Finally some understanding

I have done as was suggested to me. I took my closest friends aside and spoke to them about all that has been trouble me. I have asked them for help and told them what I need.

I have gained a tremendous amount from this experience. For the first time I finally understand what is going on. I understand exactly how I am stuck and why. The last piece of work required is to find another way.

Firstly, because of complicated factors I sit with unmet fundamental human needs. I need support, care, concern, love and human contact.

I have learned to give greatly of my self. I am able to receive and take, but I do not know how to communicate my needs to women effectively. The only method that I know how to employ is to give and show concern, which has the opposite effect to what is desired. It freaks the women out and drives them away at worst, or make them see me as a close friend at best.

The major problem, however, arises when I start to develop feelings for a girl; realising that she might be able to fulfil my needs. As the feelings grow and develop they resonate more and more powerfully with my unmet needs, which becomes painful and uncomfortable; like dangling a carrot in front of a starved horse, or like an itch that you cannot scratch. The feelings of extreme anxiety, loss and sadness grow worse and worse until I cannot contain them any more.

Then one of two things happen: I diffuse it by having an uncomfortable conversation with girl who is then left with the unpleasant and unfortunately choice of having to tell me she shares the feelings or not. She inevitably says she doesn’t share the feelings and then she feels awkward and does everything in her considerable power to get rid of me.

OR I leave her and move on, which normally doesn’t work the first option supersedes.

I wind up creating things that are so sad, terrible and beautiful; like the Elves. I fall for girls who don’t love me, love them until it drives them away and then cannot move on. The reason that I cannot move on is the hope created during the process; the hope that this women might be able to meet my needs, is all I have. To let go of that shadow of something that might have been is too much to bear because without it there is nothing.

I believe in truth; in life, too much is left unsaid.

I speak my truth calmly and openly because it is the only thing left to do when the hope is gone and the hollowness hurts horribly.

My truth is the searing hot spark that turns my reality into a blazing hell of pain

After time the blaze burns down and the scars remain, and the shadow of the hope sad, beautiful and terrible.

A pearl of wisdom

I have had an incredibly difficult day.

I woke a few times during the night and early in the morning. When I eventually got up I thought of the fucking amazing day at had yesterday and got straight back into bed. Yesterday I went to Jooste where I chose to go help out at the surgical out patients clinic. The doctor who runs the clinic had an American girl with him. She was not even a medical student. Just a completely random girl. He was being very flirty and talkative with her, but I didn’t mind. I just did my bit, helping him out, seeing patients, etc. I eventually saw a lady who need a benign, though large, tumour cut out of her inner thigh. Because I believe in thoroughly examining the patients I see I noticed that she was profoundly anaemic with a tachycardia and tachypnoea. I asked the sister if we could do a ward haemoglobin on her, but we couldn’t because the machine was broken. I proceeded to take blood from her to send for a formal haemoglobin. I’ve been taking blood from patients for years and I had very good reasoning to do this investigation. When I told the doctor he decided to shit me out for not getting his permission. I think he thought it made him look good for the american chick. What an asshole.

Anyway, so today I woke up feeling like shit. My university/work was terrible. My friends are all busy writing exams, my family are in a state about my dad having heart surgery soon, my time is free but I have nothing to do. I’m so lonely and bored.

I went to Kaya where I had an excellent chat with one of the counsellors. He suggested that I speak to my friends and people and tell them what I need. He also suggested that I speak to people to get feed back about my interactions with women. I then attended there aftercare. I had an issue with one of the patient who was being aggressive and trying to intimidate me, which wasn’t fun.

I went to the bayit where I had a nag. I then went out with a good friend for sushi. Then I visited one of my good friends who is down from Joburg. I had a long serious talk about how I am feeling. It was good to speak about it. In talking to him I realised why I haven’t ever been able to feel real closure with those many women who has caused me so much pain.

When I liked each of them they gave me hope of human comfort and understanding. It is the most that I have ever had. I cannot let go of the hope because the hope is all I have. I will only be able to let go of the hope when I have somebody or something to fill that small space of the vast emptiness within that is occupied by the hope.

The Creeping Doom

I have found it difficult to reflect lately because my life feels very empty and uneventful. It feels like the constant stream of medication I take to maintain myself. I have two blister-strips and one bottle. In the morning I take 60mg duloxetine. They are arranged in 2 rows of 5 tables and 1 row where the middle table is missing making 14 in the blister-strip. Each month the pharmacy gives me 2 blister strips and 2 tablets cut from another blister strip making 30 tablets. I can take whichever one I want from the blister-strip. Some months I take them in order, some months I make a pattern, this month I am taking them out at random.

