A Looking Glass into the Manically Depressed
*I tried journaling for a month to snapshot a period of my life. Here’s what happened.*
Thursday, October 8, 2020
I’ve been trying to read a book for sometime. I actually started reading it when I was a freshman in college. It’s called The Alchemist. Back before quarantine started, I used to go into bookstores and browse through all the shelves. I’d pick a couple random books and buy them to add to my miscellaneous collection at home. I’ve had the same copy of The Alchemist since my first year, and I remember buying it because I’d been told it was a book about philosophy. An allegory, all the literaries would say. I read the entire book except for the last few pages. The boy was pursuing his treasure and he was so close. I never knew if he found it or not.
Because I never finished reading the book. I never knew if he found his treasure. I wonder now why I never finished it, and if I really think about it, it’s just like the author himself said in the foreword. You become the boy. I was looking for my universal language, my Personal Legend, my treasure. Back then, I had no idea what that was. Wanting things for myself was so far out of reach, and I think I left the book’s ending open-ended for myself just in case he never found his treasure.
But come on, it’s a book, he probably has to in the end, right? And yet life’s not like that. So if I never knew, I wouldn’t have to pursue my Personal Legend and be disappointed if I come up empty-handed at the end.
I just finished reading the book tonight. I figured shit, I’m a senior in college now. I’ll probably read it with different eyes. And I did.
Spoiler. He finds his treasure. I thought it a little underwhelming, that the treasure was actually physical treasure, that it wasn’t some deep spiritual shit where it was about the journey the entire time and he didn’t need actual material wealth.
But some other parts resonated with me because I didn’t quite understand them. The language of the universe, that all humans, all organisms, all unliving things can understand without the need for spoken word. The idea that the universe will conspire to help you if you want to achieve your Personal Legend. That some people never find their Personal Legend. Simple facts, but it gave me a lot of food for thought.
Sunday, October 11, 2020
I had an outdoor picnic with my friend today and we got to talking about yoga and mindfulness. She told me about the different types of yoga there are, which is something I didn’t know before. I learned that I practice Ashtanga and Kundalini yoga, which helped me think more about the way I breathed and connected to the energies inside me.
Okay before I say anything more, journaling is weird. I keep feeling like I’m writing an article for the paper and need to hyperlink in context for terms like Ashtanga and Kundalini. But apparently journaling is for yourself so if someone else gets a hold of this and has a question, go search that shit up yourself. I know what Ashtanga and Kundalini are, and journaling is supposed to be about me.
Anyway, so my friend, she told me that she had gotten a mindfulness journal, that it helped center her in her daily life. It made me think about my life and the dimming core wrapped inside the functioning human being.
So I have decided to get a mindfulness journal. I bought it, thinking it would help me sit and be with myself.
Friday, October 16, 2020
My mindfulness journal came. To be quite honest, it’s been a rough couple of weeks mentally. I’m all over the place emotionally, too. Like…depressed, you know? But fuck if I admit it out loud. I fucking hate that word. Depressed. Stressed. Anxious. I really fucking hate all those words. It’s this odd aversion, but I just feel like society’s taken the meaning away from them. I second guess myself even though I INTRINSICALLY know I’m depressed. But am I actually? Or am I just making that shit up because life seems bleak?
Also excuse me for using italics and bold and capital letters. It’s just how my mind works and how I see words in my head.
I keep thinking about how good I was in September. I had so much energy, I honestly didn’t even sleep that much, and I was kind of fine? I was just so productive, and it kept me going, it made me feel good. But I felt the burnout settle in this month. Burnout.
I feel so irritable. I honestly can’t quite explain it. And sometimes I’ll criss cross and change, ilke one second I’m super irritable and I shut myself in my room. And sometimes I just want to be around people, even though people tire me out. That’s kind of how I see people too. They go in highs and lows for me, bouncing between love and hate. One minute I can’t stand the thought of being alone, I love people I want to be around my friends and then it’s like who are my friends ARE THEY ACTUALLY MY FRIENDS? Cue those words blowing up bigger and bigger in my head until I decide…Yeah I should probably get out of here before they get annoyed at me but the tables are flipped now? My skin is crawling I’m actually the one that’s irritated God they’re talking so much it’s literally sapping the strength out of me but no keep that smile plastered keep nodding your head it’s fine you’re almost there you’ll be back in the safety of your cave room soon. Motherfuck. And it just keeps happening again and again, in the span of seconds, minutes, days, weeks. My mind is so tiresome. Is it possible to be tired of living in your own brain? I know I am. Perhaps if I could think linearly. But as you can see, I don’t. It’s all weird and jumbled up and circular.
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to “Security” by Stop Light Observations. I’ve been listening to it a lot, and he keeps singing, “Shit, why don’t I feel happy?” Hell if I know, but I feel the same way. And it eats me with guilt whenever I think like that.
I should probably open this mindfulness journal sitting in front of me. It’s practically begging to be opened. Open me and you’ll be one step closer to understanding yourself. You’ll be more in touch with yourself. Fine.
The first page asked me what I was grateful for. I flipped through more pages. A whole ass section just on gratitude. I mull it over. On the surface, yes I have so much to be grateful for. I remind myself all the time. I have a roof over my head, I have friends that care about me, I have food, I don’t have to worry about where I’m sleeping tomorrow night. All of my basic needs are met. But see here’s the hitch, right. I have everything now that I could’ve ever asked for. Things at home right now are good. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had with my family. I’m working a lot and saving up money. I’m exercising and taking care of my body.
And yet….none of it feels like it’s enough. There it is again, the age-long debate I’ve had about enough. Why is it that when i should be content I am still completely absolutely wholly unfulfilled?
I realize that I had just kept flipping through the journal without reading anything on the pages. I asked myself how I was feeling. Angry.
I slammed it shut.
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
It’s Wednesday of every odd week, so it’s therapy day for me. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with therapy. Over time, it turned more into a love-indifferent relationship. Lately, it’s been somewhere in the middle, and learning more toward indifference. The thrill of finding out some revelation of myself was gone. I was just bland. Flatline. I felt like my sessions had been kind of stagnant. I was having black-box thoughts again. I’ve been thinking about death quite often. Not as bad as I used to when I actively thought of ways to die. But just constantly turning over in the back of my mind how much I don’t want to be alive. Because everything is pointless. I had taught myself not to see it that way, but I forgot what that was like.
