Warning: badly punctuated and very rambling

I’d start by saying it’s late. But it’s not that late, not really. It’s a little after 11 on a Friday night. I couldn’t be bothered to cook any of the few bits of food I have – which is not a lot, unless you want soup or beans – so I sent out for pizza and charged it to my credit card. I’ve got compensation coming in and will clear the debt soon enough, so a pizza is no big deal. I feel anxious or wound up. It could be a side effect of restarting the medication after half-stopping it. I’m alone in my flat, which isn’t so surprising when you consider that I live on my own. I have been through the address book on my phone repeatedly, hoping that out of nowhere I will hit upon someone to call. But even with the compensation coming in, I can’t afford international phone calls and however great the internet may be for having friends all over the globe, when you really want to talk to someone you realise just how far away everyone else is. Even San, just in London, seems a world away. I could call friends back home – but however much some of them might say that they’re there to talk to, they aren’t. Not really. Not in a way that I could call them on a Friday night a talk about any of this. I met [Charley] for a few drinks earlier and it was good. We’d never met before, and didn’t know all that much about one another, but it was good company – she was good company. Even though I had originally wondered what she might mean when she asked if I wanted to meet her for coffee, it was completely platonic – which is fucking great when I so often feel I fall in love too easily, or at the very least develop wild inappropriate crushes. But just the same, the only light in the room is my desk lamp and the glow of the monitor. My heart feels like it’s beating too fast – although I pause and put my hand against my chest (did you know, you can see my heartbeat even through the two shirts I am wearing? It surprised many doctors, until they concluded in all their great experience and wisdom that it just must be unusually near the surface, or some thing) and I can’t tell. It doesn’t feel to my hand like it’s beating too fast, but I feel a little short of breath and my hands are restless. It’s not panic, or even anxiety exactly – I wouldn’t say I’m worried, so much as troubled – but at the same time. At the same time, I don’t know. My head reels off the various inappropriate crushes I have and then I return to thinking of San and wondering – worrying maybe – what is in store for us, when I might see her next or whatever. I really am a mess. What do I want from life? What exactly has kept me alive – other than a fear of the unknown? I want to travel, I want to see how big the world is. Sadly I can’t focus on the day to day – although there’s movies I want to catch, bands I want to see, records I want to hear and books to read, they aren’t enough. A desire to see more and do more does interest me. Also a desire to find more from my own life, maybe it’s a symptom of my illness – the eternal underlying mania that every now and then comes out like this week and that gives me that immature thought that I am special. A kind of messiah complex. A thought that I could find my way to becoming pure energy, a kind of Buddhist enlightenment means lawnmower man or something. I want to be the clouds dropping rain. But what do I want, really? A job I enjoy, and do well. Security – not having to worry about what is coming next. The usual, peace on earth but I don’t think I’m holding out much hope on that one. I want to meditate in the desert again. I want to live in a monastery and live a purely simple life of a bed and plain white walls. I want to be a fire lookout in a national forest, even if the job is so reportedly amazingly dull and lonesome it induces breakdowns. And now I stop. The words or thoughts aren’t coming, except it still feels too damn light in here – even with just the glow of the monitor. I’ve stopped. Nothing feels resolved or any different, except my heart has returned to a normal pace. I found an old address book when looking for a mislaid address. It’s full of numbers for people I don’t talk to, or incorrect numbers and addresses for people I still know. I found my grandmother’s old address and phone number. I had stopped using this address book by the time she died, the summer before from the look of it. I wonder to myself now, in that stupid dreamer sort of way, that if I call this number I have for her if there might be some chance that she will answer. The area codes for London have since changed so that number wouldn’t even work – which encourages me to try calling it all the same. I wouldn’t be calling anyone any more, so in some made-for-tv-movie sort of way could it happen that I’d get to talk to her, one last time? Maybe get to say goodbye this time.