Sedimentation of the soul.

So it’s 1.46am with an extra “FUCKING WHAT TIME IS IT?” in there somewhere. I’m currently writing about sand. Yes, my geography degree is not just about colouring in and standing in rivers and climbing up hills, I also have to analyse sand. I have to spend hours in a lab looking at sand through a microscope, looking at the colour and shape of sand, and I have to describe in technical terms how round or pointy the sand is. This sand is white, it is very pointy. No, no, good heavens that will not do. I have to explain in several pages why the sand is pointy, how pointy is this sand compared to that sand, what sand is sand and sand the sand sand sand.

To survive the sandy pit of hell that is currently my degree – hell, I don’t even fucking like sand, I fucking hate beach holidays because I burn in the sun like a roast chicken in the oven and I’d rather go on a city break anyway so my melatonin-deficient decrepit body can rest in the cool air-conditioned realms of cool air-conditioned buildings instead of burning like yes, a roast chicken– I have started to drink tea. Today I alternated between Yorkshire tea, green tea and peppermint tea. I drank so much tea that my wee practically turned clear which never normally happens because I don’t drink enough. Every time I burp my mouth tastes of Polos and I’m slightly worried to go to bed in case my blood actually turns to peppermint tea and my body bursts and tomorrow morning my housemates find a deflated minty wreck of a corpse where my usual lively – well actually no, I’m practically comatose when I’m asleep anyway – but where my body would normally be happily sleeping and they’ll find me and look at each other and sigh.

And all of this. All of this minty death because I have to talk about sand. My actual mind is now set in a sandy desert – all of my thoughts are set out on camels running across the desert that is my mind. Desert as in full of sand, and also deserted, because all other rational thoughts think “SHIT THIS SAND IS BORING I’M OUTTA HERE” and do a runner but here I am, my physical body, at my laptop at 1.51am, talking about sand. 

Eye of a Tornado

There are some days where being awake hurts. The sheer thought of existence causes you so much distress that you wish to sleep more than anything in the world, because sleep is the closest you can get to not existing. The closest to escaping from having to be, to think, to act, to eat, drink…go out. To go to university, to get dressed. To move. The banality of existence is so plain to you that you wish to take no part in it. Communicating with yourself is too much, let alone with others.

Emotions run away from you, your brain substitutes. This is what makes people happy, your brain tells you. This is funny, now you need to laugh. Did you laugh? You weren’t paying attention. The whole thing is just a personal struggle of will, to function. A greyish drone shrouds your thoughts, someone holds your head under water. You don’t struggle.

You could be halfway through making your breakfast and you stop – your batteries have expired. They don’t properly recharge like everyone else’s. You never quite recharge. You wake up and repeat the cycle of telling yourself how to exist. Must walk upstairs, must open shower door, must wash hair, must get out, must dry hair. If you stop for a moment you resign to emptiness, staring blankly at the wall.

You are living in your own head apart from it’s not really you – you is buried somewhere deep inside, locked in a vault miles away from the part of your mind that deals with the practicalities. Eat. Piss. Shower. Sleep. No emotions, the only way of expression a sigh or the odd utterance. The couch becomes host for the shell of your half-dead body as it surrenders to its half-dead existence. Head is silent yet whirring. You drag yourself to bed in the hope that you’ll manage to fall asleep and not exist for a few more hours.

I feel depressed occasionally, but today I woke up and felt the most depressed I’ve felt in two years. The last time I felt like this is somewhat un-documented; I lost months. I can’t remember anything for what I did from November-March, can’t remember if I did anything, said anything. Can’t remember the places I went to, the only thing I remember is the stomach churning feeling I felt one morning as I woke up and had to continue living. In a dream you go into autopilot and float. And here I was, having to live again. The only thing dragging me through the day was the countdown until when it would be time to go to bed and not exist for a bit longer. Being asleep was the only time I didn’t fucking ache.

Existence dominated by lack of existence. It comes and goes. I’ll probably be okay in a couple of days. I need a cuddle.