It was maybe 20 minutes into the session when I was going through my usual complaints about how bleak life was. About how guilty I felt for not being happy, for only being able to feel flickers of it sporadically. Being and feeling are two completely different things, mind you. I am often shameful, and because of that, I often feel shame. In the same vein, I can feel happiness. I’m just not happy.
One of the biggest revelations I had in the last few months was that I not only felt anger, but I actually was angry a lot of the time. The second big revelation was that the anger was usually directed toward myself.
Even as I’m writing this I feel like I’m complaining. And I have to actively reassure myself that I’m not. Usually I lose that battle and shut myself up. But in therapy I can’t. In therapy it’s called practice with vulnerability.
So 20 minutes into the session, my therapist tells me that there’s something she actually wants to discuss with me. Oh?
THERAPIST: Have you considered the possibility of bipolar disorder?
ME: are you fucking kidding me? No. Not in a while at least.
THERAPIST: What do you know about bipolar?
ME: I know it’s a cycle between manic and depressive episodes. That manic episodes manifest for a certain period of time before people with the disorder fall back down.
THERAPIST: Right. That’s the gist of it, sure. I wanted to talk to you not about the traditional bipolar. I wanted to talk about the possibility of bipolar II, or maybe cyclothymia.
ME: fucking Christ are we doing this again? It’s actually interesting you’re bringing this up now because my very first therapist diagnosed me with bipolar before I was officially diagnosed with borderline.
THERAPIST: Oh really? Can you tell me more about that?
ME: Yeah, after a bunch of sessions and he got a better sense of me — to be honest, I don’t think he really got me because he didn’t specialize in disorders. But anyway, he thought I had bipolar II. Right, because I don’t have textbook manic episodes like the DSM-V suggests. And that’s kind of why we stepped away from that too. My symptoms aligned much more with bpd, and I decided to focus on that when I transferred to this clinic. And the summer before I came to this clinic, I started medication because I was literally seeing things. My panic attacks made me feel like I was dying. So the whole bipolar bit just got swept under the rug. Oh, I remember something else. My first therapist did suggest that if I didn’t already have bipolar, I was very likely to develop it later on.
THERAPIST: And I also wanted to talk to you about medication.
ME: okay shit she’s really throwing me the kitchen sink and then some here i guess we really are fucking doing this again. *nonchalantly* Medication?
THERAPIST: Yes, I know you don’t want to be on medication again. You’ve made that very clear, but I still wanted to touch on it. This is in no way intended to pressure you into considering it, but just considering it. The symptoms you’ve been describing to me. They’re not getting better. In fact, your depression and even your anxiety sounds like it’s getting worse.
ME: Okay, but my depression and anxiety are still better than where they used to be. Isn’t that what matters?
THERAPIST: From what you’ve been telling me, it sounds like you’re struggling with things that are making the day-to-day hard. You have a lack of purpose and your sense of self is distorted. You don’t find joy in things and you spend most days contemplating the point in living.
ME: But that’s how I’ve always been. I just get like this sometimes. And I just really fucking hate how meds make me feel. It was so hard just finding a combination that worked for me. And when I did, I couldn’t afford it or take it consistently. I was on and off meds for a year and that actually fucked me up, not just me but it was hard for the people around me too. And the combination that worked for me was literally four different kinds of pills. Like Jesus Christ. It made my dissociation worse. I already don’t feel real, but taking pills from small orange bottles literally made me feel half-alive.
THERAPIST: I understand. I also want you to know why I’m bringing all this up. The mood swings you’re describing to me. And this temporary elevated sex drive. You’ve been talking a lot faster in some sessions, not the way you did when we first met. The thing with therapists is that we only get these snapshots of you. And especially with you, since you only come to therapy every other week, I don’t get much of an opportunity to see how you live day-to-day. And like I said, the mood swings you’re describing, they’re much too intense for someone with just borderline personality disorder. And the last few years, you’ve been wrestling and learning about your bpd diagnosis, so there wasn’t a lot of focus on other potential aspects of your mental health. Can you tell me a little more about why you might not think you’re bipolar?
ME: holy shit how does she know that’s what i think? So when I started seeing my first psychiatrist, she explained to me the concept of euthymia. To me, that’s how I always am. A flat line. Unfeeling, numb, far detached from reality. Everything happening around me doesn’t feel like it’s actually happening to ME. Euthymia is neither happiness nor sadness. I think I’m generally sad most of the time, but on the days when I’m not, I’m just that flat line. So my psychiatrist told me that sometimes when we come out of a depressive episode, we feel mania/hypomania even though it’s just euthymia — we’re just not used to anti-sadness. I guess I internalized that if I’m not sad, I’m in a constant state of euthymia.
THERAPIST: I see. Another piece that made me want to bring this up is because a few months ago, I think it was September. You were working a lot no? Did you get tired?
ME: In September? No. I thought I could do anything. I didn’t miss sleep. In fact, I didn’t really need it. But that’s kind of how I always thought it was with people you know. They work themselves to the bone and then burn out. And then they recharge, get that energy back and then do it all over again. And for me, I almost anticipate the burnout now so it’s like I’m trying to get everything I want to do done during those periods when I do have energy. But it was weird because it was not euthymia for sure. Like I keep telling myself when I get periods like that, it’s the coming out of the depression. But sometimes, you’re right. It feels more than that. It’s like almost the opposite of my depression. I feel on top of the world, like I can do anything I want. And I want to tackle everything, I love people. And then sometimes, I can’t fucking stand being around everyone. And the people are the same. They don’t change. It’s my view of them that shifts dramatically and it ping pongs back and forth between two extremes. My last therapist called that my ‘splitting.’ This coupled with my unstable sense of reality and myself really fuck with my head. Apparently those are all bpd things and it’s supposed to be exhausting. Because then I’m completely worn out and I don’t have that same energy anymore and look I’m depressed again. This whole time I thought it was burnout. I just…kind of crashed.
THERAPIST: *looks at me intently* *waits*
ME: *eyes widen as the realization hits me* Holy shit. When I was on meds, like when I was taking four meds at one time. I was on two bipolar medications. I remember now. One was a mood stabilizer and the other was an antipsychotic. And two other types of antis.
THERAPIST: And you said this was the best combination that worked for you?
ME: Yeah *nodding vigorously* It just kind of mellowed me out and I didn’t feel like myself. But yeah, shit it did work. The only combination that worked. Jesus fucking Christ.
