Do you hear the people sing?

Movies are starting to affect me badly again. Making me long for things I tell myself I could never have. I have always wanted to be a soldier, ever since I can remember wanting to be something real and not a frog. Some days frog is still a pretty appealing option. Second above all else I wanted to be an actor. I liked the idea of being someone else so much that I thought I could do it for a living, which retrospectively says an awful lot about me. If I didn't have a crippling case of stage fright at all times I might have even pursued it, but I do so I didn't and the time has come. I got the call, I am available for re-evaluation for the position of combat engineer in the Australian Army. It has been six months since my soul crippling rejection, eight months since I royally screwed up my relationship with a truly beautiful human being and three months since I opened back up to an idiot. nearly twenty-two years since I was born and I am still no better at making decisions. I have done next to nothing about my fitness because I refuse to be motivated to losing weight and being better. It is so very fucking hard to write that sentence. The tears swell in my eyes as I write "I" instead of "My mind"or "my brain". Both of which are such bullshit, its like blaming a third party for my refusal to do a single bloody thing, but the blame falls at no ones feet but my own. I don't know what to do about it anymore. I tell myself I will go to gym tomorrow and I probably will but how long will it last this time? Until the next girl breaks my heart from a million miles away. The next time someone makes a fat joke or a forever alone joke or the next time I feel hideous because I am constantly reminded of how unremarkably average I am in the attractive department?

I don't even know if this is depression anymore? I hate that, I always think of it as an excuse to feel sad. Oh I have depression, or bi-polar or stress disorder or a thousand other things.

If I fail this time I don't know what will happen. I am scared of that, not knowing that is dark. that's a road I am fucking terrified of, but applying almost scares me more. To sit in a room and try to prove to a complete stranger that you deserve the future you have always wanted when you yourself are not even sure you do deserve it.

Do you know what people ask? How are you going to get in with all your head stuff? Don't you have to be fit to get in? But aren't you a bit too emotional for the army?  Do you know what that does to a person. What this fucking decision is doing to me right now. I am so gone, I just want out. I want to step into the rain and have it wash me away to a place where I don't have to feel like this. Tonight the darkness in my mind may consume me. If I make it through the house in my head I will see you all tomorrow. If not, make it Tuesday.

I must admit I momentarily missed the good old days...

I am inevitably always surrounding by two things. the first thing being women who are as incredible and beautiful as they are unavailable and the second thing being assholes.

As I become more and more of an adult I begin to realize how easy it would be to end up in this place forever. To stand still in your life when you find a place that you understand and know would be the easiest thing in the world after experiencing years and years of not knowing what will happen next. I think this is how people end up working retail for the entirety of their lives. If you can put food on the table, keep the lights on and have money left to buy the various substances required to keep you mostly inebriated then why would you want to move? That is what I am afraid of, the more I put off the army the more that fear grows, that I am not putting it off for an benefit but that of my fear. Am I doing it so that I am more prepared in the long run or because I am safe here? I have a home, I have food, I have some semblance of a social life, I can pay the bills and am happy at least thirty percent  of the time. Life is not that bad in the here and the now, so why not just sit down and get comfortable? Everyone knows why not, because you want bigger things or different things or you have dreams. I get that, I know that for myself all I am saying is I get it now. I get why there is a forty year old man working at woollies as a shelf stacker.

I don't like not knowing how I feel, which I imagine everyone dislikes to some degree but I find it especially difficult as my emotions rule me more then I rule them. I'm not a robot and not as perpetually angry as some of you may think I am. I like having focus and knowing my feelings, I use them to write and create and make decisions, just like everyone else once again I suppose. It is a funny thing that we all consider ourselves unique for one reason or another but few of us really truly are. I suppose in a way that is exactly what makes this hard. I know I'm not alone, I know there are so many others out there like me, but then I have to ask why the hell I am sitting here alone? Is it all to be blamed on me not getting out there and doing stuff. I don't think I'm solitary in nature I just think I'm so used to this now that I honestly don't know how to change it. I think it is much the same as breaking up with someone you have been with for years, you feel broken, all you want is them back as bad as whatever caused it is and half of all of that is not knowing how to exist with them in your life. I guess I don't know how to function with people in my life and I've never had it constantly enough to learn. I either fucked up the relationship, moved away from my friends or was too drowned in my own bullshit depression to care. I don't do people well anyone that knows me can tell you that. I just get awkward and weird and my confidence slips away from me like a bar of soap in a prison shower. I am trying to be better at this, joining the SES should be a step forward in a lot of areas. I'm doing it on my own, new people, new stuff. I'm scared shitless, that's why I don't shut up about it, but I'm still doing it.

