7: Outside the Asylum

March 2018.

        I haven’t been journaling much, as you can probably tell by the dates. I haven't had the passion nor the mental focus to sit and look at blank pages for minutes or even hours on end. I haven’t had the focus to do much of anything lately. I still don’t draw, I can’t write (much), and I can’t focus long enough to read or play video games. Everything I once enjoyed like an addict, I can’t sit and settle long enough to even do. I can spend enough time to think about it, then talk myself out of doing it, or even just talk myself out of enjoying it. Yet, as for my journal, that depresses me most, second to video games, which are at least mildly social when I can play online with my friends back home. I am, however, enjoying my hand writing right now, which seems to get better when I’m stoned. As I am at the moment. Though, my hand is starting to cramp up already. I’m quite out of practice for just writing down my thoughts like a rambling monologue. I suppose that’s just what happens when you don’t write for nearly a year.

Ow.

        I don’t really sleep like I used to either. Some nights it seems like it could be a good thing, but for most nights, it’s not. Most nights I stay up to the earliest morning hours before going to bed, then I lay in bed awake for a few more hours until I finally doze off. Wasting my mind on things like YouTube and “freemium” phone games. Yes, I know that blue light isn’t good when you are trying to sleep, but I find it much better than letting myself get lost in my merciless darkness. And now, for the second time, my hand is starting to seize from the strain of writing, even though it was just a couple of sentences. I never should have stopped journaling for this long. Now I have to retrain these muscles, lest I get carpal tunnel.

-~~~-

        Practice makes perfect, I suppose. I cannot give up on journaling simply because my hand starts to ache quickly. Muscles need to be worked and exercised no matter what you are using them for. Whether it’s your arms for lifting, your legs for running, or your hand and wrist for writing whatever thoughts are on your mind at the moment like a crazy person, you have to keep them moving and working so they don’t atrophy and become useless. To be honest, I have missed spilling all of my meaningless and mildly interesting thoughts onto a sheet of paper so that I can forget them for now and revisit them when my mind is more put together and able to sort through them logically. Edit as I go, that sort of thing. As vein as this sounds, I enjoy reading my own writing. I can hear it in my own voice and I know the meaning behind each word without question. No one can mistake my words if no one else is reading them. Yet.

        Something I really want to do is write short stories. I have an idea for one that could turn into a novel of sorts. It would be about a girl (so original) and a demon that follows her. Both of them keeping journals the focus on the other. The girl wouldn’t be entirely aware that what is following her is a demon, but of course the demon knows all about her and all her sorted details. He sort of studies her as if she is a new species or something.

        I have clear memories from writing my first real story. It was about a demon named Eris who had wondered the States since her birth back in the 1800s by some crazy cult witch. I had hand written well over one hundred pages when it was lost. My landlord at the time had broken into my apartment and moved out all of my things, throwing out half of them because he hadn’t seen me come or go in a week. All I was really doing was taking care of my grandmother who was going through a hospital-to-home transition after a heart attack. It sounds like one of the excuses someone would give you on a street corner asking for change, but I promise on this very book that it’s the truth. Either way, I was completely disheartened against writing long stories due to the blind destruction of one ignorant bastard.

        As for this moment, my hand cramp is back with a vengeance. I have managed to write one full page this time. Progress.

-~~~-

        Sometimes thinking “what do I write about?” is much more stress inducing than actually writing. I often fantasize about writing a fantastic novel that is mildly successful, but when it comes down to “what do I write about?” I freeze up. I over think how my writing will come across as juvenile or too self-serving. Constantly getting in my own way by ruining anything that seems like a good or interesting idea when I first come up with it. I even worry about how something I would write could be labeled under the genre of “young adult”. I don’t have anything against young adult fiction, but that’s not the audience I would be wanting to write for. To me, that seems to only leave a couple of options. Write a bloody horror novel, and I mean just this side of shock horror, or, smut. Smut is something I can write with some efficiency, but it’s not something that is easily marketable. I could turn it into what I like to call a “bubble-gum book”, meaning a reader could easily shew through it and enjoy it to the end in a couple days… But I don’t want to write a bubble-gum book. I want to give people something with substance. There is a flood of books in the market right now about “bad girls” or strong women who have to deal with impossible life altering circumstances.

