New Again

I’ve begun running again. For most of high school, I used to run every evening after school around our subdivision. It would be totally silent, and mostly dark. There were streets that were pitch-black those were my favorite ones to run in. I could be sure there would be no one there (because no one was as insanely lacking of the instinct of self-preservation as I was), and running in the blackness made me feel like I was disappearing, too. I liked that feeling.

Noting the difference in my phases of depression / mania prior and post to that period of regular, strenuous physical activity, I’m fairly convinced that exercise is an extremely powerful mood regulator that is largely ignored by the psychiatric field. My own psychiatrist freely admits to this disregard of the psychiatry towards anything that isn’t psychoanalysis or pharmacological – anything that has to do with emotion or the body and its needs. Basically, all the psychiatric theories that had been carefully constructed for decades were thrown out with the rise of psychopharmacology in the 80’s. And that’s a terrible shame, because meds only work for so long.

Anyway, I abandoned running and the gym when I started college. That’s really when everything went to shit. I’m only realizing this now that I think about it.

I still don’t really like to run in the gym, on a treadmill. I love running at night, though. I’d forgotten how pleasurable it was – not at all something to slog through in the name of fitness. I lost track of time as I ran quietly around the empty streets. In the previous years, plenty of streetlights have been installed, and I no longer hear the evening symphony of the toads in the puddles of the empty lots, or the crickets in the trees. They’ve probably all been murdered by pesticides. And I’ve given up on ever spotting a firefly again – when just a few years ago, I once saw a whole swarm of fireflies in the highest treetops. It was such a lovely sight that sometimes I wonder if I dreamt it while I was lying on top of the water tower. (It, too, has since been fenced with barbed wire.)

So many things have changed. But the air was still fresh and cool, and it was still quiet enough for my thoughts. There was a full moon, and enough clouds in the sky to reflect its light – but not so many clouds that they blocked out all the stars. The trees, the houses, the grass and the streets were all silver.

“In the sky, the darkness surrounded the moon, and it seemed like at any second it would take over, and the moon would be no more. And yet its light shone on the ground. How could it be that the moonlight had no effect on the darkness around it? How did it reach the earth without leaving some silver trace? He felt his intelligence and curiosity quicken, and he knew he would eventually find the answer; and when he did, he would love moonlight. From understanding, to love, was not such a big step.”

– What Hearts, Bruce Brooks 

I want to take you here. I want to drive with you in my father’s (long gone) dark red pickup truck and find the darkest street with the clearest view of the stars. I’ll spread out a blanket in the back and we’ll lie there like the teenagers we no longer are. I want to make you feel young again; I want to hear your laugh, deep and rich and full of joy. I want to lay my head against your chest and listen to the beating of your heart. I want to run my fingers over and over in your hair. I want to bury my face in your familiar scent, in the hollow between your shoulder and your neck that I’ve fit into like it was molded for me. We are not new, you and I – we’ve been lost, found, kicked around. But I can make us feel new again.

On many of my solitary nights running around and around here, I used to wonder if I”d ever have anyone next to me. On some nights, I felt the loneliness so strongly, I felt convinced that no one would ever love me.

How wonderful to be wrong about that one thing.

 

Dear R

By Irene Koutsidis

May 19 2016

 

When you’re dating someone like me — someone with bipolar disorder  — you have to be ready for a bumpy ride. We are extreme. You’ll never be loved harder or shown more affection in your entire life. We’ll shower you with gifts, love letters and all of your favorite things.

We’ll stay up all night kissing and loving you because you are our ultimate high. You have just shown a person who believes they aren’t lovable that they can, in fact, be loved. You are our saving grace. You are our world, our backbone, our everything. You are what we dreamed of when we were young.

You’ll realize our laugh is contagious, and we always want you to feel the extremes with us. We want to take that feeling all the way to the top of a mountain, and we want to feel your heart race with ours.

