heartbeats

things were going so well for the past few months i nearly forgot how broken & dysfunctional i can be.

oh well... i was blissful for several months, which is the longest stretch of being happy that i can remember. it was nice while it lasted.

now i am sitting up at 5 in the morning, having serious anxiety, not breathing correctly, with my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

i want to go back to being chilled out & blissfully ignorant again.

Jolly Roger Tavern & Awkward Girl

I'm so thrilled to be free of my retail book store job.

I'm currently working the desk & doing piercings at a tattoo shop in south atlanta and not making a great deal of money but I am happy to go to work.

There are lots of things to be done, starting with a website, business cards, print ads & facebook ads. I want to help this place prosper and make a killing. it will also be a great opportunity for me to test out my marketing & advertising skills.

It'll be great for my schedule & I can go see my wonderful awkward girl perform more often. that wonderful girl who makes my heart beat faster when i think about her can really rock the guitar & croon some amazing tunes.

I'm happy with life & how crazy it is & how wonderfully new & magical & bright things are.

state of mind

I don't feel like I'm in the right state of mind. Everything is hazy and I don't know anything anymore.

Fuck the holidays. Nothing good ever comes from the holidays, only horrible repressed memories.
Just fuck it all.

I'm feeling really tired & cold. And most of all, I feel alone. I am surrounded by people and I smile and joke and participate but I will never stop feeling alone.
A certain someone was right. We're bipolar. We'll live alone and we'll die alone.

Argghh I don't need sleep!!

Dear electronic diary,

I've been up working on homework. I'm now feeling accomplished and tired, but I am stubbornly holding off on bedtime.
If I try to sleep now I wont wake up on time to make it to my important class (which, is inconveniently scheduled at the start of my day).

A recap:

Today has been one of the best days so far.

V and I went to Guitar Center to pick up a pretty PA system. The Fender 300 (while being convenient in its portability and an essential tool to her trade) is super freakin snazzy. Everything folds up into this weird rocket ship looking hunk of machinery. It was just so great to see her that ecstatic about something. It's the face I make when I can officially claim some awesome new lens or flash unit as my own. She just had the biggest smile & was ready to start doing backflips. We were, fortunately, in my car, so flipping of any sort wouldn't have been possible.

We also got her kick ass merchandise stuff in the mail that I designed & ordered as part of an early Christmas present. I think I was more excited than she was as we opened the package, but it just made me feel like I did something right when she was admiring everything & when she was showing her mom. It made all those hours I spent designing everything completely worth it just to see this person that I absolutely adore so happy.

I don't think I've ever put in extra effort for anyone I've been in a romantic relationship with to that extent and without actually wanting anything in return. It is the strangest thing. I mean, I don't know what happened. I usually only do stuff if I know I'll get something, usually tangible, for my efforts, but I just wanted to see her act like a little kid on Christmas morning opening presents under the lights & plastic pine tree (cutting down real trees hurt the environment).

On top of that, when she was happy I felt some of that joy. Not as much as her, but enough for me to forget any of the usual feelings of doubt, anxiety, & sadness I usually carry around. It was like that bag full of rocks I carry on my back was put down for a second so I can stretch & take a deep breath. I'm starting to think that maybe if I do more nice things for other people this depression will start to go away. Maybe if I keep making peoples day in some minuscule, insignificant way I could leave those rocks behind in the dust of my footprints. Who knows, it could be worth the try just to one day wake up to find that I wont be weighted down by those metaphoric rocks that I've had all my life. We will see...

Anyway, those were just some minor items. I can't wait to see her reaction when I give her the much cooler stuff I plan on making when the holidays come around :)

Pass the eggnog

The semester is almost over and I have never been more relieved to be finished.

The past few months have been a torrential downpour of research papers & essays & even more research papers. I can honestly say that when I am done I will have earned every single point in my statistics class.

I'm also glad to be able to hibernate during the holiday season. Stupid retail job aside, it will be a good time to just retreat. I will have deserved some time to be a bum during the winter.

