a good night's sleep would be nice
2004-11-15, 7:28 a.m.

Last night I slept with an old friend. I haven�t seen him in a while, but he�s been visiting me, mostly at night, for the past few months. His name is Panic Anxiety McFarland. He grips me so tight, I find it hard to breathe. At first, I don�t even know he�s there, my mind starts racing and my chest gets tight. After a few minutes, I realize what�s going on. It�s my old friend come to visit (haunt) me.
I�m becoming very much like a small infant. I feel overwhelmed by these emotions I cannot name. I feel incapable of moving my limbs. All I want to do is eat, sleep and poop, emphasis on the sleep.
Has anyone ever fought the ocean? Battled the surf when the undertow/riptides are strong? The waves keep coming and crashing on you, the surf tries to suck you out into the ocean. Every time you get your head up for a gasp of air, you get sucked back down. You can feel your energy waning with each pulse of the tides. Soon, you wonder if you�ll make it. Next, you wish you could just give up. You know that as soon as you start to feel like you�re going to make it, you will get sucked back in.
That�s the closest approximation I can come to explaining what it�s like to live with my brain. I don�t have words for it. It doesn�t even make sense to me, how could I possibly have it make sense to someone else. I just know that the depressions are pounding, they try to suck me out to sea. Sometimes, it�s all I can do to just be alive at the end of the day. And they are so unexpected sometimes. It�s like walking down the street and suddenly falling in a pothole that you never saw. And I never know how long they are going to last. Lately, it�s been so crazy. I really am moody. Moody is the only appropriate word to describe how I feel. One minute, happy, feeling like I can do anything. 2 minutes later, I just want to curl up into a ball, or die. The battle depletes me. I feel weak, physically as well as emotionally. And because I know that even when the battle is over, the war will never be, I start to succumb to the urge to just give up. I�m tired of this war. I wish I could dispatch some troops to fight it for me.
Last night, I had three dreams (that I can remember). In one of them, I was being attacked by sharks. In another, I was attacked by snakes. In the third one, 5 people died of various causes. Sleep is no escape for me these days.

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