Watching Paint Dry

"The lows, the nothing. There's nothing left in you. You're beyond tears, you're even beyond thought."

I want my hypomania back. Just got to let it pass. But I'm so impatient.

Wordless

When I wrote in the letter in the blue envelope that I didn't think I could be a writer anymore, that was just because my finesse didn't compare to that of my favourite writers. But now, I think I've actually lost it. I spent all day trying to write. I can't even rhyme anymore. I have ideas, I've just lost my words. They're not my words, I don't know why I call them that. I've lost the words. And that scares me a lot because writing is how I survive. Suffering from chronic boredom. I need new experiences, I need to do things I've never done before. Like the cuckoo's nest. Not that that really provided me with any writing material. I don't know what's gone wrong. Everything's all mixed up, it's all too still. I feel cold, hard, flat. I'm not enjoying this. And I don't even know how to fix it. None of the music is what I want to hear. Everything feels very wrong. That's the only way I can explain it. Everything is wrong without words. Agitated.

Chemical Imbalance

I have a chemical imbalance in the brain. So do lots of people. Trouble is with my chemical imbalance they don't know which chemicals to feed me to put me right. When the chemicals they presume will work don't, they try to alter my diagnosis. Surely with all the money that goes into medical research they could develop a type of blood test that assesses which chemicals in the brain aren't present in the correct amounts, so patients could be given the right chemicals as medication to make them right again. I'm fed up of being a fuck up. I'm fed up of being unfixable. I'm on such a high dose of everything I take that I think it's affecting the way I think. And by that I mean I rarely think. Or I'm rarely aware that I'm thinking. I seem to have no access whatsoever to my thoughts, and I'm sure it never used to be this way. And the knowledge of this leads me to question what it is my brain is so busy doing that it's lost the capacity to think.I don't know how I'm ever supposed to succeed in the creative world without thoughts.



Is it unethical to make a life-changing decision based on the lyrics of a song?

The Hoarder

I have a photo of a man whose name I don’t know. I’m a hoarder, a magpie; I collect things I don’t need. It started with something I heard on the radio; a familiar voice explained how she was unable to walk past a discarded scratch-card on the ground, just in case it was a winning ticket that had been overlooked. And once I’d mimicked this, triggered the avalanche, I couldn’t stop. I also couldn’t bring myself to throw the scratch-cards away. I pinned them over each other on my noticeboard until the pin wasn’t long enough and I had to start a new pile.

Receipts came next. I didn’t need them, but I couldn’t bin them, just in case they would be of some use some day. Consequently I’ve kept every receipt for everything I’ve bought in the last five years. I have thousands, tens of thousands maybe; more than I could count, I know that. So it escalated, the snow kept falling, until I was keeping and collecting just about everything.

There’s always that temptation, but I’d never outright steal. But when the opportunity is there, I just can’t turn it down. It began on a bus; a woman bent down before me, picked up a shiny silver key and held it out in front of me. She asked me if it was mine, but it wasn’t. My mind said no, but my lips released the affirmative. I had no use for this little key, but I slid it into my pocket after thanking her and later blu-tacked it to my bedroom wall.

In this way I’ve gained a mobile phone, three wallets, four umbrellas and twenty eight train tickets, amongst other obscure objects. Piles of jewellery crowd my bedside table, and I've accumulated enough scarves to wear a different one every day for a month. But I have a photo of a man whose name I don’t know and it’s the most prized possession I’ve unearthed in all these years. I found him in a wallet, nestled between bank notes, removed him and sat him behind the transparent window in my purse.

It’s a lonely life as a magpie; everyone knows it's one for sorrow, two for joy. I’ve accumulated many beautiful things but my own beauty remains untouched. I’m well into my thirties, no longer young and promiscuous, and the dreaded question never gets easier to hear. “Have you found yourself a man yet?” Aunties and grannies and long-lost cousins twice removed never tire of asking that one. And I was tired of letting them down. So I lied. It was only an insignificant, tiny white lie to begin with. I said yes, and opened my purse to show him off. He attracted a lot of attention; they told me over and over that I’d caught a good one, reeled in something really tasty. But somehow even the fishing analogies didn’t deter me.

