recent events

i guess i ought to explain what actually happened with Muad-Dib now that i can sort of talk about it. even now it still makes my hands shake to do it, though.

so ctrl-shift-h a few months and i was still living with him in a tiny one room flat in the Silver City. i haven't been well for a long time now and i wasn't doing too good then, either. i had a seizure, pain levels were getting pretty disabling, syncope and BP were bad, my head was a mess. my ma came to visit, and while she was there, she came along to one of my appointments with my consultant psychiatrist (Dr. D). Dr. D kindly listed for her all the different ways i was fucked up, and explained how this litany of insanity made me not very capable of looking after myself to a normal person's standard, and between me, my ma and Dr. D it was decided that i would come down to England over the summer for respite care. this would last a month or two, during which Muad-Dib would get a break from me and all my shit and i would go to stay in an environment that would be less isolating during the day. then i'd come back up and finish my last year of university courses starting in September. before i left, he told me to take it easy, get rest, and promised me he would be there when i got back. i packed all my shitty secondhand clothes and gear into my great big fuckoff holdall bag and lugged it to the airport and there i was.

unsurprisingly the plan went arse over tits about a week afterwards. he called me one evening, and after allowing me to flether like a fucking idiot for ten minutes about how much i missed him and how i took the dog for a walk and stupid shit like that, flatly informed me that he had been thinking and didn't want to be in a relationship with me any more. i could still live in the flat with him, he said, if i wanted to, but he was leaving the relationship.

several seconds passed while my mind tried to form an adequate expression of just how stupid it was to expect that someone you have just dumped, who still loves you, could possibly be okay with staying with you in a tiny fucking bedsit which only has one place to sleep - we would either have to carry on sharing the bed or i would have to sleep underneath it. and at some point he would meet someone else and what the fuck would happen then? "Oh," i said. he carried on talking. he was sorry, he didn't want me to take this to mean he didn't care about me, et cetera. i had stopped processing the input at the bottleneck of your life partner doesn't love you any more and simply sat there. eventually i noticed the dangerous amount of water that had fallen off my face onto the keyboard. i remember saying emotionlessly that i had to go speak with my mum now and hanging up on him.

i cried so fucking hard. it felt like my chest had been punched through and just a gaping, howling void was left. i couldn't speak. i couldn't sleep. he was everything to me and he had ripped it all away with one fucking phone call. part of me couldn't even believe that this had really happened - i kept thinking, this isn't him, and then the riposte, no, this isn't what i knew of him. i'm so easy to lie to once i trust someone that he could easily have been thinking about this for months, telling me everything was fine. i don't know any different.

a couple days later my ma called him to figure out what the fuck was going on (i was there). from this call we understood that he definitely wasn't going to change his mind any time soon. he said a lot of things: he still cared, there wasn't someone else, oh you don't want to stay in the flat?, things had "changed", and some other platitudes. i said only that i could not "still be friends", which was the truth: i refuse to put myself through the agony of watching the only man i have ever truly loved get over me, meet pretty girls while he's out drinking, bring some home, get attached, fall in love. replace me with someone he doesn't have to waste his money supporting. watch some perfectly healthy beauty with no scars become his bride. i'd rather die.

"So it's all or nothing?" he asked, sounding surprised. "Yeah," i said. "I can't just be one of your friends." i didn't know it then, but that was in all likelihood the point at which he decided on "nothing".

at the end of the call he said he needed months, maybe more, to make a decision on whether he could ever countenance repairing the bond we had and getting back together. a month in i broke, and emailed him asking for a decision now. he replied, "I'm sorry, it's a no." he added more, things to make him feel better - i "deserved someone who would look after me", he promised to keep in touch, he was sorry again and again. he wasn't sorry enough to try and repair our life together. i could come and pick up my stuff any time, he informed me. as an awful postscript to everything, when we came to pick up my things, we found a "Guide to Lovers' Massage" hidden amongst his socks which had to have been bought after he left me. i don't know if there's another because the only message i ever received from him after that was one sent to my mum, asking for some shit we'd taken to be returned. i refuse to send communications on my part because i can't face talking to him and possibly finding out that i was deceived the entire time.

i ought also to point out here that he did sleep with another woman once, owing to an agreement between us from way back when we were just fooling around together - i said he should find out what he liked, before committing to me. since i never rescinded this, he thought it was cool to bring a girl back to our house while i was visiting my dying granddad in hospice. she slept in his arms in my bed, another image i can't get out from behind my eyes at night. i forgave him. i dunno if it's her, if it's anyone. idk if he just got sick of me. his friends' girlfriends are all beautiful, as is this girl, no giant tattoos or faded man hair or fat guts or self-harm scars or fucked up old-ass gypsy clothes. i used to see them sometimes when they went out and think how fucking lucky i was that he was with me when he could have had any of those lovely women.

so that's how i lost pretty much all progress from the past two years or so. my stuff is shoved into boxes in the back of my dad's office. i'm in my parents' spare room. i still love him and there is nothing i can do with that. i have no money, no house, and i can't go back to the University until late 2014. i wish i could write something happier. sorry, sibs.

