prussic_acid

06:00 pm: Things are being moved in my field of vision. I see movements and scuttlings but not their origin. I am being shown how close they all are; especially Amy and her vicious blood link. So persistent and torturous. She's planted in me a grief that is not mine: a cuckoo's egg of mourning whose orgin I do not understand, but which I feel with an intensity as if it were my own. The cuckoo's egg hatches and tips the legitimate young from the nest, but whose is the valid claim anyway? Amy's, on account of being first, or mine on account of being mortal? She was the one displaced and vengeful with her tinkling laugh.

08:20 am: I'm wired up in my knees, left femur, the knuckle of my index fingers, both wrists, in my spine at T6 and L3 and maybe somewhere in my shoulders too. They're testing them at the minute; just twitching my muscles. I should bind my hands before they're fully activated.

I cut myself. I put a declaration of the ugliness of my soul on my arm. I thought this admission of being evil might stop them all telling me, but it hasn't. The DJ patter is as loud as ever. It sounds like Scott Mills, though he's telling me what I'm doing. I don't listen to his radio shows now. I'm scared that it might be him, and he might tell my secrets on air. He's a bitter man. He'd be pleased to relay it all.

02:00 am: Still-Born
I am grafted to you;
A pallid new shoot
In a blood-black cocoon.
All dense eye and red lid,
With a curling pink spine,
And a paper-blank soul.

Sealed in a blister;
I am nothing to you
With my visible pulse
That chases after yours.
All kidney-bean canker,
And pliable bone.

An unashamed limpet,
In the uterine sea.
The coiling insistence
Of umbilical tongue,
And bruise-blue veins
That demand and receive.

All crushed like a petal,
A small mass of membrane
Shoe-horned away
And snapped like a twig,
In the neat little murder,
Of your own peace of mind.

11:05 pm: I'm so tired, but there's no possibility of sleep. No way to shut them up. No off switch. I lie and listen as the people in the street pick up my thoughts and transmit the blame back at me though the window. I closed it, and drew the curtains, but it doesn't block that frequency. I need lead, but all I can think of is pencils and they're graphite. If I buried myself I'd be closer to hell and to the racket. I want to die, but that brings me closest of all.

Stephen's scared too. He says he can't hear them, but I think he must. Just doesn't want to admit it and doesn't want me to know that they have tried to reel him in. He's strong and has God. He can resist them while he still wants to. Perhaps he will get sick of me and want me dragged away like the others. Then I am lost. I can't even die.

10:45 am: The Edge Of Spring

March came in with feathered edges;
Softly slipper-shod and with tales of hope in hand.
A mouthful of plans; and skirts of layered promise
Wavering through winter, up to edge of spring.

March came in with kid-gloved fingers;
Peeled and cut from the blank-eyed sleepers of the field,
Ruby ice in their veins, and flowers at their feet
Curled in snowdrop carpets, and slick with winter blood.

March came in with finger to her lips;
And the orphans of winter, greedy at her breast,
With their tinkling bracelets of frost-bite crystal
And a million facets of sharp, ice-bound loss.

March came in with warm-milk petals,
Drunk on drafts of death and an optimist's folly.
As the infant summer kicks throughout her belly,
Till her waters break in the April sunshine thaw.

11:20 pm: I want to cut. I can see the mark on my hand where I need to do it. I can see the poison that needs to come out. It's there in a pool, down from my heart. This bears witness that I knew and tried to stop it, but nothing takes it out. It tried. It's not my fault. Please, please don't hold it against me.

01:35 pm: My father is in Jersey, but I can still hear him in this house. I can hear him coming through the front door as I sit upstairs. I can hear him prowling about in the kitchen and in my old room. I feel the tension in the centre of my back. I'm waiting for him; waiting for an outburst. I'm scared that he will die and haunt me as the others do. The dead with the unborn. United behind me in hatred, anger and disgust.

I need him to live, because with the living there is the hope of reason. There is no protection in persuasion and cajoling afterwards. They are immune to it. They are reborn to a purpose and they see it focused before them for the first time. Nothing dissuades them. They are a livid, buzzing crowd. A wasps' nest; one and yet many. Unholy trinities. They wait for their time to come, but they snarl and growl and claw me through the bars of that flimsy cage. One day, they will tear through and carry me in their teeth to hell.