Our love is extreme; our love is unmatchable. But sometimes, for you, our love is unhealthy. And we know it, too.

Sometimes we sit there in our lonesome, and we become a person you won’t recognize. Suddenly, we stop taking care of ourselves, and you will notice. We feel so empty, you’ll look at us and wonder what you did wrong. We’ll sit there and tell you that this time it’s not you, and we’ll mean it.

We want you to understand these “bad” moods, aren’t fair to us, either. But it’s a part of who we are, and it’s a part of accepting the person you love. We need you to know that when we have these days, weeks or even months during which our moods are uncontrollably solemn, we just need you nearby. You need to be the voice of reason. We need to hear you tell us our feelings don’t define us, and that you’ll be there to get us through.

The problem here is sometimes we don’t always know what we need. Most of the time, you won’t feel like you’re enough to help solve the issue. You’re not doing anything wrong. The reality of our illness is just that nothing is ever enough. Nothing ever helps. To put it bluntly, that’s why we’re on medication. We have mood stabilizers for the behavioral aspect, and Xanax for the anxiety that comes with being in your own head all the time.

We are so sorry, and we feel so much guilt in the confusion that we cause you. But the problem with this doesn’t always have to do with you, it has to do with the fact that we sometimes don’t address our issues ourselves.

We don’t always say what we need from you. We don’t always explain to you our condition, and because of that, you unfortunately get pushed to the side when we need you the most.

We need you to help us when you see we’re down. Tell us you notice our beautiful soul on our darkest day. Tell us we shine when we’re curled up in our bed unable to talk, touch, kiss, feel you.

But please don’t give up on us if you know our heart is in the right place.

It always is.

Porn ban, unemployment, lithium, bpd, fsdaf;kljd

1. Some porn sites have been shut down since January 14 here in the Philippines. One is a personal favorite of mine. It’s to address to issue of child pornography, which is obviously extremely important, but since it is “yet to be known if the adult websites have violated any provision of the anti-child pornography law”, that probably doesn’t accomplish much. Considering how much porn does for society (good and bad) I don’t think the government should go around shutting down websites willy-nilly. Haha, I just said willy-nilly while talking about porn. Willy-nully. Get it? Because the willies are now nonexistent? Null-y?

Moving along. I actually don’t have anything else to say on this topic right now. I’m just mildly upset because my favorite site would load videos and they would stay loaded  while my laptop slept, so I got the advantage of having videos ready for watching without internet and without saving them to my laptop.

2. Today we had a report. My professor liked it. I’m good at storing information in my head for a short period of time and relaying it before it expires. Could I do that for a living? Is that a marketable skill? Because I don’t have much else going for me. I don’t even really know my way around Excel.

3. I don’t know if it’s because I’m sick, or because I’m on my period, or it’s the meds, but I can’t seem to stop eating. My psychiatrist is blind to the problem, which I’m fine with, except it’s probably not good for me. She is also in denial about the fact that the country is running out of lithium. My mother lives in fear it’ll run out and I’ll turn into a raving maniac or a suicidal zombie. Which isn’t too unreasonable of her. It’s like running out of wolfsbane potion.

4. I had a friend with borderline personality disorder for a while. I wanted to love her, (platonically) but I don’t think she would have ever wanted that. I miss her.

5. 

1. fhdjkslahjflkd
2. fdjskalhjkdf

 

A Polite Desire

For most anyone else, it would be a bittersweet film about a relationship that couldn’t last but nevertheless made each person better for knowing the other.

For me, it’s about the impossible longing to go back to the moment where everything could have been changed. To correct the trajectory that was a fraction of a degree off course at the launching, a tiny mistake that became larger and larger and more irrevocable the farther we went.

“Here’s to hoping that our friendship can go where our love could not.” – A., 2015

I only found that note months after the last time I ever saw her.

The French Conditional Mood: The verb “aimer” is used to express a polite desire, sometimes one that cannot be fulfilled. 

