Day 24,fail, fail, fail. Again and again and again. I don't know when it started to sway off course but it's been this way for a long time........ I hope tonight that dreams (or is it really the waking state, perhaps when we think we are dreaming we are really plunging into reality) take me to a world where purity is the first assumption

Day 23, fail fail fail. I haven't even managed to make it 1/3 of the way through this without being able to control myself. Tonight I feel incredibly mundane, but with that madness taking over your head in a way that you think you should be able to tell it to stop but it keeps flitting back and forth putting out little ideas and words that sometimes make me think I'm dreaming.

Day 21 and yes, I have failed.

When I'm on the verge between sleep and waking, there is often screaming in my head. My body often shakes, trembles and I feel a jolt seize my body. It's then that I wake and I have to remind myself that it's the present moment. Whatever I've been dreaming about is at the forefront of my mind and it's vivid, almost real until I realise I'm awake. Often in the second before I wake with a start I feel the presence of someone over me, grabbing me or jumping on me. But then it feels like they fall through me, and I can physically feel them falling through me body as I rise from laying down. This started about 6 months ago, and it's been happening regularly ever since. It's such a strange physical feeling. I'm momentarily frightened and it leaves me slightly breathless. Sometimes I can almost feel it about to happen when I begin to wake but I have no control over it. It's haunting and strange.

Some things get lost in translation, others just get lost. When you're alone it's sometimes hard to imagine there is actually anyone else in the world, especially anyone who would understand your voice of reasoning. Even as a child I never thought there was anyone who 'got' me or understood the way I think. As I get older I sometimes feel there are people who might understand. The problem is I don't know if they really understand or if they're actually just intrigued about how mad one person can be.

Blood rushes through my veins at too quick a tempo. Rushes to my stomach, causing dull aching pain. Then it drains, making me feel totally lacking in the liquid of life. I wish I could lie down and feel a dangerous, yet familiar and wonderful spreading of tingling and warmth through my body. I can't let it happen again though. To be numb is good, but it's isolating and lonely. It's also dangerous if you've convinced yourself you'll never need to deal with the pain, and then something happens that brings it all rushing to the surface and you've no control how, when, where or why this will happen.

Day 17. A am a failure. But some days I don't see it like that. Somedays I think I'd be more of a failure if I didn't indulge in behaviours that stop my soul from dying or stop me body and mind from falling apart and retreating into oblivion. I wonder how my body manages to keep working (just), and stop myself from falling to the depths of despair or the highest of high. Actually despite a failure today, I feel ok today. My breathing in constant, no heart palpitations from fear or excitement and no inhaling and holding my breath because I don't know what's coming next.

Wish I could escape the heat. It makes my mind like mud. Too sticky to think, but laying under the fan seems quite exotic. Sometimes I have moments where I feel like I could walk out into the street in my nightie and lay down on the hot road, hoping it will rain. The pain has eased today, not more constant stomach cramping. It's still there but is bearable today. Can't speak for the pain in my mind though. Sometimes I wonder if the torrid thoughts will ever stop, and maybe they really shouldn't

Day 15, or at least I think so. I have been headstrong the last few days in restraining myself. I can't say I've made it to day 15 without failing, but at least I've made it to day 15 and I'm still here. I may be weak, tired and in varying amounts of pain, but none the less I am still breathing and feeling. I wake in the morning feeling slightly more positive than I would have several months ago, yet so many days I could easily go back to sleep and not face the world. I sway between wanting to take advantage of the illness and wanting to quash it completely so I don't have to think about or feel anything.

This heat is so oppressive, but perhaps it's my guilt that oppresses me. Sometimes I think guilt can be incredibly self destructive, if let out of control. Perhaps guilt should be boxed into the compartments that represent different areas of you life. Can you really have guilt yet let not infect every area of your life. I like to think I can control it but every now and then it floods my my body.

I am so soooo tired. My legs feel like they've got concrete in them. The air is steamy and sticky, it has a passionate kind of feel about it. If only I was not too tired to take advantage of such conditions. Anaemic, white, pale and tired. I feel like I could sleep for a year and still wake up tired. But hopefully time will heal a little, perhaps next week when particular hormones kick back in I'll feel a little more energetic. I lay on the bed this afternoon just watching the fan go round and round and anticipating the rush of air beat my body with each spin of the blades. I like doing that. It's monotonous, but kind of relaxing, hearing the whizzing of the blades, hoping the whole thing doesn't fall from the ceiling and carve your delicate body into pieces.

