I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to go to Installfest so despite having woken up at 10pm, I was set to go to bed again at 2am so I could wake up at around 9ish and get to the Installfest.

But for some reason I got horribly depressed.

It occurred to me that even during my most horrifically depressed times, and even at the most happy times, I could always feel God – that somehow He was always there for me. But now, I no longer feel it. It’s just gone. As if my vocation was gone.

And when at the shopping centre and Viet Anh was clucky over the kids, I was like ‘meh’. I used to get so clucky over kids and now I can barely muster enthusiasm. It’s too much for me.

It felt like little parts of me had disappeared, things that made me who I was. I just wanted to slit my wrists and feel the blood drain away. Or stab an awl again – to feel that physical pain again. To feel human. I felt like Claire Bennet in Heroes. To keep doing it to myself over and over again until I really felt I was human again.

After a long time I drifted off to sleep. I woke up at 11:30 and I was like “Argh!” and I didn’t know if I wanted to go anymore. But I had promised I would come. So I made myself get dressed and I walked to the station and caught the train. But at the train station I knew that it was going to be a bad day. I kept focussing on my knitting. I waited ages for a bus and was fidgety, but I knew that as soon as I got to uni and got there, I’d be able to collapse in Jay’s arms because I knew that he would be kind enough to look after me.

The main walkway seemed endless, and I almost cried because I couldn’t figure out which lab it was to get in, but I managed to get into Oboe and I saw Jay and I literally collapsed into his arms shaking. He held me and told me it was ok to have a bad day because I was with friends. Jess was there and she took care of me as well. We went for a walk to the Red Centre to get some water to drink. I asked her about it – why couldn’t I feel God anymore. She said it was just the drugs, and it’ll all come back.

We went to watch Wall-E. I couldn’t stand it. It felt like it was going way too slow for me and like I’d seen too many animations and I just didn’t like it. It was cute and all and I felt like ‘meh’. I don’t know if usually I would like this movie or it’s because the emotions and actions in the movie weren’t violent enough for me to process and feel them. They weren’t emotions I could identify with. I don’t know.

We had dinner and it was nice. It was a nice walk all the way down to the roundabout for some ghetto Thai food. I had an entree whilst everyone had a main. By this time I had managed to calm down a lot so it was just nice to have dinner with friends.

I went home afterwards and I called Lizzie on the bus. I just needed her to talk to. We talked about my feelings and she asked me if I prayed anymore. I said no, I haven’t. She said maybe I needed to reopen those channels of communications, just to let it happen. She’s got a point.

I slept on the train and was careful to wake up every 10 minutes so I wouldn’t miss Bankstown. I walked home in the dark and got back. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. So I rang Lizzie instead and my parents came home from a wedding. My mum made me some spring rolls which I didn’t eat all of and I went back to bed. It took a long while to fall asleep.

I hate it. Everytime I want to sleep, it takes ages before I can. I don’t know if I want to sleep because I don’t know what I’ll be like if I wake up. and when I sleep I tend to go for 10-12 hours at a time. I can’t wake up earlier despite the fact I set alarms.

I want to be normal and human again.

I usually get annoyed whenever my parents make me stop doing what I am doing and do something for them but generally now it’s not just annoyance it stresses me out. They wake me up at like 11am to answer their inquiry but I find it really stressful because I don’t have answers for them.

I resent having to be the daughter that they always rely on to do what they want. My brother is around and he’s slightly more sane then I am at the moment. But I have all this free time at the moment. I dunno. I find it hard.

So I started the day slightly on edge. Then I got started on my cupcakes. But I poured myself a cup of juice and I spilt it. I almost fell to pieces. My mum was like “ugh, just mop it up” and I got rags from the laundry to clean it up but I just wanted to curl up and cry. She said “If you are having tremors, just go to the sink and pour it so you don’t make a mess.”

It got me so fustrated and unhappy. The last time she said something like that to me I was 10 years old. I felt so useless.

Liz came over as planned and she helped me put the cream and strawberries on my cupcakes. She was terrific at it – much better than her cutting skills in the sewing room. We talked for a bit and helped calm me down. I hate that I’m usually in such a state. We also wrapped a present that I got for Steve.

We sojourned to Bankstown Square and did some shopping. She bought some new clothes that she looked absolutely hot in and I got a present for someone. We had a nice walk through Bankstown, it was a nice day.