J’aimerais que si j’avais été un peu plus âgés. J’aimerais que si j’avais plus patient. Si j’avais été mieux. Si, si, si… 

Not because I’m not happy now. But because I needlessly wasted so many good things before I got here.

Nothing but wordless images now –

an open window, a moment of panic, before I saw her perched on the ledge, smoking and listening to a sad song. a body against my back, fingers suddenly harsh and unfriendly on my throat. a low voice. peeling the backing off a fever cooling patch, patting it down on her hot forehead. being manic then, I didn’t need much sleep, so I would go into the kitchen and watch movies and eat cookies with milk while she slept on the mattress on the floor. we made so many plans and there was never enough time or money. a subdivision guard knocking on the steamed-up car window, looming in the darkness outside. a christmas party with all her closest friends, giving her a box full of our history, as well as I could document it. The musty room filled with musty objects, the four walls within which we had to contain our love. a lighted river, a moment of uncertainty. fingers on my cheeks, wiping away my tears. poems. poems and poems and poems, flitting back and forth between us like birds singing the sweetest notes.

I don’t think about the endings though, all the good reasons why, all the good reasons to forget. My mind doesn’t wander down there. I still don’t really know why.

The path I walk now, and the one who walks with me, is  just as sweet – and often sweeter, in its way – but the long journey here was so needlessly bitter

What It’s Like These Days

The statistics aren’t on my side. At least 25% – 50% of people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide. It’s like having cancer, the way it takes over your life, how you try to live in between the surges of disease in your brainbox.

On my wall I have a corkboard with the business cards of people I met when I was full of idealism and hope. It keeps falling off and scattering pins everywhere.

In the morning I’m so disappointed when I see the sun behind the curtains and realize I’ve lived to face another day. I would’ve been grateful to stop breathing during the night.

I don’t like writing about this here. I hate most of the novels written about bipolar disorder. They’re self-absorbed in a way that goes beyond the introspection of other writers, other artists and dreamers. I never wanted to be that way. But I’m fascinated and repelled by this illness, how it warps everything that I am. It’s hard not to pay attention to something that’s taking over you like this does.

I’ve lost almost everyone from my life. It didn’t happen right after my manic episode, which I would have expected, but sort of gradually… I don’t like myself, and I suppose it must be difficult to like someone who doesn’t even like herself.

I live for those visits with ____. The only times I ever feel safe anymore. My isolation is almost terrifying in its completeness.

I don’t like writing about this at all – but I’ve told myself – someday, when I’m brave enough, I want to write about all the ways I’ve made life horrible for the people who have tried to love me – like a part apology, part love letter, part confession –

To say thank you and I’m sorry –

To send some words on the wind and hope it finds them again somehow

I guess this is practice, because it’s really hard.

Well S***

“True peace comes from accepting the worst.” – Lin Yutang (?)

– Ever since I got out of the hospital, I’ve been steadily morphing into this person I don’t recognize. There wasn’t any specific point at which I realized I was different. It was slow but sure. On each successive morning I’d have less and less motivation to get out of bed. Until most of my time was being spent there, only getting out for the bathroom or food.

– Now I don’t know who I am. Even the doughy face in the mirror looks unfamiliar. I keep thinking back across my past, wondering who that person was, who thought and did so many things. Which is why I’ve been reading so much of my old messages and my journals. It’s sort of entertaining, but leads me to no answers. I look at a typical day. “work in the morning.” Work? What work? What did she use to do? Why did this make her happy, and not that? Why did she hold on so long? Why did she give up? She’s a mystery to me.

– In this mood everything seems meaningless.

– This morning my mom picked up half a dozen empty chip packets scattered around my room. The other night I saw Nick Vujicic at Araneta with her and my girlfriend. I thought he looked tired and wondered why he wouldn’t have prosthetics.

