No rest.

I was woken up at 7 this morning and told by my mother that work had called and I’d been asked to come in on my day off.

I went. I work again tomorrow and then have the next day off, finally. It was awful to wake up from 12 hours of dead sleep and have to get up and go back after imagining how nice it was going to be to lay in bed all day doing absolutely nothing. I didn’t even get up last night like I usually do; I was too listless to even bother.

My godparents were over again yesterday, and naturally all they seemed to be interested in is what I eat, especially at work. My godfather even named what I’d eaten,when he was asking me if I was going to have some of dinner. Why do people insist on doing that to me, honestly?

No one can tell I’ve gained weight. Even my mother didn’t notice. It makes me feel slightly better, I guess, even if I can see and feel the difference like night and day. I’ve done alright the last few days, and I work so much that my pants are loosening up ever so slightly even though I’m certainly not in diet mode.

I’m tired in the mental sense. I’m angry that I have to go back again tomorrow, but there’s not much that can be done. Besides, now I have an extra day added onto my check. I’ve been thinking as a gift to myself I may just by the 300 dollar boots from Spain that I’ve wanted forever. Why not? It’s my money; I’ll waste it on what I want.

Dream

It was only as I was driving down this narrow road that my dream from last night reemerged for me to remember. I swerved to avoid hitting something in the road, and it’s when I saw what it was that it all came unburied. There was a head in the road, a buck’s head, missing the chunk of its skull cap where it antlers should have been. It still had the fur on it, fully recognizable as what it was except for that the body was scattered all around, and its eyes were missing.

Bloated, dead horses, that’s what came back to me. There was this muddy slope covered in a myriad of them, many of them still living. They came in an assortment of colors, but the filth had marred the shine from them so they all appeared dull and monotonous. Except for the white horse. I’m walking along the hillside, calf deep in sludge that was a combination of manure and old, rotting hay. They are shying from me, their manes matted, dreadlocked from years of neglect. The white horse is standing at the base of an oak, appearing untouched by the famine and dirtiness. He’s thick through his neck and limbs, like he’s been eating very well. I’m heading toward the leaning oak.

The horse is eyeing the small animal in front of it, snorting and acting generally displeased. The creature is tiny and white, too-long legs  folded under it awkwardly. Just as I approach, the stallion begins to trample it. The little splotch of white rolls over and cries out, as the horse repeatedly knocks it around. I start to shout, and I see the white horse’s ears prick in my direction, and he even ceases his bullying to glance at me. But then, as though he never saw me, he paws at the ground again, pushing the small animal with his hard hooves. I’m waving my arms now, hollering ‘hey!’, and going as fast as I can to them.

I continue to make a lot of noise even as I get feet from them. The white horse doesn’t seem to know what to think of me and seems to have abandoned his little game in order to better stare. He’s moving from foot to foot nervously, but I keep thinking he’s going to charge at me anyway, as I reach down and grab the mangled little creature. As soon as I have it in my arms I start backing away, and much to my luck, one of the other horses starts something with the stallion, biting at the graceful white neck with yellowed teeth. I take the opportunity to turn away from them and hurry back up to the top of the hill.

I realize that the animal is not what I thought. I mistook it for a lamb. It’s a newborn goat, blue-eyed with fur whiter than snow beneath the grime.

The longest day.

I confess: today I feel like death warmed over. I got up this morning and actually had breakfast because I wasn’t sure if I’d be alright without it. I had no appetite yesterday, and didn’t eat all day while doing an 11 hour shift. I got home and more or less force-fed myself because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling like shit. There seemed to be a group consensus that we should all pack up and leave, and even one of my favorite shift managers was joking around with me that she was going to lock all the doors and let us go. We all were more sluggish than usual and constantly asking the time.

I was ready to just stop. I was so groggy and out of  it, that it was like operating half asleep. By the time I was four hours in, I knew I had to eat something or go home, so I went next door to the gas station and bought a bunch of sugary junk to try to revive myself rather than stand around the rest of my shift being entirely useless. I need not have worried, really, because we were all fucking up, dropping things and taking longer than usual. Thankfully our forgiving shift manager was just as exhausted (I worked with her at the other restaurant, so we were already acquainted).

I have the day off tomorrow, and I know all I am going to do is sleep. I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m so numb nothing makes sense anyway. I’m sure it will all get as blurred as this day already has, as all meaning already has. Nothing at all seemed to matter today. All I could think of was sleep and getting away, far, far away. And death. But when don’t I think of that?