Off to trivia we went with me clutching my strawberry cupcakes and I had hoped that I would win them back. Not because I wanted to as I rarely eat my own baking but just in principle. We had a grand time even though some of the questions were clearly geared towards engineers and there were no real girly questions about TV shows that I could answer! So I was like no help whatsoever to the team, but we managed to win anyway We celebrated with my cupcakes.

It was so nice to see some friends and chat with them. I rarely get to see some of them and it was such a good time and place to catch up.

Liz and I headed off to Trashioke to see her beloved Stevie wonderboy in action and for me to get my singing diva-ness on. I sang and knitted when off stage. Liz informed me that half the pub reckons that Steve is my boyfriend just because we flirt so much and get it on on stage. I think it’s hilarious! He thinks so too. We informed Liz that no, our relationship isn’t a sham and that it predates THEIR relationship and it’s not cheating if she knows about it. She was like, do you two need to get a room together or something. I find it hilarious.

Lizzie keeps getting hit on at the pub. I found it an interesting observation. Everyone keeps hitting on her. She finds it retarded because she’s like “ugh, I’m happy to chat but not to get hit on” and I’m like hahahahah. But I’ve never had her problem. Is it because that everyone thinks that Stevie and I have it going on? Liz says that somehow I manage to broadcast the “I’m not interested” signal to all and sundry.

I found it an interesting thing to ponder about.

We got home really really late. And I went to sleep.

Sometimes I fear going to sleep because I don’t know what I’ll be like if I wake up.

Viet Anh came over today and woke me up at 11am because she wanted my help with making a Hen’s night thing for Winnie. We managed to have a good time getting it done. Viet Anh said that it was good that my fine motor skills were still able. I said that it required a lot of effort and concentration for me to do that though. The thing worked out fine and I even managed to use my hot glue gun! YAY FOR HOT GLUE GUN!

But I crashed as soon as she left. I went to sleep and slept the entire day away not waking till about 10:30pm. I woke up remarkably unstressed.

I don’t feel happy though. Living is hard. I have things to look forward to, friends who have made me smile and stuff – but living is so damn hard.

I have a crush on a boy and it’s nice because it makes me feel like a normal person. But sometimes I wonder about my other emotions and whether or not I feel them because memory says I should or because I actually do. I feel fustrated a lot. I don’t really get angry anymore and I used to be one of the most angry people I knew.

Now I just curl up in bed and shake.

I couldn’t sleep.

I simply couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep all Monday night and finally had a nap at like 9am only to wake up at like 12:00pm to get ready for my psychiatrist visit.

The visit was ok. We ramped up so now I’m on half a pill of Aropax. I actually got a prescription (with repeats yay) and so we are all good. After a week I’m suppoesd to go to full dose. He told me that my decreased appetite was probably anxiety related and that when the drugs kicked in the next few weeks, it’s actually supposed to increase my appetite and we’d have to monitor weight gain. Pfft. My next appointment is in 2 weeks, and I’m hoping that everything will be positive for a return to TAFE next term. I might not be able to manage it because we are taking the dosage slowly and it will take weeks for it to take effect.

My mum on her crusade to get me to eat asked me if I wanted anything in particular so I asked for Spring Rolls and prawn crackers . I rolled them. Whilst rolling them I actually had a chat to my mum – a bit more information then I normally divulge to her. Just saying that the valium didn’t actually help me and that it would take time for the Aropax to kick in and it was just all stress. I don’t think she really got what I was talking about – but I made the effort. I stammered a bit. My Vietnamese has always been a bit halting, but it was even more so trying to explain the situation.

I still was unable to sleep. My body would be tired but my brain wasn’t or vice versa. I was slightly on edge, but Viet Anh came over to take me out to watch a movie. We saw ‘Taken’ which was absolutely awesome. The first movie that in the long history of our friendship we were just both ‘wow’ after watching it.

We had a long chat in the car when we got back to my place and I confided in her my fears and anxieties. I think for a moment I actually got depressed. Tears rolled out of my eyes even. Life is one big scary thing right now. In a sick way, it was good that this happened because it’s forced me to stop everything and look at what I really want instead of burying myself in work. And the drugs must have some effect because things that would normally make me really upset aren’t.

I’m just on one big anxiety attack as opposed to feeling down – I don’t know if that is any better.

I couldn’t fall asleep until 4 am. I was woken rather rudely at 11am to parents wanting information. Geez.

The weird thing is is that my mind never gets sluggish – like when it needs sleep. It just decides hmmm maybe I should and my body agrees. But there’s none of the disorientation after waking up, none of the I’m so exhausted I can’t think straight even though I was up for like 20 hours. If I sleep, then I’ll sleep forever, but if I don’t, then I can just keep going.

