The First Cardinal Sin – Mad Chaos: March 11, 2003

As dark clouds roll over and sweep to the right, hovering in the distance above but non-threateningly, the ascendancy of dangerous days decline, so far-removed from my mindset now yet so hauntingly still.  This unshakable past period tormenting has died for now.  In hindsight, once my demeanor saw its way out of constant pestilence, it made me wise that one must see the worst of a condition before he or she can improve.  That in my systematic ups and downs was the lesson endured. 

I now see the light of objectivity, a stark but usual contrast to the darkness of its dearth.  I fought my way out with outwitting display, but this fortnight was an outrageous low, a low that saw me slip into isolation, a low that crumpled an already livid hope, a low plunging me into sheer desperations, and base, vile considerations. 

I was so low this past fortnight with repeated anxieties that grave was suicide on my mind, only as a thought never to be taken, but the crime was what my mind envisioned.  The threat was inescapable, when an anxiety attack late at night would trigger some fingers down my throat, and the imaginings of stabbing gestures to my throat to stop the pain. 

I even came up with an invention in the most ridiculously logical times, an elasticized mesh pipe, hollowed out to allow regular breathing as it was funneled down my throat, until affixed just beyond to the beginning of the air pipe, where it would then expand, stretch the inner circumference to a strain and in its sadistic process, it would take the root proposal for anxiety away. 

I became so extreme in all my desperation.  One such was so extreme that even suicide would seem infantile beside it.  I do with its memory as with everything else however, which is to block it out to sustain myself, like now in this anomalistic mirage, until the past eventually remembers me, and thrusts me into a redundant low again. 

Making An Unspeakable Mistake

I am well now however, but it is alarming how my lows continually deepen each time, reaching outrageous extremes after outrageous extreme, until all the taboos of personal dignity are broken.  I really did bad this time, but for once, my memoirs would shame it too much to hear, so for once, let us pretend that no calamity outlines us today.  Let us hope this will become the permanent barrier for which no other extreme will mount up on, and count on it to be yet another piled mistake. 

Let us hope my own sacrifice is not the next level, as there is little else my daring has to teeter with anymore.  I am so scathing when mentally ill, so dark and haunting compared to those days, and my own words bring me down.  Just one more step it would take, and then it happens all over again, only infinitely worse.

Tired And Out Of Ideas

The last week up until these last three days has been horrendous, captured like an insect in the jaws of Venus much to my depression.  I wouldn’t know where to begin but generally, the threshold of my anxieties and the functioning accumulation of stress forced me to play my final cards, and forced me to visit the doctor. 

This doctor visit happened on Thursday the sixth at the start of another lonely weekend but its importance impacted me the most, as the doctor consulted me, and then watched in an empathetic stiffening of emotion, his long-suffering patient weep. 

I hadn’t slept at all on the day; my sleeping patterns so out of sync that bedtime was usually around ten in the morning.  One of the obvious mounting pressures burdening my shoulders was of course the continuous roulette hindering my ability to sleep, as well as the disconnect with my parents, which exaggerated it more. 

I was tired and out of ideas.  I would vehemently try to sleep earlier, but either it induced my panic attacks or it woke me up eventually with a brainstorming idea.  I had paranoia.  Writing was one way to reset the paranoia.  But then once my eyes closed again, the wakeful nightmares began, not so much terrifying but troubling weirdness an ill mind can only make. 

I believe that anxieties and its triggers once again played catalyst but there were plenty of annexing issues to increase the burden, and destructive pessimism was its frontloader.  Isolation played a part as well, as did the feeling of abnormality in my few attempts to socialize out of home. 

I became phobic of the gym with past-tense worries about perception, thinking people were picking up on my “deficient wardrobe” habits.  I carried a blank look on my face everywhere and wondered why people avoided my unsure looks at everywhere but to acknowledge their eyes.  I didn’t’ fit in anywhere.  This persistent misery is what made me see the doctor, to open my options once more where all else was closed to me, and he did help.

Hiring A Hotel Room In Sydney

I remember the day of the visit vividly but not so its setting.  I remember there was a contrast last week because of my night spent at a city hotel to observe how my anxieties would set.  I remember it was invoked by thoughts on my walk back home from the gym, and then my bag was packed that day for the controversy. 

I was supposed to use that opportunity to begin my three-day walking journey but it never happened that way.  Living separate to the crux of these issues was experimented on however, bringing success in fond memories.  Like how finally a bath was there for me to baptize myself in, to dip in with embattled stress only to rise up purged without concerns. 

I remember the simple liberties, like watching television sprawled greedily over a double bed, the sheets painted with cigarette holes, but me with a plastered smile making those inconsistencies farthest from my mind. 