L

i'm sorry to give you all bad news again. Muad-Dib left me this evening. i have no more words. L

broken

okay so i've seen all your comments more or less, but there's too many for me to adequately respond to right now including all the mentions and messages on Twitter, comments here on various posts, phone SMS and answerphone messages, emails etc. i haven't reaccessed the email box yet & to be honest i might just delete everything in it beyond the last month or so, so if you did send anything you desperately want me to see or you really need a reply to go ahead and resend it.

the situation is, my meat home is not faring too splendidly. a few months back my thyroid stopped working properly, and since it isn't the standard autoimmune problem (i have the problematic TSH levels but not the autoantibodies, if anyone cares) i'm not being treated for it. the GP i was seeing thought it was better to just leave it, and as you could probably have fucking guessed, that didn't turn out to be a great treatment. i'm carrying two and a half stones or so of extra weight and it's not pretty. i'm tracking calories as best i can, but on 2K/day i was still gaining and it's only stabilised on around 1500 or less now. that's fucking hard to stick to, although it helps that we're poor as fuck.

the poor as fuck is because i'm not currently getting any student allowance, on account of i've been too fucked up to do anything like either study or work. so i'm not possessed of any funds for experimentation, which is frustrating.

the rest is still there: i'm still anaemic as far as i know, my back's still fucked, i'm still taking 100mg of fucking methadone daily for it (which granted is free) and i'm still mad. officially the diagnosis is "BPD with cyclic treatment-resistant major depression and iatrogenic opiate dependence". (apparently that explains the two or three occasions on which i've heard weird songs that aren't playing in meatspace.) contrary to the general commenter opinion i am not in fact schizophrenic. i think someone made a video somewhere on YouTube or something, about how i'm a fucking nutjob and you shouldn't listen to me because i'm just telling you what the voices in my head tell me to, but alas, i've never had the sort of hallucination that tells you things. mine were only ever little odd tunes going round and round, with or without strange poetic lyrics.

as to the suggestion that maybe it's not auditory hallucinations and i'm actually a conduit for an unseen dimension of the world that most of us aren't aware of, well, that might be cooler but if it's true the hidden dimension pretty much just wants to sing songs about shadows and twiddle its thumbs. sorry.

so that's what i've been doing. absolutely bollocks all, more or less. i think if it were either purely physical problems, or just the mental stuff, i might have been able to deal with it better, but it's everything all at once. the mental capacity to deal with and ignore the pain got fouled up because of all the shit that goes on in my head, and anything in meatspace i might have turned to in order to escape or improve the psychological status goes out the window because of the pain and the loss of mobility involved, never mind the fact that going anywhere or doing anything tends to cost money. i've pretty much just been trying to sleep as much as i could, because pathetically enough, that was the only place that didn't hurt to be in. the downside of that is that in that sorry escapist state there's no room for communication, and in fact i had the general idea that it was better not to look at the email or blog and to keep the phone off because all the messages would be overwhelming. that's not strictly true but there are literally thousands of people wanting a heads up, and fifty or so who worry exceedingly within a few days of not getting one, so there is a fuckton to keep up with.

(that isn't to say that anyone trying to reach me worsened the sickness or did anything wrong, it's a flaw in my logic, so to speak, but it's so ingrained that combined with the fact that i don't like voice contact at the best of times, it just led to me totally shutting down in an attempt to escape it all.)

i think it's improving, slightly. after all i can speak now, right? i don't know. i don't wanna make any grandiose statements that it's all better. my blood family in England and my adopted big brother in Canada have been trying really hard to help, and for the first time my blood family now have all the details of my medical diagnoses. my mum came up here to see me and figure out what the fuck i was doing, then realised how fucked up i was, so with their support i'm currently planning to go down to England over the summer to maybe recuperate a little. there's animals there, dogs and little bantam chickens that sit in your hands and a cat, and there wouldn't be the same kinds of money problems, although i'd just be sponging off them which does bother me quite a lot. i also changed GPs to hopefully get a fresh look at my case and some decent treatment for the pain and thyroid problems, and i've had a formal care plan drawn up with the psychiatrist which is in draft right now. i feel like a broken cyborg that's just been discovered in the rubbish heap, dragged home and pulled up onto a bench for someone to take a look at. maybe they can fix me and get me running again, maybe i'm too damaged for that, i don't know. i've pretty much only just "woken up".

so if anyone else out there wants to help restore an obsolete piece of junk that might still have some use, i'm all ears over here on this workbench.

comms channels

i welcome any kind of message from pretty much anyone who isn't trying to sell me gods or penis pills. i sometimes can't reply to everything but i'll try my damndest to read everything people send me.

email: lepht at trioptimum point com
physical address [EDIT: 21 Ashgrove, Thornbury, Bristol BS35 2LH]
mobile: (+44) (0)7527 428831, i'm absolutely shit on the phone and i really hate voice calls because of how awkward they make me so SMS greatly preferred, you can call me if you like but you'll likely get stuttering and monosyllables and i tend to hang up if i can hear my own voice.
IM on request: lephthatesmsn@hotmail.com, tell me if you wanna IM so i can try to remember how to work it
twitter: @lepht_anonym

i have a Steam account as well but i can't remember its username right now. i'll see if i can dig it up so we can have some co op. any other things that you want me to set up or think would be useful, go ahead and suggest, i'm all for anything that helps me be less isolated and more connected with you guys.

gonna go make some spiced milk and play some Alice now. carpe corporem

L

access recovered

urgh. idk what the fuck actually happened but i've not been able to get into any of the Google services i use at all for the last couple of weeks - SA was rejecting my password and even the one i retrieved via mobile backup, Gmail wouldn't sign in apart from a couple of times i managed to get in through a different machine, and even then it would kick me out to relog every few minutes. dunno if someone smarter and more malicious than myself was fucking with me or if the Google account just had a stroke or something, but i'm in now. i do know that just after i posted on Twatter that i'd recovered access i was booted right back out on my pasty little arse. i fucking hate access issues.

real hackers seek knowledge, kids, they don't just fucking break things and torment people. i'll probably get another OH HEY NO HARD FEELINGS HUH I WAS WONDERING IF WE COULD SLEEP TOGETHER NOW I'VE FINISHED ANNOYING YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE READERSHIP email like last time.

