Lately I feel like I'm going insane. That's not hyperbole, I really feel I've driven several miles down the highway leading straight to the town square of Mental Illnessville. Oh sure, part of the reason for that feeling is because I'm a woman and everyone knows that all women are cracked. We know this because men have scientifically discovered that vaginas are the factories where crazy is made. And no one, least of all a woman, can argue with such things as science. The other reason for my crazy can probably be chalked up to the fact that I haven't slept for days and I'm probably totally gluten-poisoned (what? it's a real thing) right now. Or perhaps, just maybe, it's because most people are horrible and my face is really dumb. Does it really matter why, though? I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Feeling insane when you very desperately need to keep it together isn't as enjoyable as you, sane person, might imagine it to be. Sure it looks all punk rock and romantic when Edgar Allen Poe (who allegedly died of "brain congestion" which is a perfect description for what I'm feeling right now) and van Gogh did it, but in the throes of the mania it feels different. Less awesome. It hurts when you cut off your own ear, for one thing, and the wave of immediate crushing regret that washes over you like an alcoholic's bile is also less than pleasant. After the thrill of I CUT MY FUCKING EAR OFF I AM A GOLDEN ONE-EARED GOD! you're just ear-less and alone in a cold world where people look askance at ear-free people. Plus you hear like 50% less sounds.

The problem is even if you have a legitimate reason for feeling crazy and you know what that reason is, it doesn't change the fact that you are still going insane. You can tell yourself all day long that what you think you see isn't actually reality, except what you see sort of is your reality even if it's not real.

This inevitably leads you to start thinking that the loved ones who tell you what you're seeing isn't true are the real loonies and only YOU see the truth. The beaten but not yet down for the count logical part of your mind will then step in to tell you the most likely explanation is you're the certifiable one, not everyone else. That's when you have the sickening realisation you are possibly as mad as a March hare. How March hares got the reputation for madness is a story for another day.

Once you've accepted you're the wacky one of the bunch, you have to try to ignore the hateful thoughts that burble up inside you like bat stew in a witch's cauldron, boiling up in your face at the most inconvenient times such as when you're supposed to be polite to the patron you would rather beat with his own shoe and you must instead pretend everything is A-OK! but inside you want to hurt yourself or someone else or just break everything breakable you can put your hands on, or cry until you hate yourself for crying.

Then as an extra 'fuck you!', your brain has a brief moment of sense and you will look at yourself and wonder what the fuck, just what the fuck is wrong with you??? You're not a Chilean miner, for fuck's sake. You live on Easy Street. There are people with real problems and you aren't one of them. That's when the shame comes in, which makes you continue to want to throw things at your own face, just for different reasons now.

And you get up the next day from yet another sleepless night and the horrible thoughts start again and you just want to run away from your life. But instead you write down this embarrassing shit and hope people won't laugh at you/be frightened of you/hate you/have you committed.

Whilst writing out your feelings (gag) you also try to cheer yourself with little two-piece Halloween fun packs of Starbursts until you tear open 50 packets only to realise that every godforsaken candy is RED OR PINK WHEN YOU ONLY LIKE THE ORANGES AND YELLOWS. So you crumple to the floor and lie there surrounded by Starburst wrappers and you contemplate making someone pay for this insolence. Then you pick yourself up and draw an MS Paint picture instead to make this all seem silly so people don't think you are going to jump off a bridge.


An Insomniac's Gluten-induced Delusions Expressed in MS Pain...t
This is a face on insomnia and gluten. Note the moon-like quality of the head as it threatens to lift off into space and enter Earth's rotational pull. The atmosphere around this moon appears to be made of pure frizz. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul and these windows show us a blood-shot soul filled with frazzle and many desires to punch. Did this poor soul, in a sleepy fog, put purple eyeshadow under the eyes instead of on the lids? No, it's just that when the Sandman decides not to sprinkle sand in your eyes so you can blessedly sleep, he instead applies a rifle butt to each eye just to let you know he fucking hates you. And then you wake up and squeal with glee when you realise you have to go to work looking like a drunken Irishman's wife after being taught a lesson for yelling at him for losing the rent on the pokies. (That's a slot machine to you poor unfortunate non-Aussies.)

Haha see because all Irishmen are wife-beating drunks that gamble! It's okay to make up untruths about the Irish because they are pale and have a high incidence of gingers.

When one isn't sleep deprived, one's eyebrows seem even and approximately the same, but not on Day 3 of No Sleepageddon. Oh no. They're like two totally different eyebrows, as if one brow was unceremoniously ripped from someone else and then sewed to your unfortunate face and TOO HIGH AT THAT, FRANKENBROW. Way too high. Which makes one seem inquisitive and surprised, but only on one side. Which frankly comes off more as merely "unhinged".

Let's not even talk about the eyelashes. They're like...whatever.

What moon is complete without craters? On a normal day you would remember that everyone has pores and that they're supposedly beneficial to skin or some such nonsense, but today they look like you walked through a meteor shower with your face. Who needs a hot tub? Just boil some water, pour it in and hop into a luxurious spa made entirely from a pore. Bring friends and Bud Lights. Do it up right.

Don't worry, if you don't sleep for days it's not going to turn your nose into a triangle. I just can't draw.

If you have Celiac Disease and somehow have eaten gluten, your lips will be chapped. As hell. The dead skin can actually form the word CHAPPED, as you see there.

You'll get the idea to draw your moon face lying in a pile of Starbursts filled with red and pink candies but your lack of drawing skills coupled with your lack of any semblance of patience mixed with constant interruptions from people who think you are supposed to do work will cause you to draw one Starburst package, realise it's too small to even fit the word Starburst on it, which has the effect of making you progressively and angrily write the letters bigger and bigger instead of erasing and drawing the package over again. You do this in lieu of hitting yourself in the head with a brush.

Labels: crazy, fuck gluten, gluten-poisoning hurts us all, insane, insomnia was invented by Hitler's balls, let's all attack gluten, let's stamp out gluten shall we, moonface, MS Paint is back again