The cracks are showing

“DON’T FADE ME OUT YOU…BEASTS.  I INTENDED TO MENTION DISAPPEARING TIGERS AND COMMITMENT.  COMMIT ME MAMA! THEY’RE TRYING TO COMMIT ME!  COMMIT HIM TO THE GARDEN MAUDLIN…”

“From the depths”.

Christ almighty.  I genuinely have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with my life.   My consciousness says, “A writer, a harlequin, a dallier who indulges in dalliances, anything, everything”, but I’m not particularly good at anything or everything and all of it is terribly lonely, because I still feel utterly unable to confide in anyone (the whites of the eyes, hence my tendency to write, if you open yourself to one person, they can hurt you, to many, it doesn’t matter) about all these everythings, and at the moment all I seem to be succeeding in doing is hurting the people I love the most in the entire world, who I have loved most through my entire life.  All I keep thinking is, “How unbelievably blessed have I been to have been so loved and cared for, and this is how I repay people?”  They are thoughts from the garden maudlin.  Oh, I don’t know.  What a strange month it has been.  I should repay the people who love me by being stronger than I am.

This depression, the edge of mania, this utter confusion and feeling of wandering through the end of the horizon, below the sun, the moon, beyond humanity, beyond peace but so sadly, never beyond myself,  makes it harder to even attempt the everything.  My head and heart are both a total mess, and there’s only so long the, “I’m confused, I’m not myself” excuse will fly with those around me before I am summarily executed on the mantle of being a not-great-person, really.  Nor good in any of the old familiar roles (friend, girlfriend, lover, sister, daughter), and not even particularly good at being Seaneen Molloy.   I don’t like making excuses for myself.  This is part of the reason I have somewhat attempted to abandon the identity of the manic depressive.   Some of it is so clear, but I don’t have the guts.  I don’t mean suicide.  I mean the bravery of throwing yourself into the supernova of living.  How utterly terrifying.  And there is the feeling of, “Actually, what if I am myself?  And this it?”  Even worse.

I talked to my social worker yesterday at my ever-increasing feeling of detactment of the world around me.  Which, alas, as you know, leads one to actively seek out the extremities of living… reckless abandon, and not so reckless…. Either way, it makes me feel like I’m not much of a good person right now.  Ever spinning little spiral, hello, hello…

She also asked why I told you all about my “plan” and intrusive thoughts.  I told her it was at once an exorcism and an insurance.

I’m listening to “Dear God” by XTC and for some reason I heard the first line as, “Dear god, I hope you have the internet”.  It would sort a lot out if god just posted on a forum somewhere saying, “I’m real, and you lot are making a total mess of the world.  Quit it, seriously”.

So yes, not exactly an erudite entry.  I’m, er, not myself at the moment?

Anyway, to console myself, and to convince myself of the impossible at the moment (I am worth it, in some way, eh, so strange, since at the moment some people are rallying around to tell me, in this sadness and confusion, how wonderful I am, and the more I hear it, the less I seem to believe it), since I made you do it, here are my five things.

1)  I am kind and forgiving.  I forgive people of almost everything and I am rarely angry at people (possibly because I tend to turn my anger inwards).  It isn’t much of a boast to say, “I am kind to those I love” because if you aren’t, well, that’s pretty weird, isn’t it.  ”I like to kick the ones I love in their BEAUTIFUL FACES”.  No.  I think I am kind in general, because in general I am interested in people, and it is hard to be unkind when you are interested in the person you are speaking to/listening to.  I have massive amounts of empathy, which is somewhat, and often, to my detriment.  I find it incredibly difficult to honestly dislike somebody because there’s always a little piece of them that tangles itself around in the cat’s cradle of my heart.

2) I have a sense of humour, I guess.  Okay, it’s a base sense of humour that delights in making, “Your mum” jokes, but it counts, okay.

3) I truly value genuine eccentricity and have no desire whatsoever to “mellow out” in my old age.  I don’t mean you’ll find me gibbering in a rubbish bin at the age of fifty talking about the “good old days”, but I don’t believe that “settling down” needs to equate death and that experience means compromise  I WANT to be a ranting, raving sixty year old eating books.  I will never feel anything other than a kind of pride when I regard the rollicking madmen that fizz and pop in the world.  They have the right idea.   As do emotional adolescents.   The emotional/mental/physical strangulation of etiquette is killing.

4) Now I’m struggling.  Right, to get to five.  I have a lyrical way with words which extends to my speech as well as my writing.  It doesn’t mean I’m interesting, it just means that I can sound interesting.  That’s a skill, surely.  Eventually everyone discovers I’m talking nothing but beautiful sounding rubbish and they stop listening to me.

5)  I will give myself one thing in terms of my actual personality:  I am strong as all hell.  Sometimes. Yeah, one day I am likely to snap, and recently I’ve come close as the horrifying realisations (“Oh god, why am I alive, I cannot cope with any of this!  Everyone’s dead and gone and I am a madwoman who will end up alone or driving the people I love mad”) of a decade hit me at once due to one event tipping me over the edge, but I have gone through much and somehow survived it still screaming, “COME ON!  COME ON!” while wielding  heavy machinery like Ash in the Evil Dead.  I would never have gotten this far without the love and support of Rob, friends and family, but I did, so there.

So there you go, a ranting entry at 6am, waiting for my sister to get home since I uncermoniously left her to her friends in central London due to feeling exhausted, fluey and delirious but utterly unable to sleep because of all of the above.