Childish things

I've spent the evening trying to convince myself of who I am, and all I've gained from my efforts is a vague sense of confusion. I've gone back to hiding from my fears. I wish I was the kind of person that could confront them and then put them behind me. Instead I seem to be the kind of person that keeps running headfirst into my fears and then running in the opposite direction into another. Always running and never getting anywhere. So much effort and such terrible rewards. I used to be a terribly strong person, or at least a person who was too stubborn to quit. People keep saying I'm brave, but I'm not. Not anymore. I don't even have the anger, that drive to prove people wrong out of sheer spite. I also kind of feel like every significant experience I've had in my life is it, and that for better or worse there will be nothing else. I don't want to live the rest of my life this way, but I don't know what to do. I keep expecting to wake up some VA home for old crazy people, like Rip Van Winkle. I don't know what to do, what to be. I cannot imagine a future, and I have an excellent imagination. Life is never going live up to my expectations, the world and the people in it, for the most part, are always going to let me down. Becoming a soldier was one of the most life changing experiences I've ever had, hell nobody really gets more life changing than that. Especially once you've been to war. Once you've accepted that people can and will kill you, you can never look at the world the same way again. Once you've accepted that people who were supposed to care about you, or at least be responsible for your safety will rape you and hurt you beyond anything you've ever felt, you can never be the same again. I spend way more time than most people do trying to create the illusion of safety. I hide a whole lot more than is healthy. I don't believe in that illusion of safety, but I keep hoping I will. When that is the best you can hope for, you are in a seriously fucked up place. I want to remake the entire world, so that no one ever has to suffer anything like this. I want to give the world back a sense of magic and hope. I want to make everyone stop being so damn jaded. Unreasonable expectations all of them. I really don't want that kind of responsibility anyway. If I could do without anyone expecting it, or knowing that I did it at all, I totally would. Imagine if one day you could wake up and everything is just suddenly better, because you can look at the world through a child's eyes again. No hard truths, no harsh realities, just the simple ability to be filled with joy at the simplest things. Sunshine, kittens, crayons, chairs that spin around in circles, all reasons to be happy without all the things adults think are so damn important. Once childhood is behind you, its all down hill from there. Its such a childish wish, but its such a powerful one.

Nonsense

I've been feeling more like Alice, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland more and more each day. I even got a button with a quote from the book. Life doesn't make sense, people don't make sense, society doesn't make sense, the rules, laws, and social contracts we bind around ourselves don't make sense. I don't make sense. I've always felt this way, but the feelings have gotten more intense. I'm confused about who I am supposed to be. I don't know what I am supposed to do. I don't know what I want from one moment to the next. The more I learn, the more I realize, I know nothing. I have a general sense of right and wrong, and I kind of wing it from there. I am compulsively honest, and generally am disliked or overlooked entirely. I don't mind it as much as I used to. I've learned it is better not to be around people with whom I have nothing in common. There is a quote from somewhere that comes to mind and I'm sure I am mangling it, but it goes something like "Never surround yourself with those in who's company you would not gladly die." I'm annoyed that I can't figure out the correct punctuation for that quote. I don't want to be the sum of my parts, or be what the past has made me. I keep trying to make someone new, but that is difficult. The world has moved on. I stopped being young at some point, because some experiences prevent you from staying wrapped in your illusions. It makes me feel old. I'm quite adept at mimicking what people expect to see, but most of the time I don't bother. Its something the army taught me, and I find I have no use for it in the civilian world. Frankly, its dishonest, and quite distasteful to me. Generally, I only speak when I have something to say. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Most of the time. I am consistent only in my inconsistency. I am so very tired of myself. I am like a puzzle with pieces missing, that doesn't seem to form an understandable picture. Not even abstract art, because it has no purpose behind it. Just random. I should go to bed, I've been tired all day, but when I lay down I cannot sleep. Try, try, again.

