joy and thunder

No dumb-ass dove in my dumb-ass brain.

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:59:43 GMT

There has to be a reason why I keep doing this to myself.

Does there have to be a reason why I keep doing this to myself?

I've run out of forward momentum, but everything I'd been pulling behind me so easily has inertia on its side.

Ouf.

But I'll burn my bridges when and if I come to them, and tonight I'll sleep.

Can't say fairer than that.

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:17:09 GMT

Where does the rest of you go...?

Where, indeed?

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:24:52 GMT

24

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:00:17 GMT

turn the light out, say good night
no thinking for a little while
listen, I'm trying to figure out everything at once
it's hard to keep track of you
falling through the sky
we're half awake in a fake empire

like the deserts miss the rain

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:45:46 GMT

Three years, 25 days and 23 hours later, and I still can't think about it too deeply.

And I still wonder if I'll ever have those parts of myself back, or anything like them at all.

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:07:48 GMT

Depression is an insidious creature, not least because it creates in the sufferer the belief that things will not get better.

Once it has passed, it's tempting to think (hope?) that things will not get worse. I wonder if this is perhaps even more damaging than the former state of mind. It's only in fairy tales that foes are vanquished once and for all, never to return. Relapse, backsliding, only serves to reinforce the belief that things will not get better.

Maybe things will get better, maybe they won't. They probably will. Creating an expectation that they will is unwise.

Even if they don't (and they will), I will remember that I was happy not so long ago. Unambiguously and for months at a time. It's not impossible and I remember what it was like.

Maybe things will get better, maybe they won't. In the meantime I'll stand up at the beginning of each day and lie down at the end.

days like these

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:59:06 GMT

The theory is that going through the motions is better than ... not.

I'm not sure what makes it better.

that's what it's all about

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:29:56 GMT

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

sick

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:19:45 GMT

I don't have any appetite, just a series of habits and cravings.

When I go for most of a day without speaking to anybody, I find I can usually still make the words I want come out of my mouth. On a normal day, though, I use the wrong preposition or a completely unrelated noun. I stammer, I stick together halves of words to make new ones that don't make sense. I lose track of what I'm saying and forget what I've said.

It takes me longer than usual to work out what people are saying and why they're
saying it. Paranoia is worse, unlikely though that seems; my first reaction to many things and people seems to be suspicion and fear. I find that most of the time I don't have any desire to see people, and when I do my emotional responses are mostly missing or strange.

I'm tired, all the time. Resting doesn't seem to be causing any improvement, so I'll have to try to find the energy to try something else.

I suppose this is where I need to throw everything I have at it. If that doesn't work, then comes finding more things to throw.

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:44:39 GMT

My parents are growing older and my family is growing further apart.

If I don't tell anybody what I think or feel, I'm the only person who knows. Maybe that's why I want to tell people things, and why lately I haven't wanted to.

Riding the waves and rolling with the punches.

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:50:09 GMT

I am feeling very sad about a number of things. I'm not really sure what I can do about any of them at the moment.

This, too.

unstuck in time

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:17:25 GMT

I always get strange and sentimental when anniversaries come around. I wonder what will happen when I've lived for a bit longer and filled up more of the year with significant dates.

Sometimes a thing gets broke, can't be fixed.

Rain will make the flowers grow.

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:43:15 GMT

Strange days.

I could say I've been spending this year finding pieces of myself that I never knew were missing; I could say I've grown into myself enough to begin to learn to move around.

I could say that it's just like breathing in.

I don't know where I'm going, and I'm not even trying to decide if that bothers me.

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:38:29 GMT

I used to miss the good things a lot, but I don't now. They're in the past, where they belong.

Lately I've started to really miss some of the bad things. I think it might be because they proved just how important it all was to me.

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:41:43 GMT

Dreams are odd.

After a dream I had last night, I realised that someone I rarely see and barely know has somehow come to symbolise some significant things.

It's odd.

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 07:35:40 GMT

Sometimes I feel like I made a bad decision, several years ago, and now it's too late.

In some ways it's never too late, of course, although it's always too late to change the past.

To change course now, though, I would have to change almost everything. I'm not prepared to do that.

It gets difficult, sometimes.

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:52:03 GMT

Each day I think about the things I would like to do before that day is over. Recently I haven't been able to do all of the things every day. If I miss doing something, the next day I think about doing it again.

I've been getting things done.

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 03:21:52 GMT

I've been trying not to write about things, or trying not to mind that I haven't been able to write about things. In the absence of writing and of any of the sensible behaviour I should be demanding from myself it's been too easy to get all twisted up inside myself.

If I don't try to explain things once in a while, even to myself, I start to grow comfortable with thoughts that don't make sense. By forcing them out of their usual indistinct state and into words, I usually find a better handle on what I'm actually thinking.

***

There's never a lot that comes out of June, but there's always so much that goes into it. Of all the months of the year it has the strongest vacuum. The gap between the surface and what lies beneath grows far larger than I'd like it to.

Perhaps the hardest thing to deal with is the empathy overload that comes along for the ride. Whether the things I pick up on are real or imagined, it becomes difficult to walk down the street when the joys and disappoinments of strangers are constantly hammering me in the face. Whenever I'm feeling off-kilter I find it hard to cope with this sort of thing; it's usually at its worst in June.

