Hic...hic...

It's almost four in the morning and I don't feel like sleeping. I don't want to give up my time alone in the living room with no kids or phone calls to bother me. I tried to get myself drunk, infuse my mind with unrestricted creativity. Now I just have the hiccups and the need to pee. Fuck it.

Silence

Sometimes I need to quiet my mind and quit talking to myself. My head is clearing, I'm getting things done, cleaning and all that nonsense. Domestic shit. I'm also thinking about writing something that isn't so trite/whiny/self-centered. I don't know what and I don't want to force it, but I feel a need for something specific and creative to concentrate on. When I'm creating, pouring myself into something, I have something to look forward to. When I am endlessly perusing Facebook and see the same shit over and over, the same cutesy inspirational quotes, the same politics on both sides bashing each other, everything starts to feel a little pointless. Nothing seems real. As if no one has actual thoughts anymore, they're all swallowing and regurgitating the same information. It's all a little false. It's where all of my friends and family are (I do not have the convenience of living close to or seeing most of my friends in person anymore), so I still gravitate to Facebook daily. But maybe some time away. Get some perspective. There is this real world around me.

Thoughts

I should not be allowed online whilst drunk. That is all.

Almost nothing

Oh, I give up. Fuck. I have no words. Not really. I'll try to describe this but I don't know why I'm bothering. Maybe I'm keeping track of my thoughts so I can tell the doctor. But the doctor won't want to hear all this, they'll just ask me questions and give me a fucking prescription. I'll just write this for me, then.

I feel an almost-nothing. I don't like to feel emotionless, but a full-on nothing would be better than what I've got now. It's a numb lined with frustration tinged with sadness and pent up rage. And a hopelessness. I'm a dumb pathetic creature sometimes and I hate it. I want to rip things apart. I want to sleep. I want to get in my car and drive. Throw away my cell phone and computer. Cut off contact with the world. Live in a cave. I'm not doing any of those things, though. Instead, I'm curled up in bed feeling miserable and blogging from my phone. The end.

Oh, the dreadful wind and rain

Okay, you beautiful Spitnoodle, I know I said I'd found another but I just can't resist you, my lovely.

Like I said yesterday, I woke up with a feeling of dread. It never went away. I carried it with me all day yesterday, waiting for the worst. I took it to bed with me and let it invade my dreams (I had a very hazy dream about working for a hotel/bookstore and my employer hating all my ideas, and a girl asked me to come to WA with her for New Years). I felt this tense waiting when I woke up and got the kids off to school. Went back to bed and the wind made it sound as if the house is about to cave in, which is fitting, as it feels like the world is about to cave in.

Alien me

So tired. I feel like I'm on another planet. There's a slight shift in everything, enough that the world seems foreign now. Things are not quite right. Everything is awkward and strange and wrong. It's like I'm Sam from Quantum Leap. I've jumped into this body, into this life and I'm only pretending to know what I'm doing or why I'm here. Hoping next time...will be the leap home. Pshhhh, whatever that means, I just really like Quantum Leap. ;)

I felt so great yesterday, but I stupidly drank a pot and a half of coffee in the afternoon and evening. So subsequently, I barely slept. I had a dread feeling before going to sleep and then the same after waking up. No dreams. None that I can remember. Damn. Hoping for some good ones tonight. I'm watching Delicatessen, and it's shaping up to be a very strange and (hopefully) wild dream-inducing movie.

Good day. Good ideas.

Feel amazing today. Had loads of very vivid and fascinating dreams last night and now I've got the idea that I'd like to learn to draw or paint so I can make a dream book or stories or poems based on my dreams complete with illustrations by me (that felt like a run-on sentence...oh, well, fuck it). I thought maybe I'd never be able to learn to draw, I'm so horrible at it, but a couple people recommended a book (very highly) to help me learn. I will try it out, and if said book helps, I will write a post about it.

I'm so excited about this idea, I don't care how silly it sounds. I have a strange preoccupation with dreams. I don't care if they're the feel-good sort or nightmares (I have and recall plenty of both, normally a few per night), I love them all. It seems like the more vivid my dreams are, the better and more creative I feel the day(s) after. It's like it all comes in waves or cycles. But anyways, I've always had that wish that I could record my dreams and replay them for myself and other people after I wake up. The closest way to do this (that is reasonably within my power to do) is to write it out, either in story form or poetry or both, and illustrate it with the same emotion from my dreams. I know I can do this.