THERAPIST: So with bipolar II, it’s a milder form of bipolar I because the episode lengths are different. People with bipolar II also experience hypomania, which is a milder form of manic episodes. They also tend to be more ‘manic depressive,’ which sounds more like what you’ve been describing to me. Living more often in the depressive state and coming out of it into hypomanic episodes occasionally. And if you want to contest the lengths, cyclothymia is a more cyclic form of bipolar.
ME: Holy shit.
THERAPIST: I just wanted to check in with you, Ella. How are you feeling about all this?
ME: how am i feeling? *mind is reeling, thoughts are going a million miles a minute but i’m not sure what i’m thinking or feeling* Nothing. You know. How I usually am. I know I’m supposed to feel all over the place right now or confused but I’m just numb. *laughs nervously*
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, October 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 2020
I haven’t been able to focus, because my mind keeps coming back to the new diagnosis. Back to square one? With bpd, it took over a year for me to acknowledge, not even ACCEPT, it took me a whole year to acknowledge and process the diagnosis. I’m in a better place now, I should be able to rationalize bipolar. I’m in a better place now.
That’s what I keep telling myself. That’s how I delude myself. I’m better now. Not like I used to be. I’ve made strides. I’ve made progress. I learned. I came to terms.
So why the fuck do I still feel so confused?
Could it be possible? Was I bipolar? I keep having these same back and forth conversations with myself. I can’t possibly be bipolar.
But it makes sense.
Am I making a big deal out of this? I’m just catastrophizing in my head. It’s just blowing up out of proportion.
But it could be me.
I can’t stop thinking about this. And I don’t know who the fuck I can tell. Like how do you even bring that up organically in a conversation. Hey, so I just found out in therapy that in addition to the whole slew of things I ALREADY have, there’s something else I didn’t know. Surprise! I’m bipolar too. (hah pun not intended, jesus)
The three people I found the courage to tell asked me how I felt about it. That’s the problem though. I don’t fucking know. I don’t want to have to know. I don’t want to have to be thinking about this.
I found out that 20% of people with bipolar II disorder are also diagnosed with bpd. So this isn’t a ridiculous notion. And this isn’t news to me either, I’d always known in the back of my mind that I could be bipolar. SO WHY THE FUCK IS IT BOTHERING ME SO MUCH??????????
I keep thinking about how I was in September. I’d never felt that way before. So….almost alive. The closest to living in the present as I’d ever felt. When my dissociation collided with the reality and everything around me vibrated in this pulsating, fervent feeling of LIVING. Of having the energy to conquer ANYTHING. Like I could do EVERYTHING.
Snippets of memories keep resurfacing, memories of when I was a kid, of when I was growing up, of different points in my life that were starting to make a little more sense after my conversation with my therapist. Why I had acted the way I did, that couldn’t be explained by just the bpd or depression or anxiety or complex -PTSD. The rising high highs and dropping to rock bottom low lows. And then flatlining.
It was hard for me to concentrate during yoga. It was hard to write. I caught myself picking up the pen, then putting it back down. I found myself jotting down phrases and words but something was keeping me from writing. Something inside me was all twisted up and I didn’t want to confront it.
These days passed by in a blur. I alternated between delusions I told myself were happening versus what was actually happening right in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? It’s hard to describe. But when I think back on those couple of days, I am not reminiscent of a feeling. All I get is a strange head rush.
I do remember one thing though. On Saturday, when I did yoga that morning, my instructor asked us to look for our heartbeat. That really stuck out to me, and I’m not entirely sure why yet.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Whenever I am feeling lost and bereft but don’t care to admit it, I call my big sister Katy. She’s known me since I was five. But she’s also known me as someone who hasn’t lived through my eyes. So she sees me in a way that I never learned to see myself.
I hadn’t had a heart-to-heart conversation like this with Katy in a long time. We’ve both been busy and it was hard to get our schedules to match for even a few hours. I sit at the dining table, poised in front of a plate of leftover hot pot. That’s the other thing. I’ve lost my appetite. I haven’t been hungry at all lately. I didn’t even notice.
When I hear Katy’s voice on the other line, a memory comes back to me.
~
I remember that day three years ago, during the summer, back when I was actually going a little crazy. And when I say going a little crazy, I mean that I imagined myself falling through my bed. I saw the walls waving around me, moving closer, closing around me before expanding again and giving me room to breathe. I was unsafe in my own room. I‘d fall through the ceiling, then crash through my walls again and again and again and again and again and again. But the whole time I was unmoving, my body was just prone on my bed. Watching the air turn into currents around me. Katy used to take me out every week that summer. I figured out a little later on that she did that to keep tabs on me. I asked her one of those days for wine, and before she handed the bottle to me, she said, just as long as you don’t use it for self-medicating
I won’t, I promise, I said.
~
I had promised. And three years later, with cuts all up my arms and probably thousands of bottles later, I had broken that promise countless times. But Katy doesn’t fault me for stuff like that. That makes one of us.
I explained to her the conservation with my therapist last week. She listened.
I told her about how I wasn’t happy, how the shame ate away inside me because I had convinced myself that if I couldn’t be happy with everything I already have, I probably didn’t deserve to be.
I told her about how things are good with my family. The core of my trauma, I had processed. Isn’t that all I’d ever wanted? But still, I am stagnant. I’m stuck. All the growth I felt like I had achieved in the first six months of quarantine had gone to waste. Because here I am again, in the same place, still *depressed* still *anxious* still sad. She listened, chiming in whenever she had an observation to contribute.
I was surprised. This entire time, she hadn’t questioned whether or not I actually was bipolar. She just took it matter-of-factly and treated it like I was. I told her that.
ME: I want to point out that you’re completely accepting of this whole bipolar concept. Like right now, I’m still disputing it. I don’t even know if I am.
KATY: How come? I’m just taking in everything you told me, and I’m comparing it to what you describe bipolar is and what I know about it. And it all seems to add up.
ME: But I’m having such a hard time seeing myself in that way. When I got diagnosed, it completely changed everything I thought I knew about myself. I’ve spent the last few days psychoanalyzing myself and everything. I’ll catch myself thinking in some way or doing something and I’ll ask myself what it is. Is it the bpd, could it be the bipolar? Is it just me?
KATY: Why do you think that’s the case?
