Strange goings on

Somehow my posts and people’s comments from the past couple of days have disappeared It was pretty depressing stuff but I’m still annoyed. Sorry if you thought I was ignoring you, I assure you I wasn’t.

Edit: I managed to paste it from my RSS reader, sorry about the comments though.

Edit 2: I think my web host must have restored a backup because I lost a link that I added to my blogroll and some settings changes that I made this morning too. Everything should be back now apart from the comments from the last 2 posts

Emptiness

I had a few moments of relief from the anguish this afternoon, my classes went well and I know a fair amount of the stuff we’ll be covering already. I even managed to talk to one of my future housemates for a good 5 minutes or so in the kitchen.

It didn’t last long though, they are all off out tonight and I confined myself to my room while the noisy good times of pre-club preparation were going on. I can’t stand to be around drunken shoutiness and all that :-S I at least managed to make myself some pasta to eat for dinner once they left. That’s been getting a lot worse just recently, I’ve missed so many meals over the last month of being here, I could stand to lose a lot weight but still…

The bad thoughts never leave, every time I see a tall building I find myself assessing its suitability. I can’t stop thinking about how I’d be able to swallow that many pills. My organ donor card came today, I’m not sure how much of me will be of any use after they scrape me off the floor but hopefully someone more deserving of life will get a little bit more than they otherwise would have.

My week

Somehow I made it to all my classes today, all I can do at this point is to remember how completely hopeless I’ll be if I don’t get this degree. There’s no explaining away a 2.5 year gap in work history when you’re in your 20’s and it’s not because you have kids to look after or anything so reasonable.

I haven’t spoken to anyone in person yet. Not since I said goodnight to my mum on Sunday night. I still can’t believe how people say so much more than me. I watched a program on TV the other day about a device that you can wear and it takes a picture every 30 seconds or when it detects motion and can build up an image of how you spend your time and uses artificial intelligence to pick out “events”. The researchers think they might be able to use this to improve AI in some way or other. It struck me as I watched it how incredibly boring my life is. I only ever go to the same places. The past 3 years for example, I would expect was spent 80% in my bedroom at home. I really haven’t lived a day in my life. 

I no longer think of myself as a real person. Sometimes if I see people having fun or just doing some mundane activity and I think that I’d like to have people who I could spend time with, I’m overcome with a feeling that it is stupid of me to feel that way. It’s even worse if I see a girl who I find attractive, I feel embarrassment that I entertained the notion that I could be liked, even for a split second. That’s for real people, not me.

I won’t name names, but even reading about other people who have mental illness leaves me feeling downhearted and envious sometimes. It’s too late for me to start being normal now. There is absolutely no reason why anyone would like me, I don’t even like myself, I hate myself. Why would anyone be friends with someone who feels such self loathing? 

I won’t pretend to be wise or anything of the sort, but when I sat in class the other day and watched the people in front of me laughing and joking around, I felt like an old man. It’s so long since I’ve actually had a period in my life where I enjoyed being around others, it seems impossible now. When I was a child, before people became concerned with social status and how badly associating with such a freakish looking loser affects it, I used to have a few friends. In a way, I feel stuck in that stage of life. I didn’t grow emotionally beyond the age of about 11.

When I think about how pathetic it is for a “man” in his mid-20s to be so inexperienced, it makes me want to cry (which I do far more often than I should). I remember reading the agony aunt pages in my sisters magazines when I was younger, kids writing in about how they were worried about their first kiss and how they didn’t know what to do. It’s so achingly pathetic that someone can reach my age and still have the same social obstacles to overcome. Not that I worry much about that itself any more, even if I do live much longer it’s not like I’ll have to deal with that awkwardness.

I carry this shame around with me 24 hours a day. I know people can see it in my face. I am terrified to put myself in a situation where the subject of relationships or whatever you want to call it, comes up. It’s not hard to tell from my narrow eyed, red skinned, freckly mess of a face that I’ve never been within 2 feet of a girl. I cringe if I’m ever around a conversation about such matters. On the first night I was here at uni, my flatmates asked each other if they had boy/girlfriends back at home, luckily they were tactful enough to not ask me, but I felt panic rush through my veins anyway.

To most people the 40 Year Old Virgin is a hilarious concept, but for me it’s my future. I can’t let it get that far, I won’t. Non-existence is preferable to me than becoming an even greater laughing stock and ever more lonely and twisted.

High Places

Every time I walk to classes I see that high apartment block calling me over. I want to climb to the 10th floor balcony and drop knowing I’ll have at least a few seconds of release.

I don’t know what to do. It seems like I should talk to someone, but who and what should I say? I don’t know if I want to be talked out of it.

