Hoping

I'm still bargaining. Still trying to understand why this happened. Why me? Okay that is a stupid question. But I just counted on it to go so well for some reason, cause you know I should have known better by now. Though I just somehow knew it was gonna take two operations. Maybe more now, I don't know. I don't know how this can be corrected. Maybe they can take skin from somewhere else and hope that will stick. Or I'll just have scars instead of nipples.

That chest piece tattoo I want suddenly seems more alluring to get. And maybe somehow expand it to cover the scars. I don't know. Maybe they won't turn out so bad? Yeah, keep hoping. I scar so easily and they show. Even though my skin is almost as pale as the healed scars, at least on my arms. But it's different kind of skin there. I don't know. I don't know anything as of now.

I'm trying not to think about it. Fill my head with world of warcraft and tumblr instead. But scrolling makes my head hurt more, so not so much tumblr then. Just gonna play some more and then go to bed. Wash my face, brush my hair (it's easy these days) and brush my teeth. Aiming for a shower tomorrow or the day after. Hopefully I can sleep well tonight too. Doesn't hurt to hope at least. For better days, I mean.

When there's no escape

Let's talk about pain. It does things to you. It makes you do things you didn't think you'd ever do. As a kid I never wanted to drink or do drugs, I swore I'd never do that. I never got desperate enough to take a whole bottle of pills or get so drunk I couldn't stand on my own feet cause I couldn't deal with my headache. Because I wanted to escape.

I remember the first few months after it got chronic. I was sixteen and just wanted to lead a normal life, go to school and meet new friends. Become something, have a job that I didn't hate. Of course I still wanted to be different, that's not what I mean. It was so hard to come to terms with it and accept it. It took almost a year before I gave up on trying to understand and cure it.

Now when I take something, recommended dosage of painkillers or something more of a dangerous amount, I just try to get rid of the worst of it. It never works anymore. Not even morphine and I think it's because it isn't physical anymore. There's this thing with our brains, it remembers pain and can make you experience it even if you aren't actually in pain anymore. It's hard to explain, cause I don't fully understand it.

There is no cure, there is nothing I can do. Most days I accept it, try to work around it somehow, anyhow. Find my limits, when to stop or slow down. I can't even go to School anymore. It is that disabling, cause after one or two School days in a row it becomes so strong I have to go home and rest for a week. Aside from the other mental problems that hits the roof at about that time or even sooner. With slight social anxiety, dysphoria, psychotic symptoms and a splitting headache you just don't work in society.

It makes me nuts sometimes, all of that, but I can handle most of it, with rest and time, but not the headache. Psychotic episodes eventually fade, dysphoria goes down when I'm back at home again, social anxiety goes away when I'm away from social situations. But the headache never goes away. Ever. It doesn't matter how much I rest or whatever I do or don't do.

I wish there was something that could be done about it. My ideas have been everything from crazy to stupid. Like when I want to literally be beheaded or when I cut myself only to ease the headache. Sometimes it works a bit, the latter that is, which is kinda sad.

Right now I'm worried I'd get a fever. Cause if I do it's likely an infection and I have to go to the emergency ward. Don't want to spend my Easter that way.

Anna says: Don't be afraid of your own body.
I respond: There's nothing I am more afraid of.

Denial and bargaining

Started a little with my coat/robe today, but my head is killing me so I couldn't continue. Took some measurements and cut out a large piece of fabric for the back part of it. I bought 4 metres of a lovely deep purple, velvet fabric. Fake of course, but very nice still in a thick, very smooth texture. Only a tailoring nerd like myself would find something to complain about it, if you catch my drift.

I still feel weird from yesterday and hesitating to take a shower, though I probably need one. Detached words from yesterday's conversations with the doctors and with my mother echo inside my head like little stones in an empty barrel. I can't understand. I knew my body reacts weird with healing, I knew it from all the piercings I've tried to have and I yet I went for the transplanted procedure.

I should have known, shouldn't I? Yet, there wasn't that much of other options, I knew that too. But couldn't I at least have thought about it? I mean I've had that surgery on my mind since I was 19 at least. Some time during those years from then on that thought should have popped up, shouldn't it?

I'm going through the five stages of grief and I'm currently shifting between denial, isolation and bargaining. Skipped anger though, or just haven't gotten there yet. Losing my tits was just getting rid of something that wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, like a tumour or something, but losing my nipples... well, that sort of feels like actually losing something. And I can't describe it, I'm not even sure if I want to.