I need to get away. I have camping on the Murray in April, and as excited as I am that's still not where I want to be. I need to get to Adelaide, I need to chase a different dream, if only for a day.

Cool, cool cool cool.

Up the creek.

I don't remember getting on this boat. I don't remember why or when or how it happened, but I have been on here for a while. Bailing water out of the bottom and trying to plug up the holes. It is hard watching others sink, it takes people so long to realise you can’t plug the holes with stuff. It doesn't work like that. These holes aren't really in the boat. They are in us. We are bleeding lead and poison into our boats and it is dragging us down. So you bail as fast as you can and you get it all out and the boat starts to rise, and that's when you notice one of the holes is gone, and you smile and another has vanished. That's it. Positives plug the holes, so now you don't have to bail; now you can spend a night out, go, party, enjoy your life and when you get back everything will be fine. It’s not; it never seems to be on this boat blog of mine. You have left it to long and now you are scrambling to get the water out, and that's when the voice kicks in. You are going to drown Lee. No. You are going to drown and no one will fucking care. No. Give up, you are going to anyway. And the holes are back, so positives plug the holes up and negatives bore them back in? Correct. So what is the bailing? Bailing is keeping yourself level enough to exist while the water floods in and you can’t create the positives. So.. we basically just keep doing this until we are alright? Yep. That's kinda shit Lee. Oh I know, I've been doing this for a while now and it doesn't ever really get awesome, well I have to get back to bailing now otherwise, well you know, death and all that. WAIT! Wait, why don't you just pull up onto the shore?? Tried that, this happens to be the river of my life, sounds cheesy right? But it’s there. So you pull up onto the bank for a while, but sooner or later you have to get back in the boat and when you do you realise you haven't really gotten anywhere. So why not just pull up on the bank and spend that week repairing all the holes? Tried that as well, but there are things you need to do that. Like mallets? And timber? And various hole plugging things? No. Like therapists, and shrinks, and happy pills and time off work, and money for trips to Fiji. But why not still do all of that? Because when it’s all done there is still the chance that the holes can come back, the boat is never permanent. It always changes. So what do you do? Spend your whole life paddling down the river? That's the plan, one of three things will happen. Option 1. You give in, let yourself sink and sit on the bottom for a few peaceful moments before your brain runs out of oxygen filled red blood cells and you die. Option 2. You paddle far enough down the river to find a place you can settle for; you slide up onto the back, get comfortable in the mud and accept your life for what it is right then and there. Or my current goal. Option 3. You get good, you learn the lesson that there will always, always be holes in the boats and you manage your brain enough to fight them with the positive hole pluggers, and if all else fails you get to be the best damn bailer you can be. You keep that up for as long as you can until you get where you really want to be going. Some rivers are long, some are short, some go on for infinity and some grow as you do. They can take you anywhere as long as you are willing to paddle that way and they always end in something good. There are waterfalls and rapids, rainbows and kickass colourful fish. There are scary things and awesome things and everything in between. But in the end, there is only one real way to go and no one else can paddle for you. So come on buddy, get back in the boat. Stick your positives in the hole and follow me into infinity.

I found myself that day.

 

You bring yourself back in like you were never gone. No dust, no marks, no mould, no problems. Just a few rooms all for you and your madness, your brilliance and all of the little that go along with you. Art supplies and a room full of clothes with your tattered and muddy ones in the corner. What a woman. Knee deep in it everyday and beautiful every night. Anybody would think I was in love right? Ha, they do. They already do and they don't even know the story, or the smile, or the fireplace and the magic. And then we talk on the phone and I want to punch your face in. "And that's why you love me" she says.

I found myself that day, there was no other way. I spent some time away, I'll never be the same.

