Well, that was a dumb idea.

I decided tonight that I would take a nap after supper and write when I got up. It seemed like a smart idea at the time and I mentally patted myself on the back for it.

Well, here it is, nearly 11 pm, and I am all addled by that deep intense sleep stuff, and I have only an hour or so before midnight in which to write the day’s blog entry and hence save the day.

Not all that big a deal, mental coherence issues aside, but I am at a loss as to what made me think this was a smart idea.

I think tomorrow, I will write before the nap. and save myself a lot of hassle.

Speaking of napping, took a Zopiclone today. They really do help. In fact, they are in some ways the ideal sleeping pill, because they do not make you go to sleep. They are not a knockout pill or an old school brick to the head style sleeping pill like Valium.

Instead, at least at the dosage I am taking, 7.5 mg a day, they just make sleep easier. When I take one, I can feel the soft, politely soothing effect in the back of my mind. It is quite pleasant, but hardly euphoric or overwhelming. I could ignore it if I really wanted to do so, if say something came up after taking the pill but before going to sleep. It would be uncomfortable but require no epic act of will.

What it does do, however, is make it easier for me to fall asleep (greatly appreciated, because it has taken me a long time to get to sleep for as long as I can remember) and make the quality of that sleep just a little bit better.

Today was a little weird because I took the pill in the morning, around about 9 in the morning to be precise, and tried to sleep then, but could not really get to sleep. I seem to have entered an almost healthy kind of cycle where I can’t sleep well while the sun is up. Sun goes down, I immediately start getting pretty sleepy. So maybe tomorrow, I take the pill after writing and just before the sun goes down, then we see what happens when the darkness falls.

Besides the darkness suing the horizon for damages and for keeping an unsafe falling place, of course.

Still, all in all, my mood is more up than down lately, and I am glad for that. I am getting into the swing of this emotional openness thing. Sure, I feel like crap sometimes. I feel sad for no reason, I feel bored and restless and frustrated, I feel hurt and confused and down on myself.

But at least I am feeling something. I went too long with that emotional volume knob turned way the hell down, and that leaves you alone in a sea of black cold clear syrup, like you are a subject on some sadistic sensory deprivation experiment, except the senses are not sight and smell and sound, but your sense of connection with others, your sense of reward from your actions, your sense of the potential for a positive future, or even the feel of warm sun on your skin.

It is a tragic case of maladaptive reaction, where something which works in the short term (suppressing one’s emotions to deal with painful ones) has far worse consequences in the long term (isolation, sadness, depression, suicide.)

Speaking of suicide, I watches a move called A Single Man today, with Colin Firth putting in a somewhat Michael Caine-ish performance as a gay college professor in 1962 L.A. who plans to commit suicide because he can no longer deal with the grief he feels eight months after his partner of sixteen years died in a car accident.

It struck me, while watching the movie, that to commit suicide because you see no point in going on living is to bet awfully heavily on you ability to predict the future. Like Kenny, a fresh-faced college student who seems stricken with the main character (played to fresh faced perfection by Nicholas Hoult), points out, “You never know. ”

And it’s true. Life can be very surprising, and you never know when something good might come your way and make you very glad you stuck around for it. Sure, maybe you can’t see and hope for the future. But maybe that has more to do with your vision being clouded by mental disease than any rational assessment of your future prospects. Maybe you have a mental defect that makes it impossible for you to be as rational as you like to think you are when it comes to thinks involving yourself and hour future.

Maybe you have, indeed, no idea what you are doing.

I think that provides enough reasonable doubt in order to spare yourself the death sentence, don’t you? Life in prison should be enough for your crimes. Hang in there, no matter how pointless it may seem, and keep working towards your parole.

Because you never know when things might just get a lot better. Or hell, just a bit better.

Or at least start sucking in an interesting new way, so you can sample and enjoy a different flavour of pain for a while. A change is as good as a rest, they say.

Or sit back in anticipation of good, hearty laughter at the ways the Universe comes up with to screw you over without you even having to lift a finger.

Whatever it takes to keep you in the game. Just do not think that you know so much about how the future will turn out that you can say, with total confidence (and it had better be total, because it’s final), that there is absolutely no point to remaining alive because only bad things can happen from this point on.

Seems like a pretty big bet to place on your diseased mind’s capacities to me.

Probably better just to assume you are too crazy to make those kinds of decisions yourself.