ME: Well, see, last year when I went home to get acupuncture for my mental health, I briefly mentioned to my acupuncturist that I’d already been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. And he straight up waved me off and told me whatever it is I have it’s not that serious. That it could be treated. That I could be cured. And I did get better. Physically and it helped me spiritually and mentally and emotionally. At least for a while. And then what the fuck happened. I crashed again. And I realized that I had never accepted the fact that I had bpd. That it was me. And that I was it. And that it would always be me. And that I would always be it. If that makes sense? But now whenever I read the symptoms and criteria for diagnosis, I know it’s me. It has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense. That took me over a year. And now with bipolar, it’s kind of the same thing. I go about my day and it’s always just lingering in the back of my mind. Am I? Am I not? Could I be? Am I literally just bullshitting myself? And I’m like shit I’m better now, I can do BETTER. So why’s this still fucking with me so much?
KATY: You have to be careful when people gaslight you. And you have to be even more careful when you do it to yourself.
ME: oh my fucking god. Are you serious? You think he was gaslighting me?
KATY: In our culture especially, it’s a possibility. And I know you do it to yourself. You’re your own gatekeeper. You convince yourself what you have can’t be that serious, that it’s not that bad, that you’re making a big deal out of nothing. But it doesn’t change that it’s affecting you. And that you have it.
ME: You really think I’m bipolar? I’m just asking, because you’ve known me for so long.
KATY: From what you’re telling me and what I know about you, I think about the way I know you act, how you behave. And it seems to check the boxes. When you were telling me about it, it was like, “yup, sounds like the Ella, I know.” So no, I’m not surprised by this at all. It’s very real. But you’re standing in front of your own gateway.
ME: *laughs nervously* Well, fuck. I guess it is different. I like to think I’m self-aware. I’m very conscious of all of my thoughts at one time. I know what I’m supposed to be feeling. But it’s still different, the way I see myself and how other people see me.
KATY: You mentioned this bit about recklessness. You’re right, it is hard for you to see some things until you have the time to go back and reflect on it. Like in your first year of college, when you were going through your serial dating phase.
ME: Holy fuck, yeah. I don’t even fucking know how I did that. It sounds fucking exhausting now. I thought I was trying to get over heartbreak, but shit, when the opportunity presented itself to reconcile that, I didn’t even want it. But somehow I couldn’t seem to control this impulse. I put myself in circumstances where I was jumping from people to people and not in the safest situations. And it was like, yes my rationale is working…so why can’t I stop myself? Now I know I was projecting a lot of things onto other people. But also, sometimes, there’s just this voice in my head that sometimes makes me do things even when I don’t want to.
KATY: *nodding* Yeah, exactly. That’s the recklessness, and you don’t even notice it when it’s happening. And you said you function in cycles, you go through these phases where you have energy and work a lot-
ME: I do. And then I completely burn out and have no energy left. I thought it was just burnout. But it keeps happening. Here’s the wildest part though. I thought all people are just like this. Are normal people not this way?
KATY: *amused* *shakes head* No, they are not. People usually burn out from something. Like work. But yours isn’t burnout because it’s a state of being.
ME: *eyes widen* Jesus.
KATY: I know right, the things we learn about ourselves.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
I wasn’t hungry, and I almost skipped dinner. After a two-hour long internal fight, I forced myself to have some leftovers. See how conscious I am about that? How funny it is, being conscious you’re depressed but not being able to do anything about it. I knew it wasn’t healthy to not eat like I used to, so I tried a little, for my own sake. But I still felt tired and icky. Today, food was no solace. Today, I was just sad.
Friday, October 30, 2020
Shit went down at work. Honestly, looking back on it, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I completely understand why it turned into a big deal though, but it blew up out of hand, and I had to spend hours of my day dealing with it. I was on the phone with my bosses, constantly checking my phone to put our fires. I spent my entire six-hour shift doing damage control. The entire time, I was aware that no one was actually communicating with each other. Everyone was just saying what they wanted to say and talking over each other. And for some reason, it made me so angry. Like the boiling kind of angry I never like to admit I can feel. When it was all resolved, I simmered in my anger as I finished the rest of my tasks.
I stood in front of the imaging machine and I could feel my throat closing. I couldn’t breathe. I knew how to deal with this. I was used to this suffocation. I knew my anger was drowning me. Slow. Almost there. Just make it out in one piece. Then you can go home.
I came home and boiled longer in my anger as I finished the rest of my work. I decided to take a shower and douse the fire inside me. I listened to music as I stepped into the shower. I sat down in the middle of the bathtub and felt the rain drum against my back. I stared straight ahead, letting the faint notes of “First Class” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise flood into my ears. My eyes stung a little and I shut them tightly, like how I used to when I was a kid afraid of the water. I felt the water gather at my chin, eyes still stinging, wondering if I could set saltwater on fire. But to hell with that idea if I couldn’t even cry the way I used to. Because no matter how hard I look for the tears inside me, it seems like the fire dried them up long ago.
So then, I just decided I had been hiding away long enough so I got out of the shower and went about the rest of my day.
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
I tried to write today, but couldn’t. The air is cold, and it is laced faintly with nostalgia. I did have therapy today. I told her about my conversation with Katy. I told her I’m still depressed. But I wanted to distinguish today’s depression with others. So I described it like Dante’s Inferno, which has nine circles of hell.
My depression, like my thoughts, often comes in circles, or rings if you will. So it is ringed like Dante’s circles of hell. And today, I wasn’t that deep. Maybe just the third or fourth ring. The sadness is manageable, it doesn’t consume every fiber of time. Everything is just vaguely tainted with it. Two weeks ago, I was close to rock bottom. That’s when I begin to question the line between life and death.
I figured today in therapy, you know, i’m still not happy, but what the fuck, will I ever be? Probably shouldn’t worry about that right now. I did remember Katy’s suggestion at the end of our call. She suggested I track my moods and I brought up the suggestion to my therapist.
She said she was going to suggest that, so I took that as a sign from the universe. All of my therapists had suggested I try to track my moods, but I’d never been up for it until now. And if I’m going to start living like I was bipolar, I should probably be more conscious of all of my moods as they swing this way and that. Bipolar is a mood disorder after all.
I downloaded Daylio Journal, which is a journaling app. Journaling is still a fucking chore for me, so I stuck with the basics. I just cataloged my daily sleep and how I’m feeling that day. Since it’s hard for me to verbalize feelings, the app has little emoticons that you can customize with individual feelings. So you can stick with “happy, sad, shitty” and all that or you can change it to better represent you. I pondered over the categories of my daily mood fluctuations, and settled on, “awful, bad, meh, passing, and pretty good.”
