Nemo Saltat Sorbius, Nisi Infanus Est

It’s been over a month since I last wrote anything.  Partly due to buying a news Window sand thus formatting my PC and losing the link to this page.  And then taking me ages to work up the enthusiasm to write anything.  Actually, it’s hardly a fucking shocker that I’m writing under the influence of alcohol.  A 70cl bottle of Jura Superstition whisky that I have downed.  Normally a £30+ bottle would last me a while but tonight I’ve just gotten fucked up.

I guess I’ve gone through a period that verge from being OK to being meh, but being meh is hardly something I’d talk about at the doctors.  Since my last blog I’ve had my prescription for Citralopram renewed and I have managed to meet and talk to the Pathways team twice which frankly is quite surprising.  Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that my meeting with the Pathways Councillor has gone anywhere as I have been asked to attend an appointment with a Pathways CBT person, and that’s not until the 1st March.  Which is…Well, I it’s why I’m writing this fucking blog update I guess.  I am lost.  My time in college is collapsing.  And desptie two councilling sessions which have been at least slightly useful I am now left waiting 2 months so I can go talk to someone else in the NHS.  Perhaps my viewpoint is skewed by my ego but I am having a hard time and have been for the past couple of weeks and so the idea of waiting two weeks to talk to anyone is…hard to comprehend.

Right now I am fighting hard to not take a razor to my arms in order to FEEL SOMETHING.  I guess instead I’ll just fall asleep feeling shitty, knowing the thoughts that will dominate my mind until the 1st March and my meeting with the CBT person from Pathways.

I think I’ll phone a helpline right now.  It’s just…bleak.

I’m not really able to complain too much.  Side effects from the citalopram have been largely harmless after five days.  Had the runs for a day.  Basically the only problem is that I am struggling to stay awake past 8pm, and am waking up by 4am after a restless night of interrupted sleep.  I’ve always been a night time person, I hate mornings, so I can’t say I’m best pleased by all this.

Going to see Napalm Death this evening, a gig a friend is promoting.  Apparently a bunch of folk are going back to a pals flat afterward, but as the gig doesn’t finish until 10pm I have concerns about even being awake at this point.  Even if I wasn’t being totally battered by my bodyclock arsing me about I’m not going to be drinking so it’s not likely I’ll be a social animal.  If I go, I’ll be unlikely to say more than 30 words all night long.  The fact that it’s a stupid Sunday gig means that the tube is shut after 6 so I’m going to end having to walk home.  Hardly the end of the world I accept, but it’s -2 out there right now and should be -4 or lower by the time I leave.  I’m half in mind to just not go but I know I’d regret that.

Still struggling for any motivation at the moment but the bright side is that my mood has been noticeably better.  No obsessing with death, not even cut myself in the past week, which by recent standards is a minor miracle.  One doesn’t want to get carried away, but things could be alot worse.

I woke up at about 6am.  It’s now 8pm.  I haven’t done anything.  I’ve eaten two slices of toast all day.  I’m really tired again.  Huh.  It’s all just rather gone by in a blur, though an unorthodoxly slow blur.  Really odd.  I have to try make more of tomorrow.  Just on principle.  If only it wasn’t so ruddy cold.  Or I had the foresight to own a coat.

Or at least the first step was.  Startlingly so.  Aside from the half hour spent sat in the waiting room nerously fidgeting, staring at the clock on what seemed like a minutely basis, failing to read anymore of The Plague (that’s really irritating me lately, a reduced attention span that is making reading hard to do for any extent of time.  Why read when you can stare blankly at the computer monitor, right?  Hah.), occasionally dropping off for a couple of second micro-sleep and just generally working myself up into a minor state of fear.  But as soon as I got into the doctors office and remembered how to talk without bumbling over my words I just vomited forth some nonsensical words, enjoyed several awkward silences, all that jazz.  He asked if my long hair was a sign that I haven’t been bothing with a hair cut, which made me chuckle.  My long hair is a concious decision I made almost a decade ago, and the only part of my physical appearance that I’m at all satisfied with.  (although if I was nitpicking I’d say that it’d be even better if it wasn’t so darn curly!)  It does need a shower though.  I’ll try for that tomorrow.

