as usual, a beautiful wine from sainsburys (banrock shiraz, pounds 7.99 down to pounds 3.99) and a vile wine from over the road (chianti at pounds 4.99)/ unbelieveable/ i'm not sure if his wine is horribly stale or just naturally really bad, but i literally have to wretch it down/ never mind/ a fine supper of wild mushroom and parmesan risotto coupled with pork escalpoes fried in normandy butter and ultra haven't-had-sex-yet olive oil/

the writing is going well/ i've set myself the very achievable task of writing one page each morning and one each evening/ thus by the end of the week i'll have fourteen pages/ i'm basically writing a succession of short stories/ the first went well/ i've now started the second/ however i'm ill prepared to write a lot of what i have to write/ a lot of it is incredibly painful to remember and i write by putting myself back where i was and remembering everything as it transpired/ thus i have to live out all of these painful experiences again/ i think this might be incredibly cathartic/ i'm hoping too that my girlfriend, who finds it hard to see beyond her own emotions, might be given a nasty shock and realise just how hard things were for me/ from her behavior at the time it was evident she;d adopted her usual stance: no one's suffering is a significant as mine/ i just wrote a page and some of it made me weep/ i hope her very least reaction will be to weep/ i hope she realises just how badly she let me down/ of course, she occasionally cottoned on, even at the time, in sporadic moments of drunken self-realisation/ but most of the time she was a very cold, nasty person/ she'd found some fairly needy people to buy into her cause and so everything that had transpired before and had got us to that point was negated/ i was just the enemy, and she, as always, the victim/

no entry yester/ bad writer/ intake: one bottle wine (14%); 2 cans stella; usual homeopathic adjuncts/ afternoon nap of 3 hours/ night of 11/ sitting sipping etheopian and speculating on how to waste the day/ oh if i could seize/ well, soon/ friday's appointment ok/ they won't put me up to 90mls/ and i've to seek an outside doc. for antis/ so not too pleased, though the building is proof they are well funded: a lavish art deco structure/ i'm now treated somewhere looks like an art gallery rather than a comprehensive school circa 1960/ good news is they might be able to sort me out with psychotherapy/ i'm only 27/ many years yet/and thus far i have learnt alot/ when one passes out of depression one is almost thankful (for experiencing the depression)/ one emerges with a more rounded perspective/ excess and wisdom etc/ i think an excess of any type of perception or experience will necessarily give one a broader outlook/ i'm not feeling too hot at the moment (have not been for a while) but i know from experience that when i emerge from this spell i'll be the better for it/ and then i can grab life by the nuts/ it seems everyone's had their period in the sun/ well i'm going to get mine/working on a story at the mo'/ found a magazine who want to publish some of my stuff/ i should really get my stuff out there more/ however i only really enjoy writing my diary/ i've been keeping a diary for 5 or 6 years now/ they are scattered all over the house/ only recently have i started to keep a digital one/ i find it extremely addictive/ when i set out to write a piece in some other form i find sentences flow easily but its a chore the shoehorn these bits into a pre-determined structure/the only structure of a diary is that it is linear/ stories usually require a bit more structure/ however what's stopping me writing diary as fiction?/ i've also been considering a pseudonym/ did you know mark twain was a pseudo?/ until yesterday, neither did i/ so is tom stoppard; fay weldon; voltaire; tennessee williams/ john le carre; george orwell; jack london; anthony burgess (although the relation here is both were his middle names)/ fascinating/ i know that as soon as the citalopram take hold i'll be way out there/ what worries me is that it gave me such confidence that my infidelities became manifold/ i kissed other girls whilst out with mine/ i'd meet her having just been with a prostitute/ i justified my infidelities with the argument: well, i ain't getting any at home/ if i never broached the subject again we would drift into old age without a single sexual act occurring/ she, of course, has a bizarre relationship with sex/ and it pains me infinitely/ but what would you do reader?/ people say, oh thats terrible, you should leave her if you're not getting what you want from the relationship/ well, what stupid advice/ so easy to give, but anyone who's been in a long term relationship with someone and been through a lot will know, it is so hard to know what to do/ and there is, i'm convinced, no right answer/ its very easy to moralise when looking in from the outside/ but no one really knows what goes on between a couple but the couple/ and advice given always has an agenda/ well more on me later...

