Hard to watch

    

      I’ve so far gotten my physical and first tb test out of the way. I went to an urgent care place and had it done, and the medical assistant actually took my pulse from my left arm because of where I was sitting (something I couldn’t help). I was hesitant in mind but I didn’t stop her, though I do think she saw a few scars because when it came time for the tb test she used my right arm for the injection sight. Now I’m just wondering if the second tb test can be with the same arm. Then the next thing is a drug screen, and then I should be ready for classes.  

 

I was going to work on my poems today but I got totally absorbed (unfortunately, because I regret it) in watching a disturbing movie called An American Crime. I shouldn’t have watched the movie because I know now it’s going to haunt my mind for longer than I’d like. It was a true story, which is what I can’t let go of. The whole thing is horrifying and I hate myself for reading up on that case and finding out the worst of what the movie actually left out. The movie was good but the story in general really tears me up. I think it shows how the herd mentality humans can have when in groups can be so dangerous, and how wrong it can end up being when people don’t step in and say something about what they hear or see going on, or when they finally do step in, it’s too late.

 

So, I may have a hard time sleeping tonight, but hopefully tomorrow I’ll have my thoughts back to what they should be on. I’ve started back on my medication so I am trying to keep myself together and be optimistic, at least about classes starting. Everything else is going to fall in line somehow, I just have to control what I can and keep moving.  

It’s about disappointment…

        Complete disappointment, from many different angles. From people using or manipulating you to the bad advice from others or yourself that you never want to hear but it is repeated over and over anyway. But that’s just my interpretation of it (for today..lol).

Let Down

Trust swindled me of a soul

I was above the trance of these other sheep

But I see what they’ve done

Every smile I perceived was a fallacy

To ever think I was enough….

 

I am swathed in botched self confidence

A boring balance of undesired range

It’s my own disillusionment forcing me to change

It’s the beady way they looked at me

With flickering disdain….

  

This is the life of the broke and used

I am beneath with the fragments of an unfulfilled wish

Fast pace confusion gave its old opinion

Shriveled experience poured out its dust of a vision

Its wisdom and wounds, without a reason  

 

I never mentioned before, but about two or three days ago I received my absentee ballot (early voting here in Ohio). I was so glad to finally get it over with and send my ballot back through mail, because here in my city the polling places are expected to be very packed and I was worried about waiting until Nov. 4th and having to see the line I’d have to wait in. It’s cool though. Now a person who actually needs that place in line will have it, and might be able to cast their vote before the polls close that day. Strangely, I’m in such a better mood today :)

Dried blood, my circumstances, weak, helplessness

           I have been so right all along. I am supposed to swallow my anxiety and fear and pretend it’s not what rips me apart inside for ever moment I still breathe. Because there is no cure for social anxiety. The rest of the world considers this disorder a joke I’m sure, but it’s not so light to deal with. It’s caused severe depression and a complete feeling of desperation, of being trapped. I should make it clear how it is in my head.

I can not and do not want to get a job because I WOULD RATHER DIE FIRST. Literally. The interviewing, the pathetic resume I haven’t bothered writing down, the lying I am no good at…where does it leave me? It leaves me starving in the end.

My circumstances are ones that have delayed and continue to stall any progress. I can’t drive, have no work experience and an unfavorable personality. I am that person with social anxiety who has one person in my everyday support circle, my mother, and unfotunately, she doesn’t understand how much it breaks me in dealing with this. I put off learning to drive because I knew my family couldn’t handle the financial burden at the time to send both me and my twin brother through student driving courses. So, I passed and let my brother go first, and I waited until I am now too old to take the same course. I stalled in looking for a first time job because I knew my options would be limited. I would have had to work either at a fast food place or be a cashier somewhere. I feared the situation then and I fear it now, more than ever, because my time is running out.

CB therapy was alright at first. It eased my depression along with the pills, but I let go of all that. I don’t want to talk anymore to people who cannot do anything to genuinely change the circumstances of my life. No one can do that, and they shouldn’t. I don’t want a life, so it’s not neccessary for anyone to try. Oh, and I’ll not forget to metion the near $200 bill the fucking insurance company is sticking me with. They’ve changed how they charge patients for mental health services, and it doesn’t favor the patient, of course.

I could change my degree to Graphic Design and go through another year of courses with a half heart and weak motivation, and it won’t change the circumstances. I’ll still be in this house, without a licence, without work experience. I am shutting down and it’s clear from the numbness. It is deadness now, complete lifelessness.

