#14

It's been awhile, hasn't it. The last time we talked was earilier this year when I'd entered rehab. That lasted until September-ish, and then I relapsed.

I've lost my job and I'm job-hunting again - Was fired in late December/early November. God I feel numb today. I don't seemt o have the energy, confidence, or ability to do anything positive today. I want to curl up into a ball, cry, and then disappear somewhere.

God this sucks. Why can't I just disappear for a bit and not do things or be around people. I'm just not feeling good. Gopd I wish I could not be at this point of life again right now. I always disappoint myself. I'm good at picking myself up, but holy shit it sucks when I fall down agian. No pill or therapy fixes this, it's just the shitty thing about bipolar. I don't know why it has to hit me like this. Why.

Song of the moment: Blind Melon - No Rain.

Feels about right in my life right now, honestly - All I can say is that my life is pretty blain. What do I do here, where do I go? And the birtch of it is that I'm not so bad - One of the guys on the van is bipolar and legit had a 2 month breakdown where he basically disappeared from life whilst in the hosptial.

Fuck all of this. I feel so miserable about life rn.

#13

Hey buddy, it's been awhile. Thjis will probably be the first in a l;onger series of posts.

On Feb 28, 2019 I admitted to myself that I'm an addict. I'm coming up on one month clean, and I wanted to let things out here a little.

I still feel alone. Not as alone as before - I have people I can talk to about it. But I'm climbing a pretty giant emotional hill right now, and poeriods of downtime where I have nothing to do are not as good for me as I once thought, they seem to reinforce my loneliness. I'm just as afraid of doing things that distract me from my loneliness as I am of being alone itself. I('m trying to slowly get back i8nto standup buyt I feel like slowly isn't really going to get me anywhere right now, I need to get into it .

I''m still trying, though. Getting clean has brought up a lot of things I didn
't think it would - I'm emotionally got a lot of growing to do - maturity isn't something that has come easy, and I numbed a lot of who I was through using.

I still think of suicide. Of how easy it would be to just leave and not have to deal with so many things any more. I''m still tired, mentally, of all the shit that I now have to do, again. Picking myself up has been a specialty but it's realkly fucking tiring, man.,  I''m lost and I don't know what to do and as much as I have brief periods of joy I feel like the road to recovery makes me sadder than it does happier. I'm learning, and I think the cognitive disconnect between who I was and who I''m trying to become is the source of it - The pain is the result of trying to grow, trying to be someone. I don't know what it means yet, but I feel like I have to go through this. Not as a martyrdowm or anything, but I vacillate between being glad I'm getting better and taking in the pain, and just wanting it all to stop. Letting go. Not necessarily using again, but just... I dunno.

I made dill pickles yesterday and put them into the cupboard to ferment so now every time I open the cupboard I get a waft of dill, garlic, and pickling spices. It's really calming to sit there and inhale the smell. I'm trying to cook more healthy, and my next step is to start writing more standup. I think that will help - Performance is something I've learned to be good at because I seem...

I was able to fool myself and others - I could slip on a skin and try to be someone else. I think performing on stage is an extension of that, and so I might feel better for it.

12

Its been awhile since I was back. Im healthy and medicated now so I dont have quite the same level of fears and anxieties I once did.

But I do still fear being lonely. I am alone.

Friends and family, ye4s, but romantic love, the kind that validates you as a person, I dont have.

I am desperatel;y lonely.  The problem is I see no way of getting out of it. I caught myself looking up at the sky yesterday wondering what the point of living is if I cant have someone in my bed, someone around me to take the edge off life. I can fill my days with hobbies, with pursuits, volunteering, and attempting to make the world a better place, but if I dont have love with that...

Whats the point?

Strangely, I still have no opinion of living or dying. I died tomorrow, it wouldn't be such a bigf deal for me. Id probably be scared as it happened, but Id like ideally to pass quietly and easily, like with an exit bag.

I feel numb. I'll be fine tomorrow morning or in a few days. But I definitely feel numnb, and alone.