dull day/ intake of yester: pint 1, stella, bottles twain, white wine (12%)/ i acquired a particularly vile pinot grigio from the off license opposite the estate around 10pm/ must have gone off/ however since it contained alcohol i persevered/ went to bank this morning to change a mountain of coins, the value of which was pounds 41.92/ so off to nth soon and then will complete the ensemble with a nice organic shiraz/ bliss/ am still taking supplements and cleansing/ my abstinence from alcohol lasted only four days/ i first slipped because i felt so awful/ yesterday i drank to celebrate/ and today with 2 or 3 'blue' in hand i can't not, really/ attempted a short story this morning/ didn't derive much pleasure therefrom/ i only seen to enjoy writing my diary/ when i sit down to purposely write something it comes out terribly contrived/

just visited amazon and the lengthy album reviews i painstakingly complied have disappeared/ b's'ds/ i hate loosing work/ i do so little that what i do produce is extremely valuable (to me)/ i also regard my work as a marker, a memento/ whilst i struggle greatly with life i do find pleasure in reminiscing, and some tangible marker makes memories more vivid and the process more enjoyable/

0950

on station platform on route to doctors/ feel like shit/ fucking sluggish and knackered/ i'm buried 'neath a perpetual fug/ had a drink last night though within reason (i btl 14 percent vino) so it ain't a h'over/ p'haps its this d'tox shit i'm imbibing/ it affects the gut and that seems to be the primary site of discontent/i've not been following the instructions on the packaging but i can't imagine a homeopathic remedy can have such a profound and negative effect/ however some herbal highs are very powerful, so.../ i'm not sure if i deserve to feel like this (id est shit, in various manifestations and degrees) but i do/ maybe i'll feel worse before i feel better/

1005

just imbibed the most abysmal latte/ how, with such excellent equipment which requires a minimum of input from semi-sentient meat mannequins (were they puppets one might hope they were guided by a sensible hand), they fuck it up i do not know/ when paying somewhere in the region of a 2000 percent mark up one expects at least some degree of quality/ shit.../ anyway will soon have a one month meth. script, the thought of which pleases me exceedingly/ then to doc's to sort out ag'inst-deppers/ my black dog is persistent enough to require muzzling (at least - bring on the extraneous measures)/

1032

i think cbt (cognitive behavioral therapy) is what i need/ i'm trapped in repetitive thought patterns/ luckily i'm a fairly resourceful guy/ i've interests, which help divert my mind/ this marginally improves my lot/ but i still find large portion of my time is spent unwillingly obsessing over the many and various ways in which the albatross had wounded my fragile self/ whilst a lot of my anger is justified, i think i'm unfair in that i use her as a focus for all my rage/ im rarely express this/ i have the occasional vocal outburst but i'm usually a caring, attentive 'life partner'/ admittedly i'm not as tactile as before and am prone to freeze up when she embraces me/ but in the main i'm supportive and loving and confine this vast fury to the inside of my skull/ not a good idea, i hear you say/ and you're right/ it is a terrible idea/ as a consequence, i die everyday/ not a little/ not incrementally/ i die (i.e. cease to live) everyday/ my myriads dysfunctions conspire to form a prison from which i cannot escape/ and in this prison i cannot live/ it is a prison rooted in the past and i cannot reach out of it an make an imprint on the present, nor look to the future/ it is a horrible way to live/ mercifully there are some avenues of release/ literature, writing, heroin, alcohol/ i've always been like this, to an extent, functioning painfully below my potential/ but over the years the monster within, the prison without, whatever, has become stronger...