05:50 pm: Stephen brought home a book which he borrowed from a workmate. Now I'm scared to speak in case there's a listening device inside. Maybe cameras. I want to find a soundproof place for it. Somewhere that it can't transmit; but I can't think where. I just don't want it in the house.

I know this isn't quite right, or quite normal. I know it is my own brain-chemistry doing this to me... and yet I can't shake off this very real sense of fear. I don't want this to develop to the point that I can no longer perceive that my fears and experiences are part of my own problem, and not exactly real. I never know what to do. Should I turn to medication? Should I hold out? I prefer the latter approach, but there are times when the side-effects of waiting too long prove worse than those of the chlorpromazine.

11:45 am: Either I slept awkwardly, or I pulled a few muscles when gagging yesterday, because my back and chest are both rather sore this morning.

Pleasing though it was to see that I am still capable of inducing vomiting after not doing so for a couple of weeks, I plan on returning to restricting in my quest for purity. I shall only resort to purging when I feel that I really have to... though, in saying that, I am quite aware that I shall be inclined to think that I "really have to" after any morsel of food that I deign to swallow. I was sorely tempted to rid myself of the apple and slice of bread that I consumed this morning, and I am almost certain that lunch's baked beans will see many of their compatriots being flushed away shortly after said meal has been

Ah well. In the absence of the possibility of my plugging myself into some intravenous feeding system that bypasses the requirement for food to ever touch my stomach again, purging at least reconciles me to the idea of eating some things... which should please Stephen, if nothing else.

01:55 pm: Being as I am dog/house-sitting for my parents whilst my brother is out at work, I am making this entry from the PC at their house. This arrangement involves Stephen bundling me out of the house at 7am... usually whilst I am still clad in pyjamas and wrapped in a blanket. Still, aside from this slight inconvenience, I feel as comfortable here as I do in my own house.

I have had the chance to relive a few old, familiar experiences since being back here... the most notable of which would have to be leaning over the toilet with a toothbrush handle in my oesophagus as I persuade my stomach to part with breakfast. Strangely, I am more relaxed about purging here than I am at home. There is certainly less chance of being caught! Unlike Stephen, the dog doesn't pay much attention to gagging noises issuing from the bathroom, or to the reddened eyes and hoarse voice that I have acquired by the time I emerge.

There is a part of me that considers it rather odd that I - as a fat person who is perfectly content to remain at her present size - should choose to indulge in a behaviour that is generally practiced by those who are desperate to be thin. But then, it's not about weight... it's an issue of purity. The purity of an empty stomach. The purity of that thin, piercing streak of hunger running through the centre of me. Before steroids, this was achieved through starvation; but now I am "better"; now I am "normal". I sit at the table and eat dinner like a good girl. No tears and no hysterics. I just happen to throw it up afterwards.

09:40 am: Last night I dreamt that Cassandra Barton-Harvey (who was in my school year) and I were working together on the counter of Lutterworth Post Office. After nearly running her over when trying to turn the car into my apparent place of work whilst still in fifth gear, she announced that she was going to apply to be a presenter on Radio Four's Today programme. Upon hearing this, I found myself insinuating that she was hardly the sort of politically-savvy, intellectual heavy-weight that would be required, and that her speaking voice left rather a lot to be desired. Knowing me, I would have had no hesitation in addressing such a statement to her face in reality too.

Later on - though in a dream with the same school-mates theme - I dreamt that Kim Wilson and I were cleaning a hotel that bore a startling resemblance to my current residence. Whilst thus employed, I managed to engage her in a fierce argument on the apparently linked topics of thirteen-year-olds undergoing plastic surgery, and the biochemical nature of potato starch. I awoke, confused.

Most of my memorable dreams seem to involve arguments. I can actually feel myself shouting and an over-powering sense of annoyance and frustration comes about whilst I try to put my point across... usually to someone who cannot, or will not understand what I am telling them. I am amused to think what parallels this scenario has in my conscious life.

01:30 pm: According to Quizilla's "Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?" test, I am Nihilist Bear. Hmm. I have far too much time on my hands...



At the beginning of every January, Stephen and I each try to come up with a list of four or five people whom we predict will be dead by the end of the year. This year, my list features - along with Pope Jean Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Michael Foot - Radio Four's long-in-the-tooth presenter of Letter From America: Alistair Cooke.