Wow, I have more energy than I can believe today. I get these days where I wake up and I just feel super creative and happy, like I can do anything. I look back over my old posts and can't understand how I ever felt so down. I know it's going to happen again, but I'm going to take advantage of this good day and write as much non-whiny bullshit as possible. :)

Enough

I've started posting my personal whatnot somewhere else, where I can pour it all out and not censor it for my family (who I know can see this, I just sort of stopped caring). Not that I've been censoring much, but I still have things I need to get out in writing or I will burst. Hopefully I will start posting here again soon, when my head is free of ghosts.

Bad.

Same SHIT, same SHIT, same SHIT. I feel like nothing, I can't control my irritated reactions to everything going on around me. I don't want to do this anymore. I am fine and then I'm suddenly really not fucking fine. If I was alone, I could cry. I can't cry around anyone. I cried on my drive home from work. I cried in the bathroom. It's all I feel like doing. I just want to let myself feel something, but when I get the chance, it's always shit. I'm terrible to everyone around me. It's pure hell trying so hard to keep this under control around my kids when I want to scream and cry and I don't even know, I just can't handle living like this. I'm waiting on my boyfriend to run out and get some whiskey so I can just quiet my brain and relax. I can't fucking do this, I just want to hide. I don't want to talk to someone who is just going to wonder when in the hell I'm going to stop talking and crying and making them uncomfortable. Or someone who will tell me I just need to get out more and get more exercise. Fuck that. FUCK. THAT. I need realness, and there is almost none of that left in my world. Everything is just superficial bullshit and complaining and shouting. My soul is a train wreck. What the fuck am I even talking about. My head is so full of nonsense right now. Merry Fucking Christmas.

A Tuesday

"Give me one more medicated peaceful moment...I don't want to feel this overwhelming hostility..."

Today was almost beautiful. I woke up during an amazing dream, the kind that leaves you feeling just nice all morning and, if you're lucky, that feeling bleeds into the afternoon and evening. I had a quiet empty house and so I read. I felt optimistic. Or, what's the word... transcendent? I don't know if that's quite right. To put it plainly, I felt GOOD.

I've been eating better (and less, as my appetite has been mostly gone for the past month or so), and when I weighed myself I was down five pounds. This meant something great to me. I was uplifted. I was happy with me.

I don't want this to be my Depression Blog. Really, I want to be interesting and fun like I seem to remember being. But this doesn't feel like me anymore. This goodness is always short lived lately, as it was today. It's like a switch in my brain that flips. Eventually I pass my image in the mirror and see someone else. Someone not as good. I don't live up to my own standards. I'm not talking about my outward appearance. I accept that I'm not physically perfect, no one is. That's nothing to me. I can see the change in my eyes, in the way I look back at myself. I lose my shine.

I'm angry with myself. I don't want to talk with anyone about this, I just want someone to understand, to just know. Stop so much with the well meaning advice. I'm angry that everyone else is living their meaningful lives and I can't find the meaning in mine anymore. The uglier and stupider I feel, the more brilliant and beautiful everyone else seems. The gap between myself and the rest of the world keeps widening and there's nothing I can do.

That's all. My highs are more exhilarating and my lows are ever deepening. I'm going to write something of meaning here soon. I swear. Until then...I'm so sorry.

Optimism on my night alone.

I need to find me. Somewhere along the line, in the last ten years or more, I've lost almost everything I used to be, everything I liked about myself. I suppose this happens to people as they grow older, take on adult responsibilities. I'm a mom, I have to be mommish. Pshhh. Whatever.

I don't know if these problems I have with depression would have overtaken me no matter what, or if they appeared due to life changes (divorce, having kids, moving away from every friend I had, moving again, and again, and again). But I want to think about something other than the workings of my brain. I am going to see a doctor sometime after Christmas and hopefully I can be properly medicated. I want to move on from this shit, I'm tired of it. I want to live, have adventures, be me again. I don't want to be forced to take on a role that I hate, or allow others to make me into someone that I don't want to be. Fuck it. I will do what I want.