Once again

I had a horrible realization tonight. I've been looking for a long time for a way to be happy just because I'm me. I don't know if I ever will find a way, but it doesn't seem likely. I start collecting hobbies, and then leave them all unfinished. I'm so tired. It is a hard thing to realize that you really don't like yourself. I'm not even feeling sorry for myself at this point, I'm just sort of shocked. I started crying earlier watching a damn cartoon, and have been crying on and off for hours. I'm questioning every decision I've made for the last several years, and every decision I just didn't make that I needed to. I almost got in the car and drove straight to the hospital tonight so that I could be someplace safe, where I could just stop being for awhile. But the truth is that there is no answer, none that the doctors can give me, none that anyone can give me. Damn I hate crying, its so fucking useless. The more I learn the less I know, until I finally understand that I will never know, but I still have to find some damn way to get through this life. Like Cee-Lo says "I can die when I'm done." I did what I set out to do, I made it through five years in the Army, because I needed to prove something to myself. But what do I do now? I still haven't found all the pieces of myself that I've lost. I know that I have to find some way to live, because I'm too spiteful to let the bastards win. I just don't have a lot left to work with anymore. Oh I could survive, but will I ever find happiness? I'm a strong person, but that doesn't do me a hell of a lot of good at this point. I can keep pushing through everything and ignore the hurt until the day I die, but who wants that? I can keep forcing myself to "acknowledge my feelings and thoughts and letting them go", but they don't go. They keep coming back. I started a jar. I put money in it every time I catch myself thinking about things I shouldn't, its just kind of a way to measure how fucked up I am over a given period of time. Maybe I'll make a spread sheet and keep track of it, that would make my therapist happy. Everybody keeps telling me how well I'm doing, but the truth is I'm not doing anything. I don't do a damn thing. I just am. I suffer therefore I am, right? I hate this, I don't like feeling like this, I don't like writing about this, and I sure as hell don't want to talk about this. My head starts spinning when I try to figure out all the ramifications of this epiphany, the ripples go so far. Its like looking at the universe, at infinity, and trying to find home. Religious people so have it made, everything is black and white, and no matter how bad this life sucks it has a purpose and in the end is 72 virgins or a castle in the clouds. Frankly, when I die, all I want is some peace and fucking quiet, and the inability to remember any of this shit. Maybe get reborn as a house cat, fat and lazy. People are too complicated, and because people are complicated they make life complicated which makes people more complicated and around and round she goes. I'm not even making sense anymore so I guess its time for meds.

As of today

I wasn't sleeping well so I started taking my sleeping meds again. I think insomnia is just hard wired into my brain at this point. I was taking 5 or 6 pills a night, for the bigger part of last year, to help me go to sleep. Prior to that I had 6 years of on and off insomnia. I had the whole works, couldn't fall asleep, couldn't stay asleep, would wake up early, horrible nightmares, and occasional night sweats. Sometimes I'd have all that in one night. At any rate Doc took me off of most of my meds to avoid daytime sleepiness associated with the rocking case of depression I got going on. A couple of weeks of that with the related "Discontinuation syndrome" from being off Benzodiazapines, which I've been on for more than a year, and everything was going to shit because I wasn't sleeping well or at all. So I finally start taking my sleeping meds again a few nights ago, and right away I start feeling a little better. At least better enough to start being able to identify problems again.

