The Burdens

I wrote an abridged list of my miseries - forgive the total lack of eloquence as well as the many things I omitted - in the hope that the cathartic process of their expression will give clearance for brighter things to grow. It's time to burn this all and start a fresh tomorrow for the very last time. 

I have no place to call home and sofa-surfing is incredibly draining and demoralising 

I am a problem - I'm a burden to anyone and everyone I spend any length of time around given that I can't control my emotions or my eating disordered behaviours and I'm tired of making everyone's lives a misery as well as my own

I don't have the money to find my own place and the services can't work quickly enough 

This has quite possibly been the worst half term of all time - I spent my Halloween trekking around Sussex for six hours looking for somewhere to spend the night instead of having a good time with my friends or family

I don't feel supported or cared for anymore; not even by my own mother who I had thought I could depend on. Even though I forgive her I cannot forget the hurtful things she has said and done. I cannot shake the feelings of betrayal, and for her now to deny moral support in me finding somewhere else to stay is only making me feel more alone than ever. I didn't watch her spend years in a severely unhappy relationship with my Dad and learn nothing - there is no denying that we need time and space from each other before the situation deteriorates any more. Right now it is only a ticking time bomb before another dangerous situation explodes between us when I feel suicidal whenever I am in the house

I don't want to be sad anymore but I don't know how to be happy

I can't find peace anywhere

I am ugly and fat - I'm not even thin enough to be deserving of pity

I can't seem to do any work for sixth form as I'm overwhelmed by misery and anxiety at my situation

My bedroom is a mess

I can't sleep without having horrible nightmares - when I slept last I dreamt that I was being raped and no-one would help me and then that someone attacking me leapt onto my back and I didn't have the strength to shake them off

I'm exhausted by the constant battle against food, against fear, against sadness, against anger; against myself

I feel physically terrible - I'm tired of feeling like shit 99% of the time and being under the weather with a cold coming on doesn't help AT all

I'm worried about my brother Tristan as I know he is struggling mentally but there seems very little I can do to help him

Every effort I make to help others is never enough - if I make breakfast in bed for my Mum, babysit my brothers and cook them dinner, get myself to work without troubling anyone for a lift to save me struggling all the way to the station… it is only appreciated for the briefest of moments before I get shit for something else

I'm tired of being spoken about so negatively behind my back by members of my own family and I'm sure thought of negatively all the time

I'm horrifically worried about the ELAT test on Wednesday as I'm the least prepared I've ever been for any test in my life. I gave one of the books from Oxford University I could have used to revise from to a patient at my last unit to read and I think she has died which makes me more miserable than you can imagine and also means that there is no chance of me getting it back

I feel like I am letting everyone down by failing to reply to messages or letters in good time but I don't want to respond when I'm in such a bad place when I desperately wish to be a positive influence to others

It makes me bitterly sad to see all my friends getting on with their lives - my sixth form friends now flourishing at university, many of those I know from various inpatient units now recovering from their conditions and loving life again - all whilst I remain stuck

I miss my friends more than I can say

I can't forget the things I have seen: E being brutally force-fed as I cried and girls screamed and tried to escape; L slitting her wrists with my paint tile that I had left on the table and seeing the blood that drenched her bedroom floor; T vomiting in the washing machine before she was restrained and injected in her room where she screamed 'rape' for hours on end; walking past the isolated ward on the AMU a few days following my worst overdose and seeing a lady being resuscitated after a heart attack, then returning after my cigarette for her to be gone...

I can't forget the things that I've experienced: being taken advantage of by a guy I didn't know when I was paralytically drunk those years ago; having the naso-gastric tube inserted up my nose and into my stomach to be sedated and drip-fed constantly for three weeks; watching my life slur by in strange dream-like scenes as my present senses began to diminish and vitality faded whilst I was at A&E during my physical worst; being conspired against by mental health professionals when they assessed me for sectioning without my knowledge before admitting me to an institution that has left me permanently traumatized; being screamed and spat at by a woman suffering from severe Anorexia herself and told I was a selfish cow who didn't deserve to be here; being rushed off in an ambulance after my fourth major overdose, impaled with needles and wires as the sirens screamed; having my own mother grip my wrists nearly to breaking point before we fought so viciously until she called the police…

No-one understands how I feel

I want everything to go away but I'm judged for any means of escapism that I resort to

I don't know where to go or who to turn to

I miss my boyfriend and I am ashamed to see him tomorrow when I don't deserve him and he doesn't deserve to be burdened with me. I am terrified that I will lose him for I know I will not survive that loss

Lou Reed is dead

Your Life

I feel in an incredibly good and an incredibly bad place all at the same time. Is that possible?

I could never have imagined when lying upon those stiff hospital sheets in the acute medical unit - struggling to breathe or even move besides being sporadically overwhelmed by waves of intense nausea after my fourth and worst overdose - that I would be sitting in a bar in a campsite in France on a family holiday, as emotionally settled as I have been in recent weeks. 

I may well have suffered a gut full of despair over the latter weeks but I have certainly been enlightened with some pearls of wisdom and my God it has left me with good vibes. I don't know how long they can last and of course there are often moments of distress but it truly feels like I am finally on the cusp of something new; I have discovered a state which is quite refreshing, quite inexplicable - euphoric.

I suppose that in a sense it is interesting, given that the majority of people preach that recovery equals true happiness. Perhaps the existence that I'm experiencing now is purely delusional, but it's surely an improvement from the utter despair that I knew previously. It would be hard to define particularly what has changed since then, besides the fact that I have allowed quite completely for my impulsivity and mania to take over when they have arisen and not given much regard for the consequences - unwise, perhaps: but exciting, most definitely. It feels like in meeting the new people that I have that I have gained insights that they have renewed me both physically and psychologically. 

Perhaps my present elation is a counterpart to my physical decline which I cannot deny has its downsides too - losing feeling in my limbs and face as well as uncontrollable bouts of shaking can be embarrassing at the best of times - but then there is that twisted gratification rendered by the effects of emaciation. 

It's hard to believe that it was only a couple of weeks ago that I was close to death. I wouldn't say I feel higher than ever now, but then that would be a precarious position for me to be in for heights of mania only lead to crushing falls. Contentedness is truly quite blissful. The calm after a tempestuous storm. 

For once I am proud of myself too. I can take every day as a victory. I made it through the toughest heart break I have ever suffered, one that I could never have contemplated surviving. Nothing is easy, of course not: I'm still hurting to this day and I still suffer but it feels like I'm in a new process of learning that dwelling on the very many things I have to be miserable about won't change them and certainly will not help them - so the best way, not the easiest way it goes without saying, to go about dealing with them is to try to move on from them. Taking the positive from the negative may sound trite but it honestly is a practice worth preaching.  

