It has come to my attention that my brain requires a massive amount of reorganizing. There has been so much I have regarded as absent since the beginning of the year that has disturbed and frightened me even as relief over their disappearance overwhelmed me. I did not notice the profound excess I now sense in myself - a house too large for it's walls, or a cup too small for its contents. The overflow is happening because I need to thoroughly embrace what is hesitantly easing its way into me; that is to say, I need to fill my holes with the positive progress to allow everything to fit. My lack of fear when it comes to abandonment, loss and inadequacy needs to be filled with the confidence I can't quite accept. My lack of responsibility or indeed even love for Donna or those who I had adopted like her needs to be filled with the love of others who are actually worth my time. And et cetera.

I notice it has been over a year and a half since I have written in this journal, and I can really only speculate as to why. It seems easy to blame certain parties for this, to claim that their inability to accept my mental shortcomings led me to force all evidence of such out of sight. But of course one of the truths that will soon take up the space of the spaces inside me I'm getting lost in is that I made these choices, I have the power to change everything that is going on with me, so I will have to take responsibility for my failure to address my issues in this venue I have created for myself to safely do just that. Also, even after cutting ties with these certain parties a year ago, I still did not come back to this place. I assume that this means I wanted very much to believe, just as certain other parties did, that I was getting so much better so rapidly that I hardly needed the personal insight. I believe I was also under the impression that no one was reading this anyway so there was no point in keeping it up - which of course is coming from a place of pride I didn't know I had (which makes this sudden awareness of its lack of being very jarring indeed) since it would make more sense to write when no one is looking in hopes of stumbling upon real truth.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, it has been a year and a half since I last wrote in this journal. I am currently taking nothing to alter my mood or brain chemistry, save the probably absurd amount of alcohol and occasional bit of marijuana or MDMA, my last stint with either being months and months ago. Marly has suggested that my relative steadiness after making this change (as in not completely flying off the handle) feeds her theory that I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar II. Her suspicions lead her to the hypotheses that I suffer from either: Cyclothymia, which is still within the bipolar spectrum although less severe and less predictable; or a form of severe depression which I would have had since my early childhood mixed and blended with the PTSD I acquired at age twelve - the receding of which seems to be what is leaving me at such a loss as to how to get on. 

There may be as of now no official diagnosis to explain my mental state. The conclusion that I have to come to is simply that I was wrong about a great many things regarding my brain. Everything else that I knew to be true has changed. I have become better. This is a clean start, really. No medications, no preconceived ideas, not even any hair dye to mask my true color, no obsessing over my history of trying and failing because this is all new. There is literally nothing stopping me from making my life the one I want it to be.

I realize only as I type that that i am absolutely terrified of it. Of the hugeness of it. Because it is huge. There are some very important relationships I have (including the one I have with myself) that actually have been defined by my illness as I understood it. There are some that were even defined by my need for that person... there were many like that. I realize that I do not know how to love someone without needing them. But I don't. I don't really need anybody. I can face everything with the tools I have collected and the strength I've allowed myself to see. Although the quieting of my mind has left me jarred and somewhat lonely, I have been refusing to reach out as much as possible in fear that I would fall back into my old self, into my old habit of needing. I know what it must sound like to someone who is listening to me or reading this. How ultimately contradicting I am being. I know and I wish that I could find a place of actual sense but I'm afraid I can't find one myself. I go through periods of relaxing, of convincing myself that it is only a matter of letting it "be" that is the secret to accepting these new aspects of myself and letting the old go. But rapidly this sense of calm is replaced by panic, the knowledge that I cannot possibly rebuild myself or my relationships, the vision of all of me, all of these pieces, not being held together by skin or sanity or duct tape or anything... that it is simply a hot mess and it is too much and too big a task to put it together again.

Reflectively, there are rapid cycles of energy and lethargy. I go through them every day, at least twice a day. I feel as if action and movement will help me, as if getting it done will make me feel better. I will then start on no less than three things at once and finish one of them and get frustrated with the rest. Then: fail. Then: despair. Then: nothing.

