Spirit Level

The melancholia continues...

I have noticed, I have been clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth. I wake up in the morning with a stiff jaw; brushing my teeth has been agony! Standing at work, waiting to interact with someone, anyone, and I'm biting down on my teeth, clenching my jaw. I don't feel stressed out, but clearly I'm anxious about something. Saying that, recognising my now melancholia is probably the tip of the iceberg. I know something is wrong. I just need to figure it out.

Weird dreams featuring my work colleagues litter my nights' slumber. One particular dream that stands out, was one I had about lifting a car and placing it on top of a garage. A fellow technician and I, decided to play a prank on my downstairs neighbour. They have made complaints before in the past about loud music coming from my flat. Now, I work forty hours a week which means, I'm only really at home two days out of seven. When I come home, all I want to do is watch cartoons and play video games. On my days off, the same. Bar when Jeremiah or Jimmy wants to go walkies, I'll be out in central London. Ollie, decided to come over to my flat to chill; I recounted the experiences I had with my downstairs neighbours. Ollie said: "Az, we should go downstairs and put their car on top of one of the garages". Without hesitation, there we were, downstairs physically lifting up a Golf Plus, with no machinery, just our bare hands on top of a garage. We got back into my flat giggling like school children. Consciously, I have a professional relationship with Ollie, but in my dream, we are best buddies. The strength we both portrayed in the dream clearly has some significance, but I'm unsure in what context.

My sleep is broken, quite heavily. I wake up about every hour to two hours. My heart fells like it's going to stop at any moment and I often wake up in a real panic. Gasping for breath, sweating, soaking the sheets. I have had to change my sheets now every three days. My body feels oddly still. I can't feel my heart beating, the blood in my body feels still, but I am conscious. It's the limbo between death and being alive. I feel when I sleep, I will not wake up. I fall asleep purely out of exhaustion now. But I often awake incredibly anxious. When I'm awake, I'm in bed, eyes wide open, oddly thanking God for another day. This is confusing on a number of levels. Significantly, I don't believe in God, at all. Here I am, thanking God and Jesus I get to see another day. I more likely believe our universe is in jar, created as a science project, on a wall of some alien being, whilst they figure out how their universe came to be. You could argue that is a God. However, my faith has never resided in religion despite being brought up christian. I always had faith in people, especially those around me, because I love them so much. Yet, every morning I thank God I am awake and thanks for another day. My mum recently had an operation, she said she witnessed my passed great grandmother, great aunt and my great great grandmother, telling her she couldn't stay with them, she needs to go back and be with me and my brother. Apparently, we have significant life events to face. My dad is getting better but only recently recovering from cancer. I pray, yes pray, one of the life events isn't having to deal with losing him to this evil illness. For me, there are logical explanations for mum's passage to talking with the dead. One being, general aesthetic can produce hallucinations especially when its wearing off. But that stuck with me, I have been ruminating on this ever since my mum said it.

Here I am thanking this newfound God I have temporally found, when not so long ago, death is all I wanted. It's all I could think about, perseverated on without actually attempting anything; I guess it was the ideation I was so focused on. Retrospectively, those thoughts are incredibly dark, coupled with my waking gratitude for another day is confusing. But I am grateful. But I am also feeling nonplussed. There are two see-saws. A small one placed in the middle of a bigger one. The bigger one is flat, my spirit level tells me so. The smaller one, which is the one my melancholia seems to be riding at the moment, is going up and down. I have also found myself being grateful now for the things I have. I am no longer concerned with what other's have, I just want to keep doing better for myself, in whatever way I can.

Maybe I have questioned my faith in people, hence this transfer to another medium. It's also possible, that this could all be a massive overthink. There is one thing I have realised though, I am not ready to die. I don't want to go yet. There are things I want to see and people I need to let know I love them.