So I'm trying to fill my head with nonsense instead. Something, anything, to keep my thoughts off that subject. But I feel so weak, physically, like as soon as I try to do something away from the computer I get tired so quickly and my head starts hurting more than I can handle. I can't focus on movies or books or embroidering right now. Can barely focus on WoW, barely on anything at all.

But love isn't fair

It's only two days left now, and the anxiety is holding a firm grip around my throat, suffocating me. It's the "Love is in the air" thing in world of warcraft now, and all the pink hearts popping up everywhere make me feel sick. Was it always like this? I don't remember.

This just struck me, what am I gonna do without the cigarettes this time? How can I endure this without the sweet smoke? Blood, alcohol, anxiolytic drugs, chocolate, blankets and warm showers, movies, more video gaming and whatever I can think of. Whatever I can think of...

I just got a phone call, and the person on the other end said they were calling from "Socialstyrelsen" and my heart missed a beat or two. I snapped at them and didn't know what I was feeling. But after they had explained who they were, I was like "oh... it's you" suddenly feeling utterly embarrassed and unnecessarily evil. Or something. It's just the LSS people, no worries at all.

I'm a bit jumpy and freaked allover today. Hardly know what I'm doing and I think I forgot to eat too. My head is spinning and I'm trying to calm down, but it's not easy. A thousand things run through it and I can't keep up. Maybe I shouldn't even try.

At first I thought this might not go so bad at all, considering I seem to take it better every year, but then this about the cigarettes. I'm in abstinence and quite a mess mentally. This... hopefully I don't go and do something stupid that I will regret after. It's just a memory, why do I let it kill me?

I miss my blood elf priest. Gonna go and do some pointless quests now. I know I don't write here that often nowadays, but trust me I do write, I just don't post it. Well, until now that is. The title, I just thought "love is in the air, but love isn't fair". No other reason, or whatever.

Unliveable life

I don't know what to say. I feel cold inside. Empty. Apathy has come to stay. I don't know if this a form of depression, but I have a sensation that it could be. My inability to get out of bed. The way everything is hollow, tasteless, dull, empty, colourless, meaningless. I'm still creative though. Still able to draw, write poems, and enjoy playing WoW. But everything is half hearted. It's like I just "have to" do it to get it off me.

Like playing WoW is just a way of making time pass, time that I don't want. All I ever have is time and all I want is for it to go away. Another emotional suicide, killing everything I have inside me, killing all the time I can instead of making it stop permanently. I'm suicidal, but choose to keep on living at the same time as I'm in a way killing my life. Do you understand? I'm killing myself indirectly.

It's killing me. There's so much that is killing me inside. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to endure. I'm filled to the brim with medications, yet I'm just a heartbeat away from being full blown suicidal again. This mess is eating me alive, I become thinner every day, until soon I'm just an empty shell. I'm filling that void with smoke, cause at least there'll be something in there.

It's weird that the more I feel, the emptier I feel. It's like all these emotions extinguish each other. They vaporise before I can catch them and analyse them. But I can tell this pressure from within can't hold much longer. What I want in life I cannot have, and what I have I do not want.

I want to be someone else, a totally different person. Make me his girlfriend, or make me a healthy young adult with his whole life ahead of him, make me loveable and make my life liveable.

Survival without rules

I'm hiding my true feelings even to myself right now. Cause it's better that way. I don't want to feel them, know of them or deal with them. It's heavy enough as it is. Surviving... just focus on that. Eat, sleep, wake up, smoke, pop pills, cut, do whatever is necessary, escape escape escape. Into tv-shows, internet, writing, world of warcraft, anything.

By the way, I've decided to never answer my phone again if it's a secret number calling. Fucking Radiotjänst and telemarketers. Gave me so much anxiety last night, I didn't know what to do with myself. Really, really don't need more of that. In fact my phone rang so many times just a few hours after I had gotten back home yesterday, it threw me into a black hole of despair. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but damn I went furious, anxious, I couldn't deal with it. Starting to hyperventilate and cold sweat after a phone call? Yeah, I guess it would depend on the conversation.

So yeah, welcome home and yada yada. Eventually I fell asleep some time in the early morning, so out of it on drugs I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Falling asleep filled to the brim with anxiety is just as bad as falling asleep right after an argument. Possibly worse. I woke up at ten this morning, but I stayed in bed until three in the afternoon because I couldn't find a reason to get up. And I'm still bummed after that anxiety attack. Reasons to live, wish I had any.

Procrastinating feelings

I'm always so tired nowadays, like I could just fall asleep at any given moment. Maybe it's still my three months of sleep deprivation and hypnophobia that I'm not entirely recovered from yet. Maybe it's just all the emotional stress that is still going on. I'm not even awake when I'm awake.