makes it seem a little silly to post contact details, but what the fuck, i figure they're pretty much out there already. coming right up, sapes. cc

L

lazarus tl;dr's

i'm not dead. anymore. i feel like i have been. didn't move, didn't eat, didn't talk or communicate with anyone but Muad-Dib, barely even that. i couldn't remember what month or year it was or when anything was. i didn't go to the doctor or the psychiatrist except to mindlessly collect drugs. i didn't open my planner or my logs. i couldn't touch my phone. i don't even have any real memories from beyond about a fortnight ago, not since finding this place last-minute in early March and the rigmarole of getting it paid for and putting enough shit inside to make a house.

i had to stop there and go puke my guts up again. that's been happening for a while now but once again, the NHS thinks i am a skaghead and besides i already have a fuckton of antiemetics. the bowl under my bed is full of blood and all this green bitter shit i think is bile but might be stomach weeds or something since i haven't eaten the last few days. it's fucking gross, but it's better than being dead.

i also have some tramadol (legit!), which, predictably, has fucked me up. not in the good way either since i can't keep it down. i wish i had some goddamn intravenous doses. can't get the cyclizine to stay in my system long enough to take action.

veering off track again - apologies. my mind still isn't what it was yet. i'm losing the struggle to even fucking name what happened. i'd like to say depressive episode, but never in my life has it been that bad, never has my whole consciousness been reduced to catatonic coma like that. it's been so much longer than a normal episode, too; i can't really tell but i know i've been like that for months after i should have surfaced. i know i planned to die after i realised it was eating away at my mind, because i wrote it in an OO.org file i found amongst my documents about a week ago; i had the tools close at hand, but i didn't even try this time. in hindsight that's probably good, since what i built was more or less foolproof and does not allow for second chances. one breath would have deoxygenated this carcass in milliseconds and wiped me from its shell like rain off goretex. i shudder to think how close i came to this, and how close to its effect i was in life regardless.

no, i dismantled the assembly, and i must have discarded the components, because none are here and Muad-Dib would have done something memorable even to me, i think, even then, had he found them. for the first time i had the capacity to do it quickly and cleanly, and as the cliche goes, i couldn't. or must not have been able to, i've no real record of what happened. i found myself shackled to life by the simple existence of the man i love, and by weaker chains to everyone else who gives a fuck, Unqualified and my blood kin and Max and Usul and everyone else there is, all of you.

Muad-Dib said at some point that he didn't want to be what kept me there on life support. i remember saying that there wasn't a choice in it, and remembering what he had told me when he first knew: that my loss would rip his life to shreds, and he wouldn't be able to end that pain by following me. a lot of the time when your mind is crumbling like that all you can think of is the easiest of the hard ways out, deleting yourself. you forget that it would leave a wake of destruction in the lives of those you know and care about such as you can't even imagine, such as would fuck them up permanently just like you, reduce them to the same state you want to escape so badly - only without that escape, because they saw what it did and they won't spread the damage out any further. i know what it would do to Muad-Dib, the strongest person i know. i don't even want to think about the crushing blows my suicide would have dealt to my mum, my nan, my dad.

so i lived, half-dead, and after a very long time i woke up. i don't know what did it. the week before, i was prescribed an additional drug, Seroquel, although i don't seem to have taken more than three or four doses. maybe it was that. maybe it was Muad-Dib's hard work finally paying off, since he's been doing literally everything for me since i fell into catatonia. he quit his degree, took a full time job with one of the giant zaibatsu corporations that run this city, left at seven every morning to come home at five and cook something with meat and bread and try to coax me to eat it. he'd download episodes of a couple of TV programmes during the day and put me in front of them in the evening and watch them with me, he installed simple games over Steam that he couldn't really afford and set them running to try and get me to play. he did the dishes and cleaned the house and took the rubbish out, talked to my mum when she couldn't get hold of me, filled out the council tax forms and doctor's letters and sent countless emails to Prof. V trying to explain what the fuck happened. i owe him everything, again.

shit, i type too much. tl;dr then - it seems i cannot be trusted not to disappear when this channel of communication is simply me talking at you. i'm pretty sure that one of the contributing factors to what happened is that this is the first time ever that i have had absolutely no friends at all while an episode is ongoing; even the presence of B, who didn't really understand the whole depression thing and thinks suicide is an act of "ha! now they'll be fucking sorry," helped a lot more than i thought. so, i'm asking anyone who still reads this for a favour. i would like you to remind me of... well, anything. life. since my anonymity is far more cosmetic than concrete, i am going to give you every possible means to do so. i need contact from people or, it seems, i really do go insane. the details i will place in a second post for visibility.

i understand that maybe nobody except spammers will take me up on this, but the data haemorrhage is worth the risk to me. i'm fucking sorry i didn't do this before. i'm sorry i left you all. i'm sorry i didn't answer your messages. i'm sorry this has happened so many times, and that i wasn't good enough to stop it. i'm sorry i wasn't awake before. i promised you knowledge and i have not yet delivered.

it is my goddamn duty to hold up that promise as well as my life.

