Quick update:

• Painted my nails for the first time since middle school or something
• Finally cleaned my room mostly. I need a larger dresser.
• WE GOT A KITTEN HER NAME IS PHEBE.

• I got some medication. Lithium Carbonate 300mg 2x/day and Sertraline 50mg 1x/day. Standard medications for Bipolar II. This is from my GP. Long story short, my insurance has changed and I'm still not sure if I have mental health insurance right now. I hope my GP doesn't get sick of me asking for more refills on prescriptions they granted me based on the assumption that I'd be visiting a psych in the near future. That was 3 months ago...
• Despite the fact that it doesn't feel like my meds are working, I think they are. I've had a better quality of life, I guess.
• I will likely become a permanent employee relatively soon and I'm actually pretty happy about it
• Family stuff sucks and, emotionally speaking, I've kinda been all over the place
• But I think everything else has been better?
• Sam is my warm blanket, my worn record, my found heirloom, my old photograph, my kite in flight, my gin & tonic, my dog-eared book, my--HE'S THE FUCKING LOVE OF MY LIFE

Oscillating

I think, overall, things are looking up for me, emotionally. I'm learning how to communicate better what I am feeling, and what I need. It's frustrating sometimes that I have to be so blatant about things but I realize that if I can barely deal with myself, how can I expect someone else to just know how to handle me. There's only so far intuition can go with mental disorder, you know?

I'm in an in-between place. I can keep myself relatively stable and good, but when something does get me down, I explode, or implode. I either yell and cuss (I never really cussed before Sam. It's still weird to me. What a squaaare.) or I fold in on myself and it takes the greatest effort to speak at all. But it takes a little more to get me there. The real triumph is that I don't crumble into a pile of self-loathing nearly as easily. Which means I'm actually being more understanding and less selfish and definitely better able to be there.

I wish I didn't get to the point of like...agitation saturation. Critical mass.

I am bad at doing adult things so I didn't look for a psychiatrist for a long time. But I'm a doof because I realized the other day that my urgent care center treats depressive illnesses. I'm not sure if this includes Bipolar, and I'm eagerly awaiting an answer to my inquiry. Hoping!

A lot of good things are happening right now. I'm leaving for New Mexico this weekend. I'll be there for 10 days, and I'm psyched. I started a new job at Montgomery College in Germantown and just started full-time again. So I can pay down my credit card, thank goodness. Paying the minimum was making me anxious.

Sam wrote a song about me, and it makes me good-cry. For various reasons (probably mostly biased), it might be my favorite song of his. I could write forever about how amazed I am at our love. Even when I feel at the point of destruction, I know this is an intensely, heart-spillingly wonderful relationship. Today, the first lucid words out of his mouth as I woke him up before I left for work: "you're so pretty." N'aw.

Between a rock and a crazy place.

I'm in a high right now. Which means that I feel awesome about myself, quick to spring back, cheerful, and energetic.

It also means I can get into full-blown mania. In which I'm quick to anger, can't control what I feel, get stuck in cyclical thoughts of self-hatred and annoyance and self-awareness ("I know I shouldn't feel like this, I hate myself for feeling it, is it worth saying just because I feel it even though it will bring everything down or should I shut up and try ineffectually to feel better on my own..."), feel sensitive to the point of rawness about a lot of things that I normally would be able to brush off and/or rationalize and move on from.

I had a really crazy episode earlier this week, and it came right after two weeks of almost constant awesome feeling. I fell from a high place and crashed hard. I thought, well that was a good run. I guess I'm grateful for the only two weeks in the past two years that I've felt really me.

One part of my mental illness is the powerlessness of spontaneously forgetting things when they upset me. Oh, it's even shittier than it sounds. In the middle of an argument, I'll forget what I/Sam has just said. Literally JUST said. I'll forget previous arguments, I'll blank in the middle of a sentence. Right now, I cannot even recall what I got upset about the other day. This might seem like a blessing sometimes. It's not.

Because now I just remember silently sobbing myself to sleep, hardly staying that way, hating myself from the moment I awakened. Thinking about wanting to just die, to just not be alive, that Sam would be so much better off, that I add nothing, that I'm just an overly-sensitive terrible person. That I'm annoying, that I'm whiny and self-righteous and WAY TOO FUCKING HIGH-MAINTENANCE, and I resent myself for that (what the fuck?).



Or, tl;dr: Mania = too much. Too much of myself, too many feelings, too polar.