Watching life flash before my eyes primarily as I was being transported into the ambulance before being impaled by various sharp objects amidst a cacophony of screaming sirens and then secondly, far more temperately, when accompanying my friends - purely as a means of moral support - whilst they received their A level results to determine their university choices. It was a surreal and largely unpleasant experience on both counts; feeling an immense sense of waste and purposelessness, lack of power to resolve my fate. I was told however by somebody I later became, quite suddenly, very close to, something that though of course I had heard many a time before really struck a chord with the circumstances which I have just recounted: that life goes on. No matter how much it feels like you have frittered away your years, there are many more to come. You can use them precisely in the way you choose, whether that would mean wasting them some more, or fulfilling them with joy and love and accomplishment. 

Taking life too seriously is a dangerous business, and living a little on the wild side has certainly paid off for me in recent times. Despite a horribly difficult day I plucked up the courage to join my friends to Brighton on the 15th August, and I didn't regret a minute of it. From dancing our hearts out in the grimey clubs on the seafront in defiance of the fact that half the time low potassium dictated that I couldn't feel my hands or feet, to meeting strangers, to getting high on the beach, and finally meeting a lovely guy and ending up staying the night at his, which happened to be something that I will remember for the rest of my life. He was a psychologist, much older than me, but seemed greatly intrigued by me -   to which I cautiously asked whether I was a case study but of course the answer was a definite no - and we talked in depth I've rarely ventured with any soul on this earth for most of the night. Not only was it the best therapy I can say I've ever received but to feel loved for once was a wholeheartedly nourishing experience. In my frenzy however I left my camera at his flat which was stupid meaning I had to take a spontaneous trip back to Brighton the next day in the hope that I would somehow be able to find this obscure little flat, get inside and that he wouldn't be lecturing at university at that point in time. As it happened he wasn't there, but luck, or fate, or God knows what had it that when I somehow managed to find it that another resident popped outside and asked to borrow my lighter and kindly let me in after I explained the situation. After knocking on a few doors I eventually acquired the guy's number, though after it failed to save on my phone for a second time I managed to google how to transfer hidden numbers from the sim to the phone and voila, a message was sent and received. I proceeded, at a certain loss as of what next to do exactly to head to the Lanes where I knew I would feel safe, had a delicious black Earl Grey with three calorie-free sweeteners of course accompanied by an American Spirit rollie outside Costa and begun to feel quite alone. I'd been watching someone opposite who I had assumed to be homeless, bearing a hand-written sign reading: CHANGE IS INEVITABLE for quite some time and decided to follow my impulsive trait which had brought me such joy over the past twenty-four hours and go and talk to him. We did for perhaps an hour, which was lovely - he was a squatter who had travelled all over the world; he wasn't looking for money, only to spread some positivity as it were. It was truly inspiring. He said he hoped that I would get better. I said that I hoped that I would too.

Thankfully everything resolved itself. Shortly afterwards I was reunited by my somewhat worse-for-wear (on my part) camera and headed home. Now after days of attempting to write and complete this overly elaborate tale I can finally say that I am concluding it on a brighter note than tradition would allow. There have been many ups and downs over the course of this holiday so far and the one thing you can rely on family dynamics for is to be taught: but I know that there is no point ruminating on misery, or absorbing others' suffering. It manifests itself in me, I'm quite aware of that, but if a lesson can be learnt from any of this, it should be to give yourself a fucking break once in a while. 

I Was a Stranger

It's a quiet maelstrom into which I'm slipping. Glassy whirls of cosmic haze have caught me adrift and I  can do nothing but watch myself from afar as my uninhabited form spins in dizzying descent.

I only wish there was a soul on this earth who had lived as much as I have in my short years. Everyone is through with me so prematurely, through with dealing before I've ever had my share; I am thus left a stranger on this lonely road still burdened with the ghosts of my past - bereft and abandoned, that dark, sharp-taloned Raven known as sorrow the sole companion for my journey. No-body knows the suffering from which I am desperate to be relieved. 

This curious new path was largely unknown to me before, or at least to this extent. It feels as though life is spiralling into a state of unprecedented chaos and I do not know how to halt the progression, or even if I would if I could. Everything is taking over me and in my frailness I merely succumb to the tide. I'm tired, so very tired and the task of sustaining my defences during such an unholy war is becoming too much. It has been three nights since I slept at all and some time without food. Now a rather more fresh addiction - if the term is valid - is spinning the world beyond mere delirium and into further disarray.

My altered state is albeit a highly disorientating one in which the vision before me is a rippling vision of flickering scenes in progressive time zones; meaning that I have no idea which scene - which world - is reality and which was simply a transient precursor of the scene to follow, only to vanish like a dream. I am rapidly waking and re-waking into yet another dream after dream. The world is not true. Reality cannot be. Though I am not afraid: there have been times where I have fallen into this experience accompanied by feelings of intense terror and desperation to be secure and finally grasp what is real again. Now, however, I can let it wash over me, and treat the voice as a friend. 

Yet why do these behaviours cause my conscience a small sense of discomfort when they remain my only means of surviving a life that I cannot cope with? It seems cruel that the door to my shelter is also the one to my prison cell. 

In all honesty I don't give the highest regard for my own existence, but I have this great fear for the sake of others that something has set in motion that I will not be able to turn back from. There is already so much to contend with but my reality is becoming so deranged and distorted that I am uncertain what to do. I want all of this to be gone and to never have been at all.

I can't close my shelter.

Waking Up

So. I went for this walk.

It was raining an awful lot even though earlier it had been a good day except only weather-wise because I was having a bad day. So I thought, I’m going to go on a really long walk from Shinewater through Langney past Pevensey up to Sovereign Harbour and round to Princes Park and burn the zero calories I’ve consumed today and chill the fuck out. Mojo was asleep so I thought I’d go it alone, with my phone, like a gnome. Then I thought, whilst on this walk, fuck, this is taking me a long time. And I’m alone. I don’t like being alone. And I’m fucking tired. It’s raining, which is, without a shadow of a doubt, an absolute pathetic fallacy for my mood and life in general. But at least that means I can wear my Dad’s massive Barbour which makes my legs look slightly less fat. I’m going to have to employ coping mechanisms. What coping mechanism can I use in this situation? Probably the two I prepared earlier. I find being at my Dad’s really difficult and and I don’t care what you say for every means there is a just cause or something.