In the evening I take quetiepine 100mg and phenergan 25mg. The quetiepine comes in blister strips of 10 arranged in two rows of 5 tablets. I get 3 blister-strips. I normal take them in rows of 2. The pherergan comes in a plastic bottle. I feel bad because I have a draw of plastic bottles that I cannot recycle. I sometimes take 50mg of phenergan if I really want to sleep well. If I need to wake up very early and not sleep much I don’t take the phenergan.

Sometimes I forget to take the duloxetine in the morning. I always put it out on my bedside light’s stand the night before. Sometimes, when I wake up, I see it but I roll over or get distracted and then forget to take it. By early afternoon I can feel that I have forgotten to take it. When I move quickly, especially if I move my head quickly, I get a shooting sensation through one of my arms. It is painful or pleasant. This gets worse if I miss the medication for two days in a row. I rarely miss my medication though, I think that I am more than 95% compliant.

I never forget to take my quetiepine. I cannot sleep at all without, not matter how sad, tired, depressed, despondent, exhausted, or sick I feel I cannot sleep for one “millisecond of a motorcycle wheel” without it. It has been like this for over 3 years.

In the morning I wake up. Half the time I feel sore. This is when my joints feel achy. It’s not an arthritis problem, but a psychosomatic manifestation of my illness. It normally goes away within 20 minutes, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times I wake up feeling tired. I often wake up feeling lonely. There is nothing that I look forward to when I wake up.

University is very unstimulating at the moment. I am doing surgery. I spent a month at groote schuur of which 3 weeks was spent in the breasts, thyroid and sarcomas firm. This involved busy interesting days on Monday and Tuesday and quite chilled Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In fact, I haven’t gone in on Friday for over a month. I am not going on on Thursday at the moment because it is just tutorials and lectures and I don’t give a horses ass. I feel bad. I feel that I am missing out on something.

I have been studying medicine for more than 5 years and I know that I am not missing out on anything. I am missing out on those lectures that I was forced to attend last year. The lectures that I was bored in and resented last year. I am not attending them.

Tomorrow I will go in at 10am because there is a lecture from 8h30 to 9h30 by the vascular firm. Vascular surgery is one of my least favourite topics of discussion. At 10am I will present my scrawny Jewish ass to the orthopaedics outpatients clinic at G.F. Jooste Hospital where the consultant will, as he did last week, scream at me to shut up whenever I try to answer a question. I will not care about his verbal abuse and continue to try to learn orthopaedics. I will then go home.

When I am at home there are a few activities which I use to help fill up my days so that I don’t go any more crazy. I am devouring Harry Potter at the moment. I spend a substantial amount of time every day reading Harry Potter. Reading Harry Potter has no long term benefits. It just serves to fill the vast, nearly overwhelming emptiness. I watch TV series and I play computer games. I am currently playing Warcraft 3’s Frozen Throne expansion on hard. I am on the first level of undead. The online tutorial I had to use describes this map, along with most of the other maps in this campaign as either almost impossible or impossible. I find that far form motivating, but it does fill time.

I also spend quite a bit more time than I am used to cleaning. I clean my room, sort things, wash, dry and pack away dishes, just because it fills time. It also provides a false sense of maintenance. I am maintaining my… erm… room therefore I must be maintaining myself and my happiness. This is quite the contrary.

I spend a significant, though small, period of time every day trying to communicate. I send text messages to my friends. I send a message to a girl I really like every day wishing her well for her studies and exams. My relationship with her at the moment fills me with pathos and sadness. I know that she does not have feelings for me. I also know that there are complicated reason why we will never be together.

There are other girls with whom I communicate less frequently. The content and feeling are the same. I barely even expect a reply.

I try, whenever possible, to socialise. I attend aftercare at Kaya on Wednesday afternoon where I contribute greatly to the group therapy. I smoke nag with some of my friends and go out for dinner with others. I speak to them, try to laugh and tell jokes. I try to relate my experiences with them in a positive way.

The mantra I find myself saying to myself more often then not is “There is nothing.”

My problem is that I have hope. My hope is unreasonable and irrational. While, in this period when most of my friends have exams, I feel isolated, lonely and forgotten, I maintain hope for unreasonable things happening. I still clutch with the remants of my will onto the hope that girls whom I have chased for years will like me. I hope that girls who have rejected me, insulted me, scorned me, ashamed me, humiliated me, betrayed me and then forgotten that I exist will like me, will communicate with me, will contain me and care.

Why do I hope for that which is impossible and would damage me beyond repair, when I cannot believe or understand that tomorrow might not be another hole in the threadbare cloak of my soul.