Because fuck.

Fuck mania, or mixed episodes, or whatever the hell this swing I’ve been stuck in for days is. And fuck not having access to Mental Health services because I don’t have the right insurance, and fuck anyone who can, with good conscience, turn someone away when they’re practically begging for your help. The only option as this point would be to go the ER for an evaluation, but even then, fuck that, because sometimes they’ll stay turn you away (because they obviously know what you’re going better than you do, right??) and also, they make you sit in the most depressing room for fucking hours on end. Honestly, it’s fucked how the only way you’d actually access super-immediate intervention is if you actually hurt, or try to kill yourself. What kind of fucked up Mental Health system is this?

Also, fuck the health clinic that tried to refuse me services today because I’m on pain medication. Without even asking why I’m taking this kind of medication, or verifying if someone else is prescribing me, just assuming (I guess?) that I’m going to show up asking them refills. Surely I couldn’t be trying to schedule an appointment for an entirely different fucking reason, but nope, she’s on pain medication, we don’t want to deal with her. The fucking druggie. (Not their words, just how they made me feel.) All I was wanting was to have my psych meds evaluated, and to help them get me stable since I can’t get in with an actual psychiatrist at the moment. After I explained that the pain medicine is being prescribed by my rheumatologist (for a serious, chronic and very painful disease, might I add), they agreed to take me on as a client, but honestly, I’m almost to the point of saying fuck it, because why would I want them to manage any of my care at this point? The judgmental fucks.

I forgot how therapeutic writing can be. I honestly did. I’m always so busy analyzing every little thing I say, and how I say it, the words I choose, the punctuation I use, every single little fucking thing, because I have to be prefect, or else there’s this unrelenting anxiety that nags and nags and nags at me until I edit edit edit and re-edit and edit and edit and then just end up fucking deleting it, because fuck it. (Why do I even bother?) But fuck it. Because with the mania (or whatever) raging, I just need to fucking type some shit out, release these thoughts into the world… so suck it, OCD or anxiety or whatever the fucking fuck you are. I hate you. Stop taking the good things from my life. Stop holding me back from EVERY SINGLE THING.

Also, I’m not so completely delusional as to understand that I’m probably sounding somewhat unstable in this entry, or at the very least I feel fucking unstable as I’m writing all this shit, but… ya know. Better to get it out than to just leave the thoughts to twist and multiply and swarm like these annoying ass angry bees. FUCK.

I don’t feel like myself. I don’t know who this girl is, but in some ways I guess maybe I like this me better. I don’t know. But I’m finally not holding back and it feels good. I know this mania-mixed-episode-whatever-the-fuck is not good for me, I know, and I don’t feel great, it feels really awful, but this part, the writing, and doing something other than the same old shit feels good. It’s like, I’ve been falling falling falling, and now, my fingers are flying flying flying over the keyboard and it’s so incredibly fucking freeing. Like a breath after I’ve been under the water for so so long. Maybe I should go all out and try to write a fucking book while I’m at this, because if ever there was a time, maybe it’s right now.

And I could go on and like this for fifty more paragraphs I’m sure, but there’s probably other things I could (should?) be doing that might help me tame this better, because at this point maybe this is fueling a fire a bit more than when I started, so I don’t even know.

Also, I’m not proof-reading this, which is a first. And I’m sure I’ll be back to do so at some point, but for now. Nope. Not happening.

Maybe. (But probably not.)

I hate the way I start and stop things; how something can be everything to me, and then it’s just nothing again. I have this drive to do things — to achieve something with my life, whether it’s helping people or even just something as simple as writing book reviews because it makes me happy.

But I cannot follow through with anything. Ever.

What’s the point of having these goals, and dreams, and whatever the hell else these ideas are swimming around in my head? I will never achieve the things I want in life. I am incapable of sticking to the script. I may give up, and then convince myself to come back, but eventually I’ll give up again. It’s what I do. What I’ve always done.

There’s a story in me — I’m thinking Young Adult fiction. The edgy, dark kind. Something I can use my own experiences to shape. Possibly something written in verse. I want it bad. But…

If I could — then what? I’m afraid of putting myself on display; I could string myself up with dazzling lights, a Christmas tree decorated this way or that, but wouldn’t someone still find fault with me, no matter what I did? I can never be perfect enough– not for myself, and not for anyone else. And I don’t know if that’s something I can ever truly allow myself to accept.

