Scrap that last post. Sleep is good and all when you get it but it completely sucks when you have trouble getting to sleep.

I am so awake yet so extremely tired. Pure exhaustion is what I feeling but can I fall asleep? Noooooo!

What an absolute prick of a state to be in! I long for the release of sleep but it just isn’t happening. Believe me, I’ve been trying for that elusive sleep. I’ve been in bed for hours but when I turn off the TV and cuddle up to my pillow that’s as far as I get.

Worse still, I’m so tired I can’t bring myself to do anything useful. My whole house is filthy but I don’t have the energy to clean it. I can’t even be bothered doing something that I would usually enjoy … working on one of my websites for example.

Ugh!

Maybe I shouldn’t complain too much. After last night’s limited sleep and feeling incredibly dopey all morning, I did fall asleep in the afternoon. In fact, I slept for around three hours. I guess that is part of the reason I am still awake tonight but unfortunately it doesn’t make me feel any better about the predicament I find myself in now.

I am really missing my crazy meds. At least while taking Seroquel I was guaranteed of a good night’s sleep. I could drink as much coffee as I wanted in the evenings. I could do whatever I wanted before going to bed. With the help of the Seroquel I slept regardless.

And while I am busy complaining, what is with feeling just as crappy now I am off the pills as I felt when I was on them? That is so not friggin’ fair! I still feel down almost constantly. I still can’t get excited about life by any stretch of the imagination. I still … *insert any number of things here*.

*Sigh*

Maybe all I need is to have something to sink my teeth into. If that is the case I can’t wait until the TAFE holidays are over and my next term of study begins. Let’s hope that is all it is.

Update: Okay, I relented. It’s now 2:15am and I have just finished sawing one of my Seroquel tablets in half. Half a one is better than a full one, right? Anyway, it is down the hatch now so hopefully I will be getting some sleep in a hour or so. Thank goodness for that!

Last night I actually slept without the aid of Seroquel. How about that! Okay, well, it was an incredibly short sleep (maybe four hours) but it was a good sleep … no tossing or turning at all. Oh, and yeah, I still feel tired this morning but ya get that. I guess there is just no pleasing me. *smiles*

I want my own domain! I want, I want, I want!!! * insert childlike foot stomping here *

For a few days now I have been mucking around with a WordPress blog over on my centralqueenslandcemeteries.com domain. (Yes, that’s right … I already have my own domain). I set up a new blog on a subdomain just for fun, found myself a cute little WordPress template (be stuffed if I can write my own … that php stuff is just too much of a mystery to me), and even made a couple of posts.

The problem is that the subdomain thing just isn’t working for me. To begin with adding a personal blog to the centralqueenslandcemeteries.com domain feels plain weird considering the type of stuff I write in my blog. It doesn’t fit with the original website that sits on that domain. Additionally, half the time the blog doesn’t load. Now that’s a pain and a half when I want to write a post or just take a look at the cute little cartoon characters that appear on the template.

So … I want, I want, I want!!!

Is it silly to pay for another domain (not that it’s all that expensive * smiles *) just to plop a blog on it when blogger works perfectly fine? Mind you, I could always move my Central Queensland Cemeteries website over to the new domain and just let the centralqueenslandcemeteries.com domain lapse when it is due for renewal. That way I could have my website and my blog. I would just need to pick a good all-rounder type of domain name that suits both my blog and my website.

Mmmm … choices, choices, choices.

I want, I want, I want!!!

During my travels around the Internet yesterday, I stumbled across a song which sums up how I have been feeling a lot over these past few weeks. The song is Breathe Me by Sia and the lyrics are as follows:

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Yeah I think that I might break
I’ve lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

What a powerful little song! Over the past few weeks I have felt terribly alone, even if in reality I haven’t been. I’ve felt like I have lost myself. I felt like I was breaking apart. I have definitely felt unsafe.

Sometimes it is hard to express oneself. In it’s own way, coming across such a song helps to let it all out.

