Quiet up there, people, I’m trying to work.

Yep, another one of the darned days where I feel like I’m a grouchy neighbour who keeps banging threateningly on his roof with a broom shouting “Heavens to Betsy, would y’all KEEP IT DOWN!” while my fabulous co-tenants party/have sex/fight above me. Except that the noisy co-tenants are my anything-but-fabulous thoughts and the grouchy neighbour is the rest of me and I don’t have the benefit of a dividing roof, or indeed a broom, and we’re all stuck in the one terrifying space together, otherwise known as my body.

That metaphor was so strained I think I might have pulled something.

So while the metaphor-composing part of my brain is off on the sidelines having a rub-down, the rest of me will continue with this increasingly nonsensical post. Those of you who have seen Post Numero Uno (I’m assuming fairly confidently that this blog has an audience of one, and that person is currently inexplicably imagining themselves to be a grouchy old American man with a broom circa 1958, so this is probably unnecessary, but I’ll humour myself) will know that on of the raisons d’etre for this blog is to try and shut up my noisy, overcrowded head. So here we go.

I do not understand it in the slightest, but I cannot stop fantasising about shooting myself in the head. It is ridiculous. I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to shoot myself in the head, or anywhere for that matter, yet there is this image on loop in my imagination of me holding ‘a gun’, and I know next to nothing about guns so I can’t even tell you what type, other than the fact that it is not an AK47 or a bazooka or any of the ones that appeared in Worms in the 90s, to the side of my head and pulling the trigger. I don’t even give myself the benefit of seeing the aftermath, probably due to the fact that I know nothing about guns and hence have no idea what happens when one shoots oneself with not-an-AK47.

I should make it quite clear that I am by no means suicidal, in which case this might make an iota of sense. I’ve deduced over time that I am a little bit bonkers, as evidenced by the fact that I can’t be in a room with an open door, can’t do The Age crossword any more because they moved it, won’t step on cracks, can’t go into interview rooms at work where the chairs aren’t the same colour as the walls and have an irrational hatred of the month of May, but there’s a big difference between neurosis made endearing (or vomit-inducing, either way) by Jack Nicholson in As Good As it Gets and full-blown maniacal death fantasies. It also might make sense if I was constantly imagining shooting myself in the foot, as that would directly reflect many of my life choices to date and wrap the whole thing up very neatly, but as we have seen, the metaphor-constructing side of my brain is currently taking stress leave due to OH&S issues in the workplace- my brain - so is out of action.

If only this were a novel (for so many reasons, but to keep this relevant, just for the following) this fantasy would tie in quite logically with a denouement where I was either a) shot in the head by my doppelganger or b) a classics enthusiast who takes their obsession too far by re-enacting the practices of the Dionysian Mysteries of Ancient Greece and inadvertently killing a farmer, managing to hide the evidence for a while by killing a friend who is threatening to blackmail me, but ending up kissing my girlfriend between the eyes and, you guessed it, shooting myself in the head. In the latter case, I would be Henry from The Secret History and undoubtedly have many more problems than I do now so for that, at least, I can be thankful. Though it is worth noting here that for years after reading that book, I wouldn’t let my then-boyfriend kiss me between the eyes in case he shot himself in the head.

I don’t really have anything else to say about it, I just wish it would stop happening, it’s distracting. I can’t concentrate on anything.

To be honest, I’m not even that interested in why I’m thinking about it. If this blog were genuinely a search for truth, I wouldn’t spend all my time trying to sound arch and witty on the off-chance someone comes across it some day (see first post). I’m a great believer in Getting On With Things. The moment I start talking about being sick or having an illness is the moment I start using it as an excuse. And once I have an excuse, I don’t do the things I need to do, or more importantly, I want to do. And that really would make me depressed, if I realised that I didn’t use my mind the way I wanted to because of something ridiculous like obsessing about shooting myself.

This is why I prefer to think of myself as crazy, bonkers, a bit of a loony, anything other than ‘depressed’, which is so serious and debilitating. It’s not right for me to eschew therapy and drugs and such things on the basis that they are signs of weakness. They’re not and people need them, I’m pretty sure on some level I need them too, but not as much as I don’t need them.That, I’m aware, makes no sense, but I get pretty much all of my strength from Getting On With Things In Spite of (insert obstacle here). If I didn’t, I’m pretty sure I’d be even more of a mess. So hopefully, having written this down and thrown it into the depths of the World Wide Web, I will be able to get on with things that need to be gotten on with and retain my own special brand of sanity.