August 21, 2004

I'm convinced now that I'm not going to last much longer. Relax, friendly editors, this isn't a suicide note or a threat or anything of the sort. I've felt suicidal now for nearly three months, and despite several attempts, I'm still here and it's clear that the universe isn't letting me out.

This week, on Tuesday, I was meant to cash a meager check, buy a bus ticket, pack a suitcase, and ride a bus to Colorado to move in with some friends. When my efforts to cash that check didn't work out (it's still in my wallet, uncashed), apparently I came home, and my mind "checked out."

I have no recollection of Tuesday or Wednesday at all (apart from the check thing Tuesday). My ex-wife tells me I was completely gone, unable to speak, read, or write, unable or unwilling to communicate in a meaningful way, to cook, groom myself, or even eat (apparently when she handed me a fried chicken TV dinner I tried to eat the bones. Apparently very late Wednesday night (after she'd gone to bed) I managed to prepare an alcoholic drink for myself; upon drinking it I of course got drunk, and my mind seemed to return to my control gradually.

I don't know what's wrong now. I have frequently experienced memory loss over the last few months, but everyone I describe it to is dismissive of this, suggesting it's no big deal. Despite the fact that whole days go missing in my memory, people don't seem to think it's a problem. This is the first time my mind has "gone on vacation" like this when someone else was around to see it, though, and it suggests something may be going very badly inside. Oh, it's worth mentioning my hair looks really stupid now since I got hold of scissors while I was "out of it," shaved part of my right arm, and carved up the left arm a decent amount with a steak knife.

Y'know the saddest part, though? I don't even care anymore. Wednesday afternoon is when I was supposed to turn up in Colorado at a bus station. I had e-mailed several people (all supposedly friends) letting them know I was coming. I called Teresa and left her a voicemail to thank her for her friendship and to let her know I was leaving the state.

Not one phone call. Not one voicemail. Not one e-mail. These people who profess to care about me ... just don't. Erica even seemed to approve when I told her Monday night that I was going; she said "good, let me know when you get there!" I mailed her Tuesday morning telling her I'd let her know Wednesday when I got in safely. Nothing from her either. The very people supposedly letting me move into their home (and picking me up from the bus station) are mysteriously silent and absent.

It's hard not to sound just paranoid when I say this, but even my "closest friends" seem to be either doing everything in their power to hurt me even more than I already have been, or they're doing nothing at all, knowing that's the worst possible thing they could do to me. My parents have done the same thing.

What is so hard about making one god damned phone call? I can understand that people are busy and have lives, but, um, all of them? Erica, Teresa, my parents, my roommates to be, etc., are all too busy to place a phone call like "hey, why aren't you in Colorado yet?", or even one to my ex-wife -- "uh, where is he?"

I'm so desperate to have someone to talk to now that I actually talked to a collector for nearly half an hour about everything going on. She just wanted money from me. She even said "you know, you don't really sound like you need to be in a hospital." But at least she fucking talked to me.

Let this be a lesson to all of you out there who lament being lonely and friendless — don't waste your time giving. Friendship is a ripoff. They're around when you're flying high, when you have a truck to lend to help move, extra cash to lend when they can't make rent, or a strong shoulder to cry on when their shit hits the fan. They're completely absent, missing, AWOL, when it comes to your turn for help.

I am now truly stuck. The cars are repossessed. Erica didn't send enough money to get me to Colorado (ironic, since she owes me over $1,500, and sent me "just enough for a one-way airline ticket" which turned out not to be nearly enough). My friends have promised at least three times since early July that they're coming out here to "rescue" me. I think for the last four weeks it has been "this weekend we'll see you!" ... in a row. Nobody showed up. My parents came all the way out here late in July but got pissed at me before even getting around to coming from their motel room here to visit me. They turned around and went home.

I guess I'm not worth anything to them now that I'm not a trophy boy anymore. They can't exactly brag about me anymore — I already know they lie (my father tells his coworkers and employer that I have a master's degree, while I really have maybe 60 credit hours and no degree at all). I know my friends don't actually want me around — I have nothing left to offer (financially or otherwise) and am essentially dead weight.