I’m trying to test the waters. Writing short book reviews every now and then– putting my thoughts out there, even though I don’t see why anyone should really care what I have to say about anything. Who am I, really? Why should my opinion matter in the slightest?

It doesn’t.

But I want it to.

I want to do something with my life. I don’t want this all to slip through my fingers. I don’t want to have to look back on this years from now with an ache of regret in my heart. I don’t want to end up thinking I wasted my life because I was too afraid to take risks. But fuck. I’m so scared.

Even wanting things is dangerous for me. I feel like I’m setting myself up for even more failure. If I could just pretend that I didn’t want more, that I was content with all this nothingness… but I’m not. I need to leave an imprint. I need to be heard.

Maybe this is just 5am-going-on-6am-manic-mumbling. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe I just really really need sleep.

Or maybe.. maybe…

But no, probably not.

More questions than answers.

I made it through my brother’s wedding. Somehow. And okay– I’ll bite and admit that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Now if only there wasn’t this agonizing wait until they get the picture package from their photographer back, where my mind is already practicing for the confrontation on how I–with all my ugly awkwardness and that awful, unnatural smile of mine–ruined their official wedding photos.

Sigh.

I won’t lie and say I didn’t have a bit of extra confidence at the wedding. I’d found a dress I felt comfortable in, got my make-up to look nice and had my hair professionally styled. Little things, I know, but they add up. Plus there was the alcohol.

But those damn photos. They’re nagging at me.

And it wasn’t even as awkward seeing some of my aunts, uncles and cousins as I thought it would be. These are people I haven’t seen in years. And yet… I managed to make small talk with even a little bit of ease. Granted, the alcohol helped, but maybe a small part of it was me? Maybe I’m not so far removed from the world that I’ve forgotten how to interact like I told myself I had?

Towards the end of the reception, my uncle commented on how it was so nice to see me so happy. It caught me completely off guard. Because… wait. What? I don’t feel happy. But he saw something there. Something I can’t see myself. And then the next day, my brother commented on how nice it was to see me so happy at his wedding. It was weird. Was it just the alcohol streaming through my system that made me seem like a different, bubbly person? Or could I be making some sort of progress?

The wedding left me with more questions than answers. It was so far out of my comfort zone, and yet I managed to get through it. How? And then there’s the fact that I’m now craving some sort of relationship with my brother. We’ve never been close, but now.. I don’t know. I guess I wish things were different. I guess maybe I wish I could be a part of his life. Maybe, in some ways, I’m finally growing up.

I never asked to play this game of ‘Life’.

I’m not okay. And if I don’t do something, if I just continue to let this depression feed off itself, I’m going end up doing something I regret. So. Here I am. Wanting so bad to self-destruct, yet still finding that there’s that little voice at the back on my mind, urging me to just hold on. Fight.

The thing about this battle is that I’m the only who can see the damage. I can tell you I’m hurting. I can tell you that I’m trying so hard to just be okay. But ultimately, this is mine alone to fight. I can’t make you understand the whirlwind that is my mind. I can’t explain the way my mind twists things, making them out to be worse than what they probably are. I can’t transfer the feelings of overwhelming anxiety to you, can’t give you that taste of what it’s like to be me. I have only words, and it seems those are failing me.

This depression, this stress, this need to be perfect in every single way, even knowing that perfection is a lie–an illusion I’m chasing while knowing–knowing!–I’ll never catch it, is unraveling me. I’m in fight or flight mode. Instead of reassuring myself that I can get through this, I’m actively pursuing the thought that surely killing myself is the lesser or the two evils. I don’t mean to be so morbid all the time, it’s just the way the gears turn for me.

But still. I can’t make you understand. And maybe that’s the part that will ultimately break me… having to live in a world where my thoughts and feelings are exclusively mine, yet where I’m still expected–forced even–to play be everyone else’s rules.

All the ways in which I’m selfish.

We fought again yesterday. Over money, and how I need a dress to wear to my brother’s wedding.

