Messy love is better than none, I guess. I am no authority on sane living.

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

Under the old system - which is now so archaic that a lot of people can't remember it - if you wanted money you had to go to the bank and take the money out in cash form, and you couldn't take out money that you didn't have. But with the credit card you can spend money you don't have, and that is just so tempting.

Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

One good maxim to keep in mind, and I can't remember who said it, "You meet the same people on the way down that you meet on the way up, but you're going the other way."