"She keeps her heart in a broken clock, and it's waiting there for me"

I haven't been posting at all, lately.

I'm kind of sad about this latest turn of events, actually. It just seems like I can't summon the energy/inclination to make long posts anymore.

So many of my friends are having tough times, and I feel like I'm not here for them either. I'm barely here at all. I read, I commiserate, but silently, which isn't exactly helpful.

There's a lot going on inside my head, too, which I should probably post about, because it always helps me to sort out my thoughts.

Mostly, I've been avoiding introspection lately. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. Like the Baron said the other day, I think too much.


Mostly, I think I'm afraid. I'm terrified of going back to that dark, bleak place in my mind that I know is still lurking there. I don't want to think about any of my stupid "issues" because it might just suck me back into the quagmire I was in before.

I haven't felt truly depressed since I started working, but my stress and anxiety levels have definitely... what? Not gone up, since I was stressed and anxious before, but I suppose it's different now. Significantly so. I'm not stressed about the same things anymore, which I guess is a good thing. The stress is also mostly manageable, and I don't take it home with me.

On the other hand, I just had a five-day migraine. That in itself should be an indicator that things aren't all peachy keen in my world.

The problem, as I see it (yes, I know, there's more than one problem, but what can I say? I like oversimplifying things now and then, to shake things up a bit), is that I spent the better part of a year doing the introspection thing, and all it did was make me spiral deeper and deeper into depression. I had good days, but for the most part I hated myself and my situation, and I couldn't for the life of me shake myself out of my apathy and despair.

So now that I have something which is forcing me outside of myself and doesn't give me that spare time to brood, I find that, while I'm not happy per se, I'm a lot more comfortable. It might be just denial, or it might be that too much navel-gazing never did anyone any good. I'm not sure.

Then again, I've also been more hypomanic than I've been since university in the past three months. I like it better than being depressed, but I'm not exactly stable, either. I'm not sure I like being overexcited and bouncing off the walls and borderline hysterical so much of the time. There haven't been too many instances of racing thoughts, or if they were, I didn't notice them racing. Work kind of demands I think fast and do three or four things at once anyway, so I guess maybe it's not all bad.

I feel like there's a huge part of me missing. The part of me that used to spend hours in my parents' basement just writing because I was consumed by my own story. The part of me that would make me get up early at summer camp and go sit on this huge boulder about three hundred yards away from the tent in order to think up the new chapters that I would write when I got home in a month. The part of me that didn't listen in class because I was writing a new scene in my head.

I miss the thrill of writing. I miss the joy I used to feel just letting words pour onto the page. I miss being convinced that I'm creating something worthwhile. I want to recapture that ephemeral feeling, grasp it tenderly between my fingers but not too tightly so as not to crush its wings.

There's a gaping hole in my life, with jagged edges. A Nothing. Looking at a spot where the mind's eye has gone blind. The Nothing is taking over the real world, Fantastica having long since been consumed. (You can dance and sing and walk with me and dreams will fade and shadows grow in weed...)

I'm going round in circles.

And I'm sorry so sorry
I'm sorry it's like this
I'm sorry so sorry
I'm sorry we do this

Speaking of going round in circles and thinking too much. :P