Fall Academics

I have the option of sitting here contemplating my errors this semester, or I can move on into an increasingly uncertain future. This week has been an anxious one for me. My anxiety, although I have chosen to conceal its outward expression, has become more concentrated as the week has progressed.
Final projects involving group work, and attending my job and classes have become chores. My depressed brain is at work with regard to academics and my future. It is hard to shake anxiety and console myself from paralyzing fear. I have high standards of success and although it would be easier to believe, pressure doesn't come from only myself. My parents to an extent place a lot of pressure on me and I also fear the judgment of medical school admissions officers in the not too distant future.

This semester has been an emotionally intense one. Intense is not necessarily bad here. I've had to grow accustomed to being vulnerable and being my true self. I've also educated myself a lot about the various injustices that exist around the world and specifically within American society. My desire for perfection has made this recent education a burden on my mind. Once you have heard or read about the various inequalities, it is hard not to notice them and even more difficult not to be bothered by them. The combination of increased vulnerability and increased sensitivity to others' actions has been a difficult combination for me to get used to. I also struggle  with liberating myself from depression and bouncing back from psychologically damaging medication withdrawal. Struggling with emotions has strengthened me a bit, and allowed me adjust to a new persona who may withdraw a bit when faced with stress, but who can generally handle herself in difficult situations.

At the end of each semester, I like to think about what I've learned and how I can change. Academically, I am disappointed in what I have done, for yet another semester. This may mean that I have simply not developed a good strategy for performing well academically. The liberal arts method here seems to favor people who outwardly behave like idiots but who perform well on tests. Unfortunately, I appear to be quite intelligent in a way that isn't reflected by my grade point average. What new things can I do next semester to fix the way I learn and perform here? What am I supposed to do to change? I feel lost. My personal relationships are fine, but is this at the cost of my academics? I need balance, and I refuse to compromise my personal life like I've done in the past because I genuinely believe that I deserve to be as happy as I am now.

I suppose I will have Christmas vacation to ponder change. I need to find a way to start making Vermont work for me. Somehow I need to take advantage of this liberal arts system. I should be prepared to cope here, yet somehow, I feel as if I am not. I don't know how to pull myself out of this mixture of academic apathy and contempt. I need to feel like my intelligence is being valued again. No one here seems interested in helping that count however, so I suppose I will have to be more self-sufficient than I've been in the past. 

Snippet 2

Leave poetry to the poets and I will take  the leftovers: words that are too dull and plain and I will build a log cabin out of my thoughts. I am admitting that I have no way with words. At times. I choke on them as if allergic. Other times, words flow out of me; there is no dam to my noise. I am in love with words and sounds, but I am not loved in return. Unrequited love. Maybe my place belongs with tables and charts and graphs and adding one chemical to another to make a third. I should leave poetry to the poets, and writing to the writers. But then, what would be left for me to build my thought-house?

Snippet 1

Let's not care about the future. Live every day like it's the last one you'll have left, right? We are in Vermont. It is cold. It snowed this morning. I woke up in your arms. You kissed my shoulders and wrapped your arms around me while I panicked about spring classes. I missed my first class. I   ate lunch with a good friend and skimmed my lab readings. This is the present. Winter is here without any regard for slowing down to let us experience fall in its entirety. How quickly will the next semester go by? How long do we have the present? How long will it be before I have to confront ideas I am not ready for? An hour ago, you kissed me for the first time; I was shaking and nervous. It's already the end of November. I've never wished so hard for spring to remain distant.

Titles

I absolutely hate titles so I always do them over the top or just plain awful.
I may go through and re-title some things because I can't handle this at-ALL.

Disorganized Mind: November Edition

Writing on an empty mind is like drinking on an empty stomach. A lack of quick thought is a sickening vodka, churning up bile along with the coarse, forced retching of doing too much, too fast. I haven't been thinking about much recently. The inside of my mind has been a bit of a dream world. I spend my time bound by instants rather than having a constant preoccupation with the future. I suppose at some point I will be made to acknowledge the future and what it holds for me, but until then I am going to seek refuge in my head, and in warm bodies and sheets and in immense joy.


I usually question happiness and treat it as the fickle mistress that it has always been. I am slowly letting my guard down with this man. I am shedding layers of myself, like layers of clothing touching the ground aggressively as my body relishes in the freedom of nakedness and the purity of existence. A single touch releases the imprisoned girl within me. I am one hundred percent myself. I think he fears that I hold back with him. That may have been true when I first started toying with the concept of freedom in his bed; but things are different for me. I wonder if this is real or sustainable.