See I've been doing my prolonged exposure therapy like a good little soldier, and I've started to see a marked reduction in anxiety when I'm out. A good chunk of that is due to the fact that I'm not in Downtown Seattle anymore, and I'm a little wary of gauging just how much is actual progress on my part, and how much is a change in environment. Part of it I think was overload, from the move, which caused a backlash of emotional avoidance, and a big wave of depression. I had weird anxiety side effects, but no anxiety attacks. I'm still having weird anxiety side effects. Everyone is cheering me on and saying how well I'm doing, which sort of irritates me, but a part of me craves the affirmation. All that aside, I don't do ANYTHING during the day when my bf is at work, except mess around on the internet, and maybe read or watch tv. So the house is a disaster, because bf is trying to do a million high stress things at once, and I'm completely apathetic about it. Cleaning is an nuisance and since I'm already avoiding most of my life, why not just add that to the list? Problem is I've also been avoiding almost everything else. When I get kicked in the jaw by some unexpected stressor I go straight into a panic attack, which probably means I'm ignoring my anxiety levels altogether instead of monitoring them like I'm supposed to be doing. Its been a year since I dropped out of school. I quit school to deal with the all the things that were driving me into a constant state of terror, and that's what I've been doing. Admittedly it has been a massive undertaking, but that is pretty much the only thing I've done for the last year. I started writing a book, but that has been completely on hold for like a month. I refuse to say I've given up on it, because I want to pick it back up. I've been pretty much hibernating since the move. I don't like change. The move was extremely stressful, and I didn't even do much to contribute to the move because I was so stressed out. Vicious circles, my life is full of them. I still have a lot of work to do to shake off this depression, but at least I see the ripples its caused in my life now. The problem is that suddenly I have to be proactive, when I've been so passive for so long. I'm very hard on myself. I've caught myself thinking about how worthless I am or something along those lines a half a hundred times this week. So then I have to stop and spend a half an hour conducting a running monologue in my head about how feelings like that should be acknowledged but not be allowed to run amuck, and then give myself a pep talk. Its very disruptive. I get so wrapped up in all this that I forget to eat or brush my teeth or what not. The only things I do consistently is smoke cigarettes and drink my almighty cup or two of coffee in the mornings. Depression means I can justify sneaking extra caffeine because I need the energy. I also have attention deficit disorder, which means I'm extremely easily distracted, except when I'm hyper-focused on something like mindlessly surfing the web or reading a sleazy romance novel. So its pretty chaotic in my head these days. I'm constantly reminded of what I didn't or couldn't or should've done, which leads to feelings of being a failure, which leads to depression blah blah blah. So I avoid. I curl up on the couch with my book or laptop and proceed to not move except to smoke or pee all day. Sometimes all this avoidance makes me tired and I take a nap. Craziness. Basically, I've been a miserable person. So I have to figure out how to go about fixing all this, and I'm really open to suggestion at this point, so feel free to comment. I haven't made much progress in therapy due to all this crap, and my therapist ends up listening to me babbling for an hour every week and constantly asking if I'm having feelings of self-harm. I'm not by the way. One of my new favorite songs goes something like "When I was lost I even caught myself looking in the gun's direction, so I've tried everything but suicide, but its crossed my mind. But I'm fine." C-Lo is a genius.

Depression

Lately I have been severely depressed. I don't want to get out of bed. It takes supreme effort on my part or someone nagging me to get me out of bed. Even when I get out of bed, I don't want to do anything. I start reading a book and can't finish it. I start watching a movie and turn it off halfway through. I just lose interest in things so quickly. Which is making this whole moving thing really difficult. I'm so tired, all the time. I tried to take a walk with my bf today to try and wake up and find some energy but it didn't really help much. I don't know what to do. People tell me I should be happy and excited. But I mean, if shoulds ruled the world, I wouldn't have gotten raped and sexually assaulted and wouldn't be like this in the first place. I would love to be happy and excited. I would love to have at least normal energy levels. I would love to have a life. Unfortunately, I gotta work with what I got, which isn't a helluva lot right now. It's infuriating how often I think about something that scares me lately. Its almost a constant background noise in my head, like static noise. If I am not paying attention I will start talking to myself, reacting to the background fear. Sometimes things slip out of my mouth, and if someone hears it I have lie about it, because I don't want to admit that I'm talking to myself. Its not even that I'm talking to myself, I'm talking to memories. That is some crazy shit. My favorite part is, I'm starting to be afraid of things that never happened. How fucking awesome is that stupid shit? Its like the memories are growing beyond what they were into something even worse. Like I need worse. What I dealt with is bad enough, but I got so scared I was going to remember something else bad that happened that my brain started going through all these "what if'" scenarios. The human brain is a fucked up little machine. So I have to give myself these little talks from time to time, about what reality is and what it isn't. Let me tell you how good that feels having to do that. Its like "Hey crazy lady, that didn't happen, this is what happened and quit trying to drive yourself even more insane by dreaming up all these awful things." Generally I'm nicer to myself than that, but holy shit, sometimes I think my subconscious is trying to kill me, and its only paranoia if they aren't really out to get you. Try and catch a subconscious in the act. Its unprovable. Deviant little bastards. You know I've tried reasoning with crazy people before, more times than is pretty to think of, and now I spend an awful lot of time trying to reason with myself and its harder than reasoning with some other crazy person. My head hurts trying to unravel the grammar in that sentence so I'm just going to leave it as is. I'm tired and its starting to affect my cognitive processes. I'm not as articulate as I was before. Its harder to explain things. When I start sounding like Kurt Vonnegut I'm having myself permanently committed. I don't care if the intellectuals love the guy, he was bug fuck crazy.

