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.