People spend so much time wondering; I am as guilty as the next person of thinking too much about places and times that have not yet come to pass. It's becoming easier for me to not dwell on the past or the future because the present is so tangible and I can taste it on his lips and see it in his smile. If you'd asked me three months ago what I thought of men or if I thought it was ever possible to feel this way I would have scoffed at you and gone back to internalizing my bitter loathing of men (which is really just a poorly expressed criticism of patriarchal thought.) Now, as this new feeling coincides with my depression healing, I am exploring new ways to feel and  trying to understand and change the feelings of fear that sit underneath any positive emotion I manage to choke out and actually express.

What I'm most scared of is being too much of myself, especially since I am just becoming accustomed to being "myself" in her purest form. I can be too obnoxious, too needy, too depressing and that scares people away. My extremes scare me, what kind of insane person wouldn't be terrified also? I know that depression scares people away because I've watched it happen - and not just to me. I don't want to be a burden to anyone and sometimes, it is difficult to see the positive aspects of my personality.

I'm told that I have a great capacity for love and that I am caring, but I see all these things as being burdens to other people. My caring is taken advantage of, or seen as pathetic and clingy. Loving people has got me into trouble more often than not. Even if I'm involved with someone who understands the good parts of me now, how can I be sure that this won't change? How can I be sure I won't let my darker persona take over? I am strong, right?

I don't want to hide my fear from him. At the same time, I can't continue to receive emotional support without giving anything in return. I take too much I think, perhaps to compensate for my immense ability to give that tends to go unexpressed. I am tortured by fear too much. I am scared of inadequacy, failure, caring too much and feeling too much. This insecurity won't get me far and I know that too well. I should fix myself without compromising how I feel. I don't need to choose a man or self-care. I can choose both, and I will be conscious about choosing both. And maybe I won't be enough for him. Maybe I will be too much. But how can I think about being enough, or being too much with my hand curled around his and my head nestled in his chest listening to his deep strong breathing through the night.

Selfishness

I walked to his room in the middle of the night eager to feel his warm body next to mine and eventually the sticky heat from wearing too much clothing to bed. I wanted him to be next to me as I slowly peeled off layers and settled into his arms and rhythm of his heartbeat. I feel like I am not as terrified of happiness as I used to be. I am formless, shapeless, elated nothingness, yet I am alive. I use my index finger as a pen, drawing the outline of his body and then filling it in with kisses. Last night, I clung desperately to him, not just the idea of him, and I said things that I really meant. I talked about my feelings. It's such a relief to be able to say what is on your mind without being scared. I wonder if he feels that too.



It seems like everyone around me is falling apart. As my life is gaining sanity, and as I am becoming comfortable with this new found sanity, everyone else seems to be losing theirs. I am sealing myself in a bubble of happiness and ignoring everyone else's pain. I feel guilty about it, but despite my guilt I cannot fight compulsion to run back into safety and warmth. This is the first time I've cared about myself. This is the first time in a while that I've felt like my depression has a slight chance of being erased. Maybe I'll find the cure in his heartbeat or in his voice. At the very least, I may find a part of the cure which is more than I had in yellow pills or dwelling on my past trying to fix the unfixable.

As the people around me who I looked to for stability get shakier, I am starting to question whether anyone is truly stable and whether people are really as sane as they appear. I am starting to think about how fragile we all are. As I think of fragility, I recall a scene from the popular British television show, Skins. Emily (one of the main characters) is standing on the edge of a building as her girlfriend Naomi who has just cheated on her looks on. "Don't you see it Naomi, I could be dead in a second. Everything is so fragile." Emily gets off the ledge and walks away. Despite ending with an anti-climax, this is one of the most poignant moments in the series. The moment is honest and profound for a sixteen (or seventeen) year old's thoughts. People are fragile; their emotions and their behaviors are all tethered together by an unreliable glue. We are utterly reliant on each other, yet each of us is so unreliable.

What do you do when the strongest people around you are no longer protected? How do you help them when you are used to being the weak one? I am not dealing with my need to nurture very well. I am running to what makes me happy, and latching onto it, trying to ignore the fact that people I care about are in pain. I am consciously being selfish. I know what it's like to feel alone and to feel engulfed in sadness. I am irrationally scared that being around sadness or unhappiness will take me back to darker places in my life.

I am only now learning that some darkness can be alright, and manageable, but I still fear it. Protecting other people is a huge concern for me, but I wonder if I could even be supportive right now. I am almost too happy to be supportive and I'm scared that my happiness may come off as gloating. A part of me is aware that this is the anxiety-controlled piece of my depressed brain at work. I am fighting this piece of me that wants to be immersed in selfishness and ignore people who have been there for me.

But how do I act strong? How do I assure others that everything will be okay? I know that I cannot guarantee a happy ending for anyone even if I want to. There seems to be no viable solution for my conflict between selfishness and selflessness. I am ruled equally by both: an unexpected moment of balance in my life.

