Vicious Whirlwinds

I managed to survive 20 years without a single blackout, yet in the past month have experienced 3 total blackouts. They're pretty confusing, and you find yourself unable to believe people when they tell you what happened during the memory loss that ensues. Each blackout has been shorter than the last, and each for different reasons. The last one must have only lasted a few minutes, and I can remember trying to hold on for as long as possible. I began to see black spots in front of my eyes, and I felt slightly queasy. My entire body felt very weak and I was short of breath; I remember flopping over to try to regain some energy (this was at the front of a gig, so the flopping was onto the barrier) and I suddenly woke up in an entirely different place surrounded by staff. This episode may have been brought on (in order of likelihood) by:

• Overheating / overexhertion 
• Lack of food 
• Mix of antibiotics, antidepressants and alcohol

I'd had one pint of draught, which is really nothing. I'm usually on 4+ double vodka-mixers to get inebriated so... Yeah. The staff kept asking me what I had taken (illicit) and, heh, I hadn't taken anything. Upon coming round again, I was very thankful to the staff for being taken out. I drank some water, cooled off, had a laugh and missed one song, was escorted back to my original place. 

I've brushed off each incident, but really, thinking about them, it's disconcerting. The last one was fine, that was a real black-out, but the two previous ones were where I was still functioning but unable to recall a single detail upon returning to consciousness. Those are the more worrying ones. 

I have a feeling this will escalate to a point where I am forced to be much more careful about my surroundings and what I am pumping through my body, but as usual with people, I will not heed caution until that point. This train wants to drive. 

So, this is it.

There's no reason to split up the post other than because I will like the way it looks. And I STILL want to justify myself. Because what if someone stumbles on this by accident, and gets the wrong impression? Why do I care? This isn't for them. It isn't for anyone in particular. So if you are here, you should probably just leave.

For the longest time (what a stupid way to start), I have felt next to nothing about anything. There are still levels; there is still a scale of feeling. My emotional landscape isn't completely barren, but it's close. The scale is just so much smaller than before. In a way, this has been liberating over the years... Without emotions, I have nothing to fear. Nothing seems daunting - my first job interview for example, the first time I had sex, exams. I didn't feel nervous, I didn't feel much. I had a job to do and I did what I expected of myself in each case, and I did it well because I was not impaired by fear or anxiety... But at the same time, I didn't feel alive. I don't feel alive. Now, like I said, there's still something there, sometimes. But in a very abstract and empty sense. People like to argue with me and point out when I am feeling something (because yeah, you, being a separate entity to me, can totally tell when I am feeling something); for example when I laugh. I'm not talking about being a vegetable. When my girlfriend broke up with me, I felt it. When my interview went well, I felt good about it. But the feelings don't last. They do however create an inertia in my actions and behaviour. I felt incredibly sad, and thus I carried on behaving sadly. I knew I should feel sad, or happy, or proud, or angry at whatever moment I should have, and behaved in the correct way even once the feelings had died away. My feelings broke through recently, but I am back on pills now - so it's irrelevant right now.

I live, 24/7, with someone I can never please, however hard I try. He is never satisfied, he is never proud of me. Nothing I do makes him happy.

I can't hear music, I can't see beauty.

I believe people should have control over their right to die.

You shouldn't come to me if you want someone to bullshit to you that "everything will be ok in the end". It will, it won't, nobody knows. Tomorrow you might go blind, or you might meet the love of your life. And the next day, they might die. One of my friends is suicidal right now, and all he speaks is the truth. I can't tell him his life is worth living, only he should have the right to decide that.

One of my friends self-harms. I do. I think it's a reasonable reaction sometimes; I think it's better for you than binge drinking or doing loads of drugs. It's generally safer, with less long-lasting damage - and I have been to hospital twice to get stitched up. But these are just scars. It's a way for the internal turmoil to manifest itself in a physical way that people can see. It is a release. I wanted to OD on pills, I cut myself and went to hospital instead because I knew it would take me out of that suicidal situation and into a safer one, it would be the drastic measure I wanted to take - it would be dramatic enough to satisfy my need to destroy, but wouldn't kill me or do any long-lasting damage. Clearly, skin is of a very low priority to me. I find scars on other people attractive too, especially self-harm scars, so there's that too.

I am not a good influence at the moment when it comes to these issues, and those around me with these issues know it. Then again, I myself and these people (generally, I think) probably appreciate the way I respond. None of this positivity, the coddling, telling you not to do it. You know what? If that is what you want, you do it. Nobody owns your body, and if you don't have the right to do to it what you please, then what the fuck DO you have??

Justification.

It's one of those things that you only want to do when you can't possibly do it. I wanted to start a blog to write things down, as I said to Caffyj, just to make the words exist. For awhile, the idea of how to start was in my head - a commentary on why we seem to feel the need to justify ourselves. I was, previously, going to begin by laying out my intentions for this blog as I had before in my more comedic venture (if posting four times can be called a venture, but it's still humorous to me two years later so, there's that) - but then of course, my intention is to just write. And I'll share this with few people. I just want the words to exist. So why do I need to justify that? I don't.