So I was walking along and by this point I was getting really tired. I passed two young lovers and a sleeping ice cream van and it made me think some more thoughts for a while. I was coming up to the Langney roundabout which seemed longer than it was but I’m really very very sorry that this story is getting too long. Holy moly. I wasn’t really thinking particularly hard as I was crossing a road but I was wise enough to know that when a red fiesta is approaching from the left it’s fair to cross as long as it’s in the distance so I did and the prick didn’t even have to slow down but he beeped because I had to maybe run a tiny bit but mainly because he was a prick which scared the shit out of me and when I landed on the other side of the road my heart was doing a funny dance and not a pretty one at that. By this point I figured that I might not quite make it all the way to Princes Park tonight. So I sat down at the nearest bus stop and said ‘Fuck’ out loud, like a don, because my bag was so heavy. I sat there for either ten minutes or ten hours and watched the rain, watched a bus pass, nearly stop with the bus driver glancing back and forth at me as he approached deliberating whether or not I was worth picking up, but then carry on; then I decided to stand up. As I was doing up my bag I realised that it had suddenly caught up on me and that everything was rippling tremendously and my self-dialogue was getting really really loud and I was beginning to have vivid conversations with myself in my head but with happy thoughts as oppose to sad ones and I thought I’m fucked this is good. 

I figured that I wasn’t going to make it home and I was beginning to worry as I didn’t fancy sleeping on the side of the road and I didn’t have the heart to phone my Dad and trouble him to jump in his car and collect me. So I turned around and started walking back and tried to phone Mum to tell her that I was having a lovely walk and it was turning my day around even though I was super tired and secretly worried about getting home and Dad making me have something to eat but she didn’t answer her phone. So I carried on and thought, let’s burn some more and shake things up a bit more. Let’s make this interesting. The cemetery would make an interesting route but then I remembered that that’s what horror movie directors would call creepy so maybe not. So instead of going all the way back to Milfoil Drive I took a left at Friday Tree, which made me a tiny bit pleased because I noticed that it was actually supposed to say Friday Street. I walked and walked and walked - it seemed to take forever and ever and ever. I like that symmetry. symmetry that like I .I reckoned that I would have to turn left at some point to basically do a circle on myself and end up back at Milfoil which I also thought was pretty damn clever but the only turning ahead said something Drive, but no it said Grove… Drive, Grove, Drive, Grove, which one could it be? What will this strange location be like? Drive suggests a closed end.. whereas Grove suggests a road with trees…. Which one? Am I squinting as much as I think I am? Suddenly. The obscurity evaporated: DROVE! I have no idea what that means. Still, I walked on and decided to take the next left because by the time I had finished thinking I had passed Something Drove anyhow. By this time I was on my second spliff.

After a while I saw a white camper van ahead which reminded me of pleasant memories of happy families and holidays to the Isle of Wight in Dad’s converted ambulance. Then fuck, my roach fell out. I think I might have told my Mum if I was still on voicemail, or imagined telling my Mum, or told myself or someone else that it was a filter and then following the phrase with copious giggles. I tried to put it back in but with little success as the roll was pretty goddamn wet with all the rain and all so I thought I’d go without, like the master that I am. I thought also, this is going to get me fucked. Like drinking from the bottle. Without the filter. Or maybe not. I don’t know. It’s getting to the point that I wish this psychological diarrhoea would give it a fucking rest to be frank. Anyway. Enough of that. I reached the camper van and realised it was parked in a pub carpark. I thought, maybe I could be an absolute daredevil like my Dad and sneak through the carpark and over the trees at the back and hope there’s not a brick wall on the other side or any parents putting their children back into the family car or police vans called to a local brawl. So I strolled through as nonchalantly as I possibly could wet spliff in hand and sometimes mouth and did a runner through the trees but as I write this my phone is sporadically vibrating because it keeps thinking it’s on charge but there is no wire plugged in and even my brother agrees I’m not making this up I swear to God it’s freaking me out IT’S MESSING WITH MY MIND. And I keep getting distracted by my Rowan’s incessant babbling that he pulled his tooth out and that he hid it under the sofa for me yesterday followed by the exultant phrase ‘Yeah Mimi eat i’ in a bowwl.’ But anyway. Thankfully there was no brick wall.

Then I had no idea where the hell I was. Sorrel Drive No.1-2 I thought, better not walk up there or you’ll be sorrel. So I went left again and thought I don’t recognise that construction site but then I thought just ignore it best ignore things you don’t recognise. I passed an elderly lady walking her dog as I trudged on and I really was beginning to wonder if I was going to make it home at all and I was so bloody thirsty but I smiled real horrorshow. Then I thought I saw a part of the bus route home I recognised but then I thought just ignore it best ignore things you recognise. Eventually I came to the top of the hill and I turned one of two directions and it was going okay again.

I carried on walking, I definitely saw a real-life squirrel. Then I turned out exactly where I wanted to be - homeward-bound that is - so kind of not so much where I wanted to be. I’m not sure now. Things seem good. I thought I know what I’ll do I’ll surprise the boys by coming in the back way and running in to the glass doors splat all soggy and shout hello but then I thought that would be rather undignified so I searched for my front door keys in my bag. I felt what I thought was the antique miniature bottle of eau de parfum attached to my keychain that I bought for a few euros in an amazing vintage warehouse in Treguier not Trebuchet in France last summer when everything was lovely but it was in fact my sugar-free fresh mint breath spray and all I kept thinking was I must brush my teeth when I get home I must brush my teeth when I get home I must brush my teeth when I get home and several more visionary scenarios branched off from that.

This isn’t how I normally write I’m in quite an altered state of mind.

On the way back I think I might have overheard/seen some domestic abuse. I still feel bad about that. I carried on walking. A police car drove past and I thought that was lucky/nearly unlucky had they passed earlier or had I been a slightly faster walker which for once makes me thankful I was tired and then I imagined a whole scenario had any of the above alternatives arisen involving policemen searches which I won’t go into.

Then I got home and I was very wet. On my hair. On my head. Then I sat down and wrote this story, even though it took a little while because I got distracted by family banter which was nice, watching Gulliver’s Travels intersected by sexual innuendos, my macbook being out of battery, taking ‘I wonder how tired I look ‘photos on Photo Booth after I plugged it in, then my Dad bringing me his reading glasses which he has used as he has got older and his eyes weaker basically suggesting that my eyes are shit which made me laugh and cry a little bit but the glasses were super funky so then taking more photos of that. I’m sorry that wasn’t a list of three, I’m really sorry about that.