This is what I said to Sam the next day:

"I just hope you understand that when this is going on, it's not my choice

• I don't choose to feel as full of rage and self-hate and anguish
• there's a catalyst - in this case, not being able to get to sleep and being awakened rudely - but it is never just about that
• my brain just explodes all over itself
• I'm sorry if I make it harder for you to be sympathetic
• I just know that I have to at least try to just allow myself to feel some rage and upset and yell a little (even on the internet) and fume and feel debilitated like I can't get out of bed

because I know - only from experience and habit, certainly not from faith in the moment - that it will pass. If it gets that bad, it's my disorder, and I need to let it pass."

The "even on the internet" part was referring to some self-conscious microblogging I did on Tumblr that day. I just wanted to yell where people could, possibly, see me. I don't know why. I wouldn't call it "reaching out;" more like being more honest and uncloseted with people about my fucking insane self. I guess I wanted a response, like an "I feel that way too!" or something, but that wasn't my motivation. I feel pretty good about doing that, actually. I'm fucked up. I hope I come across as sincere and honest, as opposed to whiny and self-righteous, but I'm fucked up and high-maintenance sometimes and I'm doing what I can to grow some self-acceptance.

I'm not quite at the same high point as before this episode, and it'd probably be stupidly nostalgic to wish for that. I do feel good, though.

- I bought a bathing suit and I feel awesome in it. Why did I not embrace the high waist earlier in my life?
- I'm looking for jobs, and trying to figure out what I really, seriously want to do, while I'm still young and privileged and still have few enough responsibilities that I can take stupid risks.
- My psychiatrist opportunity fell through (the search said she was a psychiatrist but she was actually a psychologist -- meaning no meds. Uh, no. I need them pillz, thx). So I'm getting up the gumption to follow through with that again.
- I'm about 99% certain I will not be continuing to work at the DOT, for the following reasons:

• I would need to pay $4-5 THOUSAND dollars to take one [1!] full-time class that spans at least a year and leads me to a certification in something I don't actually want
• I don't have that money just lying around, WTF
• I have the option of getting the money directly from them. On the condition (of course) that it is a 3:1 relationship. I.e.: I commit to 1 year of this course, free of charge, and then I commit to 3 years of work with them. Hell no I don't want to work there for three years.
• I'd be working in MARAD. Which, as I've recently found out, is a goddamned war machine. Not exactly fitting with my ethics, and I wouldn't call myself a pacifist, but fuck falsely righteous slaughter/ethnocide/genocide and the stuff that fuels them.

That is my life update.

Now I lust after Rehoboth Beach and being self-employed.

I wonder if, if someone knew nothing of my disorders and hung around me regularly, they would think something was wrong with me; if they'd see anything negative in how I act, socially. Anyone I know has access to my journal and my Tumblr and that's dandy with me, so I'm fine with not knowing the answer. I don't feel that I have much control over the way people view me anyway, and that doesn't often scare me. Everyone does what they are content in doing, or what they think will make them most comfortable with themselves and their image. I'm most content putting myself out there, being loud about my opinions -- sharing myself mentally, physically, emotionally. Sometimes I'm harsh about it, as with my political opinions, but I'm in it for the dialogue. I'm in it to change.

Facebook and Tumblr have greatly supplemented my understanding of the world. It's become a theoretical community, to me, outside of and after the Great Academia. It's incredible how much I've learned from crowdsourcing my interests. I mean, what better way to learn than from the people; the many people. I know I can't always be in academia, surrounded by young radicals who share my views but will always be open to argument/discussion/laughter/self-examination. The internet-world has become a wealth of growth for me. Everything changes constantly, and I've realized I'm happier when I don't try to keep things the way they have been. Not even that -- the way they are. So I'll get an iPhone and buy new clothes and spend more than I save.

I've been letting go of my scrimping habits, letting go of calories, letting go of blaming myself for my own emotions. I don't see how I won't continue to encounter new things to negotiate, new-old habits to break, new prejudices and privileges to check. I've discovered so much and I'm exuberantly, self-indulgently happy or proud of it all. Even if I spent all day on the computer, who's going to judge that as wrong, and why? If that's what I wanted to do with life, I'd do it. For me, "everything in moderation" is just another guaranteed-to-lose form of control.

I'm not comfortable being such a harsh judge of myself anymore (an arduous concept to unlearn, as I was always convinced it helped me), which I think makes me more accepting in general. If I want to sit in bed and eat 10 brownies and stay up until 2 and not exercise to make up for it, how is that wrong? I'm still as judgmental as the rest of us though, so I function just fine. E.g.: I don't judge a person for eating a pan of brownies in one sitting; I judge them if they don't "take care of themselves" in general. That's still terrible of me, right? What does it even mean?

