One Giant Episode

this is what I feel like: {...............................}

Life might feel a whole lot less like one giant episode of My So-Called Life if I didn't suspect an anxiety disorder. I wonder if Claire Danes ever blamed her chemistry with Jordan Catalano on her brain chemistry. What an intense-yet-vague thing to blame. Pretty convenient. Less so when it's potentially true.

Those are pretty loaded (not to mention 21st century) words--"anxiety disorder." So are "weak" and "crazy," which is what the first two make me feel like.

I'm not really sure if anyone's taking me seriously about it. Which might be for the best, considering it balances out the seriousness I afford it, though it never feels best in the throes of an..."episode"? What do crazy people call bouts of crazy? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I don't drink enough green tea. Maybe I breathe through my nose too infrequently. Maybe I lost myself in a pothole thirty-three lightyears ago and now blindly revert to....

I don't know. I can't find any words. I can't find much

And the Winner is!

Anxiety v. Peace: my life, the court case.

not related, I find it quite predictable that my heart has hardened so completely--to its previous state--that I wonder what vulnerability I'm even capable of. I filter through all those "where is love" thoughts and find myself more comfortable denouncing its feasibility than remembering that I've done it before. that it was easy. that it surprised me and spun me like a top--spun me so graciously that only my warm sides showed. my happy sides, my electric sides. and as soon as I remember how it's encompassed me before, I remember that the pain of its concluding roller coaster will never push me under again. and so... as much as I'd like to believe that my current confidence and peace and security is my triumph over the hurt and any subsequent walls, I know that the next soul to sneak through their cracks will fill them in a way that won't ever release it. I know it takes patience to stumble upon the soul that's prepared to be the water and the glue, but my patience is proportionate to the knowledge that I won't be able to repossess my heart a second time.

welp, enough of that! the wind is on my heels, fellas. I feel like I'm one of those pullback cars. I don't know in which direction freedom will send me, but I bet it's pretty scenic. scenic and warm.

Memoiries

I never know what to write anymore. Like it takes courage I don't have, or something.

I like to see my thoughts develop, but not in print.

Sometimes I think I could publish something, but not at this rate

And by the time I've worked up the courage, my thoughts will have sunk back into the mundane, back into the down comforter, back into the sudsy sink.

Sometimes I think I could publish something, but not on this date

Small Fry

For the first time, I have thoughts nobody knows. I don't whether to treasure them or to toss them like hot potatoes.

Peaks My Interest

I thought I saw my turn signal miss a blink. I said, ah! Just like me. Palpitations. Skipping rhythms. Your wiring knows when to blink, beat, blink, and then sometimes it just--sometimes it just--sometimesit--sometimes it just, doesn't.

I sip Christmas Blend from a mug as big as my face, admiring its body, the coffee's, not the mug's, though perhaps the mug's as well, and draw parallels between the way the liquid pans my tongue and the way this year has panned my mind.

Isolation, propagation, irritation, awolnation, speculation, interpretation, communication, ation, ation.

"Happiness is only real when shared." - Christopher McCandless

Well, gang, it's time to start over. No one who knew me knows me still. The difference between depression and isolation is that depression plateaus in a valley while isolation plateaus on a mountain. This is not a universal metaphor, and the geographic images are paradoxical, yes, but still, isolation the way I feel it sets in with the same hardships as do any adjustments to high altitudes. I survey the view and am surprised to recognize that I do so alone. Imagine the peak is the present and grows over time (also paradoxical... peaks can only erode... I really need to think these things through). In observing the decline and my past, I notice that my surprise may be rooted in naivety. I think I climbed for too long without regard to the gaps I'd created between my companions and me. The problem remains--I... don't really know how to get back down.

Confetti

"Trying to be a nicer person has made me meaner to myself."

***

Occasionally I allow myself to care for people indiscriminately. Pros and cons.

I fall in love with friendships all the time. I learned to function inside of those infatuations for so long that I don't know what to do with myself outside of them.

***

At 19.5 years of age, an age that must differ from person to person (primarily due to varied lacks of awareness that doing so is important), I can officially look back on who I was/how I reacted to things/the courses of action I took and reflect on how I would treat those scenarios differently today. Which is promising, I suppose. My brain chemistry must be fermenting right on schedule.

I look in the mirror and see two people: one girl won't need to be someone's partner ever again, and the other doesn't know how she's gone one short year without existing solely as one. Integrating those identities presents my current internal struggle. I typically settle on the notion that my resolute independence is shaping my future as a whole that functions simultaneously as a half.

Whatever. That's reading as a bunch of heart-on-my-sleeve mumbo jumbo. And if there's one place my heart isn't... you get the picture.

the long way to go never shortens

I'm usually floating along on a writer's spectrum that ranges anywhere from "Why haven't I published a collection of every thought I've ever had?" to "No use adding more thoughts to the world's already overflowing sea of thoughts" to "Why would anyone, given the chance to read already acclaimed works, want to read about what I have to say?"

The other day I was disappointed to realize that a few ideas I wanted to expand disappeared in the relentless Idea Stratosphere because I never wrote them down to remember them. Then I wondered if they were even worth remembering. Then I chastised myself for harboring insecurities regarding something so subjective. Then I chastised myself for encouraging unconditional confidence.

Long story long, I find myself reading so many essays and poems and song lyrics that I identify with. Not only do I identify with them, but I'd like to try my pen at a few. But I get caught up in the dangerous Motive Zone where I wonder for what reason I present such thoughts. If happiness is only real when shared, are thoughts only real if presented for discussion? If I keep something inside, do I benefit from it? If I let everything go, what do I have left?

Meh. I need to purify the process. Expand the process. Never again have to answer the question, "Are you still writing?" with "I don't know. Sort of."