Protest Against Life

May 1/97. Thursday. 08:46.

A new page. And what is left of yesterday is pushed further back. Maybe to be eventually forgotten. Nothing stays the same. Yet why do I keep hoping some things will? People will lose relationships, their homes, their comfort, their security. One day they are seen as good, another day they are bad. Where is the order of such things that MUST be?

A few nights ago a friend called. Let's call him Bill. Bill told me he'd broken up with (let's call her Jenny). The news not only caught me by surprise, it made me grieve for this lost relatioship. Sure, they had troubles before, they fought, bickered, argued. Don't all relationships have that somehow? I was saddened, and I wanted more than anything else for Bill to say to me before he hung up, that they would make up maybe later (I don't care if it's days or months). But no, he said it was over. He couldn't live with someone who just wasn't meant to be the "ideal mate". Who lives in an ideal world these days anyway, huh? I haven't talked to Jenny yet. I will be getting together with her this weekend. It was through Jenny that I knew Bill. She was an old school mate of mine. I always thought they were a great couple. In fact, I was sometimes envious of the friendship and sharing they had together. I always wondered what it was like to love and care about someone, and it was through them that I sometimes found out about tolerence and acceptence.

They've been together for years. They've taken trips to Europe together. How can they possibly, after all these years, decide they were not right for each other? How? I dated this guy once, Greg, and after a couple of weeks, we knew we weren't right for each other. That's OK, I can live with that. But years?? I've always been quite cynical about relationships because I lived with a living proof that love never lasts. Prime example, my parents. As a kid I knew that their relationship was failing, and the only reason they never got a divorce was because of the culture I was raised in. So where the hell did I get my idealism from? Strange, huh? Maybe Bill's recent break up only confirmed this cynicism. Maybe that's why it made me so sad. Maybe I've been looking to prove myself wrong, and I can't seem to do that in this world so full of disillusionment.

May 5/97. Monday. 16:45.

Been quite a few days. Hasn't been like me to be silent for so long. A few things.....

I don't think Bill and Jenny's relationship is salvagable at this point. Jenny seems unwilling, too hurt to consider anything like this. Bill on the other hand, seems to be doing better. Manic depression or not, he's got a wider circle of friends, a steady job, and, well, alcohol. Three things just to name a few that Jenny's missing.

And me, I ran my first road race this season. Heck, my first in a long long time. 9 years? My last one was a 16K, I was 15 and placed 9th. This one's statistics, 10K-(do the math)-6. Not bad at all. Hell, I should be overjoyed. Still, I couldn't help looking enviously at the top three placers who each received some cash prizes/vouchers, wondering maybe if I had given it a little bit more of a push up that almost unnoticeable-yet-very-much-felt hill. So I got a T shirt out of it and a lucky draw number which didn't turn out so lucky at all. It was all in good fun. Something I haven't really felt in a long time. It felt so good I signed up for a 5K two weekends from now.

Today is M's birthday. I called and we talked a bit. It was good to talk to her again. I went to her for help two years ago, after failing to get my life in perspective and at the recommendation of one of my professors. She quickly became my friend and mentor, and sometimes part time sister. Looking back, I admit she saved me from a few major disastors of the suicide kind, and maybe even saved me after a particularly bad one (episode). After I left York, she continued her post grad studies, and we drifted apart. I don't remember why I stopped calling. I guess life was more or less in progress for the both of us.

So it's been quite a weekend, tapping out the energy of the competitive runner in me and dusting out relationships from moth covered holes. And I'm all tapped out. Who knows why I bothered.

May 7/97. Weds.

18:00. The quietness grows.... and I will be devoured by it if I stop my writing, stop my speaking. It is a shadow with a form. A shadow with its own mind. Why did I bother to share when I was lacking inside? Why did I bother to win a race and try to belong in a world I have no business belonging in?

Is it strange that the intensity of my feelings overwhelm me so completely each time that I may as well be its slave than its master?

do we know......?

Friday. May 9/97.

1640. Tired, as I battle two setbacks within the last two days. Tired, as I watch the mighty dragon fall from the sky in flames. Tired, as I contemplate what that means to my expendability in this world.

It is more than just that deep sense of loss and dissapointment, but it is also the fear that this is one territory I should never have ventured into. And that I have made a terrible mistake in the sense that I will be blamed for the fall of that dragon, and all other dragons that follow it. I've always been the scape goat.... and now I'm beginning to think I was born to be one. Doomed to be one. And even if it hasn't anything to do with me directly, a tiny path will somehow be created and traced all the way back to me. And even if it isn't my fault, I will nevertheless hang my head in shame as I have been made to feel long ago.

Monday. May 12/97.

I need to feel safe, yet I do not feel the least bit. I fret and fidget as I strive to settle my turbulent emotions. George writes from cyberspace with notes of encouragement. Bewildered, I try to connect,.... and there is stark emptiness from within the vacuum of my mindspace.

I slept a lot over the weekend, trying to sleep more time away, and perhaps waiting to forever disappear from the vague existence I hold now. On Sunday, all concept of time vanished for me in a moment when I tried to grapple with the date and time. And I spent 3 hours working out and then an hour playing badminton. My body was exhausted, but my mind unfailingly relentless in its torment.

May 14/97. Wednesday.

0904. Trying to take care of personal matters while work piles skyhigh on my desk. Remaining calm while the ship is thrown into a whirl storm. Slept well last night as I slept off the effects of the Elavil.