Haha, I've sort-of become that awful kind of post-structuralist, postmodernist that is impossible to explain and often threatens to self-examine into oblivion.

I think I'm going to cross-post this to Tumblr, but I maybe think Tumblr will become my new journal. Hm.

How to Fall in Love without Losing Yourself (When You’re Bipolar II and For the First Time Now Have Someone Who Challenges You as a Person):

1. Lose yourself. You were already lost; you didn't know it.
2. Come to realize this slowly. Agonizingly. While being incredibly selfish, because you have no self to give, so you just take, take, take...
3. Enter crisis. Doubt that anyone can love you, because who are you, anyway.
4. ^ Live accordingly.
5. Try to snap out of it. You know that's bullshit.
6. Fail miserably, often. Causing plenty of grief for your partner as ze feels ze has to walk on eggshells with you, and rightfully resents it. Hate yourself more than you don't, for being a pitiful amorphous blob or shell of a person. Hate yourself for fooling someone into loving you.
7. Ponder who you are. Are your impassioned political views just a way of avoiding your own self-hatred? Is it all just a ruse to feel like you’re a good person? Doubt everything else "good" about you. Doubt that it's genuine.
8. Worry that you've ruined your relationship. It was all a show from the beginning. You fooled hir into believing you were as wonderful as ze said. Think about this every day, because you’re all but convinced of it.
9. Realize some things that are genuine. Notice what you do in your spare time, or what you do in your not-so-spare time when you should be doing what you should be doing. Realize that this is probably something you.
10. Talk to your partner probably too much about all this shit, seriously bumming hir out and ruining a lot of good moods because you can't stop thinking of yourself. Have a lot of blowout fights because you’re both so raw and coiled all the time.
11. Try to reclaim those things that are genuine. Actively identify with them more, and show it. At least pretend to be proud of them. Hope that it gets easier.
12. Keep trying. Know that you always will. Know you’re being naïve perhaps. Reckless perhaps. Break down often. Come this close to losing hope. Try anyway.
13. Realize one day that something has gotten better with you, in your head and heart. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but one small part of you and your life is better. Feel wonder-full and somehow content with that.
14. Repeat Steps 3-13 ad nauseum.
15. Notice the good times getting better between you and your partner. Somehow. Notice your sense of self has gotten more substantial. Somehow. Start thinking about your dreams again. Not just your nostalgic projections.
16. Do things for yourself. Do them by yourself, do them with other people. Make more decisions (make any decisions, because you never have, really). You’ll feel like you can’t; literally are unable to. And you worry about what your partner will think of you. Do it anyway (ze loves you).
17. Feel like ripping your hair out (it’s already falling out, why not) because your emotions get ahead of your thoughts, running wildly out of reach -- wildly, crazily, stupidly out of reach -- never to be caught by your reason and intellect.
18. Regularly remind yourself that just because you don’t want to be irrational, just because you know one thing and feel another, that does not mean you can just shove it off and be done with it. You are all of it.
19. ^ cry.
20. Hysterically
21. All the fucking time.
22. Feel out of control every day; some terrible version of you powered by -- if you want to get Freudian about it (I don't really know a better word for it though) -- your id. Worry that it's all been latent, dormant. And it's all who you "really" are. Hate it. See 6 above.
23. Continue to be wildly in love. Don’t hold back.
24. FIGHT. Yourself, your partner, fight with your fighting. Fight against nausea, fight against complacency, fight against that wanting to just detach. DO. NOT. DETACH.
25. Outwardly trust that your partner isn't just fooling hirself; they've made the decision, knowingly, to be with you and to do whatever that takes. Believe, outwardly, when ze says you're worth it, you're a good person. Inwardly: you want to believe it -- you trust them -- but it's never enough to really feel it.
26. Until sometimes, fleetingly fragile, you might believe it. You want to. And you realize -- you want to, you want to.
27. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

This journal entry brought to you by the letters BPD, CD, SAD, ADD, and ED.

Having panic attacks at work, because I can't stand my impotence, and I can't stand my thoughts, and I can't stand their dissonance with everything that's good in me.

I have at least one reader from Russia and at least one from Alaska. This Stats page is cool. But, who are you?! I want to know why you came here/why you read this!