It's hard to concentrate on anything. World of warcraft, movies, writing, anything. It takes hours upon getting out of bed for me to wake up somewhat, and then I get so tired again before I know it. Nothing can make even the slightest bit of alert. Not even caffeine or any of the usual or unusual things that I can't think of right now.

People are more annoying than usual in WoW. They keep bothering me with group requests and duel proposals. I was this close to just yell "fuck off" in chat but managed to keep ignoring them instead.

Other than those occasional anger outbursts that don't really burst at all, I feel completely numb today. Just like yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that. Still fantasising about death, self harming, listening to Emilie Autumn and I'm back on normal cigarettes again. I'm not entirely sure why I'm this numb, but it could be that thing that shook me to that shock-like state a month ago. But it's been a month, for crying out loud.

Would it be okay if I say I'm not suicidal, I just have a constant death wish?

It's like I've built a wall around me, and nothing can come through it. I still don't want to feel anything, but I doubt this is a good thing. Well, of course it isn't a good thing, but I don't know what to do about it either. Or if I even want to do something about it. I don't want to be completely numb 24/7, but I don't wanna feel like crap either. And there really isn't a third choice.

I'm putting off going to the grocery store. Just wanna play WoW and watch Criminal Minds. Almost simultaneously. But I have no food left. That is a problem.

Emptiness

The pounding emptiness is buried in my heart, and the sun never really came up today. Normally I'd be disappointed or something, but today I just... nothing. But I prefer it this way, it's better than how I usually am, feeling a lot of negative stuff. This emptiness is in its contrast a sombre calm, like a cold, misty street in a ghost town. Thinking back to the novel I will someday actually write. Well, one of them, I have two on going. I have some sort of writer's block now. But even still, I keep visiting the places I've created for this one story, the one taking place in an imaginary ghost town somewhere in England. Sort of an alternate reality thing.

Picturing the empty streets, the thick fog, the old tarnished buildings that had become grey over time. Muddy with dust and rain. It's a calm town, and there are no actual ghosts in it. Or well, not any creepy ones at least. Just this one ghost, but she's nothing like one. I imagine myself as the main character, 37 year old Kian, standing in the window to his apartment, wearing only a bath robe over a pyjamas in the early morning breeze. He's a little like me, or rather how I feel like I am.

So I spend more time thinking about the story than actually writing about it. I want to write, but every time I open up the document and put my hands on the keyboard I just freeze up. Where do I start? Which scene should I write at? Where was I the last time? Should I read it through again? I just can't write, I'm unsynchronised. So I just stare out the window, pretending that I am Kian.

Chasing me

Seems the bad summer turned into a bad half-year. That sucks. October passed with depressive poems, lacerations and kilos of medication. Just like September, August, July, June, May and April did. What do I want to accomplish that I think these addictions will lead to? Nothing. Just my fucked up way of dealing with anxiety that is too heavy to carry.

Controlling the chaos with caffeine and cutting. I have to cut deeper than I dare for it to have a satisfying effect.

Trying to play WoW with a semi-broken keyboard is annoying the fuck out of me. So much for trying to blow off some steam... Spilled some lemonade on it yesterday or the day before, and now some of the keys are hell to press down. So I need to buy a new keyboard as well. Good thing I'm going to Visby later today.

I deliberately stayed up tonight, since I woke up so late yesterday it was kinda pointless to go to sleep again a few hours later. Feels good not having to think about sleeping, but as you can probably tell, I'm still not able to stop thinking about it. My anxiety has been growing, increasing and decreasing, changing shape and chasing me all day.* Don't know what it is I'm worrying about, what brings me down all the damn time, but I can tell there's more than just one reason, more than one simple answer. There's never a simple answer to anything, really. Especially in my life.

Still obsessing about my love, though more routine-like now. Internet stalking, or well, more lurking actually. That is less creepy, right? I'm trying to not be a creep. So tired, but can't sleep, I'm supposed to be in Visby 11 o'clock, to which it is only two hours. Or was it at 13 o'clock? I can't remember. Oh whatever, my mother will call me well before so I'll have time to get ready. Mom just call, so it's at 11:00.

*And it still does.

Impressions

I have on and off thought about going incommunicado sometime. Just for a few days or so. I have no idea when, where or how though. Just that it would be so sweet being alone without any contact with other people, for a little while. Instead of going nuts and lashing out on everyone who don't wanna leave me alone, because they "care" or whatever.

