Protest Against Life

Tuesday. April 1/97.

April fools day. My favourite day of the year.. Now, this is the day they should make a national holiday. No, wait..... it's much more fun to go to school/work on such days. When I was still living at home, I once got my mom running half naked out of the shower because she thought there was a long distance call for her from my brother. You HAVE to know my mom and her undying devotion to my brother to find this extremely side-splitting hilarious. I think she found it funny in the end after the tirade. At least I like to think she laughed with me in the end.

Seems like another long day. Tired again,....not up to much except praying that the day will end soon and I can crawl into bed anThe second part of it is what is left of the remnants of my ruins. Of my darker side. It is how I have always felt, that I have had enough of life. That I am too old to fight a battle I seem destined to lose. And it is the tiredness and bone weariness within me that urges me in its secretive little whisper, to give up now. NOW, before it is too late. d lie very still while my mind wanders aimlessly around.

Apr 2/97. Wednesday.

08:35. More awake today. Yet, to be awake for what? I can only wonder......

Hard to tell how I'm feeling right now. Nothingness swirls all around me, and I'm trying to grasp a piece of it quite stupidly. How much hanight as I try to talk myself into falling asleep, I imagine I have taken many many pills, and as I drift asleep, I imagine a quietness I will forever sink into. And once I have convinced my exhausted mind that I will never wake up tomorrow, it will finally let go of all the worries, pain and regrets. And the brief darkness will keep me safe until the coming of dawn. How much have I sacrificed to be here today? It seems pretty pointless doesn't it? Everyday appears to get longer and longer, with the weekend retreats getting shorter and shorter, and I am escaping into my fuzzy little world with more .. "why bother?". Why build a dream when a dream realized will only become a dream disillusioned?

Apr 3/97. Thursday. 17:04.

Upon waking, subtle changes can be discovered. A small part of the brain loses information into a black hole. Sometimes things we want to forget anyway. Sometimes things we will regret forgetting one day. And until that day comes, I cannot complain. I never looked much into the future until these last couple of weeks. Maybe it's time to go back to who I really am. To be a person forgetful of the future. To be a person who hates the world so much that forgetting is the only way to keep sane. But one thing should be kept close to heart : that good things can happen to those who work hard; that rewards exists. And for that, maybe will keep me alive a little while longer. I have completely no control over what happens next. It is frustrating, but if I see blackness in front of me, the inevitable fall that may or may not come will keep me calm and unanxious. And that, the living only in the present without regard of the future, is probably the only thing to keep me living.

Friday. Apr 4/97. 08:58.

Hanging on the balance of things. Waiting for the week to end. It will mark another retreat. I was in a spell of depressive fog this past week. I've been riding this rollercoaster from hell almost all my life. The world below looks like nothing but a blur. The highs are great, the lows and swirls are sometimes terrifying; I don't know how much longer this will last. Maybe I'm better off dead. God, what a time to think about it again, now that my basic survival needs can more or less met.

For me, death is always nothingness. No highs, no lows. That's not so bad. I want to live, yet I'm afraid to. Dying is too easy. Even during my highs, I know somewhere inside that I will accept death as willingly as ever.

Apr 8/97. Tuesday. 12:18.

My mind is numbed beyond all feeling. Can't feel. Can't think. Can't do anything except sit here and rot. Small steps to getting things done. Big achievement when finally done.

I feel like I was born a long time ago, and that I remember that moment, and then, all of a sudden, things are fast forwarded and I am plopped into this body that is a week and a day from turning 24 years old. And I don't know what to do with this "body". I don't know how to keep it happy. I don't know what it wants, what it wants from me, from the world, from the people I interact with. All I do know is to push it; in my running, in my weight training sessions, in my work, in my play, ..... everything. So I simply want to lie down someplace quiet and peaceful and be lulled to sleep by a peace I have never known.

Apr 14/97. Monday.