Damn this apathy. Damn it to hell. I’ll sleep it off.

I truly wish I would just die. I am weak and want the world to do it for me, because most days I don’t have enough left in me to follow through like I need to so badly.

The Living Death

I’m numb. So incredibly numb I didn’t get out of bed until night had fallen, and only then because everyone was going out to dinner and I was expected to attend. I feel as though my body and my mind are not attached. We are two very separate things, and neither has any control over the other. Overly drugged. That is what it feels like. I know it must be the pills. This is such an awful feeling, like being in a prison. I know I wouldn’t have left my bed had I not been coaxed. I didn’t eat or go to the bathroom or even get a drink of water, I just laid there waiting for the hours to pass.

I’ve been awake for hours now and this has yet to subside. Even my mom made a comment that I was more quiet than usual, along with another statement from my dad that I looked ‘doe-eyed’. Tomorrow I have to go to work, and I can only hope that this will lessen by then. This is not living, not at all. What is wrong? Why is this happening? I can only think that it is my body adjusting. Hopefully it is only temporary, because even a week of this would be more than I could bear.

I’ll wake up from my nightmare soon. Nothing lasts forever.

Sleep it off.

People are coming here today and I don’t want to deal with it. I was originally supposed to clean my room, but I never got around to it. I’ve been flinging papers to the floor when they get in the way, not even bothering to pick them up. I step on them and crush them every time I move around or push my chair back from my desk. There are CDs and DVDs scattered all over the table by my television, then food wrappers littered around my laptop. Soda cans are more numerous than pens. Everything is sticky because I have been taking every meal at my computer instead of  the kitchen. I guess it doesn’t matter. I just won’t permit anyone to come in, I suppose.

My godmother has already sent me an email in an attempt to schedule what we’re going to do. I don’t want to do anything. I want to sleep.

All I have are bad dreams, yet those are preferrable to having to get out of the house and try to do something. I feel horrible today, for no real reason. The idea of shopping in an environment that doesn’t involve clicking the ‘add to cart’ button on a webpage is daunting, and I usually like that sort of thing. I’m destroying myself and I don’t want to face it. I don’t want to look. I don’t want other people to look. I want to crawl away and lock all the doors. I want to sulk in my own private hell and not have anyone come banging down the entrance to see what’s going on.

Fuck this mood, fuck everything. I’m going to sleep until I can’t anymore. Maybe I’ll wake up and I’ll be better.

I’ll try to sound less helpless and stupid when I start giving a shit.

There is no sympathy when one cannot feel.

I think it goes both ways. For one, I can’t sympathize much…at all. I might even venture to say that oftentimes I am not even capable. On the the other end of it, people don’t understand what numb means, what it can do to you. Even if I were to confess all of this people would have little to say to it, and likely would not fret. After all, how bad can it be to feel nothing at all?

 I’m falling lower and lower, but I’m not missing the fresh air; I’m not missing anything. All I can feel is this biting frustration that is a constant. I’m irritated that I can’t feel, annoyed that I have to compensate in other ways just to feel like there is any positive result from continuing to breathe. Sometimes I don’t want positive. Sometimes all I want is negative, and I’m starting to strongly dislike the coping mechanisms I’ve developed over the years. They grow progressively worse; again I am fighting extremes. One end for the other. Day after day. Switch over, switch back. Pick a side any side with nothing to lose and nothing to gain but momentary clarity that fades in an instant. And is it worth it, is it really?

I’ve been having nightmares again, then bouts of insomnia. It seems like every night I have to take something to sleep or I spend hours pacing in front of my television with my hands clasped behind my back trying to figure out what I’m doing and why, and most of all, how I feel about it. All I get is this blank spot. No reaction. No hopes and aspirations but the ones you’re not supposed to talk about. I did what I ‘wanted’, yet it has produced no glimmer of hope in my mind’s eye, no distant twinkling of a far off future that everyone else is planning for. The abyss remains black and unchanging. Sometimes I feel like it is a black hole taking everything away from me, that lack of a future. Yet for some reason I find myself not having any will to fight it. “Have it”, seems to be my only response. “Take it, because I don’t want it.”  

I’m still angry, and I’m glad. If I get to the point of not being able to get mad I really will go insane. There’s nothing like watching things that once disgusted you and smiling at them suddenly because they don’t mean anything, anything at all. It is the ultimate form of objectivity, as close as anyone would ever be able to get. Oh, but how it hurts. You don’t feel it then, but later…if tomorrow comes you wake up scarred. Wounds that time can never mend. They’ll bleed forever, a sick reminder of what you were doing yesterday so freely without the slightest restraint. 

