This post was written in one go without stopping and is therefore rubbish so please don't read it.

What the hell is wrong with me. That is a statement, not a question. I write it as a question by putting the word 'what' at the beginning of the sentence, and yet refuse to round it off nicely with a question mark. It isn't even a rhetorical question. It's a statement that is implying that there is something wrong with me, but also allowing room for there to be nothing wrong with me.

"But" you may insist "that is bollocks! Léonie you are a massive idiot."
A ha. Yes. Maybe THAT is what is wrong with me. I am a massive idiot. That would certainly explain a thing or two.

You may have noticed that this post is meandering gently along on a little path just over on the wrong side of sense.

This is because what I really want to do is to write about myself in that self-indulgent manner that I have. I want to ask questions and expell my demons into this old PC sitting in front of me. I want to tell it that I'm feeling bad, that I'm feeling lonely and hurt and upset. I want to expound on my pain. I want to tell people how much I need warmth, affection and comfort but how scared I am that, if I ask for it I might get it and then I'd feel guilty and humiliated and sick. I am scared because I can see the contradictions in my instincts but I can't help them. I am confusing strength with coldness, confusing self-assertion with hard control.

FUCK.

Is how I'm feeling. I want to tell everyone to fuck off and leave me alone, but I want them to know that what I really mean is please, please. Help me.

I think I'm feeling this today because I have have seen the results of my pride and refusal to deal with my pain and I have seen the ease with which some other people admit they are hurting and accept it. They aren't ashamed of it, they cope and deal and then it can run its course and go away. I want this. I want to know this: why does it make me guilty and angry and riddled with the bullet holes of my own inner battles?

In the past when I have felt depressed and angry and hurt I have cut my own arms with a razor. When I went to the doctors the first time I stumbled in there as a result of a promise made to my boyfriend at the time. I didn't care about it myself but I DID care about how much it upset him so I went. I sat sullenly in the office of the local GP and stared out of the window, at the crayon drawings on the walls, at my knees. Anywhere but the face of the man sitting opposite me. He asked what the matter was, the standard question. I think perhaps I'm depressed, I replied, a question mark in my voice. I sometimes cut myself on my arms. I turned over my left arm and showed him the lines, these fine red slices which were, on closer inspection, ragged and raw. Oh, he said. I see. Well. Why are you doing that?
I thought about it.
I don't know, I replied. I suppose, well. Why not?
Are you unhappy?
I don't know. I suppose, no? I don't know.
Hmm, came the response. He paused, staring at my face.
Timewaster, I could feel him thinking. Stupid, melodramatic idiot.
God, I was thinking. I hate this. I hate the doctor's. I'm only here because of Dan. I'll go soon.

Finally he said something. Triumphant.
It's summer soon. He pronounced the words slowly as I tried to work out where he was going with this. You won't like it.
I looked at him. Just, looked.
I know what you girls are like, he continued. Oh, ok, I thought. I know where he's going.
Pretty girl like you, you'll be wanting to wear short sleeved tops and the like, because of summer, and then you won't like that. He gestured at my torn arm with a vague sweep of his large, doctorly hand.
I smiled. I won't care, I said. I don't care.
You will, he intoned, gravely. You will.
No. I won't. I don't. And I won't. I stared at him. Amused and let down all at once. And kind of relieved.

I am a self-destructive person. I hated the person that told me repeatedly that they didn't like my unhappy side, that I should just put it all aside. I think, though, what I really hate was the implication that it was possible to change, because if it is then I should but I feel like I can't. I cling fiercely to my own capacity for furious pride and self-loathing, as if it makes me different and strong. I know that's a contradiction. I am capable of such fury, anger and passion, but it is mainly directed inwards and I am fucking bored of it but I can't help it.

I don't know what is wrong with me. I see a stark contrast every day between myself and the people that see things how I want to see them. Those who don't put more pressure on themselves than they would put on other people. I am my own pushy mother, playing down things I achieve as soon as I achieve them, setting each goal a bit further away as I draw nearer to the last one. Even my sense of humour seems bitter and cold now, and that is all I have.

When I lived in Paris when I was 18 I was so miserable. I had no friends apart from this strange flatmate who was nocturnal, who occasionally took me to the theatre to see Kafka plays in french. He sometimes organised my drawers when I wasn't there, which was a little disconcerting. I had a boyfriend back at home who I missed furiously but who was ill and making my life hell. Some of the things he said to me and about me during that time still ring in my ears. The things he made me feel are still in me, filed away and ready to be plucked out for inspection at any given moment of self-torment. I should have gone home. I should have walked away, when the pain in my stomach became screaming agony, when I had endured weeks on end with no contact with anybody apart from a far away, abusive voice, accusing me of things I'd never heard of with people I'd never met, and telling me it wished I'd just die.
Just fucking die.
I wish now that I had gone home, accepted that I wasn't happy and that I could make the decision to escape. I wish I hadn't tortured myself the idea that escape was running away, and that running away was giving up, and giving up was weak. I felt weak anyway, for not making the most of it. I felt disgusted at myself.

I should have just cut my losses.

There are many things I feel I could've done differently had I cut my losses. Cut myself some slack. But I never do either of those things. What I do, instead, is wait until the pain of pressure gets too great and then just cut myself. Perhaps to compensate for all the losses and slack I should have been cutting before. I cut my arms and it releases something, it validates something else and there is a moment when I feel like I'm alright. Just, alright. Not failing, not striving, not justifying desperately to myself or anyone else what I'm doing with my life and why I'm doing it, but just being.

Again, a contradiction. Endearing, isn't it?

I really feel like I need someone to help me. I can't do this on my own. I can't but I have to. I want help but when someone sits and watches me cry and tries to help me I want to push them and tell them to stop. I don't want help. I don't want to be told it's all going to be alright, I don't want someone to tell me they love me and that I'm not a fucking stupid fucking idiot bitch because I find it too humiliating that they see me so vulnerable. This, I am beginning to suspect, may not add up.

I dread the nights I wake up every hour on the hour shaking and soaked, and panicked because there is nothing to panic about and yet, and YET I am panicking. I see people I love and want them to hold me, to hug me, and yet I don't know why and can't ask. I don't want them to touch me. I am relieved when I can be on my own again because then maybe people will stop expecting things from me. Maybe I can stop expecting to be able to figure everything out myself.

Oh I don't fucking know.

Please disregard. The funny will be rejoining us shortly, it just popped out for a breather.