Sojourned

That was some long reading. At least I'm not the only one to do something as daft as this. That's possible, but I'd find it difficult to believe in this case. For all the time we spent together last week I haven't really changed from the way I was when we last met, and I know I carry myself off online much the same as real life since all the people I've met from forums etc (over 30, possibly 40 now) have never been surprised by the 'real' me. The only things I've had comment on were my looks, fitness and drinking abilities being better than expected (bear in mind I'm a complete geek and the forums I visit reflect that). Ref. life in general, things have improved somewhat. Had a long talk with Eva's better half about life/AS - which is odd since I haven't been in a position to do so for about 5 years - which helped, but I'm still fairly lost on where to go. I wanted to work things out with the friend, I've been giving her space to think about things, but hearing nothing is bringing me to the realisation things are over - and the worst part is I don't even know why. It's funny, I've known her since she was a nervous 13 year old with no confidence in herself or her abilities and I always said I'd be there through whatever medium necessary, and this is what it comes down to.. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I don't get close to people easily, the only other two I really cared about (or 'loved', albeit in different ways) are dead, in some ways the lack of closure in this situation makes it even harder to deal with. A part of me wants to find peace in the bottle of sleeping pills next to my bed and not worry about waking up again, but that's been diminished over the last few days. Another part of me wants to go back to my old ways of drinking myself into unconciousness, waking up and doing it again before reality sets in. As irony would have it the one I gave all that up for is now driving me back to it. In another way I want to find a bar, meet another girl and make them feel as used as I do, although I know that wouldn't help anything and the thought of me trying is almost laughable - Although three guys now have told me I could get girls here without trying, but they may have been trying to hit on me. Then the optimistic side wants to believe Gary's talk of "Pioneering", proving you can live life with AS just as well as anyone else, eventually meet 'the one', buy a house by the sea and have 2.4 children, but I can't ever imagine that happening. Like Gary said, I shouldn't be worrying about all that for at least a decade but it still bothers me daily and has done for years. Last night I met a strange guy at the motel. He's here on business for a few weeks, took one look at me and said he's never seen anyone looking so stressed - It later transpired he's known more than one person who's jumped off a bridge, although I didn't mention any of my problems like that. After staring at me for a while he pretty much listed every issue I've got in my life without me even hinting any of them. He's offered me a job in Brisbane (just manual labour), I've got a couple of weeks to decide but I can't see anything much to keep me here. Not enough to outweigh the cons, at least. I think it was more than a chance meeting. Anyway, I've been stealing Eva's PC to write all this for the past hour so I'd better be off. I'll try to keep people updated, but as I said, internet access isn't regular.

No, that wouldn't be a good idea, but I didn't. Although our genitals have an astounding amount of differences, we're just friends. Arabs will be buying sand before I start dating again. The girl in question is/was not more than a close friend who I care/d deeply about. Thanks to everyone for their words so far, I've only glanced through as I'm borrowing Eva's PC right now. I'll ingest it all sometime in the near future, but my internet access is spontaneous. I'm not destitute or anything at the moment. I'm booked in the motel for a week (money isn't an issue) and the staff/other guests I've met are extremely sociable so I'm fine there for a while.