Instead of writing, I read a book instead. Not started a book. I read an entire fucking book tonight. It was nice. I haven’t derived joy from reading since The Alchemist. In the book, the main character suffers a brain injury that leaves her an amnesiac for a period of time. She had been in a coma for a year and when she awoke, she was not only disoriented, but also she had to relearn many motor functions. What particularly struck me was how she relearned feelings. She would point at different faces that represented whatever she was feeling inside. She did this especially when she could not find the right words to express how something affected her.
I thought to myself, Mother fuck. I’m doing the same fucking thing.
Friday, November 6, 2020
Today, my friend did a tarot reading for me. He had done my October reading, and I got to thinking that I wouldn’t mind doing this every month. The reading was pretty freaky, and damn did it take a long time. I was lucky he was willing to pull so many cards to answer the questions my initial reading gave.
I kept pulling out Pentacles cards, which had to do with materialism. He asked me if I was worried about money, or if it was always on my mind. He asked this quizzically, like he was concerned.
“I think about money all the time,” I told him sheepishly. “I calculate everything down to the last dollar because I never want to be in a position where I’m financially unstable.”
“Okay, well, the cards are telling you not to worry. The cards are also telling you to let go of things that are not serving you. I remember this from your October reading too. You’re almost there. You’re going to reach a breakthrough. That’s what all the wands and swords are telling me. And you pulled a Death card in reverse. It means that you’re holding onto something, and it’s keeping you back from reaching this transformative experience,” he said. “And to do that, the cards are saying that you need to spend some time with yourself. And knowing you personally, you do. You need to stop. The Sun in reverse is literally telling you that you need to stop and rest and be with yourself. To figure out what’s not serving you. To figure out what you need to let go. To let yourself and allow yourself to reach the breakthrough you deserve.”
And every time I had a question to clarify, that’s what the cards kept telling me. To stop. To rest. To let go of what was not serving me. To be with myself. That I was almost there. To stop obsessive compulsive worries like money. To not be sneaky and lie to myself.
I was confused. I had no idea what I was holding onto. I don’t know where I’m headed, much less what transformation could possibly await me. But tarot cards don’t predict the future. They simply pull from the energies around them and guide you into the different pathways the universe has scrawled for you.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
The seasons are changing. I can feel it in the air. It is colder and the sky grows dark earlier. I used to hate this. I used to hate knowing that the rain was coming soon. The rain that took away my sun and deepened my rings of hell.
But this morning, I heard the rain drumming on the roof. Like the shower drumming against my back. I felt a strange sense of peace. The seasons are changing, and so am I. The winter may not be so dreary if I can remember that it is spring that comes after. And perhaps winter is cold and uninviting. But it envelops you all the same. Winter may be distant, but it’s not like the heat that sticks onto you and renders you motionless.
I think I can learn to love this change.
Sunday, November 8, 2020
I spent time with one of my oldest friends this weekend. Everything we did was for ourselves. We both have trouble with that, and I think we needed to remind each other that we matter. Because it’s sometimes hard to do that for yourself.
Before she left, I took her to Gliderport. I remember when I used to look out over these cliffs, at a different place in my mind, during a different time. I thought about how I used to come every summer night three years ago and look out over the cliffs, wishing they would swallow me into non-existence.
But today, when we went together, we were stronger. I was stronger. I was stronger than the wind threatening to blow me over. I was stronger than the cold biting at my skin. As we listened to the waves and watched the darkening sky, she talked about the weather.
“I am always reminded of how unapologetic Mother Nature is,” she said. “Mother Nature is allowed to be angry. She is allowed to be sad or happy.”
“The seasons, yes,” I murmured.
“But most of all, no matter how moody Mother Nature is, she just gets to be that way. What is anyone going to do about it? She’s Mother Nature. And I wish I could be that way,” my friend finished.
I thought about the ocean, of the lapping waves against the cliffs, of the currents that wash up the shores beneath. I imagined each wave as my mental illnesses. One after another, crashing into my safe harbor, wearing my walls down. Do we question ocean waves? We don’t because we can see them. We know they are there. Steady, unchanging, constant.
Perhaps instead of seeing the destructive quality of my illnesses and questioning the reality of their existence, I could recognize them for the consistency with which they stay in my life. We don’t know when the tides will hit the shore, but we know they will always come. We know they are always there.
That night, I spoke to my mother about gratitude. We talked about spirituality, and her words nourished my heart. She reminded me that gratitude is something we don’t always remember to have, that it must be an act we are aware of. That in connection to the rest of the universe, gratitude will always cycle and pass from person to spirit. But to feel gratitude is not easy. We have to calm ourselves in order to feel it.
Today, I was self-confident. I liked the way I looked and the way I dressed. I liked the conversations I had, and words were not too difficult to find. And when I used them, people listened. Also, I did not mind the face staring back at me before I went to bed.
Monday, November 9, 2020
I couldn’t sleep last night, so I didn’t get much rest. I’ve been pretty tired lately too, so I’m not entirely sure what it is. I haven’t been this bad in a while. I’m in the seventh ring, maybe the eighth today. I know I won’t have an appetite.
Do I get out of bed? It’s cold if I do. But shit, I’ll feel even sadder if I stay under the covers. I have to go to work later too. We have a new president, and there’s a potential coronavirus vaccine. So many things are happening, but it barely feels like I’m catching up. It’s like I fell back so many steps in just a single night.
I know the cycle is back in full swing. I pry myself out of my sheets and sit at my desk. I don’t have the energy to move anywhere else. I am reminded of the ocean waves and how easily my moods can change. I think about how mercurial I have always been, and how the years haven’t changed that one single bit.
I woke up feeling empty, like my heart was broken. But no one’s broken it. Nothing has broken it. It’s just in my head today, and it feels like I’m starting over from scratch. It feels like this every single time, but I hardly remember.
In fact, today is one of those days I don’t ever want to remember. But I have to, for myself. Not even to get better but just to understand. That this is how I am, and how I’ll always be. But shit. It feels like absolute dog shit.
I don’t feel safe with myself as I sit at my desk. I look at the mirrors on both sides of me and all I can do is sit here, completely numb. I think about blades and where I’ve hidden them. I feel the immediate urge to reach for one. I barely stop myself.
I don’t even want to shower, to cleanse myself. I do not feel like how I did just yesterday. And then I think about how my swings from hypomanic and depression are almost imperceptible; they slip in through the cracks. But fuck it, I’ve got shit to do. Why can’t I just be left alone? Fucking Mondays.