So there you go. There’s your bedtime story for the night kids (except probably not for kids.)

Essentially, this story was already written word for word in my head on the way home. 

I’m thoroughly surprised that I remembered it all to be honest.

Soaked to the Skin

Why is it bleak here?
Winter has come once again
Tears are welling in my eyes

Comfort

In some uncertain light, comfort sighs. The soul's kawanami.

It's more than strange to have known absolute happiness amidst such intense grief. I had not thought it possible. Lying there as though I could forever in perfect, inexplicable contentment, when for the most part I long to escape the torture that is life altogether - these sentiments blossomed, vernal sacraments promising a future and a hope. 

Suddenly I am lost for words. I generally try not to censor the flow despite every anxiety that the result is a stream of consciousness which is emotionally elaborate in excess - yet now I find that every expression is a struggle. I don't know how to explain what I cannot, what I will never be able to be. It has been the strangest week of my entire life - which is saying an awful lot given that I've been in various psychiatric institutions - and I just don't know where to start. 

I'm still in a state of partial disorientation after the week's indulgences in copious quantities of substances I shouldn't be using but it's a reflective condition; one during which I have the ability to recognise, my thoughts order and release them in a hopefully reasonably comprehensible form as oppose to having some absorbent glass wall deaden every vessel of meaning in my mind and heart and then shoot from its exterior an action which is so entirely undetermined it seems as though it was born from thin air. Despite the sad reality that the almost frighteningly dizzying highs are subsiding, and my mood mellowing in accordance, I am still able to appreciate the good times that have been. I cannot and will not let myself crash completely. 

The week was far from devoid of turbulence, commencing with a wild night in Brighton spent, after a great gig with friends, chasing someone such an emotional and physical wreck that she was a danger to not only herself but others around her including me and those I was with. I don't think it was situations of trauma and moments of intense anxiety including various panic attacks that made it such an extraordinary week however; quite the opposite: for once in my whole life I found myself wanting to hold myself in a moment of time forever and ever as oppose to wishing it away completely. Newer still it wasn't only for the wrong reasons. It wasn't purely for starvation or the influence of intoxication, though undeniably both played a substantial part. I knew peace.

Insecurities will always invade any suggestion of a relationship which exists in my world. Somehow here however, some reciprocal connection, an inexplicable bond which I doubt can be defined so simply as lust or even love or good company rendered a sense of ease between us - we were, quite unconditionally, meant to be together at this time. Fate. Magic.

Now after the bliss of discovering, at least for one transient moment, true happiness I am slightly at a loss. I don't know where to find myself without another, when it seems that it is in that other that I have found home. I long to feel the comfort of being embraced again and adoring such a gesture as oppose to feeling terrified in its grasp. The sense of security once is beginning to become evanescent, drifting ever more distant on the horizon and thus persuading me further toward a means of gratifying self-destruction. Though I know this road well and have been on it for some time now it seems the downward trajectory is accelerating with alarming abruptness which contradicts the easy tranquility of my more pleasant mood and the preceding events. Physical deterioration is beginning to set in more rapidly than before, almost as some ironic remark from the universe about the imbalance of life. Maybe this is all I will ever know: my situation being good at one end of the spectrum means everything on the other must suffer as a result. Either way, I would sacrifice anything for the brief bliss I have known over past times - something I never imagined I would ever express.

My body may well be worn but my heart has found a rhythm which I hope can find the will to sustain. It's difficult to keep a hold on an abstract feeling, especially one so rarely felt. I can only try to remember. 

Shelter

It's difficult to self-express in the light of this dizzying oblivion. I do not know what's real anymore. I'm not sure who I am; what I've done. I don't know if any of the past week happened, or whether it was a dream, or even if I'm still locked in such a curious succession of images and events, of rippling sensations that may or may not be reality. Though the intense feelings of disorientation are subsiding with tentative lethargy I am not yet grounded. Still it seems difficult to determine where I am, if I 'am' at all.

I promised myself that my entry to follow my Parisian adventures would be entirely devoid of misery; that my bons sentiments would sustain themselves after my return to England. Tragically it's past the point of refusing to acknowledge the fact that I've crashed since coming home, for I have plummeted deeper than ever. Relaying the positivity I felt throughout my time in France will remain the priority of this post, but I cannot deny the fact that I don't know quite where I stand with myself.

It was a beautiful vacation - truly and utterly perfect. During our journey to London my manic excitement was thriving to such an degree that I could not imagine that it was reality, in a thrillingly delirious sense, not the dull confusion I know now. Pessimism forewarned me that something was going to go wrong. We would miss our coach from Victoria to Bercy, it was inevitable. Or maybe there would be a confusion at check-in, we'd forgotten the relevant documents or something. Perhaps even a horrific accident - to collapse and die before we'd even reached our destination would be so fitting with the scheme of the melodrama that is my life. To my surprise, everything went relatively smoothly. The 11-hour coach journey was anxiety-inducing to say the very least and it wasn't only me who found it a challenge - Lucy too was weary after a night's discomfort and lack of sleep - but after that rough patch we had arrived in Paris and everything was wonderful.

We stayed in the centre of Montmatre, minutes away from the stunning Basilique de Sacre-Coeur. I could not remember the last time I had been so blissfully happy - never without pale sorrow staining the outskirts of my ecstasy of course, but, comparatively content. It wasn't only everything that we did over the brief vacation which was so incredible, but to be so at ease with another person, to feel happy with them - it was the most valuable aspect of the whole experience. There was not one moment that I felt anything other than wonderfully comfortable with Lucy; whether we were laughing non-stop or walking leisurely around the canal in silence. It is almost too good to be true to have someone you love so much.

Meeting my beautiful sister Jane after so long was more lovely than I can describe. The picturesque settings of Le Jardin de la Vie Romantique, home to George Sand and Chopin were beautiful - it could not be more perfect for Jane and her partner Niz to impart their good news of my sister's pregnancy. We then travelled to Le Louvre art gallery where fate had it that we should meet my friend from youtube Clara (even though we hadn't expected to be lucky enough to find her amongst the rippling hoards of tourists!) The art of course was breathtaking but meeting Clara too was incredible. For the first time in a long time, I felt inspired to be alive. The meloncholy beauty of the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the majesty of Le Tour Eiffel, the bustling busy of the inner city juxtaposed with the ethereal peace of the Sacre-Coeur - suddenly existing was farther from the torturous end of the spectrum and nearer to exquisite. 