Know that I care. Know that I love you. Know that you deserve a happy ending. Know that everything happens for a reason... At least I hope it does. Stay strong. Cling to memories of when you were happy because I assure you that they exist. I love you. I love you. Remember that I'm here and I always will be, in the middle of the night when you need to cry or early on weekend mornings when the whole world is dead. I will be here because I care. It's the sort of caring I cannot help, that is almost too much. You are my sisters. You are my friends. And I want you to be happy.

If only I could speak half as well as I could write, then I'd be twice as helpful as I am. 

Latté

I've made myself a latté with four espresso shots. The foam is perfect this time. Even if my coffee has been tainted with milk, I'm finding a way to enjoy it. I should be studying for a Chemistry test I have tomorrow, but instead, I'm going to write and try to forget stress and pressure and these other things that constantly dominate my thought processes. The past two weeks have been wonderful in my personal life, even as I watch my dreams of a good GPA and being a real scientist seemingly crumble around me.



It's strange to have a boy (man?) in my life like this. I'm very much unaccustomed to it, and I spend a lot of time trying not to dwell on the future and what will happen and trying to focus on right now. I want to be there when he touches me, and when he kisses me and when I listen to his voice soothing the lurking spectre of my depression. Keeping myself present is a challenge. My mind has a tendency to wander off, and she gets lost easily and terrified. There are places my mind has wandered that I would like not to find myself in again.

So as I rest my head against his and feel his fingers tracing the outline of my lips, I try to anchor myself in moments. But anchoring yourself is risky. I'm not very fond of taking emotional risks, although I do it frequently. I have convinced myself that being present makes me free. And it does.

For a couple weeks I didn't have a single bad thought. Depression's sickle was kept at bay by this weird sort of happiness that didn't even have a manic, artificial tint to it. I've rarely had days in a row like that this past year and having weeks unnerved me. I tried to do what I always do, and tried to push my mind into remembering negative things that have kept me distant from men physically and emotionally. I tried very hard to remember anything and I ended up writing a good bye letter to the first boy I ever really loved unconditionally.

I don't know what that means. Maybe I'm growing up? Maybe I'm getting better? Perhaps I am freeing myself from my mental handicap. I've used the word freedom a lot. I think that's what happiness is. Or at least freedom is a huge part of happiness. I can feel vulnerable and naked and stressed and sad and happy and affectionate without really worrying about the aftermath. Balanced happiness is freedom.

This weekend I got quiet, and irritatingly introspective because I was scared that this boy's presence in my life was the only thing contributing to my recent happiness. This is obviously ridiculous, but the concept terrified me. I remember being the person whose happiness was tied to how someone else thought about them. I also remember how totally invalidated I felt  when I no longer had this approval. However, I need to give myself credit for being different now. I've done a lot to get myself to this place. I shouldn't have to feel guilty because I am happy. And I won't feel guilty.

How did this happen?

I would never ask this question unprovoked; but I've had it whispered in my ear inopportunely enough times to have it sort of sit there festering, waiting for me to come up with some half-assed heat-of-the-moment answer. I refuse to give impulse the dignity of getting to the question however. I've chosen to secretly mull it over, maybe one of the times I've avoided eye contact and bit my lip, unresponsive for a few seconds or maybe another time when I've been alone for too long.

I don't know if I have a good answer. I suppose there is no right answer. But I really do think "how" isn't important. Maybe I needed this. Maybe you needed this. Maybe we both need each other a little bit. It's okay to be needed and to be wanted without questioning it. It has to be alright to feel random bursts of happiness that are totally unexpected.

Sometimes I think back to when I first noticed this boy. I really liked a friend of mine at the time (completely unattainable physically and emotionally). I had no idea who this boy was, but he always looked at me as I walked into the dining hall, almost like he wanted to say something but either didn't know how or was too scared. (Alternatively, maybe I had fabricated all of this up in my egotistical head). He introduced himself to me one day, and I was amused in sort of a condescending way. People typically find me too unfriendly looking to approach so I suppose I ultimately appreciated it. I remember that I'd been having a bad day, and I was stressed about a number of things and I felt like I was a failure of a pre-med student and failure of a girl. After that one time, he never really spoke to me again for the rest of the year, so I guess I sort of went back to living my life in the throes of a major depressive episode. This one deviation from the norm of my depression felt good though.

It's strange when we meet people, the things we remember about meeting them or interacting with them. I don't think last spring I could have predicted anything that has happened thus far this semester. I don't think I could have predicted that this anomaly of a person would have been more than a random encounter to me. I think that I can tell a lot about a person from the first time I notice them. And so far I don't think that I've been wrong. I'm hoping that happiness doesn't betray me this time; she has occasionally been a fickle mistress. If I was the praying sort, I would pray for my mind to be peaceful and for me to really appreciate this boy. I'm still not sure if I deserve how I feel right now; but operating under the assumption that I do deserve this, I hope it doesn't go away anytime soon.