It rocketed out of control, just like the hoarding had done. I named him Ethan, and told my family that he was a soldier in Afghanistan, that we’d met whilst he was on leave but that he was back on the front line now and that was why they couldn’t meet him. Sometimes I’d find myself with a glass of wine in one hand, television remote in the other, scouring the news channels for his face, convincing even myself that he was real.

I became devoted to this imaginary character, writing unsent letters to him, addressed to the army barracks I’d told myself he was serving at. It scared me how attached I was. At times I’d try to remind myself of the reality; I even thought about offering the photograph to strangers on public transport, in the hopes he’d fall into the hands of another hoarder. But I could never bring myself to go through with it.

After an exhausting day at work one Friday evening, I breathed a sigh of relief as my train finally pulled into the platform. I fought my way into the busy carriage, squeezing through a mass of business people to a space by the window. Gripping onto the handrail as the train began to move, I caught sight of my pea-green handbag, lying unaccompanied on the bench I’d sat on for the last half hour. It was too late to get off; it was too late to do anything. I clapped a hand to my mouth as I watched my possessions fade further and further into the distance. My phone, my purse, my umbrella, my train ticket, gone, forever. And the photo of a man whose name I didn’t know.  

Untitled

And so I have to go away,

'A retreat' you've coined, in the nicest way.

'The funny farm', 'mental home' I say.

I wish it didn't have to be this way.

And so I have to go away,

And here, without me, you will stay.

You'll cross your fingers, kneel and pray,

That everything will be okay.

And so I have to go away,

But no magnitude of help will change the way,

You're in my head each single day.

You're mine, regardless, come what may.

Don't Be Worrying

It hasn't felt like this before

 It hasn't felt like home, before you 

And I know it's easy to say but it's harder to feel this way 

And I miss you more than I should 

Than I thought I could 

Can't get my mind off you 

I know you're scared that I'll soon be over it 

That's part of it all 

Part of the beauty of falling in love with you is the fear you won't fall 

 Joshua Radin you're a wise man.

Dear Sophie

Hi. It's half 2 in the morning and I'm still awake. I was knackered hours ago when I said that I was and now I'm running out of energy. I want a relentless. Anyway the reason that I'm still awake is because I just had to read through every blog post on here before I let you read them all. At first I was going to delete all the posts where you were mentioned because I get really embarrased when you know what I think about you. But now I've read through all of them I've decided not to delete a single one. Because I think this might help you to understand me more and know more about the way I think that I know you don't get. And I'm going to be away for a while, and maybe it will make it easier for you if you have access to this silly little blog. So until I re-emerge from Chelmsford you are the only one with access to this blog. It's all yours.

Here are some things I'm thinking at the moment in a list because I like lists a lot.