Being there allowed me to explore my own personality, one shrunken so you could hardly see its prehistoric remnants on my face, and one too fractured for the curious to delve.  I was so glad to be there in a Sydney hotel, but once it was over, it was over.  I came back to reality pending, a land of my own disregard, of felt isolation, where this room was my demon, and night without fail is when he came out.

The Calm Before The Storm

The trip into the city must have occurred on the fourth to the fifth because the surrendering to help was almost immediate. 

I remember staying awake on the night of the fifth, playing distractive computer games as usual, and feeling useless in its purpose until the morning came. 

Sleep should have been begging at that time on Thursday morning, but all these grievances of days behind me raced my thoughts and made me depressed. 

Once again, in the morning as my parents were sipping tea, my thyroid flared up, and prominent anxieties tempted me once more.

A trip upstairs signed me off to the reality of leaving home when my silent discomfort in the kitchen was met with equally disturbing relays.  It was hard on me to remember the relative city peace knowing my stock was all dried up.  To parallel it to recognized asphyxiation at home paralyzed me with depression.  So when slumping back into my bedroom, enough was enough.  I was so enraged like you wouldn’t believe, like trying to explain on paper the beauty of my joie de vivre. 

Storming Out Of The House

I remember the day of the visit to see my doctor because it came so shortly after this last straw, where the experience only worsened my hold on stability, engaging me in later and later offsetting nights awake, until my parents would wake and my turn would come to sleep. 

I stormed out of the house with a permanent fixture grim, my eyes sunken, my nostrils ablaze, a lip trembling with frightful vigor, numb, featureless, and hooked on a jerk of emotion every so often.  You would swear not to look but you do so at this faceless conspiracy.  I couldn’t even bear myself let alone the contradiction of my outward show.  Strange be it for an ill mind to say but it would have taken a lot of pushing despite the look of menace to stir my retaliatory behavior. 

I am like that; a glutton for punishment that will take pains like a black hole but never react.  I took the inconsiderate receptionist at the doctor’s surgery on my chin, suffered the people pressing me onto the grass as their straight paths commandeered the laneway, and done it all without even batting an eye, but I do react. 

I fear my own reaction however, as when you have elaborate thoughts like mine, so intimidating in their serial nature, it is easier to resist into pacifism.

Emotional Breakdown In The Doctor’s Room

The doctor however was another story.  At first I had plans of confronting him in the ways he failed to treat me seriously, but telling the truth became too painful, and it broke me down. 

“I don’t know what to do,” I would lament, throwing hands over my eyes to channel the tears. 

I was upset with how anxieties prevented me from normality like work and social situations, how my insomnia was a vicious cycle and how there was no hope for me on the horizon.  I had shut down.  The doctor was stunned by the raw emotion, his disbelief so overwhelmed with my reaction. 

“Why can’t my parents just ask me what is wrong instead of telling me all the time,” my voice would utter and break, as the suddenness so sad annihilated me. 

The doctor struggled to be professional as he listened on, but we did take some basic steps to reasoning my problems out. 

He took my blood pressure as well and was floored by the result. 

Stratospheric Cholesterol Levels

“I can’t believe I haven’t done this before,” he said in failure, as the blood pressure read 160 over 120.  I didn’t look surprised at all, as he had me lie down on the table to track my heart.  Finally my doctor was paying proper attention to me, and it only took desperate resignation. 

He sent me out to pee in a cup.  For the first time I saw the bloodshot ruin in my eyes, the exhaustion of every nerve inside of it.  I have made follow-up visits to see my doctor since then as well.  He now sees me as an important state of affairs, as today. 

On top of the high blood pressure, we identified an iron deficiency in my diet, which contributes to this continual drowsiness, and a ridiculously excessive cholesterol level for my age, which is a staggering 9.3.  I surpass my parents with those numbers, and they have been battling both conditions for years, so it is an urgent problem. 

High blood pressure and bad cholesterol is only a byproduct of anxiety however.  I have stress from this imprisoned acceptance, which precipitates high blood pressure, and then all this sedate living relying on my computer for distractive company is what hastened my cholesterol levels. 

Increased Exercise To Manage Weight Loss

My doctor noticed the extra pounds put on since he last saw me, which also resigned me to helpless depression.  I had intensified my workout regimen since the onset of this revelation however, which sees me pedaling honest sweat on the bikes for half an hour. 

I have always aspired to rid this overweight frame and belly but insecurities have always blighted my way.  Early afternoon visits to the gym twelve hours into my woken day however have helped, thanks to these rolling sleeping habits.  I should by this watch have slept in the afternoon to wake up around now but my memoirs were always the thorn.

Anyway, in rounding up my visits to the doctor and its current attachments, I guess my hardest-hitting moment was when confessing my suicide trips.  I didn’t want to reveal superficial gestations but when I confessed my thoughts about it, it suddenly hit me. 

