Finding Me

I haven't been posting here regularly for a while now. Usually I come back and I make some lame excuse or laugh off my absence. Today..Today, I'm going to tell you the truth of where I've been.

I've been right here. I've been sitting here, staring at this screen and wishing desperately for the knowledge of how to tell any of you who still read here that I'm not okay. I'm not fine. If I say those words, odds are that they're lies because while I so desperately want to be, I'm not fine and I'm not okay. I haven't been for a long time.

Oh sure, there are good days. Everyone has good days, even me. There have been days where I feel like I'm on top of the world and nothing can bring me back down. Those days are almost too good. They give me hope and for a brief shining moment, there's clarity.

Then, there are the bad days. Oh God, the bad days nearly kill me sometimes. Those are the days where I sit and cry because my life just feels impossible. Those are the days where I look down at my wrists and I think about how good it would actually feel to slice open that fragile skin. I don't want to die. It's not about death. It's about feeling something other than whatever is holding me down.

I met a boy not so long ago and he was wonderful. For the first time, perhaps ever, I opened myself up to him. I showed him the good days and I showed him pieces of the bad days. It was hard because I was so afraid that the "truths" of the bad days really were the truth. The voices that tell me that I'm useless, that I'm ugly, that I'm stupid, that I don't deserve happiness..I was so afraid that he would look at the real me and just confirm those things. He didn't, but he still broke my heart. You see, I showed him the real me and he said the real me doesn't exist.

Do I exist? That's such an awful question if you think about it. We all want to exist. We all want to be important in someone's world, don't we? To have someone say that you don't exist and then prove it by completely shutting you out of their world is just awful. It's been a couple of weeks and it still fills me with a horrible amount of sadness.

You see, I do exist but I exist within a world that not many people understand or even get to see. I live in a world where I may be on top of the world for a few days and then below the bottom of the ocean for a number after that. I ride a chemical and emotional roller coaster that makes no sense to many who haven't lived it themselves.

There are days when I don't want to get out of bed, where all I want to do is pull the covers up over me and pretend that I don't exist. It would be so much easier than trying to push through it. How do you explain to the people around you, the people who tell you how smart you are, that there are days where trying to think or put together coherent thought is like being in a smoke filled box where you can't see the walls and so you keep slamming into them as they move in closer and closer to you? That the very attempt at trying gives you awful headaches but you keep trying because you don't want anyone to see just how much you struggle with something that other times comes so easily? How do you explain that sometimes it's like there are two of you living inside your own head? There's the completely logical, rational, totally you girl..your true personality and spirit..but then there's this emotionally rabid creature that just reacts without reason. How do you explain that it's that second girl who desperately seeks out love and affection, even when it's not healthy? It's that girl who will crumple into a weeping pile over something said without any intent of harm or malice?

Those are the bad days, the days where I spend all day fighting myself until I'm an exhausted mess by the end of the day. Those are the days when I try to avoid people and yet everything within me screams to be with certain people. You see, I have what I call my safe zone..those people who have known me for ages and yet still accept me, even on the bad days when I know they don't understand what's happening with me. They're my 5 safe places. The irony is that I can't easily access any of them but they're the 5 that deep down I know that if things got bad enough, they'd be there.

It's not all bad days though. There are the way too good days too. The days where I wake up and I'm on top of the world, nothing can stop me and it's going to be amazing. Those are the days where I'm like a machine. I can accomplish amazing amounts of things and I'm happy, cheerful, bubbly and everyone loves me.

The problem with those? It's not normal or healthy either. A person cannot maintain that level of omgtheworldisawesomeandyesitalklikethisonthosedays. My brain moves at hyper sonic speeds and it's not unusual for me to have half a dozen things going on at once in it. I could be hearing a song, arguing with myself, thinking over some problem, sorting out a schedule and all this going on while I'm actively doing something else. Other times, my body is still as still can be because my brain is moving so fast that I don't need to move. For me, they can last no more than a few days and then the crash comes and I go through a series of bad days. Then, if I'm lucky, it balances out and I have
"normal" days for a little while before the whole cycle starts again.

You see, this isn't just depression. I've done depression and this is something more.  If I had my guess, it's Bipolar II disorder. My guess isn't good enough though, so I'm seeing a clinical psychologist next week. I need to know what's wrong with me and if it's even possible for me to live a normal life. I need to know if I can be just me without all of this holding me down and holding me back. I know that I will never get the boy back or help him to understand that I loved him enough to
show him the good and the bad, but maybe I can help other people understand what it's like to live with this by writing about it. It's a scary, scary place where so often I feel incredibly alone, so alone that I panic and will reach out to people who have no idea just how badly I need them to hold my hand and to tell me that it's going to be okay.

I'm just a girl, lost in her own world, who needs to know that even when she's "crazy", she's still loved.




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