16

    It seems like everything goes sideways so quick now. It's not even one day Im fine and the next everything is terrible. It's like a slow descent into it - I can feel it coming and I can see the markers but sometimes it feels like I'm a ride and I can control the speed but not the course. My back hurts and my legs ache which is a surefire sign. It started because I got thrown for a loop by a surprise performance review, which is never good.

 

But this is a pattern in nmy life. I don't know what's goijng on but I feel like I need therapy.

 

Ont he other hand, I'm just. So. Tired. Like, I don't want to struggle with this anymore. I don't want it. Take it back. And if it means I have to return everything else I will just so I don't have to feel anymore. Just not to feel would be a pleasure and a privilege. I don't want to do this. 

 

I want to be somewhere dark and quiet, crying and rocking back and forth until I'm ready to see the world again. I know it's not a good idea but I don't really have anything else in my pocket at the moment. I can't really deal with a lot right now and there seem to be overwhelming demands even though objectively it's not too complicated right now.

 

I feel like everything's falling. Maybe not spiralling, but even with a simple life I find myself juggling a lot. Why am I like this. Where do I go? Why am I like this. 

 

I'll take this ovrer my worst non medicated days but holy fuck they're both pretty bad. It's a close choice, really. The freedom to let go of my meds and completely ruin the brain I have left seems really appetizing right now. Go on a suicidal bender and tattoo "DNR" on my wrists so at least I don't have to live when I choose to die. 

 Legit, I wish I knew what to do. I know I need help but it feels like such a long ways away, I don't know what else to do here. 

#15

 It's been over a year since I last posted. I have a job now. Still living in the same place, things are in a comfortable groove. 

I've started smoking pot since COVID started, so I've been relapsed for awhile now. I've also had a few bipolar cycles along the way. Still keeping up with my meds though, so that's good.

This morning I realized - I don't think I'm ever going to get married or find love. I've been in this space before. I've accepted it, but today in the shower, I realized that I'm not really okay about it. I'm lonely and missing things. I'm sitting here in a filthy apartment at my desk while I work and just... Wondering. I don't know, man. I just want someone to share a home with. 

It might just be because I've downloaded the entire series of Mad About You, but part of me wonders - Of all the reasons I've dreamt up and fantasies I've ever had of why I'd leave my life, I never realized this would be one of them. 

I don't really know what to say about this, but that's something I say to a lot of things about myself. I just don't know. 

Loneliness eats me up inside. I hate being alone, I hate not having validation of who I am outside of the people who love me at the moment. I don't know how to do this - Everyone says that you take your time, that life isn't a schedule and you decide when things happen, but...

Goddamn, I'm 39 this year. I've waited for so long and now I'm sitting here lost. I wish I knew what to tell you when you read this back, whenever you come back here. You might have someone in your life. You might have the things now that I wanted at the time I wrote this. Things might've taken a 180, you have a wife and kids and responsibilities.

Nassim's husband Ami died a little while ago - leukemia and COVID and MS. Married for more than 40 years. 

I'm never going to have that kind of marriage. That kind of bond, a life together. 

What do I do besides hope.

#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.