21

Instead of thinking;
Another year of wisdom I've learned for laters years,

I think;
Another year wasted, another year closer to the day I die. I'm afraid. I'm running out of time.



Star .

Today, My Dad Said,

"I wanted to have success so that my family would be with me. Now I have found it, my family aren't with me."

That's a big reason for finding success for me too. So my family could be together and not have to worry. I'd never for a moment thought that it might not go that way, that it might be what they want, or even that life might take a different turn if I do get successful. So then, am I doing it for me alone? Who am I doing it for? What am I striving for?

Why does his bug me all the time? I'm so confused. Life is confusing.



Star .

Psychosis Nightmare

I have a lot to write and not much time, I'm just gonna bash it all out. Fuck grammar, fuck typos, lets do this.

This World Makes Me Sick, I Wish I Was Dead.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm writing this for.

I have a Thoughtbook that I write my moods in as well, but this blog is no less private than that book. Why do I keep writing on here?

Maybe in my mind, as this blog is public, I'm hoping that either somebody can give me the answers I need or else one of my many many tested methods of trying to improve my mood will work for somebody else out there. I really hope so. I am so fucking tired of repeating the same old shit, and not entirely sure what else I can do. Anyone reading this blog must be weary to see me back at the same dark spot over and over. I know I haven't yet tried everything, but I've tried so much that I'm mentally exhausted.

Also, my conscious efforts to stay positive were reinforced by the realisation that my depression has a knock-on effect on Mama, and seeing her cry scares the crap out of me. She's a tough cookie to me. I hate seeing her so helpless.

I've been obsessed with Beyond: Two Souls lately. Usually when I'm obsessed with something, it's a happy distraction from daily life. However. Beyond: Two Souls is possibly the darkest story I have ever been obsessed with, so as much as I love it, it's actually bringing my mood down. I am wondering if that fact that it made me think so hard about the human condition is what brought my depression back so fast.

Today was an awful, awful day. A few different things happened that would have technically made it a bad day, but bad days, compared to my Black Moods (depression) don't phase me anymore. I can shrug of minor unfortunate events. But I'm gonna write it anyway, hoping that a coping technique will jump out at me as I do...

I went to university to get some research done, and on the way I did some foo shopping, not really thinking it through. I ended up filling the bag I brought to carry the library books with more shopping than I actually needed. Never mind. At the university library, the bag broke. Strike one. I had to find a way to carry that and I hadn't even got the books yet. That didn't bother me as much as it could have. I thought, 'Well never mind, I'll tuck the book under my arm, the walk to the bus stop is only 5-10 minutes'. PLUS the bus stop was end of the line so it would be empty when I got on.

When I got to the stop, I saw that the bus was one of the older models buses and for some reason I groaned inwardly but I don't know why. The older buses kinda feel dirty, but that might just be my OCD, I'm sure they do clean it. Funnily enough, I think my reaction prompted later events.

It took ages before the bus was ready to let on passengers, I think because the buses behind it were late. I got on, no prob, then three fifths of the way home we got caught in traffic. As it was taking so long, there were loads of people waiting at every stop, making the journey take longer. Four fifths of the way home, the bus broke down. An just-under-an-hour-journey became almost two hours. And of course I was juggling an armful of books and (broken) bagful of shopping. In my mind, I was like 'okay, this shit happens, fine, get over it.' but my arms were starting to ache from all the waiting and I was aware that I was running out of revision time.

Skipping the rest, when I got home, I had to spend ages tidying up my room so that I could even bloody walk in it, let alone get together my revision stuff; Friday I put all the stuff to sell on ebay in my room, I work weekends, Monday I was out, so today it was a complete tip. MUCH better when I finished but then it was half-two, and I was already feeling exhausted. I hadn't studied all day and at that point I felt a little blue, and I have no idea why because a that point it didn't feel like a 'bad day'.

But then it got a lot worse. For some reason, Unpleasant thoughts began to resurface in my mind and I couldn't get rid of them. Lately they've been such a problem that I listen to music to get to sleep, but at that time it wasn't working. So I got back up and watched some Pewdiepie videos to cheer me up but my mind was so wrecked that I rarely found myself laughing, then all of a sudden I felt like I couldn't control myself anymore, I started shaking and crying and feeling really afraid. It was as if it was uncontrollable. I felt beyond help.