 

Created by Courtney Chapman

 

 I let my walls down to damn fast, I let the wrong right people in. People that get it but cant be there, reliability has to be a quality of the people you let into the house in your head. You have to be able to trust them to be there when all hell breaks lose and you go back to being the madman on the run. I've mentioned it before I think, this big house in my head. It came about sometime after I read The Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings, which is brilliant if you are interested in any sort of fantasy. It was a metaphor for my mind that I grew really attached too. An infinite house, with paint peeling and locked doors, open ones and rooms for guests. A sprawling mansion with wings I didn't even know existed until I come upon feelings that I have never felt before. There are permanent rooms in there, places for me and for other people I know will never go. There are rooms for music and insanity, there is desk and a pencil for writing and even places I try not to go anymore. but back to my point. I let people in too much, I'm trying to correct that, put the breaks on my emotional connections because that's what they are, you can call them friends all you like but you pour your heart out to someone enough and shit starts heading into that weird grey zone. Even if it doesn't for them it still puts you in an odd position. So I hope I don't come across as a cold fish. I'm just trying to protect the people I care about and myself from the inevitable insanity that stems from being attached to the impossible.

A relationship gone past has been tumbling through my house lately, slamming doors shut and blowing others open, letting memories out I really don't want floating around. They are armed missiles set to destroy my mood and my day. Considering times gone past and rumours blowing up chunks of happiness. I don't often talk about what I did because it has become so twisted in my head that I don't really know what happened. Do I have an explanation for it? Or am I just trying to justify my actions for decisions of a past that other people have apparently forgotten. Is this all just a case of my loneliness making my pine for a partner? Or is it my brain returning to the pattern of the aftermath where I went psycho again. I don't want to go back to that I have been doing so well keep my anger down to minimal levels, and then you bastards had to go and start laughing and blow it all up again. people are weird.

Not created by Courtney Chapman

The picture. Some of you may freak out at this, and I did think about it for a while before I decided to add it in. I wanted to show you rather then tell you what its like, this circle of thoughts in my head. it like watching your life roll by with bad reception. Greyscale colour and so much snow you cant see a damn thing. You brace yourself for the drop into depression and you want to rip your hair out and scream but you just have to keep going. You have to tell yourself this is only for the moment, that things will get better no matter how often these moments come you will beat them. There are days when I give up and want to die. there are days when all I feel like doing in going back to the metal and the lighter just to feel something different, to let my brain process those sweet, sweet endorphins that come after the pain. But you cant. You have to handle it like an adult, you have to push through everything and just keep fucking going. The static is the worst though, you roll up your sleeves and prepare yourself to do something positive, to change your life and be better but your mind throws decides something else entirely. Suddenly there are these road blocks and stop signs and excuses not to go, the snow gets turned up to eleven and now not only are you suddenly waist deep in reasons to stop yourself, you also cant see why you wanted to do it in the first place. Build a snow plow out of good memories and upgrade your headspace to digital reception.

 

I have this amazing friend, a real ticks all the boxes and twelve out of ten sort who carries around a lot of emotional baggage from her past and all of the things that have happened to her along the way here, and it got me thinking. Emotional baggage, we all drag it around for no real reason until we finally build up the strength to let it go. Past relationships, denials, rejections, bad days and horrible memories all zipped up and ready to go in handy wheel along packages. What for? To tire us out? or slow us down? Why do we keep these things with us for so long? Because when you really think about it when has anyone ever described anything akin to positive emotional baggage? It doesn't exist! it isn't a thing, its simply not there, its not hidden in your toilet bag or packed into your just under the limit carry on. It is inside us. It sounds cheesy when I write it out, but all the positive stuff, the good things we keep to keep us strong and shuffling along this road of ours all comes from inside. It isn't something we carry, or pull along or push in trollies, we keep it in our heads and hearts for easy access when things really go south on us. Maybe that's the key to being happy, keep the pockets of positivity inside bigger then the emotional baggage you are carrying on the outside.

Sometimes I write because I feel like I might say something brilliant other times it is because I need to get things out of my head. Today it is the latter. It may not have been written well but it has been written and at the moment that is all that really matters to me. I'll be back again when things get real or better.


 

Now your lost...

