saera

i have the spent entirety of today on the computer and my phone, lying down, slowly burning off layers of skin.

well, i made it from my bed to my couch, and the burning was done using an overturned can of compressed air, but still. mostly lying down. burning off bits of skin.

i started out okay. i got up around 7:45am, and got out of bed intending to do homework before class started.

then i got preoccupied with work stuff…

then i sort of went back and forth between the two… and then, at 9:26am (class starts at 9:30), i gave up the thought of going to school and turning in my half-finished homework in favor of perhaps taking a shower, then going to work.

several emails, texts and a little under an hour later, i decided i was working from home anyway, and so i could put off showering until noon, and be ready in time for group (at 2:00pm) and later studio (at 4:15pm).

at 1:06pm i gave up on the idea of showering, and instead decided i would get ready and go to group as-is..

and then, inexplicably, i fell asleep. 

i woke at 2:18pm, belatedly called the counseling center to let them know i was not coming, and briefly considered still getting up for studio.
i then drifted in and out of consciousness for another couple of hours.
while awake, i guilted myself for not going anywhere and worked a little bit more.
while asleep i focused more on guilting and hating and nightmareing, though i do not precisely remember about what or who. i could probably guess, but to what point and purpose?   

all this while slowly, intermittently, methodically burning off layers of my own skin. perhaps i should say freezing. it is more like frostbite, i suppose.
it’s not particularly painful, but it is oddly satisfying. i guess this might be a similar behavior to cutting, though cutting never was i thing i found useful. i ought to be worried, but i’m not. i did this before. i was much, much younger. like, a third of my current height younger. i stopped.

i spent the rest of my evening watching various things in an effort to distract myself from that pervading sense of hopelessness and impending doom which has plagued most of my life. i did the audio visual equivalent of skimming an episode of the x-files. i caught up on all my youtube subscriptions. i attempted to watch submarine (i quit 30 minutes and 36 seconds in.. it was alright, i just wasn’t feeling it. or anything else). the burning continued throughout.

i ended up watching a bunch of old vlogbrothers videos. the burning stopped.

i continued watching for some time.

at 11:36pm i felt tired (but much better), and decided it was time for bed and that tomorrow would be a better day.

at 11:37pm i thought i saw some thing move in my peripheral vision. i killed it.

at 11:41pm i killed another. and sprayed the entire house, just in case.

upon the completion of my spraying ritual, i mulled over the curious turn of events.

previously, if i’d ever even thought i’d seen a thing, i would have immediatly deep cleaned the entire apartment, and set off a few bug bombs for good measure. it would not have mattered how tired or hopeless i felt. it would be done.

but over the course of the last few months i have allowed my living space to reach approximately the exact state of disorder that i imagine my own mind is trending toward.

while this is an obvious and familiar sign of my mental decline (as witnessed by myself and my parents countless times in my 23 years of life), i chose to ignore it.

(((i also ignored how i’ve basically stopped posting anything here ever, which is also generally not a good sign for me.
when i am well, you get  at least 4 posts a day, without fail.
when i am well, i have my queue meticulously lined up a week in advance.
but whatever. i lose followers every time i post anything personal now anyway. incidentally, bye people… can you take the porn bots and random band/product pages with you?)))

two weeks ago i saw the first thing and killed it. it was small, but i decided it was clearly past time i clean up and reorder things. i knew it would probably make me feel better almost instantly. 
i managed to tidy a bit, which helped, but failed to follow through and complete the process as thoroughly as i should have.

last week i saw and killed another thing, but again, did not manage much more than my spray-and-pray ritual.

two days ago, i saw one about the size of a pencil eraser. i killed it, but continued to procrastinate in the process of cleaning.

but tonight i have decided that i will read/nap for about an hour and a half, shower, get dressed, and then actually clean my apartment. at 3am. on a saturday morning.

depending on how long this takes, i will either
take another nap, wake at 7:45am and go be in the practice rooms by 10am,
or i will skip the nap, get an especially large, espresso-enhanced coffee, and then go practice.

tomorrow, as it so often does when i am at my worst, has become today.

but it will be better.

i will clean my apartment.

i will practice.

i will shower.

i may distract myself with friends, if they will have me.

so, not the first thing, but the fourth and fifth (and the vlogbrothers, as ever) are going to help me take care of myself.

i’m writing this so that later i can look back at point at this and say “that’s what low is” and then try not to be here again. i have been worse. but i did not write down those times.
that’s a lie, i actually wrote down at least four of those times, but tumblr ate the posts as i went to publish them. in retrospect, this probably saved me the trouble of having to go back and private or delete the posts a few hours or minutes or seconds after publication, which is what would likely have happened anyway.

perhaps this time, when i hit “post” tumblr will work as it should. 

perhaps i will look at this when i wake up and delete it.

or perhaps i will let this post live to serve as that reminder i so obviously need, that while things do get bad rather often, they still aren’t this bad.

and even when they are, there’s always the vlogbrothers to make me feel better.

well, maybe not always, but hopefully for long enough that i have time to learn how to actually cope with this mess of a life without vegetating and burning off layers of my skin.