As I said:

It was around lunch time today, I could probably give an exact time had I thought to look at my watch, but I was in my car, about to drive to my school for the afternoon, and I felt it. Something slipping. I had four hours of teaching ahead of me so I spent the afternoon clutching at it, holding on for dear life, and by the time I got home I felt exhausted. I probably should have opted out of the dinner plans, and I definitely shouldn't have made it to the bar, but I found myself sitting in a corner and not being able to recognise the people around me and I just couldn't play happy anymore.

So I left, before it slipped entirely and people had to see the ugliness beneath. I walked home in the dark... there's something very soothing about a good long walk in the dark, especially in a strange city, taking strange streets... getting lost, hopefully found again...

I honestly don't know. It's everything, and nothing.

Everything, like the fact that I'm feeling restless in my job after a mere three months and I don't know if I can last the year, the fact that I have been sick for a week and spent the last two days teaching classes without a voice, the fact that I am so damn tired, that I have been over-indulging and I feel like a hippo, the fact that I have spent the whole week coasting on an oestrogen high and it is just dropping off right about now...

And nothing. Like the fact that I see things from the corner of my eyes that are not really there. The fact that if I sit back and outside from it all, the elements of my life look just fine without me in it. The fact that if you removed me from the world most people would be none the wiser. More than anything, the fact that this bothers me; the fact that I need other people to define my own existence. The fact that every single fucking thought in my head takes the form of dialogue, every thought I have is phrased as though I am explaining it to someone else in conversation, or as though I am writing here (which is just another conversation really) and I can't seem to think purely for my own purposes. The fact that my thinking resides so deeply in the thick of a grey area that I can't think in absolutes, I can't think of one single thing that I KNOW...

And fuck, that bothers me. I need something concrete to stand on, because I am slipping. I need one absolute, I need to know absolutely that I exist, or I may as well not bother with it all... but I can't seem to define myself outside of my relationships to others. They support my existence, whereas nothing within me does entirely. If I can't believe in my own existence... what am I clutching at, why do I try to stop myself from slipping? Why not just let go? I can't say absolutely that I am in fact sane now anyway, but assuming I am I feel terribly close to the edge...

I am frightened. I have some really great people in my life right now and I don't want to bring them here. I am not good for people... tonight I wanted so much to talk and to be with someone else, anyone, but people were having a good time and my reasons were fucked anyway, purely selfish, just supporting the fact that I exist and I think we've already established that this is the wrong way of going about it...

I ran away from the one person who might understand, but that in itself, that he may have understood, is scary... I don't know him and yet his presence in my life is so soothing... but whatever instinctual comfort I feel in his presence my rationality is trying to systematically debunk, screaming at me about how wrong that is (itcan'tbepossibleitissomethingentirelyfabricatedbymyownmindIamdraggingthispoorguyintomydramasinyetanotherfutileattempttodefinemyownexistenceitisallmyfault) I mean, what brings him to me? I am not a rational choice...

As I wandered home I was thinking about the big flip out I did two weeks into my relationship with the Greek, where I was so terrified that I actually packed a bag - I was going to move to Melbourne, I was going to tell nobody, I was going to avoid it ever happening because it felt so dangerous... and we all know what happened there. It was so intense that it was almost pre-destined to self-destruct, and we forged an addiction to one another so that we were still relapsing nine months after we broke up... a three month relationship that took me two years to recover from.

I have the urge to run again, because I want to avoid another addiction and because I like him and I don't want to drag him into my messy comprehension of the world... this, tonight, everything... it's not about him, but I want to protect him from it, from the possibility that he could get caught up in my mad existential angst and that I might be appreciating him for what he does for me and not who he is. As I said, I have good people in my life here, him not the least, and I don't want him to get caught up in my madness.

I don't know how much all of that makes sense... I don't even know if it is what is truly bothering me, but it is what has come to mind... my mind being more on the irrational side at the moment, who knows which parts are right and which are wrong and which are consistently either...

But I must sleep now, and we'll see how it lies tomorrow...

Before After

© Blueshoe 1999-2005