Note to self: Please do these things in 2013

Decided that maybe if I make a list of things I want to do/achieve this year (and things I often have avoided doing due to anxiety) I will be more obliged to do them. So here it is:

Note to self for 2013

- Apply for volunteering positions, preferably in a shop so you can finally learn how to use a till!

- Start to volunteer with Student Action at uni such as helping out at parties for the elderly or the film afternoons they hold or with the homeless JUST DO ANYTHING CAF IT'LL BE ENJOYABLE

- Start to go swimming regularly, hopefully on your own (even though this is quite high up the hierarchy of things that set off your anxiety, so you might have to drag boyfriend or friends along first)

- Keep going to Knitting Society meetings every other Tuesday, as when you have been it's been a barrel of laughs and a nice way to unwind from uni work (you are sad that you didn't get to go much last semester so will try and make the most of it this year) and stop panicking about how you might not know anyone as you've been before and it was not only fine but really fun AND you didn't even need alcohol to feel relaxed

- Look for knitting/crochet groups in Manchester (if it's free and there's time)

- Join a nude drawing class?! (because come on Caf, you love genitals and you miss drawing quite a lot)

- Be confident enough to apply for jobs over summer (this is the big'un, what with never having a job and the thought of even applying for a job filling you with such inadequacy that you want to sink into the floor like a slug that's just come into contact with salt)

COME ON CAF! YOU CAN DO IT! YEAHHHH!

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.