When I stand in front of the mirror, naked, forcing myself to shower, I register that my eyes are completely blank. I can see right through them. I step into the shower. The water crashes over me, submerging my head in makeshift ocean waves. But I don’t step out clean. I still feel dirty.
In the shower, I keep flashing back to every moment I woke up the night before. I spent the rest of the day feeling like someone was watching me, and my paranoia drove me up the wall. I kept looking over my shoulder, pacing, biting my lip, clenching my jaw.
A word flashed into my head. Healing. How could I have ever thought that I was healing when I was still capable of feeling this way? WHAT IS HEALING?
AM I? HAVE I EVER BEEN?
I spent the day consumed with thoughts of depression. I sat in my car for 20 minutes after I parked, because I was too lethargic to take the elevator upstairs.
Today, I am defeated. Today I spiraled…out of control? I’m still trying to figure that out. I’m still trying to write. I’m only capable of writing down phrases and bullet points, but not full sentences. Those are hard to string together because they require a coherent train of thought.
I think about the waves again. Today, my thoughts are not circular like usual. Instead, they are like the waves. The moon pulls the tides. That’s what controls the tides. What controls my mood swings?
Mother Nature does not cause the tides’ anger, but she does make the wind. She can make the tides angrier, spur them on, fuel their destruction. Could Mother Nature be bipolar too?
I’m better now.
That’s what I keep telling myself. But the erratic, impulsive, half-damaged person is still in me, as much as I don’t care to admit it. She’s the one pulling my tides.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
I had the apartment to myself tonight, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I’ve been wanting so badly to write, but I just haven’t been able to. It feels like the words are there, somewhere inside me, but there’s a lot of digging I have to do before I can unearth them. I’ve been dissociating all day, and even though my body isn’t tired, my mind is exhausted. I just want to sit here and stare off into space and let music wash over me.
So I sat on the couch and gently closed my eyes. I felt the tears prick in the corners of my eyes, but I knew I still wouldn’t be able to really cry. Not the long, shuddering sobs that would wrack my body. Just dainty half-tears, hinting at the infinite sadness inside me but hidden so deep that I can’t even find it.
I notice my gaze drifting out the window, even though it’s pitch black outside. I imagine myself standing on the top of my balcony, waiting for the wind to catch me. Would it? Or would it just let me drown in the concrete below? I can’t help but always look outward, especially when I feel trapped inside. Today, there is no deafening roar. My claustrophobia is manageable. But the outside, even though it is dark, still holds my attention.
I never felt like I had a reason to stay anywhere for a long time. I convinced myself that I always needed an escape plan. It’s vital to always know where the emergency exits are — in the case of an emergency, you have a way out. But for me, I just never wanted to overstay my welcome.
Focus.
I lock my eyes in one place and shut them again. I try harder to quiet my mind, but it’s hard when my thoughts are always trying to talk to me. It’d help if I knew what they were saying, but fuck if I do. Pretty ironic, isn’t it? My head is filled with thoughts racing all the time and yet I can’t even find the words to put on paper what’s going on inside me.
My body grows still on the couch and I’m aware of how slow my breath is. I watch myself piece words into sentences, trying to draft in my head what I want to write. But I am unable to, and I hear the frustration inside me, berating me, cussing me out. What a fucking chore to live inside this brain sometimes. Circular thoughts again.
I’m tired now and want to sleep. But I used up too much energy already and so I don’t know if I can make it off this couch to bed. Jesus Christ, I hope I don’t actually have to sleep here tonight. Fuck. I really hadn’t thought this through. Aw, well, if I do end up crashing out here in the living room tonight, it wouldn’t be the first time. And knowing me, probably won’t be my last time either anyway.
As I felt my eyes drift toward sleep, I heard my thoughts faintly. How strange. It sounded like they were praying.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
It is Monday all over again. I am lethargic. I can’t get out of bed, but also, unlike Monday, I slept a lot. Almost 12 hours. I muster the energy to make it to my desk again to write this all down. I think about the way I view time. I don’t think much anymore about what I want to do or if I even want to do something. It’s more often just a consideration of how much of my energy something will take up.
I had a crazy dream last night. I was back at Giraffe Learning Center. God, I haven’t been back there in years. I was just a kid when I went there. But there I was again. There was a little girl with me, and it seemed like we were competing against someone else — and the clock– to complete a series of tasks. I was comforting her, and I remember in the dream that she was hiding. She knew all of my hiding spots at Giraffe somehow. But I knew them too, and that’s how I found her. The last thing I remember from that dream was holding her as she cried, gazing at the clock as the time wound down. She was completing academic, mental tasks and my tasks were more laborious and physical. I remember trying to calm her and urge her to finish her test, finish her work, finish so we could win…
If I think about it any harder, I’ll convince myself that I was probably that little girl in my dream.
Friday, November 13, 2020
I woke up at 6 today to go into work. I wanted to finish everything I needed to do because I wanted to go to yoga at 10 this morning. I didn’t have any plans tonight, and usually on Fridays, I end up doing yoga at 6pm. But for some reason, I felt like I had to leave my night open. I wanted to try again to be with myself.
I was the only student in my yoga class, and my instructor asked me to turn on my camera. I was self-conscious; I’d never done this before. But she tailored the practice to me. I see why I’d been avoiding class all week. I had told myself I just wasn’t in the right headspace, that my energy wasn’t suitable for yoga, that I’d feel shitty doing something that would cleanse and purify me.
But I saw today that yoga helps me introspect by amplifying whatever I know I’m feeling. It helps me actually feel everything inside me so I can pick the emotions apart and not ignore them.
I’ve been listening to “Mercury” by Gregory Alan Isakov. It’s an unreleased song, and I like the name because it reminds me of the word, “mercurial.” Temperamental, moody, changing, unstable. Like me. Before he performed it live, he called it “a poem about everything.”
I thought to myself, Shit, I’d like to be able to write about everything.
Then I thought, What the fuck. I should probably write from my heart first.
So I gave the night back to myself. And I gave myself permission to not think about work. Or money. I decided to go for a walk, like I used to when I’d make time for them. Before it got cold and I was too sad.
Honestly I’m not sure if I wanted to or needed to go on a walk, but there was an inexplicable feeling that I could no longer put this off. I’ve been thinking about this all week. So somehow on this Friday the 13th, I found my night free. I knew I had to be with myself. I used to be able to do it. So why haven’t I been able to? Why have the rings of depression consumed me so? So much so that I forgot to listen to myself?