Totally spent. Head space not quite clear again. Where does she go from here, she knows not where, but she will let it take her to an amazing place

Day 12 and I've failed again.

Hot again and my head is fuzzy. I shop for party goods and feel the glare of the checkout lady. She either thinks I'm a dedicated woman or have had an impulsive need to stock up on non essentials. Whichever it is she still looks, glares and says nothing. I realise my car is parked the wrong way and it takes forever to load the car. People wait and wait, I just put my head down and pretend I can't see them. When I get into the car, it's hot and I need to sit for a moment to be sure I won't melt and completely disappear. It's all fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy........

Woke up earlier than usual this morning and don't feel that tired . Sometimes I worry either my brain or body is sending me lies when this happens. I trust how I feel, but don't necessarily trust my body to send the right signals to my brain.

Ahhh to get through the day wondering how you've done it again. At least there were no relapses today. All good, but maybe that's something to do with Tuesday being a therapy day. Would be the worse look to relapse while at therapy. But then again, it could be either the best or the worst place to do it. Don't think I'll try and find out. I really just want to fall in a heap and sleep for a month. I am so absolutely and completely exhausted. Am probably anaemic again, which would explain my sheer exhaustion. Last night I had a strange dream. I was living as two people in one world. Had to keep changing depending on who I was with. Just when I thought it was all about to come undone there was a disaster that saved me (once again!). It was like an avalanche of human beings and I was terrified I would be drowned or crushed under the thousands of humans falling from the world. I found myself getting out alive but kept seeing people who knew my secret. Strangely no one said a word. It was then I realised that everyone else has secrets too...................................

It's day 10 and I feel like I have to make up in today what I failed in yesterday. I'm only at day 10 and I'e already given in twice. I hate myself when I give in, it, eventually it makes me feel sick. Sometimes I just wish I was 'normal' as such, but then I don't think I could live with my emotions only ever swinging marginally from either side of the pendulum. I guess it's feeling those emotions at both extremes of the pendulum that make me realise there is so much more to be experienced than not having the pendulum swing.

I realise now that I'm technically into day 8. Let me see, feel, taste and hear what the day will bring and how my thoughts will culmintate by the end of the day

I don't know when to go to bed. There seems to be so much I need to, or want to, get done. My mind is buzzing with memories of the day, a day that was quite blissful with the promise of even more elation to come on another day. Well, technically it already another day, but until I sleep it will feel the one lovely long long day.

Don't even remember what number day is................but there has been one failure. Can't win them all. Tomorrow is a new day.......

Mmmm, had a great day today. All happy and satisfied. Brain wants to get going at an amazingly fast pace. Don't know where that will take me to. Somewhere to neverland, but there are always consequences from going up too fast. I tried to exist on as little as possible the last few days. Lots of coffee and a few cigarettes. Not a good combination, but it seems to push up the elation. Tomorrow is check in day again, don't want to eat, but need to get through the process of it just for one day. I sense it's going to be a fantastic weekend.

Spin spin spin. Stop

While I try to focus on something everything peripheral seems to spin. Still have a shocker headache but hoping my body will adjust to this. I painted today. When I paint I feel so much in my own space. It's quite cathartic. I don't know where I got to today but I came home feeling quite ok, no lurching in my stomach of despair or anxiety. Day 5 and I think I've done it. Thought about it, but then actually forgot about it!

Another day to wake too. So far so good. Shocking headache, could be new meds. The more I commit to myself the stronger I become. Don't know how long that can last for though. Today I promise myself I will start a new painting, finish reading a book. bake a cake, make dinner, do the ironing, make a skirt, have 3 cigarettes, drink 2 cups of strong coffee, allow myself 1 apple, make a plate for a meeting tonight, phone the babysitter, buy new ink, buy 4 new canvases, make 3 phone calls, buy 1 present and skip dinner. But the only thing I will do is go to the doctor and tell him this. See how it rolls off my tongue, too fast, too slow. What if he doesn't listen, what if I say too much or not enough. Momentarily it daunts me seeing the long list, but if I get up now and explode my into my secret head space I know I can do it.

t's late and I've been frantically baking. Baked three cakes but only need one for tomorrow. I feel like I want to stay up all night but then if I don't go to sleep I won't get to dream. I worry, or maybe hope, that if I wake early tomorrow morning that it's a sign of good times to come, but then there always lurks a low. I'm almost excited to see what time I will wake, and what I will have dreamt of during my other life that is sleep.