Physically, it was a struggle. Walking for miles round the beautiful city each day was a joy, albeit one that took its toll; particularly when I was existing purely on a little soya milk in my tea in the mornings, administered by my friend. Nevertheless that was a milestone for me to accomplish, given that I've never consumed calories under the supervision of figures of greater authority than Lucy, be that my parents or a medical professional. It was very, very difficult, but I did it, I got by. I trusted her when she told me it was alright, and that I needed it, and after the first sip of tea I managed to convince myself that I wasn't doing it, or simply numb the anxieties away, cigarette in hand. At that point I could feel a little glimmer of pride, or at least thanks to my dear friend for supporting me, with the knowledge that if she hadn't then I wouldn't have had any energy at all to achieve everything that we did. I could not have been more thankful to her for encouraging me to drink half a hot chocolate when I was near to collapse on our last night, for it allowed for more dancing at Le Paris Social Club - another fantastic experience.

Perhaps the disorientation of returning to England didn't help matters, but tragically, since coming home  I have suffered my most severe crash. It seems so unjust that other people can lead such temperate lives, with things either being - consistently for the most part - reasonably good or reasonably bad. I have the misfortune of clinging to a pendulum oscillating between states entirely diametrically opposed: either things are on a surreal high, or a low so intense that I am desperate for death. Subsequent to the thrill of Paris, it shames me to say that my mood has plummeted to the latter condition. I made a vow to myself on the way home that I would ensure that my positive memories of our adventures would sustain my sentiments. However, inevitably what goes up must come down - it seems this may well be the story of my life of which I have no control. 

It hurts to feel so utterly bereft; that nowhere provides any peaceful sanctuary for you, a homeless wreck. After coming back to Sussex it is almost as though it has confirmed to me that the pain will not end. Every time that things seem to be good, they are destroyed before I have had the chance to fully embrace them. Everything I love turns to shit.

Seeing the Rolling Stones should have been the best night of my entire life. Instead I spent the morning having the worst panic attack I have ever suffered after a period of intense dissociation and loss of control the previous night to the extent that my Mum nearly called an ambulance out of fear that I was having a heart attack. Nothing can describe the crippling pain of despair, which physically grips every nerve, each vital organ being crushed as though in the claws of some demonic force with a lust for blood. Neither of us thought I'd make it to Hyde Park, but after escorting me on the train my dedicated mother managed to hand me over to my Dad, and eventually I came to be glad that I had gone after all. 
I cannot even express how incredible the Stones were. I was crying again, but with awe, and perhaps the residues of the morning's torment. Jagger's boundless energy, the screams of the hundreds of thousands of fans and the fireworks filling the London skies following the last bursts of their encore... I can only wish that I had been in a better place to make the absolute best of the moment, as oppose to shrivelling to a shell of a person as soon as the ecstasy of the evening had left me.

Things have to change, and they have to change for good. I simply cannot go on like this any longer. I need to find shelter somewhere. I want to be able to say that I'm doing better, and that I'm happy to be living. Misery seems to hit at the worst moments and I've never wished to be someone else more in all my life, especially with more important events approaching including my sixth form prom. It seems as though I can't escape myself - neither the excruciating volatility of my mind, nor the grotesqueness of the body in which I'm trapped. I want everything to be okay again. For this neverending war to be over.

All I can do is battle on.

Ça c'est l'histoire

Even positivity generates anxiety. For the first time in a long time - albeit for the wrong reasons - I'm feeling lighter and brighter; even, dare I say it, beginning to really look forward to Paris. I just pray that my relatively stable (with tendency toward mania or delirium) sustains itself throughout the trip away. One great fear is that it won't.

I haven't been away without my Mum since I was 12 years old so besides the thrill of the fast-approaching vacation there is inevitable trepidation. I cannot deny that my prevailing worries are orientated around my illness - which shames me in a sense, given that I know there are many more dangers in the big wide world other than food and my insecurities about my weight. I'm not worried about the threat of food, because, admittedly, it won't play a part in my trip away. I'm living off air and water again, but for once that scares me somewhat I'm horribly uneasy about how we will go about ensuring I have at least some marginal calorific intake over the four days so as to prevent collapse. Lucy will be incredibly supportive, that's a certainty; but how can I go about indicating that I'm about to pass out and that perhaps a drop of milk in my black tea would be a wise idea, when it's the last thing I want in reality? What if there is some physical crisis and everything is ruined? I am terrified of letting my dearest friend down.

I'm doing my utmost to put my excruciating concerns over my body image aside. I am determined that we will have the experience of a lifetime together - I just don't want to tarnish the. It's such a quandary: if I were to eat (which in my present state I cannot) I would have the physical energy but my mood would hit the floor, whereas if I did not as will be the case my mood will most likely be more elevated despite the odd unavoidable down I'm sure, but I will be at risk of exhaustion and thus the inability to do everything that we plan to, or at worst collapse. It's not as though I have much option - it's at a stage where it isn't that I don't want to, it's that I literally can't do it. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed that this so far remarkably resilient body of mine holds out the best it can, and that I can have the courage to accept the support of Lucy when it gets to the point where at least some calorific liquid needs to be consumed. It's an absolutely terrifying prospect.

Nevertheless, in devotion to the positivity I intend to impart throughout this entry, I am finally looking forward to the trip. We have so many things planned and it should be a wonderful experience for us both. Of course, pessimism taints my hopes in that I am fearful beyond words that something awful should come about so as to impede our adventures before they have even begun, but I am striving to bear in mind that there is nothing I can do about these worries - I just have to let them go, or at the very least displace them with a more pleasant occupation.

Another problem with high moods other than the likelihood of a pitiful subsequent crash is the feelings of disorientation. Everything feels so exhilarating, whirling by with such speed and unpredictability that none of it seems real. Last night I began to question whether any of reality was real or not which resonated with sickening nostalgia of my period of psychosis, when every little detail of life's fabric was completely symbolic and linked to previous or future happenings or my fate, reality a haze of distortion and confusion. It goes without saying that I haven't declined to that dizzying state again, but in my thrill the memories were fresh as the tomorrow of yesterday. 

We will be together after all which is perfect. I've been really struggling with being alone and it's getting to the point that I'm having to retire from sixth form on a more frequent basis simply because everyone else has a lesson or another priority so for a period I may have virtually no company, which I seem clinically incapable of coping with. I still feel an outsider, no matter how hard I try to smile or timidly participate in conversation with peers. There seems to be this great, perpetual pressure over me in any given social situation; generating feelings of substantial discomfort and unease which I cannot shake. It's a complete enigma: absolute intolerance of being alone but at the same time afraid of talking and being burdened with the difficulty of trying to relate to others. At least in Paris I will be with one of the few people in this world who I don't feel so awfully on edge around. I love Lucy more than I can say, and at long last I'm sensing that exhilarating excitement of exploring the beautiful city with someone so precious to me.