First thing: make more time to be alone, while losing all this fucking weight. I will start jogging or some shit, I don't know. I will be Me Independent. In touch with my own mind while not being distracted by others. I don't need anyone else around for me to feel like me. I need the opposite. I need freedom and to do things for myself without feeling guilty. The freedom of not having to stick around listening to people being miserable assholes. To not allow myself to feel guilty for my feelings. I can't let that shit get to me, I have my own whatnot to work on.

I think I may have just made a New Year's resolution. Only I can't call it that, or I will fuck it up immediately.

Continuing story of Being Down

This shit. Ugh. I'm sick of this coldness. Indoors is no better than the icy drizzle outside. I can't write the things I want to. I can't feel the things I want to. I get moments of unbearably intense emotion, love, sadness, anger, whatever. But that never lasts long. My days are peppered with these short bursts of emotion (if I'm lucky) and the rest is just blank irritation. At work today, it was mostly an almost pleasant indifference. Once I'm home, it quickly turns to an anxious boredom. I need something I don't have. Usually I interpret that as hunger and eat. This explains my weight. I'm doomed.

People

As small as the world seems sometimes, dull and pointless as things tend to get, there's a thought I come back to when I feel hopeless. All these flat characters around me, they are more. They all hide a cosmos in their minds. They all have dark corners. There is always something interesting, something secret and usually defining. Sacred even. If I look at these people, boring and shallow on the surface, and remember that they must have a depth, that fullness of self that they reserve for different times, people, or even just themselves...when I remind myself of this, I feel a little more whole. Connected. The masses aren't the vacant blobs of flesh as they appear. They are shiny pinpricks of brilliance in disguise. They are real. I am real. I stop rolling my eyes at their acts and begin to wonder what's happening a few layers down.

Thanksgiving

Sometimes I just wish my holidays could be spent drinking and eating mashed potatoes and watching horror movies at home. Not that I don't like spending time with family.  But this Thanksgiving feels different. I can't seem to get into it today. I don't want to be anywhere. I want to go back to sleep. Or get drunk and write bad poetry. Or curl up with some coffee by myself and read. With no one talking to me or asking me if I'm okay or wanting me to do something for them.

I'm sitting in the bedroom of my boyfriend's mom's house waiting for my turn to take a shower. Then I will go downstairs, be the fattest person in the house, be ultra self conscious while I'm eating, get a stomach ache from the anxiety, then drive the two hours home. Repeat every year.

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving.

More of the same.

I've been like this all day. Terrible. No sense of humor about anything. All outside stimuli too irritating for words. I have the urge to throw, smash, scream. I'm vaguely nauseated. I'm cold. I know I'm not sick, it's just really fucking cold out today and I've had too much coffee and not much to eat. I feel ugly. Stupid. Worthless. The madder I get, the stupider I feel, and the stupider I feel, the madder I get. I'm trying not to show how bad I'm feeling to the kids. Everything my daughter does makes me want to scream, though.

I have things to look forward to. Why do I feel like this?? It's not FUCKING FAIR. I can't cry because it would confuse or upset the kids. I need something but I don't know what. I don't want anything specific. Not even a drink. Maybe a cigarette, I don't know. I haven't smoked in 6 years, but a well timed cigarette always used to help me before. I'd slip outside by myself, look at the sky, smoke and think dark thoughts. Daydream. I was escaping.

Test

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Blah blah blah. I have a new phone. New blogger app. Just wondering if it actually works or if all the terrible reviews were right. I repeat. This is only a test.

Stupid Parents

I've been reading through comments on a parenting site regarding the "ridiculously high" expectations placed on kindergartners nowadays. The interesting thing is, every parent that complained that their kindergartner was under too much pressure at school made comments that were riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. The parents who believed that the expectations were fair and that sounded as if they spend a lot of time working with their child at home, they not only provided lots of helpful information about activities and websites that can improve a child's reading skills, they also had comments that were free of errors.

Coincidence? I think not.

Back to "How am I not myself?"