Anyway, very long deeply personal post forthcoming. Soon. Once I get several quiet moments to finish it.

This weekend was amazing.

Sam and I turned two.

Right now I feel very depressed. But that's okay. I have been in bed since last night, and that's okay. I don't want to be around people, and that's okay.

Friday night we spent at Hotel Helix in DC, and it was wonderful to not have to drive almost two hours to get home. We walked to Cafe Green, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite restaurants. Walked around Dupont, got sweet things, Sam bought me some of the beautiful new Penguin Classics clothbound books which I've drooled over since I first spotted. The hotel was swanky. We had free drinks, got kinda tipsy (well I did; his drink was basically straight whiskey but I don't think he felt it for long), ate sweet things, had amazing sex most of the afternoon and night. It was blissful.

Saturday was Record Store Day. Once again we didn't get there in time to get all the good stuff, but we didn't come away empty-handed. Got yummy sorbetto, walked around, went to the head shop for a bead curtain (couldn't find one), got Smoothie King, got par-baked Joe Squared for us and my parents, visited parents, watched Court's dance competition DVD (she's wonderful). I actually didn't feel too anxious there. I love my family.

Friday and Saturday, I felt more myself than I have in a long time. I felt wonderful. I'm so in love.

Right now, I'm finding it difficult to be functional. I'm not sure what happened, but I don't need to know. I'm okay with it.

Bipolar II Rant

I JUST FUCKING WANT TO BE HAPPY.

I just want to be normal and happy, no poles. No highs no lows. No disorder, just happy.

Self-pity FTL.

Sometimes I just want to rail at it. I want to kick and scream and pound my fists on the floor until I get my way. I want to tear at it with my teeth and nails until my disorder is nothing but shreds and through this beaten blockade I can see myself again.

As though it's something outside of me. Separate.

But this is wrong. It's stupid. I am Bipolar II, as much as I am a woman, American, queer, white, vegetarian, liberal. There's no getting rid of it. I have positive identities and I have negative ones, and this is, to me, my worst.

I get so hateful of myself. I don't know why, I just hate who I am; everything. I mean I don't, not really, but that's how I feel at the time and that makes it no less true...if that makes any sense at all. It probably doesn't; it's no less real. I hate being me. I hate my body. I hate my doubt. I hate my hate, my anger, my sadness. The fact that I can't control myself. I get so out of control. I don't do anything physical...or at least I haven't yet. Not since high school. Sometimes I want to and it scares me. It's the impulses I used to get. To break a window, to jump out of the car, to fly off a bridge, off the railing on the 9th floor in this building. To crash my car into someone, to punch, to throw things and want them to cause destruction. To hurt other people, for no reason other than impulse. I want to destroy my surroundings so it can be in perfect, hateful harmony with what's inside me. This confusion, this hysteria, this self-awareness-gone-haywire.

I hate myself and almost want everyone else to, too. Just so it matches. So I don't feel alone in it; I guess that's worse, the isolation. It's so backwards. Sometimes I almost want Sam to just stop loving me, to find someone better, to "realize" that I'm just dragging him down to my terrible depths, making him worse, making everything about his life worse. That I'll never be a chance for lasting happiness. And I quit my job and go live with my family. The fucked up mess they are right now, I've always fit right in. I don't have to try, I can just listen and be. I'm so selfish. I feel like the worst person. That's my weakness.

The highs are lower than the lows. I hate my anger; does that sound stupid? It is. It's worse than being debilitatingly sad. Sad can at least hold a sort of contentedness, a familiarity. I can be okay when I'm depressed. I am instead, right now, in a constant state of either not-okay, or just-on-the-verge. Constant. I am so fucking edgy. Everything startles me. Perpetual emotional exhaustion, trying to keep it all in. Shove it all up and shut the door quickly, but the slightest-- slightest of slight -- one self-deprecating thought -- one confused tone of voice -- will burst open the dam, send it tumbling back out to supersaturate my consciousness.


I feel a little better.

J'essaye

SAM you are so wonderful! You, just you. Every you you've ever been and all the yous you'll ever become. I miss your smile all the time just to look at me. I miss making you laugh. I miss feeling like I can't be apart from you or I'll just explode, and I miss that when apart from you I still feel very acutely loved, very close.

I miss your teeth and your confidence and my confidence in loving you, and I'm going to grasp that again no matter how many times I fail and feel like shit and wonder when you'll realize I'm just dead weight. I'll stop wondering, I promise I'll try.

