masterkidderminster.net

Mood +5 feel normal, haven’t gotten down at all today. possibly some prodromes of hypo-mania.

 Went down Birmingham to sort out a few things for a trip to Snowdon this weekend. Decided just to go, try and make something of the holiday whilst I’m not working and am still waiting on a few jobs etc. Bought a lot of stuff that I should use again. It felt rational enough and I am not so strapped for cash.

 Got a fleece, waterproof, scarf etc. Managed to prevent myself from buying the complete Arden Shakespeare, though it was only &25, and Anthony Clare’s In the Psychiatrist’s Chair III despite the fact that it had Tony Benn and Kay Redfield Jamison, among others in it. I have been reading one of his with Ken Dodd – who I saw and who appeared to be an interesting eccentric on a TV interview recently – and R. D. Laing, probab;y why I got the book [from interest in his case rather than belief in his ideas, which even years back were not compelling to me in the least, or, certainly, I stood aloof from them, thinking his 10 day psychosis or whatever it was, where he mentioned a man who believed he could influence others and that he didn’t feel qualified to comment on the truth of such a statement, was similar to the under-reasoning of mine when manic at the Goile and at Shawn Avenue – 04.10.01]. It also had Clare Rainer in it which was interesting. Anyway, I am constantly watching out for myself in bookshops now, and had to laugh when, intrigued, I read of Kay Redfield Jamison having once bought many copies of Penguin books one time so as to make a colony. I must have been feeling sanguine. Anyway, I convinced myself out of buying these, and Noam Chomsky due to the fact that I would go to the library and because I have more than enough to read, have a book of Chomsky’s from the library which I have barely started and, because I had already had my debit card ask for authorisation due perhaps to the amount of spending that day and due to having dipped into my overdraft. (They asked for my telephone number and postcode etc., and I wasn’t prepared to wait or coinvinced that I was in such need of the books that I should get some money out and return.)

 I have been designing cameras and bikes. Decided that cameras should have two roles of film in, at the top and bottom, perpendicular to the lens rather than behind the mirror, and that Mountain bikes would be far less fiddly if they only were driven by a shaft and enclosed gearbox rather than the proven mess of a chain. I was thinking about this last night, aware, of course that it was ludicrous, but what if? There is a place for such eccentricity, of course, [retro. 19.11.00 I still know there to be, and I can’t scorn myself for this, however bizarre a time it was. I can perhaps even romanticise it. [here, Salinger style, and in a purely ironic fashion are some parenthesis. No, I was going to say, I can romanticise it but don’t. I simply think it valuable and infinitely morally superior to laziness and a lack of effort. – 04.10.01]] there is just that dilemma about whether the price is worth paying; that “dilemma” that keeps us on the wrong side of the tracks.

 I had decided to do something about that. Ordered not only the Kay Redfield Jamison autobiography that I had stoppped short of one-click oredering beforehand but also a guide to sex and the artist’s and writer’s yearbook. If I don’t go mad, I’ll get a shag, and if I can’t do that then I’ll write a barely worthwhile radio play. But seriously, I think I was thinking (here goes the retrospective rationalisation) that me, like B_____ faling asleep on Karen at Jayne’s party, will be just too naïve if ever I try to catch up on what I have missed, on what everyone else is forever at. Right now I want none of it. [retro. 19.11.00 And right now of course I’m desperate once again for someone to hold, share moments with, fuck.] I have heard that Jayne has met some guy in Ireland and I wasn’t that pleased to hear that. It just seems so superficial, she was there for a long weekend. They are texting each other. I’d be mad not to want to be mad. Who’d want to be sane amidst such insanity? I really am out of step with the world, and at times – and I believe I mean my more objectively lucid moments – I think I prefer the way I am. I have long known that I have missed out. I have been a virgin for too long and am too romantic. What I wanted was to meet someone – some ONE – that I care about, then have a caring relationship in which sex is one important but in many ways peripheral part. And dealing with abstruse (in terms of my empathy) sexual and emotional histories is not what I want. To be seen as inadequate because inexperienced, and to accept that when my worldview is different. To apologise for it or make excuses, that would be too much to repudiate in myself, and far too much of a compromise. Jayne had had sex with one guy, perhaps now two, I don’t know nor understand, and these figures, I hate to say it, don’t seem to be for want of trying. [retro. 19.11.00 I am of course being grossly unfair and I know it, though perhaps was unaware as I wrote here, but I was upset, disillusioned and perhaps hurt.] Who’d have ‘em. Fickle. From Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress to this. And prefering my state by far than those destined only to be facetious, ironic, drunk, one of the lads.

