It�s half past four in the morning. I haven�t slept. I have tried with no success. I just purged and for some reason I can�t stop shaking. After a college trip to France and Belgium through Thursday and Friday I was doing slightly better with this, having to follow a routine of being active during the day and resting at night, although it has not lasted.

We went to Ypres and The Somme, to the war memorials and battlefields. It was indescribable, really eye-opening, everyone was extremely moved. We visited both the English and German cemeteries, the former with gravestones as white soldiers on command, and yet the latter holding only flat black stones for so many men. We sought out the inscriptions of those with our own surnames, I found my own carved against a back wall and left a poppy nearby. Friday morning it was bitterly cold as we stood at The Somme, in a mass grave that still hold skeletons deep within soil, we watched out from the trenches they would have departed from, and yet they we�re charging against death and we were not. It makes you realise just what you have, and of course the guilt is inevitable.

I�m not doing too well really. I am not at all. I am so worried about college. I didn�t attend a single class last week and looking at the clock right now I don�t know how I�m going to feel up to it in the morning. I have a lot of course work to hand in, a lot to actually complete. I am under expectation and demand, which is perfectly reasonable, but I�m finding it so difficult to keep up. My head just won�t work properly. I have no idea what I am doing or how I am going to get through the next few weeks or so, I just want to give up.

I feel awful and yet I feel I have no right to be like this. I always look so miserable in photos, what is wrong with me? Why can�t I just pull myself together? There are no answers, just circles spinning round and round. I cannot function. These words are as useless as I am.

Shut your eyes to black
&
Pretend you aren�t falling.