You're Giving Me Capt. Archer? Really?

Sometimes when thinking about certain situations, people envisage a number of different scenarios - generally along the lines of the best, or at least most preferable, one; the good, or at least acceptable, one; and the one which would be bearable if absolutely necessary. In this instance:

• To never have existed;
• To die;
• To have some use in the world and enough health/strength to see it through.

The problem is that one so often falls short of their own imaginings, even those they feel are conservative.

It's like needing someone to command the Enterprise: you're thinking Patrick Stewart, Bill Shatner, or maybe, at a push, Alan Ruck, but then you get stuck with Scott Bakula.

Of course, the first case is clearly impossible, but neither of the others are intractable problems, were I not so weak (even ignoring the physical weaknesses the solutions to which are largely in the hands of others at the moment). How often is it said that getting something done, particularly curing oneself of a mental illness, is simply dependent on really wanting it and deciding to make it happen? Motivation is surely a key, but I don't think it is purely will, I think it is the strength of character driving the will. I don't mean strength in the sense of depth of yearning, but more fundamentally, the ability to put such yearning into action. It is an ability, like painting or composing, which is not always available to whoever wants it. Yes some abilities can be taught, to a point, but can they all, to all people? Can a deaf man hear, just because he really wants to?

I am not just weak, I am weak minded. I mean, both ends of the life spectrum are on my list: oblivion or useful existence, and presumably I could make either happen - I'd love to in fact - but my mental feebleness and pervading cowardice leave me stewing.

I wonder occasionally, if God's idea of 7 days is 14 billion years, then surely the 28 day warranty on this life he gave me must still be intact. D'you think he does refunds?

Who'd've thought a poem could rule your life?

I hate this poem.

One night in the Easter holidays I was woken up with the first verse of this, and it has been haunting me ever since. The rhymes and structure are tenuous at best and the logical part of me is telling me to burn it, in the same way I do two-thirds of all my other poems, and forget it ever existed. However, I can't seem to shake it, so I'm hoping that publishing it will finally make my brain accept that it's finished and move on.

What is it you want from me,

Confirmation that your path was right?

Or do you just want me to give

My life for yours, that you might live?

Are your glasses that rosy,

Can you not remember your own plight?

You may have reached your tunnel's end,

Other wounds take longer to mend.

I had hoped that you would see,

The cost of asking for new insight.

Your passion and strength serve you well,

But some of us still live in hell.

And now, 'through a glass darkly',

You're looking with scorn upon my fight -

For all we are alike, we two,

I can't just drop what you outgrew.

Enough pressure, let me be:

My head is hurting, my chest is tight.

I needed an objective eye,

Not a lecture on 'do or die'.

I feel like a sapling tree,

Expected to grow in strength and height.

But some trees take longer to grow,

And are no worse for going slow.

I never wanted your pity,

I am aware that I sound uptight:

You misunderstood my question -

You judged me on your own fortune.

So now I'm feeling guilty

For looking to you who is so bright;

A role model I only bore,

Who kicks me down upon the floor.

I asked for help, finally -

Put my pride away, worked through the fright.

In different ways the battle's won,

And now I hold the smoking gun.

I'm losing all energy,

I'm sure it affords you great delight.

I kinda thought that you would know,

Old scars reap what new wounds sow.

WARNING: Another miserable rant coming up

When I was a child, I believed that I was a moderately intelligent, relatively hard-working person, and that when I grew up I could pretty much be whatever I wanted to be. It turns out I was being supremely and unjustifiably arrogant, and for starters I feel I should apologise to the people I was at school with for all the times I was inexcusably patronising to you.

I don't know if any of you know what it's like to spend years labouring under a misaprehension, but if you do, you will appreciate that when the truth hits you, it hits hard and is a fairly devasting blow.

These last few years have been eye-opening to me, and have shown the true extent (or more precisely the lack thereof) of my mental powers. My A-levels and first year of University were a disaster, and I think this marked the beginning of the end of my academic career. I have been reluctant to accept this, as I have always felt that academia was my purpose in life: my school work and the absorbtion of new knowledge were, to me, the most important things in the world. However, now, as I reach the conclusion of the first week of exams, I am forced to the recognition that I am actually not as good at education as I have been thinking all my life.

Last year I faced my first major failure, and this year saw me retake 6 of the 8 first-year EngMath units. I really thought I'd done enough this year, I thought my work-rate had picked up again, and that I had a chance. Unfortunately, when it came to revision-time and I started going over my notes & doing past papers, I discovered that I couldn't answer any questions. I have worked myself into exhaustion over the last few months, and now it seems that all of that meant absolutely nothing. In these exams, the pass rate is a measly 40%, and yet out of the 5 exams I have taken this week, I found, by the end of 2 of them, I had not written enough that even had everything been correct (which I know is not the case), I cannot possibly have passed them.

