Journal of A Sad Act

Depression Again

2011-12-10T11:51:00.003Z

The only useful purpose this blog serves for me personally is to keep track of my mood swings, so I can look back and see if there is any seasonality or pattern to them.

As such I should record that about 2.5 weeks ago I began to feel depressed, but thought it would just pass in a few days like it often does. About a week later I was overwhelmingly depressed, though not suicidal, and experiencing anxiety, intrusive thoughts and OCD symptoms.

I went back to the doctor I first saw for SAD last monday and have been back on Fluoxetine (20mg/day) for 6 days now, and am feeling a lot better than I was before - this seems soon for the pills to start working, so perhaps it is just placebo effect but no matter.

The fact that this depression began to set in with the onset of the winter weather perhaps suggests seasonal affective disorder. However I have also been under immense amounts of stress from university so perhaps it is related to that.

Flatmates Again

2011-11-04T08:36:00.005Z

Dear flatmate who is never in, stole my food and then didn't wash up and fucked up the bin with the packaging of said stolen food, I know that due to your almost constant absence from the house, it is unlikely I can ever confront you about this, however I do hope that the thought that, when you do return, you might find some of your beer still in the fridge has not entered your mind, because such a thought couldn't be further from the truth you silly cunt.

In fact, seeing as how you fuck the rest of us over and hide from confrontation, perhaps I shall steal everything you buy until you are forced into a discussion on the subject.

Some people would call this childish, but then those are the people who are stealing other people's food and would rather get away with it.

3rd Year

2011-10-24T02:43:00.005+01:00

Physicists tell us that time is not a constant, and that you can swap the chronological order of events that are not causally linked. They also tell us that, were we to travel faster than light, time would flow backwards.

This does not seem to make sense, but allow me to briefly explain: The faster you travel, the more energy is acting upon you. All energy is actually made up of particles, for instance gravity is made of gravitons, and these particles all have a tiny amount of mass. Therefore, the faster you travel, the more you weigh. Your weight increases exponentially as speed increases, and as more energy is required to move objects of higher mass, eventually as you add more energy you can no longer increase speed because to do so would add an amount of mass that would require more energy to move it than you are adding in the first place. This means that there is a finite maximum speed at which it is possible for anything to travel. Photons - the particles of which light is made of - travel at this maximum speed.

Now, to use an analogy borrowed from a TV science documentary, imagine you have a torch/flashlight and are standing on a train that is moving forward at 100 mph. The photons coming out of the torch cannot travel at the speed of light+100mph because the speed of light is the maximum possible speed anything can travel, this presents a paradox which is resolved because what happens in this instance is that the time the light is travelling through slows down, and if speed is distance over time then once the time is moving slower it all works out. Time can theoretically be slowed to the point at which it flows backwards.

Now, I like to think of this blog as like a mysterious tome which, if it somehow fell into my past by some freak accident involving faster than light travel, would tell me my own future. Therefore I am guilty of some dereliction of my fantastical duties insofar as I have written nothing of what has happened in 3rd year of uni so far. I will correct this forthwith:

I am still living in Fenham, I never see the new flatmate that has replaced Juntao because he is always in his room or at work or out. I have spent the last month at the flat without seeing my parents once but this is no escape from my mother who likes to send me emails full of trivia I don't care about. My dissertation idea has been accepted and I have secured a top political thought professor as an advisor, some girl on one of my modules has actually started talking to me so I'm considering like, actually bothering shaving and not dressing like a tramp to lectures, seeing as how someone else is making the effort to acknowledge my existence there now. Oh and I applied for a job at boots, using my personal tutor as a reference, and got rejected.

Presently at the flat we are engaged in an unspoken war over the kitchen bin. Basically I try to take it out when it gets pretty full, but last time someone else, rather than take out the clearly full bin, piled a load of shit on top of the already full bin bag and just left it, but I dealt with this anyway. Now this happened again, about a week ago, and I refuse to deal with it again, seeing as how the last time I saw the bin before some asshole started overfilling it, it wasnt full, so the corner of the kitchen is now overflowing with a huge mound of rotting food products. As is the backyard, incidentally, as someone has stolen our outside bin and we have been unable to simply steal someone elses to replace it like we did last year, as people now patrol the backstreet to defend their bins from the wave of bin thefts that is apparently going on.

Student Finance England Complaints Email Address

2011-07-28T16:30:00.002+01:00

customer_complaints@slc.co.uk

The above is the complaints email address for student finance england. If you have ever had to deal with this shit heap, you will need it, and they don't make it so easy to find.

I hate these cunts.

Sertraline/Zoloft

2011-04-23T16:10:00.003+01:00

Well, I went to the GP appointment. It wasn't as anxiety-inducing as the first time I saw a GP about anxiety/depression, but it wasn't a whole lot of fun either. One problem was that, having been secretly on SSRI's for a month beforehand, I wasn't really properly depressed so I don't think I really conveyed to him the extent of my anxiety/depression.

Anyhow, for some reason, rather than give me more fluoxetine, which was working perfectly, he has given me sertraline aka Zoloft (50mg a day) and I have to go and see him again in three weeks.

So, I guess we'll see how things go.

Well this is mildly terrifiying.

2011-04-21T13:43:00.002+01:00

So yeah, awhile back I stopped taking my meds, got massively depressed, and now I want to go back on them again. Which means seeing my GP. Except he's on holiday. So it means seeing some other GP I've never seen before in my life...in about 90 minutes.

Yes, hello, See for about a year I was seeing this other doctor who gave me prozac, but then I stopped taking it without telling him for no real reason, and then I got massively depressed....can I have some prozac please?

I've been taking my left-over meds for the last month in order to try and overcome my anxiety to the point where I can go and see a GP, and now I'm trying to blunt my nerves with alcohol again. Because I'm literally that functional a human being!

Well, let's see how this prozac/booze fuelled visit to some unknown GP goes!

Valhalla Rising: Worse Than Cloverfield

2011-03-14T19:02:00.008Z

I never thought I'd find a worse film than Cloverfield, but I just spent 90 minutes watching beardy men walk through fields. This is literally the entirety of Valhalla Rising. Some people say it is an artistic commentary on religion and the human condition, which has been disguised through marketing to look like an action film so the unsuspecting public will spend money on it, but it is not artistic in the slightest.

Here is a man in a field, look at his beard! Here is some atmospheric music as we show a wide-angle shot of men walking through a field! Look, here is a man in a field with a red-filter on the camera! And now back to normal colours! More fields! Here is a shot of a river ripped straight off a BBC nature documentary! Here is a man in a field again! 90 minutes. Of men, and fields, and beards.

And from the box and the marketing you are lead to believe that this is going to be a slightly shitter version of 300 or otherwise something that at least presents the macabre satisfaction of watching pretend-people have their pretend-limbs torn off.

Some time ago, on this very blog, I referred to Cloverfield as "a vacuum where a film should be", Valhalla Rising makes Cloverfield look like a masterpiece:

IT'S 90 MINUTES OF APATHETIC-LOOKING BEARDY MEN WALKING THROUGH FIELDS! 90 FUCKING MINUTES! YOU MIGHT AS WELL WATCH A FOOTBALL MATCH!

Fucking Indians in Call Centres!

2011-03-05T12:59:00.005Z

No, this isn't a racist/xenophobic post - the Indians in question take what work they can, it is the companies fault for exploiting the fact they have a lower minimum wage over there, and moreover if I was an Indian I probably wouldn't want an English person I couldn't understand handling my customer service enquiries.

In fact, as is only natural and logical, whatever nationality I might be, I don't want someone of a different nationality who barely speaks my language and can only do so at all with an incomprehensible accent to be the person I have to speak to for important and complicated dealings with any given company.

I especially don't want this because I am dyspraxic and have enough auditory processing difficulties with people on phones (or indeed, in person) as it is.

I am referring to my attempts to cancel my Lovefilm subscription. I was given 2 months free as a gift from a friend, but in order to claim this gift you have to give them your debit card details. Fair enough, signing up was easy, and they assured me cancelling was easy and that I could do so at any time. Well cancelling is not fucking easy, because I can barely understand other British people over the phone, with my auditory processing problems, never mind some poor fucken Indian working at below minimum wage who hardly speaks my language!

Bleh, I emailed them and told them I was deaf and asked for an alternative way to cancel my account. Failing that, I guess I can resort to either getting someone else who can understand said Indians to pretend to be me, or just telling my bank not to give Lovefilm any money, and hope they don't send the lawyers.

Annoying Flatmate

2011-02-23T00:51:00.002Z

The following is another re-post of a Social Anxiety Forum thread.

[Incoherent Rant Warning]

Ok, so I live in a student flat with 2 other guys. I have lived in shared accommodation before, with people of ages ranging from 18-28.

I have noticed that any attempts to be considerate of others seem to be exclusive to me...Nobody else ever cleans anything, they run around, slam doors and play loud music at night (not really so much an issue for me, usually, 'cause I'm insomniac anyway...but I use my headphones for music and move around quietly at night out of consideration for both my flatmates and the neighbours)....

...In my current flat, one of my flatmates is particularly bad for this. Whenever he cooks he manages to use every pan, bowl, tray, chopping board, knife, and other cooking utensil imaginable for every single meal (even his fucking breakfast! - damn rich kids and their gourmet standards) - and then he never washes any of it! Why the fuck not?! I generally wash things right after I use them because I know the stuff is shared.

And then he eats in his room, and just hoards plates and cutlery in there, meaning me and my other flatmate can't use it.

Worse, he uses my stuff, and doesn't wash it....he used one of my fucking shot glasses as a spice measure, to add my curry powder into one of his needlessly complicated meals - WHO PUTS CURRY POWDER IN A FUCKING SHOTGLASS!? .....and then didn't wash it....until he got tired of me swearing at him over the issue after 4 days and cracked.

He leaves half eaten food strewn all over the place, there is no space on our kitchen work-surfaces because his half-consumed meals are everywhere. He once left some bread in the toaster until it turned green and I gave in and removed it on his behalf (me and my flatmate try to avoid cleaning up after this guy, even when it's necessary, because we fear it will reinforce his irresponsible mentality if we clean up his mess - but this means we live with a messy kitchen all the time, it's really lose-lose)...but more to the point WHY PUT BREAD IN THE TOASTER, WALK AWAY, AND LEAVE IT FOR 2 WEEKS!?

When he uses the oven, he doesn't bother with a baking tray but just puts foil down on the shelves, which means any grease or whatever leaks over and covers the bottom of the oven - he once did this the day after my other (cleaner) flatmate had just spent hours cleaning the oven, much to the guys annoyance.

Just today he spilled a load of coco-pops all over the kitchen floor and just....left them there.

He hasn't paid any of the bills yet either, but he uses the most electricity...he went and bought a fucking electric heater for fuck sake..that adds loads onto the monthly bills, of which he has yet to pay any, and he's always leaving the heating/lights on.

He also plays his horrible pop music pretty loud at like 3am...hell maybe he's doing it during the day but I drown it out with 80s rock which is naturally infinitely superior to Beyonce.

Now, this guy is a particularly bad example, but everywhere I have lived, the other people seem to have no concern for the fact they are sharing a flat, I almost feel weak for my own compulsion to clean up after I use any of the communal stuff (my own room is a mess, but that doesn't bother me nobody else is using it)...is it really so strange to try to be considerate of others?

Failed Attempt at Applying for a Job #1

2011-02-05T15:22:00.001Z

That isn't to say my application was rejected, because I didn't even get as far as submitting it.

I saw an advert in a local newspaper about a new supermarket opening in town holding a 'recruitment event', and I would of been able to work there at weekends when I'm not at university, so I went down to this "event", and at first found nothing, then realised that this "event" consisted of a tiny table in a random corner in the indoor shopping mall this supermarket was opening in.

There were massive queues and hardly any staff though so I decided to come back later. When I did, the ratio had been reversed and there were a few people at the desks signing forms and about 30 supermarket staff wandering around with clipboards.

And at this point my anxiety, which I had thought I was largely over since it rarely bothers me nowadays, kicked in and I just left without even talking to any of these people. I just couldn't make myself do it. The idea of filling in an application with some clipboard wielding person standing there over my shoulder and queues behind me was somehow too intimidating a prospect.

I'd probably never of got this job anyway, but still I feel terrible at myself for not even being able to apply...I really don't want to have to go back on anxiety meds but I might have to if my anxiety keeps cropping up randomly like this and stopping me doing things.

Exams

2011-01-22T07:41:00.004Z

I think my political philosophy exam yesterday went pretty well. My European Politics exam is in 6 hours, I already gave up revising, and stayed up watching Dr. Strangelove instead - what a great film:

"God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all"

Anyhoo, I'm going to be resitting this EU bullshit in August, I think that's enough time to learn it, hopefully.

On Schedule

2011-01-13T13:50:00.004Z

Well I finished my first draft of the timed assesment, at 2005 words I'm almost exactly on our recommended word count of 2000. Our question was:

Critically Analyse how Theory Influences Practice in International Politics

And I can't really say anything on what I've written until after I've submitted the assessment, lest I be accused of plagiarism. I still have 22 hours left, and only some editing still to do, so it should be fine.

As a result of advancing through this so fast, I got bored and started playing Civ IV, which has sat on my laptop largely ignored for ages.

I cannot play this game on anything above the exact median difficulty very well, but I was bored so I gave it a try, and rapidly found myself being torn apart by Queen Isabella of Spain and Alexander the Great of Greece, with no provocation on my part, and my semi-naked dudes with clubs, despite their massed numbers, were no real match for the advancing hordes of spearmen and chariots and such like. The next time I am bored, I shall endeavour to learn how people play this game, because it looks like it would be really interesting if you could only survive out of the dark ages:

T-minus 87 minutes

2011-01-12T10:33:00.001Z

Until they release our Critical International Politics exam question: We get e-mailed it, and have 48 hours to submit a response.

Hmm, this could well go terribly badly.

Ah well.

Odd

2011-01-11T16:54:00.003Z

Something odd happened today. Well to be fair, it is probably not that odd, it just seems so to me.

I was walking back from town, I passed the secondary school I used to go to as a child, just at the time the kids were leaving to go home. As I walked past this group of about six unusually tall kids, one lashed out and tried to trip me. I stepped aside, kept going, then out of curiosity turned around. At the same moment one of those kids turned back to face me, grinning inanely. I unthinkingly gave him the finger, and he laughed and returned the gesture, at which point I couldn't suppress the tiniest hint of a grin - stupid kids. Then they all stopped and turned around, and I felt an odd pang of fear - I mean, this is Durham, not Fenham, nobody gets jumped here - but after being attacked on New Years Day I tend to get paranoid easily at the moment. Why was I afraid? It was just for a second, before sanity returned and I realised that A) They aren't going to start a fight in broad daylight in Durham and B) They are school kids, I can take them.

Anyhow, they decided not to try and start anything and walked off. Strange though, they looked too old to be acting like dicks in that way, they looked like sixthformers (16-18)...and weren't dressed like chavs. Maybe rahs from the local private school, they often go to the state comprehensive that used to be my school, for sixthform, because at A-level the state school outperforms the private.

Even if they were rahs though, why randomly try and trip someone walking past in the street? Someone who is clearly older and who you probably aren't going to win against in a fight? Do I somehow give off a "I am a pushover please fuck with me" vibe? 'Cause I am pretty sure they don't do that to everyone they walk past. Still, I know that if there had only been one he would not of dared, he was some kid trying to impress his friends. Nonetheless, it perturbs me, I strongly do not want to give off an air of vulnerability. I would of fought him, all 6 of them, even...but I don't want to get into fights in the street because people think it is ok to attack me and that I probably won't retaliate...because I will, I can't stand letting someone weaker fuck around with me - so I cannot afford to entice them into provoking me, lest I end up hospitalising a 16 year old.

No Crash

2011-01-08T15:07:00.004Z

Well my mood never really crashed after that euphoric high. It has just fallen back to its previous, detached, vaguely melancholic low - but by no means a nadir.

So I don't really have much to write. I am revising European Politics for my exams. This isn't very interesting. I am reading the somewhat trashy high-fantasy novel A Shadow on The Glass by Ian Irvine, which is reasonably entertaining, albeit in a very cliché sort of fashion.

On a musical note, I recently overcame my long-standing opposition to growled vocals (or "death growls") in doom/death metal music - Paradise Lost has been something of a gateway drug from clean vocals to an acceptance of ridiculously deep growls - here is their song Remayn:

As a result of all this doom metal, I can now enjoy bands such as November's Doom, so far I especially like this dystopian picture of human reality:

...I do find it odd I have never made any music-related posts on here, since music is such a huge part of my life nowadays (last.fm). Here is another song to make optimists leave the room:

Perhaps I shall do more culture type posts in future.

Euphoric High

2011-01-05T12:49:00.004Z

I'm recording this because having a record of my own mood swings is useful to look back on later.

Right now I'm on a complete euphoric high, I don't care about anything, I feel ridiculously happy - I'm doing uni work as if I actually care about the future, and I am enjoying it! I am, somehow, enjoying writing about tedious bullshit like the technocratic nature of the EU executive qualified majority voting procedures.

Experience suggests this means I will crash soon, and get reeaaaalllllllly depressed, maybe I'll OD on something, I found some drug beginning with T in our medicine cabinet yesterday, I was checking to see if my mother had any Nembutal, 'cause she has sleep problems. Maybe I will take that. But right now I don't care.

Hahaha I'm actually happy for no reason this is crazy!

For the record this high began sometime late last night, and is much more intense now, at time of writing 1pm

Fantastic News

2011-01-04T16:57:00.004Z

I appear to be experiencing the beginnings of male pattern baldness...at the fine age of 19. Great.

To be fair this isn't really that tragic, but nontheless with all the other shit, its hardly something I need right now, and will probably impair the previously mentioned getting a girlfriend attempts.

In other genuninely better news, I have found 2 suicide methods that are said to be relatively painless and easy, which don't require a firearm.

The first is to take an overdose of a drug called Pentobarbital, often sold under the name 'Nembutal':

It kills you by slowing your heart rate and reducing brain activity, I believe it also works on some neurotransmitters. Key to this particular drug is that it causes you to pass out and become comatose before you begin to experience heart palpitations, so there is none of the panic associated with other similar methods - you just become incredibly drowsy, pass out, enter a coma, then die. In theory. It does have a potential to go wrong, however, and also the drug is extremely difficult to acquire without a prescription in western countries, I have still not located a source, though a pro-euthansia organisation called EXIT International provides instructions on how you can synthesise your own pentobarbital sodium...however this is a complex and costly process.