have been writing long hand today/ should transcribe that material here/ will, later/

weak am i/ glass of fine wine in hand i sit, vaguely self-chastising/ i was doing so well but started to feel so shit/ thus i procured one bottle and this for the eve shall be my limit/ i just cannot do cold turkey anymore/ not with so many other chemical disturbances troubling my body/

feeling good/ intake yesterday: same as day before though including 3 b/ went nth around 1900 and, having waited no small amount of time, secure three excellent size b, 2 of some new stuff and one enormous bag of that excellent quality shit i spoke of before/ i think they (the dealers) get bags mixed up because sometimes you get a bag whose size and content is identical to one two weeks ago in a current batch/ well it got me nicely mashed but i have to say without the alcohol it wasn't as good/ however i slept well and woke at 1100 (having recently risen around 0800) feeling much better than if i'd been pissing it up twain/ so a middle ground/ i think maybe a couple of glasses of good wine plus three b followed by flagons of iced mineral water and i should wake feeling fine/ but what am i saying!/ i must be strict with myself and continue with this detox (well, period of abstinence from alcohol)/ it has now been four days since i've had a drink and i'm feeling much better/ anyway must eat some breakfast and then i shall continue to bored you and myself with my self-indulgent ramblings...

well it seems no one reads this blog, bar the occasional random visitor, an instance or two of whom have left concerned comments/ well, thanks for your concern/ it's appreciated/ however nothing but chemical purging and replacing or perhaps restructuring can help me (my poor tortured self/ my horrible monstrous self (the monster inside))/ i've always had it, but it's become a lot stronger as i've got older/ it's reassuring to try and explain this monster, to break it down and explain it as a name for a composite of various different chemical imbalances/ but that cannot be the whole story/ the gut the gut if man were nothing but the gut/ heroin is the only thing which helps and so soon i'm going to get lots/ i was going to join the gym again and become an even greater slave to my vanity, tickled by the empty flirting and flashing eyes of passing women, but no/ i'd rather soothe out and sleep/

