Tuesday 16 July 2013

Imagine my face in the first 5 seconds of a bungee jump

I want to do things. Somethings and nothings. Good things and bad things. Important things and damn stupid things. Everything really. So why is that I'm sitting here feeling like I've done absolutely nothing at all. Procrastination has become a lifetime habit I'm going to attempt to assail.

Today I have that massively overused quote in my head. The one that says life is what happens when you're busy making plans. Actually, I think it's time somebody came up with a new quotation to get the point across. Anyway, it does sound a lot like the title of my autobiography. But then everybody does it. Nobody more than me. I love to dream. All the extraordinary things I am going to do when...

Allow me to wander through a small sample of the things I've always said I would like to do. Learn a second language. Alternately Spanish, Polish and Italian. Start a band. Visit every country in Europe. Travel the the rest of the world(except Australia). Become a genuine PUA. Reach my peak fitness. Start speaking my mind, regardless. Finish reading every single word on my bookshelf. Bungee jump or skydive. Start volunteering some place where I can at least try to help other people.

That last paragraph is less than a drop in the ocean. Sure I have made attempts to start some of the things I want to do. Have a few European countries ticked off and even began learning some languages. The problem is the amount of time I have spent trying to make these things happen is nothing in comparison to the time spent talking about it, thinking about it or imagining it. It's obvious that I spend too much time thinking and reflecting on things. That is a big part of it but not the whole story. It's the sheer lack of action that is really hurting. If you don't go for the things you want you just end up with what falls your way. So don't complain when it's not what you thought it might be.

Thinking about all the things holding me back I wonder if they're not all excuses. I feel like I have always struggled under the burden of being the youngest child. People who aren't the baby of the family won't get this. Carrying around this guilt that if I leave the house for good I would be signalling the beginning of the end for my parents. I left the house. I came back. I felt guilty for leading my own life. But really, was that not an excuse so I could slip back to my comfort zone with no pressure to do things for myself. It seems likely to me now.

Money or lack of it could be used as a reason not to have done some of the things I wanted to. Travelling costs money. Looking at that and being honest though, I would say I could easily find the money if I tried to save properly and stopped spending on random nonsense like a book on how to save that turned out to be another terrific waste of money. Another excuse.

I use my family, my depression, my romantic interests and fear of disapointment to retreat from endeavor. Why try anything when I have all these other things to deal with? Wouldn't it be better to wait until my life is absolutely perfect before I start shooting for the stars?

You may have guessed that the above was a rhetorical question. Or you may not. Anyway, it is pretty clear to me right now that waiting for the right time is absolutely the wrong thing to do. I need to go out and really struggle for the things I want. Otherwise I'm just wasting time and not really having fun wasting it. Sometimes I think about using depression as a catalyst. What I mean is I know I'm going to sink into a severe depression once more in the future. It's odds on. I'm looking at that and telling myself that it is all the more reason to do the things that I want to now, when I have the capability.

When it comes to those last few days when I can write the school report on this lifetime it  would be nice if I could say I at least tried to do all the things I wanted to. Regret the things you haven't done, not the the things you wish you hadn't. Up until now almost all my regrets are for the things I haven't done. Oh well, can't go back now but maybe I can start doing the things instead of just thinking about things.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

The foot in my ass needs to be my own

I woke up this morning like everyone else in Ireland. With the sun illuminating my bedroom, stirring up a heatwave that we all long for eleven months of the year. I can do anything I want today. Anything!

The thing is though, I just want to close the blinds, crawl under the sheets and disappear from it all. Depression has washed over my entire body. I feel sick to the stomach. Helpless. Hopeless. Not in depair yet but it is going to take work to hold it back. Where has this come from? It's been maybe the worst year of my life but I've been pretty happy for the last month or so. Even if I didn't believe that myself, there are enough other people telling me I'm my old self again to make it true. It was good while it lasted.

I'm lying there in bed with two choices. Retreat or attack. Surrender or fight. One means doing what I've always done and let the depression own me again. It means giving myself an excuse to fail. A reason to stay in bed and avoid reality. A chance to imagine what I could do instead of having a go. To be honest, that's what I want to do. Reach for the cigarettes, sleep and sad songs.