I enjoy my apathy. I don’t know how, but I do. At the same time I think it is the worst burden I bear. Then the feelings come back and I remember just what a wreck I can really be, how small and weak and pathetic. If I must choose, then I take this a thousand times over. I take the not knowing, the blankness, the quiet in my head…. I take it without question.

I am grateful. I am not sorry.

Negativity.

I’m awake, isn’t that shocking? I only got up out of bed so I’d stop planning. That’s what I was doing, laying there. It’s been so fucked up, I don’t know what I can truly do anymore. I’m drowning in all of those setbacks, and telling myself over and over, proving over and over, that the list of reasons to continue has nearly been erased blank, that this is all a useless, stupid struggle I would have been smart to quit back when I was 14 and knew better.

I knew it then, I know it now, but I hesitate. Over and fucking over, like an idiot. A stubborn, worthless thing that is too obsessed with trying to win, trying to show that all those people that they were wrong about me, that I can be this way and breathe. But I’ve been lying. I’m always lying, even to myself, because sometimes the thought of not being here is more scary than surviving. It’s my parents, I guess. My dad will write me off as yet another mark against him, some cruel joke of the universe to grant him a child that didn’t want to survive beyond 20. And my mom will cry and ask all those stupid questions about what she did wrong. I don’t know mom, don’t you remember when I told you that I wanted to die?

Every time I try to say something, the words catch in my throat and I choke on them. I feel the bile rise, and I swallow it down, thinking, “Now don’t be a weak, snivelling child”. But it’s not the voice of my tormentors anymore; it’s my voice. I am the enemy now, because I built up these walls, laid every fucking brick, and it’s my right to tear it all down. Tear it down and begin anew with an even stronger foundation, with even more hate imbedded in the walls. Or…I can just end. If I don’t want it anymore, my castle can be torn down and never rebuilt. It can wither away, dust on the wind, as I do that deed everyone is going to hate me for.

But didn’t they always hate me? Wasn’t I always the bitter disappointment? These days it’s hard for me to sympathize with them. They should have looked, should have seen it coming. Truth be told, it’s not their responsibility anyway. If they blame themselves that their choice. But my reasons are my own. My choice is my own. I’m so dreadfully tired of people believing that parents own their children, that they can somehow control them by laying down the law. I care a great deal for my parents; they have kept me after I failed their tests. But I never asked for this life, and I never asked them to hold me above the water. I think I would have preferred to drown. I deserve to be left behind, learn life’s lessons without a protective safety net to catch me when I make a mistake. I want consequence, because this life of protection has done nothing but make me will away being human, will away that survival instinct that is supposed to save us all like a life raft. But it’s not their fault; it’s mine. I should have strayed a long time ago. They made their mistakes, so I am entitled to my own. I should have ran.

Finding normal.

It’s nice when I reach equilibrium again. It doesn’t mean it’s over, but it means I finally can get some rest. I had a very bad spell there, one that hurt more than usual. It’s just days of an aching sorrow and loneliness that  hate. And no matter what I do, it won’t go away until it’s through with me. But it’s through. For now.

If I had a ‘normal’, this would be it. Somewhere between hateful and numb, with a constant desire to be alone. Needing other people around is an idea that is almost alien to me; when I get pangs for that it comes as a total shock. It makes me want to die more than anything else, because it means that I haven’t shed all of this humanity like I thought I had. Then there are times like this where I feel like the power is electrifying; I need nothing. I am back to knowing that no one matters, and being alone is always best. It’s meant for me. It feels insanely perfect sometimes.

I’ve been doing bad things. Things I shouldn’t do. But there is nothing to focus on now but the shell that I live in, the sad little world that happens to belong to me. This truly is mine, more than anything else. I think at times, the fact that I am in control of this one thing, pulls me through when nothing else could. I know that it is not all left to everybody else.

I slept until three thirty today. I woke, and my room was so dark from the black curtains that I thought it might be five. It’s funny, but I feel relief when I know that means fewer hours to be awake. It means sleep is coming sooner than usual, night will be quick to overtake everything.

I won’t have to worry, because everyone will be asleep soon and I’ll be all alone again. Just like yesterday, just like the day before that. Small little reprieves to keep me sane for awhile longer. Such a cruel trick.

Useless Cause.

