Alive.

Today has been exceedingly strange, full of happiness and low points which have settled into a comfortable calm waiting to sweep me into the embrace of sleep just as soon as i close my eyes.

It's funny to think that an insomniac feels like sleep might actually come so early; every night thus far in my new home has been forcing myself to sleep; lying there clutching the covers, the pain in my shoulders building furious frustration in my chest as I struggle to get comfortable (the only way to do this is to lie my arm flat on the bed, stretched to the side, a pillow resting on my shoulder and then another one in a T-shape down my side. As you can imagine, this makes turning over a laborious task indeed...)

I always sleep on my side; always. They say that lying on your left side promotes your ability to breathe, something I followed strictly when I was pregnant - but it doesn't. I always seem to breathe better on my right side, something that, as an asthmatic, I cherish. The problem with that is embedded in the fact that I have always lain on my left side. Why? Why is my left side more favourable, you ask? Simple. I'm 60% deaf in my right ear.

This means that when I do sleep, I sleep more soundly than the dead, for i'm alive, i'm breathing but I can't hear you. The noises which plague the average individual don't reach my slumbering mind and it feels so. good. The problem is that when I lie on my right side, I am now acutely aware of these noises, so I turn, then I can't breathe, so I turn, noises, breathing, noises, breathing.

Is it any wonder i'm an insomniac, or why i'm losing my mind? I really am losing my mind. That's why i've been dragged off into a parallell examination of my nightly habits instead of telling you about the daytime I intended to.

Today was my 'day off'. The one day a week I don't have to watch Damien 24/7. My dad came to pick him up around 12pm and I went back to bed. In the end I didn't fall asleep til nearly 1.30pm and I got up around 3. Relatively uneventful until you add in the problem of why I was unable to sleep...

It wasn't the usual, though that didn't help. It was the sudden, crushing feeling that I was alone. Totally, utterly alone and no one was coming for another 5 hours at least. My problem with breathing and noise was suddenly worse - breathing became irrelevant as, when my hearing was unobscured, I could hear every creak, every bang, imagining sounds from outside were in my house and, when it was covered, i imagined that I was missing the sounds of some intruder creeping up my stairs to strangle me in my bed. I got up to check the locks four times before I exhausted myself with my worrying so much that I passed out.

When I woke up, I went to the shop. I felt hazy and drugged, like the world around me was nothing more than one large cinema screen and I was walking down a corridor of illusions. I did my shopping, I handed over the cash, totally numb and faking every response I was forced to give. I met no one's eyes - I still can't bring myself to do this, I don't deserve to do this. Then I walked home, two heavy bags in hand. On the way back, I spotted the worst possible thing - chavs. I'm not being discriminative here, I have genuine reasons for fearing them, as I have been repeatedly victimised simply because of the way I dress to the extent of being pushed in front of a car. The point is, I saw them, they saw me and I got scared. I ducked my head even farther down, talking to myself inside my head, begging for them to just let me pass, praying that they wouldn't kill me. Dramatic? yes. I know that now, but at the time I had images raging through my head of them jumping me and beating me to death, tomorrows paper sporting a short tribute to a young single mother tragically killed, three suspects in custody. I cursed myself for wearing my black jeans because they looked too goth, wanted to scrape the makeup i had put on off because it drew too much attention...

Needless to say, you know how the story ends as i'm here. By the time I got home, my heart was racing and my chest was tight; I had to take my inhaler just to get rid of the feeling. All the while I kept thinking; "take your pills, Kirstie. Just take them.", and somewhere else, deeper in my head said no, don't take them. You're not real on them, you can't write music on them and taking your pills is just like living a lie. I'm sick of living a lie, but is a lie better than a nightmare? It's ironic, so ironic that an insomniac should have a living nightmare, don't you think? I love irony. Even when it's gnawing into my life like a rabid squirrel and threatening to disease everything, I love it. The fact that nothing is sacred, there's nothing that can't be touched or tainted by its equal and opposite amuses me to no end. Yin and yang, yang and yin.

Thankfully, life did pick up today; i discovered that two of my favourite bands are playing in the UK between now and March - I got tickets to one of them and intend to get tickets to the other as soon as possible. This means that in the space of the next two months (from the 23rd Jan>23rd March) I will be going to 5 gigs. It's something to look forward to, and I live for those little things.

I also remembered why I love my friends. There's one person in particular who has been very special to me for a while now; they know who they are - I mean, all of my friends are very important to me, but only a few of them share a connection to me which words can never break. I'm not a very trusting person by nature. This one person knows all there is to know about me and more and they haven't run. Words can't express my love for this person, they never will. It's magick in it's purest form, it's freedom and it's empathy.

No matter how much I panic for silly reasons, I. Am. Alive.

And it means more to me than my whispering suicidal thoughts can ever tempt me with.

Finally.