I stayed up, clearing out my email and doing things I never seemed to have time for until my eyes hurt too much to continue. I read one of the books for my course, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which I'd been wanting to read for ages so I thought that would lift my spirits. Wrong. There's a part in the book, only a few pages in, that made me feel SO. SICK. I don't think it would have affected me so strongly if I hadn't felt the way I'd been feeling. I would have been disturbed, yeah... my actual thoughts were 'What the fuck is wrong with this author? Do men actually think this? Fuck. Fuck this. This world sucks. I don't want to be a part of it. Get me out of here.' These are usually the thoughts that make me wish I was dead. I feel so tired. I kinda want to cop out. Obviously I don't tell people that, just put my head down and get on, that's what you do.

So clearly, that particular part hit a nerve in me and I didn't want to read it anymore. I'm wondering if I can get by this module without reading it at all. That particular bit I read had really fucked my mind up. It's now an addition to the thoughts circling my head. Then I went to bed and put music in my ears to drown out my thoughts. I went to sleep - I won't say 'thankfully' which is what I'd like to say, because I had this fucking crazy nightmare, which I KNOW is because of all of these thoughts I'm having. I won't go into details but my Dad was in it, and I woke up feeling shaken and very very sad.

So when I got up, my Black Mood had returned. As I'm writing now, I just realised that I didn't even think of cutting myself which is the usual solution. That definately a plus, but now I know I need to see someone quickly. I've been avoiding this for so long since the last one. I'm dreading it.

I feel as if I haven't just gone in a circle, I've ended up in a worse place than before. I really have no idea what to do. I can't write my book when I'm feeling like this. I have NO IDEA what to do.

But people have fought their way out of this, so I've got to as well. Do or die, right?

Anywhoo. Life goes on. I'll find something. Play loud music to drown my thoughts. Find happy stuff to do. I'm sorry if there's typos, but I don't have the heart to read everything I just wrote again. I'm sure you'll live.

First thing tomorrow, I need to make some phone calls.



S.K.

Broken

Super Spoiler: Briefly talking about the end of the Hunger Games. BuzzTF off if you haven't read it yet.


When I finished reading the last book of the Hunger Games series, all I could think about was how broken she was. Broken. So many people she loved, gone, or no longer trustworthy. Their whole society - broken. Katniss - broken. The nightmares, awful memories, and deaths of loved ones would haunt her until her dying day. Whoever is in charge of Panem will try to make her a pawn until the very end. She's broken. She's completely broken. And she will never ever be the same again.

Not to compare my life to a (fictional) war on such a massive scale, but a destruction is happening inside of me, quietly, internally. Last year, something happened to some unreachable part of me that has tainted it, and I don't know what it is, but it has broken me. I will never be the same.

A friend said something to me in distress - she said that she hopes to God that she doesn't have depression because it never goes away. I remember feeling so angry with her because I'd never felt better in my life than I did right then, and I wanted to be the one in charge of my life and my emotions. I was convinced that I would come out on the winning side. But it is a sham, a hope, a hallucination, a sick mockery of what my life really is. It is nothing.

I never thought I would ever fully understand what it was like to be depressed. It's something I never talk about. Anyone who's been there, truly been there, will know that wrenching feeling, about not even knowing where to start when someone offers to be a confidant. Those who can open up about it - I admire them. But not me. No more. I'm done. I don't think I will have the heart to post on this blog any more, though I will try to hang on to any event that makes me happy, for as long as humanly possible. What concerns me most right now is how it will end. How will I do it? How will I commit suicide? I don't have the guts to do it. But when I think about my future, I don't see anything. There is nothing but the realisation of who I am, what life is. Nothing. Like I said. Hopefully, I can get back into the swing of pretending I am happy and that it means something, that I am not a small pawn in a scale of something far grander and far beyond my control. But this moment of reflection has helped me understand this basic fact about existence. It's horrible. I am happy for those who don't yet know it. Maybe it is the cause of chronic depression - because those who suffer it really know what's going on. Maybe. Probably.

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Life Is Short. A Writer's Life Is Shorter Than The Average Person.

- because there's never enough time to write it all down.

A Banner for one of my older creations, 'Dreamer'. The premise was amazing - it haunts me even to this day - but the execution was embarrassingly awful. That story will never see the light of day again unless it has a SERIOUS makeover.

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.”

-Dale Carnegie

The Very First Novel

When I was younger, I had this funny little daydream that it would be cool if I published a book when I was eighteen, just to have said that I's completed a book at that golden age. What a bloody idiot I was.

Now, I am much more adamant that the book I publish is outstanding, over anything else. I would love if a film studio asked for film rights, or if I published it in my teens, or if I got the exact cover I wanted, or if I saw it being advertised on various TFL platforms, yada yada yada. But WHAT is the POINT if the book I've written wasn't up to scratch?

The Fear

Oh, so many.

