#6

So here I am again, trying to put into words  that which is unfathomable. I  looked up at the sky a few nights ago and thought "You know what if I die tomorrow morning, this would be the... I'd be happy to die tomorrow morning, after seeing tonight. The moon was high in the sky, the stars were out and the night was clear. I was genuinely convinced that if that night was my last on earth I'd have no objections leaving.

The problem is, I find myself doing that a lot. Saying with an increasingly frightening level of finality that I recognize the day as being beautiful only bu comparing it to the fact that I still would if I had no more.

I've had an off few days. Like a knot in my guts, there's a ball that wants to rise up through my throat and choke me into floods of tears. I don't why the instinct to cry is so strong when I'm feeling this way, but I get overhwhenlmed. I feel like standing quietly at the sink in the middle of making dinner to take some breaths and potentially burst into gusts of sobs.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by life. Mad with fear. I don't really know how to handle it, and the sentiments aren't something I can readily share with others - After all, how do you really describe the process of going through a down period to anyone but yourself without really exposing hw different that... How do you describe your down periods without making it sound like you're crazy. You can't. So you donb't, really. I mean, there's only so many ways you can say "Look, I'm feeling shitty and I need to talk", because, and I'm going to be honest, I'm not even sure *I* want to hear it anymore. I now I feel shitty. I know I'm having a bad day. But beyond that, I don't really know anything. Except for the fact that the only thing that really helps is simple human contact - A hug.

I wish I knew what to do with my life. I wish I did.

I wish to have a job.

I wish to move out.

I wish to get adog.

These three things would make me happy. I wish to be self sufficient, but I am not... I know these are simple things. But I want to keep things simple. I am rapidly becoming a more simple man. I would just like those three things in life right now.

Excuse me, I'm going to go lie down, and maybe cry a little to get it out of my system.

#5

Every so often I get the urge to disappear. Move somewhere, delete Facebook, remove myself. Fly out to somewhere, like an island in Indonesia, and stay for months at a time. I don't know where it comes from, but if I were to venture a guess, it would be that the supportive company with which I surround myself leads inevitably to comparisons, in my own head, of their lives and mine.

It could be anything else, but this is what I'm comfortable with thinking. It's a powerful pull, this idea that I can just up and disappear. Not have to see anyone or be anyone or even care, just disappear. Get where I'm going, and lock up my passport and wallet. Why does it seem so comfortable and easy to think that? Is it some sort of analogue of suicide? Is that what I actually want, and this is just a projection?

Talking myself out of feeling bad has been working. Not great, but everyone has to have coping mechanisms and I'm willing to be patient with mine. I've also discovered that physically doing something with my hands means that my bipolar is kept at bay, so I've been trying to reinforce that. Makes me think that perhaps the idea to switch careers to something in the trades might be more valid than I first believed.

Today's been a good day. I haven't been down, just quiet. I've gotten things done, and haven't really felt like collapsing. It's strange that that ranks as a good day.

I can say, though, that the depression I feel right now isn't really *caused* by my bipolar per se, but more as a result of being aimless and jobless. I want to do something, be something, but it's sort of hard to commit to that when I've got nowhere to go. I have all these ideas of things I can do or be, but I'm missing the spark, the oomph to push it forward that a job brings.

I'm hoping that speaking with a career counsellor and maybe getting some inkling of other careers I can do will help me push it forward. I've been looking into things like welding, that seems interesting. I don't know, though.

I have to be careful with these grand ideas. Part of me wonders whether or not they are influenced by my bipolar - I do have a tendency to scheme, and fall apart at the first difficulty. I find it hard to commit.

This sounds like it'd be a good opportunity for a secure job where I can work with my hands and actually do something. Not attend meetings, do corporate things like create change and strategy, and fulfill requirements and timelines with limited resources juggling project deadlines and missing pieces.

This just seems like... Come in. Do the work. Do it perfect. Do it again. Like sharpening knives, or polishing boots. Develop a rhythm, do it right, move on.

I want to do that. It sounds like something I'd like. But I'd want to hear more about it. I doubt it's that romantic, but somehow the idea of working with my hands is something I'd like more than what I'm getting now.