I realise now that I've actually made it through 4 days. 4 days of hell. 4 days of bliss. 4 days of nothing to think about other than whether I'll even wake up or not. My dreams are vivid and full of potent emotion that sucks the life out of me by the time I wake. Four days is good. But htf do I get through the next 86 days. I wish my waking thoughts could be my sleep time and that my dreams at night could be lived out during the day. I don't want to fail at this, I don't want to fall yet again and have to start all over again. Perhaps it is not right for me to be living this mundane life. Who know what awaits when I sleep tonight.

A long hot day in Sydney. Was feeling quite normal, if not a bit too happy, until I drove home this afternoon. Suddenly the mood plummets and I've no idea where it came from. I woke at 5am this morning and didn't go back to sleep. I haven't done that in a long long time. Perhaps it's the 'early morning waking'. I long for that feeling of waking happy, to a bright new day that nothing can ruin. Today that feeling stayed with me most of the day, and now it's gone. So called experts tell you to 'sit' with the feeling. Sit there and go crazy! I don't want to sit with the feeling, I just want it to go away. How long can you 'sit' for before you go out of your mind and do something stupid or regretful? I want to wake to days that make me spin with excitement and happiness, days where nothing is too hard or complicated, everything is amazing and wonderful. Days like that are to be treasured, but they are also incredibly fragile. It only takes one thing to go wrong and suddenly you're plummeting back down further than you were before, then you constantly search, frantically search, hoping that you can speed back up the hill again to another fantastic day. I want to wake happy tomorrow. Today is technically day 3 of I don't know what! But so far, so good, no real relapse here, but oh how I long for there to be.

Medications don't really solve anything. They just suppress it, which one day everything will just have to explode. When and where that will happen, I just don't know. Someone will probably bear the brunt of it all, but it might be simpler to do it all by myself. I wish there was a medication that could sustain a constant high. The world would be an amazing place if we could be high all the time. We'd probably deal with the mundane things a whole lot better than we do, and we'd enjoy doing it. I stuffed my mind full of trivial stuff today. I tried to get by pretending every thing is ok, but pick at the seams a little and there is stuffing falling out all over the place. Stuffing that I have to some how shove back in so I can get through another day. it's kind of fun though to leave little bits of your stuffing at different places, with different people, hoping that, perhaps, you've left people with something that they didn't have before, something that they might think about.

9.18am and already I don't know if I'll get through the day. Watching everyone at the school run this morning. How mundane it seems to be. But every other mum or dad appears to be happy. Why? do they think that it doesn't get any better so therefore they better be happy about it. At least this morning when I woke I didn't immediately think that going back to sleep would be the best way to get through the day, not having to face anything. But now that I'm back home it seems like an easy option. I could just take a pill and sleep for the rest of the day. But then I'd be rid of any interesting thoughts that might come my way. I'm going to go to the studio. I plan to at least get a couple of ideas written down and start at least one painting. I can listen to music that will take my mind elsewhere, pretend I'm someone else, somewhere else in my head.

The fading eerie light is driving me insane. Like, I'm not already insane enough! I hate daylight savings. It begins by pretending it's going to stay light with just that little glimpse of sun coming through, then the glare fades and it promises darkness for a long long time. Enough to torment me with that gut wrenching feeling, like someones put a fist down my throat and is twisting it for increased effect. It's about now that I turn all the lights on draw the curtains so I can pretend it's been dark for hours. The awful feeling that this eerie twilight creates has been with me since I was about 12 or 13 years old. I don't quite know what it is but I hate it, hate it, hate it...............

Day 2 and I've managed to sleep most of the day. But now I must face doing some incredibly mundane tasks like ironing and preparing dinner. Let's see how chaotic I can get my mind to be, what I can think about, dream about, long for in a world that doesn't understand one exploring the inner mind, let alone act on the thoughts that get plucked out of there. I don't suppose I'm going to be able to get through the next 88 days by sleeping, but hey I guess it's an option.

Today is what I hope will be day 1 of 90 days. 90 days supposedly breaks a habit when one chooses to do without something. I've called this blog mundane madness as it's often how I feel. I get through the mundane tasks of everyday life but my mind feels ferociously mad, like I can't stop processing thoughts at a million miles an hour. I don't know exactly what I'm hoping to break in 90 days, perhaps smoking, perhaps drinking, perhaps thinking............................