Yesterday was a bad day. It started out as all my days start out right now; out of bed at 9:25 or 9:30, dress, kiss, cycle to work. THe same motions every morning to unlock my bike from the railings outside my apartment; the same traffic lights; the same stairs in the office. The same hellos and the same fucking work, every day for the last few months.
I came home for lunch and I felt fine, but when I got home again at nearly 7pm something had happened me. I sat on the chair without taking off my coat and stared at the ground. I talked to Lindsay, responded to her questions, but there was an important part of me that had gone walkabout. I couldn't think properly, couldn't find the will to do anything, and couldn't explain.
Well, I tried to explain. I talked about the fact that I've got a lot to do at the moment and I feel drained and under stress. But that doesn't really explain it, it's just what triggered it. I went out again to leave back a DVD and get out Once Were Warriors for Lindsay to watch for an assignment, and when I got back I made food. I ate most of mine; she wasn't very hungry so she only ate some. Then she went to watch her film and I spent most of the next hour and a half playing blitz chess on the Net and surfing. I was supposed to write. Part of me wanted to write, but I've been trying to write for the last couple of days and nothing has been coming. Something is wrong. So I just distracted myself until Lindsay came back downstairs.
I lay on the bed on my side. I felt unable to say or do anything. She asked if I was alright, and I just nodded. SHe asked me if I was sure and I nodded again, because I couldn't explain. I felt like there was no energy inside me; as if someone had switched me off at the neck like Data from Star Trek. She finished up on the computer and lay behind me. She got ready for bed. She tried talking to me, hugging me, and eventually just gave up and lay on her back. After a long while I got up to brush my teeth, came back, turned out the light, and lay down with her.
The next couple of hours were pretty strange. I started to feel an incredible frustration and sadness, and I couldn't do anything or say anything about it. I jiggled my feet and tried to lie still. Lindsay would hold me for a while, and try to talk to me, and I wouldn't respond. She got frustrated sometimes, because she didn't know what was going on with me. I was trying to deal with an endless, disturbing flood of images - me, cut by knives, beaten up, burned, torn apart, drowned, falling, exploding, horribly disfigured, riddled by disease, dying. Sometimes it was other people doing it to me, and sometimes I was doing it to myself, driven mad by my own feelings of frustration.
I tried to explain what was going on, but I think I made it worse, because she misunderstood what I was trying to say. "You want to kill yourself?" she asked, and I laughed, and said that of course I didn't want to kill myself; but she was offended and angry, she thought I was laughing at her, and she started to cry. I knew she'd just misunderstood, but I couldn't talk any more. She has OCD and has often described to me how she sometimes has unwanted images of graphic violence pass through her mind, so I thought she'd immediately understand, but I probably needed to say more; the problem was that it was a huge effort to talk, when really all I wanted to do was fade into my own mind and disappear.
I lay there for a long while, and eventually she put her arms around me again and told me she loved me. I guess I must have fallen asleep soon after that, but she told me this morning she lay awake for a long time.
I still feel that way this morning. I'm able to function, but I just have no desire to speak or do anything other than what I absolutely have to do. I don't want to interact with anyone or come up with any ideas. Some kind of dynamo inside me has temporarily shut down. Even in writing this, I don't think I've managed to explain anything important, for instance why I get like this sometimes. I just want Lindsay to read it so she knows what was going on with me last night.
Anyone who thinks this is a Teen Angst Bullshit Daylog is completely missing the point.