If I don’t kill myself, what will society do with me in such a state? There’s nothing in life I want that would make it worth the hell of being forced to ‘face my fear’ and anxiety of social situations, day after day after day. It isn’t right, but neither is lying to myself.

Familiar Ways

           I’m getting back to my normal self again it seems. The withdrawal is pretty much gone from going off the medication and I can sleep a little better, but it’s the days now-I feel this day to day reality getting to me the way I remember it did before I took any pills or had a therapy session. Certainly not as bad as it was, but I wonder, will it only get worse? Have I learned enough about being aware of how I think and what my habits are to predict the worst and decide on a different approach to situations, for the better?

Just to give an example, today my mother and some other close relatives (my aunts in town) went to a shoe store. I saw some cute shoes there, I pointed out some styles I thought my mom would like since she was the one who needed shoes to go with her clothes for work. I saw styles I would have liked to buy, but instead of just taking and buying them as my mom was trying to persuade me to, I decided against it and thought to myself “Why buy shoes when I have no where to wear them to?” or “I don’t have a life, I never leave the house, what’s the point in new shoes, what’s the point in buying anything anymore?”

My mom was mentioning that I might need new shoes for when my classes return to the classroom and aren’t online anymore. I didn’t really give her a response to that, I only shrugged and looked away. And though I did not think the actual words, I felt a familiar way that in the past has led me to think “I’m not going to be around long enough to worry about that.”

In all honesty, I still want an escape from all of this. Just as Lupe Fiasco says in his song, Fighters, “You just wish there was a door that would appear that you could go disappear through…”, exactly. I don’t feel horrible yet, not in the way I know horrible to be with my own mind, but I would still walk through that door and disappear if I could.

Anyway, yesterday hurricane Ike remnants, combined with a cold front came though the midwest where I live (I think I got it right), with wind gusts between 30 and 75 mph from what I could gather from radio reports (again, pretty sure). Trees large and small were uprooted or split in half, more than half a million people are still without power and cable, I think about four people died from fallen trees between yesterday and now, but I am not sure exaclty, and lots of people got injured trying to clean up the mess of branches everywhere (with saws and so on)…Yeah, it was a bad weather event and the result has people rushing to the few gas stations that are still open that weren’t affected by the power outages that happened, it has people being greedy with the ice being sold at the few stores still open (some people were stock piling ice bags and selling them from their own garage to people, according to my aunt, doing what she could only assume was price gouging). This whole thing has really reminded me that mother nature can snatch any thing you hold as important with no mercy. Those winds could have been much stronger and could have swept away houses, cars and who knows what else. She can let you know your very life isn’t important and that if you want to live, you better make worth in every second you’re given. I have been thinking long about that. Whose side am I really on…?

Society- The City

The idea for this came from a ride back home after night classes at my college. I looked around at the dreary streets and eyesores and people walking around….I was in a bad mood after an Algebra class and had to vent. So anyway, I wrote a poem about society, and rather than add to that, I decided this one needed to be on its own, especially after five drafts. I’m sticking with what I’ve got, and I don’t care if it’s terrible. Not today….

We hear the city pulse best at night
A train in the distance; a plane flying high

Brisk city water burns my eyes
It’s night and the urban lights taint the sky
The crime- to sleep away our precious lives
So, we thrive just well in artificial sunshine

At the core we’re hostile soulless beings
We stalk standards of fantasy
Cover the scent of agendas in bile
With a good and selfless moral profile

Right…Everyone’s comfortable in their box
A smiling illusion of everything we’re not.

So Anxious….

           I think I’m getting more anxious about interacting with people than not. Distrusting of more than what I thought. Before it was only crowds that I stayed away from, now it’s as if I’m feeling unsafe around people as individuals, not just the crowds anymore. I’ve been watching too much news; there’s something conflicting going on in my head. I know life is short, I know I should do my best to live the best way I can. I am trying, and instead of feeling guilty for my opportunities and for being the burden I’ve always considered myself, I’m really stuck about how to change things. There are still things going on with my family that do affect me. And as grateful as I try to feel for what I have in my life, there’s still that thought echoing about how I really should be gone. How I really should find a way to disappear.

I’ve been approved for more school money from the loan company. It eats me up inside knowing I have debt already. Thousands of dollars. And it only builds and builds. They expect me to start paying it back six months after I get my degree in a few years. What if it takes me longer to get a job? What if by the time I get my degree, it’s still not enough? There are so many what if’s, worrying about them literally might kill me. 