The other method is also wrought with its own problems, but looks good on the surface. It involves putting an airtight plastic bag over your head with a drawstring, and pumping an inert gas such as Nitrogen or Helium into the bag. EXIT international sells a flow control valve for the gas canister, and the canisters are available for purchase over the internet - people use the helium ones for party balloons.

Apart from the ironic juxtaposition of killing yourself with the gas pumped out of something that says 'balloon time' and has a picture of a happy child on it, this can apparently leave you waking up alive with a headache if done incorrectly, and often needs assistance from another person to work - and geting someone to help you kill yourself, when they could face prison time and probably think anyone sucidal should be sectioned and incarcerated against their will, and when part of the reason you want to kill yourself is crippling social isolation, is somewhat impractical to say the least.

However when this does work, the nitrogren acts as an asphyxiant, so as you use up the oxygen in the bag you drawstring over your head, the nitrogen replaces it and, while it doesn't keep you alive, does serve to keep you calm and relaxed and prevent panic setting in.

So, things to think about.

Erm, what?

2011-01-03T00:30:00.003Z

So following on from the themes explored in my last post, I was looking at some ways to kill myself that wouldn't require a gun or that much effort.

I looked on google for some medical pages about how long people survive stomach wounds, thinking I could hold a kitchen knife up against my stomach, then fall forward onto the point - the impact with the ground drives the blade in so I don't exactly have to stab myself, as such.

Apparently people can survive stomach wounds for up to 3 days, and it can be horribly painful if you don't hit any of the right blood vessels, because you release a load of hydrochloric acid and bacteria and stuff into your internal organs and it is an agonising and slow way to die.

So I considered if it would be possible to drive a blade into my heart instead, using a similar method. This looks difficult because the heart is actually pretty deep into the body and there are thick layers of muscle tissue to penetrate, so a kitchen knife might not be driven deep enough into your chest cavity by a fall. So I am currently considering what might happen if I filed a screwdriver down into a point.

But the thing that is really odd is that when I typed "How easy is it to stab yourself in the heart", this blog was the first result. What? I never wrote anything about that on here :S

Suicidal Again?

2011-01-02T14:26:00.011Z

I think I want to kill myself again.

I don't know - I haven't done anything suicidal yet, I've just been thinking about it a lot.

My moods are chaotic since I stopped the anti-depressants. Perhaps I should go back to the Doctor and try to explain why I suddenly stopped them without contacting him, and why I didn't go to any of my "review" sessions and dropped out of therapy. Except I'm not entirely sure why I did do any of those things.

It was New Year's eve last Friday and I got physically attacked for the 3rd time in 4 months of living in Fenham...not too badly, my friends got the worst of it, I was just knocked down and my jaw was knocked slightly out of place, I also lost my glasses but later recovered them by going back to the place we got jumped the next day. I still feel bad about this, but I dunno why. I have been attacked before. And they didn't even steal any of our stuff or continue beating us up for long.

It's just that...why would someone do that? We walked past a couple of guys on our way back from a New Year's party, I said "Happy New Year!" and they punched me in the face and started attacking my friends. Why? Why do I even care so much I'm not really hurt or anything, it just preys on my mind. Moreover why can't I do anything about this. I've been doing weights for months now, every other day, why are all the random brutes so much stronger still? I haven't really gained that much strength - perhaps this is a dyspraxia thing, apparently the condition can significantly retard muscle growth. Meh.

That was something of a tangent though, I was depressed before being mugged...again...it is just something else to think about while being depressed.

I don't really have all that many reasons to be this melancholic and despondent right now, my moods don't seem to respond to stimuli in a logical manner. Still, I don't want to go on like this. I do want to die...again. But I don't think I'm going to act on that desire this time. I can't really see how. I don't have any meds to try overdosing on now. I now realise that cutting yourself is never going to cause enough blood loss to kill you, or even make you pass out - you need someone to properly stab you for that to happen, and stabbing yourself with enough force is really difficult and nerve wracking. I don't have a gun. I looked into getting a shotgun licence yesterday, but apparently I can't get one because of my drunk and disorderly convictions.

This is a shame because maybe if I had a .12 guage shotgun and some magnum shells, I could get drunk and sit there with the end in my mouth and possibly eventually dare to pull the trigger. Maybe.

I was going to jump off the Tyne bridge in Newcastle back in early December, because the river was half frozen and I thought the fall followed by the impact with the ice-layer followed by the hypothermic reaction to the water temperature would probably kill me really quickly, but then I looked online at some stuff on hypothermia and it seemed to suggest there was a good chance I'd survive but possibly get brain damage for the rest of my life, so I thought "no".

Hours of research on the internet suggest there are no easy ways to kill yourself without the assistance of a firearm that are guaranteed to kill you and not leave you alive and disabled and suffering even more than you were beforehand for the next 50 years until you eventually die of old age or some horrible disease.

Lying on the train tracks looks good in practical terms, but the problem is I don't think I'd dare...I might have to wait over an hour for a train to come and I bet I'd run away before then, I'm not sure I'd even dare to climb onto the tracks in the first place, nevermind lie on them for 20 minutes. I also think they might be electrified, which is not good or painless.

I will probably feel better soon, and then feel terrible again, then better, then terrible and so on until I eventually go mad, 'cause thats whats been happening over the last 2 months. I had to delete a lot of people off Facebook and sever all contact with them because of things I have said in my lowest moments and stuff I have stupidly posted online in the hope of some vague catharsis or potential assistance. Best to stick to writing shit on this blog, its less...public, and yet people can still technically see it, so writing here has many of the cathartic benefits of publicly complaining/crying for help, without so much social stigma. Possibly. Also if I do kill myself someone might find this, then they can read out the whole thing at my funeral until all the non-existent guests have ran away.

What am I Doing Wrong?

2010-12-31T11:08:00.004Z

Ok, to get straight to the point: This post is primarily about me wanting a girlfriend. And not a...weird...person - like my ex (and sole previous gf). A....proper girlfriend where you go out places and see films and hold hands and there is kissing and nauseating quasi-romantic facebook messages and eventual sex.

See, one of my two proper friends has a wonderful ability to charm women. Like, we go on nights out, he pulls a female member of the group he's never met before. Pretty much every time. Then they go out for a bit. I'm almost exactly matched to this guy in terms of strength and physical fitness, I'd say were pretty much equally matched in terms of looks - though obviously that is more subjective. Yet I talk to the girls more, I make them laugh and smile more, I buy them drinks and do the whole charm offensive thing...he doesn't seem to be doing anything I'm not, so why does he always pull, and why do I never pull?

Here is another curious example of this phenomena: I went to a Social Anxiety meetup in London, met up with a scouse guy first, then we met the two girls who were coming along. The day after the meetup, one of the girls started messaging me about what a wonderful guy the scouse was. They are going out now.

I'm not resentful in the slightest, don't get me wrong - I just wonder what it is that made her instantly like him, and not even consider me (I honestly had and have no romantic interest in this girl, I should restate)...yet I was there for all the time those two were together...I mean I nipped off for a piss when we were in a coffee shop so maybe he pulled some magic trick in those 2 minutes that I didn't see...but like, the scouse hardly said anything the whole time, I wouldn't say he's especially good looking as guys go. So...why'd she take such a liking to him, they barely talked, he was really quiet - I thought girls were supposed to dislike quiet guys. I talked to her the most, I made her laugh and engaged her in conversation...yet within the 3 hours she was with this guy who barely said anything, she decided she fancied him. How!? How the fuck did he do that!? I want to be able to do that!

Perhaps it is not other people having magic love tricks, but rather me being shit. I'm not very good looking, but I'm not fuck ugly or repellent either. And it seems that looks don't really matter that much as long as someone isn't grossly overweight or physically repellent...nonetheless I tried doing things with my appearance, hairstyle, clothes - to be more attractive, didn't really make a difference, reinforcing my conviction that it isn't looks that are at issue here. I see fuck ugly guys with beautiful women all the time. And hey, a gay guy called me hot the other night...he said my only physical flaw was my somewhat uneven front teeth with a gap between them, but apparently this isnt hugely noticeably awful...and while I'm not gay...gay guys are sort of like women....possibly? So if a gay guy thinks a man is good looking...possibly women do too? Or is that too much of a stretch?

Anyhoo, if not looks, then what? I don't think in the student age group people are too concerned about shit like money or careers or cars, so I don't think it is related to material possessions either.

Confidence? While at school people said I was really quiet, now people say that I'm really loud and confident, I don't think I'm overly lacking in confidence, at least, not in a way that becomes apparent at first meetings with women at social events.

Humour? Well I can generally do that really well, one of my few talents, making people laugh.

Conversation? Well I talk to girls all the time, and they seem to enjoy the conversations and are engaged in them rather than looking for an escape...hell women will often come over to talk to me at a night out, even meet up with me at subsequent social gatherings, I am, apparently, 'good craic' (that is a northern expression it means you are fun to be around)...however this is where I fall into that disgustingly entitled "friend zone" trap. Women talk to me as a friend. This suggests my conversation is good, but I'm doing something else wrong.

So what else? Any straight women have any suggestions beyond the general stuff that means nothing: "be yourself" etc.

It seems to me some people have an intangible, ephemeral personality trait a bit like charisma, which makes the opposite sex like them for no discernible reason. I seem to be massively lacking in this elusive trait.

You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It

2010-12-29T21:02:00.003Z

Except, by very definition, you can. You can't not have your cake and eat it - because somebody else has your cake, and you'll need to get it off them first before you can consume it for yourself. However, once you have your cake, you categorically can eat it. I have always been puzzled by that expression:

"You can't have your cake and eat it"
"Yes I can, idiot"
"No you can't"
"Right, pass me my cake over, I want to show you something!"
"..."

Also, "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" - that one took me a long time to figure out. To spite is to emotionally harm, so in order for this aphorism to make sense, one has to imbue the face with its own emotional consciousness, independent of the brain. Then the brain, which shares a body with the face, decides the face is its' mortal enemy, so it orders the hand to cut the face's nose off...to make the face bleed and hurt and look fucking disgusting.

Seems like a valid strategy then doesn't it - you don't like something, you cut its nose off, sorted! However the catch here is that the brain needs a blood supply, and when it cuts the face's nose off, it causes haemorrhaging, thus reducing its' own blood supply, so it is harming itself as well as the face. However its still harming the face more, so this is a perfectly acceptable military tactic: It's the principle suicide bombers work on: Sure, they blow themselves up, but they take down, like, fifty innocent civilians with them.

So really, "cutting off your nose to spite your face" is a stupid pejorative, because sometimes you need to cause a small amount of harm to yourself in order to cause a large amount of harm to an enemy - punch someone in the face and you bruise your knuckles.

People should think before they coin phrases, no?

The blind leading the blind

2010-12-28T18:24:00.001Z

This is a re-post of a thread I made on the 'Relationships' section of the Social Anxiety Support Forum. I suspect the moderators there may delete it, so I am reproducing it here.

If you type "How to get a girlfriend" into google you get 69,400,000 results. To restate the point, that is just under 69 and a half million pages.

If the advice on any of these pages were half as effective as their authors claim, then there wouldn't be any single people left.

The first page that comes up is an article on WikiHow - a website which also claims to be able to tell you how to make friends. And yet there are plenty of friendless single people who have read these articles and are still very much friendless and single. In fact, I would hesitantly suggest that the majority of friendless singles who have read these articles are still in the same state they started as.

There are also books...lots of books, many written by people with no qualifications in anything remotely meaningful or relevant, promising to give you the secrets to relationship, or friendship, or business, success for under $20 US. Books advocating miracles with names like "The Heart of Stone Technique".

There are people on forums telling you that in order to be in a succesful relationship you need to do all sorts of things, things with ambiguous meanings, things like "be yourself" or "boost your self-esteem" - as if there are people for whom the source of their problems is unintentionally being someone else, or people whom have opted to have lower than average self-esteem because they thought to themselves, "Hey, I'm going to see myself in a negative light".

But it's OK. The lovely person selling you this book says you need to be confident in who you are, whatever that means, so off you go and do that, and bingo - success!

Of course, in reality, this is not how the world works, least of all the world of friendship and relationships. How do you know it isn't? Because I am telling you it isn't! And I'm a Doctor of Relationship Psychology! Actually I just made that up.

People get into relationships, make friends, because random things happen. The world is a totally chaotic place full of guesswork and lying and pretending and people with no idea what the hell is going on essentially winging it through life. As such, there is no advice anyone is going to give you that is going to make you popular or acquire you a romantic partner. Society is a chaotic place and stuff just happens. If you look at what a lot of people who claim to be able to unveil secret forumulas to govern social interaction are actually saying, you will realise they are actually saying nothing at all, they are merely saying nothing with fanciful language. They do not know anything you don't.

That will be all, thanks.

Deconstructive Social Analysis

2010-11-30T16:58:00.003Z

"Deconstructive Social Analysis" - I just made that phrase up, but it sounds like the kind of thing some bullshitter might use to put a name to the CBT-esque process of breaking down and analysing the thoughts that enter one's head during an intense anxiety situation. I am told that writing down such thoughts is useful in overcoming social anxiety disorder, and since I am no longer on prozac I have occasion to suffer such incidents every now and then.

Today, for instance, someone in the library tapped me on the shoulder, and said "Can you turn your music down a bit please?"...My first thought, was, fittingly "Twat." followed by "But nobody can hear my music I don't listen to it very loudly and my headphones have excellent noise-isolation"...at which point I had to say something to him, so I said "yeah, sorry" and turned my music down a few notches...though I later felt comepelled to prove to myself it couldn't possibly of been disturbing him because even with my mp3 player turned up to its maximum volume and the earphones hanging free rather than actually in my ears, you can barely hear anything.

Then I thought "Why aren't you listening to your own music, like a normal person" - and I glanced over at the guy to my right listening to his iPod.

Then for the next hour or so I was somewhat distracted from my readings worrying over being in the wrong and disturbing people in the library, alternating with thoughts that the twat on my left was just one of those people who deliberately looks for things to complain about.

Rationally, it doesn't matter whether his concerns were legitimate or not, I shouldn't think on the issue very much at all, after all I will probably never see the guy again, and anyway what do I give two shits about his opinion beyond the collective need to maintain civil decorum in the library which restrains me from replying "No, fuck off".

That is my best attempt at written analysis of today's anxiety inducing situation...naturally it is somewhat impractical to carry a notebook everywhere and transcribe one's thoughts the instant they occur, hence the blog entry.

The People You Sort-of-Know

2010-11-21T02:03:00.004Z

Within your "social circle", if such it can be called, there are usually certain people who are not your friends as such, but who you get on well enough with and see often enough that you cannot simply walk past in the street with just a nod or a "hey". People you have to have a brief conversation with if you unexpectedly run into them. I am rubbish at this brand of social interaction, here is a recent example:

"Hi!"
"Hey! I thought I recognised you, but I wasn't sure so I wasn't goin to say anything in case I looked like a retard"
"Yeah you talked to me at that house party"
"Yes I remember, Maria, right?"
"Yeah - we're friends on facebook....what are you doing?"
"I've got an hour before my next lecture, I'm just sitting here doing fuck all"
"Why?"
"Why not?"
...
"So...are you going in to town or something?"
"Yeah I have to see the doctor"
"Erm...good luck"

This was all distinctly awkward, but I struggle to think of a better way to handle such situations than grindingly forced Q&A until the other person pisses off to do whatever they were going to do anyway.

Newcastle Pasty Massacre

2010-11-08T16:07:00.004Z

This is what happens when I cross-reference what wikipedia tells me are the characteristics of a serial killer against myself:

They are often intelligent, with IQs in the "bright normal" range. YES
Often they have trouble staying employed. Usually they have menial jobs as well. YES
They tend to come from unstable families. YES
As children, they are often abandoned by their fathers and raised by domineering mothers. YES
Their families often have criminal, psychiatric and alcoholic histories. Well they are all dead so I don't know.
They were often abused — emotionally, physically and/or sexually — by a family member. YES
They have high rates of suicide attempts. YES
From an early age, many are intensely interested in voyeurism, fetishism, and sadomasochistic pornography. YES
More than 60 percent wet their beds beyond the age of 12. NO
Many are fascinated with fire starting. YES
They are involved in sadistic activity or torturing animals. NO
They mostly grew up in poverty, although various serial killers have had middle class backgrounds. SORT OF (Middle Class -> Poverty -> Middle Class Again - > Relative Poverty)
They were frequently bullied as children. YES
Some were involved in petty crimes, such as theft, fraud, vandalism, dishonesty or similar offences. YES

Further reading tells me a shocking 82% of serial killers masturbate, 88% are male, 85% are Caucasian, and many serial killers are characterised as having a "vivid imagination".

So as you can see, I'm going to kill you all.

It is interesting that quiet, loner types who are considered "creepy" and were bullied a lot are often stereotyped as being likely serial killers - which, statistically, they are. I just wonder that if people hadn't bullied them from a young age, and then they hadn't gone through life being referred to as creepy, weird, strange, and neglected and treated with suspicion and fear by extroverted people their whole lives...would they still kill anyone? I would suspect, in a reversed society, where extroversion was treated as a sign of future serial killing and general creepiness, and where extroverts were attacked by milling loners for their gregarious intrusions into the quiet status-quo, we might start seeing extroverts being the ones to go around killing people. I would think it is not necessarily being "quiet" or other attributes similarly unrelated to killing anyone, that makes someone a serial killer, but society's viewing those attributes as "creepy" and victimising anyone who displays them, that engenders sufficient hate for humanity in an individual for them to go psychotic and start killing people.

If I could get enough people to believe that anyone who liked rabbits was a likely sexual deviant and future serial killer, I reckon in a few years we'd see a massive upswing in rabbit owners killing people en masse, the very definition of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Plans

2010-11-05T23:41:00.003Z

Here's something that annoys me: When you invite people to some sort of social event, and they give the cryptic response "I have plans".

I have never said that to one of my friends, if a friend invites me to something and I have prior commitments, I will say "Sorry I can't go I already said I'd go to [NAME]'s party" or "I'll be in [PLACE]"...the general point being that I usually respond with the reason why I can't go.