I went to Jayne’s party down South over the weekend. I am sometimes too quiet. I find it hard a lot of the time to talk even to people I care about or are fairly close to, finding it at one particular point impossible even to say anything to Jayne as I walked past when she was washing up. I had a good time on occasions. Said a few funny things. Her mates are fairly cool. I sometimes can feel embarrassed about B_____ – he is very like me, I guess – but I didn’t there. I was getting on well with Rowena, and most people there.

 I did get jealous, though, about Jayne. For the first time, I think, I actually started to get anxious in sme way about her constantly being on the look out for some man or another. I had found her to be quite superficial in terms of men before. She is constantly discussing various men, and never of course their personalities. I think I had always considered her just as a friend. It was cool that we were getting close. I have always liked having close female friends, getting away from the boys once in a while – perhaps more. And I always felt comfortable around her. I was wondering the other day whether girls being affectionate towards me whilst being openly interested in other men brings out the worst of my emotional baggage – it is hard to tell whether that is psycho-babble or not. I like her. That much is fairly simple. I like the attention, the affection. But more from her than from other girls. And it is good, I feel, not to have a clearly demarcated line where friendship ends and more emotionally involved relationships or reactions begin. I think it is fairly healthy. And I guess it would be nice. People had always said that there was something going on there. I had always dismissed it, but maybe there was something there. On the other hand, and of course there is always an other hand, she might well see me as fairly asexual and therefore a little sweet. She is fairly affectionate to her many gay friends, although even then I’m sure not quite to the same extent. She wasn’t put off when I held her as she sat on my lap. And she gave me a very warm hug when she met me at hers – or rather Naomi’s – holding her arms far apart as she ran acoss the road to me. She even asked me to massage her ankles, making the disclaimer “what are friends for” as if dismissing raised eye-brows. And she has pulled a lot of her male friends. She does have a thing for guys who work out, and has said so to me. I think I have convinced myself that I should make a move. She would be great in bed also, I’m sure, and you have to take these things into consideration. [Retro. I hope to God this came from nowhere and that I was trying to write wittily, or that I can claim insanity. I just can’t see her in that way now. I certainly didn’t when I first met her, and I really didn’t think I ever had. She was like scratching athlete’s foot. I don’t know, but I can’t see it now. I can’t for the moment see anything good in her at all. 4.10.01]

 There has been a thread of narrative in my head for months, if not years now, about my virginity and chastity, my distance from women. Is it due to a conviction that I must find the right woman? Is it due to me gauche stupidity and alienation from the world, my depression and fear of people in my formative years that I later tried to rationalise but which has stymied any attempt to grow up in the normal way – making that early compromise on any ideals of love to get laid then finding it at least potentially lush and progressing through a number of bad relationships. Am I afraid that people would not understand me? Am I oversocialised, masochistically altruistic to the extent that my conceptions of love – built on the emotional needs of my diseased mind and background – mean that I cannot commit as I would be placing demands on a woman I love who would have to live with me when I need her because I cannot adequately live with myself. Am I as independent as I would often like to believe, even if at other times I see this as a way of avoiding the truth? The only thing that is of course clear is that I think far too much, even if I really do find this necessary to avoid going too impulsive and to avoid solecisms [my thoughts on this have recently altered to a certain extent. I may be fairly perspicacious, but the inevitability of understeer and oversteer and of concretising false assumptions, however educated – or over-thought - they may be can lead to as many problems and solecisms as thinking not at all. 4.10.01]. Or does thinking too much only exacerbate those solecisms as I feared it did the other day, only a couple opf days after Jayne’s party when I convinced myself I had thought everything through and should call her as I was wasting time and would only continue to think things through wasting the critical moments when I should ring. An overwrought stupidity sometimes impells me to do things I have thought through far too much.[ahh, should have read on. I am condescending to my old self again, wily old devil. There are no new ‘cognitions’, what a depressing cognition! 04.10.01]

 I’ve gotten down a little now and again, convincing myself I am more or less lunatic. Picked myself up again, popping the remains of the anti-depressants I stopped going to the doctor for – at first accidently and then through a determination not to be satisfied with being so fobbed off, or a conviction to stand on my own two feet for a while.

