My head is spinning today.  So many thoughts…  how can my mind move so fast, while I stay so inert?  If I could harness the energy of my imagination, I’d have "the strength of ten Grinches, plus two" (sorry – classical reference). 

Charlie is napping behind me, and I’m just sitting around.  I poured myself a cup of coffee.  And, now, I’m going to have some coffee, eat a bit of pastry, smoke a little, and then I’m going to try to get my ass moving.  I need to take a shower, and clean up my apartment (it needs a lot of help).  And, I really want to work on my play today.  I am grateful for the comment that made me realize that I’ve been neglecting my play.  I haven’t been feeding my soul, or doing the one thing that reliably makes me feel productive and good about myself.  Working on the play, and the apartment, will help my state of mind, once I’ve accomplished something.  I’m gonna get on Charlie today, about the insurance.  I need to see a shrink, and he needs to help me make that happen (given that I can’t do it without his help – he has to be the one to untangle things with his insurance).  I am trying to keep myself in check, but I can’t out-think my bipolar disorder.  I need meds to tame some of these impulses.  Particularly the hypersexuality…  being really impulsive, and hypersexual…  it’s so hard.  Charlie’s in no place to ease my frustration, and I can’t do it myself (the manual stuff just doesn’t do it for me), so, I’m left FEELING IT.  Hopefully, the meds will help.

I went nuts on a friend yesterday.  He hasn’t been my friend, that long, in the scheme of things.  Less than a year…  and, he stabbed me in the back, really badly, not too long ago.  I wrote about here, but just to quickly recap, I told him intimate info about my problems with Charlie, and he gossiped to the worst possible people about it.  I forgave him, because I’m pretty forgiving, and because I know he has problems.  But, lately he’s been making me crazy.  Yesterday, we had plans.  He was gonna come by, and eat.  He calls, asks if he can come right away.  I say I’m taking a nap, and can I see him in a half hour.  He asks if he can come now, instead.  I say fine.  The punk doesn’t show up for like four hours, and then he can’t believe I didn’t save him any food.  I tell him, I fed it to other people who stopped by, because I had no idea if he was coming or not.  He said he thought I’d call if there was an issue.  I say there was no issue – I just didn’t think he was coming.  But, he acts like he had no idea he was being rude – NO IDEA AT ALL.  What crap…  he sits there and spins stupid excuse after stupid excuse, like he does, making himself sound dumber and dumber, until I can’t take it anymore, and I snap.  I told him to shut the f$#% up, repeatedly.  I never talk that way to friends, but he was being SO STUPID.  Making stupid excuse after stupid excuse…  and, they all sound so lame that my friend Jordan was laughing.  So my friend Steve finally does apologize, and he shuts up for a few minutes, but then he starts gossiping about people we know.  And, the stories he tells make him sound every bit as bad as the people who are the subject of the stories, b/c he sees these terrible things going down, and does nothing.  I tell him so, and he doesn’t see it that way – he starts making more ridiculous excuses for himself.  Claiming he’s really not that tight with these guys, and he did throw one of them out of his place yesterday  (he threw a guy out of his mom’s garage b/c dude was smoking pot, and stinking up the place – and, he tried to act like that meant something bigger).  One of the stories involved some serious cruelty to an animal, and Steve not only failed to intercede (the creature may have been past help, but he could have gotten it to a vet, or animal control, so, it’s suffering could have been ended), but still chills with this guy.  He downplayed his friendships with these scumbags.  Today, on my way to outpatient, I saw him standing around talking to the guy who hurt the animal, and another scumbag.  On my way back, he was still standing there, chatting away with these f@#$%s.  Whatever…  sometimes, I let my guard down, and start calling someone a "friend" a little too soon.  Sometimes, it’s warranted.  Sometimes, you meet an amazing person, and you just click, and you know you’re gonna have a deep, honest, and real connection with this person.  That’s happened to me a hand full of times in my life.  One was my friend Ben, who now lives in Iowa. And, I’ve recently begun to feel that way about someone I’ve talked to through d-tribe chat.  Steve is someone who I always knew was a little screwy, but I chose to look past it, because we’re all a little messed up.  But, after a while, I started to realize that he bullshits, a lot.  Just, out and out lies…  seemingly, just to get attention…  and, I can’t listen to it, anymore.  I’ve tried to reason with him – like last night, before I started saying, "shut the fuck up, already," I was trying to get him to see how absurd he was making himself seem.  Trying to get him to declare ownership of his mistakes, and just own up to them…  he said he was sorry, but I’m really thinking at this point that the guy is just toxic.  I never know when he’s bullshitting, anymore.  And, he’s been less than encouraging about my effortts to kick – telling me a couple times that, maybe, I should just try to moderate my bad habits (I couldn’t and neither can he – we met through inpatient).  Maybe, if we’d been friends a long time, and he was just now wigging out, I could deal, and try to work through it with him, but he should still be in his probationary period as far as my trust goes.  I just made the mistake of letting him in too soon.  But…  once I do let someone in, I have a hard time pushing them out.  But, as I don’t see how I could really help him, (I feel I’ve done as much of that as I know how to do) I don’t know what else I can do.  I’ve got my own problems.  I need supportive friends.  I do like being there for people – sometimes the only thing that gets me out of my pain is tryig to take care of someone else.  But, I can’t handle having an untrustworhy, emotional leech as a friend.  I guess, I have to cut him loose.  But, I haven’t had to swear off a friend in years.  I really don’t know how to go about it.  Or, if I can go through with it…  it’s not like he’s directly wronged me, other than the spreading of my business, and  I told him I forgave him for that.  Should I just stop being available?  I don’t know what the best way to handle it is, and I don’t know if I’ll figure it out today.