The fuck is with this "plans" thing. Plans? Plans to do what, conquer the fucken world? I mean, I understand that sometimes, occasionally, something private has come up that one does not want to disclose, in which case I'd just say I couldn't come, that something had come up, not that I had "plans". Fucking plans indeed. Better things to do than hang out with the person who invited you out, you mean.

Recently my friend, who has been through a lot of shit recently, got turned down for another job offer. One of his "friends" created a facebook event to cheer him up...then this "friend" suddenly decides she has "plans", and his other friends rush to tell him that they are "busy" with "plans". Reminds me of my last birthday..."Yes, you invited me 2 weeks in advance of the event, and sure you went out of your way to come to my birthday, but hell, I have PLANS"!

So now its basically me and one other guy travelling up to Durham to meet with my friend.

Fucking sanctimonious dickwads and their "plans".

I am free

2010-10-23T18:12:00.001+01:00

By which I mean single. As of yesterday I broke up with my girlfriend. This was at least a mutual thing, as neither of us could manage a long-distance relationship and she would be spending most of her time at least 300 miles away from me.

That is all.

Don't fire untill you can the whites of their eyes...in 3D

2010-09-21T22:05:00.002+01:00

I went to see the new Resident Evil film in 3D with my flatmates yesterday. This was the first of the "new 3D" (as oppose to the old kind where you had red and green glasses) type films I have seen.

I must say, this new 3D technology has been way over-rated. First of all, it only really makes its presence felt at certain set-pieces, for the rest of the film it serves only to add slightly better depth-perception, which you don't really notice anyway...and occasionally this fucks up a bit destroying the suspension of disbelief. However, the special 3D set-pieces are pretty damn impressive. At one point in the film, a large zombie throws a giant warhammer at the main protagonist, and the thing appears to come right out of the fucking screen and get so close to your face you physically flinch. Another cool application is some over-the-shoulder 3rd person action game type shots where it looks like a character is standing outside of the screen, shooting into it at a rapidly advancing horde of blood-drooling zombies.

Before 3D is applied to any proper films, it certainly needs some work, however as a gimmick for brainless action shoot-em-ups, it is pretty cool.

As for the film itself, don't expect plot or character development, but if you want cool aestheticised violence set to music, then it certainly delivers. Also, I give it extra credit for having A Perfect Circle's song "The Outsider" over the end credits, which is awesome.

Romantic Times?

2010-09-14T12:47:00.003+01:00

I have a girlfriend. No, really.

Her name is Jenna, she has quite long black hair, she's slightly shorter than I am, pretty thin, very intelligent, highly musically talented, has a great sense of humour...erm, what else does one say when describing one's partners attributes as if they were a product in a store, as seems to be the in-thing these days?

How did this happen? I'm not quite sure, I first met her in Primary school when I was 9, and we were in the same educational establishment from then until we were 18. Last Christmas holidays, she came back to the north and we ended up on the same night out...me and my mate got pretty drunk and most people left straight away, however she was one of the few to stay out with us, and apparently had a great time. I then saw her the next day when I decided to invite myself to a coffee morning she was going to, which was also a lot of fun. I met up with her again at each university holiday since then, and so we've been doing a lot of stuff together for about 9 months.

More recently, she started dropping hints that she wanted me to ask her out - hints which were, after-the-fact, validated by her friends. Anyhoo, I did ask her out, she said yes, simples - right?

Thing is, she, like myself, is totally inexperienced with relationships - indeed, I believe the only reason someone so attractive and multi-talented is going out with me is because she has her own troubles integrating with "normal people". I feel like she treats me more like a best friend than a boyfriend...perhaps it's just because its still early days yet, but hell, she'll be in London in a few days and I won't see her for months, yet she will not even hold hands, she certainly won't kiss me, and she won't even hug me unless I initiate it. Furthermore, she is late to everything.

Is this going to work out? It seems I am far more into the whole relationship thing than she is, and have no more experience. It was her birthday yesterday, I sent her a card, a letter, and an item of jewellery...in response I got a text message.

Perhaps I am just being stupid, maybe all relationships start like this, when I typed "my girlfriend treats me like a..." into google the 3rd most-searched suggestion was "...friend". Maybe things will develop over time, though I am not sure how well that's going to work out considering there will be months at a time when we don't see each other at all.

I am unsure whether it is prudence or pessimism that causes me to think I should avoid investing too much, emotionally or physically, in this relationship too early. I have already spent so much buying this girl a whole range of birthday presents, in an effort to please her, I turn up early for anything we arrange so she isn't left on her own, I walk her home every night...and yet she seems somewhat disinterested, which is odd for someone who apparently was desperate for me to ask her out. I think I must teach my self to care a little less and be a little more contemptuous of others than I am right now, past experience tells me sentimental attachment usually ends in disaster.

Hey dickhead, I'm looking for you

2010-09-09T17:06:00.000+01:00

Somehow, someone got my card details, and has so far spend £74 of my money, of which I only have the slimmest chance of getting any back. So then I have to call the bank (normally phone calls terrify me, but somehow not when I'm infuriated with indignant outage), there is a list of numbers on the bank's website, but there arent any for card fraud, so I go with "lost cards" which seems close enough.

The woman at lost cards says she'll refer me to fraud. Fraud has an automated message which says "If you have purchased something from a retailer and are contesting the transaction, call the retailer.....if about 100 things of happened, you have called the wrong people....if you are calling to report a CONFIRMED fraud case press 1....blablabla"

And I'm like, how can it be confirmed when you haven't let me report it yet? So I ask to hear the options again, and it still makes no sense, so I'm considering what to do then suddenly the robot-voice on the other end is asking me to key-in my account details even though I haven't made any choices yet. I hang up.

I look at the list of numbers again, think "screw this" and call fraud back deciding im just gonna say its confirmed - by me, right now - since I'm not on 02 and I don't live in slough, I think it would be pretty difficult for me to be paying phone bills and buying clothes there - that's confirmation enough.

Eventually I get through to some guy who says I need to call after 8pm to report card fraud (by this time it is 7:50pm, but apparently the time-space continuum works differently in the NatWest fraud office), and he tells me to call lost cards again and ask them to freeze the card.

Sooo, back on the line to lost cards.

"Have you lost your card?"

"No, the guy in fraud told me to call you because I cant report a fraud case right now and apparently you can freeze my card for me"

"No we can't freeze your card, I can cancel it though"

"Fine, do that"

"What is your date of birth?"

"*date of birth*"

"That isn't your date of birth"

"yes it is"

"no it isn't"

"yes it is!"

"It isn't what we have on file"

"Well it should be, since you had to scan my passport when I opened that account"

"Ok sir, what's your password"

"I don't have one, I opened it as a childrens account and the upgraded it to a student account, you didn't ask me to set a password"

"Well I can cancel your card, but you are going to have to come in-branch tomorrow, would you like me to do that for you?"

"No, I've changed my mind, let the guy in slough spend my money, why not? And while I'm at it, how about you disconnect your phone, tie the wire around your neck and jump out the window?"

actually I didn't say that last bit, but I was THIS close.

Last.fm

2010-09-01T10:47:00.001+01:00

If you are on last.fm, add me here.

If you aren't on last.fm, get on last.fm.

Oooooooook, not sure what the proper social etiquette here is

2010-08-29T12:39:00.002+01:00

Reet, so I was out last night, and this girl who I have been friends with for a long time got reeeallly drunk, and by the last club she was somewhat aggressively grinding on me and kissing me etc....with her ex-boyfriend right there not looking too impressed.

Now, I wasn't really doing as much as I could have to restrain her in these...er...advances, because I've been friends with her for ages and I'm always up for a drunken laugh, and also because I was pretty drunk myself and I knew she didn't have a current boyfriend to get annoyed.

I'm not entirely irresponsible, the one time something like this happened before the female concerned did have a boyfriend, who I was also friends with, so I kept her away and ended up taking her home cause she was so drunk.

Anyways, this morning I was feeling the tiniest bit guilty, wondering if it really was appropriate for me to let her carry on with me like that and if I would get in trouble for it (see, when I get drunk and do stupid things I get the blame, when other people get drunk and do stupid things...I also get the blame - c'est la vie). Now I just checked my phone and there is a text from her that says "Huge apologies about last night xxxxxx".

What do I say? My first instinct was to say something like "Haha nothing to apologise for, I had a great night, cheers for inviting me!" - but then it occured to me this might imply I had a great night because she was touching me up and that I actively enjoyed it. On the other hand if I ignore the text she might think she's offended me, and I don't want her to feel bad.

I have attempted to reach a happy medium between stuck-up prick and pervert, but I suspect I will somehow end up coming across as both. Ah well, Send.

Casual Racism

2010-08-28T12:25:00.003+01:00

So yeah, some people were like "Wow your blog was amazing you should write more" and I was all "Nah, it was shite, and moreover, I can't be fucked"...

...Yeah well right now I'm going absolutely insane with boredom and loneliness so I thought I'd write something on here to postpone my inevitable descent into naming all the blades of grass in my garden and holding conversations with them.

I have totally given up on Asinine Rants, and since this is no longer remotely a Journal, I'll just post whatever I like on here from now on. You may notice my talent for writing has declined somewhat, but that's probably because I gave up on the whole thing a while back, like all my other attempted hobbies.

Anyhoo today I am writing about niggers.

Bahahaha, still here? Well done. No really I am writing about how hung-up over issues of race people get. I was recently linked to the infamous "Dr Laura" phonecall in which a radio-host used the infamous "N-Word" while talking to a black caller. I was expecting some kind of racist rant about black people taking over America and mass immigration and anti-white ethnocide n all that bullshit. This was not the case. Basically, a black woman with a white husband called up and complained that her husbands friend kept mentioning things about race and he never stopped them.

Now, I admit Dr. Laura was hardly sensitive in her response, but she was not racist, and, surprisingly for a family-values republitard, made some valid points. She asked the caller to provide some examples of the comments her husband's friends made, and was provided with the example "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?". Then Dr. Laura says its really not that racist, and so the caller says that people use the "N word" around her sometimes, so Dr. Laura points out that loads of TV shows, and black comedians say Nigger all the time. At this point the caller and political correctness types the world over decided Dr. Laura was horribly racist because she was a white person who had uttered the word "Nigger".

I don't see the problem, if it is used in a non-insulting context, with a white person saying nigger. It seems incredibly patronising to assume all black people shit themselves in horrified offence if they hear someone with too light a skin-tone use the word. Also, it's just a word, chill. I have black friends who I make all kinds of racist jokes with. To be honest, white-people are way easier targets for racial-mockery in the modern world anyway - see "Stuf White People Like" or "White Men Can't Jump"....whites are stereotypically nerdy middle-class types, blacks are stereotypically cool gangsta rappers. Neither stereotype is accurate, but I know which pre-conception I'd rather have.

Dreamlog #1

2010-04-15T12:38:00.003+01:00

I had such a weird dream last night, and I can still remember a lot of it, so I'm going to write down what I remember before I forget it.

Myself and some friends had somehow acquired a time travel device from the office block in which I worked. The device was shaped like a misshapen cross, with the horizontals representing travel through space and the verticals representing travel through time. In the center was a pool of blue liquid which was constantly on fire, and the flame changed colour a lot, from blue to orange to green to silver. It tended to go silver when the device was activated.

The device had limited use, there were only two options for traveling through space - my own office, and my boss's office. There were pre-set destinations in time you could travel to, engraved on the device, with the future ones at the top of the cross and the past ones at the bottom. I can't remember what the future destinations were, but we went to those first - if you were close and in physical contact with others when activating the device, you all travelled together. The past destinations included 1998, 1986, the 1960's, and the 18-somethings.

We did some weird experiments with the device. We tried pouring some of the fluid in the centre into a shot glass, and then trying to use that for time-space travel (it sort of worked), we tried holding bits of paper in the flame, or blowing on the flame - I nearly put it out once, much to my dream-friends annoyance. We dared each other to drink the mysterious fluid. I did a test to see how close you needed to be to someone for them to travel with you, which involved repeatedly poking a female friend in the face.

And then....then we decided to put a full deodorant can over the flame in the centre and film the result. We carried the device down to this abandoned engineering area under a bridge - which does exist, its near my house in Durham, though in the dream we had to use a ladder for access. We put the device in a corner, balanced the deodorant can over the flame in the center and legged it. And then....BOOM!...and there was the most beautiful cloud of silver fire and sparks....then suddenly I was having another dream about running along deserted railway tracks and trying to build canoe's....yeah, my dreams do not make a lot of sense.

The Coming Darkness

2010-03-29T17:51:00.003+01:00

Apologies, that was a slightly over-dramatic title, I just thought it was a little more exacting than "stuff".

Well, the first week of the Easter holidays is down. I have been out twice. The first time was a total disaster - it was going alright, though it was a bit awkward, so I drank quite a lot...ok I drank a LOT - in just over 2 hours I had: 1 pint of Stella; a double rum and coke; a Smirnoff ice; a jäger bomb; a VK orange; a treble vodka and coke, and 4 bottles of Stella...still, I was certainly freed from any social exigencies, and things started to be a lot more fun. Then my memory stops. I woke up in my flat covered in my own blood, with a massive gash on my chin, and various other cuts and bruises, and with my glasses bent totally out of shape. I have no idea what happened. The people I was out with don't talk to me anymore. Such is the problem with using alcohol as a social lubricant: it is extremely difficult to judge how drunk you are when you're out drinking, so it is very easy to over-step your limits and lose 6 hours of time to alcohol-induced amnesia.

The second night out, on a Saturday, no less, was a much greater success. I didn't really know any of the people there that well, but that was OK, I still talked to most of them with relative ease for the majority of the night. I may have even made some new friends that night, we shall see - keeping friends can be as difficult as making them, sometimes. I was very careful not to get drunk that night, only had 3 drinks across the entire night, so it was fine.

I'm out this Thursday as well, and the Thursday after, so if all goes well I will have achieved at least 4 nights out over 4 weeks, which isn't bad. My original target was 8, but that somewhat fell by the wayside after last weeks, er, "incident". I have switched my focus from the futile pursuit of a normal, active social life to attempting to find ways to have fun on my own.

In other news, I am attempting to change my university course from Politics and Sociology to straight Politics, but am told I probably wont be able to do this, so I'll have to do 3 modules I hate next year at uni, great :|

In other, other news, I may actually have student accommodation sorted for next year. There is 1 room available in a 3 bedroom flat and I'm going to view it this week, hopefully. It looks really good though - cheap, good location, only 2 other people to share with, and they have a cat! :D

Clutching at Straws

2010-03-22T16:52:00.002Z

Well, the universities are breaking up for Easter, I have 4 weeks off.

Woo.

No, really.

Pardon my lack of enthusiasm, but what in fuck's name am I going to do for four fecking weeks. Nothing! I am still looking for a job and getting nowhere, so I don't see myself working much if at all. How about socialising then? Hmmm, over the next 28 days I have precisely 1 night out organised, and I have already played my entire hand - I have contacted literally everyone I know who will be back in the north over the holidays, and I have got one night out, one. I really do envy those who have a stable friendship group with which they are in regular contact.

In other news, I'm back on the anti-depressants. Not because of the return of social anxiety, but actually for depression this time. Being bored and alone does that to you, you see.

And er, that is all.

A Somewhat Bleak Outlook

2010-03-07T21:18:00.004Z

I don't write here very much anymore. In fact, looads of stuff has happened between now and the last time I wrote here, and has gone totally undocumented. But that's not really the point, the point of these ramblings are to record the states I spend most of my time in, not the transient phases in between. Basically, yeah, I've been out a few more times, though less and less as the weeks have gone by, my tenuous grip on both my social life and my "friendship group", if such it can be called, is falling to pieces; I've moved out and live with 5 horrible, noisy, messy neurotypicals, all of whom are between 6 and 10 years older than me, in a tiny room in a shared house in a suburb of Newcastle, though I come home on weekends because otherwise I would probably be discovered dead one morning having hammered nails into my own cerebral cortex in response to stress of it all.

I stopped taking the anti-depressants a few weeks ago, it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference, thereby reinforcing my suspicion that the main thing I gained from taking them was a placeabo effect.

And now, now what do I do with my life? When I'm not at uni, I'm sat alone in my tiny, shitty room listening to the guy next door shout at his video games while the guy above, well I don't even know what he's doing - moving furniture back and forth for no reason? I sit there, drinking cheap lager from cans, eating Morrison's own brand pizzas, playing Tetris or watching some shite on YouTube. I guess my mother would be fucking proud eh, silly children-having people, damn them all.

I don't see many people, as I said, my "friends" don't bother with me much anymore, unless they need a favour in which case they can generally still rely on exploiting my altruistic tendencies. They all know other, cooler people, who they wouldn't want to see them hanging around with someone like me. And yet what pisses me off the most is that, now I am on facebook, I have no escape from the constant ravings of normal people, including my "friends", about how great their fucking lives are! At uni, they all talk excitedly about how they have arranged little groups to move out with next year (don't ask me what I'm doing for accommodation next year, I don't have a fucking clue), and then when I'm not at uni my facebook news feed helpfully tells me how much more fun everyone else is having, on their nights out, on their communal trips in to town, and so on and so on. I dunno why they do this, as evidenced by the massive gaps in my blogging tendencies, I don't really write much about my life being great, I am far more inclined to write about it when things are going shit.

And I'm going to need a job to fund myself now, so I can afford to eat and pay bills and rent, so I can sit in my flat some more on my own and drink more and pay more bills and then work so I can pay more bills so I can sit in my flat and- FUCKING WHY!? AARRRGH! I live to support myself so I can live some more so I can continue to support myself....presumably in the hope that amongst all this monotony and tedium good things will occasionally happen? I do envy normal people and their friends who they do everything with, being alone with fuck all to do is a depressing state. But hey, on the plus side, I'm getting a fuck lot better at Tetris - that's bound to come in handy some time...

Friends

2010-02-17T12:58:00.003Z

I am beginning to feel that I am having much the same problems at uni as I had at sixthform. I lack a friendship group. Instead, I know several people, who all have their own different groups which I am not a part of. I still have a social life, because I sometimes get to tag along with one group or another on a night out or whatever...but I am not a part of a social group - I do not, really, have any 'close' friends - just a few casual ones.

Perhaps I am being paranoid, ignorant, or even hypocritical here - perhaps this is how social life for normal people always is, it just doesn't look like that from where I'm standing - looking in from the outside.