I know that I can be happy. There was a time anything could have happened to me and I still could have smiled through it because I had you, and what else did I need. I don't think it's just nostalgia to reach for that.

I'm still so excited about you, but it's inhumed under mountains of self-loathing and mental illness. I'm excited about me too, somewhere. I swear to you, I'm getting it back. I promise, I swear.

Reality

Got back yesterday from an 8-day tour with Sam and the band. It was one of the best times I've ever had.

Poolesville, MD --> Lexington, KY --> Nashville, TN --> Austin, TX --> New Orleans, LA --> Home (with a couple of in-between places). One house party, two Austin showcases, and a coffeehouse. A cool music shop, Nashville's Broadway, driving through Memphis, Austin's 6th Street and South Congress, New Orleans' Garden District and awesome crepes. Several Sonics, remembering how awful Taco Bell is, a horchata milkshake, great tex-mex of course, and a couple of margaritas for good measure. 3,500 miles, ~50 hours in the crowded van.

Now we're back. It's hard not to feel down, and disappointed that now I have to go back to work. And I'm not even in the band, so it's so much silly! I can only wish that the guys consider me essential enough as stuff-watcher/photographer/videographer/roadie/hotel-booker/enthusiastic friend to keep taking me along. But I still can't help it. I have to be up by 6 tomorrow morning to be at work at 8:30 for a job that doesn't start (for me) until 9 and I have to stay until 6 even though I'm off at 5:30, won't be home until at least 7:30, and I don't get every other Monday off like Sam will now. Not to mention it's a sometimes insidiously hostile work environment. It feels pretty bleak all around.

I'm trying to be grateful for the time I had, grateful for the money I'm making. Trying to look at this job like a means to live the life I want, but I can't help but wonder how I can do that when I have almost zero personal time aside from the weekend, and a workplace that resents people taking time off. I make personal time and get not enough sleep, or I get enough sleep and continue to feel robbed. Either way it's so....
I was already doing a pretty poor job at not resenting spending most of my waking life at a job in general. Objectively, it seems so obviously unhealthy.

Plus, life is not coming so easy for me right now, for reasons both mental and external. It's hard to speak so generally about it (and I can't spend my journal disclaiming about how lucky I am), but I wouldn't feel comfortable writing about the business of people that includes but is not limited to me.

The bottom line is I'm just not happy. Happy happy. That has very little to do with the external though.

So them's the facts. I'm pretty good at being optimistic, but not all that great lately at not being negative. It's a painful contradiction. I'm trying at a lot of better things. And I am lucky. Sam is so good to me, and good for me, in so many ways; I couldn't ask for a better partner if I tried. And my Mom is, strangely, a source of sanity for me. Even though my lows make me feel physically ill, I've gotten better in a lot of ways. And I'm not giving up.

Worries

• I can't make you feel better because I can't talk to you about music in the same way - depth - that you talk to other people. Or I just can't make you feel better at all because maybe I don't know you as well as I hoped/thought or I just suck at it


• I'm still thinking disorderedly about food


• My Dad is going to kill himself


• My family's house with be foreclosed


• I will not be able to find a good job after this contract runs out and won't be able to pay for the house that we want to rent, or all my money will go to rent and we won't be able to live comfortably or save any money


• I won't be able to find/pay for a psychiatrist

Those are the main ones right now.

BE MYYYYYYY VALENTIYYYNE

Last week was an unusually good week. Starting Monday night Sam and I housesat in Takoma Park (well, basically Silver Spring). We cut our work commute in half, and both fell in love with the place. It's going up for rent in June, and we're considering moving in. More than considering.

Valentine's Day was happy indeed. I woke up to a "Happy Valentine's Day" red metallic banner hanging from the ceiling and a cute card on the table. At work he left a rainbow heart card on my desk when I walked away momentarily. After, we went to Bacchus of Lebanon for a fantastic mezze dinner. I felt beautiful in my drapey maxi dress and Sam looked dapper as usual in his pretty shirt and suit jacket. When we got home, flowers had been delivered - a lovely pink arrangement of gerbera daisies, lilies, roses and things. I gave him the rest of the healthy goodies I baked for him, and he gave me a third adorable card and Godiva truffles (his mom gave us Godiva truffles too), and a gift card from Sephora, saying "I want to explain," and that he always thinks I'm beautiful, and he loves how excited I've been since we've been together about being pretty and wearing pretty things and experimenting with actually wearing makeup. He sees how it makes me feel great about myself and how I've embraced it as something self-indulgent that I do for myself, just for me. It makes me happy too.