I dunno. Life is weird that way. Maybe I'll find something. I hope I do.

#4

Part of this is about not really looking up at the screen, but looking dwn at the keys. Sensing when I've made a mistake instead of trying to visually see it. Writing is a lot more liberating when you don't really care about mistakes. When you just want to get something out and minimize them, but acknowledge them anyway.


I've been thinking about people. About how so many people have their shit together that I never see, about, I guess, the fact that there are so many people so much more mature than me in so many basic ways.

Everyone I know has their shit together. It's sad, and scary for me - I'm the only one left in the sandbox of youth while everyone else has moved on. I don't understand how to move forward, and I think I'm not the only one, I don't know if I'm the only one in the sandbox. I feel like I've been left behind for something, but I don't know what.

I don't want this to be an... Fuck it, yes, I do want this to be a bit of a pity piece. I don't feel like I have my shit together, and i feel like every day life is getting smaller and smaller as I lose sight of its plumes

What's wrong with me. Why can't I find or keep reasonable employment? Why can't I get anywhere?

Okay, I've got a lot here. I'm going to sort out in my head some things today.

First things first, clean out my room.

Second, change passwords.

Third, I'd like to sit down with a piece of paper, and even try to figure out basic next steps.

Do I need to start looking for a secondary career. What are my career goals. What am I having trouble with at the moment.

Apply to some jobs. Make some calls and set up an appointment or two to figure out next steps. Do I want to invest in secondary career training?

Once this has been done, I can stop for the day.

#3

Today's a day for quiet breathing. Little things are throwing me off. Rejections from jobs. Bad interviews. The inertia of life. I'm fighting back with something new I've learned, the necessity of positive thinking. I'm learning that indulging in my self-reflectivity results in deeper pits than I would've previously thought - I thought being metacognitive about myself and my illness would help me to better identify how to avoid the dips that I associate with the worst of my illness. But instead, it's avoiding those thought patterns entirely that seems to have the most effect.

Today's a day to do things to keep my mind off that sneaky beast. I've mowed the back lawn, have the front one to go. There's cleaning I can do, and jobs to which I can apply, but after awhile it gets wearing to apply to jobs, to try and network, to be consistently faced with the potential of failure.

Even interviews are demoralizing at this point. It's frustrating. I don't want it to be frustrating. I want to find a simple job in a simple place that pays enough fro me to live simple. But I can't even find that. I guess my definition of simple ins't, well, simple. But still, I'd really like the opportunity to start SOMETHING. Jesus, I can['t seem to help it, I get turned down EVERYWHERE. Job hunting sucks. I have to reach out to the people at ODSP, but I've seen those job agencies, they're not particularly helpful. There's no way to get a job THROUGH them, there's no listings or anything.

God, I really want a break. I was thinkng about that today, [picking up my shit and leaving for another country. The romance of it, the opportunity to leave all my shit behind and just start somewhere. I'd really like that. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels here and not getting anywhere, no matter where I apply. I don't know why, or how, or what I can do to improve. And everyone I know who's listing jobs is getting supremely qualified candidates. I'm just a middle-of-the-road schmuck. How am I supposed to go any further.

Take it one day at a time. One step at a time. One day it'll all make sense.

#2

It's a bitch. I mean, just a dragging, exhausting bitch. My self-worth is undermined by small things in a day that end up accumulating at an alarming rate.

I got three job turn-downs in two days. One was for a JUNIOR role. I can't get any jobs, so I've resorted to applying for junior roles and call-centre positions, and I can't even get those. The beast that feeds on my self-loathing and anxiety really knows how to kick in.

I thougth the last time I was extensively unemployed for 18 months would be the last time in my life. I'm 33 and I pulled in 12,000 last year. Twelve thousand dollars.

What am I doing with my life. Why?

See, this is the problem with bipolar. Whenever you ask questions about what you're doing with your life, bipolar has the neat and easy solution.Commit suicide. End it. Because if you have to bash uyour head against the wall for the rest of your life, what's wrong with not playing the game any more?

What's wrong with saying "I quit?"

I mean, there are lots of people who will say that someone loves you and you shouldn't do it because there's so much ahead of you.

But is there? My life to this point has been episodes of futility. Situations where the ball has dropped because of my fingers.