GBF travelled up north for a conference this week. He took my camera with him and, as a result, arrived home with a bunch of photographs from his travels. Here’s my favourite photo though. It’s my new motto!

The following is stolen from the current issue of Australia’s “That’s Life” magazine (issue 38, September 20, 2006) and appears in the “Your Letters” section. It really is one of those Homer Simpson “D’oh!” moments. Kinda funny! *smiles*

My partner and I had to attend a ball but being heavily pregnant, I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a new gown. So I rang around a few formal hire outlets to ask if they had maternity formal wear. A male voice at one particular establishment asked, “For women?”

Reminds me of a song … “Folks are dumb where I come from …” LOL

“It is impossible to know who we are unless we can remember where we’ve come from (Middleton, 2005). We are defined by the journey that thus far has brought us to here. The more readily we can access the past that shaped us, the more that we can own and share with those we trust the feelings and vulnerabilities that have accrued from our life experience, then the more likely it is that we will be empathically receptive to others. The less we have ‘no go’ zones in terms of what has happened to us or the feelings associated with such events, the more likely it is that we will have assembled functional personal boundaries, affective stability, healthy self-esteem and be self-activated enough to aim high in the pursuit of love, work and play. The capacity to remember, and the capacity to process pain lie close together.”
(Middleton, 2006. p.23)

Last night and this morning I have been doing some “light” reading (a whole 112 pages worth … eek!). When I googled “dissociation and depression in the non-traumatized population” I stumbled across a paper, written by the Australian psychiatrist Warwick Middleton (whom I was actually “head shrinked” by when I stayed in a Brissie hospital for a few weeks a couple of years ago), entitled “Reconstructing the Past: Trauma, Memory and Therapy“. It is actually a background paper to a seminar he held earlier this year representing an extension to the exploration of some themes covered in the paper: Middleton W, De Marni Cromer L, Freyd JJ (2005). Remembering the past, anticipating the future. Australasian Psychiatry,13:3, 223-233. My pdoc gave me a copy of that particular article a few months ago (which reminds me, I have to get the thing back to him) in order for me to gain a better understanding of dissociation which, unfortunately, it didn’t. (Hello? Where’s my traumatic background? Did I traumatise myself by overdosing or something? Why does everything I read have to be related to trauma? It doesn’t make any sense for my situation. There has got to be something out there that I can relate to … surely).

Anyway, why am I quoting the above text? In a sick, perverted way I almost wish that I did have some sort of past trauma to contend with (my apologies to anyone who has lived through the hell of an abusive situation). If that were the case then it would give some meaning or reason to the way that I am now. Depressed … yep. Dissociative … I don’t know. Traumatised … nope. It just doesn’t make sense.

“The less we have ‘no go’ zones in terms of what has happened to us or the feelings associated with such events, the more likely it is that we will have assembled functional personal boundaries, affective stability, healthy self-esteem and be self-activated enough to aim high in the pursuit of love, work and play.”

Yes please! I wish I felt stable. I wish I had a healthy self-esteem. I wish I was self-activated (actualized ?) enough to aim high in the pursuit of love, work and play. Sounds great, doesn’t it? These things sound like the ingredients to a happy, healthy and productive life.

Instead I am sitting here wondering why the hell I am so useless, thinking that Hubby would be much better off with someone else besides me in his life, and wondering why I have been reacting so negatively (especially in relation to my pdoc’s therapeutic endeavours … medication and otherwise) over these past couple of weeks.

The scary thing is that there is no causal relationship with anything for me. I am the way I am. The old argument of nature vs nurture (did I do too many psych 101 classes or what!) appears to tip significantly to the side of nature in my case and I don’t like that. It means that I am a flawed individual who just needs to pull herself up by the boot straps, stop whinging and whining and get on with life. Mmmm!

Anyway, I have been thinking way, way too much since my last pdoc appointment. I have today and tomorrow in which to finish my TAFE work for the term otherwise I will fail. There is no doubt about it, I need to spend today finishing off the last of my TAFE work. Anyone got the recipe to turning off the wandering mind and focusing on what has to be done?