Wednesday 25 September 2013

Sleeping black holes

"I feel terrible"
After being interrogated by Darth Vader on the cloud city of Bespin that's what Han Solo uttered just before he collapsed in his cell. 
Right now I feel the same.
This week has been a fug of over-sleep, scant eating followed by flurries of toast eating and tea drinking and much reading. I don't know what it is but right now I feel drained and empty. It's as if my inner core has gone with nothing to replace it except a cold draft. 
The bones and muscles are there but only thanks to gravity and tendons but little else. 
My spirit is tired and limp. Apart from when taunting me that I'm a fat git, of course, whenever I eat something it deems unworthy. 
Everytime I eat I have this tendency to rub down the sides of my abdomen, almost as if i'm trying to rub off the potential fat from what I'm eating before it has a chance to settle. The stupid thing is, I know that I haven't really eaten enough calories to put on weight yet that doesn't stop the feeling or the thinking. 
What a mess.

I can't recall if I mentioned but I have in my time performed on stage, comedy to varying degrees of success and failure. In the last few months I've tried to get back into it, using my mental health as subject matter in the hopes of breaking down stigmas and in the hope of getting some laughs too. Out of four gigs only two went well. The latest one, my last, a gong type show where you get 2 mins max and then voted on or off depending on the judges vote, went badly. It started off badly and then continued so. I got tangled in the mic lead, forgot I'd asked the audience how they were and then muddled my way through trying to engage with them and then my opening bit about me and mental health which got a groan. A groan!
I tried to make a comment, hopefully funny but no go and before I knew it the two mins were gone and as the lights flashed signalling to the judges to vote I watched as three red light sticks were raised, meaning do one, pal! Bollocks.
I had another gig to come but withdrew. It just wasn't in me and that feeling has been with me since. Was it the gig? Nah, I've had bad gigs before and the following week after it I did manage to go back to the acting workshop that's now back on after the summer break, so I know I wasn't that badly bruised.
True, it did wind me a bit but it's not that. Right now it seems to be something else but I have no idea what. Unless its just that usual black exerting its usual over me. The gym and general exercise has taken a back seat as usual when I'm bad, which of course makes me feel rubbish regarding how I feel and look so it feeds itself some more, round and round. 
But that's the least of it. I really don't have the energy of body and certainly not of mind to even attempt it. 
Tomorrow I have a trip to the University for my induction day of my foundation degree to complete. I've been a mess all day thinking about it. Well, I say that but it's not really the doing or going that is unsettling me its' more the fear that I won't have the strength of will to get up and go because right now I feel like a dead weight, unable to do a thing aside from stuff toast and tea down me whilst listening to music and reading. 
I feel so damned tired.

A week or so ago when wandering through the town, think I mentioned this here, I felt a multitude of memories fly at me and begin to weigh me down, as if walking through and seeing certain places that triggered certain memories I'd been jumped on by a little black puppy dog at each one until my body was covered in them. By the time I'd got to the car I was physically and mentally drained by them all. 
Right now, I  feel the same only doubly so.
My meds are strong, I'm on the highest dose of Mirtazpine and boy, does it ever feel like it. The doping effect is strong which usually means I over-sleep. So me taking the full dose before this event tomorrow I know will potentially leave me in a bad way so I might go for my usual and not sleep. After discussion with the Doc I might also try to breaking it in two and taking the second half tomorrow morning. I have tried not taking it before to help with the no-sleep but with the way I am right now that's probably not a good idea.
(I read recently that not sleeping is a mild anti-depressant which explains why I usually feel pretty good when I've tried this. However, once you get back to sleep back it comes and yeh, I've had that experience too)
Everything right now feels like a damn struggle. Going outside, communicating, doing things, living. I'd rather hides away and hibernate. I feel so damn nervous and skittish to so anything, even playing football is making me think twice. 
Lately, I've taken to drawing little hide-aways made out of felled tree trunks, little homes that wouldn't look out of place in a Tolkien type story. Well, that's what I'd like them to look like but sometimes my imagination can't match up to my drawing skills. But I get the gist of what they're supposed to be even if they don't always look like it. 
Maybe I should get back to drawing again.

Whilst reading, Pink Floyd has been my mainstay with the odd foray into Radiohead, Morrissey and of course the Manic Street Preachers.
What have I been reading?

"If you liked school, you'll love work" by Irvine Welsh, fiction
"Black by Design" by Pauline Black, auto-bio
"Inside Al-Qaeda" by Rohan Gunaratna, non-fiction
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote, fiction
"Chopper 3" by Mark Brandon Read, non-ficton
"Out of the Ordinary, true tales of everyday craziness" by Jon Ronson, non-fiction

Varied I'll think you'll agree :)

So, what now? Hope this passes I suppose. I don't know what else to do. 
Actually I do, but I can't go there again.

Why does this have to be such hard work?





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