Yeah, I've talked about this before. I've had feelings that I am not myself. That I am playing the part in a movie that is not my life, sometimes that I'm watching someone that is not me playing a part in a movie that is not my life. But it is my life. And I like my life. It's frustrating and confusing.

I know I shouldn't be doing this. Self-diagnosing on the internet is always stupid. I keep googling mental symptoms in hopes that I can figure out what it is that's wrong with me. I have no idea what good labeling it will do, without seeing a doctor and possibly getting medication. I thought maybe I'd solve the mystery and feel some sort of...I don't know, this is stupid.

These are things I really don't like writing down. I hate seeing them and I hate that other people can see them, but I need that at the same time. It's either I tell my blog or I tell a doctor. Well, the blog is free...and not as intimidating.

So anyway, I googled my symptoms. Which are the following:

• Fatigue
• Cloudy/hazy/fuzzy thinking.
• Periods of time when I feel nothing at all, and that nothing at all matters. Everything is pointless.
• I lapse into vivid daydreams, yet can distinguish fantasy from reality. These daydreams sometimes feel so real that I am unaware of what is going on around me. I laugh or mouth words at times (but only when I am alone). Sometimes I shake myself out of it and I'm crying. This normally happens while alone in the car, sometimes while trying to fall asleep in bed. Times when I'm by myself with nothing for my brain to focus on.
• I often feel as if I'm not myself, like I'm watching a movie starring Jenny the Idiot. I feel removed from my own life.
• I often feel as if I'm waiting to wake up from a dream, all while I am awake and not dreaming or daydreaming.

I know I have depression, and I've been to a doctor before (albeit many years ago). It just seems like more than just that. Dr. Google also came up with depersonalization and maladaptive daydreaming. Do either of those really fit? It seems like it, but I'm the sort of person that googles "eye twitching" and convinces herself she has Parkinson's. If I dig deep enough, all of my symptoms eventually lead to cancer.

Did looking up all of this really help me? Hmm. It wasted a good hour of time at work. That's just fine.

I wonder if there is a term that describes obsessively trying to diagnose oneself with things via the internet.
Cyberchondria? Yeah, I need to stop now.

My Give-A-Shit...it has flatlined. :(

I feel blank today. Not anything. I want to feel something. I thought once I started typing, words and (hopefully) some sort of emotion would flow out, but nothing. I am faintly frustrated, but not enough. Not enough of anything. It's uncomfortable. But not uncomfortable enough. There's a pea under my mattress. I'm okay, I guess, but something feels a little wrong. And I'm tired. I finally have a day off from work, the first in over a week, and I can't enjoy it, really. I'm just sitting here blankly. I feel guilty that Lucy wants my attention and I can't muster any. I'm trapped inside this cotton ball head. I'm almost too tired to care.

A few hours later...

In a matter of hours, my mind has gone from an aloof and confused mush to angry, closed up and defensive. I don't know why. I know that this shouldn't be normal and probably isn't. I went to the store and felt paranoid that people were thinking terribly of me (which they may have been, my hair was a mess). I have a bottle of whiskey in my possession now, which gives me a little bit of peace. I'm hoping to get good and drunk and write some terrible poetry, feel like myself again.

One Thing

I wish I could find that One Thing that I am supremely good at. My talent that I could translate into a career. I look around and it seems like everyone my age knows what their One Thing is, have careers. I've worked at a hotel for seven years. This is that job people work while they are looking for something better. And I've been here for seven years, making a couple dollars over minimum wage. I don't really feel like an adult.

I wish my talent was writing, that's what I hear from family and friends. But maybe this is the only mildly good thing I can do and they are just trying to be nice. I come away from reading some great book or poetry, then read over what I have written...it's boring. It's juvenile. I wouldn't pay to read what I've written. It's honest enough, so I suppose that just goes to show how boring I actually am.

I'm at work right now. I love hate this job. I don't like to work because I feel like I could be doing something better with my time, but when I'm not working, I feel useless. I don't DO anything better with my time when I'm off work. I'll think, hey, I'll go for a walk, get the house cleaned, write something epic. But do you know what I do? Sleep past noon, then stare at a computer. At least when I'm working, I know I'm making money. Even though most of my work involves spending my down time on Facebook.