Blogphen

Blah, I feel as though I’m in danger of falling back into the trap I found myself in almost 9 months. There’s a number of insecurities I currently need to address: I’m not sleeping well, I’m having nightmares. Everyone keeps pointing out how much of a loser I can appear. I’m becoming afraid of the dark, I don’t like being in the house on my own. I’m less mobile now I’ve dropped a glass on my foot, it absolutely kills to walk. I keep randomly having fits of wanting to cry at various things.

It’s encouraging to know I can be liked, but at the same time it’s discouraging to realise the truth that I’m only used as a ‘last resort’. To you (you know who you are) - I am not interested. It was unexpected but I’m afraid I’d need a lot more to go on than what you presented to me. With regards to being “scared” (why did you feel the need to drag others into this?), I’m neither going to confirm or deny that. However, despite the breach of my confidence on the part of another party-goer, you already know the answer to that.

To you who asked whether or not things were actually happening with regards to the previous weekend: no, I could only dream.

My nightmares are playing on a lot of insecurities at the moment. Of the two I can remember most clearly, there was one I woke up with a bushy moustache/beard and I had a combover. The other, I found myself moving into a house with Russell T Davies. I don’t know what made it a nightmare but I didn’t like it.

There’s evidently a lot I don’t know in life, the universe and everything. And recently that lack of knowledge has made me look and feel absolutely stupid, worthless and useless.

I passed one of my resits. The other I didn’t fail *too* badly, such that it’s a tolerated fail and I’m through to the next year, but it was still a failure. Especially as how much effort I put into passing it and how little effort I put into it all the first time round. Not a big enough improvement to justify everything, really.

Meh.

It’s 02:04 on Tuesday Jan 9th 2007 as I begin to write this post. I can’t sleep tonight and my whole body just aches for some reason.

In a sweeping generalisation, suffering from depression is a bit like how I expect schizophrenia to be. It’s not to say I know what it is like, it’s not to say I might be right at all, but all I know is how I feel. When I’m up, I tend to be very optimistic to things such as going back to University (this coming Saturday). I always want to blog and I write in my head. I write, I read it back to myself and I re-draft it somehow. I never actually get to write it down in case it brings me down with it. When I am up, I tend to be a lot more sociable, I tend to get up early and get to sleep well.

Conversely, when I’m down I tend to be very negative about things. Even though I do feel able to blog without it going round in my head, I never feel I manage to get my points across properly. When I’m down I think of all the negative things about going back; I think about dropping out or intentionally failing exams to force me out. I tend to be more wrapped up in myself, less open, less able to act in social situations and I have a nasty tendency to get myself into serious trouble this way.
This “split mind” theory is something that’s been floating around in my head lately and I’m not entirely sure if it’s correct for me to make such a generalisation.

I’m not going to mention anything medical here - it’s in everybody’s best interests for now.

I need to get some sleep. Still not tired though…

I’ve been thinking the wording of this post through my head for the past several days. Still doesn’t help me in any sense, though.

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve done too much travelling and have had time to do some thinking. Essentially, there are a few themes which have recurred.

• Firstly, I don’t feel settled. Before moving to University, we had builders in at home doing all sorts of stuff. As a result, that gave us all of 1 day to shop for EVERYTHING I needed and leave the next. Therefore I didn’t actually get to pack anything until the morning I left.

Because of this, I haven’t felt as though I’ve moved out, just that I did a quick pack to go on holiday for a bit. Hence I don’t actually feel as though Hendrefoelan Student Village is actually “home”. I know I do say “I’m on my way home” but I just use it as a saying and because it’s easy to say.

• Secondly, my life isn’t as I’d like it to be. Freshers’ Week wasn’t like it’s supposed to be. I’d like to write about it but given some parts of the Blog’s readership (and not just Google), I feel it’s safer not to. Suffice to say I don’t feel properly part of the University lifestyle.

In the 7 weeks we’ve been there I’ve been slowly gaining an interest towards a girl more commonly known as Emily. She’s more like me than most people I’ve met so far but I can’t tell if she gives a shit about me. I’m not going to ask her out simply because I’m shit scared of rejection. It’s happened all too often in my lifetime (precisely every single time; in the only relationship I’ve been in she asked me out) and it does me precisely zero amount of good, mostly relating to what you can assume my last password-protected post is about.

My course has also become very hard, very quickly. The CompSci (the ACTUAL course I signed up for) modules are all going fine, all going smoothly. However, I’m beginning to struggle with both the maths and engineering modules I’m being forced to take. Both of them are about logic and on some occasions have shared the same material, just from a different PoV. I was fine up until then but then they took radically different roads and now each course is pumping me full of information I don’t understand. Hopefully I’ll be able to get books for both and catch up soon.

• I’ve spent the last weekend at the house of friends in Essex. Had a mostly good time apart from the tantrum which was thrown just before I went. Was over nothing, really, but despite everybody else apologising for him, it wasn’t really a downer on the weekend. Had a great time and a fantastic end to what had been a fun but exhausting birthday on the Friday!

Once again, I blog from the train. I’m now on the way back to Swansea. Had a MUCH easier journey than last Sunday (Nottm > Birmingham > Newport > Bridgend > Swansea taking 7 hours) - hopped on a train at Chafford, straight on a Circle Line train to Paddington and just missed the EARLIER train by 5 mins. Was there 55 mins before my scheduled train so I didn’t lose anything (other than The Game, which happened when I wrote that). Got the Swansea train on time and I should be home for 8:30!

Anyway, that seems to be my life as it stands at the moment. Lots of seemingly random, unconnected bits, really!

My entire life I’ve been bullied for a number of reasons. Many include my physical appearance (large lower jaw) and due to my achievements such as gaining access to NAGTY and Mensa. As a result I’ve generally been depressed, stressed and messed about.

This came to a climax in years 10 and 11 when due to the added stress of GCSEs, combined with daily verbal abuse (I have very rarely been physically bullied; that’s never been an issue), I began to self-harm. At first it was just the odd cut on my wrist but over the months it escalated into widespread wounds all across my body.

The past 2 years at college have been brilliant - most people have actually respected me for who I am. As a result the cutting, for the most part, stopped.

Recently, my stress levels have been steadily rising, most notably due to the fact that I’m about to go off to Uni soon. I don’t know the area, I don’t know any of the people and I’ve never been faced with looking after myself for so long. However, this has not immediately been the cause of the panic attacks I’ve been receiving.

An IRC channel I frequent has recently been giving me the same feelings of bullying I suffered 2+ years ago. Things such as banning me from the group for reasons which are out of my control (dodgy connection causing me to connect and disconnect) as well as verbal attacks on me from some members of the group regarding my operation.

As a result of bringing these feelings back, combined with the extra stress, I’ve unfortunately just buckled. Every time something like this happens I get a panic attack. Shortness of breath, trembling, the onset of my depression and an overwhelming need just to get away. I’ve even had the thoughts of self-harm running through my head again but thankfully it hasn’t come to that yet. That said, if this carries on I’ll just end up back in the same spiral as before.

So, I know when I’m not wanted. “Shell”, “KTremain” and “Caz” have all made it pretty clear now. Next time I sign in I will go and ban myself from the system so that I’m not troubling them any longer. I just don’t know what else there is to do. I can’t carry on like this.