It also worries me a bit, since my mood just starts to worsen as it gets colder. Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be lurking its ugly head, waiting for me to think I'm doing fine. I'll enjoy free time so much that I slowly start to isolate myself from the outside world. I'll make excuses to not go anywhere because it will be too cold out & stay in my home for weeks on end. At first I'll really enjoy catching up on my reading. Then I'll clean the house, organize everything, and maybe do something new with my hair. I'll teach myself new things on photoshop & watch movies all day.

Then I'll slowly start to get moody & not want to be around anyone. I'll no longer enjoy any quiet time to myself because I'll be bored, but I will be too fearful to leave the house because by then I would have talked myself into distrust & anxiety from the thought of having to interact with people.

I'll become just sluggish and bummed out because of my mental state & because I would have gone several weeks without sunlight on my face. Soon after that, I will be absolutely nuts.

This seems to happen every year when it starts to get cold, and I don't get back to living my life until it warms up & people force me to get outside & do things. The holidays are a blessing in the form of rest & a curse in the form of me sinking into a deep depression.

I remember 2 holidays ago I was at one of my lowest points when I was completely alone & just felt sick in every sense of the word. I spent Christmas Eve barhopping, surrounding myself with other strangers who felt completely alone. No one in that bar came in with someone else. People were all staring into their drinks & I felt so disgustingly similar. I hated how I fit in with this group of sad people. Drinking to drown out everything on a day when everyone else is at home with friends & family. Feeling completely alone because I had worked so hard to isolate myself. I felt out of place at family holiday parties & I didn't exactly fit into the rock bottom bar fly scene. I remember just wanting to literally go jump off the bridge over 75/85 in midtown. So I got in my car, started the engine, opened the door & puked on the sidewalk, & took a 5 minute nap because I was just too scared to end things, as miserable as I was.

I drove home & thought about the bridge that night, promising myself that I would never end up like the people in that bar. I would either have that friends/family holiday kind of life or work my ass off at my career. I would not stoop to that point again, because that would be the end point. If that were to be my only option I would not be driving home, but letting myself fall off a bridge. I decided that I'll either have a family or a career (maybe both, if I'm ever that lucky), but I wont end up with nothing to my name.

My holidays are usually miserable. I dont really recall any of them, since pointless memories shouldn't be held onto. It makes perfect sense to me why so many people kill themselves during that time of year. You just feel like there is nothing better to wake up to the next day and there is no other hope for you to live a meaningful life. Worse of all, you have nobody to express that to because you are alone, with no one to remember your name once you're gone.

I really hope this holiday won't be like the rest. I'm going to try to force myself to do something with my time instead of hoping I'd have the will to live to start spring semester.

Maybe I'll try a new approach this year. Work on my career stuff, volunteer, or go out shooting cool pictures. I haven't decided. I just dont want to get too comfortable with having alone time so I won't want to isolate myself.

One starts to wonder...

I have this problem.

It will probably never be fully resolved, hard as I try. And believe me, I've tried. I'm still trying.
Every single day is a struggle.

I try so hard to push out all the negative thoughts, the horrible feeling of someone sitting on my chest & pushing out every breath I have, the feeling of vomiting burning poison from my insides. I have to remind myself hundreds of times a day that everything will be okay and that I am okay, but I only partly believe myself. I've never been able to fully believe that I am a decent person. It feels like I'll always be this damaged, broken thing made up of countless individual failures that will always define who I am and it will never be any different. No matter how hard I try I always see that person in the mirror while everybody else sees someone who has it together. They see someone who is confidant & social. They see someone who cracks silly jokes & has no qualms about working hard to get things done. They see this persona I've built up for as long as I can remember and they will all leave in disgust the day they discover that I am a fraud.

Tomorrow I will try again

I've taken things for granted.

Specifically, I've taken my new calmer and doped up state of mind for granted, so I will start taking zoloft again tomorrow morning.

WIthout it I have started to slip back into a weird cycle of depression and everything is starting to feel horrible again. Everything is falling apart in my head again, even when they're not actually.

I hate that this medicine makes me normal and almost whole. I hate that I am a broken person with too many individual failures to ever forgive myself with the only thing keeping me from feeling okay is 100mg per day.
However, if that's what it takes to be even be close to being a normal person then beggars can't be choosers.

Tomorrow is another day. Another start to what I know can only be better.