Sometimes I begin to reach out and try to find support from someone else. So then I go through the list: Zac is of course at his job, or at band practice and if he happens to be home he is tired and talks about important things like money and plans and everything I would ask of him dissolves into making him more comfortable. Julia has so many friends who make her happy and don't ask too much of her, so many projects and how can I even talk to her now? My father is in Jackson with his soon to be wife (tomorrow is the day) and is very interested in fixing but despises the not-easily-fixable. Who else? Jack is wonderful but our relationship can't be nothing but crazy talk. Cip is so easy to talk to that everyone already comes to him with everything. Besides all this, how do I approach someone with something so abstract and confusing and expect them to talk to me about it? "I don't know how to love without needing... I don't need so I don't know how to relate..." What can anyone do with that. 

I have grown frustrated and upset. I suppose it is going to be important for me to talk to someone somehow. Logic tells me that just like I have to let myself "be" I also need to trust the people I love... trust them to not reject me or whatever it is I'm worried about... Just start talking to someone about my mental paradox because I can't sit here in limbo but in flux at the same time. That's what's exhausting you, Elfie, and you know it. You either go or you stay. You either sit at the bottom or ask for a hand up. It can't really be as hard as you're making it out to be.

I really want to know why I'm scared right now if it really isn't that hard.

tags: abandonment issues, anger, anxiety, bad days, change, depressed, friends, frustration, future, meds, nostalgia, paranoia, ptsd, ramble, tired, wants, zac

Ah so. It is the first night in over a month I am awake non-voluntarily. This, as you must know by now, is a big deal. To sleep, for me, is that often unattainable wonder. Yet here I've been snoozing away, dreaming, comfortable, like a happy chick with normal brain chemistry. Speaking of happy. I promised you a story.


( Click here for story. )

mood: loved

Let me tell you a story sometime.

mood: happy

Which is the part of me I can trust?

Don't you hate those evenings when you seem to be the only one who is awake? Alive, even?

No one is awake except cats.

mood: lonely

I have not updated in a while. This is due to a number of circumstances beyond my control... and I suppose more than anything circumstances that were well within. Instead of an in-depth update on what exactly is going on... I am compelled to leave you with only this.

Tonight I watched my cat, Hazel, one of twins, roam the backyard. This is a backyard full of dried weeds and thistles, and not an amazing place to romp around in. Hazel often comes back in with weeds and sharp, brittle plants stuck deep in his fur, but you would never think this bothered him. For Hazel, the irritatingly pokey yard is his new playground. After much fuss, I allowed him to go outside about two weeks ago - the miracle is that, in spite of how seemingly clueless he is to anything else, he is either self-aware enough or aware enough of my anxiety to only go so far, and I can't see how he can have turned the bend in the street, his visits outside are so short. Yet when I painstakingly brush the nettles out of his tail, his chest juts out in an unmistakable tableau of pride and satisfaction.

So tonight, as I smoked in our backyard, aware suddenly that this would not be our backyard for much longer, I watched Hazel pick his way carefully through the brush. He moved slowly, with the distinct grace one can only find in a feline, and his pupils were huge, although there was dim light provided by the bulb by the door. He seemed to hunt his shadow. He sniffed and sneezed at nothing I could see and explored the weeds as if he had never been there before. At one point he stretched himself out to his longest, and I was almost breathless with him: his coat is long and shiny, his face small and expressive, his legs held daintily in his thoughtless care. It was actually a challenge to think of him as a kitten, tiny but fluffed, dirty, feisty and restless... not to mention a girl as far as I knew. This creature stalking nothing for his own amusement was totally different than the terrified kitten stuck in my bathroom some months ago. His transformation was shocking.

This very evening I was talking to Richard about my bleeding heart, about my insanity, about my current state of loathing considering the kittens we have newly caught and now have to release into an unforgiving landscape. He said to me "Not everything is your fault," and of course he is right, but suddenly I was able to justify a little of what I felt, and so I said "I don't feel like I do enough."

"You're only one person."

"But so many people have done epic things, only being one person." Which, I think anyone has to grant me, is true. Whether or not it would make a real difference, attempting to become someone who brings about change can't be a bad thing to aspire to. Richard really seemed worried, wanted me to give myself credit on my recovery... and I was surprised to find that I feel so good about it that, while I felt proud, I also felt a flippancy. It was time, I thought, to perhaps move toward something else.