 I’ve not been sleeping that great at times but I’m not too bad. I’ve tried to set myself to reading a little, down the gym, riding and the like. The worst is in thoughts of the future and I constantly fear the future. I just try to convince myself each time that it will be alright, that I won’t be constantly alone, that I won’t perpetually frighten people away by inhuman solecisms, and that I will find fulfillment and happiness without necessarily having to plan every moment to get it.

 Sometimes maybe I forget that I am still young. (retrospective Thursday, 27, July 2000 : do I? Was that a glib, confected staement from me? Am I too self-conscious in trying to write. Doubtless I am, please bear it in mind.)

Depressed and suicidal ideation. Don’t think I’ll ever be able to write, think I see the reality over Sal – that I will never be with her, as I would never be with Rach. (retrospective20.7.00 All or nothing thinking) That I have had too much. That suicide, if I could express the reasons for it, would be the best decision. That I will never be loved. Nothing is catharsis. (Retrospective20.7.00 The future from that point has not been so bleak.)

I was looking at straight edge sites today, but I don’t think I could even pull that off. I’m down. I had been promised a job at the Harvester, I went to train on Tuesday and I guess I must have done a bad job. I had tried to be upbeat on walking away, I guess positive thoughts and all that, but they didn’t ring me as they said they would. I felt humiliated and perhaps angry, and so much the archetypal loser standing with Richard and Tim and Nick and co. in the Harvester yesterday, others serving me in the job I didn’t fucking get. I rang them, feeling angry and foolish sitting at the desk with an open telephone directory and a phone perched in front of me as I tried to get the words together, tried to grasp the right tone and vocabulary and preempt the response, would it be sheepish (as it was) or had they simply forgotten. I threw the phone at the door. I can’t believe I can make a mess of even that. Have to waste more time looking. (retrospective: who gives a shit? I am better than them, objectively. I am better than a lot of people that I at times envy and look up to for the virtues that come to most so easily. I work at them and the successes I have mean so much more, especially against the frequent battles I win, and the tiomes they let themselves down. I make excuses for others and yet whatever is good about me I put down to my illness, hatever women sometimes see as good in me; anything.)

 Desperate, I wanted catharsis. I wanted to go for a ride. Anything. Please God grant me something. Just something. I thought I had something so slight, and I didn’t. And I want to let someone know, that it isn’t just the job. I’m not getting stressed over nothing. The sky is falling in. (Retro20.7.2000 and the future has been fine, no less than that of many people. Perhaps more.) The very sky. The responsibility on my shoulders to stay sane in some way. To not let down my housemates. My friends. Just people I know. (Retro20.7.00 how unnecessary is this self-flaggelation; I am not even crazy yet. I have not let myself down. Far from it. And I am beating myself up about the future, letting down others. And they might even understand.) To be gauche, stupid, distant, quiet, unresponsive, aloof with no dispensation, no disclaimers, no forgiveness and no sympathy. I can’t do anything but read the newspapers, try to read novels. I never have had a clear head in my life. What is it like? (Retro20.7.00 I could tell you now but you never know when it is there as you don’t think like this, you don’t analyse everything while it is there.)

 Having to lie on the e-mail. To remember my personality on the telephone to friends I really am not that close to. I’m scared. It’s back. I’m desperate. I don’t see a future. I just want to cry. But I want somebody to cry to.

 Note the pejoritive adjectives ascribed to the jobcentre, and the defensive adjectives applied to myself “not that bad”.. Automatic thoughts here apprehended.