I hate the mood swings that I go through. It just doesn’t stop; likes to run me all ragged and tease me with a few days of feeling better than deathly. Then it comes back, proves me wrong again, that no, I can’t have the normal other people get to have. I can think postively, I can focus on what I enjoy, but it all comes flooding back. I remember that this is only temporary, the feeling is only temporary. When I go to sleep in the morning, there will still be that hollowness, then the deep, burning hate that lies beneath it. I always hope that when I wake again it will be gone, but it never is. It stays. It’s there even when I choose to block it out.

I’m back to sleeping more than being awake. I keep taking naps in the middle of the day, because I am so bored and depressed. And it’s stupid. I shouldn’t just let it have me like that, but it’s been so long and I am getting more and more tired. If I have a lower day than usual, I sleep in hopes that when I wake I will feel a little better. Sometimes it works, sometimes I wake up and wish that I didn’t. Part of me always wishes I didn’t. I don’t know what I’m doing here besides taking up space and waiting to die or suffer in some unimaginable way. I want me to suffer; if I do then maybe I’ll wake myself up from the nightmare and stop being so complacent toward it. There must be something I want, somewhere. Some ridiculous little idea I came up with in an unconscious place that keeps telling me to live.

It doesn’t matter though. It never did. I’ll keep living, or I won’t. It’s the only thing in my existence right now that I really can make a choice about, something I find rather sad. I’m not powerless, but I have fallen into that mindset, like there is nothing I can do. Like I’m dying and I can’t stop it, the inevitable decay.

At the end of the day, I hope I rot, and I hope it fucking hurts.

Missing.

Usually I try to ensure that even if it’s the dead of winter, I get outside. I tend to go stir crazy being indoors all of the time, trapped in a square with nothing but the same stimulus over and over again. Just a blasting television, a stereo playing something, a small heater running, and about ten projects splayed out in various places. My desk is such a wreck that I’ve given up on finding anything. I throw my scraps of notes all over it, then snatch at them later when I need them for reference. I tried keeping a journal full of them, but eventually, that too got lost, under the pile of doodles, all the sewing machine paraphernalia (one of the ‘projects’), and all the random paint tubes that get scattered around by my cat.

He just leaps on top of it all, fairly unconcerned with whether or not he is thoroughly destroying everything. He’s cleared a spot by my computer by shoving everything out of the way. He sits there staring, literally for hours on end. Looking at me. I feel like I’ve said this before. The cat doesn’t even lie down, just sits there uncomfortably. Every time I look over (which is usually unintentional, as I’m searching for something), he meows. He’ll then wait for me to make eye contact, and if I do, he continues to meow like we’re having a conversation. My mother keeps asking me if I’m talking to someone. Yeah. I’m talking to the fucking cat sitting on my desk, watching me.

But I’ve been sleeping so much, today I finally got fed up with myself, got dressed, and finally went for a walk after about a month-long absence. I think it was driving me crazy, being inside. Feeling trapped, caged, with the same people day after day. There’s a worn trail on my carpet right in front of my television where I pace like something gone mad. Hours. Pace, pace. That habit hasn’t stopped, no matter how much I’ve tried to work on it over the years. It keeps getting worse. But it helps calm me down. My mind goes and goes and goes, never stopping. I can’t find solace, I can’t find rest, so I wear my body out in an attempt to shut my head down. I’ve taken to using allergy medication to get myself to sleep lately, because I’m sleeping so much my body doesn’t want sleep. 14 hours is too much, for anyone. I’m trying to sleep it all away, I think. I’m hoping that each time I wake up it will be a different reality, a different mood.

There’s days when I wake up and do feel different. Maybe I went to bed hopeless and I wake up feeling…alright. Not so much a mess. More clarity. I’ve also discovered that I can go without sleep, something I’ve been toying with. My thoughts turn off a little when I’m extremely tired, something I dread, and something that I never thought I would try to do intentionally. But now, I want them off, I want nothingness sometimes, because I’ve gotten used to it. I’m getting addicted to numb. It’s so much easier when there is nothing to think about. None of it matters at those times, and that is both something to enjoy and something to loathe. Sometimes it is beautiful to look at what you treasure and for it to suddenly mean absolutely nothing.

But the woods were missing. I missed them. It was 16 degrees and windy, but I felt a lot better after disappearing for a long while. I keep forgetting I’m not just something automated, that I am something alive. I have to be out in the cold, dry air and feel it sometimes. I can’t just go by memory, as much as I want to. I have to have those short little glimpses of something not this, something not so rigidly controlled, or I start to go mad. I forget it’s there, then all I see is gloom.