Vertigo (thoughts from late last night)

Sometimes I feel like I could just relax a little more and I'd slip into complete insanity. It's kind of appealing because then I wouldn't have to worry about sorting my life out or doing my work etc; I could just enjoy having no responsibility. Tonight I read "A Complicated Kindness"* about a Mennonite girl who pretty much loses her faith and family. I didn't mean to read the whole book, but I realised that the text was the only thing keeping me from thinking destructive thoughts so I had to keep going. When I finished, sure enough, I ended up sobbing for reasons I'm not entirely clear on (to do with going to therapy yesterday and having to call to complain about a problem with flights). [I did write a description of what I was thinking that made me feel so close to insanity, but now I don't think I feel comfortable letting you quite that far into my psyche...]. There's an emergency psychiatric hospital a block from my house, which I'm occasionally tempted to go into, in the same way I'm afraid of the impulse to jump from great heights. I also walk through a hospital to get to the lab and it always starts me off trying to think of some nice disease or injury that would incapacitate me without being too painful so I could escape from my life for a while. I was worried about posting this in case people think I really am insane, but I don't think I am. Incredibly messed up, yes. Clinically insane, no. Unfortunately.

On an unrelated note, I have my windows open now that it's finally summer and now I can hear the cars outside. The sound of a car pulling into the driveway always makes me feel guilty and I start thinking of what I should've been doing that I haven't. It's as if I'm back at home and just spent hours reading or on IRC instead of doing whatever jobs I was supposed to do. It's not even that my parents were especially tough, I just always felt so guilty for not being responsible and disappointing them. Of course, I couldn't actually apologise properly because that would involve talking while I was trying not to cry so I'd try to compose my face into an appropriate expression of contrition, but apparently it looked like I was just putting on puppy-dog-eyes to induce sympathy and leniency. It never stopped me from slacking off the next time, though , and I'd just end up feeling worse.


*my favourite quote from the book: "I was reminded that I was, at that very moment, not bleeding from my face. And those are powerful words of hope, really."