I don’t understand our society. It hurts to see the price for further education only get higher when it’s almost a fact that you can’t get a decent paying job without something extra, beside a diploma. Everything feels hopeless…you only make it if you want it bad enough in this life. My mother is always shoving harsh realities in my face with talk of college and jobs and money and bills. Thank God we don’t have a gun. Or thank God I’m such a recluse, which keeps me away from everything…

I haven’t been able to write in my journal in weeks. I guess that’s just fine. I seem to have more to say when I at least feel as if I’m communicating to someone else. Somebody real.

Stress

I decided to write something that is both random and to the point. It describes stressful things, how stress feels, how it looks and what I imagine when I think of stress. It’s not meant to make perfect sense, but it’s all centered around this one thing.

Too many sunny days in a row
On and on dissatisfaction
Its widespread signature; the illness in my eyes
It is the scribble of those itchy red lines
A survivor and rarely a good thing
The caustic rain on my fresh painting

Inflamed hatred of a nightmare
Strangers walking by telling me to smile
It’s when the remedies don’t work; shot nerves
Instincts scratching at the walls
The rigid body language; superior vexation
Hangnails and blood I can’t ignore

When comfort begins to feel painful
Doves falling dead from the sky
It is success crumbling in chunks
Migraines trying to murder me
The vessels will rupture with my luck
Simply wishing that I’d never woken up

To Escape and Forget

 

You know when you cry and whatever sadness that’s built up is released, and you breathe better afterward, after it’s all out of you? I remember that. I’ve been experiencing sadness that makes me want to cry and let it out, but it’s never enough, you know. Once the tears stop, it’s only a pause until everything wells back up. It never gets out of me. There’s this low wave of energy keeping me down; I’m constantly thinking of a way out.

I want everything to change, but I’m afraid to act. I just don’t care about how wrong it is that I complain about my life when I’ve seen and heard others who deal with worse, but God knows I’d trade what I have, because it’s everything I don’t deserve. And I wallow in my worthlessness, doing nothing about the source of these issues. I’ll run myself off a cliff trying to figure out my own problems.

I want to go away; I can tell everyone around me wants me to go away, or they think I’m already away somewhere. I told my therapist that a goal I have is to publish a book of poems; I told him it was a goal just so that I could have one. I laughed it off, hoping he didn’t take me seriously about that last bit. But, it’s a far off goal, one that will never happen. I say it’ll never happen, hoping I’ll still be around with enough strength to prove myself wrong.

 

            Past everything I’m thinking about, I am actually enjoying a good book. It’s Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers at the moment. I read Stardust last summer and loved it, especially the ending, and this collaborated novel is really funny so far. It’s just what I need when I’m on the brink, something to make me laugh and forget for a moment.       

Negativity

  The more I look and listen around me, the more I notice the negative and cynical tone to almost everything these days. Politics, world events, and everyday problems have felt worse to hear lately because I don’t feel any hope from others, and I certainly don’t feel hope within myself about many things going on. But still, if I get through another day it’s because I’ve found a small amount of faith in peace that others haven’t yet taken away from me yet, and I survive. Yet even that small bit of light I’ve held onto is getting away from me. Whenever I think of taking a risk, I’ve got to be shot down by someone else’s negative attitude towards the idea. For example, last night I considered registering to vote, now I’m trying to keep my cool and not snap on anyone for giving me their useless opinion about it. I try to do what I consider as something positive for myself, moving in a more progressive direction from what I’m so used to. I’m trying to take more control of my own life and decisions to prove to myself that I’m strong enough, and just when I think I’ll be alright, other people and their comments cause me to retreat once again.

People can call me a coward or an idiot, I don’t care (after all everyone has been those things at one point or another) but I’ve grown incredibly tired of having the weight of such negativity (my own and others) keeping me from taking risks and acting on things I’m interested in. Why live if I’m not willing to risk anything? I’m at a point where I could gamble everything I have just because I don’t think holding on as tightly as I have for these years is beneficial to me anymore.

I’m scared to move, and I’m scared to sit back and watch myself rot the rest of my years away as well. I go back and forth on how I should move forward; should I put my energies into self-destruction, or should I continue to try and understand this life through the chances I have and with the risks waiting for me in the future? As shameful as I’ve felt in the recent past over contemplating this way, it’s nothing but the truth. I’m now trying to keep a distance from things that will cause me to fall apart, and that means the negative energy I’ve surrounded myself in. It’s suffocating me now.