Hope?

I'm doing a bit better today. I managed to distract myself yesterday and get a few things done, which helped take my mind off of things a bit. I'm trying really hard not to let myself slip back into all those dark potholes along the road, and I think I'm getting somewhere. Maybe. I hope, anyway. I just have to keep reminding myself of everything that I realised and felt when I had my 'revelation' a few months ago. I need to focus on who I want to be, not who I am now, or what's going on now to upset me. I have to keep in mind who I want to be, who I think I really am underneath all of this shit, and keep trying to get there. That makes it sound a helluva lot easier than it actually is, and I'm not exactly doing cartwheels over here, but I'm trying. That's something, I guess.

As for the whole ex situation, that's a bit more complicated. But I think I might have figured something out there too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. This doesn't have to be all sorted out perfectly, one way or the other, right now. If we both really meant everything we said about how much we care about each other and wanting to stay friends, then that's how it will be. It won't always be easy or comfortable, but as long as we don't let go of the friendship, we'll figure our way through it somehow. Eventually.

Or something like that. I think I'm less articulate when I'm less upset, for some reason. Makes wanting to be both a writer and sane a little difficult, really. Anyway, I'm trying to get back to real life and not let everything in my head overtake that. Making Christmas presents, baking cookies, working, tidying, doing laundry, all that stuff. May not sound all that exciting or that big of a deal, but anything that might help me cling onto my life is worth a shot.

A new day? Pfft.

Well, it's a new day. I don't really know what profound message there's supposed to be in that. People talk about tomorrow being a new day when you're having a bad day, but what the fuck sort of help is that supposed to be? Another whole day to feel miserable and shitty and to have to drag yourself through? Great.

You probably can't tell from my sunny disposition, but I'm not in a much better mood today. I'm tired, weak, dizzy, annoyed, irritable and cranky as all hell. All I want to do is crawl back into bed but my mediocre-ly paid job beckons me so here I am. I keep trying to distract myself - when I find myself drifting off into my head and daydreaming about anything (good or bad) I keep trying to tell myself to stop it, and think of something else to think of. But that's easier said than done. Especially when my office appears to be staffed with loud, obnoxious missing links of evolution.

I want to sleep so badly. I don't really remember what I dreamed about last night, but I don't think it was upsetting, so I'd take sleep over consciousness any day. I just don't know what I'm meant to do here. I don't know where the middle ground is between ignoring everything and hoping it will be ok, and having a complete meltdown like yesterday.

And I'm not sure that I even want to find the middle ground right now. I mean, I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to be in this sort of pain and feel like my entire life is falling down around my shoulders. I just want it all fixed. I want him to want me again, I want my best friend back. I don't want to get over him. It's been months and that's what it comes down to. I don't want to get over him. I want him back. I know that that isn't going to happen, but I can't get it out of my head. So where do I go from here? I know that so much of this situation - not just the relationship stuff but depression in general - is about the choices we make. But I can't choose how I feel about him. I didn't choose to fall for him in the first place, how do I choose to not feel this way about him now?

I really feel like I'm missing the part of my brain where people figure this stuff out and get through it. I just have no idea how that happens, or what it looks or feels like. All I know is I'm tired, and I want this out of my head. I want not to have to think about it. Not to be tormented with it.

Anyway, if I want to stop thinking about it so much I should probably shut the hell up.

I don't know.

I don't know what to make of today. I've completely fallen apart. I feel frustrated, ashamed and disappointed in myself, that I've gone right back to where I started, it seems. More than that I'm just tired. Tired of being tired. Of feeling so alone, and in pain, and feeling so completely uncertain about everything. I feel like I have no judgement anymore - no idea what's real, what's not; what's right, what's wrong; what will help or what will make things worse. I just don't know.

I know I'm exhausted. I've cried most of the evening. I tired myself out for a bit there and distracted myself with quizzes on the internet (sounds really lame, but it seems to help take my mind off things, because I'm forcing myself to think about something else). But as soon as I started to feel better I noticed that I was doing it again with the fantasies. Imagining that everything would be ok - that all of my fears have been wrong, that my ex isn't seeing anyone else, and that things will be happily ever after. But they won't.

I wonder what has been going on in my head these last few months. I wonder was anything real. I don't think so. I've barely seen anyone else the last few months apart from people at work, my family, and my flatmates. And I keep all contact with all of the above to a bare minimum. I've lived entirely in my head, and created this world where everything is fine. And because I've not been quite as depressed, or at least not beating myself up in quite the same way, I've been telling myself that I've been making some sort of progress. But I haven't. I've done what I always do - retreated into this fantasy world. And now that reality is smacking me in the face I'm having a full blown meltdown.

I don't know how to get from one minute to the next. The prospect of the rest of the day terrifies me - what am I going to do after I finish this blog? Cry some more? Go over and over and over things in my head? I guess I go over things so much in the hope that one time I'll get it right - I'll figure it out. But I never do. And it's not something I can figure out. It's not like if I concentrate hard enough I'll work it out, like on a quiz or something. This all just is, and I have to deal with it. But the problem is, I have no idea what that means or involves. I don't know if I've ever truly gotten over anything that's hurt me badly in my life - I don't know what it looks like.