I want a group! Where do you get one!? People in films, TV drama, soaps etc, always seem to have a group of close friends they are always doing stuff with, and the same seems to apply in real life - so why don't I have a group? Why am I stuck latching on to other people's groups?

At the moment I am increasingly getting the impression that my tenuous hold on some semblance of a social life and indeed my 'friends' may not last much longer - playing by rules you don't even know the existence of is an act that can only be stretched so far.

Moving Out?

2010-02-13T13:59:00.005Z

I may be moving out for the last 4 months of the academic year by the end of February...I looked at 4 houses with an estate agent today - admittedly I got my mother to set this up for me because this was my first time dealing with this sorta shit and I was totally clueless, but still.

The first place was brilliant - really well furnished, close to Newcastle city centre - AND the 5 bedroom flat was totally vacant, so any new people moving in would get to know me first. Sadly, it is so expensive I don't think I can really afford it, and as it's currently empty I would have to pay all the utilities costs until someone else moved in, and then would have to organise for them to pay their fair share - which could be somewhat awkward to say the least.

The second house was also pretty good, but I didn't get to meet any of the people, and it is currently occupied by a group of 5 friends who know each other - so I am a little concerned about moving in with them.

The third house was the cheapest, and is my current preference, though my mother is trying to persuade me to go with the second - another reason to move out from the pushy bitch, eh? (Yes, that was a JOKE - this post is being written whilst I am in something of an emotional vacuum). Anyways, the people there don't know each other - and I met one of them who seemed pretty quiet/shy, so it looks like I could survive there for 4 months.

The fourth house is occupied by 3 friends who know each other - I believe 3 girls, and we couldn't get in because it is the tenants looking for a new flatmate and so they have the keys, and were out despite being notified about the viewing - and then they didn't answer when we called them. Oh well. I don't really think I want to move in with a clique of 3 girls anyway, I might go postal.

To conclude, I'll just throw another night out photo on the end of my post to demonstrate the continuation of my tenuous hold on a social life/friends:

This is me taking my drunken Norwegian friend Tina home from a slightly awesome night out in Newcastle.

Jeg lærer norsk!

2010-02-08T00:02:00.006Z

Ja, det er riktig, jeg lærer norsk, fordi en av min klasserkamerater er frå norge. Men i dag, skulle jeg lærer sosiologi, for universitet, fordi jeg må gjøre en tale om mat utrygghet går klokken elleve i morgen. Det er ti timer fra nå, så jeg skulle trolig sovender nå, men jeg har vært en søvnløs på fire år nå.

My Worst Drunkening Yet

2010-01-06T16:10:00.006Z

Oh my god...my nights out have become a bit like that story annoying people like to tell you about buses in London: "There are none for ages and then 3 come at once".

I didn't actually drink that much last night...that I remember, I have certainly drunk a lot more and not even been tipsy. And yet...apparently I was hauled out of a bar by a pair of huge bouncers after vomiting on their floor. I don't remember this. Oh fuck.

Someone took this picture of me on their phone at the end of the night:

Don't remember that either, but oh dear. I lost my camera, and a taxi driver exploited my intoxicated state and swindled me out of 50 quid.

In other news, I am now permanently banned from the Social Anxiety forum. Ah well, I guess I don't really need it now do I, judging by the above pictures.

n'other night out

2009-12-31T12:48:00.005Z

Was at a completely unofficial sixth form "re-union" last night, which about 10 people turned up, however myself and one of my mates (the guy with the peculiar facial expression on the right of the above picture) drank so much that people gradually started getting scared and slipping away, there were only 5 of us left at the last club, and shortly after that on a search for places that were still open there was only the two of us. I shall include a few pictures to give you some idea why this might have been:

Not sure what's happening here...

...or here...

..The only two to last the whole night...

...trying to cure drunkenness at a kebab shop:

And I'm out tonight too.

Reporting In

2009-12-29T12:47:00.009Z

Had a great night out yesterday for my friend's 19th. Obligatory photos follow:

Behold, the Shot Glass Tower of Pisa:

...er, and the tragic fate of said tower:

And having had such a good time, I must add a further positive. Well, two further positives actually, the first being that I caught a taxi for the first time last night. The second is more significant, the list of people I trust has now expanded from 3 to 5. Allow me to explain: A while ago, after repeated betrayals, I decided I would never trust anyone again...eventually I broke that vow, and regretted it, so I made it again...and it took a lot more before I made the mistake of trusting someone again the second time, but a mistake it was...I made and broke that vow another twice before I stopped trusting people all together for about 4 years. Then I started to recover from SA, and decided constant mistrust was a sorry and depressing state, so I decided that I would make an arbitrary decision to trust those who showed me sufficiently significant acts of selfless kindness. I would not care if my trust turned out to be misplaced, I needed people to trust.

If I keep this up, I hope my list may continue to grow.

Yeh fuck all that I wrote about trust, I have since been betrayed by all the people I previously mentioned as trusting in this post - don't trust anyone, eh guys.

Anyways, I'm out again tomorrow, and the day after, then a day off and I'm out again...and then again 4 days later. Tres bon.

For Posterity

2009-12-27T19:02:00.004Z

Just another social event to log here:

Was out on boxing day with several people, went around various clubs and bars, got quite drunk, but am becoming surprisingly heavyweight. Out again on the 28th, the 30th, the 31st, the 2nd and the 6th - add the 26th and I will have been out 5 out of 9 days, impressive, no?

Here is the obligatory drunken pic:

Yeh, I was quite drunk then, that was the last club before we went back to my mate's house for a few beers. Still, no hang-over, so I'm happy.

Grr

2009-12-26T14:12:00.002Z

Alright, next year on the 25th of December I am officially having an "anti-christmas" festival, if anyone wants to join me in glorious commemoration of this important event in the cynics calendar, do let me know.

"Re-union"

2009-12-23T16:44:00.003Z

Ahh, had such a great night out on Monday. Went to sixthform to collect A-level certificates, talked to a few people I used to know there, went out in friends car doing handbrake turns in the snow and generally indulging in a spot of dangerous driving, then back to another friends house to drink absinthe prepared with fire. Then, after a bit of smoking, off into town to meet some more people at a pub, where we got utterly pissed...by 7pm, following which we were thrown out by the unfriendliest barmaid I have ever seen. Still, as always with shit pubs, I recouped the cost of my displeasure in their glassware, and now have no less than 5 of their shot glasses: read 'em and weep, bitches:

They join the shot glass I stole from this pub that saw fit to charge me just short of a fiver for a black russian, and the spoon I appropriated while walking through the first class carriage of one of my trains...I have no idea why, I just dislike first class and its inhabitants, so I took all their complimentary biscuits and drinks - and a spoon.

More Snow

2009-12-20T13:33:00.002Z

Snow!

2009-12-19T16:53:00.003Z

Yes, it is snowing in England now. I guess it is a sign that the last remnants of my childhood optimism have been brutally suffocated by my own cynicism that my first thought on seeing the fluffy white rain was not "Yayyyyyy!" but "fer fuck sake, your taking the piss!"

News Bulletin:

2009-12-17T02:42:00.007Z

Significant Events of The Past Week:

Social life evaporated since uni term ended, still awaiting return of people with whom I may be able to blag nights out from their various universities across the country.

Other day was informed by mother that self had been found completely unconscious on the landing at approximately 11:30pm the previous night - has no recollection of this, but the somewhat dubious tale nonetheless reinforces my resolve to move back into student accommodation immediately after Christmas - think living with neurotypicals is bad? Try living with your fucking parents.

SA appears to be attempting to regain some lost ground, so far I am holding it off with fairly consistent success.

Has acquired a black Santa hat - admire its high levels of bitchingness (yeah, I know, but it was only a quid, what would you have done!?)

That is all...seriously

Stuff...'n' stuff

2009-12-07T12:52:00.002Z

Today I went to the barbers and got a haircut for the first time. Don't ask how I've been getting my haircut before now. The point is that this is another new barrier broken, though I am struggling to find new barriers these days. Here are some pictures immediately post-grade-3:

And in other news, the scars on my hand from when I started self-harming after moving into student accomodation have finally healed - shows how long it was since I was last in such a desperate situation, I guess.

Full Collapse

2009-12-05T01:21:00.005Z

Just thought I'd post some photos from the student rock night I blagged my way in to tonight:

Recovery from SA is fun, no? We had a great night - for the second time in my life I won a game of pool, and I was very chuffed to actually know 3 of the songs at Full Collapse - that is For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Metallica; Killing in the Name of, by Rage Against the Machine and the awesome Holiday, by Greenday - in fact, when they played holiday I found someone else who knew the words off by heart and we were trying to sing louder than the speakers - SIEG HEIL TO THE PRESIDENT GASMAN! Oh, we also stole some shot glasses from this wayyy over priced bar...and I nicked a hell of a lot of shit (including many spoons!!) from the first class carriage on my trains, it's been a good day!

More nights out

2009-12-03T18:36:00.001Z

Well, tomorrow (Friday) I have blagged my way into a student rock night at a university I am not actually a member of, and on tuesday next week I'm going out with some uni people again, let the good times roll, eh?

Tuesday's Night Out

2009-12-02T17:50:00.004Z

Well, we didn't get as drunk as I wanted to, stupid neurotypicals wanted to go home early because they felt their impending essay deadlines were a legitimate concern, pah, cowards!

We had fun though, he is the obligatory group photo:

If I post more night out photos over time, the truth behind my oft-stated observation that all my friends are girls will become increasingly evident.

Oh, and here's a picture of me trying to sleep on my friend's floor:

Now, go back and read my blog posts from a few months ago, say, Julyish.

If the people who verbally abused me after I started to try and explain about my recovery from SA apologise to me, I will tell you all how I recovered, and went from someone who couldn't leave their house to someone who is more confident than most neurotypicals. If they don't apologise, I won't tell any of you anything - I'm a twat now, see - but I'll start posting their usernames so you can all go encourage them, should I receive further negative comments.

Have a nice day.

I am amazed...

2009-11-30T00:43:00.003Z

On the social anxiety forum chat, someone was asking if it was possible to recover, and naturally I pointed out that yes, it was, I did.

And of course, then the avalanche of questions "how? how? what did you do?" begins. And I have stopped answering these, because it is such a long story.

I intended to write an article on how i recovered, post it here, and link people to it.

But I am not sure I want to do this now.

When the people on social anxiety chat kept on pressing me for information, I told them that people tended to get annoyed when I told them how I recovered, that my methods were not "conventional". And still, they wanted to know, they assured me that THEY were different, THEY wouldn't get annoyed...and so I let slip a little bit of information...

...and suddenly I was being called a "bullshitter", a "troll", "rude", a "lame person" and a load of other things....much the same happens whenever I even begin to tell the story of how I recovered to anyone. So perhaps I should not write that article, it seems people really do not want to know, they just want to criticise. So be it, they have SA, I do not, I merely try to help those in need, but if they want to bite the hand that feeds, well, it saves me a lot of effort doesn't it.

I'm going out clubbing on tuesday, let the good times roll, bitches, PARRR-TAAAAAY! You people can keep your SA, and keep your moral highground - they make a good pair.

Alive

2009-11-29T02:39:00.008Z

Wow, it's been a long time since I last wrote anything here. I normally only write when I'm depressed and have nothing to do, see, and my life has been rather better than that of late - for a change.

I have actually been going out, talking to people, making friends, y'know, doing the whole normal people thing as best I can. I still have trouble making friends, I don't have many, but hey, I'm pretty much over my anxiety - and I will write a post on how I recovered soon, as people keep asking me, and it's a long story.

The picture is from one of my nights out by the way, that was a 3-legged pub crawl for the international students (the girl in the glasses is from Norway, the other girl is from Germany) which I just blagged my way onto - good times, let them last eh.

Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned

2009-10-27T19:43:00.010Z

You remember when I swore I would never have a profile on a social networking site? You don't? Oh. It was here.

Well now I have had to give in to the might of Mark Zuckerberg's evil Facebook enterprise, because of a collaborative project I am doing at Uni, where the rest of the group are communicating via facebook - so I needed to get an account too.

My profile is here.

Tbh, facebook seems a bit shit, actually, but whatevs. Feel free to add me randomly, my internet friends who know I have social anxiety disorder and am a depressed, weird, loser, can go and do battle with my real life "acquaintances", who know nothing. T'will be fun.

I intend to offset the evil of the money I have made for Zuckerberg by means of donations to the Socialist Party, The poppy appeal, and Unite Against Fascism.

Indubitably, Lord Cumberbatch

2009-10-20T19:53:00.006+01:00

Today, I decided I would go to uni, and indeed around town, wearing a bowler hat, as follows:

Or for a slightly camp-looking shot:

This was all just to take the piss out of SA, you see. Oh, and, complete with my bowler hat, I went into a fancy-dress shop and bought a plastic pipe, to imbue myself with an aura of aristocratic epistemology in my sociology seminar. Though in the picture below I look more like a toothless-spaz, but whatever, have you ever tried photographing yourself while sucking a plastic pipe while being dyspraxic all at the same time!?

Oh, and if you're wondering about the ring, I bought that today, from a clothes shop, whilst wearing the aforementioned hat, it is symbolic of the power I currently hold over social anxiety disorder.

In other news, I found out it's gonna cost about £250 to repair my car. I hope they take Visa.

Last night I broke my land-speed record, reaching 90mph for the first time.

My First Car Crash

2009-10-18T22:26:00.003+01:00

I'm afraid this post may come as something of an anti-climax, following on the heels of such a hyperbolic title. When I say "crash", I should really say "scrape" - but, much like the British tabloid press, I just can't resist a good bit of alliteration - it gets me slightly aroused.

Sorry.

Anyways, yeah, tonight I went out with my car and my mp3 player, flying around the deserted, pitch black roads at ridiculous speeds, wheel-spinning, hanging the gears to shit - to the point I was actually doing 50mph in 2nd gear at one point, the engine didn't like that - the whole reckless youth package. And that went absolutely fine, no crashes, no casualties, no paralysed children.

The problem came, as it so often does, when I thought I was home and dry. I was pulling into my pitch black driveway, when suddenly, out of nowhere, my pitch black cat jumps into the headlights, I swerve violently to avoid her, acting on pure instinct, and out of the darkness a horrible scraping and crunching sound rings out. It seems I scraped the car across the corner of our house at about 8mph. There are now a load of white-streaks across the black paintwork down the left side of the car - I will try to get some pictures tomorrow - its too dark now (10:30pm in ye olde England, don'cha know?).

And when I saw this...I collapsed in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter. Ahh, excitement and fun and happiness are such foreign and new sensations to me, oh but this was brilliant, I just crashed my fucking car! AHAHAHAHA! AHHHHHH, THIS IS LIVING!

I also got a haircut today.

Loner Goes Clubbing

2009-10-17T23:12:00.003+01:00

I went out drinking again tonight...alone. It is strange, I can do so many things I could never do before because of SA, but I still can't make fecking friends, bleh.

Oh, and when I got back from my pub-crawl, I shot a short test-video of myself with the pocket video camera I wasted £87 of my student loan on...and I was still fairly drunk when I filmed it.

I am sure it is only the remnants of the alcohol that make me feel posting this slurred mess is a good idea, and that I will regret this in the morning, but whatever, here is the result:

I have cyber-friends? Or web-crawlers?

2009-10-12T21:06:00.003+01:00

Er, yesterday my blogger profile views stood at 630. The counter now reads 780. Um, what? Perhaps my post entitled "Happiness" attracted legions of desperate googlers in search of the secret to eternal tranquility? Or in search of Viagra?

Seriously, what the hell, is this key-word related or something? Let's try to find out:

PORN. SEX. VIAGRA. GIRLS. NUDE. LESBIANS.

Err....I'm not very good at this, what do sad, American teenagers like? Post your suggestions for attractive keywords in the comments, and they will still be indexed by google.

It will be like those youtube videos where someone films a jar of marmite for thirty seconds, but writes the word "BOOBS" in the tags several hundred times over, and suddenly finds themselves with the most-viewed video of the week.

FREE IPODS.

Happiness

2009-10-11T17:39:00.005+01:00

What does one need to be happy? Love? Sex? Drugs? Money? Long term romantic relationships?

I do not think so.

I have come to believe that the basic ingredients of happiness are more simple, more mundane, than such exotic fantasies of the disillusioned and the dispossessed.

Laughter. Smiling. Friends.

These are the building blocks of happiness, in my opinion.

An opinion based on several years experience of mood swings, depression, euphoria, mental illness, physical illness, and much sadness and futile, frustrating desire. I look for a period in my life when I have been happy, and I cannot find one.

And yet my life has not been a constant, uninterrupted, glacial stream of melancholia. I have, for brief, yet really quite regular periods, experienced happiness. Times when I was with friends in a class at school. Times when I have smiled knowingly at someone in the street or on public transport. Times when I have shared a joke with someone, or otherwise been in a state of levity. Lately, the times when I have been in these states have been longer, more frequent, and with less space in between, and I have been much happier.

Yet I have never been in a relationship. I will die a virgin. I have a shit car. I am not from a rich family. I have only taken illegal drugs once, and very briefly - and I was not happy then, I was instead coughing burning bits of dried cannabis out of my mouth.

Happiness is, I think, a different creature to pleasure, to ecstasy. Pleasure is a brief, intense thing, such as one derives from orgasm, or chocolate ice cream, or a video game, or driving a fast car. Regular experience of pleasure is a good way to maintain happiness, but it is not a syllogism for happiness. Happiness is a long term, protracted thing. A drawn out state of mental and emotional well being.

It is a shame, then, that despite my victories over social anxiety disorder and GAD, I still cannot make friends. Oh yes, I can make a few casual acquaintances - some of the people in my lectures and seminar groups at uni, for example. But firstly, it was fate that put me together with these people, not my own social initiative, and secondly, I rarely see them outside of the context of lectures/seminars - it is, again, the hand of fate that holds me to these people. I do not have their mobile numbers, their e-mail addresses, if I dropped out of uni tomorrow, I would never have contact with them again - much like with my 'acquaintances' from sixthform.

One problem, you see, is that there are very few humans I can actually like. Yet those humans I can like, they can get on with a diverse range of people - and so I cannot get on with their friends, their friends cannot get on with me, and thus I am not admitted into their friendship group, I can only talk to them when they are separated from that group.

