22:23 
Oh hell. Got totally distracted by a sudden urge to tidy the conservatory and now I've lost my place. I'm pretty sure I was rambling anyway.
I've been spending a lot of time today thinking about how to get out of this hole. The Weapon has flipped, got totally freaked by an inability to parse the mechanism and structure of a makeshift supersaturated saline gel we were using for ease of connection over Monday and Tuesday. It has been annoying the hell out of me. Can you tell? It's like having a mad dog stuck in your head. Not a dangerously mad dog, not really, just annoyingly mad. I'm stuck inside this box with it, still, and instead of being soft and smug and dangerously seductive it's running around pulling its hair out and looking flustered. I keep thinking I should be enjoying its distress but I'm not. I don't like it at all.
When I was Core, I knew exactly what I was, exactly what my purpose was, exactly where I stood in the world, my role, my position, my nature, my being. The world was easy, like a bar code. There were absolutes and not much else, and time was reduced to no more than a 3 week window. Anything outside of that was unreal, too abstract to contemplate. Some days I could see no further than the next morning. I lived in the moment and it worked for me.
Then Key gave up and Core died and I was left hanging on. And I got sick. Very sick. I expected to get ill, I didn't expect it to be like this. I think I lost something somewhere. I think the whole thing about carrying on as a useful item is rather tricky, they haven't got it quite right. I either lost something, or Core didn't die properly. Core didn't leave me the way it was supposed to. The Weapon evolved from what was Core, is the manifestation of the part of me that was Core, but it's not supposed to be Core, any more than I am. I will always be a core, but that should be merely a pattern description, not a purpose, not a role, not a mode of thinking.
I think I either something in the transition, lost some part of myself, either when I became Core, but then it didn't matter because Core replaced it, or when Core died. Or perhaps something didn't die properly when Core did. Maybe I am haunted.
And Family doesn't talk to me any more, although they talk to the Weapon. Having said that, I'm sure I remember dreaming a few nights ago and speaking to Father. I was standing at the bottom of a hill and he was perched on a fence post, talking to me. I wish I could remember what he said.
I'm still in this box but the quality of it has changed. I can sense a brittleness to it that depends on some sort of trigger. If I can find the trigger it would almost be like striking the box from the one direction in which it is vulnerable and it would shatter around me. I can feel it, tight the way my shoulders are tight. It almost feels like my body is cramping because I am confined in a box, a coccoon of some kind and I need to stretch, break it, fragment the walls and expand into whatever it is I am supposed to be, like a dragonfly emerging from the larval shell.
I don't know what that trigger is.
I contemplate striking out alone into a wild place, going walkabout until I find this trigger, or something comes to me that will tell me what it is. Or maybe the walkabout is the trigger itself, forcing myself to be independant in what would be a fairly risky situation for me, ill as I am. The prospect frightens me. It shouldn't - plenty of people go hiking alone. But empaths don't do very well in isolation, and isolation has been at the heart of my problems recently.
What could the trigger be? I feel as if Family are waiting for me to get out of this box, that they won't reassert their relationship with me until I prove myself by becoming this thing, whatever it is, that I am supposed to become. I am more than what I find myself being at the moment, trapped in one form, in this cage. There is a shape, around me, that I am supposed to fill, a space that is waiting for me to occupy it, if I could only discover what it is I need to do to break this confinement and unfurl.
Unfurl, breathe. Shift, transform.
Hugin and Munin watch me with bright, attentive eyes and preen occasionally.
It's a sensation of potential, but it's more than that, because this is a potential that is already there, in existence. The dragonfly inside the spent larval casing already has its new shape, it merely needs to break free to occupy that space. That is what this feels like.
In other news we have been experimenting with using salt water and saline gel (ok, a mix of ky and sea salt so far) to improve the connection. it makes a huge difference. It could take us anything up to 2 hours to hit a decent connection before, if we managed it at all. This is immediate, direct, increases the size of the target area, although it still works best when it is dead on the spot. The Weapon hates it.
Actually, I have to say that I don't like the fact that the slipperiness means that the physical connection isn't so stable, and it does leave a nasty gunky mess. We've ordered in some proprietary saline gel and will be experimenting with that, as well as, hopefully, some gelled sea water to see if it is pure conductivity or whether the sea has some influence. So far the gelatine mixes haven't turned out very well, but we were using a lot of salt. However, the fact that it cushions the connection structures so that they don't become inflamed, and improves the resolution of the connection so greatly just about outweighs the more unpleasant attributes.
Mind you, it does feel absurd.
13:54
A lot is a minor understatement.
A lot has still to be done.
But, fuck it, I'm not going to let this thing beat me. Not today. I might hurt so much that I can't see properly, I might have a swelling in the side of my face that you can almost see, its so big. But not today.