08:35. The last two days were mine. All mine. I closed in. I walked where my heart desired. I thought only of what could not hurt me. I spent a fair bit reflecting, and then I spent the other half trying not to reflect. And I wondered, so many damaged people walking about this city. Do they know this? (my seemingly never ending question)

Perhaps they do. So what? What do I care? I am aware. I am one step higher than them because of this?

I went running. I felt good despite having to run indoors again, no thanks to the wonderful weather. Was it only last week I was outside in the sun shine? I made running such a romantic notion then. Never mind the strained knee, the burning lungs, the sweat and pain. It was all heaven then. It still is, but partly. What changed? Why do views have to change just when one is getting used to it? How come hate and love can occur in the same person towards the same person only at a different time? So given time, feelings change, people change, attitudes change. WHY? As if the chaos living inside of me reflects bits of it in the real world, and I am CONDEMNED to poison all that I touch.

Is this true? That I am a bringer of evil. Bearer of pain.

??

Later....16:43. Plagued by intense insecurity. Care about nothing except the sweetness of nothingness. So close to falling apart but holding together still. What happened? It's hard to tell with emotions swirling like this. Every good thing is so inconceivable. Every bad thing magnified a zillion times out of proportion.

I feel like I'm dying.

24 Years old today!!! There are two parts to how I feel about this. The first part is one of joy and amazement. Joy and amazement that I have made it this far. I never thought I'd live to see 24. Two years ago I thought graduation from York U. would mark the end of my journey. I thought I'd seen all I cared to see, and that graduating was simply a closure to my much hated and loved life. I thought that maybe that little part in me which Freud would call the "life instinct" would finally pack it in and give way to my "death instinct". But I'm here today. Two years later, and I have measured every step of the way like a mother would a growing child's height. There's certainly something special to this occasion which marks another milestone in my journey towards life.

The second part of it is simply the ruins and remnants of my many battles. Of my darker side. It is how that secretive little voice inside of me is saying "it's too late...give up NOW before it gets worse". It urges me when I am tired and exhausted, and it seems so tempting in those quiet, private moments.

Friday. Apr 18/97.

Lacking the feelings to care much. Drowning in what seems like eternal chaos. Will this darkness hold out much longer? Can my sleep be once uninterrupted by night visions and quiet frustrations? Who can I call in the midst of my turmoil who will listen and offer comfort? It's all lost to me. I am seeking out nothing in a world which offers a bone with a string attached. Chasing after this bone has worn me out so long ago. I've since then decided to call it a bluff and go my own miserable way. I don't know how much happier this has made me. Not much, I don't think.

I search long and hard over what to say in conversations. I seem to lack the skills to participate in some. Although given the right topic, I could ramble on a fair bit, maybe more than my usual silence. It takes a while, but it happens. We all speak our own dialect, essentially. And sometimes I resort to saying things on a different level from another because I fall into a world which doesn't quite fit into the physical realm of things. Sketchy things. More fragments from the past which I would have thought been buried and safely invisible. Stephen King once described it quite artistically, as a wooden box in which one throws all the bad, rotten, filthy, things. This box is then thrown into a well, and forgotten; but over the years, this box rots and the badness of what was inside leaks into the water and poisons the entire well. I see my brain as that well. More specifically, a poisoned well. What I have tried to forget has seeped out without my knowledge, and now that the poison has been spread, there is nothing but the agony and pain and regret to contend with. Psychiatrists especially the Freudian kinds, would be wrong to assume that once one has come to remember the past and talked about it, one's neurotic tendencies would disappear. How can anything else be further from the truth?

April 21/97. Monday.

There must be more to life than this. I seem to keep saying that. A bright shiny thing has been tainted over the past few weeks. It is nothing but a part of my worries now. And every passing day, I keep wondering.. am I truly getting to the end of this chapter? In the darkest moments, I welcome it. An end. A quick, simple, clean end. After all, my soul has grown so old. It is so tired. I've been under this depressive fog the past week, and lately, I'm tired of keeping even a facade of goodness. Of trying to keep this front. I'm saying now...."why bother?". Why build a dream when a dream realized will only become a dream disillusioned? I've noticed that every night as I try to talk myself into falling asleep, I imagine having taken many many pills, and as I drift asleep, I imagine a quietness I will forever sink into. And once I have convinced my exhausted mind that I will never wake up tomorrow, it will finally let go of all the worries, pain and regrets. And the brief darkness will keep me safe until the coming of dawn.