Revision: This ended up being 4 times the length I intended, but if you've got the time to read it I'm in fairly dire need of help. Well, as some of you may have gathered from my thread the other week, I've moved from the UK to Melbourne and after 3 days I already can't cope. Now 5 days as this took so long to write. For the past three years I've been trying, hard, to deal with AS and the affect it had on my life. Starting full-time college in 2003 (at 16) was very much a do-or-die situation thanks to some fairly life-changing events earlier in the year. Before I started I had no 'real' friends to speak of and was in a state of mind where I couldn't even get on a bus on my own. If I couldn't get over that and make a go of college I couldn't see any point in continuing life in general. Anyway, to cut 3-year-story short(ish), I got by, met some people I went to school with 5 years before, became friends again and after a while formed a close-knit friendship with the guys in my class and started to manage life. By 17 I'd lost all issues about buses and had started using trains on my own as well (I know it sounds meager, but for me it was significant), at 18 I managed to navigate London twice alone, and I was petrified of cities. Earlier this year I got halfway round the country and back using trains on my own (including London at rush hour), the thought of flying to Australia alone didn't bring on any real anxiety issues and even though it was difficult I was fairly confident I could deal with anything should I put my mind to it. That was longer than intended, but if you're still with me, I'll take you to the present week. Managed Heathrow airport without much difficulty, the flight was fine, met family friends at Hong Kong and other than not sleeping I was able to go around (not alone, but..) the city without any serious issue. Flight to Oz again went fine, feeling nervous but as confident as I could be, although it pretty much went downhill from there. The friend I have (had?) out here was acting indifferently to my arrival and distant from the point we met, which I can't fathom. Even though we only met in real life once 3 years ago, for the past 3.5 years we've been in effectively constant contact online and have been generally open with each other up until 2-3 weeks ago where we've been talking very little. Next day, things get worse. I was going into the city with my friend and her mum to go shopping (this may sound odd, but her mum's fairly young at heart and we've always got on well). Again the friend was acting distant from the point we left which didn't take long to kill my mood, and as soon as we got out the station in the city my anxiety's back like it was 3 years ago. All the people, noise and smells immediately started getting to me and the confusion with me and the friend was making it all worse. By the last shop I was (mentally) in a complete state. I was getting dizzy, couldn't think, could barely breathe and the cheerful NT people all perfectly fine in there just made me want to break down and cry in the middle of the damn store. Is this what I've been working to beat for 3 years comes down to? How the hell can I travel the world like I used to dream of if as soon as I'm somewhere new everything falls apart? The proverbial light/flamethrower at the end of the tunnel is nothing but a dimly lit curve taking me straight back to everything I fought to leave behind. On the way back/in the evening I was shattered with nothing to turn to and just zoned out for a while. Confronted the friend later and asked what was going/if there was any point in me being here, all I got was an excuse about it being harder to talk to people face to face than through a screen. Obviously, being AS I know what that's like, but after we've known each other so long and the extent of the avoidance I found it hard to believe - even harder now I've heard she told two other people two different reasons (which I don't consider myself at liberty to detail). Though neither rung particularly true, but again, I'm not going to go into detail. I looked at flights back home that night, but doing so made me realize there's nothing to go back to. The group of friends I mentioned have all gone their/our separate ways to different parts of the country (world in my case), being around my parents and all the bad memories of 'home' combined with the knowledge I failed at trying to make a new start is just going to increase the depression tenfold. Next morning I stayed in bed pretty late, saw the friend about midday but she wasn't much interested in talking and later had work to do so I went to walk/clear my head. Met with Eva (from here) and her husband, which helped even though I couldn't really talk about any of this. Went to see the friend again in the evening in a considerably better mood, tried arranging to do something the next day (with the intention of sorting out whatever's going on between us), got the excuse she thought she'd be busy before calling a friend to organise doing something else. That.. just tipped it, really. I couldn't deal with losing someone I previously cared about more than my own life again, as well as the stranglehold the AS just got back on me. I'm not strong enough to keep fighting the same fights to do the things everyone else can without thinking twice. I went back to where I was staying, packed up all my belongings and wrote a letter detailing why I can't keep living like this with the intention of ending it all the next day. Morning comes, left the letter in her mailbox, sent a final message and headed up to the train tracks. I sat on the fence for about half an hour, a few trains passed but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Turns out I'm more of a gutless coward than I thought. Thinking Dutch courage would help, I walked to the local off-license and bought a bottle of whiskey.. although an inherited resilience to alcohol meant drinking half the bottle had next to no effect. Sitting in an empty car park drinking from a bag probably represented a new low point of my life when I spoke to an old friend on the phone that went berserk after I told her the state I was in. She convinced me not to go any further somehow, although I'm still not sure that's a good thing. What happened after that is personal to more people than myself so I'm going to skip it, but later on I was taken to see some psychs at Melbourne hospital. I've been given sleeping pills to help with my insomnia and was recommended anti-depressants, but.. I can't. What could happen terrifies me. The people I know here keep telling me they'll help, but when I was on mental-correction medication a few years ago I lost it completely. My depression got worse by peaks and troughs, had a couple of breakdowns over the year and did some serious damage to myself, my brother, a couple of people at school and several inanimate objects. I can't justify any risk of going back to that around the people I'm with now. If I flipped out and hit any of them I couldn't live with myself. That was 48 hours ago now and I'm still lost. I've met some good people at the motel I'm now at, and like meeting Eva, it's helped, but it's not enough when I'm looking for hope. I used to have friends and animals that needed me around, and that dependence always helped me get through depression. Being there for them was more important than any of my problems. But I've lost that, I've lost the one who meant the most to me and with the anxiety getting worse I don't know how to go on. If going through this every few years is all I'll get out of life I just can't do it. I came here thinking I'd changed and could leave the AS, depression and everything else in memory. Instead I've got the cold reality that it's probably never going to happen. I know too well what suicide leaves behind, but I can't see the future I tried so hard for any more.