People Are Strange

I'm commencing this entry in the context of great uncertainty as to how to begin. I will endeavour to keep the narrative of a lighter nature than it typically transpires to be, but I'm afraid of setting such an expectation given that, as ever, it's when things are particularly difficult that I feel the need to write self-indulgent essays by way of some desperate catharsis. So please forgive any misery-ridden expression to follow.

It's an unpleasantly contradictory situation to be in - feeling both horribly alone and overwhelmed by the scrutiny of others. I've recently found myself suffering such a circumstance even more than usual. In starting my second year of sixth form over again I can't help but feel lost and abandoned without the small but wonderful circle of friends whom I would usually dote and depend on. Once again I seem an alien in an environment I was already far from comfortable with. To be on an entirely different level to my peers - not in superior way - is incredibly isolating. I simply cannot relate. How could I? These people know nothing about me or the suffering behind my social front even though that is through no fault of their own, so when they go about their trivial chatter it's inevitable that I feel more distant than ever. The sense of exposure doesn't help my already soaring anxieties. It's horrible to be literally stared at by most of the younger years and unforuntately this is not paranoia talking. Paranoia is merely the consequence of their glares: I wonder what is going through their minds to cause them to feel the need to blatantly nudge their friends and point, then follow me with their eyes and whisper amongst one another. Are they gossiping about that girl wearing the weird clothes? Or worse, are they questioning why I should be allowed out in public looking as fat and grotesque as I do? It has got to the point where I've had brush ins with year 8s, being assaulted with sarcastic remarks or less-than-kind comments after I ask them (admittedly not-so-politely myself) to stare at something other than me. In all honesty it's troubling me more and more everyday in accordance with my increasing discomfort with my own body, living with the burdens that I do.

People are strange. Everything seems unsettling and frightening when one seems a stranger to the rest of society; either completely unknown or known too much. Socialising is such a daunting process, made worse by feeling on a completely different planet to everyone else. There are very, very few who understand, who I can actually converse with to a degree which exceeds the frustratingly unfulfilling conditions of empty small talk. Lack of empathy combined with my heightened sensitivity render the smallest remark as a source of great distress for me. I wish there was some way of presenting what I've been through and how I'm still struggling terribly without fearing the judgement of others. Despite being reserved and introverted in nature it makes it all the more difficult to get through the day when no-one appears to have any comprehension of how much words can hurt. Even the most inadvertent comments about mood, personal experiences with regards to hospital or food - from those suffering from eating disorders as well as those who are lucky enough not to be afflicted with such a soul-destroying disease - have the power to trigger the depressive, self-destructive voice in my brain until there is very little spirit or rationality left in me. I don't really know what to do anymore. It's a perpetual enigma; to be both terrified of being alone and fearful of human contact, desperate to communicate socially but utterly unable to relate.

I know I've got to hold on but I'm so exhausted that it's painful. I'm going to Paris with my best friend in less than a week and I don't feel ready at all; I want so desperately for us to have the time of our lives together but I'm so very fearful that my raging insecurities will ruin everything. This new adventure simply has to be a turning point for me; a goodbye to pain and trauma - but I have this absolute terror that I won't even make it on the trip. I somehow need to nullify this despair and emotional instability within five days. I need to no longer be on the brink of suicide by Sunday night.

Think of the good things. Grin and bear being around others until the agony of isolation subsides. In crisis seek those you love. I know all of these things but it's a challenge to say the very least to put them into practice whilst my mind and heart feel cast adrift in a vast ocean of emptiness.

I know that biting the bullet is the hardest part so I'm trying my best. I'm persevering with sixth form in spite of my hopelessness, in an effort to pass the time more than anything until France. Something has to inspire my hope and joy again. If I can make it, hopefully life will become less of a torturous experience and more a blessing, or at least a challenge I feel equipped to face.

I Mind

I'm growing horribly tired of either feeling too much or feeling nothing at all. It seems there is no comfortable medium, no bliss of relative contentment - only the agony or short-lived thrill of an extreme. The rapid and intense oscillations of temperament are persuading me to a point of exhaustion. 

Feeling nothing is unpleasant. It might not be painful, but it surely renders a sickening discomfort to the newly barren expanse of existing as a ghost. At times it almost seems as though feeling absolutely nothing at all is worse than feeling hurt. The chronic emptiness, the crippling loneliness... they are like a nausea which will not go away... I am washed out at sea, indolently rocked by the ocean's currents which keep me afloat but leaves me lost. I can somehow miss the interjection of pain amidst the vast, grey void. At least it reminds us that we are alive.

The lows are, understandably, pitiful. Once sunken into the dark, unfathomable depths it is seemingly impossible to drag oneself from the mire. You can fall unexpectedly too; in a moment a minor incident can throw you from the level terrain of comparative emotional stability into the rocky chasm of absolute turmoil. Worse still, the higher you fly, the deeper you plummet. The potential for subsequent despair jades even happiness with a sense of danger and trepidation. 

I don't think I'd be here however without the sporadic highs. Disorientating though they can be when the mania and hyperactivity is so intense that I feel I might be losing myself in the exhilarating whirlwind of my thoughts and actions, to be floating above one's surroundings in a strange yet delightful haze of delirium can be an oasis amidst an otherwise torturous existence. Who wouldn't want to feel happy? Even if the manic sentiments are purely superficial, an armour of glorious ecstasy enveloping and, ephemerally, eclipsing the internal anguish, they still feel better. I could describe it like being in a curious daydream you don't want to wake up from. Logic tells you it is all a figment of the imagination and will soon swiftly leave your mind in a potentially abrupt and frightening manner, a flurry of newborn starlings leaving their nest; but this knowledge does not necessarily hinder you from (foolishly) allowing yourself to be swept up in the romance of the euphoric sentiments. It truly is a crying shame that the good times all have to come to an end. More often than not I find they meet a miserable fate.

