no beauty could have come from me. I am a waste of breath, of space, of time.
2002-08-13 || 9:20 a.m.

I can't believe that just three weeks ago I was able to get up and go to work. At the moment if I can stop crying for half an hour its a fucking miracle. Its like all the things that have been concerning me and worrying me over the years have come crashing down on me at once and the only explanation I can think of, is that I have time to think about it.

So where do I begin documenting my swift but sure descent into madness? Well, suddenly I can see myself and what I am clearly and this knowledge has crushed me. I am pretty sure I am depressed, I mean depressed as in requiring medication but if I am aware of that, does it negate it? I don't know.

You know you get those silly headache adverts and its always a woman who, with a voice over of something like 'tense, nervous headache?' is wincing and touching her temples. Well, I feel like that. I feel like I can actually identify the band of pressure around my head as pure anxiety. Then I feel bad for the woman in the advert because why is it a woman? Its like that Victorian thing of middle class women with bad nerves because they didn't have enough to do and were totally repressed. Is that what I am?

Then my emotions and my understandings feel like quicksand: shifting constantly but too heavy and cumbersome to deal with.

Then I get this big Sesame Street style word 'friends' in my head mocking me. A big pink, soft, happy, marshmallow type word bouncing around - but behind glass.

But it wouldn't make any difference if I did have friends because its my own barriers that keep me apart and they always have. I keep not feeling like I'm really me, I sort of keep trying to see me as a person rather than a 'me'. I got really upset yesterday when I imagined watching me from above. Seeing me being born, seeing me all small and sweet and just bathed and fed wearing some white nightdress or something. Then I can see me as a child, not sweet, lanky, intense, stroppy, intelligent, distant and I couldn't work out where the link was between those two people. Then I look at me now: petite, intelligent, intense, distant, big 'fuck off' barriers, desperate for something, hardworking, silent, unapproachable, kind, compassionate, hostile, solitary, sociable and its like I'm this mismatch of the two past people.

And then I want to cry because I want to start again but I can't.