I mean, let's look at this. I have a number of "issues" to deal with, which combine to produce this mountain of stress that is just too much for me at times.
For one, I'm ill. I'm ill with something that produces extreme physical pain and emotional stress. It has some very disturbing and distressing symptoms. For someone who is used to having an excellent memory and a sharply honed mind, the sort of mental difficulties produced by this illness are extremely upsetting. It is also extremely upsetting to have to deal with medical people who are not always sympathetic, and with my expectations of these medical personnel which lead me to either avoid them like the plague or be terribly disappointed and frustrated. Of course, given that my life isn't exactly your standard set of experiences, I'm also very worried, always, about how the medical establishment would view my mental state.
For two, I have a PhD to complete. I have to complete this PhD in order to get my life back on track, for Frood and I to be able to settle down, for me to be able to get the sort of job I want (although I doubt I'll get my fantasy job - a mercenary for an environmental consultancy), for all sorts of reasons. Not least of which is that I want a PhD, always have. The PhD is a very daunting thing for me right now, because I'm faced with completing it in 6 months when there really hasn't been enough work done on it for all sorts of reasons. Also, I get very nervous and panicky when I think about returning to Silsoe, because a lot of bad things happened to me there and the whole thing has become a great big mess in my head.
For three, there's the whole business with the Weapon, and that really needs to be sorted out. And Family. I want to know what it is I'm supposed to be doing or have done for them to have abandoned me like this. I want to know why they'll sit there and direct the Weapon in a direct, hands on fashion when it's verbally fencing with Andy, but they won't talk to me any more. I want to know why my cousin gets people and things and deities and all sorts to help her through and I don't get as much as a soggy chocolate biscuit. I want to know what it is they want from me, I want to know what it is I have to do to get that resonance back.
If I can't have that, I want to know for sure whether they've done with me or not.
On top of all of this we have the ongoing problems of isolation and frustration caused by not having anyone nearby to talk to about the things that really matter to me, and by Frood working such long hours, and by the difficulty and expense of buying property in Oxford which has led to us being in rented accomodation for so long. I really want us to get a place of our own that I can make into a safe space where I can relax. I do have certain requirements for any such space, however, and they will be very hard to meet in our current situation.
So how do I deal with all of this without it grinding me under? When the pain gets bad, and it's quite bad today but not as bad as it has been, it is very difficult to see past that, to see any way to cope with anything, and when it gets very bad it's impossible to be aware of anything but the pain for hours at a time. Then you're left with knowing that there is no way to make it stop except that one way, and the fight becomes a battle for survival, a battle to stay alive. Not because the pain itself will kill you, but because if that is the only way to stop the pain, it starts seeming like a sensible option, and your mind will start justifying it in all sorts of ways.
Let me explain something. I don't particularly want to die. I'm not scared of death, no. It doesn't worry me. I've done the traditional death and rebirth thing several times over, and I've been close enough to have lost any fear about the actual dead bit. I worry about suffering, I worry about losing control over my body - I can't think of anything worse happening than being trapped in an unresponsive body, unable to communicate, in constant pain. That's the worst thing I can think of, and it's a possibiliity if you get your attempted suicide badly wrong, and it also seems a possibility when the pain and the muscle weakness gets bad. I don't want to end up blind, prematurely senile, trapped in a wheelchair or worse. Death is a preferable option to that, for me.
When I get suicidal, it's a quest for release, for an end to pain and emotional torment that has really got too much for me. It's not so much that my life is not worth living - although it is, in a way. It's more of a question of the quality of life. That much incessant pain means that life becomes more of a burden, a torture, than a gift. I don't feel like I'm completely worthless, like the world would be better off without me. I have never felt that the world would be better off without me.
I have felt worthless in the sense that I am used to having certain capabilities and the illness is intermittently destroying those capabilities, and feelings of worthlessness arise from that, as well as from the entire issue of being ignored by Family. It's not the same thing.
I sometimes think that doctors and the like would have me pegged as a typical manic depressive. At least the doctor I saw today agreed with me that depression can most certainly be attributable to long-term illness and chronic pain.
Hang on. Need to make tea, take some painkillers.
Wednesday, August 23, 2000
[1] My fantasy job is mercenary scum for an environmental consultancy. This would involve wearing tight black trousers and abseiling from a black helicopter into exotic, foreign, nasty polluting power plants or chemical plants or mining concerns, waving a large gun around and yelling "Shut it down!" I would have a trained aye-aye (see right) who could pick locks with that amazing finger, but who was also an expert in electronics and cryptography. I would also have a world of knowledge about process technology and environmental law (and I'm nearly there on that already). Big fat businessmen who don't care about the world in which we live would turn pale and quiver at the sound of my name. Sort of James Bond meets Friends of the Earth or something.