Anyhoo, long…well, moderately longish story short I ended up walking out with my first ever NHS prescription, for 20mg a day of citalopram, and a telephone number for the Glasgow Mental Health Pathways Team down in Pollock.  I picked the prescription up this afternoon, and I phoned the pathways team but apparently they’ve had flooding in that part of town and so couldn’t make an appointment today but they’ll phone back at some point.  And I then need to go to the surgery again tomorrow morning for a blood test.  So because I may be out when the pathways team call, I decided to tell my flatmate/cousin, which wasn’t as awkward as it could have been as he’s been on meds himself for depression in the past.  Didn’t go into any details, just told him to take a message for me, job sorted.

I don’t know exactly how I feel about all the above.  I was proud that I managed to get to the appointment, and for a while was rather excited and giddy at the prospect of it all.  But after getting home and finally getting some sleep by 6 this evening I’m slightly more level now.  I mean I know nothing about these medications, except that it could take up to two months for them to make even the slightest difference, that I shouldn’t come off them by myself if I’ve been on them for more than a fortnight because the withdrawl can be rather extreme, and that the two weeks after I first take them sound like they’ll be fucking hellish.  I can’t help myself but look at the fucking sheet of paper that came with the pills and they are…ridiculous.  I have no fucking idea what to expect here.  It’s making me rather nervous by this point in time.

I’m not sure what the deal is with citalopram and alcohol either.  I mean it says not to drink, but jeez ya know, I’m going to be totally fucked socially if I can’t touch alcohol.  How bad can it be?  Oh well.  Progress is progress, I should stop worrying about stuff for the time being and just look forward to the morning, and a solitary beige pill.

Well, this morning came.  Still not slept.  Was going to go to the doctors to arrange an appointment but I looked out the window at the snow and figured there’s inevitably still going to be black ice and there as well so it could be just a little bit slippy.   Ended up phoning the surgery.  And whaddya know?  I have an appointment for today, 11:30am.  That’s just over an hour.  So that was slightly quicker than I had really anticipated and now I’m trying to think of what to say.  I was going to try write a list of things that I wanted to mention, so I don’t forget anything, but now, well, it’s too late for that so I’m just going to try think of stuff and try my darnedest to actually work up the courage.  I think I’ll manage though.  Hope so.

Oh well.  Leaves me enough time to watch one last episode of ER before I have to leave.

Nervous times.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick sodding tock.  I guess it is Monday now.  That means what…28 hours, give or take, until I can go and arrange my doctors appointment.  I’m counting down until I can make an appointment.  Which is kind of the problem right now, there’s nothing on the horizon that I can particularly motivate myself for.  I mean the exciting plan for today?  I guess I’ll fall asleep at some point in the next 3 or 4 hours.  Probably judging be recent form I’ll be awake by 2 or 3pm, then I’ve got to pop out to the Co-Op to get some more toilet paper and some bread will probably be quite useful as well, tend not to react well to not eating after all.  I mean my room needs tidied but the chance of that happening while I’m feeling this crap and unmotivated seems thoroughly unlikely.

So now all I’m trying to do is ignore the suicidal thoughts, throwing out some insincere bullshit when folk speak to me on MSN (I’m not likely to bump into anyone I know in real-life) and try to numb the boredom.  The blasted boredom.  I think I’ve given up even trying to resist cutting right now, more just keeping it to a minimum and trying not to fall into doing it on a daily basis.

Oh well.  At least Tuesday is slightly more encouraging, I mean it’s hard say exactly why but the prospect of a doctors appointment really does have me excited far more than it probably should, but it’s just something on the horizon.  And after I’ve got an appointment for whenever-it-is I’m going to be walking (Jesus, that’s going to be a challenge, my leg muscles feel like they’ve rotted from under-use the past couple of weeks.  I’m literally living on the couch right now.  Sleep here.  Watch the TV here, use the computer here, eat my dinner here.  It’s appalling but I just can’t see what else I’m meant to be doing with my time.) into Glasgow city centre, heading to the wonderful Tickets Scotland and getting my hands on tickets for Napalm Death, Rolo Tomassi, Baroness and Mastodon (the first 3 are in January, the latter in February).  And then I’ll have actual events to look forward to.  GIGS!