I don’t know if I like sleeping. I woke up this morning with this huge stress attack. I literally couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t focus. I watched some TV on my bed and curled up and hid from the world. I managed to write an email to my teachers at TAFE to update them on everything, but I was so stressed out. I managed to calm down a bit at like 5pm when Sharon popped up online and we started chatting. It encouraged me to get out of bed and take a shower. I felt a lot better after the shower and I got my knitting and curled back into bed to watch more TV and knit. I finally felt more relaxed at about 9pm.

I don’t even know what set it off. It was just a day that I couldn’t take getting out of bed or even loud noises.

But I’m making an insane amount of progress on my knitting. I’m almost finished on the body and onto the right sleeve! It’s productive and focuses my tremors.

I mean with all this free time, I should like complain of boredom and lack of shit to do considering I used to pull in so much work. But now, I get stressed and then I lose track of time. I can’t believe it’s the whole day has gone already and I have barely left my room. I barely ate anything too.

I’m trying to figure out whether or not my loss of appetite is real or not. I mean, it partially is – but am I encouraging it because I’ve always had neuroses about my weight? In a way, I’m terrified because I don’t know what’s real or not right now.

But tomorrow is a new day. It’s CSESoc Trivia night! Lizzie is coming with me and we are totally going to lose given our combined lack of knowledge of anything useful. I’m going to see if I can get out of bed at 9am so I can even bake cupcakes to bring. That would be really cool if I can manage that.

I got a reply from my teacher at TAFE saying that it was quite and essay and I must be starved for conversation. But I think that’s not all it. I express myself articulately in written form. You can’t tell that I’m stammering or using the wrong tonal inflection to express my emotions. So I prefer to write, to blog about it – because then it’s not so much stress talking.

It’s not like I’m not talking, I perk up when I have friends company. And I’m quite open about the whole situation, I’m not afraid to talk about my problems. It’s just that I’m not 100%.

I really want to be though.

Saturday  was a good day.

I woke up to a call from my sister who was just reporting home on her latest international movements and she was kinda shocked to hear everything that’s been going on with me at the moment and sorry she hasn’t called in to check in earlier. She offered to help financially if it came down to it but it’s all covered by Medicare so it’s ok. She reckons my GP is an idiot. We had a lovely chat. She was really cool about the whole thing telling me to relax and we had an amusing time talking about the family potraits my dad had put up that we took when she was home for Easter. It was nice to hear from her, not just to update on the situation, but just to have normal sibling relations instead of me having to ask my brother to take me places and pick me up because I’m incapable of driving.

I went out to the shops thinking that I should at least get some exercise and a sojourn to Bankstown Square could hardly be that taxing. I actually bought something! A cute little vest from a shop called Sheik, it’s cream with welt pockets and two rows of tiny gathered sleeves at the top. It’s very chic. I’ve noticed that as I’ve grown older my sense of style has become more developed and I know what looks good on me. I still have an utter hatred for too many frills and everything has freaking frills on it at the moment.

I went for the 12 being my usual dress size, but the sales assistant insisted that it was too big and to get the 10 instead. Viet Anh was like “Hey awesome, you’ve gone down a dress size!” and I went on a semi rant about how clothing size systems are really arbitary anyway (yay for studying fashion). At least now I don’t have to worry about fitting into my Ao Dai that I got made 3 years ago in Vietnam, I’ve lost enough weight to fit into it. But the thought of me wearing it for Thuc’s wedding makes me cringe inside. Especially when I have to be part of the official tea/prayer ceremony thing and carry bridal gifts :S

I started tremoring a bit, but it was ok, I wasn’t out for very long. I went home and played more mindless flash games and knitted to get my mind off things.

On Sunday I actually went out. I went to Jayen’s birthday and it was cool. I was late so I didn’t get a chance to bowl but I did play Time Crisis with Dave and hung out with friends. We had pizza for dinner. I had a piece of herb bread and half a slice of pizza. I look at what I eat now and I do kind of worry about it. I wore my corset underneath my top and I realised that I needed to take it in more instead of putting it on the largest setting which is what I normally do.

I’m just not hungry and eating requires effort. I did buy some Hello Kitty lollies – how can I say no to Hello Kitty lollies? Not only are they delicious I support the evil feline empire muahaha.

