Loopy, Lonely and Lost

I’m being a bit restless lately, quite a lot of energy and stupid ideas but also feeling irritable and a little bit down and being bombarded by thoughts of suicide.

I think I’m probably upsetting everyone, being blunt and unimpressed with everything, telling everyone what I think of them and the stupid things they say. I know this makes me quite a bad person, and I feel guilty (I know I’m no better than the people I’m being a bitch to, I just can’t help correcting them).

I’m also sleeping a bit less…alternating between wide-eyed, twitchy-limbed hyperactivity and slow, painful lethargy. It doesn’t seem to matter how much sleep I get, although lying awake can be annoying because my brain keeps whirring around, like an appliance that’s been left on.

My boss has been mentioning again that I should apply for a managerial position. I don’t really know what to say. I’m torn between the feeling of itchy feet and wanting a new adventure and the feeling that at least the job I have now doesn’t throw up any nasty surprises. I’m not the cool, calm, collected, reliable, adaptable person that everyone seems to think I am. I know my boss is just being good at his job, encouraging me to progress, and there’s a part of my heart that just sinks at the thought of doing the same thing forever. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to set myself for failure (and, in the even of success, much more stress than I have now) when I feel a little vulnerable lately.

I’m spitting out opinions and making suicide jokes without any hint of a smile. I’m being such an arsehole and I hate myself for it but I can’t shut up, can’t stop my reactions forcing themselves out of my mouth. And I keep trying to give away my money. It’s burning a hole in my pocket. Sometimes I think I should just die so I can have a will and share it all out between the people I know. I don’t want money, it makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes I want to grab a bag, run away, live day-to-day, take my chances out in the real world, own nothing, never be tied down.

I’m being irritable. A bit of a bitch, to be honest.

There’s a woman at work. She keeps sighing. It is driving me MAD. It sets my teeth on edge. It makes me grip the arms of my chair with my nails. It makes me want to say cruel and unnecessary things. I don’t know where the anger’s coming from.

It reminds me of a few years ago, being at a music festival, pacing round and round a field, dragging my friend along, ranting all the while, never shutting up, hardly stopping for breath, tearing my hair out, shouting and stamping my feet over some habit of someone’s – so small I can’t even remember the details now.

I want to be calm and sensible, but I just feel like throwing things. I know I can’t. I know I have to calm down. I’m not a fucking child. I need to learn to control myself.

I feel weird. Really, really weird.

I’ve never felt this way so strongly before. The only times I can really remember feeling it at all were while I was taking antipsychotics, or after self-harming. Maybe a little bit, now and then, after unhappiness or weeks or months of sleep deprivation or too much vodka.

I feel not-real. Completely blank. My glasses are the camera through which I watch the world. The hands in front of me, typing…I know they’re mine, they must be, but they don’t feel it. They feel separate. Someone else’s hands typing words passing faintly across my mind, so faint I’m getting writing and reading mixed up.

Hands, arms, legs, not mine. Not my movements. I’m watching on a screen. A screen on a screen (not quite infinite regress; not enough screens). One hand bending back the finger on another and I can’t feel it, we’re not attached, I could break the bone and it’s just graphic TV, not real, not me.

I don’t really know what I am.

Emotionally I am mostly blank. Just a little curious. Like a dream or out-of-body experience.

If I’m not in the body I can see, then where am I?

It’s old and familiar and disappointing and just as scary as ever.

Pacing around my room like a caged animal. Realising that’s stupid and getting into bed, only to lie, eyes wide open, tapping tuneless rhythms on the wall with shaking hands. Tingling skin, almost goosebumps, but not cold, lit by an unknowable heat, an almost-fever, coursing through my veins.

I can’t switch off my brain, and my thoughts are full of hanging. I’m not suicidal. Just preoccupied and agitated and I can’t find rest anywhere.

I have to get up for work in a few hours.

Come on, Laura. Sort your life out. Get a fucking grip.