        I want to write more… But my mind is holding itself back.

-~~~-

Today was extremely exciting, and this week is shaping up to be my own personal Christmas. I could be getting my new laptop tomorrow and I am totally stoked. I can stop using mom’s computer, download my art programs, writing programs, as well as recover and back up my music. I will finally have my own working computer again. I can even play my own video games on it.

When my last laptop went to hell, A---- kept suggesting that I get a new one from one of those rent-to-buy places. You know the ones. If you don’t pay it off in three months the price more than doubles, sometimes triples. Which would have been easy enough to do, had he not demanded that I pay seventy-five percent of the bills, and even pay his personal bills at the same time. The more I think about it the more I’m admonishing myself for staying with him as long as I did.

The problem with manipulative sociopaths is that they are good at what they do. He managed to convince me -with very little effort- that I was going to be helpless without him. And I knew without someone else to at least mildly help with the rent, that I would have been screwed, blued, and tossed out onto my ass like a heap of molded potatoes. He kept me scared. Constantly threatening to break up with him if I came forward and talked to him about something that was bothering me. Any time I would bring up my concerns about being polyamorous, our lack of communication, or our lack of intimacy, it would always end with me apologizing and promising to try harder. I don’t even know how he did it. I started out so strong willed, but was broken down to the level of a babbling child whenever we spoke. So, I stopped speaking to him. Other than the regular things like “what’s for dinner” or “how was work”.

Through his constant subtle berating of my self-esteem and my perception of self-worth, I started turning inward and doing the work for him. I stopped talking to my friends about my issues, choosing instead to keep them all inside as I feared they would choose to stop talking to me if I voiced any concern about them or any other topic. Whenever I would end up having an issue with someone else, I stopped bringing it up to them. Instead I would take a look at myself and ask what am I doing wrong to have this issue? What can I do to make it better on my own? To some degree, re-evaluating your thoughts and stances on issues is a rather healthy thing. It’s good to know where you stand with yourself and others, to know that you are the best you that you can be. But when it starts to destroy your soul because you think that you are the only one with the problems and you are the soul person to fix everything… Well then, you really do have a problem. For a long time, I didn’t know that I had a real problem. A real obstacle that I would have to either dig through or hurdle around, and that was me. I would literally have to get over myself and my fears to help myself, or even save my own life.

It got to the point that I was willing to give up friends if that meant being able to stay with A----. I grew distant from my closest friends. I would instead march to work and drag myself home five days a week just to see him or spend time with him when he wasn’t sitting alone in his room (yes, we had separate rooms) on his thousand dollar laptop. Even with having to constantly be around him, I was getting distant. I didn’t ask to cuddle, and I didn’t ask to make love when we were still partnered. I stopped being who I was when we first met and he could see that. When he knew I might choose to leave of my own accord, he would lure me back in with dinners, gifts, and sex. Tempting me to stay with the things he knew I wanted but would never ask for. Treating me like a virtual princess when he knew I was reaching my rope’s end. I knew then but chose to ignore the fact that you can’t buy love. Sure, you can rent happiness, but you cannot put a price on true unfiltered love. That should have been my breaking point, if nothing else.

Enough about him for the time being. I am tired, my hand hurts. But at least I am able to write more in one sitting than I was just a few days ago. Seeing progress is sometimes the only thing that keeps you going.

-~~~-

        I still don’t know what to write about tonight. I didn’t get my computer even though it was sitting in a post office center right outside of Denver for the past day and a half, and as of this moment, it’s still there. What is the point of paying for two-day shipping if it isn’t going to show up for nearly a week? A waste of money at this point. It could be delivered on the same day as if I had just taken the free, no rush shipping. The PS4 that I ordered will be here tomorrow, and I am beyond excited. I can download and play all the games that I owned when I had my first PS4 that my then current partner decided to report as stolen after our breakup. Even though it was a Christmas present from her to me. Needless to say, I’ve made some bad choices when it comes to my boy/girlfriends. My fingers are crossed that I can recover my saves from nearly four years ago by some miracle.  

        My arm is feeling sore faster than I thought it would. It looks like I am going to have to end it for the night.