My ex-wife, who professes a desire to help me, is remarkably impotent in doing so. She hasn't called anybody, talked to anybody, or really done anything to find out why people are ignoring me. She keeps saying "you're going to the mental hospital tomorrow whether you like it or not." She's been saying that since Thursday. Here I am. No hospital. I think she likes me just the way I am -- powerless, subservient, and mildly entertaining when she slips me her opiate pain killers (hydrocodone, a vicodin generic). I must admit the drugs are fun — while they last. The high/buzz doesn't last nearly long enough, though.

I guess I understand why people have bailed on me and are distancing themselves. I didn't do that to them when they needed somebody, but I guess there's just a double standard at work. Again.

I just wish it didn't hurt so damned much.

Fortunately, with the stunts my mind is pulling these days, with increasing severity and regularity, it looks like I won't be around (in a lucid state of mind, anyway) for long to feel the pain. I wonder if I can influence the world my mind will ultimately move into... that might be fun.

So seriously, it is as if the community is waving a great big stick at me, saying “criticize Singapore all you like, we enjoy reading you telling us about how silly people are over there; but criticize anything else, raise an opinion about anything else, and we will smack you with this here stick so hard that your, um, node gets nuked.” I can understand that over time, the general standards of E2 have been raised a lot higher than they were in years gone by – just look at, say, the daylogs written in the year 2000; pretty unremarkable stuff really. Okay, I am through with the rant - the stuff that was downvoted and eventually nuked of mine was pretty shoddy stuff, I admit. I'm sorry to all of those whom it was inflicted upon.

So I have been around for all of a month now (3.4 weeks and counting) and overall I am pretty happy with how things are going – the quality of the writing I am outputting, judging by the response, has been somewhat erratic, but then I am an erratic person by nature. I'll admit – there was a while there where I was eager to node anything at all. Other noders have often said before that the quality of their nodes goes down as they near the next level, and that is especially true when you are level 1 and you just can't wait to be able to vote on the big backlog of things that you have read over and over again since you first started reading things on this site.

For me, there is one reason why I wanted voting power – it is the same reason that I now want to be able to C! People. Or person as it happens. Well, not even person... I want to C! This: The 20 Minute Tide (ode to insomnia).

It was the first node I ever bookmarked; first in my browser, and then in my bookmarks on my homenode. I don't remember how I found it – probably suffering, at that point, from my usual insomnia, and browsing things on the topic of insomnia. I don't know how it has escaped attention all this time. Over more than 3 years it has only had 6 votes – and one of them is mine, given on August the 10th, the day I got my first ten votes.

“If I invent my own formats I'll always do it the right way.
but then what's the challenge”

I simply love it. Every time I can't sleep I bring it out again. I quote it during the day. I quote it in conversation. I speak the words to myself when lying there staring at the ceiling for hours and hours on end... which, up until recently, was fairly often.

About that whole insomnia thing. I fear I left that club – probably just before we got badges and an anthem too, knowing my luck. I joined another club; I joined the ranks of 'the medicated.' Bipolar, apparently.

“The greatest thing ever written was probably scratched into beach sand.
right before the tide came back again”

It is a long story what led to my becoming medicated... Let's just say that my “erratic” behavior led to me punching a good friend of mine in the face, breaking their nose in the process. I can't defend my actions – but I chose to try and do something about them. I sought help, and help I received. I can sleep now; I actually have a job now; I haven't broken anything in a sudden fit of self-righteous fury for several months now; I even dream now – I never dreamt before I started my medication, or at least when I did it paled in comparison to what other people describe and what I have now.

Had rather; it's fading now. I don't dream as much; I'm starting to need to take sleeping pills in addition to the other pills; I don't feel alive anymore– or at least in a fashion that I feel I should do. Above all, I am becoming disillusioned with everything around me – my lifestyle, this country (as those who have read my other work will doubtless have noticed), my friends, everything (not this everything, the other one!). I am starting to think that perhaps the medication isn't worth it, perhaps I need to start doing what I was doing in the years before I ever started taking it in the first place – battle my demons myself. This time at least I know what I am aspiring towards, the ideal "me" I want to become. At the end of the day, we all die alone – do I want to be remembered as being dependant on pills to keep me sane and happy and well adjusted; or do I want to be remembered as one who battled his demons on his own terms?

“If I had made my own time zone, my 20 minutes wouldn't be up.
in my own ocean the tide would never rise”

All quotes are from syntax_'s 'The 20 Minute Tide (ode to insomnia)'