I’ve written it before, and it’s still true: for a long time, things have been better. Still peaks and troughs, but a little milder, and not so frequent. I think it’s largely down to routine – three meals a day, going to bed, having to get up for work – and also partly being with my family. I know I complain a lot, but weirdly, the madder my mum is, the more sensible I am. It makes me scared and miserable, but when she’s out of control, I find reserves of strength. I have something to focus on, so my mind doesn’t spiral into confusion and destruction. But recently, she’s being quite reasonable (it won’t last: it never does), and without the urgent, pressing fear and the responsibility to keep the family together, I start to focus more and more on my own inadequacies and failures.

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Everything is fine except circumstances.

When I was at uni, I used to feel that my life was fine but my brain was fucked. Everything was going well except I couldn’t control my emotions or my thoughts or any aspect of my life.

Now, I feel more or less the opposite. My mood’s alright. Still having occasional, alarming peaks and troughs, but they happen less, and are less often really bad. I feel like a proper person, capable of being an adult.

But life is terrifying and certain stresses are overwhelming. It’s family, really. I can cope with work stresses without much worry. Even the occasional existential panics about how painfully short and unbearably long life is can be overcome after a while.

But every time my mum accuses someone of trying to sabotage her, or threatens to kill someone, or spends all day crying because getting her own way 99% of the time is so unfair on her and she can’t possibly bear that 1% of someone else having priority, I sort of shut down. I don’t really cry much, because I’m scared of turning into her (an age-old problem, and perhaps something to do with my complete inability to express my emotions). I just sort of sit in my room, very quiet, breathing deeply, covering my ears until her shouting and anger start rattling painfully around my head and I go downstairs and try to reason with her, try to show her what a complete and utter dick she’s being, but then it turns on me and I don’t really have any defences, not when it comes to her, so I go upstairs again and fantasise about hanging myself, not because life is pointless or not worth living but because I feel so fucking trapped and the least I can do for me is get out of here in the least confrontational way I can imagine (you have no idea how fucking hostile everything becomes when I suggest moving out, although she’s happy to threaten me with being made homeless when it suits her). And maybe if I killed myself it’d shock her into actually caring about her family.

It’s bullshit, I know. If I killed myself, she’d probably find a way to blame it on my brother.

I feel trapped, invisible and powerless, and I feel like a weak, whining hypocrite for feeling that, because I’m not trapped, not in any material sense of the world. I have a job, money, health and a smattering of people who call me ‘friend’ and could be relied on to help me in an emergency. The only thing keeping me here is fear.

Fear that the only way to leave this house is by cutting off contact with my family forever.

Fear that, if I leave, I’m abandoning my family to bitching and fighting and never compromising, because I’m the only person here who ever tries to resolve a dispute.

Fear that I don’t have the necessary skills to live alone, and would have to come grovelling back, and they’d never let me forget it.

Fear that, without rules and routine and the way my mother keeps me on my toes, finding myself alone and free, I’d only fall apart again.

Fear that, if I leave, I’m abandoning my family to bitching and fighting and ever compromising, because I’m the only person here who ever tries to resolve a dispute.

Today, I feel like I am a massive shit.

It’s my work’s Christmas party tonight. To be honest, with all the stuff that’s been going on, I forgot. I didn’t realise until I got a phone call from a friend, asking where I was. I told her I wasn’t going. I used feeling ill as an excuse…it’s not a lie, I’m still feeling awful, and there’s no way my headache could survive all the noise and lights.

But also, I just feel…deflated. I don’t feel like going out, or spending time with people, or making myself seem cheerful. I don’t know how much of that is just being ill and how much of it is the fact that I’m sort of…not depressed, as such. Down.

I feel guilty for not going, for letting people down. I feel like a bad person and a disappointment and an idiot. I feel like crying, to be honest.

Today, I asked my dad if he’d help me find somewhere to live. He said, “if you want to move out, fuck off”.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to go about it. I’m 23 years old but I have no idea about moving house or what I can afford or what I’d have to do or anything. I feel trapped.

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I’ve been ill. Still feel like shit, actually…headaches and coughing and generally just being under the weather. It’s sort of curtailed my weird mood,  which I suppose is a good thing…everything was getting a bit crazy for a while.

But things are crazy in a different way, now.

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