Yeah, I cannot wait to see some more gigs.  I need the adrenaline rush from a good headbang.  It never fails at making me feel good.

So this is where I talk about that what matters the most in my solitary life.  And the spur for this is an MSN conversation that I had this evening with someone over the worst song of 2009.  His was a really bland metal tribute to that Sophie lassie who got her head quite literally kicked in simply because she looked different.  Sad occurence, doesn’t stop the song from being above criticism I’m afraid.  But see, I knew I could go one better than that.  So I present to you my nomination for the worst song of 2009 (strictly speaking the video came out in 2008, but hey, the album it’s on was a 2009 release): Brokencyde – Freaxxx (I haven’t the foggiest how to embed videos to Wordpress so this may take a couple of attempts to get it right.  If I can’t then it’ll just have to be a link, old-school style)

Now I’m sorry but who decided that combining grindcore/screamo piggy squeals (one thing that as an extreme metal fan I still find just too ridiculous to listen to without laughing) with the as-hideous-but-in-a-totally-different-way  Autotune pitch-shifted vocals from alot of modern hip-pop (Akon and Kanye being the two worst offenders to come to mind instantly) would equal something good?  Because honestly, I can’t see how anyone would make a connection between the two.  A metalcore band also moderately famous (in an internet sense) for combining piggy squeals and Autotune high-pitched fakeness are Attack Attack!, if you have the stomach for two appalling tracks in a row I’d suggest looking for their song Stick Stickly.  I don’t know, that doesn’t work, but the piggy squeals at least make sense in the context of metal.  In a pop song?  What on earth would possess anyone to take the one most obviously unlistenable part of lots of heavy metal (the growling/grunting/screaming/other forms of indecipherable vocals) and tack it onto a hip-pop tune?  I’m just…bewildered and confused by it.  Not to mention disgusted.  So yes, Brokencyde, well done I guess, you’ve managed to actually offend me, a rare thing these days.  Perhaps I simply have no sense of humour but eh, it’s beyond my comprehension, and I listen to fucking Wolf Eyes.  I guess they should at least get a bonus point for trying to do something marginally different, which is a rare treat.  But still.  Ewwwwww.

On the topic of music that doesn’t make me want to gnaw my own testicles off, I was recommended to download/steal (whichever you prefer) the 1978 compilation album ‘No New York’, featuring four groups from New York who were all part of the ludicrously titled “no wave” scene: Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars and D.N.A.  The album was produced by famed producer and former member of Roxy Music, Brian Eno after seeing the bands live, and he decided these groups needed to be documented in some form.  And listening to it nearly thirty two years on I can see why he thought that: I can hear the influence these guys had on bands I listen to today over a wide spectrum of music.  I was previously only vaguely aware of the no-wave scene through it’s two biggest names, Sonic Youth and Swans, both who I enjoy greatly as two of the ’80s finest recording artists, and who apparently weren’t really no-wave groups because it had ended by about ‘82.  So there I go, learn something new all the time.

On to the music, well Contortions have the catchiest numbers, while Mars probably sound the most fucked up and unconventional of the pack, but really it is all good.  I’m enamoured with this and can see it joining Joyless – Wisdom & Arrogance, Joy Division – Control and Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in the pile of “stuff that I’m listening to a fuckload on repeat” right now.  Well worth checking out if you are into errrr noise-rock type stuff I guess.  It’s hard to pigeon-hole music that sounds like this.

Twice in the space of 6 hours.  My apologies.  But there are thoughts that needed to be excreted from my head rather urgently.  My head is screaming at me to hurt myself.  It wants to feel pain.  I’ve been fidgeting with a razor blade in my hand for at least half an hour, trying so hard to resist.  I don’t normally think about it this much I just tend to do it because it feels so right but now for whatever reason my head is just split, it wants me to do it but something is stopping me.  Trying to anyway.  It’s just not ever this complicated.  So now the bad side, it wants me to drink, I guess to try and silence the side of me that’s not telling me to act really fucking stupid.  And I can’t sleep.  Again.  Fuck off.  It’d all go away if I could only get to sleep.  But no, a day spent hungover, lying in a vague coma flitting between awake and asleep has made that impossible.  And hey, on the plus side I’ve had actual suicidal thoughts running through my head for the first time in some time, oh bollocking hell.  Not just the usual vague sensation of “it’d be nice to not wake up tomorrow” but just thinking about going to a shop tomorrow and buying a stack of pills, then going to another and buying some more.  Of course it wouldn’t happen because right now I’m too fucking lazy to leave the house for anything more than food to gouge myself on.  YAY FOR THAT at least.