Later..... Keep holding on. No sense in losing balance now when the balance has not yet been upset dramatically. Keep holding on because there are ..... there's the word again.. "fleeting" moments when I can see light.

...and the voice mutters....."Really??"....

yes. yes.

Alright then.

April 23/97. Wednesday.

Too many emails sitting in my incoming folder. Overwhelmed as I slowly wade through them in a random way. Patience lacking to go through them systematically.

Thursday. April 24/97. 16:45

Woke up this morning with somewhat more peace of mind since a while now. Unattainable data still lost in the blackness of space from my previous OD. I must remember to ask DH what kind of conversation she had with my mom. I can hardly remember when it was. A year ago? More? Less? It matters to me now, in the recovery phase maybe. Not all things dead will remain buried.

I've been taking on more than I can manage lately. Maybe a slower pace will give me more stability - the kind of thing I really do need. Meanwhile, I should go running this evening. It might just do the trick of settling me down even more.

April 25/97. Friday.

Yes, I made the effort to go running last night despite having gone through a rather long day, and needing to simply get home and vegetate and forget about the workday behind me. It was a particularly good run despite the fact that the track was quite busy. My competitiveness kept me going at a good pace set out by some other bigger, better, stronger runners.

I was reminded about school today by Carolyn's entry. It certainly was a different life then. I was always broke and always working on three to four major essays at any given time. Still, it had its moments..... moments deemed funny now, but at the time was definately a crisis of sorts. Maybe I'll even reminisce a little, going back on my vow never to breathe the two little words York University after I left its drab, depressing, campus. Hey, I even checked out the site, and was pleasantly greeted by a new home page. Trust me, it used to look really bad.

I really shouldn't trash York. What can you do when the school is second home to over 45,000 students? It'll have its 5-hour lineups ( you spend two hours lining up to store your stuff in the locker - because they don't allow you to bring stuff into the bookstore, then you spend another hour lining up to get into the bookstore, 30 minutes to hunt down the one lousy book you really need, and then another one and a half hours waiting to pay for the miserable book, and yet another hour waiting to pick up your stuff at the check-in counter. Oops...did I say 5 hours? I meant 6 hours), its enormous classes (my astronomy class had 400 students.... I don't even remember what my prof looked like), and all the friendliness in the world greets you in the administrative building.

Yup, it sure had its ups (insert tone of sarcasm here) and downs.

No, really, if you're considering York as your choice of school, give it a chance. Like I said, it's huge. It's impersonal, cold, maybe even unfriendly, but the faculty (some) can be really helpful in stimulating your intellectual pursuits (that is if they recognize you when you approach them...you usually have to remind them though).

Tuesday. April 29/97.

Not many words today. Numbness permeates my mind. My superintendent asked me today if he could show my apartment to potential tenants. I said sure. Can't believe I'm moving again, but then it's been two years at my old place. A record for me. It's time to move on, I suppose. Wanderlust.

Cutting down every task into a manageable size. Everything so impossibly huge from the tiny tiny window I peer through. And thoughts flying by so quickly, so fleetingly. I can hardly follow a conversation without forgetting what the point/topic/subject is.

Apr 30/97. Wednesday. 17:35.

Intense night dreams haunt me. I want to run screaming from them. Yet tiredness holds me half unconscious while my state of awareness in that other world dances all around in a wild primitive type ritual. I want to clutch my head and scream out of the terror born within my soul. I want to die so that no more consciousness remains.

Yet in my daily life of work and play I must sustain a level of nomalcy. And sometimes the rigidity of it kills everything that is creative within me. That must be it..... the night terrors must be the result of the dying of my creativity and spontaneity.