Chemical-Induced Madness

Urgh that was a depressing performance, and I just got chased out of my room by a bunch of mosquitoes. Hopefully the parting salvo of repellant will do the job and I'll have a bed for the night.

Oh and I may be depressed, perhaps due to this medicine I'm taking for my acne, which still persistently refuses to go away, and may actually be getting worse, in no small part due to the dust, grease and dirt I face everyday. It was a weird moment, as I sat there in the bunk, finding myself getting frustrated and pissed, more than I usually do at the usual playful jabs and at other more serious incidents which I would normally have approached more calmly. It took some self-control to collect myself and give myself the metaphorical long, hard look. Was it simply a bout of foul mood that I was experiencing, or was it something more? Was the paranoia and constantly suspecting my bunkmate's motives - there'd been a theft of $100 earlier this week, not my money - while thinking that everyone was out to get me my usual cynicism at work or something else? The period happened to coincide perfectly with the time I had started to increase my dosage, and as I leafed through the potential side-effects of the drug, I found the psychological effects pretty striking. So, was that it? I don't like the idea of blaming such things on external factors, and I'd taken it before without experiencing something similar, but I don't think I was behaving and thinking like myself, and having pretty frequent headaches as well. It was pretty damning. And isn't it scary? You believe in self-determination, in having control over your own thoughts and actions, yet are forced to realize that they can be influenced by the smallest of things, perhaps a miniscule amount of chemicals flowing through your blood. It's frightening to think how little control one may have over himself. There are so many things that affect a person, genetics, the way neurons in his brain are linked to one another, the expression of certain genes resulting in the production of certain chemicals by the cells in his body which determine the way in which he reacts to his environment. There's certainly alot more factors to it, but I can't help but pose the question: Are our thoughts and actions really our own, or are we simply being driven to a forgone conclusion?

Anyways, I shall work at a more conscious level of self-control, and perhaps attempt to halt myself when I find myself on that all-too-familiar downward spiral of thoughts and emotions. Sitting at home myself for much of the day, just chilling has been a great help, I think :)

Somedays I wake up, a crazy idea at the foremost portion of my thoughts, just waiting to burst out, and sometimes it does. Yet other times I give pause to that reckless part of myself and allow the day to pass me by, stamping that moment of craziness surely and steadily into the ground. Who's to say whether that's for better or for worse, eh?

I'm disappointed. In myself. It's not about the score anymore, cause it's really gotten to the point where there isn't much of a performance to look forward to in the Nats any longer. I don't really care about the medal that I won't get. And I know that I haven't trained for a week. But never did I expect my condition to be so horrible, to not be able to get it right at all. And after that, allowing myself to be so distracted by it that I couldn't even pull myself together to salvage the rest of it. I'm only glad that it wasn't the real thing; I don't think I could stand a repeat of last year's events.

Maybe another way to look at it would be to try to work on the weaknesses that surfaced today; and I've duly noted them, mentally, at least. But it's a daunting task that awaits, made even more so by the pressing lack of time. So much to do, and I don't know whether my spirit's up to the task. I'll have to tap upon more reserves in the coming 3 weeks. And to be honest, for the first time, I'm really unsure about whether my heart's in this.

I've got to get myself sorted out before this goes any further!