I would hate to think what life would have been like now had a conscious decision not been made to seek help.  I wouldn’t predict a stroke at my age but the stiffness was so difficult in my neck that you could never count it out.  My life however has settled down.  The anxieties have disappeared into the cracks, but if my mental condition were on the operating table, after this awful accident, one would have to declare my condition as stabilized, but still critical.  I hope my own pessimisms don’t bring me down again. 

I hate a life of countering; it is so sad.

Being Exploited Became The Trigger

The general mood of this last fortnight stretching back to the end of last month has been one of increasing mood swings and isolation, where either I have been kept in this room or at the gym but never much with friends between. 

People have tried the route of association by reaching out however, like my old landscaping mate Benjamin when he called early last week inviting me to join some ambiguous tier scheme he had paid four hundred dollars for.  I would have liked if he had called back despite my outright rejection to the pyramid idea, but he decided not to follow through instead. 

The almond also came over long ago last week, which was one of the frustrations when seeing our friendship had basically deteriorated to a point where it is reasonable for me to do him favors by burning CDs but not for him to invite me out, even for the shortest of seconds.  I resented how he resorted our relationship to this, so I left his discs instead to gather dust in protest.  I was sick of being exploited.  It was around this time that my attitude began to change. 

I was predisposed to keep protesting and planned to make my blunt point when he came expectantly to collect.  But instead, as usual, my backbone wasn’t with me on the day.  I was too worried about upsetting his feelings and now the discs sit satiated on my computer chassis. 

Mumbles Visits To Smoke Marijuana

Mumbles came over as well the following night, stoned, as usual with no conversation at all to offer.  I wanted to use that same backbone to tell him it was too late of a night, but I let him in instead.  It was uncomfortably tedious to sit with him. 

I suggested we drive down the street for something to eat and to secretly escape the depressing slums of my room we both had to look at.  We did leave, but mumbles never liked it. 

“You know I don’t like driving,” was one of the few things his lips parted to say.

I sensed his hypocrisy of driving to my house in the first place, and coming from another friend’s house as well.  I didn’t like being with him at all because he was totally disaffected by drugs.  I felt invaded because all he wanted to do was lie dormant on my waterbed, no word, no whisper, nothing. 

Driving down the street bothered him however, and as the complacency of weed shook out of him, decidedly after thirty minutes watching television mind you, he decided on coaxing himself out the door.

Sprung At Adult Video Store By Jasper

Among the days when wakeful boredom had me systematically clean out my room, only to see my efforts dwindle with a messier floor lasting weeks, there was also my trip to the adult video store, and the subsequent irony when exiting back outside. 

“I hope no one I know walks past now,” were my constant grievances.

But as my head rose, the person closing in in front of me was none other than jasper.  I couldn’t believe the irony but had to talk to him, as he ultimately found out about my exploits by the glowing neon sign. 

I felt depressed again that he was headed home from the gym, and here was my excuse.  The damper was like that of almond’s predisposed visitation, my shame as mumbles saw my slums, like judgment was being passed onto me, which were all cumulative reasons to stunt my aspirations in soccer. 

Invited To Join A Soccer Team

As soon as I joined soccer, doubts started circulating in my head because it angered me to be the tagalong again, the abnormal third wheel antagonized by his ominous pessimism.  I argued to the negative when he called on the seventh that soccer would be like another Byron Bay, taxied around and adhered to an awkward coherence of what other people wanted to do. 

“You’re just isolating yourself,” he was stark to say.

That made me bitter because here again was someone not allowing me the dignity to make my own decisions, or to at least compensate for my momentary lack of backbone.  Again, I was fallible wanting to make people happy, which cost me in signing up and costs me now.  We did reach a compromise though, so it wasn’t all a loss.

How Today Fared

Recently today, my day was almost flawless, considering the monkey that is always on my back.  I visited town and embarked on my rudimentary mission, dining out for breakfast first before visiting the gym for cycling and a brief workout. 

I printed a considerable section of my edited memoirs for The Dark Ages era as well, which was a productive step forward in fulfilling pleasant activities. 

Buying some music also released happy endorphins today, which has been playing tranquilly over and over since when many hours ago beginning this entry.  Conveniently, the song is “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera, a fitting tribute to the inadequacies of the day.

The machine calling was the only other noticeable news today.  His birthday is due in five days, so he must be feeling the same as me when every year around that time.  I was out but he never called back however, which leads me to believe that people are truly intimidated by my listlessness now.  I will call him tomorrow however, even while our relationship is still up in the air. 

Anyway, that is the wrap on events.  I have nothing more to add save that my brother’s calls have quieted down lately.  Since my outburst of reaching out, the gulf between my parents has dramatically thinned.  I might elaborate on those points at a later time however, or perhaps express how its reparation has fallen apart.  Whichever way, one extreme will certainly be here, and until then, the writer has wished all that he wants to say.