Tensions were already running high. We’d been going from thrift store to thrift store, in hunt of wedding-appropriate attire. Nothing fit — which is nothing new, but still.

Shopping is a huge trigger for me. I’ve gone from being underweight to being overweight, and every little reminder of this–of my what, inability to even starve myself right? God. That sounds so pathetic and just plain wrong to even say. But there it is. Every little reminder leaves a new scar, not the kind you can see–no, nothing that obvious, not anymore–but the kind that sting just the same.

So, okay. I was in a mood. But I was trying so hard to hold it together. I was.

But then he had to make a comment about how now we’ll have to spend a lot on a dress, and don’t I realize that there are more important things, like the rent? And I’m trying not to hold it against him, because I don’t think he meant to hurt me. But this is important to me. And I wish he could understand that.

This wedding–I’ll just come out and say it. I don’t want to go to the wedding. I don’t want to go to my own brother’s wedding. Maybe that makes me a horrible person. So be it. (But I do have my reasons, I swear. More than just the fact that I’m embarrassed by my weight. So much more.)

So, I don’t know. I just though I’d feel better about myself if I had a nice dress to wear at least. I don’t even have any dressy clothes, aside from one skirt, but it’s not flattering at all. My mom even sent us some money to get nice clothes with, so I don’t understand why he’s even making it out like I’m being selfish to choose to want to have something nice to wear to the wedding.

But I was already upset, and so I took him attacking me on a very personal level. I told him that fine, fuck it, I’m not going to the stupid wedding. And then there I was, being selfish again. 

He doesn’t understand that I can’t stand the sight of myself. I look into the mirror and everything about me is wrong in one way or another. And now I have to go to this wedding, where everyone will be dressed up and looking nice and is it so wrong that I just want to look nice too? I can’t change the way I look, or how much I weigh, but I can at least find something to wear that might help me to feel a little bit better about myself. Maybe.

But now I’m being made to feel guilty for this too. And I don’t know. Am I a horrible, selfish person?

Reflecting.

I’m supposed to be reflecting. Looking back for answers as to why I am the way I am. More specifically, why I hate myself so much, and where exactly this self-loathing originated from.

Memories are a tricky thing for me. Where my partner can recall specific ages, and certain things linked to those ages, such as his teachers names and where he had his birthday parties, I find only blank space.

It’s not that I don’t remember anything. I have snippets here and there. But no real, complete picture of my life before the age of fourteen. Which, even that seems murky. I don’t know why fourteen sticks out at me. And it doesn’t feel concrete. It’s just sort of a hunch that that’s when things started to get bad. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But when anyone asks when everything started with me, I always start there.

I don’t know whether I had a happy or unhappy childhood. And I don’t understand how I can’t know that. There have been suggestions, by numerous different therapists and doctors, that something traumatic could have happened, something that’s causing this absence of memories. I don’t know. I try not to think about it. Ignorance is bliss, right?

And so, when I try to remember a time when I was unhappy with myself, I of course come back to fourteen. Whether I was actually this age or not, I’ll never know.

I don’t even so much as remember experiencing this feeling, but more so that I know I thought I was fat, and thought my love-handles looked huge. I told myself I need to lose 10lbs. I was nowhere near overweight — I was somewhere along the lower end of what would have been a healthy weight for my height.

It was just supposed to be a diet. And here’s where things start to blur again — because I don’t remember how it spiraled out of control. Only that it did.

I also associate fourteen with when I started to self-harm. Again, I don’t know if I can trust this, but I don’t know that I can’t either. I remember sitting in bed, with a notebook in my lap, scribbling “It’s all my fault” over and over as I tried to concentrate more on the pain of the screwdriver scraping against my wrist then the fact that they were shouting at each other again. I’d hear my name tossed back and forth between them, a ball neither of them wanted to hold for long. I don’t remember anything else specific, just that I knew–or at least thought–that I must be the reason my parents fought so much.

But where did it originate? Could this have been a learned behavior? My mom is much like myself. While she refuses to see any kind of doctor–a phobia she acquired after losing her mom at the age of twelve, which she blames on the doctor who was treating her–it’s clear she has some type of Mental Illness.

In what little memories I can summon, she seems mostly unhappy. She’d cry a lot, yell about how everyone hated her, and even threatened suicide three times that I can remember.