And then comes the night. Trying to get to sleep and failing miserably. The aching pain of needing to sleep but being afraid of it. Trying not to cry during the night. Counting down the hours till I have to get up for work. Dragging myself into work and trying not to cry on the bus. Trying not to cry in the office, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Not to mention trying to get a fuckload of work done, that was already going to be difficult enough to manage.

I just want this out of my head. All of it. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was a fucking asshole.

Normal?

Man, does life suck sometimes. Everytime I think I'm getting somewhere, something just comes and smashes me right back down again. With everything, even the little things. I thought I was getting on top of things at work, but there's tons more to do than I thought so I'm screwed. I thought I was getting to being ok with myself, and with the break-up with my ex, but I am so, so, so not.

I don't know why I do this. I don't even know how I do it. I live in this little fantasy world all the time, where I banish all bad thoughts with imaginings and fantasies about everything being fine. And then reality rears its head, and I'm right back where I started again. I just feel like I do not know what I'm doing. At all. I don't know what's the right thing to do, what's the wrong thing.

I'm told that I catastrophise things all the time - always imagine the worst case scenario, become convinced that that's what's going to happen, and freak out. But when I try to rationalise that maybe that's not what's going to happen, that I don't have much evidence for that, I end up being proven right about the disaster. Like with my ex - we've been keeping in touch since we broke up. Not the way it used to be before - we used to talk all day every day then. We'd tell each other everything. Now it's just the odd message and email here and there. And I don't know what it's ok to talk to him about. I used to be able to talk to him about anything, and I just don't know what the rules are for this sort of thing, and it's awkward to talk about that via phones and email. Every now and then I'd get freaked out that he was seeing someone else. I had no evidence for this, just paranoia on my part. So I'd tell myself that - that chances are he probably wasn't. That chances were, he was telling me the truth when he said he wasn't ready for a relationship and that it was bad timing with us, so he wouldn't be looking to get involved with anyone else so soon after us breaking up.

But now I'm not so sure. It seems like I was maybe right in the first place - that he just didn't want to be with me, and that he might be seeing someone else. And I cannot handle this. At all. I'm completely falling to pieces. I was so looking forward to his coming home from university for Christmas, so we could try to get our friendship back on track. So we could just hang out and talk crap and get used to being just friends again. And since he was suggesting things for us to do, it seemed like this would all be great.

Until now. Just a passing remark, but something about it is stabbing me in the stomach. And I just do not know what to do at all. Do I just cry my way through this for god knows how long? Do I cut him out of my life? I don't want either. The only thing that got me through the break up in one piece was his insistance that we would still be friends, still be best friends. That nothing could change that. The idea of my life without him is terrifying. It's dark, lonely, cold and utterly, utterly horrible. But everytime I think of him with someone else, it's like being stabbed. Over and over again. So which is the best option?

How do people get over things? I've never really understood this. I've never really gotten over anything. Time and distance has helped a bit, I suppose, but I can still burst into tears when I think of past things and people that have broken my heart. My heart is still broken from all those hurts. It feels like I just don't have the bit of your brain that you're meant to have to get over things. I do not know how people do it. I suppose there's one or two things I have gotten over in the past. They still make me sad when I think about them, and I regret screwing things up, but I don't exactly cry over it anymore. But it took me 7 years to get to that point. That is clearly not normal.

And all of the things that I supposedly should be doing to try to get better mean turning my life upside down, all at once. And I just can't do that. I'm literally not in a position to do that. I need somewhere new to live, with different people or preferably on my own (and I have nowhere near enough money for that to be likely at any point in the near or even distant future). I need a new job. I need more money. I need new friends. And as someone stuck in a crappy job in a recession, who's gotten used to not having anyone around me, and spending 100% of my time alone, I just can't even imagine what not being like that looks like.

I still keep trying not to get annoyed at myself over all of this - to not my simply being upset and sad turn into self loathing and getting angry at myself, but that's getting harder and harder. Because the more I fail at fixing things, the more it is my fault. And even if I just try to accept that, without piling blame and guilt on myself, it doesn't seem to be doing much for me.

And possibly more than anything, I hate that it's Christmas right now. I love Christmas. Always have. But I always manage to get so, so, so sad that I'm alone every year. I mean, yeah, I go to my parents and everything for the holiday itself, but not having close friends and/or a boyfriend to hang out with and do all the things that everyone around me seems to do at Christmas is a torture that increases year on year. And I thought for a while there that this Christmas would be different. That I wouldn't be alone, because I'd have my boyfriend. My best friend. But now I feel like that's being ripped away from me at the worst possible time of year.

I know that it all comes down to the fantasizing - I imagine things being better instead of doing anything to achieve it. And I let my imagination run away with me. Why do I keep doing that? Why can't I get those things out of my head?

