23 February 2003

This really cannot continue to go on...

I'm not the same person I was when you met me. I'm not even CLOSE to the same person I was when you met me. I'm not just bouncy and agitated anymore, not just neurotic and hyper, not just weird and... well, weird. I don't KNOW what's wrong with me, but I'm not exactly any of those things anymore.

I remember when I was staying with Kenny for a little while... one evening (it was probably theee in the morning, but I remember it as evening), we were talking about guilt... There had ben some sort of catastrophic tidal wave in India or someplace, and Kenny had decided that he was responsible. He hadn't been there, hadn't known anyone there, had absolutely no control over the weather and so forth... ah, but he was sure it was his fault. I told him I'd been responsible for AIDS. Kenny promised me that AIDS had started well before my birth, and I hadn't actually caused it. I told him I could be at fault for AIDS if he could be responsible for the tsunami.

(Kenny, with his Southern accent and incessant drunkenness, could not pronounce "tsunami" correctly... I tried to get him to say it as often as I could...)

Sometimes, this guilt just wells up in me, and I can't stop it. I can't even contain it. I don't understand where it comes from, or WHY I feel guilty. There's just this horrible wretchedness, this feeling that I've done something terrible. I'm too ashamed of myself to even name it. So instead, I just feel guilty over everything. AIDS? Yeah, that's still my fault. Sad looks on the faces of strangers? My fault. Cancer? War? Plague? Michael Jackson? Somehow, I'm convinced I must have caused those things without knowing it.

I'm scared when halfway decent things happen to me. I don't really feel deserving of the blue skies outside. I half-suspect that a large streak of lightning is going to come, literally, right out of the blue, and strike me down into a charred, pained puddle of Helena-goo. I imagine the lightning would also set the propane tanks on fire, and the house would burn down, and that would be my fault too, for stepping outside and invoking the lightning.

I'm sort of exaggerating.

I guess, mostly, I feel like a jinx.

And it's one thing to joke about that, but it's really gotten out of hand. Every time I look around, I see something tragic or upsetting happening. And no matter what it is, no matter how absurd, I always end up connecting it to something I've done... I KNOW that's superstitious, I KNOW it's ridiculous. And I also know that, frankly, it's an early sign of serious mental illness. Next thing you know, I'm gonna think I'm Jesus or some crap like that.

Maybe it's hormonal. I really think a lot of it is.

Sometimes it's hard to breathe, and I don't know why until I realize I'm crying, or trying not to cry. I'm totally abusive of myself, I lose more of my ambition with every passing hour, and I can't even concentrate enough to read without moving my lips. I want sex, but I don't; I want food, but I don't know what I'm hungry for; I have impulses to yell at people and I feel like a murderer for even thinking about yelling; I'm scared to start a conversation with somebody in case I start feeling sick or something... I'm so frustrated with myself that I won't LET myself out of the house without supervision, at least not any further than the end of the driveway. Otherwise, I can't be held acountable for what I might do to my stupid hated self.

And to be honest, I don't know what to do. I know my mom would tell me to go see a counselor or something, but I don't want to end up on half a dozen drugs and in another hospital. I really think it's something hormonal, some demonic parody of postpartum depression... and I don't know what they do to women for that... Probably mind-bending drugs, taken three times a day, plus being put in a nuthouse at the mercy of psychotic counselors.

I learned the German word for "nuthouse" the other day. I don't remember it now, but I liked it.

You know, that one woman who killed her five kids by drowning them in a bathtub? She had postpartum depression, they said. I don't think I'm that bad, though. I wouldn't hurt anybody but me.

Oh who GIVES a fuck.

I'm going to go have a cigarette now.

WHY CAN'T I BE NORMAL FOR ONCE IN MY FUCKING LIFE?

~Helena*