the collapse continues

By the time I was ready to talk I'd hit my monthly trough. By the time that cleared up I was in trouble with the school. By the time that cleared up it was exam crunch time. It still is. I'm busy. I'm stressed.
I need to concentrate.
If I don't focus on what I'm doing, I slip. If I don't watch myself when I'm walking, I fall. If I don't stay on task when I'm working, I get distracted. If I let myself think too hard, my brain goes into spasms.
Everything has to suppress everything else. I have to stay steady. Keep a tight ship. Never let anything go.
I have to stay in control.

Case closed

Well.
Now I know.
No... not now. I'm not in a state to write now.
I'm still digesting.
I... ugh.
Fucking hell.

Words for the future

I'm not the person that I wanted to be. Not yet, anyway. Maybe some day I'll change that.

My brain is shifting again. I'm having dizzy spells and headaches, as well as other strange effects. I think I'm very close to finally waking up. It will be nice to finally see the world and leave this nightmare behind. But the Dream Jar works both ways: anything can get in or out, just not in one piece. Breaking through my own defenses will be difficult. But then, I've endured a lot. I'm going to drop the modesty and say that I have, honestly, been through a lot of shit. So this comes next. So be it.

I was thinking about love earlier and I realized that I've never really loved a person. I just covet personality traits and absorb them into myself. It seems I naturally seek out people who not only have a hole in their life that I can fill, but also who have something that I want. I think this is part of the reason I find people with happy, contented lives so frustrating: because there's nothing for me to exploit to get at what they have.
That's always been "me," I guess. No central character, just a patchwork of things I've absorbed. You could say that about most people to some extent. I'm just more... literal. I don't think it's a bad thing, not really. I don't hate what I am, even if I do regret a lot of the choices I've made. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be united. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be in love, for real I mean. I might be right now, but it's probably just hunger again. I'm trying not to show it. It's meaningless. Besides, she'd have no interest in me.

I'm getting stronger. The energies inside of me are building. I can manipulate it many ways and change my form at will. I'm becoming more bold with my projections, straying further and further into the unknown abyss. It does get frustrating, though... I keep forgetting what shape my solid body is. It's difficult to eat when you keep thinking your mouth stretches three inches in front of your face. I'm kind of scared someone will notice... but at the same time, I kind of want them to notice. To top it off, emotions have started to trickle back. Genuine ones, not the appearances I put up. Just the other day I felt genuinely happy. I didn't understand. This will take some getting used to.

I'm almost certain that I was raped as a child. I can't say for sure. My brain throws wild accusations left and right, so any intuitions or body memories I might have could easily be false. I'll probably never know. Can I live regardless? I hope so.

All things considered, I haven't done a great deal with my life. My mum keeps saying I've done really well considering the hand I was dealt in life. I guess that's something. A lot of it was spent just coming to terms with myself, something I'm still not completely finished with and probably never will be. I've spent a good chunk of it waiting to die. Overall I think I spent about an equal amount of time feeling happy and sad, but both of those are dwarfed by the time spent feeling nothing. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.

I dunno. There's not much to be said for me. I guess I'll just do what I always do.
Just go with it.

Timeskips

When am I?
This is very, very bad. To use another tortured analogy, the surgical wound became infected after the operation. Something inside me has been damaged. My sense of time has become horribly skewed. I'm dissociating out of control. Memories are cracking in and out of consciousness. We're losing time at an alarming rate, hours and days simply disappearing. And then there's the chronological dyslexia, events arriving in my head in slightly the wrong order.
And it hurts, it hurts so much...
the pain...
and I'm so hungry...

Aftershocks

I'm really in a lot of pain right now. My chest feels... well, not bad, considering it was ripped open recently. But still. I'm afraid to touch it now... feels like blood. My hearts are still bad, too. Even though the little monster is gone they're still going to take a long time to heal. So the long and short of it is my chest hurts, a lot. Accordingly I've been grumpy.
Still. It's been sunny lately and I've been going for walks. So maybe things will improve.

...I couldn't save her. I told myself that everything depended on my being able to save her. I've always put too much faith in people, always bet on the wrong horse...
I'll just have to live for us both, now. Me, her... and her child. They're my responsibility.

Neo-Nine

I am like a child.
Feel me breathe. In. Out. I can breathe now. For so long my breathing was constricted. No more. The tightness in my chest is completely gone. My back is much lighter; I'm standing tall much more of the time, if not always. That said, my entire torso aches. Touching my chest is painful.
I feel like I'm exploding with power. I am so much freer now. The energy... fortunately my body has not gone into a feeding frenzy after being starved for so long and drained. I've entered a safe mode, naturally sucking up the residual energy that people naturally give off. (You can detect it even if you think you can't.) It's slowly filling me up, but I want more... it's like a delicious smell upon the air, hinting at a feast just out of reach, and I'm so hungry... but I'm sure it will get easier. If I've lasted this long it can only go up from here.
On another note, this experience has managed to finally break me of my addiction to porn. It was one of my secret shames, something I despised but kept falling back on in hard times. I feel no embarrassment in admitting it now because I know it's over. Like the last time I cut myself, I can feel that something has ended. I've thought about going back to it at times, and at each point my response is the same: "Fuck you, I'm free now." I just don't need it any more. I am free.
I couldn't bring myself to promise I would live well. I don't trust myself enough yet... and maybe I don't really want to live well. But I'm going to live well for now and see where that takes me. I don't doubt I'll be able to keep it up.
Me for now, us for always. As I breathe, I hope, and the Nine breathe again.