– There was once a doctor with a promising career ahead of her who got thrown from her bike in a car collision and sustained a serious head trauma. The diagnosis was permanent brain damage. She was never the same afterwards. She would forget things, be unable to process and remember things. Exactly like how it is for me during these times. She wrote: “How many suicides are stayed by exhaustion so profound that physical action is impossible?” Eventually she came to terms with her condition. I wonder if something similar will be required of me. It’s been three months. Everything ended that night my mom picked me up at my dorm and had me drugged and imprisoned.

– My old journals. I was always with someone. My actions don’t really make sense to me now. Why couldn’t I be happy?

– At the hospital, I was pretty active. I read, drew in colored pencils, wrote, watched movies, sang karaoke, and pestered the doctors for my release. But I was already starting to be hollowed out. The night I was getting out, I could hardly believe it. I was saying and doing whatever I thought they wanted. I said I was sorry for the things I posted online. (I wasn’t.) The maid had packed skimpy clothing. It was cold and tight. I was so happy to be leaving. About two or three nights before that, a young woman had gotten admitted. She was nice and pretty, and she had a small son, and I felt sorry for her, so I tried to leave her some food and magazines. The nurses took them away. She was ranting and raving down the halls when I left.

– In there, I plotted escape. At the end of the long hall was a fire exit. One night in bed, I told myself that they probably left it unlocked. After all, if there was a fire, they wouldn’t let the crazies broil alive, would they? I imagined an episode wherein I made a skirt of one of my sweaters, shucked the hospital uniform and slipped out of the fire exit. My heart thudded so wildly inside my chest that I couldn’t sleep. This fantasy ended the next morning when I walked down the hall, ostensibly to deposit laundry into the basket that sat next to the fire exit, and gave the bar an experimental push with my arm. It was locked. I suppose the nurses were expected to be quick with the keys in case of fire.

– I no longer expect remuneration for the abuse that occurred there. I’ve received no support whatsoever, no apology.

– I’m living like a dog in my parents’ house. One that’s been beaten and then coaxed back with food and favors. Oh, and the threat of homelessness. Or – not a dog, more like my cat, who’s interested in nothing but food. Whatever time isn’t spent forcefully ingesting tuna from a metal bowl is spent lying on the nearest patch of floor. She doesn’t appear to have a favorite spot or anything like that. Whatever’s convenient.

– I’m not “Trinity” anymore; I think that’s only who I was for the past year, between the time I broke up with A and now. That was an interesting time. The records are interesting. I had so many thoughts. But nothing finished.

Doubt

Creep past the hours, like the shorter hand on a clock hanging on a wall of a schoolhouse somewhere. We wait for the bell, and we dream of somewhere else. – Daydreaming, Paramore

This isn’t so much a prison of the body as of the mind and heart. Something about this place fills its inhabitants with dull despair and irrationality. It’s like Kansas – everything is gray.

This is the place where my ____ was stripped of his dignity and worth. Where I made up my mind to die, not so very long ago. Where my ___ ‘s narcissism reigns supreme.

I try to send my mind on journeys from this place, like a tower prisoner sailing paper airplanes out of a barred window. But I never get very far.

 

 

I can’t seem to find the conviction that I blew up the internet with, still less long ago. (My small patch of the internet, anyway.) Or even the rage. After weeks of forced worship at the altar of the holy trinity of Lamictal, Seroquel and Solian, I’m as dull, desperate and irrational as every last miserable inhabitant of this place.

I have news that an ex-lover of mine is now with another ex-lover of mine. I don’t know how this news is supposed to make me feel. I suppose it’s only natural to feel uneasy. Perhaps at this very moment they are exchanging the sordid details of exactly how awful I am in bed. Perhaps they’re so in love that they’ve completely forgotten I existed. It’s hard to say which makes me feel more uneasy.

This is like a sort of purgatory, where I’m being purged of everything that makes me alive. My hopes, my plans, my self-esteem.