Those truffles were gone within 3 days. All 36 of them.

We ate out a couple of times at Mark's Kitchen - one of my favorite restaurants ever - and the Mediterranean place right next to it for yet more mezze. Also an Indian place for which we had a LivingSocial deal. I have a mission to try all of the tandoori vegetable dishes at every Indian restaurant. This place had a big flat-screen playing Bollywood, and cool lamps everywhere.

Takoma Park is so close to so many awesome things - good food everywhere, House of Musical Traditions, lots of vintage clothing and goods stores, cute quirky stuff vendors, Whole Foods, you can walk from the house to a Giant, it's right up against DC, the Fillmore is right there, AFI Silver is right there.... I'm smitten, is basically what I'm saying.

I was in a good mood the whole week. I felt pretty great about myself, my general confidence level was the best it's been in a while. I'm pretty much always optimistic, sometimes to a fault, but this week I caught a hold of something I hadn't felt but fleetingly in the recent past: contentment. Tenuous, inconstant, yes. But it's something.

I sent an email to a psychiatrist last night. She seems right up my alley, ideologically, which is important to me. I hope she has later hours so I can see her after work. That was my plan, but I'd even be willing to drive the hour to Silver Spring on the weekend or whenever. Who knows if she has weekend hours though. I hope this works out. I need help. I need someone to talk to.

Body Image

I was a body-confident person, about a year ago. I had been confident since about 2005, when I was at pretty much the heaviest weight I've ever been. Before that, I was a self-loathing mess. I hated the way my stomach was never flat and the way my thighs chafed when I walked for a long time. The way shorts rode up between my legs and how I could feel them jiggle. My mustache-in-the-making, the fine and numerous blonde hairs on my stomach and lower back. My sensitive, problematic skin, my hairy big toes.

I feel similarly lately. For different reasons, in different ways. From losing a lot of weight quickly in 2005, then gaining it back quickly last year, I have stretch marks all over my breasts, my hips, my thighs, my underarms, my knees. My breasts aren't firm and perky anymore. My stomach will never be flat (now because of the stretch marks rather than genetics), my thighs and arms will always jiggle, but now it's the arms that bug me. I have "saddlebags" - a term I only recently learned. Hooray, a name for a thing that makes me feel awful. My back fat bunches up when I lean.

But it's not as simple as all that.

If it were that simple, I could just tell myself, like I once did, that all of these grievances are based on some impossible, manufactured standard of mainstream North American beauty. That curves and stretch marks and jiggle are gorgeous too. That I am attracted to all of those things, that my own preference toward beauty is inclusive of all of these things, so why would my own body be exempt from that (because standards are internalized, that's why).

But it's not. So I tell myself these things, and they don't help. It makes me feel worse, because then I feel guilty for not feeling better. Like I'm betraying womankind, humankind, by saying that all of these things that I hate about myself, stupidly, are actually ugly, but everyone else with these features is beautiful and never deserves to feel otherwise. A hypocrite. And a fraud on top of that, because I openly advocate self-love and body-acceptance, fat acceptance. Seeing conventionally beautiful women, and women that are beautifully confident, only makes me hate myself more. So what kind of fair-weather friend am I to that cause.

I know I shouldn't feel these things. I know it's stupid, unfounded, hypocritical, irrational. But I feel them anyway. It's out of my control. So I risk falling into endless self-struggle. Sometimes I do, sometimes I'm able to talk about it and I do anyway, sometimes I'm able to talk about it and I don't, sometimes I manage to toss it off on my own. When I fall, I feel like several levels of shit. I hate my body, I hate my hate, I hate my self-pity, knowing full well that it's all so stupid and time-consuming. Life-consuming. But this is Bipolar II, this struggle, which deserves its own posts.

Newness

Sometimes it's good to just start something new. An easy way to do things differently, a motivation. For my previous journal, see Jenna Begins.

In this blog, I want to make a concerted effort to be more thorough about what goes on in my own head. That means making my personal political.

Among the politics I want to explore:

• Gender
  
• Feminism
  
• Sexuality
  
• "Adultness"
  
• Our Bodies

Also among my interests:

• Love
  
• Food
  
• Living with Bipolar II, Panic Disorder, binge-eating disorder, ADD/ADHD, and insomnia
  
• Theory (especially sociological, but also literary)
  
• Learning forever

I will also talk about the quotidian and mundane, as this is my journal.

I've always been a candid person, an open book. This is how I better bare my soul.