Memories and irony

I hate it that when I sleep for a whole day and two nights and I have like 500 unseen posts on tumblr... Somehow I feel smarter and more connected when I've been awake for 24 hours or more. My brain is a bit slow started. So this is what it's become of my circadian rhythm. I'm not sure if I like it, more apathetic about it. Like I don't care that I'm pulling three or four all nighters, and sleep two or three days in a week, every week. I can't even remember for how long this has gone on.

I'm thinking about my eleventh suicide attempt again. I do that quite a lot lately, just that one. When I could have died. Thinking about that if I hadn't gone to the hospital I would have died that night. Thinking what I should have done instead so that I wouldn't have to be here today. Should not have gone back home, should have taken shelter at McDonalds or something, just until I started to doze off, then walked away to die somewhere secluded where there were no people. In the middle of Uppsala, yeah I probably wouldn't have gotten that far. But still.

So in that sense I guess I kinda want to die. In the sense that I wish that I had died then and there. Still going over it in my memory, replaying every detail. How cold it was, how I sat there on the pier writing suicide notes to my mother, my boyfriend at the time, to my best friend and to the authorities; while eating a sandwich and downing pills with cheap wine, how I lied down and wrapped my leather coat closer to me.

And when that weird domestic worker from where I lived came by and started talking to me. He had a crush on me and wouldn't leave me alone. I lied there dying from suicide and he sat there unknowing, talking to me as if it was just another lovely day. I didn't have the guts to tell him to fuck off. He had just a few days earlier tried to kiss me, and I thought he must be very lonely, that not many people wanted to talk to him. He a was kind man of African heritage in his 50's or so, though I could only understand a few words of what he said with a broad accent. Can't even remember if we talked in Swedish or English. Can't remember what we said at all. You could say I had other things on my mind at the time. Though he was quite peculiar and I couldn't understand what he saw in a young androgynous goth with obvious mental problems.

When I think about that day, I think of a few parts of that memory more at one point, and other parts at another point. It's seldom I think about the whole day and following night. I don't remember at what time I went down to that pier, but I think it was around 6 or 7 pm. And I don't remember when I ended up in the hospital, but they were done at 3 am. So yeah, it was more a night than a day. Mostly I try to remember what I blacked out. The ride in the ambulance, what they said in the hospital, things like that. If I try hard, I can remember when they arrived at the apartment I lived in, and when they helped me down the stairs. But I must have passed out somewhere around there, cause the next thing I remember I'm on a gurney in the intensive care unit, and my memories from there on are very vague.

Why do I keep going on about this particular memory? It holds a certain significance, like the first time I was actually close to dying, so close that some days I even think that I actually did die that day. And I'm just a ghost now. Cause it feels like I am just a ghost and I've been so ever since then. And I can't let go.

So maybe that's why my twelfth suicide attempt doesn't bother me that much, cause of course I couldn't die, I'm already dead. Silly, really, cause I know that I'm still alive. Don't I...? No, I still doubt. There was a risk, but not so high, that I could have died that time too. When you stop breathing by your own hand, like I did, you pass out and let go of the grip, your body automatically starts breathing again. But it's not a 100% chance of it doing so. So that's what I mean, I could have died, but it wasn't likely, and I knew that. I knew that when I took that choice of trying it anyway. So I was more desperate to do it as soon as possible, and thought I'd give it a shot, even though I knew it wasn't likely going to work.

And maybe that is also why I don't think so much about that attempt. It was deadly, but my intentions were a bit wacky and so was my choice. It wasn't even thought through, but alas, my choices were a bit limited because I was in a mental institution.

My opinions about that ward sank a bit after that night. I mean come on, a patient of theirs tries to kill themselves and what do they do? They didn't even notice. I had a huge fucking wound across my neck and spoke with a sore voice that barely held and they didn't say anything. I eventually told them and what did they do? Nothing. So it wasn't so strange that I tried it again the next night. And again the night after that. And again. Four times all and all, until I just gave up on that. I'm just glad I didn't have a room mate!

So I never think about that, huh? I obviously do. But I don't even know half the stuff I'm thinking about, so I guess it just slipped my mind or something. It's so weird though, the psych wards just seem to get worse and worse. "Back in the day" when I was admitted as a minor in 2005 it was really good. They took good care of me and they noticed whenever I was upset, had cut myself or cried. In 2011 I was admitted thrice and they were from bad to worse, but at least they noticed if something was terribly wrong with me. This time... I had to become mute for them to even notice, but nothing bothered them. Not my muteness, not my self harm or my four suicide attempts.