Well, this is it. 19 years and this is my last night in England. Tomorrow I'll be on my way to Hong Kong for 4 days and then to Australia. It's a very strange feeling. I'll try to check in here when I can and see what's going on, until then take care of yourselves and spare a thought for the lone AS kid trying to get through two of the world's busiest airports

Jean-Luc Picard. Awesome.

Hammer, nail, head. Even tonight, over 6 years since I was diagnosed, my 'parents' still don't understand things like being a large busy restaurant seriously bothers me. It has done my entire life, there's been good reason for it for 6 years now and the connection still hasn't been made. It's easy to say tell people what's bothering you, but I can't honestly remember a time when I've tried to explain why something affects me which hasn't been met with patronising or mocking comments. I'm sure many AS kids have had similar experiences and it leaves you with a hesitance to bother trying again. Even then, when I was younger I can remember not even being able to understand what was getting to me, much less explain it to anyone else. I can vouch for your kids when you say they're beyond control and don't know what they're doing. Although I haven't done so for over 5 years now, whenever that line was crossed I had no control over (and very little recollection of) my actions. Last time resulted in the near-death of one of my teachers, since then I've managed to keep it under wraps - I just need my personal space and time to meditate and clear my mind.

Lost Prophets? I take back everything I said. It's over! I kid, I kid. Time of the Oath is one of the newer Deris-fronted albums so it's more speed/thrash than the 80's camp power metal, but I don't mind a bit of Twisted Sister. Last album - Blood, Sweat & Tears by the band of the same name.

I love Virgin's reaction to all this "I have to take my hat off - it's a very good stunt," - I guess they care about Paris Hilton as much as we do.

I can scarcely believe it's real, after all the times he's said things like "This ######'s one of the most venemous snakes in the world, now I've got it cornered I'm going to poke it with a stick!" you wouldn't have thought it possible for him to die. I guess I can cross 'Meet Steve Irwin' off my list of things to do in Oz..

Did I say that? I meant a potato. And a glass of water. Last CD - The Time of the Oath from Helloween.

Kudos on your choices. I used to have 6 chickens - Still got this one, named Fluff - and they're awesome pets. Pretty stupid, but people don't seem to realise how affectionate they can be when they're tame. Emma was the only chicken I've owned/heard of who'd respond to her own name though.

Jesus type eh? Well I once fed 10 people on a pack of wotsits and half a bottle of orange fanta. No beard though. On topic, 'An Elixir for Existence', Sirenia.

The why is I feel similar to Auriel in that modern music all seems a bit generic (only I won't criticise in a non-sarcastic fashion). Stuff from around the mid 60s to the late 70s appeals to me because the artists were really doing their own thing and finding new sounds/styles that hadn't even been imagined before, let alone tried, and it still stands out today. The Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord I think is one of the best examples of this - They aquired over 30 different instruments from around the world (Asia in paticular), rented a studio for 3 months and experimented. You just don't get that kind of originality these days. The how is a decade of exploring. First band I really listened to were Guns N Roses, having been given one of their albums in 1996.. then to Maiden and Motorhead, Rammstein, Metallica, Helloween, Linkin Park (it was a phase!) and got into classic rock with that Greatest Air Guitar album. From there I started getting albums by the artists I liked and other similar compilation albums and it's continued in some kind of crazy web. Edit: Saying that, it most likely started with a Top Gear (greatest driving anthems) compilation CD I was given in 1994, although I never listened to alot until 2002 when I rediscovered it. Nowadays I listen to anything from 60s American Psychedelia to current Scandinavian Gothic Metal and most things inbetween, chronologically, geographically or stylistically. Culturally I'm a cross between hippy, freak, metalhead and goth with the tastes of all and characteristics of none. Good eh. Last CD was Clutching at Straws from Marillion.

You seem to be under the impression that innovation and songcraft are mutually exclusive, which is entirely wrong. The combination of the two are what prog and experimental genres are all about. "The best music ever" is relative, and by definition all music is some kind of formula. Otherwise it would just be noise. Stephanie: Terrorvision? All is forgiven. I love you. Last CD was 'All Over the World: The Very Best of ELO'.

I used to have a Bantam Rooster who would attempt, and in one case succeeded, to kill any cat that came into the garden. Geese do an even better job of it. I recommend them to anyone.