Stones in my pockets

1.
I wish I could store energy like a cat. It'd come in handy when my brain decides my body doesn't actually need sleep.

2.
My sense of productivity is completely tied to creative output. I've done a bunch of chores, answered emails and typed up what I wrote Friday, and still feel like I haven't accomplished anything today because I haven't written any new words.

3.
My sense of time goes all to hell when other people aren't around.

4.
I get stickers when I do 1000 words a day.
Yeah, that actually works on me.

5.
Does having pebbles wedged in it make a fairy stone defective, or is it once a fairy stone always a fairy stone?

6.
Just own up and say you made a mistake. I can respect that.
I respect honesty.

7.
Watching someone I love go through exactly what I went through with Topher and I can't do anything but scream: Get out! over and over and hope he listens.

I want to say: I will fix it. I will keep you safe. I will make it okay.

But I can't.

I can't even be there in person. I'm just a voice holding up words.

It's the worst feeling.

8. Today was a good day. 19.02.15

9.
I figured it out.

For months I've been trying to puzzle out why Caleb gets out of himself and helps the camp, and she's been right under my nose the whole time.

I knew there had to be a reason she went from a very minor character to a full-fledged personality between drafts.

My subconscious is a sneaky bugger.

Down the rabbit hole.

1.
I'm writing myself in circles trying to catch his voice.

2.
Four hours sleep and I'm wide awake. So tired and so sore. But wide awake. I just can't get it right. I don't know what I'm doing.

3. [manic episode: 12:30 PM]
The more I think about the therapist lady, the more I think it's all bullshit. It's just trying to get everyone n line. If you wake up at the same time every morning, you'll feel better. That's the key to happiness, kids. 9 to 5, go to bed at a normal hour. Make a routine for your day. My problem is my inability to break routine. I can't even have something different for breakfast without my day being fucked (I tried; I had to have two breakfasts to right the world again). More routines doesn't seem like a good solution. And scheduled worry time? Allowing an hour for all the craziness to run rampant unchecked? If I open the floodgates, I'll never get them closed again. The hatches stay battened down because it's the only way out of the spiral.

Liberation.
Liberation from myself.
Freedom.
His word, stuck in my frontal lobe like a brand.
Red hot.

It works for other people, so it'll work for you. What makes you think you're so special?

Because I am.
Average = normal.
Special: better, greater or otherwise different from what is usual.
I'm not average so not normal. Abnormal = special.
Special has a lot of meanings.
It's all about context.

4.
I've been cutting myself a lot of slack. I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but it's what I'm doing.

It's probably not.

5.
I stopped.
And now I'm not moving. No momentum. Just floating. Drifting.
The things I fear have basis in my normality.

6.
It's going to be one of those days.

7.
Dissociation.
I am a twin of myself. A passenger.
There is my body (brain included), and there is me.
A soul?
My brain is an unruly child. For better or worse, we are conjoined forever in one vessel.

8.
I fully believe in a conspiracy of the mental health profession to actually prevent people from getting better.

Evidence: The one thing that does consistently work without crazy side effects I have been told consistently and repeatedly not to do, for reasons that are blatantly untrue.

They could at least make an attempt to use facts.
I conduct my own research.

9.
What do I do with all my lighters?

10.
I do it anyway. I know these people don't have my best interest in mind. They have quotas.

11.
I know my novel is about myself. It took me two years to realise this, and I wonder now if that realisation is what's tripping me up now. Self-conscious.

12.
I build little lighter hoards in my pockets is what I do. Collect the fire.

13.
I am morally opposed to violence. I don't believe it ever does accomplish anything. They say only people who don't know say that. They say in the moment you'll just react. but I am the guy who took 5 punches to the face and didn't hit back. Not because I couldn't, but because I really believe there is never a justification.

I know the only way for there to be no violence, for me to survive, is if everyone is 100% totally on board. Like communism.

I know they're not, but I have my convictions anyway.

Something about change.