L

RIP Tom Dowler

i got the news today that my great-grandfather, Tom Dowler, died peacefully this morning at 0920. he was very old and suffering from the advanced stages of dementia, so the family has been expecting this for a while, but i guess you can't ever prepare properly for this kind of shit.

we called him Farver - that was all we could pronounce out of "great-grandfather" as tiny kids. he and my great-grandma Doll-Doll lived very close to where i grew up, just a couple of blocks away, and they were always involved with us, always happy to see us when we came to visit. they'd break out the biscuit jar and let me eat as many ginger nuts as i could cram into my face, and they kept a stock of proper Schweppes lemonade for us. Farver would press a pound coin into our hands as kids, when it was a fuckton of money to us, and grin and tell us to go and spend it all at once. later on as i left for the University he'd give me a tenner when he saw me, even though they don't have very much money to live on. he would always bear hug me and tell me, "Stay lucky, kid. Be good."

i was lucky enough to get a proper goodbye, which was more than i managed when my gran died. lucidity was incredibly rare by last Christmas day, the last time i saw him, and i thought it had been gone completely for quite some time. for the most part, it had. he was still cheerful, and we (me, my ma and my nan) opened his presents with him in the care home and made sure his giant pillowy bed was comfy, just sort of chilling and fetching the occasional drink and talking shit with him. he was the nurses' favourite guy in the whole place. they'd just changed his bedding, given him his meds and made sure he was okay, and we'd come back in to hold his hands and make sure he fell asleep knowing there were people there with him. before he went under he looked straight at me and said, "It's okay, kid, I'm still your Farver." i gave him a hug and he fell asleep.

he was a good person who did some bad things and some really fucking good things. he fought in the Second World War, driving an amphibious tank called a duck, and helped liberate the camp at Flossenbuerg. he was also a good friend of the Kray twins. he never spoke about this - to us, he was just Farver. he loved us.

i can't say he's in a better place, but he's not suffering any longer. recquiescat in pace.

L

first exam

well, that was fucking terrible. ran out of time, a quarter or more of the shit i was meant to be answering got left behind. another quarter did get answered but was so messy and rushed that i seriously doubt it will get me any marks. i guess i did alright on the other half, even though it was mostly on Agent UML, which is the one tiny piece of the course i didn't fucking revise or even make notes on - but i'm not good at estimating that kind of thing, so really i have no idea whether i'll even pass or not. there were five or six drawing questions, so i fucked up my time management and wasted almost all the time i had making the fucking drawings, painstakingly, by hand since the University doesn't let computers for exams access anything other than MS Word. i have nowhere near the level of Windows Stockholm Syndrome required to be able to make legible AUML diagrams and finite state automata in Word, never mind the level it would take to want to.

(i know people are trying to be nice when they say this, but no, sib, i will not "pass with flying colours" this time. please don't say that. i'm not low-self-esteeming a perfectly good exam transcript up to shit - this really was a very bad run. they happen. also i am trying not to say stupid shit like OHHHHH WOE WOE IS ME ASHES AND DUST I HAVE RUINED MY LIFE when actually i just got an average mark instead of a very good one.)

unsure of what to do now. that was the first exam, the next one is the day after tomorrow. i didn't sleep last night so i'm wavering a bit; think i'll at least mail Prof. V about what happened before I pass out in my bubble bath. reckon i'll make tomorrow a hardcore revision day. gonna chill out tonight.

i'd type more about some other stuff i was gonna talk about but i'm whacked now and i keep hitting the wrong keys like a little old lady. gnight, all. carpe corporem.

L

crisis averted

erm, sorry about that last post there. it did let up after a while and i was able to sleep after trying the whole (Internet videos + hot bath with sleeping aid oils) thing suggested here. i'm pretty sure the cause is just stress since my first exam is tomorrow, the rest all happen in the same week and i am totally unprepared for any of them. i guess at least it gets them all out of the way quickly. after they're done i can start focusing on what to do about housing.

regarding "get to a psychiatrist rite nao!!!", i already have one and his office is shut at 2am no matter how crazy i am. i didn't want to call NHS 24 after the result i got last time, which was the on-duty staff insinuating that i was a crackhead, refusing to believe that i wasn't in treatment for heroin use, and repeatedly telling me they would not give me any morphine or methadone (i had not asked for any kind of drugs). i will let Dr. D know what went down when i see him next on the 24th.

i really appreciate the comments from people trying to help, too. it helps to know people are out there and they're not all judgmental dicks. there's not a whole lot of people i can call or whatnot when this kind of shit happens - my parents are too far away to do anything about it, so all it would do would be scare the crap out of them for no reason, and i didn't wanna wake either them or my one other friend Feoa up at that hour of the morning just to listen to Cracky McGee blabber on about shadows and imaginary singalong time.

gotta go "revise" now, but will be connected for the rest of tonight up through the morning if anyone writes back. carpe corporem

L

worrying

i'm a wee bit frightened right now. i'm hearing things that aren't there. sure i see things that aren't real from time to time because of the stupid habits i had when i was a teenager and the permanent, very mild damage i did to myself experimenting like that, but i don't usually hear anything and this is not a flashback, i know what those feel like and they've always been the same with the same cure. these noises are definitely not real: scrapings like granite on granite, whispering voices saying fucked-up shit, B speaking even though she is asleep in her room. she can't be talking because she's been in there for hours and already called J (her long-distance boyfriend) and her parents, these being the three people she speaks to almost every night and the only reasons she'd be on the phone in bed. i don't have auditory disturbance usually (as in it's not some symptom of BPD/EUD or chronic depression) - this is only the second or third time it's happened - but those exceptions are fucking freaking me out. there are also a few unreal things cropping up in my visual field.

they're shadows mostly, humanoid. no discernible features. i keep seeing one (that isn't my reflection) in the black background of this blog. there's also a trail effect, sort of like motion blur on a camera, when i move my head or eyes. unlike flashbacks none of this is alleviated by moving my hand through visual anomalies or plugging my ears until the sounds revert to tinnitus.