How odd, I do not know what it is that makes humans randomly collide with one another and suddenly decide to stick, and then they bounce around again, like unstable ions, and collide with other humans and other groups, and stick together again, increasing in mass in much the same way as a snowball rolling down a snow-covered hillside. And when they collide, they almost instantaneously divulge their personal details to each other - mobile numbers, e-mail addresses, where they live...it is all instantly shared without a hint of awkwardness. And they stick.

How?

This Self-Help Programme is Strictly for Humans Only

2009-10-07T22:37:00.003+01:00

Today SA won what can be described as a few minor skirmishes - this is still a two-way fight...but only just.

As planned, I went to the cinema today. This is the first time I have gone to the cinema on my own. Another barrier destroyed.

I saw District 9, which I thought was an excellent film, if not a classic - which is a shame, because with a little more verve it really could have been a classic. But oh well, a great cinematic experience, and I may well be buying this on DVD when it comes out.

That is all.

News From the Front!

2009-10-06T22:09:00.003+01:00

Ok, well today was a fairly compact, concise sort of day, yet a day with lots of stuff happening in it - which seems slightly paradoxical, but whatever - it makes it ideal for writing a journal entry about.

I had my first "seminar" at uni today, which is essentially like a small debate/discussion meeting, where everyone does some preparation in advance, then discusses it at the seminar. I was slightly irritated because, as someone with a huge interest in both politics and sociology, I found the whole thing a bit simplistic...and whenever I made a complex point people kept asking "what book did you get that from?" - errr, I got it from myself, thank-you-very-much.

But hey, I participated more than most other people - and challenged the PhD student seminar leader...one of the questions we had to prepare for beforehand was "How does sociological knowledge differ from A) Common Sense and B) Experiential Knowledge..."

I argued that common sense and experiential knowledge were the same thing, since what is common sense if not the total of one's social experiences, and that therefore the question was both a tautology and invalid. He countered that common sense comes from other people's experiences as well as your own, whereas experiential knowledge is purely from your own first-hand experience. I pointed out that you could only gain knowledge about other people's experiences through interaction, and that interaction was, almost by definition, a social experience, and that therefore this was still experiential knowledge...he told me I was wrong and quickly moved on to the next point.

Then I had a lecture straight after the seminar, and actually asked a question at the end. I say a question, I really just shot down the lecturer over a glaring omission I had noticed in his central point...he was talking about the concepts of "politics"; "states" and "nationhood", and how ethnic nationalists argue that a "nation" was a group of people with a shared ethnic identity - e.g. through race, religion, culture, language etc etc. He said this was irrelevant to modern concepts of nationhood, as most conflicts between nation-states were over land, not people. E.g. the Falklands war, where Britain fought Argentina over a few insignificant islands with a few people on them - neither side was really interested in ruling the people, what they were competing over was the land. Another example is the Israel/Palestine conflict. Israeli Zionists are quite explicit that they think the Palestinian Arabs should move to other Arab nations, and that Palestine should be re-populated with Jews - again, a conflict over land and not population.

However, it seemed to me that, in defining all international/interstate conflict as over either "territory" or "population", the lecturer was missing a key point - resources. For instance, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait - he had no interest in either the people (many of which he murdered), or the territory (it was mainly desert) - what he wanted was the oil. An even better example of this is the US invasion of Iraq - they didn't even keep the land they took, both land and people are back under Iraqi sovereignty - the previously state-owned oil supply, however, is now dominated by US companies. A clear example of a conflict where resource was the sole motivator, and neither population nor territory were taken from the invaded nation-state - only resources were captured.

The lecturer's response to this was "That's an excellent point..." then he gave an additional example of this sort of resource-motivated conflict and that was it, shot down, Mr. PhD man ¬_¬

Though the real point here is not my smug, precocious boasting, but that I actually asked a question in a lecture theatre with 120 odd people in it! So you can fuck right off, social anxiety disorder!

I also talked to people outside of the seminar, who were waiting for it to start - including someone who was in the year above me at sixthform, and recognised my face (though we have never talked before). After the lecture, I also talked to Tina again, briefly. Then I went to the Student Union shop before catching the Metro to the train station...to get a train back home. And at the Union shop I saw a girl I recognised from some of my lectures, exchanged a smile and a nod with her, then joined the back of the queue and talked with another two people I recognised from one of my lecture groups, then the girl walked back from the counter to talk with me - and walked with me to the Metro station, since she had a huge hole in the middle of her timetable and fuck all to do.

Then at the train station I saw the girl I have repeatedly mentioned on here - the one who I told about my SA, the one whose party I went to - and her boyfriend. I talked with them for awhile, then got on the train with her (she commutes to uni too now, I was not the only one with flatmate problems). Then on the train, I asked a guy sitting at one of those "four-seats-around-a-table" type things that seem randomly distributed across certain UK train carriages if we could take the seats opposite him - he said yes. Then some girl sat in the one remaining seat, and the train guard came to check tickets...but she didn't have one and only had £20 to pay with - since the guard didn't have any change yet, he said he would come back to her. I looked up and shot her a quick, slightly amused grin - which she returned, so I said "Just run, that way *pointing in the direction from which the train-guard had just come from, and thus wouldn't be checking again*, then get off at [stop name]" She laughed and said she might try that, then we had a brief discussion in which I postulated the idea of legging it away from train guards, going into the train toilet, getting off at the stop you were going to, and using "diahorrea" as an excuse should anyone inquire as to why you were in the toilet so long. She said she would "rather get the ticket, to be honest" - and I replied "Bleh, each to their own" - which was highly amusing to all concerned.

Then...oh yes...then I got the bus with the girl who I had met with her boyfriend at the train station...y'know, the one whose party I went to?...and we talked some more...

...Oh, and also, this morning while I was walking to the train station, it was pissing down with rain, and I saw this guy looking thoroughly depressed trying to drag his recalcitrant dog along its walk faster so he could get home. I looked up at him and nodded in what I hoped was mutual acknowledgement of the general shitness of our respective situations. He nodded back, and I grinned knowingly, so did he, then we both laughed.

Another little interaction there, you see.

Tomorrow is the day I plan to go to the cinema.

The advance continues.

What Can I Say?

2009-10-05T19:57:00.004+01:00

You may be wondering at the lack of further news from the frontlines. This is because I have been fighting on the aforementioned frontlines so much I have not had the opportunity to blog about it, and because I am currently winning this war so decisively, if I wrote about every victory, I'd be here for hours - and I need to be back on the frontlines - out.

For those who don't have a facking clue what the above paragraph meant, welcome to my blog. Why don't you have a look at some of my earlier posts, in, say, ooh, I don't know, Julyish - then compare them to now. Or, if you can't be arsed with any of that shite: The "frontlines" I refer to are a metaphor for my ongoing battle against Social Anxiety Disorder - a serious (yes, it is, it has driven people to suicide and worse, so fuck off Mr. Psycho-analyst, you can shove that copy of DSM-IV-TR so far up your arse you can clean your fecking teeth with it, for all I care) mental health disorder which causes its unfortunate victims to experience intense fear in what, for most people, are ordinary social situations. For instance, I am 18 years old, 2 weeks ago I got a bus for the first time in my life. Do you see now? There are people afflicted with this who cannot even leave their own homes.

But I am winning this fight, at the moment. Thanks, I believe, to a fortuitous combination of the drug Fluoxetine (better known as 'Prozac' - its trade name) and some unexpected kindnesses from the hands of fate - namely the experiences surrounding going to university. At first, the horror of these experiences made me self-harm and attempt to kill myself...again. But in the long-run, they have enabled me to fight back very effectively against my anxiety disorder - I just hope I can keep this record up and do not ever relapse into my earlier subjugation.

That is really all I have to say, for now. A simple summary for any new readers, really - I see my follower count has mysteriously climbed its way up to fifteen - hello people, welcome to the jungle (...we got fun and games).

Several Pieces of Chicken Lighter

2009-10-03T17:53:00.004+01:00

Excuse my awful prose, and poor spelling and grammar in this post. I am still pretty hung-over, you see.

Yes.

Last night I went out in to town, with the intention of going to 2 pubs, and buying 1 pint at each. But on my way from pub 1 to pub 2, I ran into someone I used to know from sixthform. He has asperger's syndrome.

Anyway, the result of this chance meeting was that we ended up crawling every pub, bar and club in the city.

Fuck was I drunk last night! I stumbled home, waving wildly at random cars, fell through my own door, and then vomited all over our laminate flooring...twice...and then again into the sink.

This reminds me of those people who say they have done things in their youth which they are "not proud of", but christ, I am incredibly fucking proud of this!! Tee-hee, fuck you SA, did you see what I did there? Bahahaha, you weren't expecting that, were you, motherfucker?

Ahhh, and most bar-people are incredibly friendly to drunken student-teenagers. The woman at the last pub helped me count my last few coins until I had put down enough to buy another pint of Strongbow, because by this time maths was utterly beyond me. Though at that place, the bouncer outside insisted on asking me how much I'd had to drink, after checking my ID. I just shouted "I'M FINE!!" and blundered through the doors un-opposed.

Perhaps the motivation behind his query was something to do with my friend pulling me to an abrupt stop outside the pub, and then my inquiring in a very slurred voice "[Friend's name], where are we!?...Oh....*stumbles backward and looks up at sign*...Whetherspoons! Great!"

Good times.

Up Shit Fjord Without an Oar

2009-09-30T19:39:00.004+01:00

Bleeegghhh!

Not much happened today.

Watched Cloverfield. Was shit. Went to seminar. Sat next to Tina. Listened to some post-modernists bullshit about epistemological dichonomies for awhile, watching them talk a lot yet say very little - most of which went so far over my head that I almost felt compelled to alert air traffic control. Tina didn't have a facking clue what was going on either though, so it seems it wasn't just me being dense.

Then I got the train back home.

And then, or rather, just now, then the faeces hit the rotar blades. You see, by Friday I have to have signed up for a mandatory "library skills" session using an online system run by the university. I was told to pick a session that did not clash with any of my lectures. However, from what I can see, all but one of the sessions clash with a lecture. And the one session that doesn't clash is already full.

But, and here's the worrying thing: The "library skills" sessions are part of a module called "POL1018". The lectures they all clash with are also part of POL1018. So logically, there should be only one slot anyone could sign up for. Yet people have signed up for the others, and there has been no information about this - so clearly I am missing something that everyone else understands. And yet whichever way I look at it, the clash seems to be present. So, I have e-mailed the module leader for POL1018 about this.

But if everyone else has understood it, then that suggests that it is really blindingly obvious, and so I am going to look utterly stupid. I hate how there are so many things that neurotypicals can just automatically understand, and yet are totally beyond my comprehension - which relies on attempted application of logic, rather than a proper understanding of social convention. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I just hope my mistake is not too stupid. It will not look good if it is.

But I have puzzled over this for more than an hour, I have looked at it in so many different ways, and still the clash seems present. Yet it can't be. So what the fuck is going on?

Ah well, the e-mail is sent now. I pray to the god I don't believe in that I don't emerge from this looking like a total fuckwit.

One Leafed Clover

2009-09-30T11:14:00.004+01:00

I just watched the film Cloverfield on my laptop.

It was SHIT! Do not ever watch this film! If you see it in a store, stay at least 12 feet away from it at all times, and notify the appropriate authorities, so it can be safely destroyed. Eugh, what a waste of fecking time. Shittest film I have seen in a long time. It's not at all cerebral, yet it doesn't have any action either. Oh, and by the way, there's no romance, no horror, no gore to speak of, no real violence, no plot, no social commentary...I don't know who this film is supposed to appeal to, it seems like a huge void where substance and genre should be. Do. Not. Buy. Director Matt Reeves does not deserve your money for this piss poor, pathetic excuse for a film.

Hilariously, next to the BBCF 15 certificate on the back, it says: "Contains strong sustained threat and moderate horror" - indeed. The sustained threat presumably being the worry that the film will never actually get any better, and thus you will find yourself having wasted both time and money; the moderate horror being when you realise you have just lost 81 minutes of your life and you will never get them back.

Pile. Of. Shite.

Thank you.

All Quiet on the North Eastern Front

2009-09-29T19:43:00.002+01:00

Bleh, not much happened today, no more barriers smashed. I didn't even get to talk to Tina for more than a couple of minutes. Bah. Boring.

I spent this morning watching 28 Weeks Later, the action-flick sequel to that instant classic, brilliant film 28 days later (YES! IT IS AN EXCELLENT FILM! SHUT UP!) - and that was pretty good. Sure, it wasn't cerebral, and it didn't make any significant commentary on important social issues like its illustrious predecessor, but as a short, punchy, gory action film, it ticks all the boxes - IN BOLD.

I'm sorry, zombie films are sort of my guilty secret.

In other news...bleh, there is no news. Tomorrow I will attempt to take the fight to SA once again.

When can I get out of this chickenshit outfit?

2009-09-28T19:43:00.003+01:00

Today I met Tina before my one and only lecture, sat with her in it, and then went to one of the Student Union* bars with her - and we talked for just short of two hours...we didn't actually buy anything at the bar. I also got her e-mail address - there is another barrier smashed.

I shattered a second SA-impediment today. I, for the first time, went in to a pub I had never been to before on my own - and ordered a draught beer for the first time. A half-pint of Guinness, should you be interested to know.

Now, 50 points for anyone who can tell me where the title of this post comes from, without using google. Here are some clues:

"They're coming out of the goddamn walls!"
Remember that this is a word written in the plural, and not the singular.
"Just nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure"
"Game over man! Game over!"
"You want some of this? Oh, you want some to, eh, motherfucker!?"
"I guess she didn't like the cornbread either"

* For American readers, the National Union of Students (NUS) or "Student Union" is an oppressive communist organisation we have in the socialist state of Britain, which provides buildings and facilities exclusively for the use of students, and fights for our rights at a political level. It's a bit like a trade union, really. All students are automatically a member, and there is no fee - although the union has shops and sells discount cards etc to gain funding - the buildings and facilities are collectively owned by all students in the most abhorrently Marxist fashion. The evil communist deeds this union has committed in the past include blocking raised tuition fees and preventing contractual agreements between universities and unethical companies - e.g. those that use child labour. Damn pinkos!

¡No pasarán!

2009-09-27T23:14:00.002+01:00

Further advances against SA have been made today - I intend to break at least one new barrier each day.

I have, for the first time, paid for something in a store with my debit card - I also chatted to the person at the counter for a bit. Furthermore, I have distributed some more money amongst my city's poor and have walked through town listening to my mp3 player - again, not something I have ever done before, for SA related reasons.

Next week, I plan to go the cinema - that will be one hell of a hurdle, but I intend to do my utmost to jump it.

Stand up, all Victims of Oppression

2009-09-26T18:39:00.004+01:00

The advance against SA continues to progress daily. Today I have been into some shops I have never been in to before, asked for a student discount at a clothes shop again, and, and, get this: I approached a guy selling the Big Issue (For American readers, the Big Issue is a magazine sold to homeless people by a charity, and they try to sell it on for a profit) and bought a copy. This involved the following Interaction:

(M=Me) (BIG=Big Issue Guy)

M: Can I get a Big Issue mate?
BIG: [Clearly not expecting any custom) Eh...oh, yeah, sure, of course, of course.
M: It's a quid is it?
BIG: One fifty.
M: Oh, the price has gone up eh?
BIG: Yeah, it used to be a quid, but it's been one fifty for over a year now.
M: Oh right, well I'm not a regular customer, I'm afraid.
BIG: That's alright, that's absolutely fine, no problem at all mate.
M: Ah shit, I've got way too many coins, I'll just give you two quid and you can keep the change.
BIG: Thank you sir, that's very kind.
M: Alright, cheers mate, thanks.

I also find myself going out of my way to help people now. I get great pleasure from this; I am now able to pick up things people drop and carry them back to the person; I will hold doors open for an incredibly long time if there is someone even a fair way off behind me; I give my spare change to the homeless who line the streets; I fully intend to donate some of my limited funds to various charities and other organisations; I am considering joining the socialist party; I will approach people who are on their own waiting for lectures at uni and talk to them; I try to give directions to the lost and advice to the confused...it's great fun, I have long thought I had not been doing enough good in the world, and I am really trying to get on with starting to rectify that now.

Note to Commenters and Other Blog Authors:

I do hope to get around to responding to your comments and posting on your blogs soon, but I am rather tied down at the moment, and still need to rest my tendons. I am, however, still reading your blogs when I get the chance, even if I'm not commenting much or at all - for the time being. Please bear this in mind if you think I am callously ignoring you.

Into the Breach Once More

2009-09-25T16:14:00.007+01:00

Today I have broken yet more barriers.

I asked a random woman in the Metro station whether the train I was catching stopped where I thought it would, then I exchanged a brief joke with a Muslim woman (complete with hijab) who was obviously completely at a loss as to what train she was supposed to be getting, and received contradicting advice from the people on each respective platform.

Waiting for my lecture, I approached a girl who I had briefly talked to the day before who was standing on her own, and initiated a lengthy conversation with her.

So at the moment at least, things seem to be really looking up - in the last 8 days I have achieved countless things I had never managed in the last 18 years.

Oh, and in a moment of cynical humour I decided to buy a leather jacket...that I can ill afford at the moment...and serves virtually no practical purpose whatsoever...and is easily damaged...I was just feeling a bit rock 'n' roll so I decided I would give the old "Spending thoughtlessly when money is tight" thing a try - t'is good fun, if ill-advised as a long-term hobby.

Victories and Defeats for the Lost Cause

2009-09-24T20:16:00.006+01:00

First, the defeats:

I have moved out of my student flat and had it re-let (they found a replacement tenant straight away), I now commute to university each day by train (20 minute walk, followed by 15/20 minute train journey, followed by another 20 minute walk...or by 5 minutes on the Metro if I am feeling lazy) - in this instance SA has won, I had to retreat because I could not survive in that flat with those people. I pity the new tenant - unless they're an absolute wanker, in which case they'll do just fine.

But now, more positive news, I have done loads of things I have never been able to do before:

I have gone in to a bar by myself and bought drinks.
I have shopped at a supermarket.
I have caught buses.
I have caught Metro trains.
I have asked the person in a store if I could get a student discount.
I have talked to random people on public transport and in the street.

I have also talked to some people in lectures and on my course. I have made friends with a Norwegian girl, who doesn't know many people either. I have also befriended a guy who lives locally to the university, and exchanged casual banter with many people.