Steal my mother's car and head off to... well, nowhere. Cause sometimes I just get so damn tired of people. They talk, they judge and they have opinions. Besides, there's only one person that I want to be with, and care to listen to, but he's not exactly around here.

I think I've come down with a slight case of a rhino virus, and if it wasn't for my smoking it would have been over in a day or two. But oh well, a little coughing, the occasional throat pain and extra snivelling doesn't bother me much.

I'm back home after my trip to the main country, and it was really nice. Way over my expectations! Yeah, I had some, pretty vague expectations. Two awesome party nights after each other, lots of booze, caffeine, nicotine and socialising. Though many nights were riddled with anxiety basically no matter what I did. There's only so much you can do with Mirtazapine, Lergigan, Imovane, Zyprexa, cutting and listening to calming music. It took about 3-5 hours to fall asleep most nights. Then I slept until late afternoon. So that was the negative part, but my sleep was bad already before my trip.

I'm so tired from the flight and such now, still I can't sleep. Maybe too much impressions to process or whatever. I may have physically left Uppsala and Stockholm behind me, but mentally it feels like I'm still there. It's hard to explain, but I think you can understand the thing about wherever you go, you leave something behind. Cause it feels like I left a part of me there, a feeling, energies or an impression of sorts.

Addictions

You know you have an addictive personality when you've been dependent on alcohol, cutting, caffeine, smoking, painkillers and a lot of other things that aren't even addictive. Now I “just” struggle with cutting, caffeine and cigarettes. Three “c”, what are the odds? I usually only have two or three addictions simultaneously. It's manageable, but not optimal, and as long as I stay away from drugs and alcohol I'm fairly functional. After all, both cigarettes and caffeine are socially acceptable, and cutting is rarely anyone else's business. As long as I don't start bleeding allover the place. First year of gymnasium comes to mind...

I wore short skirts combined with tights back then, and had moved on from cutting my arms to my lower legs. I had less sensation there (well, not anymore cause my arms are basically scar tissue now, and all the cutting has destroyed some nerves) so the gashes ended up deeper and thus they bled more. Often I remember bleeding through those tights, leaving little puddles of blood on the plastic floors in classrooms and corridors. I never got any comments though, I guess they all knew it was self inflicted wounds.

Now I’m back to my lower arms, cause it's easy access and well... it might sound stupid but it feels good to cut there. But it's getting hard to break through the scar tissue, so I suppose I’ll have to move on to another area again. Skin is the largest human organ, so it shouldn't be so fucking hard to find a “good” spot. First I wanted to go for my chest (since I kinda hate that part of my body) but I do realise that would not be so damn smart considering I’m gonna get operated on right there in the nearest future... think it through, think it through...

Thankfully, my episodes of alcoholism have been brief, for just a few months at a time. I really don't like being a drunk, to be honest. Sure, the rush of being tipsy 24/7 is quite nice, and it has also helps me sleeping and as a medication for my anxiety (and that's why I've been doing it). But in the long run it just harms more than it helps. It's expensive, you get dehydrated, it's complicated when traveling, it's a hell trying to hide it and on top of all you feel really pathetic.

Smoking cigarettes is by far my favourite drug. Easy access (as long as I remember to bring my ID-card, cause I still look like 17), socially acceptable to some degree and it's not as harmful as the other things I’ve listed. Sure it's dangerous, but you can't die from overdosing it. I have slowly increased the amount I consume it over time. When I was eighteen I smoked my very first cigarette and then had around five a month, then it escalated to about a pack a month, then a pack a week. When I was twenty one I learned how to take deep drags which made me physically addicted to nicotine and upped the dosage to about a pack a day. This spring I took it even further as I could finally smoke inside my apartment, and I’m now up at two to three packs a day. Mostly somewhere around 50 cigarettes, or one every fifteen minutes. Which basically means I’m holding a cigarette between my fingers sort of constantly.

My caffeine addiction comes and goes like my alcoholism, and the two are strangely often combined or succeed one another. What often drives me to detox from it, is as simple as that I get tired of, or feel disgusted by coffee all of a sudden. Though, this is my extreme caffeine addiction periods. Come to think of it, I’m always addicted to it. Just that most of the time I settle for tea and or coke. In that sense I haven't been caffeine free since I was 12 or something... but the caffeine addiction I have now is quite more severe, with 10 or up to 20 cups of coffee a day.