This is it.

Things are about to get very interesting. Tonight, I become free.
For the first time, I can finally see the shape of myself. I'm trapped. I'm being held down by chains. Four spill out behind me, two strung through my shoulder blades and two on the tops of my legs, suspending a great weight under me. Inside of it are my memories, my repressed emotions, the darkness that has built up in me. The other night I heard a voice, and the voice said LET IT GO. I will remove this heaviness that even now weighs upon my mind.
But the fifth chain is the largest, and it spills out not behind me but from my chest, forwards and upwards. And on the end of that chain is Grandfather, the twisted nightmare of memories and demonic intent that manifests itself around me. He has made me and he drags me ever onwards into darkness. I must free myself of him or be forever lost.
Removing these chains will be tricky. A fool might try hacking at his limbs and chest with a knife, but I'm neither insane nor an idiot; hurting my solid body would achieve nothing. Instead, I must use what energies I have to cut them out inside me. I have to get them out completely, since if I just snap the chain they would still weigh me down and restrict my breathing. White Heat, I think, will be the way. This will, of course, be extraordinarily painful... even though I won't be physically cutting into myself, I'll still register the pain. The mind and body are thus connected. Sad, really.
And it has to be now. I could put it off, but then I'd just put it off forever out of fear and the net discomfort and negative consequences of keeping these chains for the rest of my life would far outweigh the agonies of extracting them now.
I wonder how much energy I have left. Life energy is to the soul what blood is to the heart, and while most people can stay stable I seem to burn right through it... I've been hungry for a long time. So, so hungry. When this is finished I will probably be starving. And I have no one to feed off of. As a rule I don't eat from family - wrong type of emotional bond, as well as that being just plain weird - and there isn't anyone at the moment who trusts me enough to... to... I guess I'll just have to cope.
This will hurt. It will leave me drained and exhausted. But I will be free.
This is it.

I love you.

A welcome distraction

Being a multiple is like alcoholism: no matter how "in control" you think you are, you keep waking up to find you've done something you regret.

Something happened at kendo. It's taken awhile before I was ready to write it down. We were experimenting with putting on the full armor and getting hit. When I put on the men (helmet) almost instantly something came over me. Something not good. The one I ended up with didn't match my head size and pressed tight against my ears, muffling noise. Apparently the edges stretch a little with use so they fit more comfortably, but at the time it just felt too small. I didn't mind the limited vision, or the heat, or the breathing problems that seem to afflict most people, but what did get to me was the pressure. The tightness. The... confinement.
Later, when I became unable to function in class and tore the men from my head, breathing heavily, I blamed it on claustrophobia. But it was more than that. The very specific feeling of having something wrapped tight around my head did something to me. I remember tugging on the edge, trying to free up a little room inside so I could hear, and I'd swear I've made that exact motion somewhere before. But where? When? Why? It makes no sense. But it was so familiar. It frightened me. It made me angry.
I didn't want to talk to anyone after that. I don't mind showing inexperience or ineptitude, but weakness... if there's one thing I'm not, it's weak. I tell myself that, anyway. I'm sure I'll end up with the men on again next week. I'm going to learn. This will not break me.

I asked a girl out again. It came on me very suddenly. I told myself no, but I felt my brain cracking at the resistance. Somehow I know this is going to take my life in a new direction; I could actually feel the timeline shifting as the words came out.
Of course, there is no mutual romantic interest between us. Which is frustrating, in a way, because a romantic relationship is what my brain thinks I need, but maybe a new friend will turn out better for me anyway. My true feelings are kind of buried at the moment. Maybe one of me likes her. I'm not totally sure what I think.
Anyways, due to some family pressures an actual date is sadly out of the question. But you know, I don't mind. If the worries of a pretty girl's parents were the height of my problems I'd be a lot better off than I am now. If things are meant to work out for the best (whatever that means in this context) then they'll find a way. In the meantime I've got a backlog of homework to see to.

Just a thought

My brother was sick for a little while. My parents asked if I remembered the week before when I'd been similarly sick. They absolutely could not believe it when I said I didn't remember.
What am I going to have to do to get people to catch on?
I keep losing time. Sometimes it's things that could be chalked up to ordinary forgetfulness:

• Mother yells at me for not taking the chicken out of the oven like she asked. What chicken?
• Finding out the next day that I was supposed to have homework
• This day seems to have gone by really fast

And then there are some things that are just unavoidable...

• The moon jumps three phases in a single night
• I wake up halfway through a filming session
• Reading things I have no recollection of writing

I'm tired.

I want to be angry

Milo died today.