About three years ago I decided here that I had lost my mind and I was better off dead. Not having managed that, I decided then that I was good for nothing but menial labor and the most simple tasks for the rest of my life. So I left the University.

The other day, almost all the people I’d known there graduated.

They’re all done and ready to move on with their lives. They managed the pressure without cracking up. Perhaps I’ve been wrong about the pressure that I so angrily wrote about. Perhaps there’s just ever a handful of us unlucky ones.

I’m doubting things I was so sure of just one, two months ago –

That I’m a good writer –

That my life’s heading somewhere –

That I’m in control of where it goes –

There are so many things I could write about, pieces I could submit – about the lake – somewhere nice to eat – about what I went through to get a prescription for Nordette in 2013; what it was like to grow up bipolar and gay; what it was like to have a relationship with an older woman.. oh, so many things… but… I don’t know where to start and how to structure them –

It’s like setting out to a different room, and always forgetting what you were there for the minute you step foot inside.

Always.

Here, anyway. In this place of doubt.

Your Sympathy Is Killing People pt. 3

The ultimate danger of suicide is not merely that it ends your life, but that it breaks everyone else’s lives. And not in that “Everyone would be better off without me” kind of way that you might have become familiar with if you have suicidal thoughts. To the people who love you, it is your inability to accept their love that causes them the most pain. Eventually, your parents won’t care that you racked up psychiatry bills; your friends won’t remember the times you woke them looking for solace, or made them drive across the city to pick up your drunk ass or whatever. No one will remember you “being a bother”; but the pain of your death will haunt everyone who loved you for the rest of their lives. Nothing will ever remove that sadness and guilt from them.

Trust me: the people who love you would rather clean up your messes a million times over than see you dead. They’d rather get dozens of texts from you that say things like, “I don’t know where I am. Can you take me home?” than get a single text from someone else that says, “She’s gone.” They’d rather stand outside a doctor’s room at therapy session after therapy session than stand over your lifeless body in a casket. They’d rather buy you things you need now than buy flowers for your grave.

The people who love you will do anything to keep you alive, even if it means you hating them for it – for doing things like forcing you to go to therapy or ratting out your self-destructive behavior to your family and other friends. They’d rather you live without them than remain close to you until you die.

Your Sympathy Is Killing People pt. 2

What got me started on this tirade? The other day, of all weird coincidences, I happened to have a long conversation with [redacted], who was close to Bianca Reyes.

There have been several deaths of ADMU students that I’ve been aware of in the past years, all of them under dark circumstances (three suicides and one murder, by my count) but Bianca Reyes’ suicide late last year has been the most publicized. Type “Bianca Reyes” in a Google search, and it auto-completes to “death” and “suicide”.

 

She and I moved within roughly the same social circle, a bunch of intense artist types known for self-destructive behavior including, but not limited to: irresponsible sex, teenage pregnancies, abortions, regular drug use, cheating on their boyfriends and girlfriends, and general stupid fuckery. I say I moved within it – they never really accepted me because I was too awkward and not self-destructive enough. I was close to a few people in that circle, but was never completely absorbed, which is one of the most fortunate things that’s ever happened to me.

Here’s the thing – they helped to kill her.

I suspected this at first when I saw photos of people from this group, out drinking shortly after Bianca’s burial. They were in a bar holding up signs saying things like, “Bianca, this is for you.” It disturbed in a way I couldn’t articulate nor confirm.

Talking with [redacted] confirmed my suspicions. I didn’t go to her wake, so I didn’t know about this:

A lot of her friends – those people – gave speeches, and almost all of them said things like, “I’m glad you’re in a better place,” and “We’re happy that you’ve finally found the peace you’re looking for.”

The family was outraged. One of Bianca’s cousins had to state the obvious to make them stop; that Bianca’s death was not a good thing and nothing to be glad for. It was clear how deranged those people’s view on suicide was. Furthermore, [redacted] said, “They were so loud, it was confusing. They were singing… They almost seemed happy.”

