Nasty Laura, coursework time and The Green Man.
Posted by: Laura on: November 18, 2008
I’m perfectly aware that I am not a very nice person at the minute.
Due to a combination of sadness, irritability and restless energy, I’m far from my best.
I’m snapping. Ask me a stupid question, I can guarantee you will get a sarcastic, spiteful answer. Or a completely unnecessarily defensive one. E.g.
My dad: What are you up to?
Me: Not much.
My dad: Why not?
Me: DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE DOING SOMETHING? CAN’T I JUST RELAX OCCASIONALLY?
I am aware that I’m being ridiculous, and probably hurtful, but I can’t control it, the anger just spills out of me and I can’t control it.
It’s getting to that time of the term, the real test. Coursework time. It’s the very early hours of November 14th now, and all of my coursework is due in the week beginning December 8th. I have to get it done. No excuses, this time.
My friend is coming to visit on Thursday. We’re going to go out and get drunk and dance and catch up and generally have a good time. It’s not really the ideal time for her to visit – considering my mood, and the coursework and everything – but I’m glad she is.
So I’m going to start my coursework, or at least preparing for it, this weekend. This is the real test. Can I get it done? Can I pass? Can I actually get a half-decent grade? I don’t know, but I have to try. I can’t fuck it up again, but I don’t know if I have what it takes (willpower, concentration, memory, intelligence, etc) to avoid fucking it up.
I’m going to try, it’s all I can do.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but I have a pretty obsessive personality. And an overactive imagination.
If my mind is a record player, sometimes, the record just gets stuck. And I think the same thing, over and over again, can’t take my mind off it for hours, days, weeks.
For example, a few months ago, I spent several weeks repeatedly drawing up timetables and writing prospectuses for a boarding school in the Peak District, of which I was the headmistress (for some reason, the school was very big on physical activity, which baffles me even now – I am the least active, least sporty, laziest person in existence). Every day, for several weeks, I’d write, and arrange, trying to get it so that it was perfect, and then, once it was perfect, re-writing it, often identically. And then, imagining stories of things that could happen there, people who were students and staff, and it was all so real, it was like a whole world that I could escape to, any time.
And the strange thing is, with things like this, I know that they’re not real. But I feel and behave as if they are.
And lately, it’s been something different (don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh).
He is known to me only as ‘The Green Man’ (he’s not like a stereotypical alien, with antennae, etc. He’s more a monster than an alien, although I suppose he could be from outer space).
He’s a tall, bulky man. His skin is green and he has spikes on his shoulders. He carries an axe. He has a constant, disconcerting smile on his face.
He’s trying to kill me.
I am not hallucinating. I haven’t seen him. But I have a picture of him in my mind, and it’s so detailed. I see him in my mind almost constantly.
I know that he doesn’t exist. But I get tense every time I turn a corner or enter a room, because I think he might be there, waiting for me.
I’m scared that he will follow me up the stairs. I’m scared that he will hack through my door. There’s a door, which is the entrance to our flat, and it’s in front of the door to my room, and I have a very clear image in my mind of The Green Man smashing the glass in the door in order to reach for the handle to unlock it and get in. I can’t escape this image, and I’m scared of leaving my room in case it’s really happening.
I dwell, constantly, on the thought, the image, of running away from him, down corridors, down streets, down alleyways, trying to find someone to help me but not wanting anybody else to get hurt by him either.
I’m scared of opening curtains in case he’s there, at the window.
I know he’s not real. But I can’t seem to convince myself of that (does that even make sense?).
It’s just imagination, I suppose. But it’s really fucking scary.
Loopy, Lonely and Lost 
1 | NiroZ
November 18, 2008 at 2:59 am
Heh. I personally would have lashed out at my parents too in that situation. Even when your succeeding they still nag you until your an anxiety riddled wreak.
My sympathies on the green man. Throughout my childhood I suffered from the same sort of thing. Although mine was the boogy man who lived in the toilet (and to this day, the rawr of the flush still scares me as a result). With my last bout of ‘something is out there to get me’ I came to the conclusion that I was actually feeling scared, and in order to rationalise my fear, I was making up monsters. I find that what helps me deal with it is repeating to myself that it is ok to feel scared, and deliberately not acting on my fear, to prove to myself that I’m full of bollocks.