My spirit is burnt and there’s blood on my hands
The more I’m down, the less I under­stand
Once so found, now so lost
I ask no ques­tions,
It’s just one more bridge to cross

—Black Label Society, Bridge To Cross

I feel like a com­plete wreck. Between the dead­lines at work are the con­stant fires I’m respon­si­ble for putting out that slow my progress to a halt. My office is a flurry of paper drafts, com­puter parts, mis­cel­la­neous boxes, and to-do reminders. Concentration is dif­fi­cult because I’m start­ing to get lethar­gic and weak. I haven’t eaten any­thing decent in a week, although I seem to be stom­ach­ing cer­tain foods bet­ter today. I left work early to see a doc­tor at the walk-in clinic, only to find out that the vol­ume of patients had already exceeded the avail­able busi­ness hours for the day. I feel so help­less when I’m sick. All I can do is put the right things in my body, keep the wrong things out, and wait for my immune sys­tem to catch up. It’s tor­tu­ously frustrating.

John changed his avail­abil­ity at the wed­ding after I already requested that Tom squeeze him in. This not only reflects very poorly on me when I have to ask Tom to change his plans again, but also means that one of the only peo­ple who could save me won’t be there. I’m going to this wed­ding as a spe­cial favour to Tom (the rea­son for which I’ve cho­sen not to dis­cuss until after­ward) because I respect him and want to sup­port him, and that’s more impor­tant than any­thing else. Even Aaron seems to be break­ing my balls today, but I’m try­ing to assume that it’s just me.

For the first time in my life, I snapped out­right. A com­pletely unex­pected, phys­i­cal, vio­lent outburst.

Thumbnail: Counterstrike massacre 

To calm myself down, I bought an M249 Para, a Fabrique Nationale Five-SeveN (20 rounds a mag­a­zine make this a per­sonal favourite), some kel­var, and perched atop a tac­ti­cal stair­case, guard­ing myself against an army of knife wield­ing ene­mies. I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t help, if only for a lit­tle bit. 6x anti-aliasing isn’t hard to look at either.

I’m try­ing to be stoic, but it’s dif­fi­cult when I’m not only men­tally, but phys­i­cally drained as well. All I need to do is make it through the month. One day at a time.