home journals

Bob Flanagan
Pain Journal

[january] [february] [march] [april] [may] [june] [july] [august]

March

My irritability and depression is amok. I feel like crying all the time. My computer keeps crashing, which is exactly how I feel. I've been off antidepressants since Christmas. Time to go back? I guess. Will it help? Is all this oxygen related? I've got it up to 3 liters. Too much? Not enough? Who knows. The TV is on but I can't hear it because I've got ear plugs in my ears to block out Sheree's snoring. I want to run upstairs and fiddle with the computer to get it working again so at least something's back on track, but it's too late (4 am). I was asleep but I woke up an hour ago with an awful stomach ache and the usual heart ache. Don't know what to do with myself. Took a couple of anti-anxiety pills, Oxazepams, but they only make me sleepy, so now I'm sleepy and anxious. I guess I'm really into the pills now. The age old quest for happy pills. But there ain't none. My body throbs with unhappiness. It's like a big weight, a giant distraction all the time. So I'm always annoyed by it, antagonized from the minute I wake up, till the time I finally go to sleep-doesn't leave room for much of anything else.

*

Up again at 3 am-what gives? Sound asleep since 11. Up at 3, no matter what. Thought I'd escape writing tonight, but found myself mulling over why it is I don't like pain anymore. I have this performance to do on April 1st, and I'm shying away from doing or having SM stuff done to me because pain and the thought of pain mostly just irritates and annoys me rather than turns me on. But I miss my masochistic self. I hate this person I've become. And what about my reputation? Everything I say to people is all a lie, or at least two years too late-what the . . . ? It's not 3 am. It's only 1:30. Can't even tell time. I knew it had to be earlier because the TV shows were all wrong.

[january] [february] [march] [april] [may] [june] [july] [august]