Nothing much to report.... except that I am trying to right a world which has been turned upside down. I think I've fallen over the edge of this most current pit of hell. Nowhere else to go now except forward and maybe up.

May 15/97. Thursday.

18:00. I imagine I can be strong if I choose to be. Many changes loom ahead of me as I gaze outward into the far reaches of this lifepath. I want to believe,... in many things. Good things. I want to believe in what I hear. Good things. But people, I have learnt (the hard way) will say almost anything to get what they want. I fear these people. These may be prominent figures in society. They could be respectable even. There is often a clause that protects this people from the lies they spew forth. Clause that protects people like them, not people like me, even though I am learning these days to play just as dirty a game as everyone else. But that doesn't exclude me from the other end of it. It seems there are circumstances where I have to place my trust in others. Will it work out this time. I do not know. I fear the worse. It is only me who have everything to lose in this gamble. And it seems I do not have much of a choice or alternative at all.

I want to believe. And if this is the road to hell, there is no turning back. No refunds, no exchanges.

May 20/97. Tuesday. 1730.

What matters now is the forgetfulness. Again, there is a large black hole in my brain, and I can choose to exile anything or anyone there. The world is shifting underneath my feet and the narrowness of my sight is a welcomed thing.

Meanwhile, where have spring gone? Hiding so shyly among the chilly North winds when it blows. Or have I just forgetten how cold it gets here even in May. Never mind... it may be colder where I go each night (my nightmare ridden insane world).

Aloneness is one thing, being alone and lonely is another. I believe I am not lonely. I believe I crave loneliness in a sick sort of way. A punishment perhaps. Like a banishment from within the lines of social order and structure. And within my aloneness, I believe one can further be exhiled into my "black hole". Nothing grows there. Nothing dies either. The things sent there sit and rot, but are forever aware . Cursed be me, the one who holds a key which cannot release the tortured souls. Cursed be me, the one who feels so intensely yet feels nothing at all. Cursed be the Queen of Contradictions.

My dwelling falls to pieces with each passing moment. I need to scream into the faces of those who have hurt me and I need to scurry away when they roar back into my face.

Friday. May 23/97.

Not much to say today, but the sun shining so bright outside today makes me want to think everything might just be alright. And if I am wrong, there is not much to lose anyway. The decision I have made a while ago, that whatever trials and tribulations I have cannot have much effect on me simply because I really don't care that much should be my safety net... for now. My comfort blanket. For now.

Going back and forth between the numbing of the pain and the aphathy that follows, and onwards towards anxiety-ridden nights is wearing me down. Plus, the move that is coming up is stressing me out even though I have waited over a year to do this. Once more, my goals are fuzzy and I am beginning to lose sight, lose faith. Where have all the energy gone?

I recently joined a mailing list of people like me, who really understand the turmoil and roller coaster rides to hell like mine. I take some comfort in listening to others describe their feelings in their own words. Meanwhile, I also want to say, but I'm different. I am , aren't I?

Or are we all just human, all having been made with the same materials and put through similar color dyes, and thus, emerge more or less in the same shades of black?

Black nonetheless.

Monday. May 26/97.

The gaps are getting bigger (or am I just seeing things?). The holes are deep and trecherous. I might have fallen in. But I do not know. Am I suffocating from an imagined weight presssed upon my chest, or is my soul dying from the lack of creativity and freedom? I have questioned this issue a while ago (days?weeks?months?). But the upward downward surge of my emotions have left me not just without answers but without a focal point. Without boundaries, without sight.

Nights, I scream out of my bed "let me die, please leave me be". Days, I walk among the living, a dead carcass stinking up this world. I wait for the voices of my past to scream at me so that the echos in my heart do not sound quite so hollow. But the people around me are real, and even though unpredictable, do not scream at me quite as much as I expect. And I cringe even further deeper into myself, because I know that when they do yell, it would be louder than I could possibly imagine.

When I am not choking back the tears that sit on the edge of my heart, I am very afraid. Afraid because the vast empty space around me reminds me how very alone I am. I realize no matter what anyone says or do, they would never quite be able to fill the space between me and Death.

I want to stop. I want a time out. I want some space. I want to stop choking, suffocating, twisting, aching, needing. If I could just stop that, maybe the world would stop spinning quite so fast around me, and maybe, just maybe, I could breathe a little.

May 28/97. Wednesday. 17:00

The world fell apart yesterday. It tipped me over and left me for dead. But I didn't die. Today I woke up and stared at the ash gray haze which has settled over the horizon.

I looked into the tired old soul, battered beyond my own recognition, and felt a quiet sense of unease. Disturbed, yes. Calm also. Yesterday, over 60 emails sat in my folder, and I sat overwhelmed to the point of not reading them. Today, a malfunction has caused me to receive no mail and I am lonely from the lack of contact through cyberspace. I feel cut off. I feel exhiled.

Today I woke up to feel the embarressment of having shed so much tears, having put my guard down and so uncontrollably wept for the lost object of desire. There is no need to do all that today. There is nothing worth so much heartache.

May 29/97. Thursday.

Trying to separate the life which must be led and the life which must be healed. The life which must be led has many bills to pay, work to finish, facade to keep up. The other one simply needs the peace of not thinking and not hurting. And healing will only take place in solitude and calm.

I must heal. Otherwise the inevitable collapse will ruin everything I have built. And losing the few things left dear to me could and will cause me death.

And do I care? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

May 30/97. Friday.

W.B.Yeats writes..........