there are actual words, too, in the voices. that doesn't ever happen, this is the first time i have ever heard a voice actually speaking to me. usually it's like overhearing talk from far away. the other two times i've heard things, one caused by taking the wrong dose of sleeping pills because i forgot i'd taken the first one, the other by being a fucking moron and drinking more irish cream than i'm allowed by a factor of three or so - those times did involve the occasional song, but not this. for example, last time i thought Muad-Dib had GamerFM radio going on his headset whilst he was playing Heroes of Newerth, because i could hear a song that sounded like it might have been by the Birthday Massacre and B doesn't like that kind of music. there was no song. he didn't even have the actual game music activated. i couldn't make out the verses but the chorus went

everything is black
the queen is black
the dreams are back
and everything is all black

it repeated itself many times, scaring the crap out of me once i realised what it was. i thought it might have been an indicator that my gory, fucked-up nightmares were about to conquer Muad-Dib's superhero-like counteracting effect on them. nothing so far, thank fuck.

i just wish the voice component would give it a fucking rest. they're not schizoid instructions or warnings like someone truly affected by hallucinations might get; they don't give orders or appear consistently as a discrete set of "people" in my head. it's like one conglomerate of misplaced/inappropriately formatted thoughts that uses whatever human "voice" it feels like using in order to communicate its nonsense to me. they're saying things like "Hey" and "Don't think you should" and other vaguely contextual things about what i'm doing at any given point. and laughing every so often. but they're not compelling me to do anything, nor are they saying anything dangerous if i were forced to do what they say.

fuck. i just looked at the monitor on Muad-Dib's old machine that he lets me use, and lying in the background is an image of me lying down on my side, with my eyes open and glazed and my body not breathing or moving. it can't be a reflection because of the angle and because it is wearing makeup and no hat. i have my hat on, it doesn't. do any of you know what to do in this kind of situation? something i can take or do that might help? i realise how insane i am and i sound even worse here but this shit is not right and it's fucking creepy.

L

crap news

we got a letter a few days ago that said we're being evicted, again. the new outdoor second-floor beer balcony that the pub's owners (a company called Belhaven) have been wittering on about apparently requires the destruction of my home. B and i have been given two months to get the fuck out before they want to start construction, which means ball-wrecking our flat to make room for a little atrium and stairway where customers will come for about twenty days of the year max, to "enjoy" the "sun" of the City. we haven't even been here for the year we said we'd be.

Muad-Dib and i are gonna try and get a one-bedroom place to live in that we can share, and B is gonna find someplace to live by herself before she moves to Southampton (southwest England) in September. i have no idea where we're gonna live or what it's going to cost, but at least we can pool our resources. i'm still pretty stunned that he's cool with that kind of commitment.

the stupid thing is that this beer balcony is a shitty business decision. there's one right next to where they're gonna put it that gets all the sun in the courtyard, literally two metres away from their one. there's also an existing beer garden for this pub that's well liked, and a pub next door that has a proper roof terrace, twice the size of the balconies and heated with proper shelter for the rain and a 360-degree suntrap all year round. to boot, customers of our pub will have to climb several flights of stairs and go round to the back of the building to reach this balcony, unlike the other balcony. they will not be arsed to do it. it's not gonna make Belhaven any fucking money given the cost it will incur to build the damn thing. B wants to write to them and ask them to postpone construction but i doubt they'll agree.

i can't do fuck all about it yet, although at least we have a plan (exams are first priority right now). just thought i'd let you know that once again my landlords have turned out to be cunts.

L

progress report

progress report: see shrink today, ought to have a slightly better dose of meds tomorrow as the starting 35mg is now causing some serious problems 12hrs after last dosage. digestive system reactivates too quickly now, having become adjusted to 35mg, and switches on at about 9am every morning to shout HEY! LISTEN! GET UP YOU LITTLE FUCK! HEY! LISTEN! and retch and stuff. not cool. the sensation is horrible and completely unignorable. it's not even pain, it's like that physical feeling kids get of too much excitement building up in your guts, like when you're four and you realise it's your birthday tomorrow or you're sixteen and somebody hot takes interest in you.

er, or maybe that was just me. i remember that feeling when it had an emotional origin and wasn't quite so fucking obnoxious... goddamn i had such a crush on this one hacker at my school, Majestic, when i was sixteen. i worshipped that dude. i loved everything about that guy for some reason, including his slight sociopathy, and despite the fact that i plainly annoyed him in hindsight. i pretty much thought he was Phate. eventually he took up with a pretty, mute Japanese girl who did not suffer from my charming lack of social skills, inadequate understanding of personal grooming and total inability to dress myself; i learned the meaning of "emo kid phase", sparked a school-wide trend of referring to me as "bitter like a lemon", spent weeks pathetically crying myself to sleep and dyed my hair red for a bit in an effort to be more interesting. good times.

at least i was pretty sure at the times themselves that they were good. good in the sense of doing stupid peer-pressure faux-rebel teenager things, which i was sure i was obligated to do at every opportunity and explore every possible avenue of lest i "miss out" somehow. i was the crappiest teenager ever. secretly, i just wanted to learn to hack stuff, and i was pretty terrible at it, so mostly i just hung around people who were actually good frustrating them with my completely useless educational background in literary analysis and European linguistics. i figured i would fake it till i made it and therefore, for a while, adopted a searingly irritating habit of just mimicking the personal behaviours of anyone who actually did have some skills. i think i thought this would "rub off" and i'd be a real hacker one day. occasionally i'd do something mildly rebellious yet always completely without risk to me like tipsily try oral with a giiiiirl or bob up and down at parties in the woods which i diligently referred to as "raves" or have a tab or a joint, and spend the next day self-congratulating in an actual physical journal about how badass i was. i'm surprised i didn't pass out from sheer narcissism the day i snuck off to London to get my tiny, unobtrusive, incredibly expensive (because the guy realised how naive i was and that i could easily be fleeced in return for secrecy) underage first tattoo.