I am reading a book by a man who not only thinks the total opposite, but openly ridicules my convictions, so I can learn how to write violence because my novel is violence. My hero is, for all intents and purposes, a serial killer.

14.
I know this is temporary.
I know this will pass.
It's still scary.

15.
The absolute novelty of being able to sit still. It's such a relief you almost want to cry.

[end 2:06 PM]

16.
It's just like when I was a kid. Missing out because I can't get my body to work like the other kids', because I can't keep up. And just like when I was a kid, I push myself beyond what I'm actually capable of because to do otherwise is to accept weakness.

But inevitably, I crash and there's nothing I can do about it.

17.
There's a point right between being fully awake and waiting for sleep when everything is clearest.

Not clear. Chaotic.

Snapshots of scenes and dialogue smashing all out of order but I don't have the energy to chase them down.

Like my brain's last ditch effort to save itself. I can only hope they'll survive 'til morning. 

Playing by the rules

1.
Creating encourages all my bad habits. Sleeping less. Smoking more. Forgetting to go outside.

2.
I want to be brave enough to run into the wild without tripping on all the what-ifs first.

3. Back to square one and the momentous effort required for the most basic things. I want to sleep and sleep and sleep but I'm afraid to stop moving in case I never start up again.

4.
I don't know how to make the words take me from point A to point B.

5.
This is what I should have told the therapist woman:

It's not about confidence. It's about people being unpredictable. I don't know what they're going to do so therefore I can't adequately prepare for the social demands on me.

It's that I forget to keep in regular contact with people. Because I forget about them (sorry, guys. It doesn't mean I don't love you.)

I have to think about so many things when I interact with people.

Maintain eye contact, but not too much.
Ask questions, but not too much.
Show interest, but not too much.
Share, but not too much.
Don't stay too long.
Don't leave too soon.

I can't stop thinking about it because it never just comes to me.

I need a formula for when to speak. When not to speak. How often to talk to someone so they know you like spending time with them, but you aren't suffocating. What their expectations are.

It's so much work. So, so much. And tiring. Some days - a lot of days - I just can't pull together the resources to manage all that thinking and being aware.

It's not about a lack of confidence. It's about not knowing what the rules are. 

Breathe away.

1.

After three days of feeling like some very small but pernicious creature was gnawing through my skull and even the word "food" made me want to never eat again, I woke up on Day 4 with an unfamiliar sense of purpose and focus. I even managed to get some work done. It took me ten hours to write 600 words, but that's still better than no words, which has been my recent daily average.

2.
Day 5: The creature is back but I almost got pancakes for breakfast. I wasn't quite up to breaking that morning ritual but the thought was there. We'll work up to it. But I'm also thinking, I'm not me. It doesn't feel like me. Is it me? The real me, or just an artificial approximation? But if the "real" me can't function without outside intervention, is the approximation such a bad thing?

Is the thought itself just a side effect? 

3.

My heart is beating because if it weren't I'd be dead. 

But what if it isn't?

4.

Accept my limitations and be honest about them. All my life I've wanted to just be like other kids, but I'm not, and no amount of wanting is going to change that. I can only do what I can do, and at least if other people know why... It's something anyway.

5.
Allowing myself permission to buy one notebook resulted in purchasing two.

I blame my mother.
She led me astray.

6.
I worry that one day I will (or have already) reach my quota of words. What then?

7.
There is something about superheroes and secret identities that I want to explore, but I can't pin down what it is yet.

8.
It's so hard for me to go out with people. If I have too long to think about it, I'll back out. If nothing is planned, I'll drift in my own world. It feels unfair to put the responsibility for dragging me out of my cave on other people.

9.
I'm not good at juggling. I can plunge into the deep end of one thing, and rock it. But I have to do just that one thing. Add two, three, I panic and freeze. Do nothing.

10.
I spent time with people and it actually felt good. For the first time in a really long time. As adverse as I am to this whole medication thing, it seems that, for right now anyway, it's what I need.

11.
I'm excited again.