Thus, I was perhaps understandably excited to hear his apparent obituary being intoned by Nick Clarke on the News At One. I ran and skipped around the house chanting "Alistair Cooke's dead!" with only the slightest twinge of guilt at my strange elation. However, on further investigation, it turned out that he's still alive. He's merely retired. Sod it.

Ah well. With a wheeze like that he surely can't be long for this world.

09:50 pm: Even though Radiohead are reputed to be fans of the Napster concept, it would seem that their record company has seen fit to make use of anti-copying technology for their latest CD... Unfortunately, this also means that the album cannot be played in the computer CD drive through which I tend to play most of my music these days. Thus, I've had to resort to illegally downloading all of the tracks; actions I would not have taken if the damn things had been released in the usual way. In spite of the inconvenience to me, there is an irony to it all that pleases me.

There's nothing to wake up for tomorrow. There probably never is any real reason to, but I am particularly conscious of the lack of one at present. Even Dostoyevsky and polysaccharide chains fail to rouse any degree of interest. I don't care enough to die. I merely am... or perhaps am not. Perhaps I am dead. Perhaps this is eternity, with all its weightlessness and lack of consequences. Numbness. I thought about cutting; just to see if pain still existed. I thought about stopping the medication; just to see if the terrors came out.

I'm sitting, staring, trying to remember. Trying to think, but it's all fog and water. Bright and remote through the keyhole of a locked door.

02:55 pm: Apparently, the Office Of National Statistics is sending someone to interview us regarding our opinions on the state of the nation. Oh dear. As ever, part of me is anxious to mouth off, and the rest of me doesn't give a damn. I know that Stephen is positively gagging to say something deeply controversial, probably regarding his desire to assassinate the current prime minister. I can just see the interviewer shifting uncomfortably in his seat before moving swiftly on to the next question.

What could I say in response to questions regarding politics and law anyway? What possible way have I of communicating the sheer volume of the anger and despair that paralyse me every time I hear a news broadcast? In Biblical times, mourning was expressed in the tearing of garments and of the shaving of hair. Now we have words and tears... neither of which can translate the violence of the grief that stalks me. I want to rip myself apart; tear from sternum to pelvis; expose the depth of my anguish and disgust.

In response to whatever nonsensical idea I was vociferously pursuing last night, Stephen suggested that I might have spent too much time alone of late. Admittedly, he mentioned it in jest, though I dare say he has a point. On reflection, I've been wandering around in pyjamas for at least a week and a half now, and haven't left the house in that time either. Personally, I don't see this as a problem. There's nowhere I want to go and nothing worth getting dressed for. Surely, therefore, it's quite logical to stay in? I don't understand why so few seem to grasp the concept.

10:30 pm: I am caught between restlessness and hopelessness as I search for a suitable postgraduate course to divert and inspire Stephen. I don't understand why I am quite so anxious to have him set out to teach or lecture... though it is evident to me that it is one of the few paid occupations in which he is not only capable of performing, but which will offer him some degree of satisfaction. I crave a sense of peace for him... and probably for myself as well, as though I hope that contentment might be acquired vicariously.

What is the point in hope anyway? Is it not merely a delusion by which we gain the capacity to function in a bleak world?... And, if so, what is the benefit in functioning when its roots are grounded in deception? With hope comes consolation. A vacant, opiate-laced sleep. A retreat, but not a life.

Is that what everyone is seeking? A path into what they believe life to be? It seems to elude them all. It hides behind the next pay check, birthday, job, achievement or possession. But when can one truly stand in the present and say: "This is it. Everything I wanted and have aspired to has come to fruition." The thought strikes a cold fear into my heart. It draws close to my notion of hell.

Perhaps hope is merely a dividing line. One that hovers enticingly in front of the majority, but which leaves others trailing at the tail end of its wake... barely able to discern it on the horizon, and resigned to their perpetual inability to catch it up. Maybe it leaves us all behind by degrees; returning to stand at the ends of our death beds before regurgitating all the desires that we failed to realise. Yet still it offersa handful of longings close enough to make them seem reachable. A proffered miracle before we wheeze out our last breath.

So is hope a cruelty or a kindness? I would venture that it is neither. Merely the means necessary to keep us from the hell that we all so eagerly pursue.