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.