so anyway, in the round i do feel a lot better/ i find it far easier to resist wandering down destructive thought routes/ i find i have a lot more energy, which is a high in itself/ i'm also sleeping fucking well/ i thought i'd suffer insomnia but no/ i go to bed at a reasonable hour and rise around eight, having slept pretty much the whole night through/ it's magical/ i just refuse to waste any more of my life engaged in petty self-destruction/ i'm going to get fit and start enjoying life/ and i'm going to stop being such a fucking hypocrite and being mad at jo for sleeping with other people when we were apart/ not only did i do the same, i did it when we were together/ countless prostitutes, several guys, several girls, i kissed about 10 people atop including my best mates girl friend/ but when one is a cheater one measures others by one's own standards and thus thinks e.g. one's woman is at it when she's not/ and the times she has been she's been perfectly justified in doing so/ i just feel so hurt by it because we had been in a relationship for eight years (my first long term) and it didn't feel like we'd properly broken up (we saw each other every week and slept together not a few times)/ i just wish i had her capacity to get over things/ when her first relationship ended she found out her man of 6 years had gone off with her best friend (if you knew her you'd realise, he's not a bad guy)/ now under these circumstances i'd have killed myself/ no question/ but what does she do?/ gets a job, goes about her life and in a few months is going out with me/ then a few weeks into our relationship she invite ex and friend out with us to a club night i was putting on/ now are we fucking extreme opposites or what?/ i think she's just so used to massive emotional blows and then having to get on like nothings happened that she can seem like she doesn't care/ but i'm sure she does/ i've just become so disenchanted with her/ when i first met her she had no friends (literally)/ we slept together having known each other four days (if i sleep with someone i usually like things to move a little faster, but hey) and she moved in with me a week after meeting me/ i was a little surprised that apart from a girl she knew at work (cathrine) she had no friends/ it didn't take long before she was waking up in the middle of the night screaming and crying and soon ensued a five year barrage of vitriol directed at everyone who'd ever wronged her i.e. pretty much everyone she'd ever met/ a year into our relationship i hated everyone she'd ever told me about/ she was so monumentally screwed up and this she (and i) believed was in no way her fault but the fault of everyone who'd ever mistreated, misunderstood or indeed wronged her in anyway/ but after a while small inconsistencies in her stories started to show up/ the most glaring of these being the fact that apparently her ex, who owed her money and had broken every fibre of her heart and soul had been 'such a sweet boy'/ what?/ indeed/ she had this way of making me feel so sorry for her and i would buy into everything she told me whole heartedly/ and the more i listened and supported, the more she wailed and complained and cried/ now i'm sure if you've been in this situation you'll understand that no matter what has happened to someone, no matter how sorry you feel for them, the more they go on and on about it, and everything else that is wrong, you begin, after a while, to not give a shit/ at first i felt bad/ i thought /my, this girl's had such a terrible time, how can i be annoyed at her for being upset/ but the fact is after a while they do it not because they need the sympathy but because they become addicted to the sympathy, and particularly when this person has had no real love in their life they have to find something/ and because she's attractive and small and has a well practiced manner she can elicit sympathy from no end of gullible, lonely people/ recently she told me she was surprised that early on on our relationship i didn't run a mile/ why didn't i?/ i was depressed, very lonely and i did feel sorry for her/ why am i still here?/ because i'm still depressed, still lonely and i still feel sorry for her/ plus jealousy if she ends up with someone else/ you expect when you've put a lot in to get a lot out/ i'm still waiting/ so am i with her for purely negative reasons?/ i do enjoy relaxing with her/ we've always been very natural in one another's company and seem, i think, to have some sort of weird bond/ she also shows a lot of interest in the things i do/ and she's got better with emotional matters/ in the past she was just like her mum/ she'd elicit sympathy and support till the point of my being exhausted and the minute i needed her support she'd shut off/ i'd never seen anything like it and was shocked but having witnessed her mother's behavior realise that it's not so remarkable (what is remarkable is her infinite capacity for denial and the belief that she is always doing good for others (but only again come to think of it remarkable in itself - this again is a charming trait she has inherited from her mother))/burroughs once said he wrote because if he did not he'd would die ('writing for my life' i believe the phrase was)/ well whilst i was saying how much easier it is to resist ruinous thought paths in my current instantiation, i am still assailed/ thus rather than sit there and stew i'll write/ what was angering me as i sat there?/ how easily impressionable she is/ when she was working with pretty awful people she was horrible, self-indulgent, spoilt and prone to massive mood swings/ god i hated her, how i despised her/ but i couldn't leave/ as aforementioned this apparent obsession is predicated on my needing so desperately to resolve things with my father and thus finding someone with similar imperfections to work out my differences with/it also has alot to do with becoming accustomed to someone and the reality then of being alone: what do you do with your time?/ it also has alot to with my dependency issues/ so there are three very powerful emotions keeping me glued to something that is tearing me to pieces inside/ finally jealousy and my own insecurities: jealousy and pain like nothing i've experienced thinking of her with something else and my own insecurities making me think i couldn't do any better/ oh and super-finally the fact i still feel i'm owed/ i dont' want to talke the risk, because the sex is so good, that she 'finds herself' at a later stage in her life whilst with someone else/ that would be supremely unfair/ so these are my many and dysfunctional reasons for staying with her, and the reasons i've stuck around even when it causes me immense pain/ oh and another thing: when, e.g. i've had a serious panic attack and she's just st there impassive (or worse told me i'm faking it because only she experiences real panic attacks (i kid you not)), i want her to look after me and soothe me the way i did her (countless times and in times of far greater emotional distress than a panic attack)/the irony is, for all this vitriol when she returns i'll be attentive and loving (see Lady Jane in LJ and John Thomas)/ so human beings are naturally self-protective and fly from anything which causes them pain/ i also used to do this with my father, but then there were not all these 'things' at work/ it is a veritable cauldron of emotions/jesus what the fuck does this achieve?/ of course it's cathartic, but i really need to move forward/ one can't change the past/ one can't expect more than apology form those who've wronged you/ i wish to fuck with every fibre of my being i'd had the strength to have a month or so of great sex and then leave/ i've never had more awful and horrible experience than when i'm with her/ before i met her i was depressed but i'd never been suicidal (never attempted it)/ and before i met her i didn't know it was possible for anyone to be so cruel and heartless/ i've seen her be heartless and cold in a way that would shock anyone/ and no one but me has had these experiences or knows because when she gets to know people its only on a very superficial level/ she's moved from job to job all her life, getting to know people there and just showing the good qualities of herself/ so no one who knows her would believe me if i told them/ the only person who kind of gets it is my brother but he cannot grasp the full horror of the situation, the cavernous agony and pain i feel/ of course this is not all her fault and were i not a depressive and had i good self-esteem etc etc i would not be in this position/ but i am a depressive and i have appalling self-esteem and this is the position i'm in/ and i don't know what to do/ i've never known what to do/ my emotions are so utterly extreme that i couldn't keep my distance when we broke up and so fucked everything up there/ i just feel so trapped/ and if i go where do i go?/ what do i do?/ i'm not like her/ i haven't had the same training in heartlessness (a benefit in life, believe me - i don't see how having a heart, a precondition of being so horribly hurt, is a benefit - well, of course, for all the wonderful experiences, but i'm not sure if its worth it)/ i shall certainly not attempt suicide again/ no way/ but something must be done/ first and foremost i must get back on antidepressants/ the counseling/

