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?

You don't get a say...

Reading through these comic strips regarding depression, it occurred to me that no matter how boring it has become to me, no matter how annoying it is, how inconvenient it can be, I don't really have that much of a say in when mine happens or even when and if it ends.
Right now, I can't tell if it's become a sort of background accessory to my life or if it's resting until the next time it jumps up and suddenly awakens again. I've had a couple of off days, which I guess is better than a week of it but it's hard to be positive about such an inherently un-positive illness. Trying to come to terms with the very real possibility of this being part of me from now until I do one permanently is hard to digest. 
What of future relationships  That's a laugh, mostly because I can't really see me having any long term ones in the future. The prospect is terrifying. Who'd want to commit to me as I am? The potential passing on of my black gene to and me being black in front of kids wold be an awful thing so I find it real hard to see anyone wanting a family with me anytime soon.
Probably just as well eh?

There's no escape (reprise)

Many moons ago after I'd puffed and panted my way through a fitness test and was about to face a two week training course, one phrase kept repeating itself over and over in my head.
There's no escape.
Being the geeky type and having been mad on Star Wars when a kid, and let's face it part of me still is as a fully grown adult, the phrase is from 'The Empire Strikes Back' and is something Vader utters with wheezy menace at a battered Luke Skywalker on the steps of the carbon chamber in the cloud city of Bespin during their big lightsaber showdown. 
It's something that used to play in my mind whenever I felt I was in a place that I, well, couldn't escape. Lately it has popped back into my mind and this time I think there really is no escape.
My former wife. Yep, her again. Well, her memory.
It's playing a lot lately and I can't seem to shake it not the feeling that I miss her, want a hug from her and also a return to that small town we used to inhabit during our early days together. Simple times during moments of stress I guess. At the moment there is no comfort except in the form of brief memory flashbacks, which also, conversely, make things worse with their past echoes of our time together. And of course, it's always the good times and never the bad isn't it?
What to do? I've no idea. The idea of closure is anathema to me and I hate the term, it being more of an armchair US talk show type term, that, in reality means naff all. 
Peace perhaps would be a better term; being at peace with me and her and the situation as is, but I don't know. Again, I'm not sure where the depression begins and the divorce ends and vice-versa.  
It's all so damn wearing.
There's no escape.

You know you just can't win...

It had started off badly but had slowly come good. Plans to gym it were shelved but I did manage to get out for a little hill run; I'd strained my calf muscle last week, and that went well. I then had to go out and meet a chap who was involved in the local MIND group and see if there were any groups I could join. All good. And then, whilst wandering through the centre I passed a bun shop. Nothing out of the ordinary there, maybe apart from me saying bun shop but it was not ordinary bun shop. It was one in which myself and her visited after a day in that town centre. Soon as I remembered it a domino effect of memories un-raveled in my mind. The Pizza house we went to prior to that and the five cheese pizza I'd eaten there which meant I could only have half a bun as I was so stuffed. This shot through my mind in nano seconds and as I wandered back to the car I felt myself becoming hollow, while conversely feeling heavy, as though the memories were hanging onto me and growing in number making my progress feel slovenly. It also felt as if someone had delivered a Street Fighter Ryu like punch to my spirit. By the time I'd got back to the car I felt drained. It had all turned around within a few minutes. 
Memories eh? Sometimes they can work against you.
Pink Floyd's 'Lost for Words', the tune and lyrics kept going over and over in my mind, particularly the boxer's ten count near the end. It felt as though I was having my own count-out.
Right now I'm wondering if I can make a performance spot that I have tomorrow. That suddenly feels like a big event now rather than the small spot that it is. I've suddenly become un-sure and un-confident when it comes to that now. Yet, it's something I do enjoy doing, even if it sometimes doesn't go the way I'd like it too.
So, tomorrow? If I wake up in the right way, then maybe.

Sleeping Beauty

It feels like Autumn.

Upon waking it felt like it, either due to the drop in temp, the fact that it's the first day of September or the down beat tone of my dream. Or a combination of them all.

It was a dream that involved rescuing someone from a rough sea that was, for some reason, making up the road between two buildings and also contained some cos-play with me dressed up like a Stormtrooper, (have always wanted to do that, either as Boba Fett, TIE Fighter Pilot or a Biker-Scout!). After that I was in bed in a house I can't recall staying in and my former wife appeared. some sort of argument had occurred, the atmosphere between us was strained as sometimes it could be. I'm not sure what it was about but what I do recall was us trying to talk about it and me making her laugh which was something that always broke the tension and is what, I think, in the long run kept us together despite the numerous bizarre arguments we had.

Upon waking, however, I did feel down. Not because of the tone of the dream but the fact that I initially thought it was real and she and I were together. But no, she's not there, as that old Zombies song went.

I like Autumn; the coolness, it's blustery background that soon brings about a change in leaf and sky colour, but this morning was not a good start.

Time for some tea.