I don’t feel as hopeless as I did, yesterday, or as bitter.  The last thing I wrote about Quinn was pretty harsh, but I do feel he let me down as a friend, by failing to so much as check up on me, since it all went down.  I never blamed him for what happened.  I can take the heat for that – I was the one who had made promises.  I was the one who betrayed the one I love the most.  I just figured Quinn lost his way, wanted something he shouldn’t have, and reached for it.  And, when, to his surprise, the object of his desire didn’t recoil…  he was too enthralled to let go.  He’d been alone for so long.  It had been two years, since our little debacle, when we touched the first time…  and, I thought I had learned my lesson, and would never go there again.  I thought I understood all of it, but…  I should’ve known it meant something that he’d had no one else in those two years.  I just assumed he was too depressed and emotionally unstable.  I don’t think he was pining after me the whole time, but I think, looking back, that he was leaning on our friendship, at times for companionship (long before the affair).  There really was nothing in between the stuff two years ago, and the two month affair, and I really didn’t expect that there ever would be.  I just got so lonely, and depressed…  I’d been retreating from the pain by getting lost in my fantasies, for a while.  And, then…  I was sad, and manic…  and, I wound up getting lost in a fantasy that was real.  My mind is such a mess.  Maybe, I don’t see it the way it really was, at all.  That wouldn’t surprise me.  When it comes to the people I care about, I have the ability to get really stupid, really fast, in spite of my intelligence.  Maybe, he was using me.  Maybe not…  I don’t know.  I don’t know anything, anymore.  Maybe, it doesn’t matter what anyone’s intentions were, now that the damage is done.     

I feel less deflated, today, but I also feel lost.  Like, I am trying to accomplish something, in a strange place, surrounded by people who don’t speak my language.  Turned around, shaken, and skittish…  I don’t know what I’m doing.  I know I need to take control.  I just need to sort out whatever the hell it is that I’m doing, because…  I’m not seeing anything clearly at the moment.  Why is it that I have clarity when I have no strength or energy, and energy when I have no clarity?  Oh well… 

thanks for reading.

– Kit