I just don't know what to do anymore. And I'm really, really tired of that.

Panic stations...

Hmm. Today is not fun so far. I was out of the office yesterday for a course that I'm doing (for work) and apparently a client came on complaining that they hadn't received something they should've gotten ages ago. Now, the client is perfectly entitled to feel annoyed about this - it's something that slipped my mind. I had been working on it, then I got sick and some other drama reared its head, and it completely slipped off my radar. My fault.

However. I am also the only person in my department. There used to be 3 of us, then 2, then one part time person as well as me, and now it's just me. And we have more work than ever before. I have been trying to point out just how impractical and unsustainable this is to my boss, but being the sort of person that I am, I'm not great with confrontation so I've obviously not been making myself clear enough. I've also been stupid enough to just work all the hours in the day to get things done, and the more that I do this, the more my boss expects it of me.

So the story today is that he doesn't seem to be too happy with me that things have slipped behind, despite my telling him repeatedly that things were behind, and that I was doing my best, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I don't get paid for all that many of them. Therefore, I'm feeling much more anxious and panicky today than I have done in a while. I am trying hard not to get overwhelmed, or to fall apart, and just take deep breaths and concentrate on what I need to do. But I'm very nervous about having to talk to my boss about all of this. It's an inherent part of my nature - I've always been a good girl, who does things by the rules and never gets in trouble. And now I feel like I'm being called into the headmaster's office to be shouted at.

It has also been an inherent part of my nature up until now to feel responsible for everything and to feel like I have to try to fix everything. But that just is not working anymore. I have to try to be strong to just do the work I'm getting paid for and not keep giving into the pressure, but also to make that clear to my boss so that he is aware of my workload.

This is a bit of a meh post, I know, I just find it helpful to write this out to try to keep myself calm instead of getting worked up about it.

The Fear.

I've been having some trouble thinking of anything to blog about recently. I've got ideas for scripts that I want to write, but I don't really want to write too much about that here. Not that I think anyone is about to run off with my ideas, but I'd just rather keep all of that contained until I'm ready to unleash it onto an unsuspecting world.

Writing is a funny thing. It's something that I've wanted to do all of my life, yet it's also something that I've struggled with for much of my life. As the saying goes, I don't like to write, I like to have written. And that's not uncommon for successful and talented writers, so I believe. For me, writing isn't this enormous, overpowering passionate endeavour - the sort of thing that it pains me not to do. It's simply the way I communicate and engage with the world. It's not all that dramatic, it's just the way I best express myself (I hope, anyway) and the way my head works. I hope that's a vaguely positive thing for my ambitions to be a writer, I don't really know.

I've always had a bit of a fear about writing as well. I was good at academic writing - really good. And one day, when I finally find my dissertations from uni, I'll throw them up here and prove that. I wasn't any kind of a genius, but I was a good writer when it came to essays and dissertations on arts subjects. But I've always struggled with anything more personal and more creative. There's several reasons for that. A great deal of it is simply laziness and lack of motivation. Part of it is that I don't do well without structure and deadlines imposed externally for this sort of thing. But a really big bit of it is just fear. Fear of failing. I've wanted to be a writer my whole life - what if I try and it turns out I'm shit? Easier to just make excuses about why I can't write, n'est-ce pas?

But I'm sick of that. I'm sick of living in limbo all the time, in some sort of suspended animation. And I've finally realised that it doesn't have to be so all or nothing. A huge part of my problems are that I make everything black and white; all or nothing. It's perfect or it's the worst thing in the world. I'm slowly starting to see that things aren't quite like that. Insert some cliche about life being about the journey, not the destination, here. I don't have to be a perfect writer right now. I don't have to sit down, write the most amazing script in the world, have it commissioned and win a bunch of awards for it. At least, not right now. I need to practice. It's a muscle that needs exercised, whichever part of my brain that deals with the writing end of things. The only way that I'll get to be a good writer is to keep trying and to learn.

And that's how I feel about a lot of things now. I've spent so much of my (adult) life with these ridiculous perfectionist standards. Either it's perfect, or it's shit. No in between, no second chances. But that's just beyond daft. Life doesn't work that way - and nor should it. We have to continually strive to be better, to get better, to learn. To not beat ourselves up for not being the perfect person that we want to be right.this.second, but to keep trying to be the person we want to be. We won't ever reach perfection, but we might at least get to something approaching happy. And that's got to be worth trying, right?

Hmm, this was supposed to be about writing and it ended up being about my head, again. I'm not sure if that's because writing is so tied into my personality, or because I'm in danger of becoming obsessed with the inner workings of my mind. It may not appear obvious, but I truly am trying not to be self-involved with this - I'm trying to be self-aware instead.

Anyway, if any of the two or three of you reading this feel like giving me writing assignments to try to give me some sort of deadline or structure, please feel free! I'm not writing your essays for uni, though. Not without payment, at least.