er. as i was saying, progress report. i'm a little bit drugged up right now. pain levels are fine as long as the medication remains active, which is the problem of course, since as expected the starter dose has become inadequate. that's pretty routine. as for repair work, i've created a studying space in my house after B removed her desk to her room to use as a dressing table. i now have more plug space and a little whiteboard she didn't want which is badass because i always wanted a whiteboard. i need to steal a pen for it though. haven't done hardly any revision for the imminent exams, because i still (to my shame) have the goddamn assignments to do. i am perfectly aware of how ridiculous that is. am communicating with a professor in the Department, Prof. V, who is remarkably sympathetic to all this despite my general tendency to fuck up, about what to do in that regard, what to prioritise etc. maybe doing the assignments will function as revision too. Prof. V says not to panic but he has now gone on holiday, and i'm sort of shitting myself here. my parents will be so disappointed if i have to repeat another year, again.

i'm pretty damn worried about that particular situation, and the variable pain levels don't help at all. Friday night / Saturday morning, when i missed my Friday dose of painkillers and spent the night awake in Stage II withdrawal, was fucking terrible and it's so easy to fall into II or even III with such a small amount of the stuff in my system at any one time. there's no grace period. i am pretty sure that my level of organisation, as it stands, is not sufficient enough for me to be completely safe without the buffer provided by a day's worth of dwindling effect in case of emergency.

speaking of which i've also introduced a couple supplementary organisation methods to my system, attempting to forget less shit, procrastinate less, be late for less things etc. i have a wall calendar (although it is for last year) and i'm drawing up a routine list of tasks that occur every weekday (you know, cleaning the flat on Sunday, taking recycling out on collection days, scrubbing my face on Saturday with the weird green shit that stops you getting spots, that kind of thing.) i'm also logging (but not restricting for now) caloric intake in a little book B brought back for me from Poland, since the meat's metabolism has changed recently and seems to fluctuate like a bitch requiring a lot more control than it did before. i assume that's an aging thing, although it's failed to affect Muad-Dib. he's a year younger than me though, and possesses a much more efficient shell with a ridiculously efficient metabolic rate. also he has things like muscle mass and a Y chromosome. sometimes i wish i could switch meat with him; he gets boobies to look at, i'd get the ability to walk upstairs without hurting my goddamn self.

then again it would be more than i'm capable of to inflict another human being with a substance dependency, two severe psychiatric diseases with management options but no cures and periodic life-fucking-up flareups, chronic pain and the permanent risk of pregnancy every time you fuck. also i'm a selfish ass and i'd be loath to give someone else my implants, tattoos and pretty shiny decorations. plus, i'm kind of used to everyone treating me like a dying orphan and that would not fly were i simply a lazy healthy guy instead of a lazy unhealthy little hacker thing.

god, i type a lot of shit. carpe corporem, all. further report later on (psychiatrist at 6pm) if the psychiatrist has anything of interest to you all to say.

L

the newer system generally is the better

as i learned today rather definitively. i'll start by explaining that yeah, out of a stupid antiquated habit i did (up until today) always send my rent in to the landlord by cheque. when i started paying rent aged 18 i didn't have internet banking set up on my account and i thought it was the safest way to give large amounts of money to people who don't accept debit cards, without paying charges or physically going to a bank whose only branch in the City is fucking ten miles from campus. i really ought to have rethought this policy, oh i dunno maybe four fucking years ago when i set the IB up.

so today, the ninth of goddamn January, i get a call from the landlord. "We didn't get your cheque for December; is this one we just received the December rent? What? It's the January rent, like what is due in January and arrives on January the fourth in an envelope marked JANUARY RENT? Three hundred and fifty pounds plix then, you little bastard. Now."

i called up the bank in a fucked-up medication-induced state of sociopathic calm, silently wondering whether i could use the same begging patch as my homeless friend Daz and whether he would teach me the ropes of homelessness for free. the bank, upon being told that i had written and sent a cheque, it had gone out of my account and its recipient said they didn't do that, blinked.

"You really ought not to have used a cheque," said the phone lady. "You should have put the money through over the Internet."

it turns out they don't keep records (at least not that they would give out to ID-verified customers) of where cheques fucking go. they keep records of them going out, and when one is paid in it just says CHEQUE IN :D :D :D without any indication of what cheque or whence. cockheads didn't actually have any idea who had paid in the cheque or to where, and couldn't help other than the nice lady saying it sucked and she'd do something if she could. i couldn't even get pissed off at her because she clearly wasn't able to do fuck all to help, even though she wanted to.

they just kept telling me this was a flaw of the cheque system and i ought to have used something else to pay the landlord. well, fuck, dickheads; why does the system still exist then? if it's really that insecure why don't we just fucking abolish it? and it really is that insecure, apparently. the bank shrugged and wondered idly if the police might be able to help, but i shudder to open a criminal investigation for any reason, never mind before i'd even physically seen the landlord about anything, so i ordered printed statements and a cheque voucher as evidence and excused myself before the Vulcan calm collapsed and i started blubbering like a fucking moron. i call the landlord back up and ask them to search their records for the cheque's number to see if it actually arrived, and tell them that evidence of my having written and guaranteed it is forthcoming. at this point they decide i'll be the one who needs to go to the fuzz and/or Post Office to open any investigations that are necessary, since i won't just do the easiest thing like a reasonable person and pay them twice. they tell me they only have three employees including the two people who own the fucking company and they'll get Angela to have a look in the goddamn filing cabinets. i hang up and start thinking of shit i can maybe sell to raise a secondary rent payment, possibly some viscera, quietly freaking the fuck out.

two hours later i get a call from the landlord again.