Sometimes something comes along and touches a part of your soul. Opens up a door in the hotel of your head. That's the way I see it at least, a big house, big rooms, little rooms, locked rooms and open rooms. People come and stay and leave, sometimes saying goodbye other times just disappearing into the night. Some rooms get smashed up and broken, and others get organised and cleaned. There are rooms for everyone, rooms for services and rooms for only you. The windows are the parts that gets to me though, windows to the past and future, to places you'd like to go and places you've never been. To impossible places, and impossible ideas. Some views move and change and flow and some are as still and solid as ever.

It’s funny the things that can open doors though, sometimes it’s the right smile at the right time opening back up that door you've had closed ever since she broke your heart, sometimes its seeing your own reflection, seeing how you have changed, or haven't changed. This time it was a song though.

Frank Ocean - Lost. If you haven't listened to it, you should. Just on the off chance it does what it did to me, to you. I can remember the exact moments I heard it the first and second time. The very first time it was played off a mobile phone in my crappy car, the sound system died a while back, and I talked the whole way through it. Looking back I think I was too focussed on the company and the conversation to really listen to it. The second time it hit me, it put an image in my head of a dance, flowing hair and cool calm colours on the walls, low level lights and good feeling in general. Today, it was played up four short stairs, on iPod dock right at the right moment, when I was in the right mood, where it could take me by surprise and lock my thoughts into one smooth fluid direction. Smooth and fluid direction, it doesn't sound quite right but it’s the only thing that fits this. With how my head works, it is an impressive feat for a single song.

Emotions are a fickle thing, because even when they aren't real, if you feel them they exist. This is the basis for waking up in fear from a nightmare or elation from a good dream. It didn't happen, the rational part of your brain is so very aware that it didn't happen but the emotion was there, we still felt what we felt and thought what we thought. I yearn to float in a void of indifference when it comes to emotion.

I am tired, not from lack of sleep but lack of reality. It’s not that I am unhappy, I have a pretty good lot in life, I love in a comfortable little home, I have a job I don't hate and pay that allows me to live some form of the life I’d like to. Good people, some of whom I respect and others that I call my friends. I have a family that cares and best friends whom I love. It’s not that I am unhappy; it is that I cannot stop this constant stream of thoughts, and maybe this is what everyone is like and I am just ill-equipped to deal with it. I berate myself constantly, for not being better, for not being able to fix things, for not being able to control my thoughts and emotions. For not sleeping, not losing weight, for being so angry, or insulting, for not having more friends, or people that think as highly of me as I do them. It’s a constant monologue of personal and insistent abuse, stemming from inside my own head and out of the handful of things that make it stop. That let me have peace and quiet and calm none of them are permanent. This normally works; I normally have this urge to type, and write the noise out of my head. Music can drown it out, and good books can let me escape. Good company can let me float, real conversation can help me focus and physical contact can shut the noise out for hours at a time. But none of it is consistent. Nothing works forever. Books become tiresome, friends leave, words are too hard to type, music causes pain and sex makes me feel guilty. So if I appear disgruntled or confused or on the verge of some form of break down this is why. Because I may not consider myself good enough for a lot of things, friendships and jobs and adventures, but more than anything I don't consider myself good enough for the life I have. This is half of why I am constantly trying to be better. To do better by others and encourage others to do the same. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like I am me, that's okay, and that I can have this without feeling like I need to do more.

Which I suppose brings me to something that's been bugging me ever since it was said. "You are amazing" because I got something that would make someone feel better. I replied with the truth, I'm not amazing, I just try and see things as, if it were me what would I want someone to do for me. She laughed and said so you are Jesus and I jokingly replied with Nope, he's a lot better at fishing then I am. I'm not a saint, I don't even pretend to be, and there are days where I want to punch anyone who needs anything from me. I do what I do to be better, or at least pretend to be better, because helping people feels right and its never wrong if you do it the right way. Girls or guys too, I'll address that right now. There was a moment in English class way back in year 11 when I offered to help a girl with her assignment, and an asshole loudly remarked that I would have helped him too if he had tits. No. I will help anyone I can that really needs it, and I told him the same. Did he walk up and ask me for help? No. He was a dick and expected it to work for him. It’s the same everywhere I have worked. Need Panadol? Or as drink, or your broke and can’t afford lunch, or it’s pissing down rain and you don't have a non-soaked way home. Then I’ll be there if I can be. But don't give me that, you only help chicks bullshit. Because I do the same for people regardless of gender. That's not being a saint either, that's trying to be a better person then what I feel like, which most of the time is scum.