It isn't just the volatility which is draining, but the nature of my sensitivity and relation to others in terms of what has been described as a 'fatal sense of empathy.' I simply cannot stop feeling for other people. Blotting paper for the suffering of others, I can't help but absorb their pain on top of my own. I know that it is only detrimental for me given that it reliably sends me into self-destruct mode, but upon hearing that there is someone struggling or witnessing their decline I become dangerously pre-occupied, even if the anxieties go unspoken. It literally kills me. I can cry myself to sleep over someone who, though I've never met, I'm aware is in poor health; or spend hours ruminating, worrying myself sick over those poor girls I left behind in that horrible place. What am I supposed to do to stop seeing and feeling all this suffering? There is no way to expunge my thoughts of worry, nor my breaking heart of its pains for them. There is so much hurt everywhere; I just can't not notice it. I can't stop it from affecting me, more deeply than I can begin to describe. It is utterly impossible to detach my mind or heart from it: I cannot forget, I cannot forget, I simply cannot forget. 

In essence it isn't just that I've been through too much; it's that I've seen others go through too much and it still haunts me day and night. I mind that there are people out there in misery who I am powerless to help, and I mind to a damaging degree. Of course it is difficult for anyone to move on, but the past seems inescapable for me, as does the continuation of suffering which pervades the present. There is little solace from the perpetual grief - I am sad to say - and I'm not sure how to go about finding any, unless in the near future there were to be some technological advancements toward brain transplants which as it is I may well be morally wary about. Perhaps there is no answer. No escape from my woes. Is it possible for one's life to embody an eternal grief process? 

If I cannot turn off my mind the best thing I can do I suppose is to enrich my life with joy as oppose to allowing myself to succumb to the darkness within. I am endeavouring to look forward instead of back but it is far from easy when it truly is a day-to-day battle. Maybe I need to accept that I will always be emotionally fragile as a result of what has happened, and particularly susceptible to the stresses suffered by others as well as myself; I might never be able to move on. The best thing I can do for now is to live, in spite of it all. I will; for those I love and care for if not for myself. I have good experiences ahead of me if I can make it and - typically, as a testament to my rapidly fluctuating mood - I am determined to. I am going explore the wonders of this world with those most precious to me. I am going to embrace new discoveries and take joy in the positive memories I do have deep down. If only there was a way to erase the anterior areas of the brain which have been wounded by trauma and torment... perhaps my mind and spirit would be sanctuaries rather than cemeteries. 

The Beast

It's difficult to contemplate myself as human at times. There's something quite otherworldly about suffering from a severe mental illness; particularly one with the power to transfigure the individual to such a grievous extent, physically as well as psychologically. How can I see myself as Naomi when I am not that joyful, precocious child who saw wonder and curiosity in everything, relishing life's small pleasures without question, able to live and love and laugh? It has been so long since I knew her, simply her, without this coexistent presence. Longer than I can remember.

It has been suggested to me before that my illness is so entrenched due to some companionship that has been cultivated over its course. There is little capacity for companionship however between two entities so intertwined that they are indistinguishable from one another: for trying to discern the two independently would be as complex as the process of separating salt from sand. Neither one is the fundament, nor the complement; they simply are together, their amalgamation forming one. 

Thus I cannot define my illness as a friend, because I do not regard it as a separate presence. Even writing or talking about 'it' seems unnatural to me, though something I endeavour to employ in the light of objectifying my situation to those who may not otherwise be able to comprehend it.

If I was to address my condition as anything (with great difficulty) it would be as a seducer: whispering sweet nothings in my ear, persuading me toward self-destructive fulfilment with promises of contentment and pleasure and security. After an extended period of intense attachment with anything, even an abusive lover, it can begin to feel as though one cannot be without the other; for each is a vital component of the whole which could not otherwise function. My illness may have inflicted the gravest hurts imaginable to me and those I love, but realisation of this does not sever the bonds so ineradicably fixed that they are beyond means of perception. I lay with this beast day and night, though no longer out of choice. He has taken over me and through this strange act of coition we have moulded into one flesh. In manipulating me into this new creature he has ruthlessly robbed me of who i used to be.  

Freud believed that behind every act of pleasure lies a conflict with a subconscious drive toward self-destruction. Perhaps it would be deemed morbid to reflect on a secret desire within us all to destroy ourselves; but is this not the crux of many mental afflictions who render the sufferer with a debilitating disability - an inability to cope with life? Certainly, if i was to acknowledge a separate side of myself, its ultimate intention would be death. I can acknowledge that: it is out to kill me. It may sing sweetly of short-lived relief from the turbulence and frustrations of ordinary complications which obsession eclipses through the nature of its consumption - yet I know that evasion from life's difficulties can only be secured absolutely in the form of nothingness. That is what it wants from me: total annihilation. That is what I want from myself, or so it feels when I allow myself the ease of being blind to a separate presence of the possessor. The struggle comes with finding the life force beneath it all. When in the throes of despair it is totally extinguished by the desperation to escape life completely. Everything has become so complex - too complex - for me to discern where my true ambitions lie, and where they are distorted by some ulterior motive. Of course there are times, predominantly during manic episodes, when I can accept, or even embrace the wonder of life: but beneath the thrilling hysteria of it all I am never without this subliminal force resenting and fighting back at every will to live. 

I have so much to look forward to, but it's impossible at times to see ahead past the next hour when every minute feels a torturous battle I would rather not fight. There are opportunities coming up which I desperately want to enjoy but I fear them when the power of the beast is growing stronger by the day. I am desperate to be positive but I feel alone. I'm not sure that anyone can fully comprehend how much of a struggle everything is. My morning routine is a predictable one: I drag myself out of bed and put on my mask, which few have the misfortune of seeing fall. There are times during which my facade of coping is obliterated by the intensity of rage or fear or misery which can overwhelm me in an instant; but in most situations it fools everyone surprisingly well considering that I had always thought my skills as an actress decidedly poor. Perhaps it's a positive practice, to put on a social front, in the hope that one day it would not be a no longer be a glamorised misrepresentation of the internal. Maybe one day pretending will turn into believing. I don't want to live like this though - it's exhausting, to keep this beast caged behind bars whilst I attempt to function like any other person, going about day-to-day activities when behind the stage curtains there is a monstrous creature raging. I want to be without it, desperately, but I no longer know how to be rid of something which is not part of me; it is me.

I'm not here for myself in the slightest: I am here for everyone else. I would say that one day I hope that I can truly live for myself as oppose to for those I love, but I have such difficulty in accepting myself that I'm not sure how I could ever do such a thing. I hate myself, completely and utterly. How could I not want to hate myself? Hate fuels hate, therefore I hate myself for hating myself, to such an extent that I hate myself even more. 'Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.' It's one thing to change an action, but to change a prejudice, a mindset, is a completely different matter. I'm not sure how to undo the hate, when it has literally endured for nearly as long as my earliest memories - I'm not quite sure how to go about this curious activity of 'loving' myself.