Angela found the cheque where it has been since December the fourth when i sent it. it was paid into one of the employees' personal accounts. i don't even know if that was someone stealing it or if they're actually employing someone that dim. they were very sorry for the inconvenience. i sat there for about ten minutes with dried YOU'RE-FUCKED tears on my face looking like a guy who's just been told he has HIV or something because my brain is broken and can't distinguish between a bad yet non-fatal event and the end of the fucking world as it knows it.

and all i could think was, i fucking hate cheques.


L

so i got four emails that were all like HEY YOU OUGHT TO GO SEE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IT HAS YOU IN IT and i was like YEAH WHATEVER

seriously, non-hacker general public, please stop informing me about the existence of that film. i have read the original novels. they were poorly written and not particularly interesting to me. the worst thing is no one person repeats themselves when telling me i ought to go and see it; everyone genuinely means well, and doesn't realise how psychotic my conditioned response to so many repetitions of the same suggestion has become. it's not like the same people tell me over and over again.

why do i hate it that much? because everyone who has never met me or seen this place thinks that i took my personal image from a fictional character in a Swedish pulp crime novel. i was interviewed for a Norwegian newspaper and the guy wanted so badly for this to be true that he asked me three times whether or not i'd wanted to look like Lisbeth Salander before getting into looking fucked up.

to be honest, being compared to the character probably isn't great for me. she's the perfect hacker, assassin, lover and everything else despite her broken bird demeanour. she's played by two very beautiful actresses and from what i can tell the films just emphasise how short and cute and sexy she is. the hero falls in love with her, she saves the day alongside him and proves to the world how badass she is. then she goes off and lives to badass another day. i'm fucked up and insecure and neither an alternative supermodel nor a completely unstoppable genius (not saying i'm stupid, just that i can't hack the Gibson with three keystrokes and an insouciant remark.) it's a recipe for failure.

er, other news after the commercial break.

L

meat free

almost. new medication doing incredibly well, should updose this week. glad to see all the support, will jump in on discussions / answer questions later when i've had a bit more sleep. house is now filled with Christmas decorations B had me put up because i'm manlier than she is, twinkly lights etc., and i will be interested to see how fucking spangly it all looks on 60mg of this stuff.

the stuff won't be named, as someone asked, because of the searches it will generate and because of what people will be led here. there are other reasons but i don't need to talk about it. Unq, or anyone else who is privy to my bitchings in the real world, if you want to know the gory details, drop me a text. everyone else, you can email me if you like, because i don't want to deliberately keep things from you all, although it's really not worth the effort for this particular piece of knowledge.

am layering up to slay Mephisto, then tackle a peer-to-peer system assessment with the aid of all my skeleton mages and a tough-ass mercenary i've been dragging around since i hitched my first ride to Lut Gholein on that crappy caravan. wish me luck, fgts.

L

freedom in slavery

so it's been about two weeks since the latest medication change. i won't bother you with the details; you all knew how little the Suboxone had been doing recently for my pain control levels, and recently the consultant psychiatrist Dr. D has switched me to another drug, a liquid one that works a lot better. it's been so long since i was actually free of pain that i'd forgotten what it was like. everything's so much freer - movement, thought. i really hope this shit will help me with my repair effort.

hilariously, whilst it is much stronger than tramadol, the new painkiller is of the same family (synthetic opioid analogues, in this case a morphioid). inc: many "can i snort tramadol?" searches just like the good old days.

in terms of that - i will have enough for rent this month, once i also pay back my mum for some of what she loaned me for rent the time before all this shit. i only have this because of you all and your support, and i can't express enough how much i appreciate that support. you are all going to hacker heaven with me.

i'll have some assignments and assessments to do in the next few weeks, so i hope to keep you all updated with them if only so you know what it is i'm trying to do and why... plus they might be interesting. bad news - i will be doing this from various crap boxes belonging to other people (like this one) because my laptop has finally gone tits-up, its mechanical soul flown off to the big scrapyard in the sky (it's where i'm gonna go, when i die, when i die and they lay me to rest i'm gonna go to the place that's the best...) - er, it's fucked, is what i mean. i saved the RAM. my parents are going to see if they can get me a new one (well new to me) for jesusween, which is awesome if a little more than they ought to be spending on their fuckup kid.

i haven't actually been to sleep yet, so idk how coherent this post is actually gonna be. we woke up at 1530 today and decided it was time to try and clock reset once again. if i don't pass out in the pharmacy, in class or at the hospital, i'll let you know how it goes.

lastly, SMS reply-type shout out to Unqualified: i hear and i obey. doing OK, as you can see (you mostly reminded me to update the blog, so consider this entry dedicated to you.) thanks for the checkup; you and anyone else who cares to check in on me are more than welcome to, as it's brilliant for keeping me in touch with what actually matters and not focused on things like stressing over trying to get my washing machine fixed. i love you guys.

L

repair in progress

seeing another specialist now, the psychologist i was referred to a while back. we're still in the initial review stage with one more appointment to go before she decides whether or not she'll treat me. with the way it's been so far - "We need to find the emotional source of this depression" - the odds of that look slim. but, if she doesn't see me, i think somebody else will; at any rate even if they don't it will mean more sessions with the actual psychiatrist, who is excellent.

having some trouble with University re. sleeping; missed a few classes, need to drop my extra and catch up with the others. have emailed a professor who ought to be able to help me there.

regarding pain, which has been pretty bad these last few months since the buprenorphine stopped working (Dr. D puts it down to tolerance, which i was told was impossible, but he knows more than i do) - i will be starting a new pain med on Wednesday this week. that's good, because this one will be stronger and not a crappy partial agonist (meaning i can dose up if necessary) and it will also not be filled with poison that makes it impossible to do anything else for pain. i cannot tell you all how glad i will be to get that shit out of my veins. i'll be free for the first time in a very long time. my blood has been converted into a trap for my mind and that trap is about to be dismantled, finally.

downside: five days of withdrawal to make sure it's safe by the time i start the new meds. i am a couple days in but as you all know it starts on the third really. this week is gonna be fun.

will be sure to let you know how everything is going so you can point and laugh etc. other stuff tomorrow depending on how shitty i feel.