I’ve put down the blade for now.  Handy I don’t have any belts or anything like that.  It’s…just…eh.  Everything is just so eh right now.  How damn depressing it is, that some part of me wants to cut so damn deep that I have to call 999 and see someone.  I want to fucking scream about it at someone, but woohoo, fucking yeah, I’m a male who is unable to deal with his emotions in a way that isn’t totally infantile.  HELL YEAH!  The sarcasm is just dripping off this rant.  I can’t help myself sometimes, it’s so fucking me.  Build up that wall with sarcasm, deflection, insincerity, self-deprecation and just occasionally, total fucking bullshit, whatever helps people think I’m “OK”.  Because despite wanting to talk, I can’t feel like a burden to my friends with my insecurities and all that other bullshit, it’s not fair, everyone has problems, who wants to know that the stupid fat cunt wants too off himself?  Of course, this is totally illogical because I know that if one of my friends was having these thoughts I’d try to do whatever I could for them.  It’s a cold, dark world out there, and I just don’t want to be quite so damn alone in it.

At times like this sometimes I wish could believe in some religion, that I could accept that we endure this life in order to come across a better time in the next one.  But those thoughts are just beyond me.  I can’t believe, I have no faith and I cannot take comfort from such ideas.  Heck, even if I wasn’t an ardent athiest who rejects the concept of god I’d still find the Abrahamic God to be unworthy of adulation because he acts like a petulant teen who has sadly come into power.

Shame though, finding some consolation somewhere, anywhere, it would be nice.

Oh and my taste in music is terrible when I get like this.  Listening to music that is pure misery is comforting some of the time but at lows like this it is…not.  It, if anything, makes the situation work.  So no Shining, no Lifelover, no Manic Street Preachers, no Crowbar, no Eyehategod, no blues and no country.  So on comes De La Soul with ‘The Magic Number’ which is at least nice and upbeat.

There’s talk about self-harm here.  Nothing too graphic, but seems appropriate to warn

And so the decade horrendously labelled “the noughties” is over and done with.  I remember the tail-end of the eighties from the eyes of a five year old, I remember the ninties pretty clearly, and I think I can say that the ten years from double oh to oh nine haven’t been the greatest period in history.  And certainly from a personal perspective it’s been mainly negative with a smattering of positivity here and there.  I’m quite glad that 2009 is done though.  While clearly not the best year I’ve ever had, it’s been better than 2002 or 2007.  But it fell off towards the end into less-than-cheery territory and even though rational me realises that the changing of calendar doesn’t make any real difference I can’t help but have some small part of hope that there will be “changes”.  There’s just a small thread of hope that hangs there in the distance, but is still just visible.  I don’t know why, I don’t even know why I think things will change because the earth has completed an orbit from arbitary point A all the way back to arbitary point A around the sun, it’s an incredibely silly thing to believe.  It’s why I don’t put any stock in new years resolution and so forth.  I mean come on, it’s easy to say “i’m going to lose weight this year and eat healthily and go to the doctor” and all that jazz but I’m not going to do it because it’s a new fucking day/month/year, my brain doesn’t work in a way that lets me put any significance in these type of things.  Coldly rational I guess.

So certainly there will be no grand statementspromising this or that.  It’s not really how I work, and setting targets that I will inevitably fail to meet due to no motivation is merely setting myself up for a fall and the inevitable disappointment that failure brings.  If you don’t have goals you can’t fail to meet them!

