Sunday 8 June 2008

I've not slept yet, the sun has risen, and I can hear the birds have started singing outside.

"Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd
is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling
cymbal, where there is no love."
Francis Bacon


It's 3:30am and I should be asleep. My alarm is meant to be waking me up at 7:00 so I can get ready to go to work and the way things are going now I can see I'm gonna be in bad shape when it wakes me (providing I actually get to sleep first).

Since I turned out the light to go to sleep a couple of hours ago I've been hit by a series of panic attacks that have got me thinking all kinds of weird and depressing thoughts and it seems no matter how hard I try I can't shake them.

We had our summer ball at uni on Saturday night which is supposed to go on until 5am where everybody is taken from the the ball location to Bournemouth beach to watch the sunrise and be in the survivors photo. In the first year I managed to make it til the end pretty easily but last year I got bored and tired and left a few hours early. This year I was determined to do the same again, but quite early on (from about 10:30pm) I wanted to go home for the same reasons as the 2nd year: boredom, fatigue, and a third reason that I failed to mention before: loneliness.

At the 2nd year summer ball I was feeling a little distanced from my friends cos they were all on pills and I remember I started noticing couples and people pairing off everywhere, which started making me accutely aware of how much I dislike being single (though I should be used to it by now cos I've been single for a long long time and, I should add, I've kinda half-chosen to remain single because I'm scared of actually entering into another relationship). Similar feelings surfaced again this year though admitedly it wasn't quite as bad as the year before.

But really, being single isn't nessecarily the problem that's causing my loneliness, it's feeling unloved that's the problem, which is how I've felt a lot of the time in my life. And I know you must be thinking that there are people in my life such as my family, and yes I'm aware of that, but that's unconditional love and while I'm not trying to knock it, being loved uncondtionally means you don't have to do anything to earn that particular kind of love. The kind of love I've often felt lacking in my life is being loved and appreciated for the person that I am.

These past 5 months or so since I've come to live in the particular house I'm in now there's been extended periods of time where I've found myself the happiest I've been since my last relationship (well, mainly the 1st year of my relationship), and in a wonderful state of contentment because I was actually feeling loved. Because I felt that there were people who loved me for who I am I was able to love and appreciate myself for who I am. Which I suppose reveals my biggest problem and the greatest obstacle to happiness: I'm unable to love or appreciate myself, I can only love what others see in me, and if I feel that they're not seeing it anymore or they start to appreciate me less then I stop appreciating myself.

So recently I've started feeling lonely again and I can only see it getting worse from now on and it will be no one elses fault but mine. Sometime I put myself on a certain path and everything I try and do to get off it will only lead me further down it, gathering speed and momentum and snow balling out of control. It was how my last relationship got messed up. My insecurities, paranoia, and low self esteem turned me into a bit of monster and there's been a couple of instances recently where that same monster has reared it's ugly head and I feel totally ashamed by it. Even everything I've written here could very well be an act of that same monster but I'm not sure.

Am I making sense? I hope not.

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