Some days I don't know if everyone else is on a pedestal or I am just a few feet down in a hole my mind has dug looking up. Some days, I’m standing higher and others I’m on even ground but most I’m sitting low. I’m trying to be better at this life business buts it hard work. I get told to look after myself for a while by the people that know and care, but I can’t do that. I just don't work that way. I will always consider other people more important, and not because I am a saint, but because I think I am a sinner.

 

There goes the fear...

So I haven't written here in a while and I was inspired today by new music and the influence of a new friend.

Things have been going well, I have lost weight and anger, I have gained wisdom and lost a few shitty friends. I am slowly becoming better at being a person, and become worse at being an ass. I still stick to what I said though. Good person, but a shitty friend. You have to help people, even people you don't like, or don't want to help. You have to. Its the only way to live, is to just be good. Not all the time, not every day, but as many times as you can manage just be good. Its not a hard concept to live by, in fact I think if I can manage it with my plethora of faults, then more of you can. It is as simply as "do you need a hand with that?" When did we become so self absorbed that we stopped seeing the people around us. I partly blame technology for keeping our eyes and ears down, and mostly blame ourselves. We get far to rapped up in the little things, because they are even more everywhere then they were before LCD screens came along. Watch the world, look out for the little old lady with to many groceries to carry, or the bloke who needs a push start on the corner. Be better, be good, help those who are afraid to ask for it.

Explore. Another thing I worry about it with the younger generations is the need to go out and find the new. No new Xbox, or PlayStation or Ipad. When was the last time you went somewhere new for the sake of seeing it. For the sake of experiencing something real and something different. Looking at the world from the top of a mountain or the very end of the beach to nowhere. Get out of your house, get out of your car, leave your phone behind. Turn the soundtrack to your life up to ten and just go somewhere. It doesn't have to be far, it jut has to be different.

See new things, find new smells, discover parts of yourself you never knew you had simply by going places you have never been. Challenge yourself to get outside, to try something new. Hell, go to a crazy restaurant or a boring museum, push yourself to do the things you didn't think you could. Take one small step and see how many follow the first. Go crazy, go hiking, go jumping out planes and diving underwater. Live. Be alive. Be free.

Always be free.

Reality escapes her...

This is the first post I have written where the title will come after the writing, which shouldn’t be as strange for me as it is but it is so I’m rolling with It.,

I feel like the next time a girl touches my neck am going to have flashbacks from Vietnam. For the first time tonight I watched the breakfast club which came highly recommended from someone who I am supposed to be insanely angry at.

You think people know you, know as much as they can about you, those are the people you trust the most, the people you let in, and not the ones you tell things to, I mean the ones who you don’t have to tell, they just kind of know. Those connections scare the shit out of me; I suppose am scared of who I am more than I should be but maybe not. Maybe if I was more honest, if I had less lies to justify my thoughts and processes then maybe id understand me better but I don’t. I am so angry, so very very angry with the way things have turned out, I say I saw it coming but at the end there things changed so much and my ideas of what would happened flipped, but I was still wrong. And I am not okay with that. Job I hate to be wrong like everyone else on the planet but this is more, I am so tired of giving out advice of telling people things and explaining things that I have no idea how I know I just know.

At what point does this stuff start to come back. When do I get to start making right choices, not just the ones that feel right? I'm not tired of being hurt, am 20 I have so much more of that to come but a few months or years of happiness would make sifting through that sea of shit so much easier. Happy memories can keep you alive.

I tell a tale and spin a yarn but no one really knows the whole story, Hell I can’t tell anyone the whole story and they wouldn’t believe me if I did. So what am I supposed to do? So much is happening while the world stands still and nothing happens at all. Tonight I am losing my mind, am not hurting now that I started typing and maybe that’s why am doing this so I don’t have to let it swill in my head and all because I saw some girl on a movie kiss some guys neck and it brought everything to the front of my head and I couldn’t ignore it, in half a second my walls came crashing down and the inside of my head was naked to the world. There was a time not so long ago when I pulled those walls down myself and I wasn’t afraid, but now? I have to build that confidence back, do we all lie to protect ourselves? I know so many people would claim they don’t, that they don’t care what others think and they do what they want but that’s bullshit, there are very few people alive who get negative feedback about every aspect of themselves. You wear your hair up and the chick that makes your coffee smiles at you just that little bit longer, or that low cut dress that distracts the hell out of the fruit and veg guy at franklins. We are all attention seeking assholes dying for everyone else’s approval. And yet no one’s approval, because we don’t are. Well fi you didn’t care you would be you. There would be no oh I can’t say that and no I should wear this today. I spend five minutes deciding which of my beat up old work shirts am going to wear, good days I wear jeans okay days I wear shorts. If I know am going to have to smash out the work it’s always shorts, they are easier. Why should it matter? Why should it fucking matter.