None the less, my stance towards New Year didn’t prevent me from going round to a friends house, drinking and listening to alot of music.  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you much more about the night, aside from one lad taking out shot roulette and there being absinthe in one of them and me getting that lucky number.  Pretty much immediately after it is blank.  I woke up at 10am in my pyjamas on my living room couch.  I have no idea how I made it home.  Or when I left.  Or even why.  Fun night, what I remember of it at least, though I don’t like the “drink until I have no memory” feeling because it tends to mean I have absolutely no idea if I did anything particularly retarded, you know, sitting on a front step weeping type stuff, it’s worrying.  I do worry about not being in control, mainly because every single thing I do I tend to think about obsessively, usually until I put off doing it for whatever vague reason.  Don’t really have much faith in my impulses, and you know, a overall fear of the unknown, be it rejection, embarassment or goodness only knows what other silly justifications.  But the worst thing is waking up to that familiar ache in one of my arms and I realise that what I got up to when I went home.  It’s a concern.  I mean I often drink before cutting, it’s an effective painkiller, just numbs everything quite effectively.  But being that drunk that I don’t remember anything, I don’t have the same degree of control, I’m implusive, I do stupid shit.  Only time I ended up making a trip to the hospital from it was because of one of those “so drunk I blacked out” moments when I was down in England.

Flatmates both went out to the Corporation (a club in Sheffield) one Friday night in November and I said no thanks.  Or maybe they’d just given up inviting me by that point because the answer was all but once no, I’m not a night club person.  So I ended up staying at home, watched the telly with a drink, Jim Beam.  Ended up necking the whole bottle, and then apparently I went outside and smashed it on the wall, left the shards everywhere, and I then woke up at about 3am with a flatmate stood over me, panicing and apparently about to phone for an ambulance.  Ended up convincing her I was fine and tied a cloth around it and went to my bed.  Woke up, decided to go to the hospital as the deepest wound was still bleeding, had been to long to get stitches but they had some sticky tape stuff to hold it close together, and cleaned it up.  That was a heck of a scary moment though, despite all the moments of sheer idiocy I’ve never come close to repeating it, fortunately.  Probably scared my flatmate even more, was really unfair for her to find out quite how depressed I was at that time, I’d only ever leave the house to get food to binge on.  Happy times.  She doesn’t talk to me anymore for other reasons, damn shame.  Stupid me.

Oh well, anyway, it’s no where this bad this time.  But it’s still a fucking worry, I mean I’m here alone until the fifth when my flatmate returns.  Perhaps it’s time to cut back on the alcohol until my mood picks up or at least until I get to see the doctor about all of this.  Bah.  A friend’s birthday on Sunday, meant to be going out on Saturday night, don’t imagine I can face it sober so in that case I’ll probably have to call off.  Oh well.  Twice in a week is plenty for me.  Course, I’ve still got half a bottle of Glen’s, fuck knows how long that will last until I decide it’s a good idea to get started into that.  More likely days rather than weeks…

Ach, needed to get that all of my chest.  Slightly catharthic.  And that’s the point of all this shite I guess.  Oh well, roll on Tuesday and a re-opened Doctors surgery.

I don’t particularly like New Year.  It’s the whole passage of time thing.  I didn’t notice it until last year, but this year it’s been foremost in my mind.  There’s just something uncomfortable about knowing you are getting older and yet still acting as impulsively and immaturely as you were as a teenager, I can’t imagine why that is…Indeed, it could be argued that as far as impulse control goes I’ve regressed; I never used to drink, until I was 19.  I’d been drunk before it but it took until I was 19 until it was a vaguely regular occurence.

Anyway.  Didn’t sleep until about 10am last night.  Woke up at 4 this afternoon.  Due to my late night I was finally able to get over my fear thanks to being only vaguely awake and stepped inside the doctors surgery to register, after 15 long months in Glasgow.   Got to call back on Tuesday to make an appointment but who knows, it’s a start at least.  No promise that I’ll be able to make it inside a second or a third time.

Eh.  In my drunken state on Tuesday I said I’d go round a pals for Hogmanay.  Stupid drunk me is far more sociable than sober me and so sober me is currently regretting my big mouth, it’s ruined my plans for a super-early night just to spite the stupid night.  But I guess I’ll have to save that for 2010 and go and get drunk with my pals.  Which really shouldn’t be the sort of thing that I have to kick myself repeatedly in the arse to go and do.  Ugh.