day 3: feeling ok/ woke feeling a tad sluggish but otherwise ok/ intake yesterday: same as day before/ when taking medication, regularity is the key/ joining gym today to get back to rowing, etc./ can't wait/ life and one's self throw enough shit at one so one needs not the further complications of cheap alcohol/ heroin is another matter/ i don't intend to quit it as it has nothing but a salutary effect on me/ i do intend however to keep use to a minimum and have sworn myself off crack/ but then, never say never...

feeling good/ sagged a little when out but imbibed a large latte, extra shot and a litre mineral water/ shall drink another 4 litres or so today and intend to retire to bed for mammoth sex session in a while/ am determined to do whatever it takes to beat this low self-esteem/ whilst i did pretty well sexually during mine and the albatrosses year off i could have done so much better/ some of the most divine women would approach me but my manner would blow it for me/ i'm bitter and remorseful, therefore/ this time last year, at the rise festival, i could've seriously got it on with three hot girls: a blonde swede, a black girl and an aussie who was fittest of all/ and what did i do?/ showed no interest and blew it with all of them/ i'm such a fool/ i have my moments and when i'm in the zone i'm very successful/ but there were so many fit girls last summer i could've taken advantage of and blew it because of my utter lack of self-esteem and vilely poor self-image/ well...

so yeah its bizarre/ all of a sudden my body seems to be craving nothing but healthy food/ i had the b'fast mentioned below and, whilst pleasant, it could have been much better/ i will thus switch to purely healthy food: museli and fruit of brown bread and boiled eggs for breakfast then something fucking healthy for supper/ and of course about six litres of water a day/ i've been sweating profusely for months now and since this new water regime my sweating has decreased enormously/ happy days/

day 2: feel amazing/ rounded off eve with baked mackerel and gnocchi with baked courgettes and rocket salad and peppers/ then completed the ensemble with a cup of nettle tea/ slept phenomenally well and woke at 0830, rising instantly and experiencing a flood of incredible energy/ wonderful/ drank one cup kenyan and four glasses of water then did yoga and light freeweights for twenty minutes (building up, see - last time i was into weights i over did it and made myself sick)/ then two more glasses water/ soon b'fast of ham and poached egg and fruit and then...what to do with the day?/ well, write and read i suppose, and maybe more exercise/ i just feel amazing/however, remember heraclitus and blake young man (me that is)/