The fear that it won't sell.
The fear that my book won't 'move' people enough. That they just won't care.
The fear of criticism about something that I should really have known already.
(- ie. the fear of missing something important.)
The fear of it not being original enough (Remember my The Hunger Games / Battlegame Forfeit problem?)
The fear of not being able to publish every idea I've ever had. But that may not be possible anyway, if you saw my notebook.

Thing is, fears are just fears. They only exist in the mind. Half of those fears are just little nagging tics, not real fears. I can fight those. But my mind wanders.

The Habit

At this rate, I'll be lucky if, by the end of my life, I get ONE book finished.

Every time I hit a road block in one novel, instead of fighting it through, I jump to another. I have no fewer than ten in working progress, right now. I stopped Battlegame after the Hunger Games film was released. I wouldn't say I 'gave up', rather - I 'lost heart'. Perhaps I'll take it up later on in life (lol).

I'd been working diligently on The Urban Piper, until the rewrite of DVTJ caught my attention, and I wholeheartly, eagerly and excitedly threw myself into that. I don't regret it - but it's meant that TUP has been sitting there fermenting. I NEED TO BREAK THIS HABIT.

Like I said recently to my best friend Lola, there's kind of no point continuing to write like this. Instead of having the novels finished one after the other, It's much more likely that when I'm forty, I'll have fifteen books finished at the same time.

The Name

I've spent quite a while trying to get this damn pseudonym set in stone. I think I finally have it, the one I want to use. I've dipped my toes in so many genres that I may actually have to use two. Or a few.

But the problem with me, as everybody knows, is that I go through periods of hating my own name.

So I may get bored of it anyway.

Curious Things

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies?

Should people be allowed to rewrite classics? I mean, the copyright on P&P has probably expired, yes, but I prefer adaptations like the whole Pride And Prejudice to Bridget Jones thing. It shows that Helen Fielding did actually have to do some work decided the setting and characterisation and whatnot. It's funny, because I do like fanfics. But fanfics are simply that - fan fiction. I wonder what Jane Austen would think about somebody writing zombies into her tale. Haha, I can quite imagine that the fear of zombies would be considerably less than the fear of not making a suitable marriage.

 I am going to read P+P+Z anyway, but the reason why I brought it up is because it made me think. What if someone, in the distant future, does that with my stuff? With all the books out there today, I somehow doubt people will look back at my work and want to mess around with it. But still, I wonder what they would do. I wonder what they would do with my plots, my characters, my creations.

... I don't think I would like it, to be honest.

Book-to-Film!

I see most of my creations as movies in my head. So much so that I am wondering if some of them should be written as scripts from the start. It's true that one of my fantasies is to see Quest, Architect and Detonator on the big screen. Oh, and Nine. I can't imagine them being anything less than awesome.

But at the same time, I wouldn't be able to STAND anybody else having control over my vision. I don't know how other authors do it. I think I would weep over the slightest change. I would have to direct and produce it and cast it and edit it all by myself. O_O

I leave that one up to God.



Star xx
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The Meaning Of Life

On Saturday, I got one of 'those leaflets' from a Jehovah's Witness, and took it with good grace (because that's what I always do in case God's giving me a sign) despite the fact that I doubt that it would have anything relevant to me. However the theme for the July 2011 edition (the one I got - some old-ass issue) was,

'What is the meaning of life?'

Seeing as that's what had been on my mind at my lowest points of the last few months, my next thought was promptly; 'Fuck.'

Because I know that when a Jehovah's Witness leaflet is telling me about my life, and I'm not a Jehovah's Witness, that there's a problem somewhere in the grand scale of my life...

... that it's basically a fucking mess and needs to be straightened out at once.

"Does life have any meaning?" Countless people have asked that question. Sadly, no matter how they look at their life, many are unable to escape what Austrian neurologist described as a "sense of meaninglessness and emptiness" in their lives.

To which I thought, 'Oh, great.' Kept reading.

To many, it simply does not make sense that humans, who are gifted with such great potential, live such short lives. They cannot understand the harsh reality that we all face: Sooner or later, even if we escape the worst that besets mankind, death robs us of everything.  -Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20

After this, I stopped reading. There was no point if it was just going to make me feel worse about the futility of my actions to suceed. 'I just want to be a writer,' I thought, feeling like shit. 'And possibly a dancer. I just want to be successful and for my life to be worth a damn.' If that's too much to ask, then let me repeat the last line of the prayer I say every night before sleeping - 'I pray thee Lord my soul to take, Amen.'