They killed her. They’re killing each other because they create and propagate an environment in which darkness is celebrated. They validate and glorify insanity in each other. This way of thinking is exemplified in the work of musicians like Halsey:

For the record, I enjoy her musical compositions, but all of her lyrics are bizarrely dark like this. 

In this environment, depression isn’t an illness to be treated, but a defining characteristic. Same with addictions. The inability to build happy, healthy relationships isn’t pathetic, it’s poetic.

Ever wondered if it was you who doesn’t know how to love?

 

These are fucking lies. Sure, every creative, intelligent kid is bound to pass through a phase of existential angst; that’s part of growing up, and something that, if handled properly, will absolutely give you more grit and compassion. But prolonging and glorifying that angst without an end in sight is a sure way to remain an adolescent forever. You face the pain of knowing the problems that are in the world so that you have more drive to solve them. You don’t keep dwelling in that pain to the point where it incapacitates you.

One of the main lies of these artist-types (mostly found on Tumblr, I think) is that depression is the only real thing and happiness is fake and for stupid people who refuse to open their eyes to the misery of the world. There’s misery in the world, and there is also joy – seeing only one or the other is blindness.

Another lie that they tell each other is that self-love comes from mantras that you tell yourself over and over again. “You are enough.” “You are worth it.” If you are, why do you feel this way? You wouldn’t have to convince yourself so hard of the existence of something that is obviously true. Self-love, like all love, is made true by actions – not words. Want to love yourself? Then take care of yourself. See a doctor for your depression. Eat better. Get more sleep. Spend time with people who bring out the best in you, instead of encouraging your neuroticisms.

The most dangerous lie of all, and the one that killed Bianca, is that suicide is ever an option. To react to an expression of suicidal thoughts with anything less than outrage provides an amount of validation of the thoughts, however small. And once those thoughts take hold, they become terrifyingly attractive. They begin to seem logical. You’re in pain, the world is terrible, you just make trouble for everyone – why not have it all over with? But the thing is, life runs on love, which is the opposite of logic. If you want to be logical about saving the environment, aren’t natural disasters great? They kill a lot of people, which alleviates overpopulation. Logical – and insane, and evil. Suicide is as insane and evil as the murder of another person. Love is the only thing that will save you. Love for yourself, love for the people in your life and the people who are to come into your life in the future.

They did not love her. Encouraging darkness and inadequacy in a person is not love, even though it may seem like it. If that has become your instinct, fight it. Before you help to kill someone else.

Your Sympathy Is Killing People pt. 1

Except when you’re not.    c) KDCorner

I have news for you: If you feel worthless, it’s probably because you are.

You don’t hate yourself because you have low self-esteem, or because other people are mean to you. You hate yourself because you don’t do anything. – Jason Pargin

The only people who owe you respect and care regardless of your personal attributes are the people who love you unconditionally – your family and closest friends. Everyone else is going to judge you only by what you can give them, because people have needs and thus assign value to those who meet them (Pargin again).

If you create the identity of a person who deserves respect without the attributes to back it up, you’ll forever be susceptible to people who want to knock down your useless and fake self-perception because there is nothing supporting that self-perception.

Want that job? Become smart enough for it, become talented enough for it. Want beautiful women to go out with you? Become beautiful enough for them.

“But I don’t want to change who I am…” Stop it. If who you are is really who you want to be, you should be happy now. You can try to fool other people, but they won’t fall for it for long, and you certainly can’t fool yourself.

If you ever want to become somebody who can take care of herself and others and effect real change in the world, stop these empty reassurances. Stop telling them to each other. Stop telling them to yourself. They’re no different than doing drugs to numb the pain that comes from your inadequacy. It gets rid of it for a while, but it’ll come back. It’ll keep coming back until you truly make something of yourself.