I don't know if I totally trust happiness, but I do like it.

Three Parts

These days I only write when I can hear you telling me to. Finding balance between my different parts has been getting easier of late, but I haven't forgotten you completely. It would be stupid to forget that you were here because you always are. Maybe one day I won't have to worry about you and your need to control my mind. Your grasp, although gnarled and icy is familiar.



You are the only person who won't leave me alone I suppose. You are here with me, reclining on a couch,  wearing my face with black eyeliner thick as I wore it senior year. I imagine your black uniform, sweater and pants hanging loose around your thinned body. Your arms are spindly, your face expressionless. You are frozen with numbness, but if I dare make any contact I know you will snap me in half. You know how to push my buttons, and cave me in. This gaunt she-devil knows my every insecurity and picks up on the minute triggers that sometimes surface through my daily interactions with the world around me.

I've tried to send you away but you seem adamant regarding your residency here. I suppose it would be rude to kick you out. You have spent a lot of time in my head. I can't just evict you like a stranger when I know the outline of your skeleton so well and I have helped you put makeup on your face and held you as you scratched and scratched your skin trying to break free of it.

I have led you to other rooms in my mind's mansion. You never blink and it unnerves me. You only speak to criticize or scream or to threaten me. You are filled with hate, and a part of me feeds off of that hatred and takes masochistic pleasure in entertaining you. Perhaps I don't want you to go away at all. Perhaps I am simply trying on the façade of pushing you away to keep up a beautiful delusion. Do you think I need you to stay with me? Oh. I need so many things and you're the only one who has never really left I suppose. Maybe that's why I let you stay. You never blink. You are so reliable. You are the concealer, the liar, envy, self-loathing, wickedness, hatred, anger, bloodthirsty and morbid. I know who you are and I know that you will stay if I let you. Unlike most other things, the simple act of letting you sit here is assurance that you will stay.

It's getting colder and colder and I am trying to stay warm without your sweet sister. She lures me in with her pretentious smile and her ignorance of reality. You two work together quite well despite the outward appearance that you are polar opposites. Unlike you, she wears skintight black dresses that make the boys look twice and she takes pleasure in consuming their attention just for a second; she can pretend that their looks hold great significance and in being wanted for a minute, she will stop feeling empty. Her laugh is contagious, easily provoked and can sound organic if she wants it to. You stare at her, jealous of her mad energy and her impulsiveness. In a way, you envy her, but another part of you wants to hold her head under water until her sick naive smile is wiped off her face. But she's just as bad as you are, don't worry. She doesn't believe in her happiness at all, and all her energy and need to take risks is just a disguise for the part of you she sees within her.

Sit there. I know it's cold. I know it's cold. Don't be scared of being warm though. It's okay not to feel pain. I need you to reconcile yourself with the women in the other rooms. I'm sitting here ready to make peace with the two of you. I know you want to kill me, your bout of silence isn't fooling anyone. And you are sort of stopping my mind. Well really it's going too fast. And I want to slow it down by kissing and kissing and forgetting and forgetting but it still won't stop. Can you at least blink. Let me know you aren't dead. Save me. That's what you're good at. SAVE. ME.


Let me hold your frail hand for a minute. Let me talk to you for a minute. Tell me how to be safe again. Maybe I will join you. Imagine us just holding hands again, and we can wear matching faces and matching eyeliner and match match match forever. And it doesn't matter if I'm never free of you right? Because if we only have each other we only have to worry about hurting each other. And no one else.

And I won't need to feel my heart turn to cement the more men it touches. Because I am scared of men and you are scared of men, we can unite against this common enemy and maybe we won't be so terrified anymore because we won't care about them. You can remind me of their evil and I will tell you how to be normal to protect you from them. I will teach you how to keep your little demon heart locked up. Or maybe you will teach me.

I don't know if I want to let you in though. You are so sad, I want to show you how to be happy. But I see that fixated look and I worry maybe you will never know happiness. And I see the way you look at boys, eyes darting around, like you are terrified to make eye contact with them for fear that you will share too much. Keep still. Please blink. Let me know you are not dead. I think I need you. Or you need me. My bed must be warmed on Saturday, and there's no point running to the wrong boy just to convince the both of us that I don't care. Stay with me. Help me punch out these ramblings with quick moving spindles. And then I'll sleep with your head cradled in my arms and I'll touch your gold leaf skin and trace the outline of your big brown eyes. And I'll let you stay just for the night, only to lock you up tomorrow in exchange for some real comfort.

A Couple Photographs