This seemed to me pretty conclusive as evidence that I shan't be continuing my studies much longer, and I don't mind admitting that this realisation was the most shattering of my life. I cannot imagine doing anything other than study, and although I knew I would, at some point, have to venture beyond into the world of work, I never, ever, imagined that it would come so soon, nor that my time at University would be such a catastrophic failure leading to my incredibly low employability (having no practical experience or decent qualifications).

Obviously, as my family keeps telling me, I don't actually know until the results come out on 19th June, but I'm afraid I don't think I'll be in Bristol much longer. While I'm fairly certain no one will bother reading this far down this post or care what happens, I will probably still post my results on here as and when I know them, but until then, if anybody can think of any jobs going that an unexperienced, unqualified young person with mental health problems could do, please let me know.

It's nearly over

Warning; this post is mostly (entirely) a rant; rhetoric spiralling into near-despair. I will try to make the next post better-possibly with another poem.

Right, tomorrow is the start of week 8 in the University calender. There are 10 weeks in the term leading up to Christmas, which means I've only got 3 weeks to go.

I'm having mixed feelings about this and many things at present. I'm getting used to Uni, the panic attacks are less frequent, but at the same time, I still have no energy/inclination to do work outside of lectures, and this is getting frustrating, because I want to do this properly, but there's another part of me that just switches off when I start work, and it's hard to do what I have to do when half your thoughts are somewhere else.

Also not helping is the fact that the only coursework I have to do this year is Electronics which involves 3 hours of lab time every Tuesday afternoon for 4 weeks, starting last Tuesday. This would not be so bad apart from the fact that I have a few problems with electronics:

1. The lecturers are boring;
2. The lecture contents are confusing;
3. The confusing contents are complemented by badly written lecture handouts and poorly presented lectures;
4. There is no incentive to try and get over such obstacles to find the heart of the subject as this too is incredibly boring and comes across as not worth the effort.

I went to the first lab, and found that as I had suspected might happen, I had no idea what I was doing. Looking for something positive I noticed that apparently almost no one else had any idea either, so at least we were all in the same, somewhat waterlogged, boat. The lecturer of course was no help; any question that was asked would be answered in the patronising and slightly annoyed tone that implies the answerer is convinced of it's obviousness and the fact that everyone who isn't a congenital idiot has done it before and should therefore be fully conversant in the details.

Needless to say, it was one of the worst 3 hours of my life, I left with no more idea than I had gone in with and feeling rather worse than a bug which has been squashed under a boot which had not long previously stepped in some fresh fox excrement. And, joy of joys, I have 3 more weeks of this to come.

This and other events this week which I cannot so specifically lay my finger on, have left me swinging wildly between feeling okay and so black that pitch shines as a beakon of lightness before being totally swallowed in the depth of my unhappiness.

Although so far I have been able to act/react pretty normally when in conversation, particularly with my parents, my sleep which has never been good is now at a stage where I can either get absolutely no sleep or my body relents and I sleep very deeply at all the wrong times and for too long. I'm also starting to feel, as I mentioned, mixed feelings with regards to the end of term: I'm happy because of the holidays and the end of the labs, and I'm looking forward to Christmas; but at the same time, I'm worried, among other things, about how my change of schedule will affect my already pretty rubbish health/sleep patterns, and how I will be able to make use of the holiday which will be my best chance to consolidate what I've done this term and actually make sure that I know all I need to know about this term's stuff before we start learning more new things next term and I have to start again. Those and other worries which I can't quite work out how to articulate are all pretty banal and irrational, but they are what they are, and I can't shake them.

Right now, I really wish I was in bed, or working, but while being to tired to concentrate on work, I'm not tired enough to sleep. So I'm doing this: hardly productive and sounding pretty pathetic, leading me to decide that I'm going to stop, give up, and go to bed anyway. At least it'll be warm in there.

Shhh...

I'm sleeping, er, no, revising. Yeah, that's it, revising (I think I got away with that one).

Bad, Bad Day

I would imagine the title speaks for itself doesn't it?

Hell, tanj and damnation

Oh fan-bloody-tastic, only just over twelve hours until the start of a new term and I'm feeling the approach of a panic attack. Hence writing this post; I am hoping that banal distractions will hold of the worst until bed-time when I can hope to sleep off the fear.

The worst thing is that I didn't even think I was scared: I was looking forward to a new start and a new kick up the preverbial, and I was actually looking forward to seeing my Uni colleagues again. Okay, so I'm fairly apprehensive about the exams, but from what I can gather I am in fact no worse off than anyone else; all the people I've been in touch with are as scared/unmotivated as I am, if not more (scary in itself, eh).

So I thought this term would be different, and we can but hope that it's simply first day nerves: a slightly elevated version of what everyone feels when returning to work after a holiday. However, if it isn't, standby for some serious self-pity: I will not be happy if this starts all over again.

As the poet once said I'm "Twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun". For many people's sake, pray that I don't twitch too much, or I might just loose one (or two), and that, let's face it, would be kind of bad.

Now, where's that Whiskey...