Waves

started writing this yesterday and forgot to post it, go me....

sun29th july. I don't feel too good. What is wrong with me, I'm at the beach with my mum, my two beautiful nieces and gorgeous nephew, and the weather is perfect - 27 degrees - and I feel totally anxious and uptight and unhappy for absolutely no reason. Goddammit, can't I just have a nice weekend and enjoy life like a normal person?? I tried sooo hard to shake myself out of it, getting engaged with the kids, running in the water etc, but the feeling wouldn't leave me.
Didn't help that this crazy old man decided to come hang out with us, and proceed to tell me about his miserable life and how he slept in his car, his family had abandoned him, and that he (according to him) actually had insight into a spiritual parallel world.
*sigh. Why does my Mum have to go make friends with the graylands escapee? 

Anyway, I felt pretty bad when I got home, I started getting all anxious and jittery. I was trying to avoid SH, so I ended up going to a friend's from my mental health peer support group (love you guys xx) and went for a walk. Helps so much just relaxing and chatting to a friend! 

_____


Okay well now it's today, Monday 30th July, first day of semester 2 uni. Busy day, had a lecture and a 5 hour lab (didn't end up going quite as long as that, thank goodness!) and also a choir rehearsal afterwards. I felt pretty bad again today, just like really agitated and anxious, I was literally shaking and kept having asthma attacks lol. I took an oxazepam at one point just to calm down a bit! Almost didn't go to choir, but made myself go in the end and I was glad I did.

I came home and had an epic bath for hours. Ran out of bath salts, so I poured normal table salt in there hahaha to avoid going wrinkly!! I think it kind of worked... but I probably smell like the ocean now! :P Unfortunately I did give in and SH'd though, oh my freaking god, why does it make me feel so much better! I don't know whether I should feel bad for doing this, like I'm not causing any real harm or anything, and helps me cope when nothing else seems to help!! Right now I'm kind of wishing I never told the therapist about it because now she'll constantly ask me about it and I'll have to admit to not stopping or feel guilty or feel like I have to defend myself over it, gah.
Am looking forward to starting the group therapy, I think I will like it better than one-on-one, not so much direct focus on ME, it can be a bit much. I'd rather blend in with the mad crowd a bit.

Tomorrow I have another lecture, and then hoping to spend the afternoon with J, L and the kids  before they go off again, roaming to China again... I don't know how they can keep up the stress and expense of travel!
I love the idea of going on holiday, but only for a few weeks. I like Australia :) I like being able to come "home," like a place you belong.

So, I am absolutely obsessed with baths.

So, I am absolutely obsessed with baths. Often I have more than one bath a day, and they usually go for like 2 hours. Basically, I spend a lot of time in there, either staring at the wall or composing poetry.  Today I wrote this poem in honour of my bath fetish, and to acknowledge how lame I am that I spend so much time wallowing in my own emotions.




The Bath


To make a story out
of your own
sadness and doubt
is pitiful, I own,


but now that my eyes
are blind to the rest
of their stories, I must
carve my way. You prize


apart my clasped pain;
you, alter-self,
sacrificial wealth,
mad thought train.


Steam rising,
water interwoven
with breath, to heaven,
heaving, striving;


I must be in hot water.
A drop of blood - 
where you stood,
your face caught the


last laugh of sun.

Hope there is always

I'm a little bit mad, again. Just a touch of it, I don't know if it's visible from the outside, but I get the sensation that my mind is not really my own. Nothing definitive; I'm sleeping, not manic, I'm sort of sad but not "depressed," I found a new way to deal with the hurt and the fear (although its not considered a "healthy" dealing mechanism.) But you know what, it works, and if it stops that bottomless pit eating at my soul, even for a while, then so be it. It makes me feel "real." It makes me feel like I have some kind of control over myself, and subsequently that I can handle situations and my own emotions. I deserve a break from the chaos in my head, I think. I signed an "I will not SH" contract my therapist gave me, without any intention of sticking to it... Does that make me a bad person? I think a contract like that just makes the guilt worse. I suppose if I could cope okay without SH that would be good, will try to work on that.
      I just wish I wasn't so god damn tired all the time so I could gather some motivation to do the things I want to! So many things with music and writing I want to do, and I just haven't because I can never seem to muster the energy. I am very tired tonight; I know I have been staying up too late. Must get a good sleep tonight! 
Light always at the end of the tunnel, yes? And we must take our accomplishments alongside our struggles... (boy I sound so wise .. hehe)

The Knife and the Candle - NO TRIGGER INTENDED

Wrote this yesterday. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. I don't want to trigger anyone who might read this (hence warning in title) just self expressing!


The Knife and the Candle
All have forsaken me.
Words have flown,
darkness settles, nameless
in the bone
at the base of my skull.
If there is magic,
it is of a very black kind.
Sadness does not
become me well, I feel
I have no right
to express it. When I just want
to wear my face, they'll
have none of that.
O blood of no father -
no blood of mine, but all
I have.
At least I may see you,
if none can see me.
I will drip forever
silent into the night.

The Definition of Magic

A week or so ago, I decided to get my depressed, mildly-psychotic ass off the couch and go for a walk down the river. I stopped by the cafe on the water-front to satisfy my caffeine cravings... or maybe just so I could sit down because, lets face it, after 5 months of depression and continual sleeping I was as lazy as f*k. Anyway, a seagull stopped by my table and looked at me with a mad glint in its eye that I recognized. Struck by a sudden and impulsive inspiration, I began to write on the back of my receipt paper (the only writing material handy). Here is a transcription of these scribblings:




The Definition of Magic

Things seem strange and shifting for me. Like I am always on the edge between this world and some other. But I can never quite break through to the other side, so I am left only with vague impressions. I am left dreaming.
     I see a man at a table and imagine that he is a lone-romantic, like me. Then a friend joins him. Although this doesn't necessarily make him any less alone, it shatters my imaginings. A seagull stops by my table and fixes me with a beady stare. I half-expect it to open its beak and speak to me in a human voice. Strange fancy! I glance across the cafe; the two men are smiling as they speak. They remind me of lost friends.

     I asked you once: “What is magic?”
You said that magic was either everything, or else it didn't exist. You said it depended on how you wanted to look at things.
     Choice is everything, then. But there are too many of them to be able to look one absolutely in the eye; subconsciously, you can not help seeing the whole row of them, side by side, in the corner of your vision.

I rise from the table abruptly. The seagull edges around my feet, nosing the ground. I have disappointed him.
The two young men do not notice me, but a middle-aged man looks up from his wife and gives me an eyefull. Sickened, and feeling suddenly unlean, I leave.
     Magic is the conversation we never had, over steaming mugs and misted breath. It is gloved hands that articulate stories, and stomachs that shimmer with laughter. It is the absence of everything but the moment. That is the definition of Magic.
     I breath into the cold air, rub my mittens together and begin walking.