Lost

I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
I wake up, I go to work, I "sleep", I wake up, I go to work...ad infinitum...nauseum, even.
It's the same for most of us, I get that.

It isn't like I don't enjoy my work, I do. It's not as though my life outside work is completely dull and lifeless. It is, however, that the endless cycle keeps on spinning within a motionless void and that, right there, is my life.

At some point, something broke, and I can't even place a finger on what it was but essentially I found myself feeling completely dead inside most of the time.

I can break things down into tiny little strings of events, from break ups to redundancy to the death of my father. I could take these events and twist them with other more minor occurences to make an entire narrative of my slow, inevitable decay, but it isn't quite as simple as all that. It's not even as simple as labelling it all under the banners of depression, stress and anxiety, while they are certainly factors they are also not entirely causative, in my opinion.

To be clear, I am only speaking of myself from my own point of view and completely accept that we all see, feel and express all of this in many and varied ways.

We are the sum of our experiences and I'd be a fool to think that my experiences were better, or worse, than most. Much of my school life was spent as a straight-As, top-of-the-class type that was always up for a good time. This soon gave way in the later yearsof high school as I lost the ability to care about results. I could do the work and aside from some higher maths concepts, nothing was particularly difficult for me. Was I bored with it all? Probably.  Had I become increasingly hostile towards a system that seemed to only favour those who fell in line with the status quo and what was expected of them? Most definitely  (defiantly).

Despite that, I'd moved on and wasn't doing too badly. I can't say that I was anywhere near where those naiive teen years led me to believe I would be, but I was mostly content with my world.

Now, I find myself in a place that I had always tried to avoid. A place where nothing really feels right and most things I do seem wrong. The motionless void inside which I simply carry on through the motions, keeping the treadmill moving and bashing on those meaningless cymbals, day after day after day.

This place is where good days are extremely rare and things that once made me happy and kept me interested are no longer able to do so. I might pick up a guitar or sit down at my piano once or twice a month whereas it was an almost daily occurence. I may buy new camera gear but I am rarely interested enough to take it out and use it. Movies and music are just time killers and as for reading, I can't remember the last time I finished a book, but it was probably Good Omens.

Every night I will go to sleep dreading the fact that I will soon be awake again for the cycle to continue. Thoughts race through my mind of how it would be so much better if I didn't wake up at all and that is often the last thing to go through my mind as I drift off to sleep.

I can, however, say that in some respects things have gotten somewhat better this year. For one, it appears that the suicide watch that I was under for a couple years has been lifted. The knife I used in my last attempt was returned to me recently and instead of placing it back in the cabinet it was once displayed in, I took it upon myself to place it in a drawer, out of sight. I know it is there but am unable to see it, or even get to it quickly if I so wished. I still think about it, making it all come to an abrupt end, but I seem to have that under control, for now.
So there is that, I suppose...

For some time I was required to regularly speak with a counsellor over the phone. She would check in with me once a week until we reached a point where she could reasonably ascertain that I was no longer a danger to myself. I convinced her of that after several months, although I would always downplay my feelings when we spoke as it's what I do. I am not one that enjoys talking about myself, if it's avoidable. I've always been The Listener, not the talker.

So, I don't have any good reason for having written this post except perhaps for the sake of writing something, anything, for the first time in years.
But it's just a blog post and is, essentially, as useless as I am...

I am so lost.

For now, I just keep on keeping on, I suppose, against my better judgement and the fact that I just want it all to be over...