-~~~-

        My laptop came in today, and it’s wonderful. The screen is so large, it’s thin, and the definition is remarkable. It’s all that I was hoping for and more. Mom’s gift also came in today. I ordered her a Dremel set. I’m very happy that I was able to get that for her. It isn’t much, but it’s something that she has been wanting for a long time. It’s the smallest thank you I could possibly give for what she’s done to help me with my great escape.

        It is a little unnerving to feel this happy. I feel like I Am just passing time until something comes along to ruin it, and it honestly don’t want this to be ruined. I like what’s happening now, the calmness and the stillness of my mind. It’s the most relaxed I have been in years. But at the same time, I am scared of these new feelings. Almost as if I have been conditioned to expect tragedy right after an incredible high, so to speak. I’m being as careful as I can not to jinx myself, but I can’t help but wonder if doing so is only making it worse on some unknown cosmic scale.

       For the moment, I am going to focus on new pens. I have ordered a specific brand of needle point pens that work particularly well with the type of paper that makes up my favorite purple leather bound journal. Clean black strokes with no smudging. That’s the plan anyway. Who is to say they didn’t change up the formula for the ink in the couple years I have gone without this specific pen.

        I love new pens. Each one a well of words and worlds waiting to be unleashed upon the readers of the land, depending on where it ends up. In whose hands, I mean. A doctor’s office, or the breast-pocket of a physicist? Or will it come to me and make it so I can keep these thoughts simply without smudging them?

Each pen is as good as the person who wields it.

-~~~-

I’m scared. Nearly terrified.

Am I going to lose myself? Am I going to change to the point I don’t even recognize myself because of these drugs? If it happens, will it be a good thing for the world? Is this bad? Do I need to talk to my doctor about these fears? It’s depressing and these thoughts are not only intrusive, but they are all a nauseant.

I enjoy being who I am. Wild, outlandish, out spoken. Will I become “normal”? Dull, dead, emotionless. A grey mass just floating through existence without an emotion either positive or negative. Wearing a smiling mask to no longer hide my sadness, but to hide the void of nothingness left in my psyche? The idea of pastel shirts with beige pants is a mortifying future I never want to face. Will I maybe lose my faith in Satanism and perhaps have to try to find myself again in another faith, or no faith at all? Lost in the eternal question of “Who am I?”.

I like the person I am right now. I just want to be a better version of what I am. A happier version. A person who isn’t constantly sick of my own shit. Constantly dreading every anxious thought, every looming stress that keeps me on the edge of a panic attack, suffering through every migraine and crying spell.

I don’t want to forget who I am. I don’t want to be “reinvented”. I wish and want to stay forever me, just a happier me. I mean… When it comes to doing things around the apartment, I usually do it just because it needs to be done, rather than having to force myself to do it. That’s a positive change that I am enjoying. But on the other hand, I have noticed a change in how much I enjoy more macabre movies, games, and themes. Not to label myself as an edge-lord, but I do enjoy learning about the darker side of the human mind. The things people are capable of when consequence is a non-issue. True crime and what not. I find it all fascinating. I would devour horror movies and shock novels like they were candy in a bowl, but lately those things hold very little interest to me, and that is beginning to worry me a bit more than it used to.

Please don’t let me lose me.

-~~~-

Good news. I have finally found my bottle of Trazodone that I had misplaced about a week ago. Tonight might be the first time in days that I get to fall asleep and stay asleep rather than wake up at four in the morning and wish that I could sleep. Staring at the ceiling, contemplating every little mistake I had ever made in my life. Thinking about my childhood wrong doings, or possibly even people that I may or may not have offended simply by existing in their proximity. My mind swimming with reasons for me to be depressed, reasons for me to hate myself.

I lay there, screaming in my own mind that I want to sleep. Trying desperately to shut out any thought that I have, trying to hush the voice that shouts at me every little thing I’ve ever done… Even then, the thoughts I try to use to calm myself become so loud that I can’t shut them out either. Just layers and layers of wanting it all to stop so I can simply go to sleep. The only help I get is from a small white pill that turns off my thoughts, shuts down my dreams, and makes it so my brain can’t hold onto anything long enough to over think it and keep me awake longer than I want to be.

Wish me luck.