My cats have grown into beautiful creatures. I have grown too - I cannot even understand the kind of person I was two years ago, when death by my own hand seemed like it was as close as skin. I recall several conversations, musings and desert ball-tripping that forced me to consider how "big" I could be, will be, and am. There are pictures of me not myself, careless and free like I never knew I could be, and it is so clear in these pictures that this young woman exists outside of myself that I wonder how her pretty face can look so much like my own.

I am close now to the bottom of the hill. The one I have been coasting down for some time now. The sheer length of the fall has made me anxious and impatient... but it hasn't been in vain, and I haven't suddenly stopped, or swerved and died, as so often I imagined I would. The bottom is there. I am convinced I see it. And from there we enter the rest of my life.

Hazel and Fiver are on either side of me, dozing and accepting my attention. They are so unquestioningly happy that I want to cry... but I'll just end this entry. I promise for a real update soon.

mood: indescribable tags: cats, change, goals

SO!

My mother just left for her first day of "Partial Hospitalization" at St Helena, which she is stubbornly calling "the day program". I knew little about this, but I did try to be encouraging while she went out the door.

If her experience is anything like mine was, she'll be exhausted for the next couple weeks, then have the doors busted off her little fucking reality. Maybe I should have warned her. But then again who cares. She's going to complain either way until she gets it.

I wonder how long before the novelty of everyone clapping at the fact that you got up in the morning wears off. Cause as soon as she realizes it's not just about blaming everyone around you it's going to be real good for her.

mood: sleepy tags: family

I want to be bigger because then it would mean that I took up more space.

More physical space.

More space in memory.

More space in time even, maybe.

I want to be solid so things don't hurt me quite so easily.

As always we attach physical metaphors to our emotional problems without even realizing it. I have to have people tell me things that seem perfectly obvious to them because they know how my brain works better than I do.

I can't believe I haven't written in so long. Been at least six months. Probably closer to eight. And every day that I house myself in this fragile little bubble fueled by tiny little hopes and successes that I've gotten through the day, I am closer and closer to Chloe, who actually has taken up residence in the top right hand corner and whispers that I'm going to have to write her away. I don't know where to start. I've become terrified of trying. The idea seems laughable: me, good with words. Me, the next great American novel. Me, taking off with the loot I've made as a proper writer and skipping town for a while. Who is this person? I could never do those things. I'm barely keeping up with my nothing life. My nothing life stresses me out. Pills and beer every night. That kind of stressed. Yet living in day dreams. Lost in fantasy. Sometimes mistaking dreams for memory. What else can I do. I look at my arms thinking there is no way they could lift anything of consequence. It's only in my mind that I feel as if I'm not disgusting, not no one, not a failure. In my mind I am independent and damn sexy. Not what I am now. On the one hand I should be excited I have been very good for a long ass time... but another part of me still craves the razor and the blood because my brain just gets tired of seeing everything in black and white. Red is a color. I am boring and I am crazy. Yet I'm still just... around. Even a life as a recluse sounds more glamorous.

I hope everyone who is tired of hearing me whine will just drop me from their friends, because I'm not sorry for sounding pathetic. That's what I keep this for. For crazy time. So go fuck yourself, yes?

mood: blank tags: bipolar, bitch, depressed, goals

Too hot outside

Breakdown in front of my dad

The cramps are actually comforting

Time to leave.

Last night I dreamed of vampires and time travel. And then I danced with them. Not the time travel. The vampires. They grabbed me and they danced with me, one by one, like I was nice to dance with. I like that idea. That I'm nice to dance with.

mood: distressed

How am I even going to do this. I really honestly wish I wasn't terrified. And not for the first time and totally not for the last I wish I was well enough to function like a real person so I wouldn't feel like I'm guaranteed to fail. I'm afraid to sleep and afraid to think. I have to get out of here. I can't deal with this shit and also deal with my parents. (My mother) I can't, I will curl up in my bed and just implode and no one will find any evidence that I existed ever.

I hate this, I hate me, but most of all, right now, I hate the FBI.