I'm not trying to seek attention. Well, I do, but in the sense that I seek medical attention. That wasn't fake, anything that I did or that happened to me there. It was all real. And after all that had happened I wanted their attention so they could help me. But they couldn't. I hate that damn place, and I see no reason going back there. Everything is out of their jurisdiction and all they can do is talk and change my meds. I already have a psychiatrist, a shrink and a supportive mother, so what can they offer me that I don't already have? I was in for being suicidal, and I was very suicidal, and they couldn't even be on suicide watch. Couldn't help but wonder how many patients there had killed themselves. In that ward, in that room where I slept. It's not like in the movies, you should know.

I'm slightly obsessed with suicide I realise, especially my own futile attempts. This day disappeared too, it's dark for so long and so much these days. I went up at 8:00 after I had slept for 30 or so hours again. I don't remember when I went to bed, nor do I care. Around midnight to the 10th I think. I didn't really want to get up, but I couldn't sleep any longer and I thought that if I was gonna get up, I wanted it to be daylight. So I did get all daylight that I could today, yet it wasn't enough. I'm tired of all the darkness. Do you realise just how much darkness it is when you're awake around the clock and you only get 5 or 6 hours of light a day? Most of my time I write, listen to music, surf on the web, eat, drink coffee, embroider and so on in darkness. I barely turn off the lights before I have to turn them back on again.

Just made myself this insanely strong cup of coffee. I've had like two gulps and I feel dizzy. I bought these kind of powder cappuccinos you mix with hot water. Alright I took one of those in a smaller cup, and mixed in two spoons of regular instant coffee, more sugar and more cream. Like four cups in one! Now that oughta keep me up tonight.

I realise that I really like German as of lately, or for a few months or so now, and especially in music. Many nice industrial bands seem to have a few songs in German, so I whipped up a playlist for that on Spotify. I really do make playlists for everything, don't I? Well, every mood deserves its own music. And I still have many moods.

Maybe it's not so strange that I suddenly like German, cause that's the kind of language I like, in general I mean. Now "that kind of language" is a pretty loose concept when it comes to me. What I mean is hard consonants, powerful and a little complicated in a way. Like Russian, German or Czech. Not those generally considered "beautiful" languages like French or Spanish, that I can't say I like much at all, and I certainly don't find them to be beautiful. Just another thing people consider me to be weird because of. To me it isn't weird, merely uncommon perhaps.

Now I've written nearly half a novel for a blog entry, but I can't seem to write anything productive lately. My inspiration is on hold, but I know it will come back to me. It always does. Still I can't help but wonder why that is, why I've suddenly lost my inspiration. I wrote and created things before, when I was a wreck this summer, so it can't be that, or can it?

I'm more stable now, my mood is stabilised due to medication and oh, how damn much medication I take for my mood swings... 300 mg Lamotrigin and 200 mg Tergretol a day. So how stable am I really? Taking half a drug store every day just to keep me from going from super depressive to manic to agressive to scared shitless anxious fifty times a day. I'm still feeling a lot, not at all zombified and lethargic. I mean, I could even up the dosage further without reaching that state. Not that I need to though. Even I need to feel something every once in a while. And wow do I feel! But just that now my emotions are controllable, except from my undying love for my crush and my fear of sleep that is. How can I even feel so damn much anxiety every night with all that medication in my blood stream?!

However, even though I'm stabilised mood wise, I do doubt that I'm completely in my right mind now. I'm staying up for days in a row, then sleep for an entire day and so it goes on. I get super anxious every night because of a phobia of sleep. I cut every day (except when I sleep for a whole day that is) and deeper and more severe than ever so I'm constantly on a slight blood loss, smoke like a chimney and don't even care about quitting any more, live on microwave meals and don't care about eating healthy, I've stopped taking daily walks and I'm a caffeine addict.

So yeah... I'm medicated enough to appear more stable and together and all, while I'm actually breaking apart piece by piece. It's like my subconscious or something still knows I'm a wreck and will do any wacky thing I can come up with to simply stay alive. This is so ironic I don't even know where to begin. In order to stay alive I do every possibly damaging thing I can think of, or at least if you would sum up this whole last six months or so, that would really be the case. I've tried every possible dangerous, and even deadly thing I can think of really, and then I complain of why it's so hard to survive? I mean what the fuck is wrong with me?! The definition of crazy: can't think straight, like ever.

Wow, now I've really written half a novel...

Simply existing

I think I'm opting for a caffeine overdose tonight. Six pills and two energy drinks in less than three hours. That would count as eight cups of coffee... Don't worry, I'll call an ambulance before I go into cardiac arrest. It's when I reach this state, after being awake for more than 30 hours and the third night falls, I get so tired that I have to double or triple my caffeine consumption to be able to keep awake. I've never been able to be up for four nights or more in a row, so can't tell how that would go.

