Blue Saturday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i84-4-GtcpM

went to York for a conference yesterday, and when i woke up and got off the train all bleary-eyed and stepped out into the early morning sunshine i had this teary fit, cos of sunshine and beautiful architecture and history and this awesome sense of being free to go anywhere and doing anything but knowing that i didn't have that freedom cos i'd fucked it away a long time ago plus responsibility outweighs freedom plus the real world says "hi shut up do mundane shit forever - maybe i'll let you have the occasional touristy break if you behave real well - or die in a shitty backstreet somewhere clutching a bottle of cheap cider"

then i settled down

then on the train home some pissed up old dude plonked himself into the seat next to me and gradually falls all over me snoring and moaning to himself, head drifting into my lap, and at one point he gets hold of my thigh and gives it a squeeze and starts sliding his hand up crotchwise with intent so i lift his hand back down towards my knee and tell him "easy tiger" even if i can't tell if he's asleep or just trying it on or tbh just trying to freak me into moving seats so he can have the double to himself, but there's that stink of beer you've drunk coming off him, peculiar smell you only get after you've drunk the stuff, and i don't bear him any malice even if he is cramping my book-holding arm, and tbh i want a drink myself pretty badly by this point

but the train gets back to Hull and i wake him up and he moves and i get the bus home and behave myself and sit around in the damaged timbers of my life and think about plans to cast off for freedom and no deep down they're probably hopeless, and then get a little teary again and lonely, and then think well at least you have stories and tomorrow morning the birds will be singing again and when i woke up the birds were singing again

:)

That's publishable

i published it here :)

beautiful tbh

yeah, that's the word

you're all far too effing kind. i like to try and map out those oblique bits of life, the nonsensical, the loser moments, into words. cos maybe the ephemera is the thing we all have most in common. or maybe it makes some sense laid out flat, stuffed and labelled so the next visitor can wonder what kind of misguided civilization came up with them.

ah bollocks if we don't tell each other stories how can we ever know we're in the same tribe?

I admire your willingness to share. I silently make various poignant observations, but as a general rule I'm not willing/able to share them with anyone. You're generous! It's nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pldwyvFseFU

i am what they call in the trade reinstated :\

2 days into my bender and contemplating a 3rd - which i don't feel physically capable of, yet, so we'll see

and for what? idiot logic. lonely lonely lonely = set sail on the sea of pubs looking for company, that's gonna run in the other direction as you stagger and drool pissed into view. but that hopeless hope fucks with me.

this is the mechanics of how an addiction cons you.

:(

tbh there's few things in (my) life better than feeling sozzled and sorry and listening to maudlin tunes, it's the lack of longterm viability that's the big ish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mFF3VmVAs

dude i can't think of anything positive or supportive to say that isn't despicably banal but all the same you should know that there are folks here that care about you to whatever extent this limited interface allows, and for whatever that might be worth

thanks dude. at least i'm having the good sense to stay in today. nothing for it but to shrug and climb back on the wagon, really.

or back in bed. on the third day he rested, after all. and television really is a remarkable thing. spiralli otm.

Do what you can, hit us up and we'll do what we can

Thinking of you, J. <3

Wolves manager Dean Saunders, following his side's relegation to League One: "Our fans have had three years of pain. I'll be delighted to try and change it for them.

worst effort at rehab ever

Hey

Oh, I'm sorry NV. Hang in there, we are thinking of you. That sounds so dumb but I don't know what else to say other than what's already been said much more eloquently by others before me.

Ive had close experience of much worse fwiw

i'd beat myself up about it but that seems to make the panic attacks worse :/

torn between feeling really fucking stupid and reassuring myself i'm probably not having a heart attack

As someone who has had multiple panic attacks weekly over the course of the last two months and nearly took myself to the emergency room a handful of times I can tell you that you are probably not having a heart attack but God I'm sorry you're experiencing a PA right now. Scariest feeling. :/

i get them every time i'm hungover E so i know what it is and this was yet another reason to stop doing this to myself

ME TOO!

and of course knowing what they are doesn't make them go away, thanks stupid brain

x-post - Well, not before these last couple months but during that time I had once each time I had the slightest hangover. Turns out that was a huge trigger for me and it did make me cut down my drinking (or at least rethink it) until I start feeling better.

