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.