All this has given me many ideas regarding the treatment of SA, but I shall not unveil these, just yet.

So, to conclude:

Onward!

First Blood

2009-09-21T20:44:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I successfully self-harmed for the first time. Well, actually I guess it was technically today rather than yesterday, as it was some time between midnight and 1AM.

By "successfully" I mean I actually drew blood - I have made skin-deep scratches many times in the past, but the instincts I fight so hard against have always stopped me drawing blood.

I am not using some sort of pathetic little emo-style razor blade you know, I am using a ridiculously blunt knife, breaking the skin requires one to press the blade down incredibly hard, and then rip it across one's own flesh at great speed while still applying the same, intense downward pressure. In the past, the same instincts that have stopped me killing myself made me let up a little on the pressure, and so I never bled.

In other news, guess where my flatmates were at last night? A strip club! Yayyy, wooo....fucking animals.

I heard them talking about me while I was in my room - which shares a wall with the communal kitchen (which now doubles as a communal lounge) - here is what I remember hearing:

"...if he's a little nerd....you've got to remember, it's not our fault he's in with us...he has been back today, he moved the chairs away from his door [last night when I was back at home they piled up a load of chairs against my room door]...but he might have gone out again...if he's got away with it...we can't do that, that would be assault...he might press charges...he probably thinks we're a bunch of dickheads"

And yes they were talking about me, before some optimist leaps in to suggest that the six other people in my flat may have been referring to something other than their seventh flatmate by "he's in with us" and that the whole chairs/doors thing could just be a coincidence - I did hear my name thrown about among all this too.

I went back to get some stuff today, and they harassed me with questions...and threw a box of condoms at me.

Suicide Revisited

2009-09-20T21:07:00.004+01:00

Tonight I tried to kill myself again.

It is a few months since I last did that.

It wasn't a particularly well thought out attempt, I was having something of a short-duration/high-intensity break down sort of thing, and my suicidal effort was impulsive, born of reckless passion rather than cool headed planning and rational thought.

My mother stopped me.

Yes. I write this at home. Things are fucked. Utterly fucked. Everything has gone to shit.

But sometimes when everything goes to shit, it gives you a new perspective on things. I realise now that I was foolishly, naively ambitious before, I must make realistic plans, not idealistic plans.

So I am planning now. I like planning, it comforts me. As long as my mother feeds and houses me - and she will, because she does not want me to kill myself, which is what I will do if she stops feeding/housing me - I will start doing things my way. Attempting to conform has failed, so I will resort to the techniques I last fell back on in year 6 at primary school - you remember? The time I became the most popular guy in school? I intend to resurrect my blunt, cold-blooded methods of that time and to survive. I do not care if I fail in this endeavour, as that can only mean either suffering or death, and if it means the former I will inflict the latter on myself, I do not mind death at all.

Even now, I am sorely tempted to take all my beta-blockers at once, and wash them down with some vodka. My heart rate would slow down to zero, and I would die. The only thing that prevents me is that if this was really such an easy and painless method, it would have been mentioned on one of the suicide websites I frequent. The fact that it has not been mentioned suggests to me that perhaps this would be a painful and drawn-out way to die. So I restrain myself from that temptation.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here

2009-09-19T21:59:00.003+01:00

(What follows is a transcript of a post I just put up on the social anxiety forum, as I think it should go here too)

Uni life is starting to prove difficult...

...and it's only the second day.

My flatmates are all loud, confident, laddish males for whom life is a non-stop orgy of drink, drugs, sex, music, sex, drink, sex, drink....oops, got carried away there for a second.

Someone has already vomited all over our shared toilet - I suspect I will end up cleaning this up as the perpetrator clearly didn't feel the need to bother.

I am hunched over my laptop in my study bedroom, with the main light off and the door locked, doing my best impression of not being in. Outside I can hear shrieks and yells and music and loud voices and shouts of laughter.

I went back to my parents house today, it is only 15 minutes away by train - I didn't return until quite late on, and when I returned I was greeted by 7 people loudly shouting my name at me, and demanding to know where I had been. They were playing some sort of drinking game involving cards and eggs...

Anyway, they have just gone out - I slipped in to my room and they didn't notice I wasn't with them - fortunately they have so far not returned to haul me out of my room and drag me on some drunken, hedonistic trip around the city - though if they do I will say I am ill - which, in truth, I am - but that is not the reason I won't be going out with them.

There was a time when I thought that a fresh start with new people would make things easier, that I would be able to pretend to be a confident, outgoing, normal person. But my lack of social experience combined with my severe anxiety disorder have put paid to that ambition - it is funny the illusions we cling to in the face of SA, how we tend to believe that if only our circumstances were different we would be able to get on. Unfortunately reality isn't like that, this is all there is.

I am trying to stagger my meal times to avoid being in the shared kitchen when my fellow flatmates are around or likely to be using it - sadly this means skipping some meals altogether.

Thank you for reading my cathartic rant - if you want to take something constructive away from it, then let that be the message that university is not a place for those with severe SA - and if you must go, don't move out just because you are horrified by the concept of being one of those people who live with their parents well into their twenties or even later. Sponging off the people who brought you in to this world without any prior consent from yourself is definitely the way to go for those with severe SA. __________________

This is Outrider One, Come in

2009-09-19T01:12:00.003+01:00

I have spent the last 2 hours drinking beer and eating ridiculously cheap microwave popcorn while watching Die Hard with the 2 of my 6 flatmates who I have met. They seem nice enough.

It is 1:15 AM, I am sat in my study bedroom, I will sleep here tonight - I am moved out.

You may wish to hear about the operation I had yesterday, or rather, the day before yesterday - if you want to be pedantic.

Essentially, it went something like this:

Arrive.
Wait around for ages
Answer a load of questions
Wait around for ages
Change into far from modest hospital gown, put on fortuitously acquired dressing gown and slippers to avoid indecent exposure charges
Wait around for ages
Go to anaesthetist's room - remove dressing gown, lie on bed, have strange circular things and other monitors attached to body
Watch heart rate soar due to anxiety - I hit 134bpm at one point - indeed, I went higher than that but I started looking away from the monitor because watching my heart rate go up made me anxious and that just compounded the problem
Note crude drawing of sparrow/robin standing on a spade handle on ceiling of anaesthetist's room - consider this to be incongruous
Trainee anaesthetist attempts to insert tap in to left hand, fails badly, causing much bleeding in the process
Proper anaesthetist successfully inserts tap in to right hand
Have oxygen mask held over face
Have anaesthetic put in to bloodstream through tap in right hand, feel mild coldness spreading up arm
Asked how I am feeling, reply "just normal" - but this comes out hopelessly garbled because I have an oxygen mask pressed over my face - all laugh
Suddenly wake up, with a vague recollection of having had some sort of dream
Get wheeled to another room
Eat some shitty toast and drink a cup of tea
Wait around for ages
Get discharged
Suffer - take shit lots of pain killers.

That is all.

I am moved out.

2009-09-18T21:41:00.002+01:00

This will be a short message, I have a time constraint.

Essentially, right now I am huddled in my study bedroom, listening to the voices of my flatmates outside. Social anxiety disorder is not fun, nor is making a "fresh start" with new people as easy as I had imagined.

One of my flatmates just knocked at my door and asked if I wanted to come out - bear in mind I cannot drink much when I am on prozac, and I am currently taking the following pain killers after my hospital appt:

Diclofenac (sp?); Ibuprofen; Codeine (sp?); Paracetamol.

Oh dear. Ah well.

Much stuff been a'happening

2009-09-12T12:22:00.005+01:00

Where to start, where to start...

On the 8th I saw my GP again, and basically just got another lot of fluoxetine pills.

On the 9th I had my pre-op assesment at the hospital - no, I'm not having a sex change, fack off you. Anyways, they took my blood pressure, which was unusually high for someone my age, but the woman put that down to anxiety - then took my weight and height. Then the nurse had to do a swab for MRSA - by inserting a cotton bud on a stick up my nose - it was like CSI but less glamorous. Following that, I was sent behind a curtain to do by own "groin swab" - another MRSA test, and had a rare opportunity to scratch my own crotch with a cotton bud. Mmmmm...*sigh*

After all of this, she ran through a questionnaire with me - had I had any strokes, heart attacks etc etc. It was all good. She was a very friendly person, perhaps it is another sign that the fluoxetine is working that I managed to hold a fairly relaxed conversation with her - about her children, and university and A-levels and about my anxiety disorder and other things. And when it was all over, I was delightfully informed that I would be in considerable pain and probably bleeding for several days after my appointment (and I am moving out the day after, remember) - but hey, not to worry! - apparently all this will "start to fade" after two to three days. Great. I am stockpiling enough painkillers to provoke a republican into declaring war on me and privatising my oil reserves. Sorry, I can't resist the odd bit of political humour every now and again.

Then on the 10th I had my appointment with the enigmatic "primary care link worker" - who is essentially just a type of mental health worker. I took a beta-blocker before I set off, because I was quite anxious about the whole thing. When I got there, I walked through some dilapidated, tiny little wooden side gate marked "entrance", then followed the signs directing me around a construction site of scaffolding and JCBs to the door marked "main entrance", after entering which I found myself staring at another door and reading a sign telling me to press the buzzer and talk to the receptionist over the intercom. Oh well, I did that, then was told that the woman I was there to see wasn't in (it later emerged she had thought she was seeing me at a different place), so I would have to go and wait on the upstairs landing - where I sat worrying for some time.

Eventually, my Primary Care Link Worker arrived, and we went into a little room off some winding little corridor and sat down. We discussed my anxiety for awhile, which I found quite hard, since describing the feelings I get is almost impossible - but at least listing the physical symptoms was not hard, nor discussing the irrational thoughts. Then I had to fill in some questionnaires about depression and anxiety. The anxiety one listed some symptoms down the side, and then across the top had a list of frequencies running from "not at all" (0) to "almost all the time" (3), and I had to circle the numbers under these columns for each symptom - I found myself circling 3 for almost all of them.

After the questionnaires came the really uncomfortable bit - where I had to discuss my suicidal thoughts with her. I tried to do this as honestly as possible, but I find it difficult to talk about such things with people. I remember she told me something which I have heard several times before, but always found strange - that if I ever started feeling suicidal I could call X number or go to A&E or whatever...as if when I am feeling suicidal I am battling against some treacherous urge to kill myself. No, when I am feeling suicidal I want to kill myself, the only battle is against the mental and emotional and instinctive forces which try to stop me - so why I might want to put myself in A&E where I would have no chance of a successful suicide attempt is beyond me.

I have another appointment with her on the 16th, and walked away with a booklet on social anxiety with some bits to fill in. Amusingly, it starts with a "do you have social anxiety?" section, which ends with the line "if you have ticked many of the boxes, you may have social anxiety" - I ticked 23 out of 27, is that "many"?

And now the final part of my post, in which I should mention two things which are coincidentally linked. They both involve my lamentable inability to trust people, and they both involve females for whom I have great respect.

The first incident relates to an internet friend on the social anxiety forum - we have been exchanging PMs for many weeks now. Perhaps this is "sad", but I fail to see how, apart from the convenience, it is any different to the time honoured concept of a "pen friend". Anyway, in the last PM she sent me she said that she was experiencing a lot of self-doubt, paranoia, even, and was finding it hard to believe I actually liked her - she thought I must find her annoying, and told me that if I wanted to stop talking to her I should just tell her. Well, my first thought on reading this was that she found me annoying and was desperately looking for an excuse to stop talking to me - then I examined this idea from a detached perspective, and saw how stupid it must look - we both have S.A.D, it is natural we will both have these thoughts. So I wrote back to her assuring that if I ever decided I didn't want to talk to her, I would tell her this straight away, but that I didn't think that was likely because I really did find her very interesting and so forth - my attempted logical arguments as to why I did actually like her went on at some length.

The second incident almost seems like the above situation in reverse. I got a text from a girl I was friends with at sixthform, but who I had blocked on MSN along with all the other people who used to know me IRL - I wanted a fresh start. Anyway, she said that she missed me and wanted to talk to me on MSN. Once more, my first thought was neatly served up by SA - that she didn't really want to talk to me, this must be some plot to try and humiliate me. But again, I decided that was stupid, so I decided to talk to her.

Before too long, I ended up admitting I had blocked her - and this was the reason she had not seen me online for such a long time - I lie and deceive people a lot, because I have to, but I also try to be honest - I tell people that I lie to them, is that weird? Anyway, I expected offended shock, what I got was earnest concern. I think my respect for her increased by half as much again at that moment - someone who assumes I must have a reason for doing something seemingly negative towards them before assuming I'm just being a twat, incredible. So I decided I wanted to tell her about my SA - but she is so popular, how can I know she won't disseminate the information to all and sundry? Did she even like me at all, or was I right in the first place to think this was all a trick? I put these questions to her, and the result was an almost farcial reflection of the situation with my internet friend - this time, it was my long respected female acquaintance protesting that she really did like me, whereas just two days before it had been the same thing but the other way around.

Realising this, I told her pretty much the whole story, from my poor health to my depression to my isolation from normal people to my social anxiety disorder - including the fact that I am on anti-depressants and seeing a mental health worker. I did not expect her to understand, I expected derision - mockery of the pathetic loner too scared to answer his phone. Society is like that, after all - people are always trying to prove their superior social courage over others. However, to my profound astonishment, she seemed to understand better than my doctor had, and almost straight away. She is going to the same university as me and has offered to help me integrate and meet people etc. I hope this offer remains standing and that I can take advantage of it, though I worry about burdening her since I already owe her so much. Back in sixthform, in the first year, I had lost what few friends I had - I was just about ready to drop out - was already eyeing a job as reprographics technician at a local college - when she, one of the most popular people in all of sixthform, started talking to me - the weird isolated loner. Normally to even associate with me at all would destroy someone's social standing, but she befriended me - I sat with her in most of my frees, and she was in my I.T lessons too. It so happened that our respective senses of humour were wonderfully compatible - hell, from time to time we could both end up in hysterics just from a mere exchange of glances. After befriending her, I was a lot less depressed, started to make a few more friends and, ultimately, decided to stay on at sixthform. It was my friendship with her that scored me the few invitations to social events I have had - that party I was so worried about and wrote about extensively on here - that was hosted by her. I feel like I owe her massively, and now she is offering to help me out yet again. I really start to feel guilty about this, I have a strong sense of obligation and feel I should be able to do something to help her out in return - but what can I do? I am the mentally ill weird loner, I try to help people whenever I can, but I am not very good at it, or in a position to offer many people any meaningful help with anything. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Where I have been and why I'm not posting much

2009-09-06T17:49:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately, my RSI/Tendonitis has been quite bad lately, so I have been avoiding computers. So if I seem to be ignoring any comments/e-mails/PMs/whatever that you send me, and don't update my blog much - you now know why.

On the medication front: I have been on the fluoxetine/prozac for over 2 weeks now, and have yet to die or go psycho. I think my anxiety may have reduced a little, but it is hard to tell because I have lots of things to worry about at the moment.

Oh, and when they say SSRIs might cause "sexual dysfunction"; they aren't joking. I hear they have been proposed as a treatment for premature ejaculation - well that's great, provided the individual in question is willing to forgo any sense of pleasure and has at least fifteen minutes to spare.

Oh I see, I'm disgusting? Bah - if you are wearing a disapproving scowl on your face you are either a hypocrite, too young to be reading my blog or a social pariah, so fack off :P

Have a nice day, children.

Officially Link my Primary Care

2009-08-28T14:35:00.004+01:00

I got a letter from...I don't even know where, but from some office of the NHS that is relatively nearby. Apparently a "Primary Care Link Officer" wants an appointment with me on the 10th of September.

Well, between the pre-op check I have at the hospital on the 9th (which I originally thought this letter would be about) and the operation on the 17th, and moving out on the 18th, I actually have the 10th free -great. But er, I have no idea what a "Primary Care Link Officer" is, and I am supposed to call her(?) to confirm I can come on the date/time mentioned in the letter.

Perhaps it is a sign that the Fluoxetine is working that I think I am up to making this phone call, though I am not going to do so immediately, I'll call in an hour or so - I might take one of my (propranolol) beta-blockers beforehand - which will be the first time taking them if I do.

I think this must be to do with my Social Anxiety Disorder...if I had to guess I would say a "Primary Care Link Officer" is some kind of go-between, between the GP (primary care) and the Psychotherapist (or whatever). We shall see.

Registered for Uni Course

2009-08-27T20:34:00.002+01:00

Yay, I am now "provisionally registered" on my university course, after completing the slightly arduous online registration process...well actually it wasn't so much arduous as ambiguous, but then I eventually discovered if you hovered over things it had helpful tooltips to explain exactly what they wanted you to write, so it's all good.

Next uni related task: Set up student bank account.

In other news, I haven't slept at all the last 2 nights - should I blame the Prozac for this? I am not sure, when I first started taking it it actually helped me sleep.

A Week on Prozac

2009-08-26T19:48:00.003+01:00

In a few hours, I will have my 7th 20mg Fluoxetine (better known by its trade name 'Prozac') green and yellow tablet. They have 'F20' and 'BJ' written on them in tiny black letters. I assume 'F20' refers to Fluoxetine 20mg, but I have no idea what 'BJ' is supposed to mean - one is almost hesitant to guess.

So far, I have not died, and the only discernible side-effect has been intermittent periods of drowsiness, however I have also had some minor head and stomach aches, though whether these are down to the tablets or not I have no idea. Apparently I should allow at least 14 days before I see any effect, so that is probably why so far I have not seen much tangible reduction in my anxiety...I think the feeling that it is better by some minuscule amount is mere placebo.

In other news - I got my offer of university accommodation today. I was not offered either of the places I applied to - both full, I presume, but instead got a room in a 6 person flat with shared bathrooms/toilets, a communal kitchen and "lounge" - which is in a '60s extension to some giant Victorian-esque building in the middle of nowhere owned by the university. I will be needing to get a bus to and from campus.

I am worried as to what the other five people I will be staying with are going to be like, but oh well, I hope they are alright.

That is all.

Anti-Depressants and Beta-Blockers - Good Times

2009-08-20T21:01:00.004+01:00

Yes, that was a very sarcastic and bitter use of the phrase "good times".

While I am glad I was prescribed something...I am a little nervous about being on stuff like this (It is Fluoxetine 20mg)...the list of side-effects is pretty serious. Seeing those pills there really drives home how fucked my life is.

