h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is a blank screen in front of me, waiting to suck my words into space. All I feel is pressure. All I hear is static. All I smell is dirt. All I smell is worms.
I have needles in my eyes and a tube to my stomcah.
There must have been some ancestral memory that life was somehow different, or I wouldn't know how free I could be now.

I want to go home. This earth is taken. There is nothing here for me.

I woke up this morning, and my first thought was H2G2. I remember being pleased that for once I had had a nice dream - something involving a food fight with lots of laughing people - and that for once I could write something in my journal here that wasn't complaint about the texture of my life.

And then I realised my eyes were sewn together.

I had conjuctivitis.

I lay there for a while, trying not to let the stabbing pain of dried mucus affect me too much, while I planned my days' packing.
Got up, cleaned my eyes as best I could, had a shower, started packing.
Pulled my weapons out from under the bed (I was a medieval enactor for several years), wondered where my sword was, remembered I had moved it, went to get it from its new place, and realised it had been stolen. From inside my room.
Someone had come into our flat, in the pretext of being a friend, and had walked into my room and walked away with my sword.

In a very bad mood now, I went to have breakfast. Discovered that one flatmate had drunk almost all of my milk (straight from the container, too, which pissed me off more than anything else) and also noticed that another had thrown out my beer. Bear in mind that today is my first day off in thirteen days. There wasn't much of it, but I was looking forward to that beer.

I /hate/ going into town without breakfast, but I almost have no choice since I haven't got enough milk to last. Wander down to the local dairy, buy some milk, and decide to go the long way home, past the pharmacy to get something for my eyes, which now hurt like buggery.
Keep having to wipe away tears from my puffy, blood red eyes, which must have made me look like a pathetic freak to anyone oncoming. Get to the pharmacy, and it's closed. Thought it might have been, since today supposed to be a public holiday, so I'm not too worried, except there's no other pharmacy within a three-quarter hour walk from here.

Get home, have breakfast, Kristine calls. She's coming to Wellington, leaving in ten minutes. Cool. I'll get to see here a day earlier, but the downside is that she won't be able to pick up my key for the now place tomorrow, like we'd arranged. Never mind, that just means I'll have to store my stuff at her place for the weekend and move everything again on monday. I can live with that.

Packing, and then..... I don't know.

I had another mental breakdown.

Don't remember much, and only in snippets. My chronology is stuffed, too, so I don't know what order things happened in. I can guess though. For example, I'm guessing I went to see Ben to get some CDs off him (very forsightful of me!) /before/ I went to Abby's. Don't remember walking home though, but I do remember waiting for pizza at hell (yes that's a gourmet pizza store). Not sure how I paid for it, but I seem to have $80 in my pocket. I hope it's mine.
I remember crying.
I remember walking down the street, still crying.
I remember Chucky saying "I'm going to the servo. You want anything?" and thinking it was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.
I remember Abby making a point of not saying "How are you?"
I remember looking at the war memorial and thinking that it was a monumentaly ugly sybol toward the sacrifice that so many people made.
I think I remember huggin Julia. Not sure weather that actually happened, or wether that was a dream. The only place I could really have seen her was at Ben's place, and there's no way to subtly find out if she was actually there, now.

I've run out of words.

I had pizza. Pizza was good.
That was about the only thing that was good today.

My head is starting to clear now, and I can see that my flatmates invited a whole lot of people into our flat. I don't want them here. I want them to go to that gig they keep loudly inviting each other to.
None of them have invited me.
I wouldn't go anyway. But I want to be invited.

I want a family.

I want a home.

I want a friend.

I've just checked my phone and there are two messages on it. One is from Kris saying that they're having fun in whichever part of the counrty they're in, so they're stopping there for the night. They'll be in Wellington tomorrow.
I bet I've left before they get here.

I want a hug.

I haven't felt this bad since I took six month's worth of prozac with a bottle of whisky, and woke up in the middle of the bush, in winter, at 4am.

Today was supposed to be a good day, dammit.

This will probably be my last post for a while. There's no 'net connection at my new flat, and there probably won't be for a while. I'm sure I'll make random, irregular posts whenever I get the chance.
Goodbye.

*sigh*

all the best...

Hope things improve for you when you move, Jerms.

Please post here when you can to let us know how you are.


Candi.

Thanks guys. It's nice to know I have a friend somewhere. Even online is better than nothing.

I'm back at uni now, so I can just use the university internet rather than paying for my own at home. (I think - I'll have to check the charge system again, to make sure I don't run out of credit.)

I'll have to update my intro again.... go go gadget enthusiasm.

I have no idea what to write - I've just written two very long e-mails and now I'm sick of writing. But I don't want to go home 'coz there's nothing there for me. I want to see a friend, but I can't seem to think of any who would want to see me.

Reading back on the original post here... I don't think I successfully managed to convey the depth of emotion I was feeling. No wonder writing about my day didn't really help me feel like I'd got it off my chest.

I still need a hug.

Next week will be better.

I hope.

Thanks for posting, Jerms. How is university? Anything there to inspire you? I hope you meet some friendly people...

Whatever you're going through, don't turn it in on yourself. Share it here, but if you can, talk to people face to face. Talk to friends on the phone, try not to let yourself get isolated.

Don't assume that people won't want to see you. Tell them you need some company - I'm sure they wouldn't want you to feel so alone....also, there must be a counselling service at the University - they are usually helpful.



Keep in touch. Life can and will be wonderful, remember that.

Thanks Candi.
I seem to be having trouble expressing an accurate portrayal of my life; the posting yesterday happened just after I'd written two very emotionally draining e-mails, and I was feeling very 'flat'. Thus I should mention that my life in general is actually going more positively than could probably be interpreted from that post, which is converse from the original entry where my life was /less/ positive than I managed to convey. I guess I got it about right on average...

University itself is going rather well, but of course I'm still in the first week which is very much the administration and organisational period - labs and tutorials start next week, and thus most of the activity too. However it looks like it will be fun. Most of my papers are pretty cool, with the notable exception of one yucky calculus blob at the start of two days in my timetable.
I haven't really met anyone new yet - this being third year everyone pretty much knows everyone else in the classes (except for me of course, having just come back from a two year break) - but I have caught up with a couple of old aquaintances, and a couple of the papers have group work components so that should help me expand my social circles.

As for talking to people on the phone, well I don't have one.
At least, I don't have a landline and being a broke student I can't afford to make many cellphone calls, but I try to text whenever I can afford it. Sometimes I even get replies!

And yes there is a councelling service at the uni - already paid for by a portion of the course fees... Hooray!


On a more personal note, Candi, you may be interested to hear that one of the papers I'm doing may include me developing a music visualisation application (I'll find out for certain wether I'm doing that, or a different project, next week. Maybe monday).
And another paper I'm doing is 'music and computers'. It's pretty basic at this early stage, but I'm hoping to have learnt a few extra theory ideas by the end of the course.
The lecturors for both of these papers both know my interests and skills, and they know my intention of creating a visual-responsive music generation module, and they've both been pretty receptive, so watch this space for further developments!

I'm relieved that things are looking better for you now, Jerms. (btw, just in case you ever want to use it, my email address is on my page).

The course sounds interesting. I would definitely like to hear more about the music stuff.