Conflicted

I really don’t know how to feel at the moment. I’m coming out of a few days or weeks (I forget) of bad depression and some good things have happened recently but I’m still not feeling very hopeful about the future.

I’ll start with the good, for a change. I got a First in my computer systems module at uni. The pessimist in me wants to tell you how the first year doesn’t count for anything and that it was an easy module, but I will try to ignore it. I’ve been determined to get good grades and not let the mental stuff interfere with my work as it did so much before and so far I’ve done reasonably well. 

The university recommended we start looking for accommodation for next year soon, as all the good places are taken quickly. I was going to stay in a privately run halls-type place since I don’t have any friends with whom to look for a place of our own but I got a bit of a surprise. Two of the girls who live in my apartment found a really good house that they wanted, with 3 bedrooms and paid the deposit for the 3rd room between them so they could make sure no-one else would take it. Anyway, when I got back to uni after being ill, they asked if I wanted to live with them next year :-S I was quite shocked to be honest and I still don’t really know why they asked me. Maybe they know I’m trustworthy enough not to steal things and will probably pay the rent on time, but we’ve never really talked much and although I remember pretty much everything we’ve said to each other before (random note: I think being so socially deprived allows me to remember and assimilate much more from conversations than a lot of people. I’ll sometimes surprise people with some random thing from years ago that I remember) I don’t think they know hardly anything about me. We went to look around and it is a great place so after some consideration I decided to take it. It means I will at least know the people I’ll be with next year, and of the people in my apartment, I get on with those two the best. 

The bad. I felt guilty signing the contract because I really don’t know if I’ll still be alive by that time. After worrying about that for a while, I made myself feel even worse that I must be subconsciously taking that idea seriously otherwise it wouldn’t bother me so much. I’m not sure if that makes sense… I feel sort of under pressure to resolve things by then, I don’t want to traumatise them by letting them discover my broken remains one morning. 

It seems paradoxical, but my strongest suicidal feelings don’t necessarily correlate (there’s a less pretentious word but I can’t think of it) with my worst periods of depression. When I first started on antidepressants, the mental health practitioner told me that sometimes when very depressed people start them, it’s a dangerous time because they feel like they have the energy to kill themselves and sometimes go through with it (hence the black box warnings on them). I was lying about my history of suicidal ideation at the time, but I can sort of understand what she meant now. I don’t want to unduly worry anyone, I’m not about to do it right now, but it is rather disheartening that I am probably less depressed and am in a better position now than any time in the last 2 years but I still feel like I want to end it. I don’t want to experience the fall in mood, the drifting sadness and childish jealousy that overcomes me. I still check the price of my preferred method, I made a test order of zopiclone and it came through without problems so an unscheduled, non-controlled substance should have problems. Also I can sleep at night now.

I’m worried about how honest I should be at my CBT assessment. Full disclosure seems like a sure fire way for them to write me off and probably send people around to my house to interfere again. I think I’ll play it by ear.

Stupid SA

I’ve slipped back into old ways again. Since I’ve been back here since Christmas, I’ve only managed to make dinner in the kitchen once and that was when I knew no-one was in. I’m too scared to be around those loud people I don’t know. They scare me, I actually feel fear when I hear raucous laughter and conversations. I’m tired of letting this rule me but I don’t know what to do. I’ve been spending far too much money on sandwiches and drinks in town so I don’t have face them all. I worry about stupid things, like what food I buy and whether they’d laugh when they see what’s in my cupboard or think I’m weird or something. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the fear that people will have some undefinable negative feeling towards me that I experienced so many times in school, sixth form and the first uni I went to. I’ve had everything from my laugh to the way I walk picked on and criticised and it’s made me paranoid to do anything in public view. I worry about the most mundane things that people usually never give a second thought to.

One positive thing is that I might be able to see a different psychiatrist next time. I had to get my mum to phone because I was too afraid to do it myself, but my appointment with the creepy guy has been cancelled and I’m waiting to hear back about seeing a different doctor.

Also my CBT appointment has finally come through. I knew over a year ago that CBT was my best shot at getting better but it’s taken this long of jumping through hoops to get them to agree and set a date. I had to fill a CORE form in (don’t know if anyone’s done this before) which has several statements presumably to gauge how depressed you are and  you tick boxes from “not at all” to “most or all of the time”. I’m a bit worried about what they might think because I filled this in honestly, and I really do think about killing myself every day and all that… There was also a longer form where I got to describe what my problem is, how it affects my life and what may have triggered it in the past. This is the first time that I will have been able to fully express these things, the first time I wrote things down for my GP, he refused to read it and made me explain to him, which I struggle greatly with. I’m just hoping that they won’t dismiss me as unsuitable for it because of suicidal and depressed I am. I shall find out on the 2nd of February.