L

all hallows eve

All Hallows' Eve in the Silver City, and everyone under the age of 40 is getting wasted right outside my house. all the males are dressed as zombies; all the females, as "sexy" whatever they felt like. i'm sure this doesn't differ in your cities either. i sat outside to have a joint and watch the drunks, and out of about 60-75 women that went past not one had resisted the pressure to wear torture shoes and a tiny skirt in the freezing cold.

three or four of them noticed me sitting on the wall, looking probably pretty fucked up with my giant clothes and my joint, and i realised they pity me as much as i pity them... weird, huh.

outside of the sexy hordes, things may be getting better, though i'm loath to type a post about happy shiny rainbows before i actually know for sure. i got two conflicting letters yesterday from the Student Loans company, so one of them says i get about half the max loan and the other says max loan. they both have the same date. i need to call up the company yet again but at least it means some money will be coming in sooner or later.

lastly, i need to thank everyone who has sent what they could give towards food and rent. we have enough to pay the rent now, so things are so much more secure for the while than they were before. i can't thank you all enough. i never expected this much support. thank you so, so much.

some people say the PayPal isn't working - let me know if it doesn't. let me know also if you do not want to be listed as a contributor - i'm giving screen or real names as they were given to me, but i'm not listing amounts. i just want to have some page up that shows you were willing to help, as a thankyou.

on that note - even if your only contribution was to keep reading, thankyou too. i'm in no way trying to imply that people who supported me are better than people who didn't or couldn't. once again, the rule is no donating unless you have an income and can spare it.

happy All Hallows', sapes (well, i guess it's All Saints' Day now but whatever, i don't know all the Christian terminology, i just like the time of year). carpe corporem.

L

donor pie

verified: the PayPal account is working, but it got hit in the face with shrapnel when my overdraft exploded and now it hates my bank account. i can still use it and take money out of it, just can't put any in from my own account. so it's kinda useless for shopping.

today me and Muad-Dib took £10 out of the account and went to the campus bakery. i mention this because it would have been impossible without you all. thankyou so much. we bought some reduced shit to last the next few days and something to eat then and there and i realised how hungry i was; yesterday's tests revealed ketosis in my system, which the doctor yelled at me for until i told her it was poverty rather than anorexia. i wasn't surprised the meat was breaking out the emergency systems after a couple weeks of not really eating anything at all, but i'd been trying to suppress the sensation of hunger itself and i guess it worked until i went in there. everything looked so good, even nasty shit like the mac'n'cheese, and it smelt like greasy, bacony, sugar-topped motherfucking heaven. i had a caramel square, and a plasma physicist mate i see every now and again gave me a steak pie before that because "you look like you need it". he was probably right. i still haven't been sick either, so it will actually give the meat some nutrients this time, albeit not very good ones.

i also found some Ribena in my locker, but it had turned into fermented stuff. not even chooh. all the glucose had been used up and it tasted like arse so i threw it out, feeling like a tool for throwing away technically still edible food. the Sprite was alright, and there were some Haribos in there as well wrapped in tin foil (fuck knows how they got in there, i don't remember). i have used up all my Xanax, though since i was using it to ignore hunger, i might not need it anymore. donor wall and proper FAQ page coming soon.

i called the Student Loans Company yesterday. they said the first employee who spoke to me shouldn't have given a time estimate because that's not allowed, and had been disciplined. they also made me skip lectures tomorrow to try and catch my passport arriving via Special Delivery (probably going to get lost since nobody can find my fucking house.) after patching me through "to my boss" three times they said my account was still being processed at head office, and that it would take about 14 working days to finish processing and then a couple more to actually get the money and letter proving the money exists to me. that is, it won't get here before i have to pay rent for November.

i asked the guy what about the October and November rent, and house bills, and the food it's meant to cover. he made a sorta nuirgh noise. fuck the SLC. thankyou, sapes. i'm not exaggerating when i say i would have bailiffs taking my furniture right now were it not for you. this has only reinforced the lengths i am willing to go to to fetch knowledge for you.

L

having vomited: i'm screwed

i phoned the bank and the doctor. i can't think straight right now, so forgive typos and nonsense in this one. my balance is pretty much fucked. i can't get hold of the student loans people until after i see the doctor tonight because i've fucking left all my login data for them at home. i fucking hate panhandling but enough of you have offered to give me money that it might be worth my dignity and your spare cash to pull me out of the shit. i hate doing this to people.

i have a semi-broken Paypal at "a (9dot) mason (another dot) 06 (an at sign) aberdeen (0dot) ac (dotO) uk" (EDIT: de-regexed at Max's reminder. i told you i wasn't thinking right. please don't send mail to this address, it's a formal address for bills and things.) - idk if it even works, since i accidentally broke it when my bank overdraft collapsed last March and it said it could no longer be linked to my bank account. if it works without being linked to an account, it should be fine. EDIT 01: making sure it works tonight if i can. will let you know if it doesn't.

i also have a worthless bank account. sort code 40-44-41, account 91356593. holding name Ms A Mason. yeah, look at the meatspace data, it's pointless trying to censor it whilst begging. i can come up with other stuff like IBAN and holding branch address if people need it.

L