I breathed in the night. It was crisp. A good start.
I found my usual spot and leaned against the grey box I used for back support. I leaned back and listened.
There was a cacophony inside me. A cacophony of voices actually. All over the place, criss-crossing everything. All my alternate personalities, all my mercurial, changing selves. Individual voices, just like that Friday at work. Talking over each other, arguing, yelling at each other. The way I had grown up learning to communicate. The way I had taught myself to speak to myself.
I reached out to the filter in my mind that determines what I say out loud and what I don’t. I walk the tightrope to the next filter, the next line that connects my inner voice with my outside voice. I realize I have three main voices. The external voice I use to speak, the inner voice that connects my heart and soul, and the mind that is my rational voice. The voice of reason that governs my self-awareness, that always allows me to know what’s happening and what I’m supposed to be feeling. But the inner voice is the one that’s confused most of the time. The one that doesn’t want to acknowledge what I know to be true. And to use my external voice, my inner voice and rational voice have to agree. And they rarely do.
So if none of my voices are ever in sync, how can I ever listen to myself?
I feel a brain explosion beginning to happen. Or perhaps a moment of clarity. However you want to see it.
As I sit and ponder, I begin to think about gratitude. Thinking about gratefulness hurts. I think about why I was so angry about it before. And I think the scariest part for me is admitting that I can’t feel gratitude if I can’t feel at all. Because as much as I want to die sometimes and not feel, I’m not entirely sure how alive I was in the first place.
I start thinking about my November tarot reading again. I think about what I need to let go. Why is it so hard for me? Have I been avoiding it? No shit.
Is just jotting everything down instead of sitting and writing just me not wanting to admit some things to myself? Am I subconsciously avoiding all these things that make me twisted up inside?
That’s anxiety I guess.
A big part of all this is that I’m simultaneously trying to rest and write at the same time. Writing is supposed to be my break, my release. But this kind of writing is raw. It’s draining and it hurts my heart. So ultimately between rest and writing, I have to pick one and I know I have to rest.
I also spend most of my time angry with myself, so it’s not really possible to have a quiet conversation. Oh my god. Quieting the mind. I am only able to follow all of these thoughts linearly when I’m centering my mind on a single train of thought that has to do with myself.
Usually my mind is cluttered with work and other people and other things that just aren’t me. Because the self is painful. The self in its purest skin is nothing but growing pains.
And I know everything I’m thinking right now are things I’ve always been telling myself, but I end up fighting with myself and having pointless arguments about the slightest thoughts and behaviors.
A Chinese song comes on shuffle as I gaze up into the slate-black sky. Its singer is talking to an alien, specifically ET and sharing his deepest insecurities with this creature from outer space. The lyrics feel like a conversation I needed and probably wanted to have with myself but didn’t know how. There’s always this half sarcastic voice in my head when I tell myself I should be nicer to myself. Like I don’t even believe that this is something I could really do seriously. Jesus Christ, am I unkind to myself?????
I can’t tell.
I mull it over more and realize that I talk about self-care but almost belittle myself just for being depressed. Self-gaslight. Yeah I know, shut the fuck up.
Holy shit Ella be nice to yourself.
It’s so easy to pretend to exist without all of these mental afflictions. That I can power on and act like I’m high-functioning when I really feel so disconnected from existence. I saw we as a society need to prioritize self-care and actively make time for it, but it’s hard for me to do myself. Because it’s hard to apply those standards to yourself. You always think you’re the fucking exception.
And for me to do all this, it means I have to make my inner voice and my external voice and my rational voice talk to themselves. Quietly. My God, that’s so hard.
Here’s the craziest part. I knew all of this. But every time I’m hypomanic, every time I am in euthymia, I lose all of that knowledge. I forget.
What made this month especially unbearable was that I couldn’t write. My writer’s block was guarding my self-honesty. How so?
Because I always need to write first before I vocalize. So it makes me sad when I can’t write; I just can’t express myself if my inner voice and my external voice are speaking different languages. And it’s hard to get to the point where they understand each other. ….Because right, the depression…yeah, yeah, I know it’s there, it’s just a pain in the fucking ass to live with.
I guess that’s what mental illness is. It’s that conscious awareness of your own self-destruction, the bad thing, the storm cloud, all of it, you know it’s coming, you know it’s lingering, you know it’s going to rain. But you don’t even brace for the impact, you just let the car hit you anyway. Because you think you fucking deserve it. So you work harder, do more, try, try again, but it’s not enough, it doesn’t amount to anything.
So you just watch helplessly as the next wave crashes into your shores again.
On the elevator up to my apartment, it suddenly hits me. MEDICATION.
That’s what I’ve been avoiding. That and accepting the BIPOLAR.
But they’re there. I have to let my voices chat about that sometime. But it doesn’t have to be now.
For now, my brain is tired. My rational voice is tired and my other voices are pretty exhausted, too. REST.
I think about my November reading yet again, and what the cards told me. That I needed to rest. I think again about how I see time, and realize that I fit my time in puzzle pieces like I fit these journal entries together.
I plan out my schedule down to the last minute of every day, but in order for me to truly rest, I have to not be cognizant of that time. That’s the hardest part. That’s what else I’ve been avoiding. To let go, I have to quiet the voices, to let them speak civilly, to not obsess over the passage of time, to not notice the time tick, ticking away. I have to not have a plan.
The elevator doors swing open. It’s my floor. I guess even circular thoughts have to come full circle like waves too.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
I couldn’t sleep all night again. But unlike Thursday, I wasn’t tired when I woke up. Okay, that’s fine. But that probably means this is the beginning of a potential hypomanic episode. Probably a result of my brain explosion last night.
As I lay awake at 7am, I felt called to my desk. Today, I have the energy to get up and make my way to my pen. So here I try to connect all my voices again.
Before I started writing, i was on the Internet and I saw some pictures of brain scans of normal brains and brains of people with different mental illnesses. I saw MRIs of people with bipolar disorder, with PTSD, with depression, and they all looked different from the “normal” brain. Some were painted with splotches of other color; some were missing tendrils here and there. It made me wonder how colorful my brain was, and it hit me that I had spent my whole life trying to make my brain look like the normal one. But it probably never will.
What a fucking cognitive dissonance.
