Stream of Consciousness...
Stupid stream-of-consciousness...
I don't really know why I'm writing this... I guess I just want a form of release from this awful mood I'm in... My brain just doesn't want to shut down for the evening... It keeps me awake... I suffer from insomnia for 4 nights, easily... then it'll give me 9 hours rest before it wakes me up again to repeat the hellish cycle... For the few of you who know me... and the majority that don't; my name's Matt. I'm 23 and I'm from Australia. As of writing, I'm sitting here, listening to Nirvana... and wondering what the fuck is wrong with me...
My brain just keeps thinking of all the friends and family I'd hurt over the years.... My parents, my bandmates, the few friends I'd kept from high school, the few friends I'd gained out of uni... The band has broken up... around 3 months ago... We'd been gigging around Brisbane for almost 2 years, sadly we'd never gotten anywhere... We released one E.P. and that was it... The anticipated second E.P. would never come.
Since that had happened; my life has kind of gone to shit. That band was both my creative outlet, and one of the only things I had ever seen as a kind of stable career. People have told me: "Find another band" and "Shit happens... You'll be fine". No, that's not fucking true... I wanna keep going with the three guys I actually had a fucking rock-solid artistic relationship with. We knew each other like we were brothers. We knew how long we could push each other, both live and in the studio before we broke and said we were finished for the evening...
I don't know what the fuck I want to do with myself now... Part of me wants to open a studio... Part of me wants to sit on my arse and do nothing... and that part of me that only comes out when my depression strikes has been telling me to throw myself into the Brisbane River... I guess it could work... I mean, odds are, out of the 200 or so people I know well enough to be friends; I'm guessing that only 10 to 20 of them would actually give a fuck if I died....
You probably wouldn't though... You're just reading text on a screen... peering into the closed off room that is my life. Not that I blame you... Isn't that why you went to the carnival when you were younger? To peer at the eccentrics and oddities behind bars or behind glass?
This isn't a suicide note, by the way... even though it reads like one... I guess I'm just running with a stream of consciousness...
I guess I should stop listening to Something In The Way.... but there's not much else that fits my mood as well as this does... That sense of crushing dread and hopelessness I'm feeling now is so perfectly reflected in Kurt Cobain's chord choices and his lyrics... It's almost mournful... Well, I guess since whenever I get this way, I feel numb inside; it makes sense...
To whoever is reading this... I'm not dead.... just... I dunno why the fuck I'm writing this... I'm not even really looking at anything in particular... just staring into that last paragraph as I continue to type... I guess I feel like I need to keep reminding people that I'm still here... I'm too gutless to actually attempt anything like suicide or self-harm... hell, I hardly drink... The eye surgeries did that...
I was born 4 months premature; so I've had eye problems from the very beginning... The docs told my parents that my retinas could peel off the back of my eyes at any time, so... I guess it was lucky it began at 16, when I could process it all... I'd just completed moving schools too.... My first high school turned out to be a giant load of shit... Second one was much better and more supportive... Though; the eye problems didn't help...
One morning; I noticed some halos around things in my eyes... I told my parents; got a day off school... then I got taken to my opthamologist's office for an urgent check-up... My right retina was going... So, it was into emergency surgery for me... After that began something of a life-long avoidance of sorts. For those who don't know; after eye surgery, you're given, probably, 3 or 4 drops to put in. The first is a combination anaesthetic/dilation solution. Second one is a pain-killer... the other two I don't really remember... That first drop has pretty much made me swear off eye-drops for the rest of my life. It is like dripping acid into your eyes.
2 years and a high school graduation later; my other eye decided to go. However, while my right eye decided to play nice; my left eye decided to play dirty... While the initial procedure went well; I suffered a supra-choroidal haemorrhage. Basically, your eye has three layers; your sclera, which is what the white outer layer is that you can see; the interior where your retina lives and a third layer in the middle.... the haemorrhage happened in that middle layer.
So, my left eye was filling up with blood and causing me considerable pain. I was rushed by my mum to Princess Alexander Hospital and given Pethidine... and due to the Pethidine, I threw up... a lot.
After the pain-killers got changed, I essentially settled into the routine I'd known for my surgeries... no food 12 hours before it began, a period of hoping that this would be the last time I went under the knife. This time I went to the day-surgery place in an ambulance, instead of having my parents drive me... I got gowned up, made comfortable... then I went under... to tune of Comfortably Numb... ironic considering the circumstances... but the anaesthetist was nice enough to have it put on as I went under...
After that, my left eye looked like a ball of mince someone had jammed into my left eye-socket. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. I remember three days afterwards when my eyelids cracked open enough to see it; I just thought... "Fuck...". The eye-drops hurt more this time around... It really did feel like I was dripping acid in there... I can't give that feeling justice and I don't wish it on anybody... Forcing yourself to cause intense pain every day for nearly 3 months...
So, basically, you're all caught up now... My left eye is fucked, clouded over and I can only really see light and dark out of it... My right eye is normal... I'm in uni; but I don't know whether I'm doing the right thing... My mind if flip-flopping all over the place; and I guess this has turned into an auto-biography of sorts... I wish parts of my life hadn't been so brutal... I wish I could have kept some things together... and I wish that I had a few more people I could trust to not stab me in the back...
But hey, life is one big freak show, isn't it? Why not point at another poor soul and laugh your heart out?