I'm shivering, chain smoking and can't think about anything but simply existing right now. Holding my breath, breathe, feel my jaded heartbeats and the coldness on my back, the smoke in my eyes, the robe belt fastened too tight around my waist, my tense stomach, rocking myself to the rhythm to the music and the little aches in my wrists from all the typing.

Existing... why is it so hard sometimes? There's so much on my mind it's nothing at all. My whole body aches, except for my knees for some reason. Focus on them then. But I can't feel them, the little comfort there is disappears in all the pain. Why does my body have to be such a bitch? Demanding things I simply cannot give it. Is that how I am disabled? That I can't provide my body what it needs cause I'm that crazy. And I'm constantly deteriorating and I've been doing so since ever. But my body is strong, young and healthy.

Yet I feel old. Cause I can't carry the weight I have, constantly aching, tired and have no energy at all. I have all time in the world, but no energy to do anything the world has to give me. Not so strange that I feel like shit. And I'm still wanting to get in shape so it can give me some of that energy I lack, but knowing deep inside my heart that's not the way it works. It didn't work in junior high, so why should it now? I was healthier and younger then, ate better and trained karate three times a week, yet I was so damn tired and constantly aching already then. I just chose to ignore it, until I no longer could.

So why bother then? First of all, because I'm not gonna give up just because I've lost my hopes. That might sound contradiction, but it isn't. One is a feeling, the other is a choice, and I chose to go against that feeling.

I'm cold sweating now also. I hate it when that happens but I know it so well. Shivering in my own sweat, my body cooling itself down when I'm already cold which makes me even colder. This night feels so damn long, and it has barely just begun.

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.

Entangled emotions

The tiredness is coming to me again. It's only been 18 hours, it's not that long. But my body is getting weaker everyday. I get that chilly feeling in my body, like being too cold and too warm and the same time. Like if you had been running around and stressing for hours without rest and then finally get five minutes to catch your breath. Or waking up really early a winter morning and clasping your hands tightly around a hot, steamy teacup. It's a vague feeling I can't really put into words. Weak, stressed, exhausted, almost feverish. Sometimes even close to delirium.

That's my body's way of complaining. Yeah, I’m not done yet. We'll just have to see for how long this will go on. Hey, I was like this for almost 6 months back in 2010, and I (barely) survived that! And I don't drink now, or go to School, so my survival rate is a bit higher this time.

I’ll let you in on a little secret though, I’ve been collecting pills in a special box on my desk. A small, octagon shaped, metal box with a German brand for pins made for sewing. The pills are my own and completely legal, so no worries there. Lergigan, Mitrazapin, Lamotrigin and some stuff I’m not entirely sure what it is. I don't know exactly what I’m saving them for. Some sort of overdose I suppose, or maybe I just didn't wanna take them and kept them instead of throwing them away. That it's “good to have”, whatever that means.

If it will be overdose, it will most likely just be a self harm thing. When I get tired of being awake in this miserable world and just want a little rest. I’ve done that quite a few times, sort of a halfway-suicide when I take an overdose of a quantity I know won't kill me, but I’d get a little nap and I’d be glad if I didn't have to wake up again. Just in case it would for some reason be fatal, death would merely be a bonus. I’m kinda pathetic that way, and scaring the shit out of everyone who cares about me, when I swallow down a toxic amount of pills just because I “want a little nap”

No I don't think I’ll be napping for a while now, not those heavily intoxicated naps anyways. Just the usual, medicated ones. Though the ever so lingering thoughts of suicide will always have a special place in my heart. Something I fear, yet romanticise and fantasise about, long for, hate and feel sick about. Love, fear, anger, resentment, joy, all of the major human emotions. Me and Self Inflicted Death have a chaotic, toxic relationship. It will always be that way, and I can never know before hand know when my abusive partner SID will hit me in the face and force me off the edge again. Or for that matter, reach out to me as a comfort and a saviour in times of crisis. Well that's some fucked up way of dealing with crisis, don't you agree?

My mind is on overdrive but my body is practically dead. Totally out of synchronicity with each other, and I strongly believe that this is why I can't sleep or eat barely anything at all these days. My mind never shuts off. It just keeps on going and going and going until my body finally gives. But what do I do about it? Not much, let my mind control my miserable life. But the thing is, even if I was to listen to what my body wants, it still wouldn't be that much of a difference. I don't understand its language. I wouldn't say that I’m trying my best, cause that would be lying, wouldn't it? I'm saying “Fuck this shit, I'll do what the fuck I want!” and that's the truth.