It came to me when I was washing my face. That’s it. I CAN WASH MY FACE. I’m at a crossroads because the last time my depression was consistently making my life this miserable, I was also seeing shit and that’s when I got on meds. I lost sight of the greater cycle because I was stuck on the smaller one right in front of me. The greater cycle is my journey without medication, having to live without something altering the original chemistry of my brain.
But now the crossroads is still the same as before. Back on medication or not? And okay, about the whole face washing thing. Back when I used to be this depressed, I not only failed to acknowledge my illness, but also I couldn’t even do basic things like wash my face. And it’s not that my depression has gotten easier. Nah, shit’s the same because it still makes me feel like absolute shit. I just learned to live with it better. That’s why I was so obsessively telling myself I was better. But better doesn’t mean well. Doesn’t mean cured. Doesn’t mean gone. Better just means that. Better.
And fuck. I can wash my face. That’s gotta mean something, right?
Circular thoughts again. November reading. The tarot cards have made me think a lot about fat and the universe. I think often about how I am a product of circumstance. I am this way because I have reflected on what I learned from my environment, the people and the resources around me. But I can’t help but wonder that if I weren’t born into these circumstances, had I been less fortunate, would I still be able to learn to make these choices for myself? To get to a point where I could even say that I’m better?
But that also begs the question of whether or not I’d have been this way, this all over the place in my head, had I been born in other circumstances? And that’s not really fair, is it? Still makes you think about the stars, though, right?
Was this all already written in some grand, archaic, cosmic scroll? The whole story of the universe and its individual parts? Or are there actually a million such grand, archaic, cosmic scrolls that make up all these different timelines and our choices change which scroll is unfurled? Like there’s some celestial library that serves as the mind of the universe? Jesus, I don’t fucking know, but what a thought, right?
Oh, and I let my thoughts run away from me again….But I’ve learned that sometimes, I just have to hop on that runaway train and see what wild places it takes me. That’s supposed to be what makes life worth living or something like that.
Because in actuality, I’ve been going through everyday looking for the “meaning of life” and that takes up so much space in my brain. I spend my entire subconscious looking for my will to live, and I guess that’s pretty fucking exhausting if i’m doing that day in and day out on top of everything else I give a shit about.
So what if I didn’t? What if I looked for my heartbeat instead?
I think a big reason why the gratitude journal made me so angry is that when I think about gratefulness, I often think of it in the same way that films about mental illness are made. They paint broad strokes of what mental illness seems like, because it’s hard to portray the subtleties. So they rarely do it. I think about gratitude in broad strokes, big picture things like my family, my basic needs being met, my friends and my material possessions. In the same way, I’m so hung up about the broad strokes of my mental illness and my life, so I have a hard time sitting with the subtleties. All the parts that make up the illness itself, all the quirks that make the illness mine to live with. The broad strokes are just the spectrum of mental health everyone can possibly experience. Gratitude in broad strokes is what everyone can be and should be grateful for. Gratitude in subtleties is much more dependent on how the person perceives and feels. I can’t think that way if my voices don’t all agree, as you know by now.
Said in another way, it’s impossible for me to feel the gratitude of my life and circumstances I’m in if I’m not even happy being myself in these specific instances. Again, same basic realizations I’ve had before. I just forget every time I’m not manically trying to make up for lost time.
I’ve been spending all these hours in therapy trying to piece together the causes of my illness, my disorders, the root of my sadness, my trauma, my bipolar, depression, anxiety, bpd, ptsd, all that shit. I just want so desperately to know WHY. WHY THE FUCK DID I HAVE TO TURN OUT THIS WAY????
And it’s because I’m ashamed of living with mental illness. I feel guilt that even with the broad strokes of gratitude in my life, they were not enough to prevent me from becoming like this.
But it turns out broad strokes don’t have to be black and white, because they painted brushstrokes of color in my brain. My roots were already damaged. Mental illness is just that. I am just that. And like I’ve said time and again throughout this past month, I will always just be.
So I’ll probably just have to accept that, no matter how the universe wrote the archaic cosmis scrolls, I’ll likely have been written as a little fucked up in the head regardless. And I’ll spend my life in pursuit of this ethereal happiness and why I exist. I always thought it’d be complex, too, whatever it was I was looking for. But the reality is simple. Just like the basic feelings I have to learn to verbalize. IT JUST IS.
The happiness, the content, that i was spoon fed to believe could be mine growing up were fucking lies. My happiness can never be measured by a standard. It can never just be broad strokes. Because happy is a STUPID FUCKING WORD ANYWAY.
I’m probably never going to be happy the way “normal” people are. And I should stop wasting my time trying. That’s why the word never sat well with me anyway when I rolled it around on my tongue.
BECAUSE I’M NOT FUCKING NORMAL.
AND I DON’T HAVE TO FUCKING BE NORMAL TO BE HAPPY THE WAY I WANT TO BE.
Substitute in any word for “happy.” It’s just a catch-all phrase to describe something you can only understand if your heart and soul are in sync. But we derive the feeling from so many things. From yoga, from climbing, from love, from food. It comes from the alignment of all the voices that clamor over each other for control of ourselves.
That’s the language of the universe. That’s what The Alchemist was trying to say.
It is 4:30 pm. I have been at my desk since 7am trying to make sense of these jumbled circular thoughts into words. Now, I open my mindfulness journal. The first page is blank, just like the first day I bought it. I feel a sliver of anxiety as I contemplate the question.
Today I am grateful for…
-for subtleties
-for happiness and anti-happiness
-for the sunlight coming through the window and reminding me of Mother Nature’s cycles and mine
-for the pursuit of fulfillment
-for not ever having to be normal
-for occasional moments of clarity like this that shine brighter than the usual haze
-for brain explosions that give me something to hold onto during the bad times
-for being manic depressive and having a colorful brain
-for being cracked but knowing I’m not obligated to fix anything
-for the gift that is the language of the universe
-for finding the words to capture my soul on paper
Am I still in a depressive episode? Fuck yes. Well, probably at least. I’m not going to lie anymore and convince myself I’m out of a rut whenever I have one of those moments of clarity. My infinite sadness and hypomania are not mutually exclusive. But do moments of clarity make it a little easier to be with myself? Also fuck yes.
In those brief snapshot moments, I’ll just be grateful that it’s a little quieter inside me and that all my voices actually agree. Just a little while for the time being. That’s why it’s called the present, after all.
Dear depression, Dear mania, Dear anxiety, Dear my mental health,
FUCK YOU.
But also thank you.
That’s the simplest way I can sum up all my feelings about you.
Ellamental Thoughts 