We even went to Karaoke. I was really supposed to go home, but I went to Karaoke for just an hour. It was great because I sang Karaoke in Japanese with Jay’s J-club mates. It was heaps cool because it’s been literally YEARS since I karaoked in Japanese. I mean Trashioke Thursday is great, but there’s something about being able to hit those high notes to Utada Hikaru’s First Love. I caught the train and walked home. My mother was worried about me yet again. It’s annoying. I’m old enough to take care of myself!

I was actually quite happy about the endeavour because I went to sleep at about midnight which has been the first time for a week. The effort to reset sleeping patterns hasn’t really succeeded so I thought we were doing well.

I woke up today at about 11:30am and it was horrific. I had a headache and completely stressed out of my mind. The phone kept ringing, my dad kept asking me to fill in some form for him, my parents were just talking really loudly outside my bedroom door and I just wanted to break something. I was so stressed and the tremors were back full force and I started stammering for a while. I knit to ease the tremoring because then it’s directing it to something useful but I was in a complete state this morning.

I kept my appointment with the Bankstown Mental Health Service and that was good. I actually calmed down whilst talking to the Nurse there. She said that there wasn’t much that they could do for me considering I was already seeing a psychiatrist but that at least now they have my file and if I ever go in crisis mode I can call them and if I want to fall back on them because I hate my psychiatrist that works too. I had an early dinner with my parents (which was actually my breakfast, lunch and dinner) and I had a full bowl of rice. And despite my good 10+ hours of sleep, I had a nap after dinner for a couple of hours. I was just really tired.

My mum is a bit worried about my eating. She keeps offering me food but I refuse. I like drinking juice – it’s got (some dubious) nutritious value and it’s tasty. Lizzie calls it the ‘liquid diet’.

I ended up watching P.S. I Love You. I bawled my eyes out watching that movie. Just watching how much they loved each other. I’ve read the book and I bawled my eyes out reading it a couple of years earlier. Even though there are significant departures, they both had the same feel of real love and trying to cope with grief.

I’m a little afraid of falling in love again. I know that I’m a bit fucked up in the head at the moment because of the anxiety attacks and depression. Lizzie and I talk about this stuff (oh wait we talk about bloody everything) and the idea of being in love is scary. No risk, no return though. BTW, her boyfriend is terrifically awesome. Not that I don’t want to murder him on occasion, but hey, any guy who I can kill if accidentally drop some sugar in his drink if he hurts my Lizzie is fine by me.

Everyone says that what I’m going through is quite common and that I’ll get over it and things will be back to normal before I know it. It just takes time. It’s comforting that all health professionals say that, but  I’ve always been a bit of a control freak and not having control over this is quite horrific for me.

At least I’m getting a lot of knitting done.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 days already. Time flies even when you aren’t having fun.

I stayed in bed today. Like literally the whole day. For some reason the anxiety I started to feel last night persisted. I just couldn’t get out of bed. I was awake and alert. I played mindless flash games all afternoon long – but I was just so stressed and I didn’t even knoww why.

I got a lovely call from my boss who was checking up on me which was really sweet.

I let my mother talk me into eating dinner considering I had eaten 3 squares of chocolate and about 20gm of chips all day. She noticed my hand was tremoring and commented on it saying she thought that the medication was supposed to make it go away. I know it’s partially my fault that I haven’t really explained it to her – that it never really went away. I just got better at coping and hiding it. Today was just a day that I couldn’t hide it.

Despite the fact I can talk with animation, I don’t feel very animated. I wonder if my current condition is feeding my low mood? Or was I just predisposed to it and that my current condition is a reflection of that? I have no idea.

I wanted to go out to the afterparty for CSE Revue but I decided against it in the end. I could have easily caught a cab – but the thought of a large party didn’t feel very comfortable with me. I live far from uni and so it would have been an effort to go home by myself even if I did catch a cab because I’d be alone and I’m not sure that I would have coped well with that. In a way I almost had no dsire to leave the house. At least at home I’m safe. Safe from extra pressures from the world and safe from myself.

I’ve never been really much of a party person anyway. Sometimes I feel regretful about that. I’m not one much for parties and then I feel left out because I don’t really get invited to any! I spend a lot of time on facebook nowadays and so I see all these photos.

Part of it is because even in revue I do a lot of solitary work. Costumes isn’t exactly the biggest and social team. You barely speak to anyone apart from the directors. You don’t get that time to bond like cast and tech do – so it’s less easy to form those easy going friendships that make you a party person.

I dunno – maybe today I’m just being extra maudlin and pensive.

But at least I’m sitting up to write this post. It makes a nice change from not even having the will to move from a horizontal position like earlier today.