No, it doesn't and that's maybe the hardest part for someone who has never had one to understand. You know what it is, you know that you're not actually having a heart attack and yet all your brain can think is OMG GONNA DIE RIGHT NOW AHHHHH. It's just such a fucking awful feeling. :/

i know, at least i'm lucky in that i have the power to not get them this bad if i just keep my fat arse out of pubs

I found you something, maybe you will like it? Or maybe someone will.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

i think i do. i can't take that all in at once - i can't concentrate on reading so good right now - but yes, it speaks to me. it might speak to some of the people on the depression thread too.

thanks :)

unfortunately all i got right now is Nurse With Wound doing - take the verb how one wants - Harold Pinter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gYU-8gLLK4

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

:\

Anhedonia is real! Powerful real, unfortunately.

That's a really good depiction of one aspect of depression.

I wrote a long non-post here on some tenuous pretext of compare/contrast to the blog post but, short version, saw a ghost of my past today, it gave me a faintly disgusted look and we both returned to pretending we weren't in the same room. (Not an ex. Just a reminder of a time long ago before everyone decided I was too snooty to hang out with them when I was actually stuck in dead fish space 24/7, and it's a decade too late and still too painful to tell them, so fuck it, let them be disgusted. Who needs people when they/we are so easily disgusted by each other?)

Self-indulgent. I'm doing OK. Thinking of you, NV. & you, ENBB, too.

that is NOT self-indulgent. it is a necessary step to admit those kinds of things and to also contemplate them.

good luck, hon.

We need other ppl, i think, but never as many as you'd be led to believe

that Hyperbole and a Half thing mirrors exactly (corn aside) what a couple of close friends have gone through and one is still going through so it made for tough reading. In some somewhat gross and parasitic way their experiences have made my bluest moments somehow more bearable, in that there's always a small element of really appreciating sometimes being able to feel good feelings, even when I'm not feeling them now.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

That makes a ton of sense to me. In both being the person with the dead fish and the people trying to help.

xxp We probably do need a few. But how to work out which, make them need you back, walk the tightrope between needing them too much and them needing you too much?

Not really breaking new ground with these questions here, I know.

xp Yeah, the strip did make me appreciate that even in my greyest months I could still get small measures of joy from listening to music. I am thankful for that, and for living in an age where I can envelop myself in music without having to play an instrument myself or go out among people or even get up and turn a record over every 20 minutes. I mean that might sound small but given that I could barely summon the energy to read books or even comics, an entirely passive method to transport myself ~out~ was a blessing

Sorry, to find out those answers you need to purchase my book

Its a little scribble or two i call THE BIBLE

I gave ten pounds and all I got was a lousy salvation.

the previous Hyperbole and a Half adventure in depression was really good too http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/934016_10151377797786875_700404415_n_zps4e1c72d1.jpg

Fitba

it is horrible but calling my mother just reminds me how fucking glad i am that i am removed from that life

sorry family, i just don't like you very much. you're trapped in the same cycles of ignorance and pain and i don't think i can change that.

ultimately you can't carry the responsibility for other people's self-chosen ignorance, and nor should you

went back to work after a fortnight contemplating self-harm, dissolution, disappearance. wish i could carry that hyperbole and a half cartoon around with me. don't want to look like i'm turning my nose up at advice about positive thinking and looking on the bright side and counting my blessings and ahhh please

ever have one of those dreams where you find your soul-mate and after some kind of wacky adventure you're (re)united and everything is mindbending bliss until you wake up and it evaporates?

those dreams come from the devil