I looked at the sky yesterday, and felt utterly alone, in the cosmic sense. Like, surrounded by a vast, uncaring cosmos to which I am less than an insignificant speck. It is humiliating - The scope of this feeling washes out even the attempt to address it.

Im lonely. Bored. Tired of life. 

So... I dont really know what to do here. There's no wrapping it up, I just don't know how to feel about this.

I'm lonely. A little scared. Depressed. Tired of life.

If I disappeared tomorrow, would it be such a bad thing? I don't want to die, of course - I'm not planning to commit suicide or anything ridiculous. But would it really be so bad to disappear and be numb for a little while? 

#11

I've been pondering a lot, lately. Dispassionately reckoning my life as accomplishments and failures. Weighing, measuring, and finding. I'm strangely detached from the oncept of taking my life. I've examined it from many angles, and considered, dispassionately, the positives and negatives of my own death, by my own hands.

I've come to the conclusion that there are a great many things worse than death. I don't really have fear of deaht itself. Maybe the means of it, from a car crash or electrocution, burnt alive, heart attack. The method scares me, but death itself is something with which I have come to terms.

That's not to be macabre or ghastly, though it does sound as such. I just don't really see the point of livin.g I wake up every day gateful to be alive, of course, but ultimately I look forward and see a big, blank vista. Dotted with loneliness. It is the monotony of my future that scares me. An endless, blank gap between now, and death. WIth such a vast chasm of nothingness left to live, what's the need? Why do I need to live out this life if all I can see is that?

There's a situation made worse by the fact that I can't really tell anyone about this. Not that I can't talk to people I love, but... Imagine bringing that up - "Yeah, I consider suicide on a regular basis. It is a part of who I am, I've thought about it a few times a week for several years, and I'm of no opinion about living or dying." Anyone who has any sense and/or even a grain of love for me would go on high alert and do whatever they could.

I don't need that. I'm not really suicidal, but it's something I understand to be part of the illness I have. Just as the man with a genetic illness fears the wheelchair, assisted living, or any one of the myriad monsters of the future, I know that suicide is an option in my future.l That there may come a time that I lose the battle, and pass quietly into a rest that no longer means I have to fight the challenge of living.

I wish I knew.

#8

It's been a long time.

Doesn't really matter, though. Its more about coming back than it is leaving for awhile.

I felt that urge again. The urge to disconnect, and go back to my dark safe space. Rock back and forth, cry, and empty myself of anything I could.

I need to get out. Not soon, but NOW. I don't know what to do otherwise.

I feel a little like I'm separated from people. I have for awhile, but I feel like now, I seem to have a gulf in *connecting* with people. I feel like something's wrong sometimes, but I don't really know what it is.

How do you put a finger on the splinter in your mind?

I think I'm being unnecessarily dramatic - It's been a weird 24 hours, I can feel some prescient gust of an episode tickling across the back of my neck. But it's not going to be severe, it's just going to be... there.

Had a frank discussion with mom and dad about my marijuana usage today. I don't like feeling controlled - who does? But I need to get out. I feel like I'm being controlled, and I can't handle it. I don't like it. It feels... compromising. There's nothing I can do but accept the reality of it. I feel trapped.

Back In Purley

It's been ten years. Eight, technically, since I was last here. But ten to me - 2006.

It even tastes familiar. The table, the chairs, the sunshine and breezes.

It's all... disorienting, a little. There's a part of me that wants to go back to Thetford and see it. Just like you want to see what your limb looks like when you take the cast off.  I don't think it's a good idea, but part of me wants to see it. What's to see? The place has no good memories, none. That was a place of survival, not enjoyment. Besides which, I don't know if there's a lot of time to go visiting

I'm glad to be here, all the same. It brings up a lot of memories every time I come here - I've been here once in the last ten years.

I'm stuck here, though. All of my cousins are out having a great time, I'm... not. Having flown in today, I was severely jet-lagged and missed the fun. Such is life. So I'm taking some time out, sleeping, eating, de-planing as it were.

#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.