Withdrawing in self-defence seems like all I can do sometimes, but the layer that's emotionally blank just traps all the gunk where I can't see it. It makes things worse.

Yesterday I took all my jumpy paranoia and tension on the road a couple of times, and while the journeys themselves were somewhat fraught the destinations more than made up for that. Being able to relax into situations where I didn't feel at home may have given me the boost I needed to sit down and work on what I've got where I do feel at home. We'll see.

There's a common thread that I see wherever I look. I know that there are things I "should" be doing, and I won't get anywhere until they're done. I get stuck, though, and I don't want to do them, and so I get stuck in avoidant and destructive loops until I'm so thoroughly sick of myself that I break through somehow.

***

Somehow, without writing about any of the things that are bothering me, I feel as though I've drawn a line in the sand and dared them to step over it.

Sun, 28 May 2006 13:14:21 GMT

I just don't know.

I'm trying to accept that I don't need to know. It's difficult.

I think an elephant may be materialising in the room.

I cross some bridges before I come to them, but when I come to others I balk altogether.

I think too much.

Mon, 22 May 2006 09:49:32 GMT

"Tell me what makes you happy," he said, and I had so many answers I didn't know what to say.

Fri, 19 May 2006 09:53:27 GMT

Four years today, although that has no meaning for anyone but me.

Postmodernism, multi-tasking and mania sometimes seem to form an inextricable tangle.

In the winter I love this city so much it hurts.

the times, they are a-changin'

Sun, 14 May 2006 15:26:43 GMT

I've been living too close to the surface to write about it.

prologue

A few months ago I got a feeling. My rational mind was at great pains to point out to me how wrong I had to be, with its great long list of reasons and undeniable logic. For a while I almost believed it, but in the end I couldn't talk myself out of feeling the way I did. I shut my eyes and fell into it.

A few weeks ago, I was struck by what felt like a wall of disappointment. At first I couldn't tell where it had come from, but eventually I found that I had given up on that feeling without even noticing. It always does take my head a little while to catch up with my heart, which can be quite disorienting until I figure it out.

no story

After a few days I realised something. All my hopes that had been lifted and then dashed, all of the things I had been wondering about, had almost nothing to do with my life. I had been trying to tell myself stories about the present and the future, and somehow enact those stories with my oblique, cantankerous wanderings - an impossible task.

There's nothing quite like realising that all of your woes are irrelevant, and what seemed like the end of a chapter was actually just a day in the life.

Slowly, very slowly, I'm learning to enjoy watching things unfolding as they will. Instead of being disappointed by the failure of reality to mirror dreams, or even trying to make it follow their leads, I'm letting dreams take their cues from reality. The feeling I had is back, but different; less expectation, more wonder.

The best part about not knowing the story is having no idea of what comes next.

epilogue

After fourteen years or so spent being wound up tighter and tighter, I have suddenly started to turn the other way. It's only as I unwind that I realise just how much tension I had been carrying around with me.

The change hasn't been as sudden as I think. Now, though, no matter how minutely I inspect my day-to-day motivations and reactions I struggle to find anything that feels out of place. I am so used to having to push parts of myself aside and try to ignore them, with all the instability that brings, that it's disconcerting to feel so steady on my feet.

I'm enjoying every moment of it.

the end

This evening I phoned my mother and talked for a while. Now I feel exhausted and a bit sad. It was a pleasant chat, devoid of animosity or resentment, but history adds such weight and stress to the most innocuous family interactions that I wish I could avoid them altogether. Having set myself to building better relationships with my family, I have no choice but to keep on shoving my hand into the fire and hope that eventually it hurts less.

I am beginning to escape the shackles of things that happened four years ago. It is renewing my faith in the impossible.

changes

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 22:28:53 GMT

There's a lovely person I won't run into on the train home any more, and there's a cat who won't curl up and keep me warm while I fall asleep.

There's a disappointment growing in my heart again, although I can never tell if it will last. Some days I can't believe I ever thought I might be right, but a day ago I couldn't believe I ever thought I might be wrong.

There are lots of things I couldn't start until certain other things were done (until I stepped past the vanishing point, in fact). Now I'm most of the way through, and there's a fairly hefty mental shift involved in getting into gear and actually starting them. They have been not-yet dreams for so long that it's hard to adjust to being able to turn them into goals.

There's lots that is different. Most of it is wonderful, and the rest is good in a different way.

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 01:52:04 GMT

Yesterday I went for a wonderful walk that made me late to where I was going.

Today I will pack up the last of my things and take them to my new place.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day.

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 11:05:35 GMT

I have been packing up my belongings and getting ready to move. I have found many things that make me feel sad about things that have passed and things that will never be. There have also been things that make me feel happy, but they have not been surprises. It's the sad things that I only ever come across by chance.

Sometimes I think about throwing away all the things I keep for their sentimental value. I wonder if I am just trying to avoid being reminded of things that usually don't come to mind. On one hand I have running away; on the other, letting things weigh me down and hold me back.