I got into bed planning to go to sleep but I could tell as soon as my head hit the pillow that slumber was a distant prospect and I am likely doomed to spend hours in the company of my own thoughts, so instead I switched my lamp back on, got my laptop out, put a Rex Orange County album on and began to wonder what would come to mind as I opened yet another blank word document. The number of files I have saved as ‘Untitled Document’ is probably enough to have me certified insane, but I’m at the stage with my writing where it’s become so intimate and personal that I dare not post much of it online for fear of revealing slightly too much about myself. There’s always that one thing that your mind seems to drift back to, isn’t there? We all have it, I’m sure of it, we spend our days distracted doing other things and speaking to different people but, once we’re alone at night, in bed, in the dark, with nothing but the thoughts in our heads for company, we all have that one thing we cannot stop thinking about. Mine is rather cliche and repetitive but that doesn’t make it any less emotionally draining. I struggle to write about anything else at the minute, which is yet another reason I could probably be considered insane, and it doesn’t help that we’re in another lockdown, which has deprived me of my hectic social life and the never ending egotistical ramblings it inspires. Recently I’ve also found myself starting to write a sentence and then deleting it incase I get judged harshly for its contents, which is a development I’m thoroughly unimpressed with and a habit I hope does not become permanent, as the one thing I pride myself on is being one hundred percent honest, regardless of the response I get from friends and foes alike. On top of this, I wonder if my writing has become the one thing I have never been able to contemplate – dull. What if people are bored of reading about my take on things, what if they consider me tedious and dreary, what if I’m just rehashing the same old shit over and over again and convincing myself it sounds good? Oh fuck it, who cares, I’m not forcing you to read this drivel. In fact, I’m even going to cut and paste part of another bit of writing I did into this piece, that’s how low my standards have sunk. No matter how hard I try and how much progress I make there seems to be no escape from the undeniable fact that my own thoughts can terrify me to the point where I’m scared to be alone with them. Even as I sit to write this, I can’t help but pick my phone up and hope to distract myself, like I can’t focus on any one thing for longer than a few minutes, as if I’m incapable of concentrating on anything that could be deemed a worthy use of my time. There are so many ways in which I could attempt to describe the emotional pain I inflict upon myself in a way that makes it sound beautiful or poetic but, in the end, I think I’m just really unwell. I long for a day when I can wake up and be happy without wondering how long I’ve got until I’m suicidal again. I comfort those around me with the reassurance that, no matter how bad things got, I’d never actually take my own life, but I’ve come to doubt the sincerity of that statement. I’ve considered it, hundreds of times in fact, so how can I be sure that I’ll never do it? I probably wouldn’t ever kill myself, I’d worry too much about the people I’d be leaving behind and I’d never be able to go through with it anyway, but the thought remains in the back of my mind nonetheless, a sort of escape plan that I know I could activate if things ever got really bad. Writing things like this always seems to help because, despite the fact that it’s a rather dark subject to discuss, getting my thoughts down in a logical and manageable way makes them seem slightly less scary. I think I’m being too hard on myself at the minute as well – I haven’t been writing or reading as much as I’d like to – and I think, considering we’re living through a global pandemic and things appear to be going from bad to worse, that I should probably cut myself a bit of slack. See, I bet you’d forgotten that I’d cut and paste that, hadn’t you? It doesn’t matter, I’ve been considering posting that for ages and, even though I’m not currently having a depressive episode and I’m actually rather happy recently, the sentiment of those thoughts does seem ever relevant. Although not quite as bleak now as they sometimes are, I’d still rather not be alone with my thoughts if possible, as all they seem to do is remind me that I’m not as happy as I could be and the few things I actually care about remain just out of reach. I suppose the erraticness of my thoughts doesn’t help, as it demonstrated by this piece, but then again no matter how erratic they get I still come back to the same fucking thing. The mind is a mystery that will almost definitely never be solved. I suppose that’s what makes life interesting.