The second option is a little harder to define. Obviously if I'm to stay and fight It's going to take some constructive action on my part. Trying to figure out what that is makes staying in bed today seem like the only realistic way to proceed. But I'm trying to change that negative pattern of thinking. I've been going to see a mental health nurse for the past two months because I was so under the influence of depression it was making me climb dangerously close to the ledge and jumping. I'm not there today. She's been trying to put it into my head that when I wake  up feeling like I do today that I just have to do something. Anything that isn't what I've always done. It will probably be painful but it's the only way to keep me from getting back up on that ledge.

Today doing something or anything means I dragged myself out of bed. Had breakfast. Took my bike out for a cycle. Avoiding going to the shop for cigarettes. Getting on here to write this. I'll go to work later and talk to people and laugh. I am going to finish a book I've been reading. I know it doesn't seem like much but when one day in bed can turn into two months of avoidance and desperation it could be a small step to saving my life.
I'm always clinically depressed, even when I'm laughing and joking. Even when I'm focused and determined. Even when I'm so outwardly confident that picking up girls in nightclubs is the easiest thing in the world again. I'm only a mishap away from falling back again. You can forget how bad the depression can get. Like today, most people would find it difficult to remember just how cold it can get in Ireland in winter. With me in good spirits, it's very hard to look back and feel empathy with the way I felt when all I could think about was dying. I have to keep reminding myself to remind myself to be careful.

I was writing something the other day about needing someones foot in my ass to keep me moving in the right direction. It's true. I do. I went for three days at the weekend without feeding any of my prescribed anti-depressants into my body while I absolutely saturated it with alcohol, a depressant. So, I really can't crawl around in bed all day wallowing in self pity anymore. It was my own choice. It seems the foot in my ass really needs to be my own.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Todays been good

Dug out this old thing I wrote down a few months ago. I don't feel like this today at all, but It's important to remember where I've been so I can focus on not going back there.To be honest I'm having a good day. Cycled this morning, did some reading and worked on some other stuff I had to do. Actually started looking into some charities to volunteer for too because someones gone and put the idea into my head. I even had time to write a love song. Okay, that last one was obviously a big lie. Not that I haven't done that before.

Here it is. Probably with spelling mistakes and bad grammar. I don't care.

Do I have an affection for depression? I always looked on it as something edgy and cool. Marlon  Brando behind a cigarette, like it was the depression that might get me the girls. Up until now I thought for the most part it was a chemical problem. But it's not. There are some deep rooted anxieties lying within me. I'm not living, I'm breathing. That is the difference.

I sympathize with some of the character traits of my depressed self. I take some morbid joy in the way it makes me feel about people. Usually love interests. I project myself as the dark hero in a story of unrequited love or passion. But it's not the way things are. That's a transcendental perception of my illness. It doesn't stem from a spiritual desire to monopolize pain to spare others. It's a fatalistic outlook. A way of viewing life as starving me of essential nourishment.

People say you control your own destiny but that is not entirely right. We are what we are when we're born, not a blank canvas to be painted in the fashion of our desires. We all have basic functional abilities that get developed unconciously through young life. So to say I can be whatever I want doesn't work for me. The best way I can attempt to emphasize the point is to say I can't be you, I can only be me.

Of course there are many threads interwoven together to make up the complete picture. I'd take up on such a thread as my childhood. We grow up reading about people reminiscing about happy childhood memories. Christmas, birthdays or summers. But for me I don't remember ever being a happy child. In fact, I don't have that many memories of my youth and any that I do, tend to have negative connotations. I have read that people with strong memories of their childhood tend to be those with positive and happy memories. For instance, I remember when I was around 10 years old that I cried because I didn't want to get older. Already frightened by the future without really understanding why.

Another factor in my story, although a few puberty affected years later, is my absolute certainty that I was clinically depressed by my mid teens. The first thing I did after school was to sleep for hours on end. I was always smart but really an underachiever. I got into mild trouble. Spending hours walking in biblical rainstorms was another favourite of mine. Never went to discos. Played golf with the men instead of the boys my own age. I look back on that time with a huge amount of regret that it wasn't detected then. How was I to know? I thought I was just of a sullen disposition. I needed help then but never recieved the succour I craved.

I shouldn't blame others for that though. I would have tried to hide it, I'm sure. But a large part of the pain is the time wasted between then and now. I really am no further on. It's said that the most long lasting and vivid memories elderly people hold onto are of the time of their late teens and early twenties. I'm not sure I have any that can withstand the passage of time. Would I have been happier if I had never been born? All I can say for sure is that I would have preferred to have never been born than to have to kill myself. But who's to say what that even means. I don't know what, if anything, lies beyond the borders of that first and last breath.