Do you see? Does anyone fucking see? This is what’s happening in my head every second of every day. This fucking. Insanity. All of the time, I can’t turn it off. I can’t make my head fucking quiet ever. Jesus this is scaring me. I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen to me if this doesn’t shut up., if this doesn’t turn off and just let me have my peace back. Let me find a way to shut all the doors and windows and just sit in silence.

AND WHY. Why can’t it turn off, why can’t it just stop because I am not comfortable in my own damn shoes. With people, with anyone, there are so few people who could shut all this up and all of them managed to ruin it, they left or cheated or lied or ran as soon as I let my mind run free. Second place, every time. Every fucking time and people wonders why am unconfident, have people leave you for someone else or somewhere else or something else enough times and you start to question everything and that was bad enough before all that shit entered my world.

I get the look, I know that look, that’s the you are pathetic look. No am not, I don’t blame women and relationships for all of my problems. am not that much of an ass, or that unrealistic if you eat peanuts and swell up and die you don’t blame the peanuts you blame your allergies. If it happens time and time again it must be something about me which is just another confidence crushing step towards hermitdom. BUT I digress it isn’t all me either because if it was I may get bad. Worse, worse than Brisbane, Brisbane it became an option fi that was the truth... it may become something I attempt. I don’t like to think I could be that selfish but I have my moments.

Anger issues. That my dad calls bullshit, it’s just me not dealing with things. He not entirely wrong, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I work and live to a standard, not a hard standard but a decent one. Why others can’t do the same am not sure, I’m not asking everyone to be a saint, but if you come to work... do your job. It is that simple. don’t do the minimum, don’t do the maximum even, just find a happy medium where you don’t force anyone else to do your work for you. AND on occasion when someone else is flat fucking out, help, just a little. Prove you have a soul and that you’re not just a giant cunt on legs. WORK. Like for a living see?

But back to that hate filled fuck that sits just behind my eyes, and sleeps in my chest. I don’t wish I scared people, but I wish they understood how scared I am. I have never really snapped, never really lost it, people think that i punch things and that’s me losing it... no no. no. no. no. no. no. that is me keeping it under control. When I sweep my monitor off my desk, smash my phone throw stock across the room, break someones fucking arm. That’s me losing it, in half a second I see all that happening in my head and I push it away. I come so close. The day I sat there and cried and cried was the worst. I don’t remember who it was that came and told me I was going to be okay, maybe Elle. Maybe. She was worried because I was sad; I was scared because I was angry. I came so close, so close to losing it. To flipping the fuck out. To dropping all ties with humanity and turning into something else. If people got all that, really under stood it, they would be scared but no. they see the semi acceptable looking kid who’s angry all the time and thinks he works hard.

And then, then there are the days where I wake up okay and wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. I’m okay, with all this going on, you wake up okay? With how you felt last night or ten minutes ago or half a moment ago. And now you feel okay? Now everything you can deal with. Bipolar. No. bullshit. This is something else. If this was that generic then I wouldn’t feel so fucking alone. I wouldn’t be tearing myself apart right now and I would wake up wondering why I wrote all this here. My knightly notebook doesn’t work anymore, that is all one topic that I can’t stay away from if I lay hands on it, same with the typewriter or anything really written down with pen and paper. So I return here with my mountain of issues and things to explode from my mind. And I know this writing is not all that crash hot but it’s not for that tonight it’s not to impress you all with my fancy word work. It’s to stop me from losing to control. It’s so that I can wake up tomorrow and not explode at work. I can be okay and do the momentous amount of work that needs doing. I didn’t know where this was going to end but I think it’s coming to a close now. And I have a title, just so I know it will be read.

Goodnight friends.