awesome and want to know everything about you can we stay up all night being ridiculous please?' without being creepy (see b), or flat out rejected (see a).

And I'm scared that I'm right about this. I'm scared that if I do put myself out there and try to get close to people, they'll not be interested, thereby confirming my fears and sparking that well-travelled downward spiral of no-one-is-ever-going-to-want-me-I'm-a-worthless-human-being-and-I'm-going-to-be-alone-forever etc. etc.

I'm scared that I'm just an inconvenience, and that if I try to push myself further into other people's lives, they'll just push me right back out. Or, perhaps worse, that they'll suffer the intrusion politely, but secretly hate it and resent me for it. And I'll sense (or imagine that I sense) they feel this and oh hey let's take another guilt trip.

The most ridiculous thing about all of this is that I KNOW how ridiculous it all sounds, and how pathetically insecure I seem, and how obvious it is that I should just get a grip and trust people to be nice and take a leap of faith.

But that's the thing about fear, isn't it? It's irrational. And knowing that it's irrational doesn't make you any less terrified.

Someone Else's Song

There are so many words inside my head right now, and so much silence too, and I don't have the energy to sort the one from the other. I feel like, bit by bit, I'm exploring all the possible paths of insanity.

So here are someone else's words. Someone far more eloquent than me, somehow managing to voice a handful of my crazed little thoughts.

I Think About This Sometimes 

by Mila Jaroniec

October 18, 2012



"I think about this sometimes, how much of life is really just comprised of aptly timed accidents. How we work so hard planning and strategizing and everything else when those skills are illusory life tools at best. How we like to believe we’re in total control of our situations, but when things start to happen, really happen, when things suddenly start to pulse and detonate all over the place, what we really need to know how to do is adapt, fall off the ledge and land safely on our feet. I think about this too, how nearly every valuable thing I’ve hit upon in life has been the result of some kind of lucky or horrible accident. And how completely awesome yet unflinchingly absurd that is.

"I think about this sometimes, what it would have been like if we had worked out. If I had chosen you instead of not-you. Would you still be saying all those sweet things and making large-scale projections about our idyllic future? Would you still be sending me new songs to listen to every day and notebooks through the mail? Would I still idealize you just as much? I don’t know. Part of me likes to think we could have been happy if given the option but the other part has a feeling we would have cracked right down the middle, your neuroses were what I liked about you but maybe your neuroses plus my neuroses would have been too many. We’ll never know at this point, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.

"I think about this sometimes, what it would be like to have a second, completely separate life to live alongside this one, just for fun. Just to test out the various potentialities present-day me will never get to realize, like becoming an Olympic gymnast or finishing my neuroscience degree. I wonder if leading parallel lives would eventually get too crazy or whether I’d be able to switch between them, flip cleanly over from one to the other like a light switch. I wonder if parallel me would actually do anything different than what present-day me is doing. I wonder if parallel and present-day me would eventually converge. I wonder if wondering about this means I have too much time on my hands.

"I think about this sometimes, what life would have been like if I had never met you. What it would have been like if you never came along when you did, never gave me whiplash, never crawled into my heart, if I hadn’t fallen for you or for anyone at all, just stayed blissfully unaware of love and heartbreak and their sides of horrible and delicious feelings. If I had never met you, I think I would have turned out different. Not better, but maybe more careful. More stable. Or maybe more clueless, relegated to making those high school mistakes in college and beyond instead. What I don’t like to think about is the fact that a part of me will always love you, and it’s nothing that logic or time can starve out. It’s like autumn happening in October or the recurrence of a particular time of day. It just is. And that’s it.

"I think about this sometimes, what it would be like to start over, just shut down and reassemble, shed every single layer and do it again, differently. Quit everything, sell everything, pack up and disappear without a trace or a last goodbye. It’s a tempting idea that’s constantly in the back of my head, but I never actually act on it because I have a pretty strong feeling (or strong literary evidence, rather) that that kind of move usually and/or always ends in disillusionment. But that doesn’t mean I’m not tempted. In fact I’m pretty sure the temptation has evolved into a sort of coping mechanism: when things get really awful all I tell myself is “you could leave if you wanted,” and for some reason knowing that, repeating that makes me feel more capable."

Source

What we've learned so far.

Nothing ever changes.

And I am a fucking moron.

Well, this is new.

I still don't know exactly what's going on, and it might be nothing.

But even if it is, I still feel happier and more hopeful and more alive right now than I have in a long time.

I need to be brave, and I think I can be.

I can be.

Step by step...

Yesterday, I didn't hurt myself, even though I desperately wanted to. Yesterday, I didn't starve or binge, even though I could have. Yesterday, I didn't put myself in danger, even though I was longing for it.

A lot of things were not so good yesterday. But I managed those things.

So long as I can do that again today, everything is going to be okay. And I can.

I am losing my mind.

I honestly think I have driven myself insane. I have meticulously destroyed any shred of normality in my brain. I have turned every facet of behaviour into disorder. I have poisoned every part of myself that I ever had the slightest affection for. I have become an obnoxious, selfish, hideous, warped... thing.

I think maybe this is what a breakdown feels like. I am tired. I am so tired.

I can't do this.