If, for now, it takes coexistence with this demon, who trips me each time I look in the mirror, haunts me in my sleep, screams at me each moment that I am awake, then that is what I can only attempt to survive. I don't visualise recovery as ever possible for myself, that is a certainty, unfortunately. However, even as I write a fresh determination to achieve what I want to in spite of it is growing. I am going to Paris with my best friend in July. I am going to enjoy my summer with friends and family. I am going to get through my A levels and go to university. I must hold onto these things with any strength I have left. It's such a shame that positivity and hope is a comparatively transient creature, a butterfly at risk of being crushed in the beak of the cruel raven who tears through the sky without grace of warning. 

Dust in the Wind

I've been thinking a lot lately. Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely circumstantial - reflection can have its uses in times of difficulty; though in excess, particularly when one has a tendency to slip into a dangerous spiral of introversion and over-analysis it can be an ultimately self-destructive process. The trouble is that the thoughts won't actually stop. Isolation is an unpleasant by-product but also a catalyst in the vicious circle that thinking can become. Perhaps it would be better to be caught up in the rat-race, busying myself with the trivialities which others regard as priorities without time to think or feel. Tragically I've already dipped below the surface. It's an effort not to sink any lower when there doesn't seem anything substantial to hold onto to prevent me from drowning altogether.

There are good things in my life at the moment it has to be said, but then again in my experience 'good' equates to feelings of intense insecurity. I refuse to allow myself to decline into some self-indulgent, misery-ridden prose as in my previous entry but I cannot deny my absolute pessimism. Natural is it not, for one to fear subsequent tragedy after every triumph when thus far it consistently appears to be the formula of events? I am incapable of accepting anything good-natured given the inevitability of subsequent disappointment. 

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet...

...Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

So goes Heaney's poem 'Blackberry Picking', a verse singing of bittersweet childhood memories. Nature dictates that everything born must ultimately die - are you telling me that this evolutionary practice should not be perceived as a reason for distress? It's not even physical death itself that bothers me. It's the in-between: the mortality of pleasure versus the permanence of suffering; the transience of hope versus the prevalence of fear; the short-lived nature of joy versus the misery which faithfully follows. Believe me, I resent myself immensely for being able to think in such a way, for in light of my inclination to take everything to the extreme, if I can I must; if I cannot I will not at all. In essence therefore, my default mentality is one that sees too much, knows too much - beholder of the dire and excruciatingly profound I cannot stop contemplating all this pain. Sometimes it gets to the point that I absorb so much grief that there is physically no vacancy for consideration of positivity in the heavy-laden vessel within my skull, nor in that throbbing organ burdened with such severity at times its wrecked convulsions may shake the surrounding cathedral of bone. It takes great skill to forget or at least ignore; I am yet to accomplish it. 

Time, experience and admittedly the wisdom of my highly quotable mother tell me that repeating the same actions will only produce the same results, and it would be foolish to consider otherwise. Therefore, I know it, I truly do: I need to change my thinking. How does one go about such an uncomfortable project? How can I let go of what has been and gone? How can I detach myself from the anguish of the present? And how can I overcome such an intense apprehension of the future?

I hate the things that have happened to me and those I love. I've been hurt, and gravely hurt by misfortune and abuse - yet I take the anger and sorrow unto myself as oppose to my oppressors, or the unkind forces responsible. The horror of the traumas I have suffered can come in unexpected seismic waves inducing nausea and panic; though, forgiving any impression of self-pity I may have inadvertently just made, it has to be said that it's the suffering of others that has caused greater devastation. It truly sickens me to think of the indescribable distress which I have witnessed and which may well continue to persist indefinitely. Violation.

I neither understand the justice of the present, for the reasons most recently expressed. It seems never-ending. The present is, quite plainly, a product of what has been - so if unalterable inflictions have occurred in the past, then their contemporary embodiment is unlikely to be anything different. Where is the peripetia? At which point do circumstances change and joy suddenly and miraculously arise? What transitional landmark is there to indicate the difference between our histories and the immediate and do we have any power whatsoever in-between to secure a comfortable reality? The enigma of it all is utterly terrifying to me, in particular the sense that we are so lost and helpless within it all.

If I do not feel in control of creating the present there is no way I could ever deserve a feeling of security toward the future. In advance none need be disturbed if this narrative were to take on a rather morbid tone - my musings are burrowing deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of my mind and readers are under no obligation to pursue the winding course of this rapidly unravelling thread. Simply, I cannot foresee a distant future for myself sometimes. There has been so much that has already happened, and I can't quite comprehend what's next, where I go from here. I've done too much too young, more than most would experience in their lifetime - surely this roller-coaster of trauma and pain, (but also episodes of extraordinary joy to a point of delirium) cannot continue for years and years to come? No human on earth could endure it. The most logical conclusion to be drawn from this therefore would be that an end would be imminent. Unless the intense cluster of drama settles to a tolerable plateau and I am somehow able to move on from the past and simply live on. This only confounds my terror of what is to come, for I simply cannot imagine how 'living' in the context of everything that has happened is a possibility. I'm not sure I'd want it to be. I don't want to live with what has happened. It's too much to bear. Perhaps that is why I struggle to live at all. 

As per usual (ie: always) I have taken this far, far too far. This is why I scare myself. I don't feel the same as everyone else.  Superciliousness is the last of my intentions as I attempt to explain the inexplicable so forgive any inadvertent suggestion of such; but I feel like I know and feel too much to function like any other person. Survival doesn't seem compatible with this 'other' psychological dimension I seem to be cursed with - and I do hope that I have adequately portrayed the message that this curious intellectualism or agonizingly-analytical mindset (or whatever term to use to describe my thought processes) is rarely a blessing from the perspective of the individual experiencing it. None of this will make any sense, I am perfectly aware of it, because there is no doubt that my audience will not be companions in this dimension... But it's as though my otherworldly sentiments are holding me back from ever, ever getting better. 

It's high time to obliterate this level of consciousness with copious quantities of nicotine. I have over-thought and I'll continue to over-think unless I accept the reality that I have the mind that I do and unless brain transplants for the psychologically unstable become a regular component of clinical practice anytime soon - an opportunity that, though I would love to accept given the torment I am under reminds me a bit too much of the mental 'conditioning' through torture used in Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange' and therefore would have numerous moral qualms toward - there is little I can do about my situation. Of course it's a shame that it's only socially-acceptable substance use which will ground me, but nothing else can lower the volume on my brain's incessant introspections as plum-flavoured tobacco and blackberry rizlas.