Cumulative

Stress is cumulative. It just keeps building up. I think pain is also. I turn away from the pain, or turn it into anger so I can deal with it, or I ignore it, but its always there. When my stress level gets high enough, things start leaking through the cracks. It gets to the point where it doesn't even matter anymore. I can't even count the losses, the sleepless nights, or the tears I've cried. I don't have hope that things will get better. Everybody says things will work out the way it should, but in my experience they never do. I've survived, and some days that is something I deeply regret, because everyday is some new pain, more stress. I keep waiting for the worst, and I can't make it stop. When I'm alone I can't stand it, and when I'm not alone all I can think is how I want to be alone. More than once I've wondered when the stress itself will kill me, because physically the body can only take so much stress. I need something good to happen, I need to win, I need some fucking control back over my life. I am not going to sleep even though I'm tired right now, because I don't want to keep doing things just because I'm going through the motions. Even if its ultimately not good for me I want a fucking choice. There is no "getting over it", I have to live it, and live with it.

Therapy

I'm doing prolonged exposure therapy, and it really, really sucks. I have to go out every day and be around crowds of people. Just recently I've had to start going out around crowds of people and be alone for like half an hour. Its awful. I can't even take my panic attack medications even though I want to. My nightmares have been really bad lately and my mood sucks. I am trying to write a book, and it was flying for awhile, but since my mood has been so bad I haven't been writing as much. I'm ahead enough in my writing that I can type things out and do some editing work, when I'm not in the mood to write, but that isn't going to last forever. I did manage to write a few pages today, in between naps. I suppose I should be grateful for that, but I'm not really in the mood to be grateful for much of anything. Mostly I'm resentful. I try not to take it out on other people, so I kind of get quiet. Then everybody starts asking whats wrong and I just want to scream. They know perfectly well whats wrong. There's nothing anybody can do about it, and when I want to talk about things I talk about them. If I don't, I don't. I know that people just worry about me, and care about me, but I need to be left alone sometimes. We're also getting ready to move as soon as we find a rental in the area we are looking at. Then things are going to get really stressful because we'll have to put the condo up for sale, and start looking for houses to buy. The market is really bad right now, but we've got a good down payment so we should be able to get into a nice house. I really want to be excited about it but it is going to be alot of work and I'm already exhausted all the time. I'll probably have to do a lot of the packing myself while the bf is at work, because he doesn't want to take a bunch of time off to move. He's been stressed about work, plus the move, plus he has to help me with my therapy. I don't push to get my therapy done as much as I should, partly because I feel guilty that he's going through so much right now, and partly because I just don't want to do it. I want to be comfortable, I don't want to keep putting myself under all of this stress and pressure. I keep going, and I keep pushing, but holy shit, I'm tired. I haven't seen much improvement so far, and I haven't even started doing the other half of the therapy which is going to suck soooo bad I can't even stand thinking about it. Its been almost a year since I dropped out of school, and I really haven't made much progress on anything. People say I'm getting better but I don't feel better. I'm still miserable. Maybe I'm just getting used to being miserable. I don't know. All I know is that I'm depressed tonight, and I don't want to go to sleep.