The appointment went pretty badly, I feel, despite the successful result (or maybe that is just the SA talking), I am also being referred to a psychiatrist, alongside given the anti-depressant and the beta-blockers.

And that is all I feel up to writing on the subject right now, I just wanted to put all this down on the record - for posterity, you understand.

A Level Results - and GP Appointment Today

2009-08-20T11:24:00.004+01:00

Well, at long last I have my A-level results, and know I am going to uni.

My results are as follows:

Sociology: A
English Language: B
Information and Communication Technology: B

Since I only needed 3 Bs to get on my course, I am happy with these results, though slightly annoyed that I was only 5 overall marks (out of 600) off getting a second A in English Language. Bah, never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, I might just as easily have failed altogether. Though on the plus side I got 530/600 for Sociology, when I would have only needed 480 to get an A, so I was well within the top grade boundary for that.

Irritatingly, the UCAS website has crashed under all the traffic it's getting (as it does every year, one would think they would have provisioned for this by now) so I can't confirm my place yet. I hate how we have to do so many confirmations...you confirm when you give "firm" acceptance of the offer of a place, then you have to confirm again when the results come out, via the UCAS website, then you have to confirm again on the first day of uni by signing some forms...*sigh*

And oh fuck my GP appointment for Social Anxiety Disorder is at something past 7PM (British Time) today, and I'm shit scared. AAAAAAGH!

Update:

UCAS has confirmed my place, yay!

Also, 3 hours and 50 minutes to go to GP appointment...I think I am developing tourettes, as I am currently sat here staring at my screen shouting "Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit!" in constant repetition...I often do this when I am particularly nervous, it has a very, very, very slight cathartic effect...it was also a good technique back in the days when I had to do PE to distract myself from the cold, as I did my best to stand out of the way while all the halfway decent sportspeople attempted to play football in the freezing winter cold. Ahh the powers of random swearing.

Depression Easing...But Social Anxiety GP Appt. Tomorrow

2009-08-19T20:03:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow is the day the A-level results are released and the day I will find out if I have the requisite grades to get on to my university course. It is also the day I have a double-appointment booked at the local GP surgery to try and get prescribed meds for my Social Anxiety Disorder. I am terrified about this, and I still might cancel it in the morning...hopefully my resolve will hold, but I am not even sure I want to do this right now or if I want to see this particular doctor - he has seen me before and since I usually am pretty "normal"-ish when in a doctor's office discussing mundane medical issues, I am worried he might not take me seriously.

Oh well, I am currently trying to write down my "symptoms" (if such they can be called, I tend to think of the whole thing as one huge symptom that affects everything I do - but I am trying to break it down and give specific examples nonetheless) and such like in a concise manner so a piece of paper can hopefully do much of the talking for me.

Fortunately my depression seems to have eased back and I am feeling a lot more motivated to do things at the moment, so I hope I can go through with this appointment and all goes well. Ah well, this is all I feel up to writing on the subject for now --end post --

Abdominal Migraine...or Panic Attack?

2009-08-19T19:33:00.006+01:00

I have for a long time felt it strange that, despite having much more severe social anxiety than most people on the support forums I have discussed the issue with, I have never had a panic attack - yet many people who have less severe social anxiety have them regularly.

Well, it turns out I might have in fact have had several panic attacks - I was just told they were "abdominal migraine" when I asked people (not doctors) about the experiences and accepted that at face value, even though I thought it strange that I should have a childhood disorder set in at 17-18.

A recent thread on the social anxiety forums prompted me to look up the symptoms of "panic attack" as specified in DSM-IV - and found them incredibly similar to my experiences of what I thought was abdominal migraine - I described one such experience here. So when I saw that the symptoms of panic attack were really similar to my so-called "abdominal migraines", I looked up the symptoms of abdominal migraine, and found they weren't at all like my experience. E.g. Abdominal migraine needs to last at least 1 hour to be classified as such, and mine were usually over within 15 minutes - a panic attack lasts anywhere from 15 seconds to 30 minutes, but apparently 15 minutes or so is quite a common duration for them.

I will quote from my post on Asinine Rants, and then from wikipedia's description of Panic Attack symptoms, and embolden the symptoms I actually experienced in each transcript:

From Asinine Rants:

"I just had my second experience of what internet people kindly diagnosed was "abdominal migraine" the last time I had it. An experience I will recount now, 'cause it was quite interesting, actually - I mean, who ever heard of "abdominal migraine"??

Basically, there I was, sitting, not surprisingly, in a chair, when I suddenly started to get an intense pain in my stomach. Since I had recently had lunch and then had to sprint about a quarter of a kilometer, I put this down to indigestion. Worryingly, this pain gradually increased, and as I tried not to concentrate on it, it seemed to spread to my head, in a manner much like I would imagine it would feel if one's brain were to spontaneously combust. Then I started sweating incredibly profusely, for no reason, it was like when you squeeze a wet sponge and fluid pours out of all its pores.

Now, and here is the interesting part, the edges of my vision started glowing, and then suddenly my whole vision was filled with green and purple and yellow light. So much so that I couldn't read the words on the white piece of paper in front of me. Then the white piece of paper started glowing too. And then everything white seemed to be glowing, and the windows and light sources and shiny surfaces just looked like pure white, glowing ruptures in the fabric of space-time. Then, my tinnitus started to become incredibly loud, yet all the other sounds in the room became incredibly quiet, except for a few specific ones, which became massively loud - when I moved the piece of paper in front of me, it sounded like the arctic ice-shelf was shearing off inside my ears. I experienced a sensation of utter isolation from the other people who were in the room with me, it was like they, and the room, weren't there. Like being in a bubble. This, apparently, is called 'derealisation'. It was so odd. And when I moved my hands it was like I was detached even from myself, as if they were someone else's hands moving, and I could just sense this is some sort of distant manner. This is apparently called 'depersonalisation'. The whole thing was over in about 10-15 minutes, apart from some lasting nausea and mild headache."

From Wikipedia:

"

A discrete period of intense fear or discomfort, in which four (or more) of the following symptoms developed abruptly and reached a peak within 10 minutes:

Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate

Sweating

Trembling or shaking

Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering

Feeling of choking

Chest pain or discomfort

Nausea or abdominal distress

Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint

Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)

Fear of losing control or going crazy

Fear of dying

Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations)

Chills or hot flashes

...Sufferers of panic attacks often report a fear or sense of dying, "going crazy", or experiencing a heart attack or "flashing vision", feeling faint or nauseated, heavy breathing, or losing control of themselves.

"

Notice the similarities?

Now look at this description of abdominal migraine:

"

The episodes of pain are of moderate to severe intensity and is felt in the midline of the abdomen, usually around the umbilicus, or poorly localised. The attacks of pain are usually accompanied by anorexia and nausea and about half of the patients will vomit with at least some attacks. Marked pallor is commonly noted during the attacks although some patients may appear flushed. The pain is severe enough to interfere with normal daily activities and many children describe their mood during the attack as one of intense misery. The attacks are self limiting and resolve spontaneously and patients are completely well and symptom free between attacks.

The onset of attacks of abdominal pain may be at any time of day but occurs most frequently first thing in the morning on waking. Associated symptoms include photophobia (sensitivity to light), phonophobia (sensitivity to sound) and dizziness in many children.

The symptoms of abdominal migraine normally appear in childhood before puberty, reaching a peak at the age of twelve years and thereafter falling rapidly. In most patients the symptoms of abdominal migraine will resolve with age but in one third of patients the symptoms will persist until the teenage years. Most patients will develop migraine headaches. Very occasionally the onset of symptoms may be during the teenage years or in adults.

"

Taken from http://www.cafamily.org.uk/medicalinformation/conditions/azlistings/a13_2.html

I have still emboldened the symptoms I suffered, but also I have highlighted in red the parts which contradict my experience. There is also, as I previously mentioned, a diagnostic criterion for abdominal migraine that states the attack has to last at least 1 hour and no more than 72 hours to meet the diagnostic requirements. So to me, it is starting to look increasingly like I was having a panic attack, rather than abdominal migraine, on the occasion I described in the Asinine Rants post I just quoted.

Any thoughts, people? I would be most interested in the opinions of those who actually have experienced panic attacks, abdominal migraine or both

Post-Script:

Having read up some more on panic attacks, I am almost entirely convinced that I was having a panic attack, not abdominal migraine. Apparently the feeling of heat that spread to my head (which an epileptic acquaintance once told me was similar to how he felt when a seizure was starting) is because during a panic attack blood is pumped away from the stomach (hence the pain) to other parts of the body, and hence the feeling of spreading heat. Also, a panic attack information website has a section which describes in great detail pretty much every tiny detail I experienced, so I am now very much inclined to go with the panic attack explanation.

Major Depressive Disorder

2009-08-18T15:58:00.005+01:00

...and Colonel Anxiety Issues? Sorry, that pun just occurred to me on the fly.

You may have noticed that I have not been writing to either of my blogs as much as I used to. Those who frequent the same forums as I will perhaps also have noticed that my postings have dropped off there too. Furthermore, the blog owners out there may have realised that I am not commenting on their posts...when usually I am a somewhat prolific commenter on the random thoughts and happenings of people I will never meet.

Motivation seems to be the problem. And not in the sports instructor/corporate culture twat/military officer "YOU NEED TO GET SOME MOTIVATION!" sense. No, not like that. It is not a feeling I have ever experienced this severely or for this length of time before. An intense inability to embark on, well, just about anything. And rather than boredom, as would normally result from such protracted inactivity, I merely feel, well, how should I say...emptiness? Bringing myself to begin writing this post took an hour and 3 minutes, and as you will no doubt have realised, I am not putting much effort into the whole affair. I simply cannot find the will to do things anymore.

When this strange feeling first began to make itself felt, I was quite relieved...I began to lose all my futile, unobtainable desires - previously a great cause of stress in my existence. I also found myself needing considerably less food...and eating is a rather mundane, repetitive ordeal, so I was glad of being able to indulge in less of it, without any apparent adverse effects.

Recently, however, things are becoming increasingly problematic. I have things I want to write, I have blog posts I want to comment on and threads I want to start - yet my ability to derive pleasure or satisfaction from these activities, or even embark on them to begin with, is almost entirely absent. And this is frustrating. Writing was one of the few things I could gain enjoyment from....now, I do not. I cannot even be bothered to start. I read the writings of others...but what would normally provoke an impassioned response now has no effect on me whatsoever. I still feel like I should respond...but I cannot. The will, the motivation, it is gone.

I remember when I first began to think I might have Cyclothymia. A suspicion based upon my strange mood swings from almost euphoric happiness to melancholic sadness - which seemed to follow a vaguely consistent pattern, in so far as the depressive periods almost always followed the euphoric ones. I still spent most of my time in a detached middle-ground, yet on fairly regular occasions I would suddenly be lifted out of this, only to be dropped crashing down to new lows, then steadily return to my nihilistic equilibrium. I discounted the possibility of such a diagnosis, because I did not meet the criteria outlined in DSM-IV. One of the criteria I did not meet was "Loss of interest or pleasure in activities which would normally provide enjoyment". Remembering this, I have gone and looked up the symptoms of depression again.

Here are the criteria for a "Major Depressive Episode" (a symptom of major depressive disorder, natch), accompanied by my introspective analysis:

For the better part of nearly every day, the patient reports a depressed mood or appears depressed to others

Well, the sensation I describe certainly lasts the better part of nearly every day, and my mother is insistent that I am suffering some form of depression, so I clearly appear depressed to others.

People suffering with depression tend to lose interest in things they once found enjoyable. Activities are no longer enjoyable and there is often a loss of interest in or desire for sex. People who are depressed may say, "I just don't care anymore," or "nothing matters anymore." Friends and family of the depressed person may notice that he/she has withdrawn from friends, or has neglected or quit doing activities that were once a source of enjoyment.

I have all but quit writing, I don't do anything else, I certainly have had a loss of both interest in and desire for sex - a symptom for which I am most thankful. I find it very difficult to do anything with enthusiasm or flair any more, so I think I concur with the above.

Changes in appetite take on two manifestations: under- or over-eating. In the first instance, some people never feel hungry, can go long periods of time without wanting to eat, may forget to eat, or if they do eat a small amount of food may be sufficient.

Ah, so that is a symptom of depression is it? Oh...well since I never feel hungry anymore, and my eating is reduced to 1 slice of bread with butter in the morning, and whatever my mother decides to cook for an evening meal (which I consume out of politeness rather than necessity), I would say this applies.

Nearly every day the patient sleeps excessively, known as hypersomnia, or not enough, known as insomnia.

Well, I don't get to sleep until 3-5AM anymore, and then I wake up at roughly 2PM most days. So in regard to this criterion I seem to be lucky enough to have the best of both worlds - insomnia and hypersomnia. Great.

Nearly every day others can see that the patient's activity is agitated or slow.

I dunno about this, maybe, maybe not...I haven't noticed any marked difference in my activity being slower or more "agitated" than usual, and don't think anyone else has commented on this.

Nearly every day the person experiences extreme fatigue.

Well I'm not exactly energetic, but I wouldn't say I experience "extreme fatigue"

Nearly every day the patient feels worthless or inappropriately guilty. These feelings are not just about being depressed, they may be delusional.

Honestly, do normal people really think of themselves as both worthy and guilt-free all the time? I have always felt worthless, we are all worthless, humanity is worthless, what kind of criterion is this? And yes I feel guilty, guilty that I cannot do things I feel I should because my anxiety disorder gets in the way. Is that "inappropriate" guilt, though? I don't know.

Noted by the patient or by others, nearly every day the patient is indecisive or has trouble thinking or concentrating.

Not any more so than usual, I don't think, but then maybe I just haven't been concentrating enough to analyse the situation accurately.

The patient has had repeated thoughts about death (other than the fear of dying), suicide (with or without a plan) or has made a suicide attempt.

Well I do all three of those, but probably less so than I did when this sensation first came over me. I used to intensely want to be dead and struggled against my instincts to try and kill myself. Now, I lack the motivation for suicide or suicide plans or whatever.

So, in light of all of this...I still have no idea whether what I am experiencing is "depression" or not. I certainly seem to match some of the criteria, but by no means all of them.

And so things go from bad to worse

2009-08-17T19:07:00.005+01:00

I don't believe it - but I should do, because it has been happening with increasing frequency and intensity for the last 2 weeks. Even as I sit here trying to isolate myself from the world as much as possible, the world manages to find a way in through my defences and, since I now strive to avoid heading toward suffering, brings strife to me.

I lack the enthusiasm to indulge in an explanation of the details...suffice to say that lots of bad things have happened over the past fortnight, and they continue to happen, and indeed more of them have happened today.

The problem with being confined by an anxiety disorder to reliance on others, is that, when one has a condition such a dyspraxia, it is difficult to make oneself understood by those others - who then undertake rash actions supposedly in one's own cause. Yet they think themselves to be doing you a great service, because they do not understand - nor do they understand why it takes your anxiety to new heights when they do this.

Myself I have always been a great believer in the art confirmation - I always assiduously strive to make sure that I understand another person's instructions or desires correctly, by telling them my interpretation, and asking them to confirm or deny whether I have interpreted correctly. I repeat this until I understand the neurotypical in question. I wish this was a reciprocal arrangement, they know I do not understand them well, so why can they not comprehend that they don't understand me well?

FUCK. LIFE.

Loneliness

2009-08-17T15:58:00.007+01:00

Isolation.

A word lacking in both resonance and grandeur, yet one that encapsulates with rare candor the state in which I have felt myself imprisoned for many years now. And yet I find myself oddly undecided as to whether this is an incarceration from which I would wish to break free - were such an escape feasible.

Here, alone, I often, in lieu of anything else with which to occupy my time, retreat into deep ponderment of such incorporeal matters. I imagine what it would be like to have friends, to be popular, to meet people. To go out on every Friday night and Saturday afternoon, to converse and congregate with other humans and participate in their peculiar social rituals. To experience their "fun". But the perception I hold of such activities is an illusory one, for there have been rare occasions when I have gone out to meet so-called "friends" in town on a Saturday afternoon and indeed times when I have gone out to one of these "party" things neurotypicals so adore. And the reality falls far short of the illusion. Though perhaps to say that it "falls short" is to be somewhat disingenuous, and, indeed, miss the point entirely. It is not so much that the imagined pleasure of their activities is not matched by the reality, as that I find such enjoyment to be absent entirely.

Talking with other humans, face to face, is rarely a convivial experience, because humans, at least those of my age group, do not talk about things that interest me, about matters of substance. No, they talk about cars, sports, sex, drugs, relationships, cosmetics, fashion, video games and their sacrilegiously idolised celebrities. I do not find the reality of inter-personal discourse to be a satisfactory experience at all, in fact, I find it positively repugnant.

Similarly, their cultish, ritualistic "parties", in which they flail and spasm like a tasered fugitive to a combined sensory assault of light and sound, hold no allure for me. Where is the entertainment in this? Why is this "fun"? How, how can one derive pleasure from such an experience? It makes no logical sense whatsoever. I just cannot begin to comprehend the attraction of these neurotypical ceremonies of hedonism.

And so, I find myself ensnared betwixt the cruel paradox of resenting the ever-present oppressive loneliness that smothers my existence with an inescapable shroud, yet simultaneously I find that the reality of company, of social engagement, does not begin to resemble the discordant phantasmagoria of fictitious imagery which feverishly rushes through my mind as I sit alone imagining what it must be like to be one of THEM. Because in actuality, I cannot enjoy the same things as these humans at all, no matter to what extent my lonely daydreams insist the contrary - indeed, I cannot enjoy these humans. I find their very presence somewhat nauseating, their culture, their values, their deluded consensus - I cannot find a way to make myself exist in congenial harmony with this almost homogeneous mass of repellent humanity.

Why was I born?

Grrrrr.....rrrr....rrrrr

2009-08-15T19:36:00.002+01:00

I hate optimists - they make me want to renounce my commitment to non-violence, smash their cheery, popular-psychology-spouting little faces into a concave mulch with a sledge hammer and scream

"LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF FUCKING THIS!"

Sorry, I'm not feeling too great at the moment, I will explain this post at some later point...possibly

This Bullshit Must Stop!

2009-08-12T19:35:00.007+01:00

Today I read a Guardian editorial about how the U.S. right are spreading false rumours about the UK NHS to support the false rumours they are spreading about Obama's health care plan...again.