Painkillers. That was a short period of roughly four or five months back in late 2010 (at that time I was addicted to everything: alcohol, cutting, caffeine, smoking and painkillers). I had gotten Citodon prescribed for my headache that had gotten vastly more severe than usually, which is not so strange, all things considering. It was one hell of a time in my life. That Citodon didn't help much for the headache, but it sure made the pain funnier, so to say. It was so easy to overdose it, add booze and caffeine and head off to School... I’m still baffled that no one noticed anything. Except for painkillers I did some tripping on the mood stabilising drug Lyrica, about a year later, until the rashes became unbearable. I’ve abused almost every kind of pill I’ve gotten prescribed legally by various doctors over the years. And also over the counter meds that weren't prescribed for me, but legal in its own sense.

Just the act of abusing medicines like that in general, could almost be considered an addiction in itself. I can be kinda freaky like that, overdosing and combining pills wildly without having the slightest clue of what effect that will or won't give me. Mostly I just wake up with a headache the next day though. I still do it, but not in the purpose of killing myself, just for a rush of some, or any sort. What can I say, risk taking and surprises intrigues me. Just in it for the rush!

I feel like a pitiful being, when thinking about all of my addictions and what I’ve done to myself. What extreme lengths I go and have gone to, to achieve some relief from my own mind. When my meds aren't enough, when no meds are enough, when I try to live independently, when the psychiatry leaves me high and dry, when I can't stand living with myself. Maybe my self esteem has hit rock bottom, but I feel kinda pathetic. Like boohoo, I hate myself so much I’m gonna drink myself to death. Or whatever. I just don't know how to live, how does one do? I’m in pieces and instead of patching them up I just cut them into even smaller pieces. And I will probably always be addicted on one thing or another, just have to pick the least dangerous addiction and stick with that.

Escaping

I'm scrolling down through several hundred tumblr posts to find his posts that doesn't appear on his page for some reason. Wow, I must be really obsessed... but if I got an answer post, shouldn't it show up in my inbox? I don't know, better safe than sorry I guess.

I managed to get rid of most of my headache, thanks to some Aspirin. Feels like I’m just waiting for the morning to come, so I won't be stuck bored with nothing to do, just wanting to keep crafting or even just redo a waistcoat to a three piece suit I found second hand. Or to just take walk, have a reason to shower, wear make up and dressing up nice. I’m trying to get used to wearing make up again.

I’m listening to songs about suicide, feeling lonely and broken. Maybe it would be nice to just jump and fall free? It's the closest I'd ever get to flying. I’m trying not to think that way, and maybe this is just a fantasy, a mind game to see if I could really do it someday. Testing myself. I’m doing that from time to time. Isn't it sad that I find “suicide” to be one of the most beautiful English words? The most beautiful word being “sovereign” which is almost its opposite, meaning “confident” or “governor”.

Alright, time has passed to forenoon and I’m off for some shopping. I must have miscalculated when I wrote that it was 33 hours to the appointment with my psychiatrist on Wednesday. It was actually 57 hours, with 48 hours remaining. That might be harder than I expected to stay up for, but it feels like I really don't have much other choice than to do so. Good thing I’ve written a list of everything I intend to say at the meeting, so I don't really need to be sharp as a knife, so to speak.

Found this amazing, beautiful song by Radiohead called “How to disappear completely” and I dream away to someplace else while listening to it. I see endless fields of red sand and dead plants, sand swirling in the wind, a few naked trees in the distance, a clear blue sky. No living creature anywhere to be seen. I want to be there, just sitting on a rock warm in the sun, feeling the wind on my face. So far from civilisation, my own miserable life, everything. I really like that I’m so good at visualisation, even imagining what warm winds and sand in my face could feel like, what it would smell like, even though I’ve never been to such a place. Not in the real world at least, just in my dreams and imagination. Maybe that is why I’m good at drawing and writing? Cause I can see and sense things so clearly in my head, I mean.

I collect “happy places”, imaginary places where I go to relax or escape from something in the real world. Whether it be an anxiety attack, a quarrel, on the verge on dissociation or just stressed out. My favourite is a meadow, a green field with white, blue, pink and purple flowers; a surrounding forest on both sides, a clear blue sky with little white clouds and a calming breeze. Sometimes I just stand there on the field, other times I lie down or run around.

Sometimes I run to the end of the field, a few hundred metres or so the meadow ends and there's a cliff. Not a steep one, but gently leaning towards a small beach. It's a little tricky climbing down the boulders and rocks to the light yellow sand leading to a calm ocean. I have only once or twice bathed in that imaginary ocean, I only ever go that far when I’m in a very difficult situation and very much need to calm down and relax, or literally need to escape but can't. I think I created this place two or three years ago, so I know it quite well.

I feel strange, like distant. Maybe I'm still in that desert.