D.I.D

I had yet another thrilling telephone conversation with my mother the other day--She calls me out of obligation, I imagine, to make sure I'm still alive. Keeping tabs on her offspring I guess..She prefers to keep the phone calls short and general unless my tone is more morose than usual , as it is. I am so stressed out and I can't focus and I have so many assignments coming up. I have a sense of true despair and I swear if I were even able to anymore, I would have just spent the whole day choking back tears. But apparently, according to mother, I'm an emotional cripple.

Not only did she deride my time management skills, but, knowing how overwhelmed I am, she continued to press me for what sort of idea I've come up with for what I'm going to do next year. She keeps suggesting I go to school and study something else before doing my English MA. I wonder how I'm supposed to afford all this education and still survive as well as keeping hold on the ever weakening cord tying together my body and mind. I feel rather unhinged these days, but I really don't want to go back on any pills They make me sick and depressed (more so--because I don't like the idea of having to take something to appear normal)...Incidentally, I've not managed to get any work done at all, despite a 4 hr stint in the library today. I feel incredibly stupid, incompetent and very empty.

My mother likes to use herself as an example of how collected someone can be, how things always work out. She told me I was young and pretty and should get myself out there. I was cruel and told her I wasn't like her--she's gone through quite a few boyfriends since finally kicking out the psychopath I'm embarrassed to call father (apparently, according to a source, he's started drinking heavily, which is probably the only reason I haven't got more psycho death threats). When I told her I've never been into dating and that I have a real problem with trust and physicality (when I was little, I was one of those flinching, "I don't like to be touched" children who got permission to stay in and read at recess rather than engage in messy sports), she reacted more strongly to this, than when I told her I might just be suffering a total mental breakdown and I thought I'd die any time now--the woman cares, apparently. She got all huffy and said something along the lines of --in a really incredulous, snide way, "So you want to be alone forever?!"...'Mother' can't understand, that unlike her, I don't need someone else to complete me...I feel far to rent apart already from my personal stuff and I really don't feel up to sharing this information with someone who expects things from me. It makes me ill. But then everything does. Mother suggested I was in love with my sadness and was quite pathetic. I told her not to quote Pumpkins lyrics and I wouldn't reprimand her for her poor choice in men and her idiocy in the case of her ill-fated marriage.

She somehow thinks my unwillingness to date comes from a really shallow place and that I must have high expectations--which is ridiculous considering the only people I've ever dated turned out to be incredibly well-intentioned, understanding, sweet people, but with serious substance/alcohol abuse/mental/criminal problems. I don't think I carry high expectations. maybe that's my problem. Hurrah for low self-esteems and reluctant co-dependence. At least I'm not in search of a prop to help me along. That would be cruel. If someone "nice" expresses interest, it's terrifying because they couldn't possibly get a lot of my issues--there are many--I am bad luck--every one I know, everything I touch seems to rot. All my friends have been in and out of hospitals this year. One of them overdosed repeatedly on sleeping pills. Going home is nothing but depression and subsequently, a lot of hours alone, watching television until 5am, as none of the people from home are healthy enough to do things with me. It's either idleness alone or drinking with acquaintances over a bar with really loud music to limit conversation. I can handle it. Spackle on some makeup. Make myself smile for once. pretend I enjoy people. etcetera. Makes me can't wait for christmas.

I have a headache. It's terrible. I hope I don't die but I really don't feel alive

Even Now

I think we live in a culture of shame and guilt. These two are the only tangible sentiments people really instill on their children. Everything everywhere is constantly criticized. If it's not being criticized outwardly by someone else, you're doing it to yourself, making awfully sure to self-edit and censor your actual feelings because you know nothing in this life can be kept secret for more than a few moments. Treasure those moments while they're happening, because in an hour or so, at least in my experience, the self-criticism comes to torment me and I experience an enormous, unbearable urge to leave where I am and run home to proceed to dwell on every sentence uttered, every possibly obnoxious look, strange posture or uncomfortable silence. I hate that I am this way and I know I 'm not alone in mental mind fucking, but I think I may be a more extreme case.

Speaking of minds, mine feels a little clogged these days. Each hour seems more uninspired than the next and I don't feel as though I can actually function in society anymore (and I was making such an effort for awhile). There's nothing to say that hasn't been said. There's little to do that hasn't been done (for a poor student that is). I know what there is to look forward to and I want none of it. I'm not exactly saying i'd like to die (it's a thought that has thankfully, terrified me of late), it's just that I'm not so sure I'd like to live, which leads me to question whether I really know what that means, since I do appear to have grasped the concept of breathing. Inoutinout and all that. Yay for me.

I wake up constantly in the night. All week I've had nightmares. I've barely slept. This is not unusual, but I think I prefer my blank dreams where all I see is black. I feel a sense of foreboding and I don't feel very healthy. I shut my eyes and my sleep feels too heavy and 2 minutes into shut-eye, I sit up so fast, terrifed that my heart has shut down and that a quick jolt is all it needs, walk around the room, check for intruders (a mirror hanging on the door is not a wise move for the paranoiac)...Settle into bed again. Take a tylenol. Close my eyes. Sleep for 10 minutes and repeat until daylight. I usually sleep uninterruptedly from 6-830 AM at which point my alarm goes off and I get terrified that I was supposed to have set it earlier because there's so much I put off doing the night before and there's never anytime for anything or anyone and I hate that. I hate that.

I hate that I refuse to allow myself meaningful connections with people. I can only socialize when I have a drink (and I, even then, end up hating the things I do, how I look, how I feel, so I get another one and just try to be the fun, interesting person at the bloody party--that's how it always is and I don't see a way out). It's not that I drink often, but when I do, I drink a lot, and that's what people remember, because I'm actually existing outside of my personal space. It's the only time I ever really talk and have things I feel like saying.

2 people in my life want me to take the year off next year and check myself in to a place I don't quite feel like mentioning here, and I realize they care (although I have my doubts--it may just be the only thing that hasn't been tried, a convenient solution to my messy mind) but I can't actually foresee improvement in my current state. Everything culminates. Everything in my whole goddamned life has culminated to this moment, now, where i feel horrible and am using this blog as a means to avoid doing other, unhealthier things. I forget nothing. I repress nothing. It's all on the surface and I've become so ashamed of it, so guilty for seeing it in myself when I wake up, that I can't leave the house until it's been conveniently tucked away in a backpocket or other.

And so here we are with all our wisdom and our headaches and weight and loneliness and lies and denial and repression and disgust and moments of wanting to act on impulse so so badly. Here we are, alone with our current standard of living and looking at life in the third person. It makes me very sad that even now, I can never say the things I want to say.