in a timeless, placeless place

[j4]

There are two phrases that keep coming into my mind: I'm just so tired and I want to go home. I don't even know what they mean any more, really. "Tired" is what happens between waking up and going to sleep. "Home" is something that happens to other people.

I can't go on like this. But I don't know how to stop.

I don't think I can even go on for another week like this. So I just go on for another day. And another. And another. And so on, until they days become... nothing. I haven't experienced a month for over 5 months. Just a string of days, and the occasional week.

I feel so hollow inside from crying and from not sleeping. I don't want to sleep now. Maybe I'll never sleep again. I don't want to draw lines between the days, you see. Then I won't have to live another day, I can just go on living this one, and telling myself that I'll give up tomorrow.

I can't see any future. I can't even see tomorrow morning. It'll happen whether I like it or not, but I can't envisage it, I can't plan for it. It'll just shake me rudely awake when the time comes, and there'll be nothing I can do about it, and I'll get up and get dressed and go out as if I'm still dreaming. Maybe I am.

Comments

Re: giving it all up

[j4.livejournal.com]

Be happy with the small things that come to you.

I don't know how to respond to "Be happy" when it's voiced as an order. If I'm not happy, then I'm not happy. I can't force myself to be happy with something that makes me miserable. I'm not saying that only one thing in the world can make me happy -- but I'm certainly not happy with where I am at the moment.

And things like this:

Believe me, lots of people manage to have a good life just by accepting that they can't depend on their plans or envisionings, and living, making the most of what they do have, from day to day.

only serve to make me feel desperately guilty for not feeling happy. After all, my superiors tell me that I must be happy and grateful for all the wonderful things in my life: what kind of hopeless failure must I be if I can't even manage that much? I might as well just bow out and let a worthwhile human being have all the opportunities that I'm wasting.

real apologies

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it did come across as an order but it was meant as a suggestion. It was, I realise, a quote from a song by Johnny Clegg called In my African Dream, and the full verse is "Old man sitting in the shade of a bong tree, talking of the things he used to do: 'Suffering is life, life is suffering, be happy with the small things that come to you, that come to you...' " Happiness comes, it doesn't respond to being sought. Many things can be sought for in themselves, but not happiness as some kind of clinical entity.

Giving up doesn't mean a "worthwhile" person will get what you have. Which you know, really. Nobody can in any way "have" or "take over" your experience or the love other people have for you: your life is in no way a transferable asset. When it's gone it's gone and you would leave people inconsolable. That isn't meant to "make" you "feel guilty", it's an uncontestable fact and has to be said just in case you had forgotten it or thought it was a fiction your head had dreamed up independently.

All I am trying to do is point out that "giving up" or ending your life artificially can be and should be argued against in plain terms.
That's not to say you shouldn't think it over, talk about it, write about it, but you don't really expect thinking people who care for you to sit by and say "oh, hey, that's too bad, but whatever, if that's your choice...". Getting rid of your life as a response to your feelings, which your other self/selves know will change, is not something anyone can contemplate lightly.

I never said anything about you *having* to be grateful or happy for what you have: only listing what you have. It's a reality check.

You are not a hopeless failure, you're an intelligent young woman who wants to do some interesting, sensible, good things with her life (including raising a family and all that jazz) and unhappily your past education and life experience hasn't helped you too much to acquire the skills you need to find out what constitutes "good" and "interesting" for you, yourself. That doesn't make *you* a failure, it just means you are part of the 95% of the population who aren't born with a striking and socially-acceptable vocation or calling, and you have to work harder than the lucky/cursed 5%. Things will get better, anyway, because as your other friends have said it is in the nature of things to change of themselves, anyway.

Did you get a chance to get those B vitamins at all?

xx