Failures.

And if that's been the trend for 34 years, why is it going to change? What is it that will suddenly come along and make things better? If I've struggled my entire life, it stands to reason that will continue.

And it stands to reason that at some point, I'm going to eventually be exhausted, and make the choice that, up until this point, I've resisted out of sheer, simple bloody-mindedness and stubbornness. But it's there, like a warm, comfortable robe in winter. The promise that the suffering will definitively end. In writing this entry, I've seen and had to correct spelling errors. Repeatedly.

The story of my life is littered with spelling errors that I can't fix. How wonderful it would be if I could write it with no more. To never see the red lines, the corrections, the endless parade of things I haven't done and need to do better.

I could silence my inner voice, the envy and fear and anxiety. It wouldn't hurt. It'd be quick.

I suppose it's a macabre fascination, but it's like a man trapped in a building on fire. I stare at the window in morbid fascination. I know what's happening, and my eyes flit between the door and the window.

I am balanced on that edge. Robert Lowell put it, "freelancing along the razor's edge".

I wonder if this would be better hand-writtne. I feel like there's something more authentic about this if I wrote it and experienced the pain of trying to get every word down without stopping.

I wonder what pain feels like now? I've always wondered what it would be like to hurt myself, to get hurt, when I feel like this. Would I actually feel anything beyond the general idea of pain? If I stubbed my toe, accidentally-on-purpose ut myself with a kitchen knife, would I feel it? Regret it? From an objective point of view, what would happen?

Would the same apply to suicide? If I ran onto a sword, shot myself, would I feel it? Detached as I am it's an objective time to ponder it. Sometimes, the part about getting thrown for a loop allows me to assess with a clear head, objectively, whether or not my life is worth continuing.

I understand how it would be frightening to someone outside my frame of reference, but it's heartening. There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing - I'm dispassionately weighing the balance between further suffering and a gentle end. Doctors do it in hospitals - The balance between quality and length of life. If the quality is going to be this way, forever sporadically unemployed, living a stuck life, then what's the point of prolonging it? Where will it lead?

I don't actually have an answer for that.

#1

Broken is really all it is. Being sad, feeling pathos, sometimes just feeling at all prolongs the down periods.  Sometimes I don't want to feel, and I know that there's one sur, well, two sureways to make it happen. One is permanent, the other one takes a while to get there. Drugs and suicide, if that's not apparenl right now. I can't do drugs. Just can't. Because I know where that leads, and even if I want to be numb, I know that once I start, that path to oblivion in particular will beshort, fast, and probably even worse for me than the quicker route.

Sometimes I do idly consider suicide. In the car at a traffic light. Walking by myself. It's not something I can tell anyone else, of course, but there it is. Idle speculation on how it would happen but moreso about the intellectual approach of it - Why would I do it? It's sort of chilling when you consider it - The ultimate weighing of the procs and cons in my life to decide ultimately whether or not it's worth considering taking my next breath. or getting up out of the chair. Or beginning, willfully and in sound mind, the process towards my own oblivion.

I feel detached about that. Not scared, not really anthing at all. Just... detached.

It's draining a lot of the time. Like, a LOT of the time to conisdr where I'm at and what it means, and ... everuything.

I need to move this to a separate e-mail address. Someone accidentally finding it because of my carelessness would probably worry them.And in turn worry me.

First Post Please Read Me

If for some reason you've stumbled upon, or I've given you access to this blog, understand that this isn't a cry for help. I don't want this to be anything but a catharsis. A place ot go where I can write things down, get them out of my brain. Get them out in a place where I don't have to hear from other people.

Just as a note, Karim - This isn't going to be about me wishing things were better, some sort of melancholy and maudlin wondering where my life went, all that shit. This is just me working out the kinks to get to where I'm in a healthy space. So there'll be some vile, scary, worrying shit here. Don't look at it when you're healthy and wonder what the fuck is going on with you. Look at it like this is what you have to do to climb the mountain, sometimes. This is what you need to do. So you let things out, and you know that you're the only person to read them. And if you want to share them with other people, you can. I trust you.

Just be really careful if you plan to give this addresss out to anyone. This is a part of your soul.