And backed by the finance of US big pharma, these lies are spreading like wildfire through the US public, and it is scary - because they are just that, lies - lies whose spread is financed by profiteering pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, and they must be stopped. I apologise for posting this article on both of my blogs, but I must try to shout as loud as a lone blogger can in an attempt to be heard by even one person above the din of the medical industry's big-money advertising.

Here are just some of the lies that are being circulated:

- That Ted Kennedy, 72, would, if he were a British citizen, be denied treatment in the UK for his brain tumour, because he is "too old".

FALSE: This is just simply not true, it just doesn't happen. People aren't denied health care because we consider them "too old" - the hell do you think this is, Logan's Run? The department of health, careful to avoid interfering in US politics yet also committed to defending our health service from the malicious bullshitting of the US right issued the following statement in response:

"There is no ban on anyone of any age receiving any treatment...Whether to prescribe drugs or recommend surgery is rightly a clinical decision taken on a case by case basis" (my bold)

- That in Britain, 40% of cancer patients are never able to see an oncologist.

FALSE: This stupid claim is based on a study that is 15 years old and totally out of date and irrelevant to our modern health care situation. There has since been a huge revamp of the system since this issue was highlighted and it is now pretty much resolved.

- That in Britain we deny people cutting edge cancer drugs

FALSE: This claim is presumably based on the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) policy of determining which drugs should be supplied to patients free on the NHS, based on the efficacy of the treatment. The 'scandal' in question seems to be that sometimes, when it costs tens of thousands of pounds to extend a patient's tortured life by two weeks, the treatment does not receive NHS funding. But they can still go private and pay for the treatment themselves. In America, beyond Medicare and Medicaid, there is NO public provision whatsoever for helping cancer patients with the cost of treatment, so the UK system is a huge step up from the current US system in this regard.

- That in Britain, anyone over 59 years old cannot receive heart repair, stents or bypass because it is regarded as too expensive and "unnecessary".

FALSE: This is just another blatant untruth. The source? An anonymous e-mail sent to elderly voters. Hmmm, sounds pretty reliable to me. In 2008, the average age for UK citizens having an NHS funded bypass operation was 66. The British Heart Foundation's medical director has also said that there are growing numbers of patients over the age of 65 with heart conditions having surgery such as valve repair or bypasses.

- That under a public health care system, nobody will be able to see a dentist and will instead be having to fix their own teeth with superglue.

FALSE: There are problems getting dentists on the NHS, granted, but there is still the option to go private. A public health care program simply extends the access to dentists, by allowing those who previously could not afford the cost to receive treatment and check-ups. It does not take away any private provision that is already in place, but merely adds to it.

- That, according to the Investor's Business Daily: "...People such as scientist Stephen hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man is essentially worthless"

FALSE: Stephen Hawking, a British citizen born in Oxford, England, UK, who lives...in the UK, and recently received treatment at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge (which is in the UK), had this to say "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS...I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived" (my bold) - when the Guardian asked him his opinion on the matter. Perhaps, due to his need for an electronic voice box (as he has motor neurone disease) and subsequent lack of an accent, the Investor's Business Daily just forgot what nationality he was...and where he received his medical treatment. Sure, a quick wikipedia search could have cleared things up for them without the need for any rigorous investigation of the facts, but apparently they felt that even that was unnecessary.

- That people of ill health will be encouraged to opt for assisted suicide.

FALSE: Except in Oregon, assisted suicide isn't even legal in the US (and is still completely illegal in Britain) - this suggestion is utter bullshit

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Look, Americans, a public health care system does not take away the insurance system you already have! It merely adds to it, making it accessible to those who currently receive no health care at all. If you don't want to use the public option you don't have to. And don't start using our NHS as some sort of socialised health care bogeyman, 'cause we have had it since the 1940s and we love it - nobody wants us to end up with the shitty insurance system you're stuck with over there - even the privatisation-happy tories daren't say a word against the NHS. The World Health Organisation ranks the US as 37th in the world for health care. THIRTY SEVENTH! And yet it is the biggest cultural, political, economic and military force on the face of the planet. Tiny old Britain is ranked 18th. So please, stop listening to the bullshit rolling out of big pharma's media outlets and show some compassion - the worst that can happen is that your taxes might go up a little, but hey, America has progressive taxation so the super-rich will pick up most of the burden, and besides - Obama has planned some new indirect taxation initiatives, such as taxing cosmetic surgery, to help fund the whole thing. Please US voting public, stop listening to republicans and their fancy media adverts, and instead listen to the voices of truth and reason.

Praise

2009-08-08T16:00:00.004+01:00

On this post, Tripletmom wrote the following comment:

"I have already voiced my opinion so I won't go there again, since you don't seem to like compliments"

And this reminded me of a post I meant to write - about my strange aversion to praise. I have wrote about that extensively on Asinine Rants⁽¹^,²⁾, but recent events prompt me to write about it here too.

Over the course of the past year I have variously been described, over a multitude of methods of communication from PM to IM to face to face conversation as: "Intelligent", "A genius", "Smart", "Clever", "Easy to talk to", "Funny", having a "great sense of humour", "Friendly", "Interesting", "Eloquent", "A good writer" and my personal favourite: "I'm sure you're not that ugly, Stephen". Oh oh, and last month someone thought it apt to compare me to Gandhi.

And why is this? I do not think any of the above adjectives could be appropriately applied to me, I am definitely in no way comparable to certain historically famous Indian peaceful protestors, and what the hell does an internet person know about the state of my physical appearance!?

But more to the point, why does this praise annoy me? Look, people are being nice for a change! People! Humans! Saying nice things! Well, to be honest, I don't think it takes a Gandhi-esque friendly super-genius to decipher that riddle. The problem, I think, lies in that the vast majority of these comments are from internet people who don't know me at all, and those that were issued "IRL" were from the most casual of acquaintances and uttered in the most throwaway manner. That in itself is, of course, not the issue at hand, my objection is not "Oh no, their praise is not meant!", well, not quite anyway...I just find it irritating that people fallaciously apply such terms to people they don't even know, as if these adjectives are becoming the next "how are you" of neurotypical discourse, being drained of all significance or meaning. It annoys me on this level because I hate how language is robbed of its meaning through casual abuse.

But it also annoys me on another level, because I feel it puts great pressure on me for someone to say such positive things about myself, when in reality, despite their glowing words, I am still, when it comes down to it, me. And I am shit. At most things. Am I expected to live up to all these eulogistic adjectives? Probably not, but the fact that I don't, and indeed never will, is somewhat brutally driven home when I find myself showered with such casually meaningless praise.

And then there is the issue that my two most despised human traits are arrogance and sycophancy - and I cannot tell which I despise more, so much do I detest them both. I do not want sycophants and I do not wish to become arrogant (or more arrogant than I already am, I should probably say) by being the constant recipient of praise. Praise which in reality is utterly false and made no more true by its' being uttered. If someone described me as "a great astronaut", the meaning would be no less false for the phrase being uttered - just so for all the other approbative accolades.

And finally there is the small matter of the 'actions not words' standpoint I still vainly try to hold in all things. Which basically relates to the above paragraph - I would much prefer to be praised on concrete things I actually do, rather than subjected to baseless abstract complimentary typification. I spent ages writing a glossary and FAQ for one of the medical forums that I am on, and I also produced a list of information about different medications for that. All of this took a long time, but the result was empirical - and I was perfectly happy being praised for that effort, especially since all praise was accompanied by constructive criticism as to what I should change, add, or excise. It is abstract praise that concerns me.

But I really should not be so negative about such positive comment, I know. Rationally, my distaste for positive description makes no sense. Further to which, it can be quite a social hindrance. My repeated curt responses (hey, I thought I was being quite subtle) to laudatory PMs and e-mails etc, with all sorts of ever-so-slightly resentful undercurrents, have on past occasions caused considerable offense or lost me friends or internet contacts. And yet still, if I am honest, the distaste remains.

No Motivation

2009-08-07T15:32:00.003+01:00

At the moment, I seem to have lost all motivation for anything. For trying to solve my health problems, for arguing with people on the internet, for posting to my forums, for writing on my blog, for fixing the various imminent real life issues that need attending to...

Why? I can only speculate, but I will give my speculative suggestion while this brief window of proactive opportunity is still open. I think it is because of the inevitability surrounding the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over my neck - which takes the form of my probable moving out on the 1st of September, if I get the requisite grades to get into university.

If that happens, I will have to start living independently, in less than a month. I can't answer the phone, I can't answer the door, I can't go to restaurants, I can't use public transport, I can't go "clubbing", I have no friends...and I need to solve all these issues in 20 days.

But, and get this, I have spent the last ages trying to work myself up to seeing a psych, or even broaching the subject with my parent. And I just can't, when I tried to speak to my already unsympathetic mother about this I literally found myself physically unable to talk, I completely lost my voice and my mouth and throat totally dried up. And I find the prospect of trying to talk to a doctor about this even more intimidating. I just cannot imagine talking to someone about my SA...it is so hard to talk about. My worst anxiety ever arises when I contemplate discussing the details of my SA - what cruel irony, hey, have you ever head of something called Catch-22? Oh, and then there's the teensy issue of such facts as that the meds I need to get for SA have horrible lists of side effects, and that they have often not worked for people or even made their SA worse - it's not great.

And on top of all of this, I find myself increasingly disillusioned with the prospect of help or sympathy from any of these humans. From the smallest individual to the largest social structure, they are all seriously messed up. Through their collective efforts, they have managed to pejorate the experience of suffering itself. I mean, if you start feeling sadness because of your situation, it turns out you are actually experiencing the contemptible emotion of self-pity. Oh, and don't even think about bemoaning your bad luck in developing a large number of rare medical conditions at a young age, because that's not being unfortunate, oh no, that is playing the victim.

I wonder if the police are like that. If you have just been raped or assaulted, and you call them, do they scream down the phone "Stop playing the victim you self-obsessed sack of shit! You go back out there and rape his ass right back!" Does that happen?

And while I am on the subject, empathy itself is also spoke of in derogatory terms by humans. People interpret empathy as arrogance, as an implication that you are better than them. Apparently there is some proud culture of a rejection of such despicable concepts as "pity" or "helping others" among humanity. But then, isn't such a rejection the founding tenant of modern western capitalism itself - ruthlessness, cold-hearted self-interest, individualism...the twisted human mentality goes right from the person on the street to the entire economic system itself and back again. I wonder if this is why people in Scandinavian countries, which still cling with admirable yet futile determination to the last vestiges of western social democracy, seem to be friendlier, on the whole, in comparison with denizens of all other places - most especially the US.

I don't know, does the macro political mirror the micro personal? Is the fact that I'm pondering this just another excuse to stop thinking about the fact that the seconds and minutes are still ticking away? Yes.

Tick - Tock - Tick - Tock - Tick - Tock - Tick - Tock - Tick - Tock

Fuck you, humanity. Bunch of bastards. And I include my self, of course, stuck here unable to do anything because I am constrained by my own ineptitude and "self-pity", too busy "playing the victim" to succeed in my plans to get treatment.

Tick.

Tock.

Chat!

2009-08-03T19:28:00.003+01:00

The day before yesterday, for the first time, I braved the social anxiety forum chatroom - inspite of its fearsome reputation for being incredibly cliquey and hostile to new comers.

I just typed those two lines, and then I realised this story isn't actually going anywhere interesting...and that by the time you read them, they probably won't break neatly over two lines anymore, but hey...I have nothing better to do than write this post, and at least it will be a short one.

Short story short: Actually, that chatroom wasn't at all hostile like I was repeatedly told - contrary to the constant public complaints about its impenetrability, as soon as I joined, despite my initial hopes of lurking in the background, I received an avalanche of welcome messages. Lacking anything better to say, I pointed out that they weren't living up to their cliquey chat-illuminati reputation, and this led to a long and hilarious conversation based around such nuances of chatroom society as the fact that all the regulars address each other by names other than their screen names - they never use the screen names to refer to each other. Ever.

Unfortunately someone then got offended by one of my clique-jokes, but I apologised to them and they said they had just misunderstood, so it was all good. See, that was the little twist in the plotline of this post there. It was a bit of an anti-climax though, wasn't it? Would've been a better story if they'd sent me a death threat and then I'd hacked into Russia's nuclear control centre and started WWIII - but that didn't happen.

So...yeah. How are things going with you, random blog-reading person? Look, you can leave anonymous comments here, you know, so you can really write anything - the spam bots do. We could have a chatroom based entirely on the comments section of this post. No? I thought not, nobody except my followers and the occasional person worried by the suicidal declarations I make when I am in one of my pseudo-dysthmic-episodes, as I call them, ever leaves a comment. Yet strangely, my profile views indicate that they view the blog nonetheless. Perhaps this trend is related to the fact that I can't write for shit, and that even if I could I wouldn't have anything interesting to write about? What's your opinion? I see.

Funneh?

2009-08-01T19:55:00.003+01:00

You Are 78% Misanthropic

Here's the truth: Most people suck. You are just lucky enough to know it.

You're not ready to go live alone in a cave - but you're getting there.

How Misanthropic Are You?

You are 62% stereotypically misanthropic. Whoopie.

You're a grump. A grouch. A malcontent. Good on you. But certain sentimental cues can make you occasionally forget that humans are your natural enemy and must be discomfited as vigorously as possible.

How stereotypically misanthropic are you?
Take More Quizzes

Note, for the second quiz, one question asks you to identify with a movie character and another asks you to identify with a director, but I had not seen any of the films listed (though I have The Silence of the Lambs on order from play.com) nor did I know any of the directors, so I just picked random answers for those questions.

Furthermore, many of the statements were quite anti-poor (those who cannot support themselves should be left to die - that sort of thing), and me being a leftist I naturally voted 'strongly disagree' to these - if humanity is being wiped out then the slaughter should not wipe out the lower classes for the benefit of the more privileged humans - I do not think my leftist sentiments really lower my misanthropy though.

So basically, I think both of these percentages are inaccurate and probably should be higher. Unfortunately the questions were designed by humans, who, as we know, are all idiots.

A New Kind of Nihilism

2009-08-01T19:04:00.003+01:00

I am feeling more nihilistic than ever at the moment, but this time things are different. This is a more misanthropic nihilism. It is less "what is the point" than "why bother, there are humans everywhere".

Example: Today I saw a post on one of the forums I am on which was essentially an attack on disability benefit, suggesting that we should leave the disabled, no matter how severe their predicament, to fend for themselves - and starve to death, if needs be. On the principle that in a world of free markets we shouldn't be giving hand-outs to the unproductive - and other such social Darwinist ideas.

Normally, this would provoke in me a fierce sense of outrage, I would be tearing apart their argument on all social and economic levels, pointing out that even remote tribes on the amazon look after their sick, sharing food with them even though the unfortunate sickly individuals in question cannot hunt or do anything productive themselves.

But I did not respond, my only internal reaction was "pah...humans". I think this is partly because I am less mentally insecure about my political beliefs now. I have read so much about economics that I just know we, the left, are essentially right - in that our system works. History demonstrates it, leftist economics work. Whereas the right merely have populist demagoguery and obscure individual examples to support their crude points. I don't feel a need or compulsion to defend left-wing economics or social policy anymore, no more than I feel a need to defend my view that the earth is round against those who insist it is flat. There isn't a choice between a broken system and a working system, there is a choice between two working systems, one distributes wealth upwards at the expense of humanity as a whole, the other distributes it downwards at the expense of the priveliged. The choice is one between ruthlessness and compassion, and I have come to just expect humans to generally favour ruthlessness. "It is only natural!" as the libertarians cry - and I agree, it is natural. This is why I hate you all.

If you think that political example was a bit obscure, I can also give social examples...I have come to start feeling physically sick at the mere sight of humans when I walk through town. I used to worry so much about how they would judge me, now I don't give a shit. I judge them. Look at them, with their fashion, their cosmetics, their mass conformity. Fecking herd of cruel, selfish, arrogant creatures. Grrr.

I am becoming quite worried...the hatred of them that has engulfed my psyche is beyond anything I have ever experienced before...despite my previous misanthropic declarations, this is not me!

Yet despite my derision, the social anxiety is no less...yet I almost care less about it...it as if I do not care that my life is confined to this house, that I have no friends, because I do not care about anything in a world that is run by them. Humans!

tldr? gfyp

2009-07-31T21:26:00.003+01:00

Is it just me, or is it incredibly annoying and rude for someone to go to a serious and heartfelt thread on a forum, which has a long first post but no replies as yet, and simply write "tldr"? (Too Long Didn't Read)

This really pisses me off...if you can't be bothered to read someone's post - which they spent a long time writing, then fine, you don't have to point that out to them in such a course manner. I write this because I just saw the most crude example of this internet-phenomena on one of the forums I frequent - and no, it was not my thread - despite my tendency towards ridiculously long and rantish posts, I have yet to fall victim to the 'tldr' brigade. Nonetheless, on a medical forum, when someone writes a serious post...I really don't feel this is appropriate.

The reason I won't specify which forum is largely because the 'gfyp' in my post title stands for 'Go fuck yourself, prick' - which is the first thought that went through my mind when I saw this - what is it with internet people and reducing phrases to acronyms?

Itifs dya?

I am returned

2009-07-31T11:22:00.003+01:00

I am, er, back...now. Hello.

However for some reason returning to the internet - and indeed, my computer, after two weeks away spawns a feeling akin to that I expect I would feel if I promptly got up, got into my car, drove southwarduntil it was dark, then walked into a random student nightclub full of neurotypicals having a drunken party. Like cyber-social-anxiety disorder...it is strange.

Though this is a familiar phenomenon, so it shall pass. In the mean time I find myself largely unable to post all the mundane things I want to write about at torturous length, so er, that is why this post is so short and replicated exactly on Asinine Rants/Journal of a Sad Act - depending on which one you're reading now - it just so happens that the identical post on the blog you aren't reading is much more interesting than this one, though that is a barb somewhat foiled by anyone capable of using tabbed browsing.

Anyhoo...that is all...for now.

On Holiday

2009-07-17T13:30:00.000+01:00

I am currently on holiday and thus this blog is inactive for anywhere between 6 days and 3 weeks. If any urgent hate mail or such like needs to be sent, please send it to:

Cobalt_VS@hotmail.co.uk

I still won't be able to check for that between 6 days and 2 weeks, and will probably forget afterwards anyways, but still - there you go.