What's slightly worse is that on Sunday, I wasn't feeling too good at all. The tooth in front of the one I got filled (remember that?) was killing me at various points, so I had to make a dentists appointment today :( Also, I'm kinda unfamiliar with headaches (I never get them) so I wasn't sure if what I was feeling on Sunday was a headache or eye-ache, which I do actually get from my bloody HD glasses from Specsavers. Kinda pissed as that, because when I last went from my eye test, I TOLD them I didn't want it too strong from my last one. I bet they're trying to make me bloody blind so that I have to keep going back there to get glasses because I'm blind. Evil.

It was even more infuriating that no matter how much I tried to write, I felt too shitty to do it. I couldn't get anything done that day. So the motto 'What is the meaning of life' kept reinforcing itself in my head and I just thought - GAHHHH !!!!

If it wasn't for my mama, who keeps me motivated and strong, God knows what would've happened to me. I might just have ended up as one of those tragic, tragic people who commit suicide and everybody thinks, 'What a tragedy, they had so much ahead of them.' Well OBVIOUSLY, they didn't think so - or else they wouldn't have done it. And I know in my heart that I would never ever willingly commit suicide; it's much more likely that in my depression, I'll do something stupid like forget to look both ways when I'm crossing the road. Did that once. One my way from teacher-student day with Mr Duffy, where I basically went into school for ten minutes to talk about how well I was doing. On my way back, walked into the road and had to run when a lorry beeped me. Damn, that was scary. My life didn't flash before my eyes, only the lorry. I'll have to touch wood now because all this talk about death is freaking me out.

ANYWAAAAAAY, on a MUCH brighter note, I got LOADS and LOADS written today. So very happy and proud of myself. Will be posting a series of those chapters this week. Big fat yay, for the alter-ego writer. And at the moment, Dawnstar is presiding - finding that happy place where I'm making good and continuous jokes, smiling, taking control of my life, laughing. Darkstar can fuck off with my stress, don't need ANY of that right now. Thank YOUP.

The excerpts in this blog are from:
The Watchtower, July 1, 2011.

Peace, Love and Light (preferrably starlight)

Star xx

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Quotes (cont.)

... we made it. And the world hasn't even ended yet. =]


Now. Seeing as I'm not the sort of person to make New Years Resolutions, pretty much ever, lets get down to business. S.K. xx

Serious Quotes .

“The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped”
-Arthur Schopenhauer 

Three can keep a secret, if two are dead. 
-Benjamin Franklin

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.” 
-Marilyn vos Savant

“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. 
Only through our love and friendship can we create
the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.” 
-Orson Welles

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,a smile,
a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the
smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn
a life around.”
-Leo F. Buscaglia

“Dreams permit each and every one of us to be quietly and safely
insane every night of our lives.” 
-William Dement

MOTTOS FOR 2012

“Time is free, but it's priceless. 

You can't own it, but you can use it. 

You can't keep it, but you can spend it. 

Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” 

-Harvey MacKay

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your

mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except

in the mind.”

-Dale Carnegie

_

Pain

I know. I'm not much of a writer, am I? For the five posts on my blog so far, only one has been literature. So as I said in Star's First Venture, I'm still trying to break through writer's block. Miserably.

It's quite difficult to do this when I'm plagued with so many fears. It's sparking violent and horrific nightmares instead of my usual, thought-provoking, innovative, inspiring writer's-dreams - I hope the list of adjectives indicated how amazing those ones are. But these fears; fear of death, of failure, of embarrassment... are beginning to unravel me.

The other day, after I'd brushed my teeth and ran my tongue in my mouth, feeling the dip in my back tooth - it reminded me of the hole I'd once had in the tooth behind it. And out of nowhere, that got me thinking about pain.

Star's List Of Pain .

10. Stomach Ache. (when I was young, this would've been number one.)
9. Cuts. (papercuts, accidental knife cuts - they're so quick that you don't feel it until after.)
8. Headaches & Migranes.
7. Pressure Pain. (intense pressure on body part ie. dropping something on foot, stepping on pin, etc.)
6. Burns. (throbs for ages.)
5. Banging Your Elbow.
4. Cramps.
3. Labour. (not that I've ever experienced this.)
2. Dental Pain. (wisdom tooth being taken out or having a large cavity. THE WORST.)
1. Torture. (ongoing pain ie. burning, mutilation, strangulation, etc.)


I've yet to figure out why I've been thinking in this way lately. Maybe there's something wrong with my head - I could write about it, and release it that way, only... I'm a fantasy writer, not a horror writer. The most violent thing I wrote was Battlegame Forfeit, and even that would be Bambi compared to the things that would probably sprout from this.

Time for some detox tea and a rest, I think. Hopefully my head will be fixed in the morning; if so, I'll be full of Christmas cheer in my next blog post. If not... well, no doubt it'll be apparent. Yay for the oncoming Christmas.

Star xx

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