Over the years, some of my therapists have suggested the possibility that she could also be suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, which I can see in her the way I see it in myself, almost like we’re mirror images of each other. I’ve always felt a strange sort of attachment to her. Like I need to protect her. Because she’s fragile, and maybe not meant for this world, same as me.

Maybe it’s the sum of these experiences, or maybe I’m missing the mark completely. I may never have the answers. But I have more to think about now. And that’s something.

Delusions.

Fighting for us has become such commonplace that my temper now rages for only a short while before simply mellowing out again, as if in acceptance. It’s not that I’m not upset anymore. I am. But I’ve somehow come to accept this crazy delusion that since we always work it out, this time will be no different.

Now stop for a minute. Because that’s completely fucked up, right? I should be trying to figure out how to mend this, not sitting here typing away like everything is perfectly okay.

The old me would be in tears right now. Begging begging begging for him to talk to me. To tell me he’s not leaving me. To reassure me that he still loves me.

But here I am, assuming that he’ll eventually come out of his office and apologize to me. When did I become okay with this–or more importantly–when did I become so numb to this?

I realize I sound like a heartless bitch right now. I’m not. If we were to not work this out, it would be break me in ways I would never be able to express.

But I’m just so used to it. Used to the fighting, the mood clashing, whatever you want to call it. I’m so used to it that I don’t even see it as a problem anymore, so much as an inconvenience. And I hate that it has to be this way. I do. I feel, without really feeling anything at all, like I should feel guilty. Ashamed of myself. Something. But no. I’m just an empty shell, emotionless.

Things I’ve noticed since decreasing my meds.

• Headaches. Really, really bad headaches. The kind ibuprofen can’t touch.

• A ‘floating’ sensation. Similar to how I would feel when I wouldn’t eat for several days in a row.

• Emotions that seem odd or unfamiliar to me. As if they are things I have never experienced before. Although more likely, it’s just been a long long time since I have.

• Increased energy. Sometimes on a manic-level, but often leaning more towards a productive type energy.

• Less need for sleep. I haven’t taken a nap–which has been almost a daily norm for me–since cutting my doses.

Can I make an attempt at normal?

Looks like I will be joining a Book Club in September. An in-person Book Club. Meaning I have from now until mid-September to somehow learn how to socialize without making a fool of myself. I generally avoid people, and especially group activities: partially because I’m an introvert, and mostly just because people terrify me. I don’t really have any friends, and I don’t go out unless it’s with my partner. He’s sort of like my safety blanket.

This will be a huge step away from my comfort zone. I always hoped a time would come where I would feel “ready” to tackle something like this. But I’m not sure if I’ll ever truly feel ready so I guess that’s why I’m just sort of diving in.

It’s not that I’m afraid of the actual Book Club, but rather the whole having to make small talk thing, and answering questions about myself. Being introduced as the ‘new girl’ when they all already know each other. Having to remember to smile, when a frown is my default setting. And then there’s the part where I worry about what they must think of me, and about what I look like, and about how much I weigh, and about what I’m wearing, and about my laugh, and the sound of my voice, and about what my opinions are on said book.

I know I’m overthinking this, but it’s what I do. And I guess I’m hoping if I write it all down here, then somehow I’ll have to commit to this. Because maybe deep down I really do crave real-life connections.

The med weaning process begins.

Last night began the weaning of my meds. Out of the five, three were cut into half doses: Lithium, Latuda and Trazodone. And while I like to think I’m doing this for me, maybe I’m doing it more so for him. Or maybe I’m just talking myself into believing that I’m doing it for him because I’m unsure of my decision and don’t want to be held responsible for any of a long list of things that could go wrong.

I could very quickly spiral out of control. My mood swings could increase. I could start to have hallucinations again. I could lapse back into psychotic episodes. I could start to lash out at him again. This could ruin my relationship. This could ruin me.

But I need to know if I can do this. Not just for me, or for him. I need to know if we’ll be able to start a family. These medications are not safe to take during pregnancy. I have to learn how to cope, how to live without them. But how do you even being to start again after nine long years? I don’t even know who I am anymore. What is me? And what part is simply the chemicals working in my brain?