1. I'm really tired.
2. Water is the most amazing drink. How can something that tastes of nothing be so good?
3. Kristina is my best best best friend in the world and all the posts that say something about 'left arrow three' are directed to her. We have a weird relationship, but she's amazing. And I'm really really scared to tell her about the priory because I know how much it will make her worry and that makes me sad because she lives far away and she can't come and see me.
4. I think this blog makes me seem like an absolute sap.
5. Reading through this blog has made me realise how much I go on about Grey's Anatomy. Does it bore you? I never realised quite how repetitive I am.
6. I'm wearing your bracelet again now. I shouldn't have taken it off. I love it.
7. I am going to miss you a silly amount. And I know you think I should go there and not think about you but that's not going to happen because erm you're in my head.
8. Out of all the numbers between 0-10, 8 is my favourite.
9. I can't stop yawning and my eyes have gone all watery.
10. I wish I was better at talking out loud. I really really suck at it. But when I'm writing things down it's different. It's like when I'm talking there's a little man in my mouth and he has my access code so he knows what's going on in my brain and then when I try to make the words come out of my mouth he stops them and no words come out, just a noise that bears no resemblence to English. But when I'm writing things down I can say anything. It's like I don't have access to my thoughts when I'm talking. Like when you ask me what I'm thinking I really have to think about what I'm thinking or if I am thinking anything at all. But when I'm writing the thoughts just come out. I don't think that's normal. It's like my brain is connected to my fingers so I can type and write just fine but it's not connected to my mouth so my words out loud are just wrong.
11. I'm now not being admitted til first thing Friday morning. I'm going to have to get up so early because I think I need to be there for 8.30 and bearing in mind my mother's belief that it takes an hour to get to Chelmsford, that means we'll have to leave at half 7, so I'll have to probably be up at 6ish which is a horrific hour. I hate mornings!
12. What if none of the crazies like me and nobody talks to me for the whole time I'm there?
13. I haven't done the bad thing tonight because I'm not angry. And because I'm really really really trying to keep my promise to you. And if I do break it I will be really sorry and it will only be because I get swept up in my craziness and the anger takes me over. But trust me, I'm trying. I don't like breaking promises so I really am going to try to not hurt myself. Because I see that when I hurt myself I hurt you too. And the last thing I want in the world is to hurt you.
14. I really don't want another stump dream because in my dream it was just so inconvenient not having hands. Hands are very very useful.
15. Do you own a bike? I still want to go to the pond at sunrise. But its quite far to walk so I usually cycle. But you like to walk. So it doesn't matter if you don't have a bike.
16. Talking to my mum about money makes me more uncomfortable than anything. It's so awkward. I hate borrowing money from her. And I really hate how much this whole priory thing is going to cost but I don't want to ask her because a) I don't think she'll tell me and b) once I know I think I'll wish I didn't know.
17. I never got around to watching my Sean Lock Live DVD tonight because I was so busy reading this entire blog. So I'm going to watch it tomorrow night instead. Sean Lock is hilarious, I think he's my favourite comedian, he makes me laugh out loud which isn't usually a thing I do when I watch tv; usually I just stare at the screen with a blank expression regardless of whether I'm watching something funny or something informative. Unless it's one born every minute because as soon as the mum gets to hold the baby my eyes just start leaking.
18. I hope you have a nice couple of weeks while I'm away. It will probably do you good to get away from all my silliness. I wish I could get away from my silliness. Trouble is my silliness is attached to me, so it follows me around like a dog's tail.
19. I wish I could play the piano. I tried to teach myself but the only song I could teach myself was Mad World. I'm such a one trick pony. We have an organ in our house that my parents got given by some distant relatives who didn't want it anymore. My mum will never say no to something free, so she accepted the giant eyesore even though none of us can actually play it. It's in the dining room gathering dust but occasionally I sit at the little stool and pretend to myself that I'm a piano pro as I play Mad World.
20. I'm really scared that my mum will tidy my room whilst I'm away. There is nothing I hate more than someone else tidying up my stuff because then I don't know where it is and I know from the outside it looks a mess but I actually do know where everything is. One time she put everything in big blue boxes in my en-suite and I flipped out majorly. Secretly I've never forgiven her for that which makes me sound like an absolute tard but it really got to me. If I'm going to tidy I'll do it myself. Another reason I'd be pissed if she tidied my room while I'm in Chelmsford is that the rest of the house needs tidying and she really ought to be getting on with that instead. It's far more important than my room where only I have to go. I'm sick of the piles of clothes and junk everywhere and not being able to walk in straight line in my own house.

So there you go, 20 things that I was thinking right now. I hope it helps.

Also, I apologize if me letting you read this blog got your hopes up that it might actually be interesting, because after spending the last 3+ hours reading through it all I have concurred that it's really fucking dull.


Anyway,, it's now gone 3am and I've got to be up at 10ish which is really early for me ;) Sleep is so good, I don't know why you don't get more of it. I hope this blog doesn't bore you sick, I hope it doesn't annoy you, and I hope it doesn't make you think any less of me. You are amazing. Sorry about being a bit of a fuck up. But I've changed my twitter bio now. Anyway. Going to stop rambling on. Welcome to my blog. <3