And Her Name Was Nicki.

It was Freshman year of college, feeling alone, wanting some kind of connection. She was there. One Hello Kitty Watch, a comment on facebook, a message, and then we were hooked. From that point forward, the term “Best friend” simply did NOT exist. We were soul mates. We we lovers, but not in the romantic sense. We connected and yet, our connection, I think scared us. The fact that the way she moved, I moved. Her words, my thoughts. My actions, her wish. My actions, it always felt like mine came first, no matter what. An unhealthy relationship bloomed out of fear of loss, out of fear of love, out of fear, of, well fear. Fear has a way of making us feel and act, and for someone like me, you’ll garner that i’m pretty much usually ALWAYS afraid of things, whether they be physical or not. But what scares me most are intense emotions. Our entire relationship was built on an intense understanding. A need to be wanted, to be loved, to be accepted, and we soared sky high on all three platforms.

It was adulthood and we had been soulmates, best friends, for going on 8 years. We had broken up so many times, and every single time tried to mend what was broken. Pieces of glass, serrated edges trying so very hard to fit together perfectly as before they were broken. A heart unyielding and un-wanting of hurt, but still clawing madly at the empty space that’s gone, because without them? Without them….so much hate comes with being alone. Self hate, words of harsh advice rubbing you wrong, but they are stuck, stuck, stuck like glue to the inside of your ears, whispering to you that it’s your fault, all your fault, always your fault. It was adulthood, and the last time was apparently, to them, never the same again as before. Along the way, they had become lost, not seeing the other in the same light, no matter how much the other loved them, cherished them, sacrificed for them. It wasn’t the same in her eyes, and i’ll never understand why.

At some point in your life, “letting go” gets so very tiresome. Especially when letting go does nothing but keep you attached, a simple hello, a walk back into your life, a small secret smile reminding you that she’s still there. It plays with your head, this idea of “letting go”. It doesn’t matter how many times you cut ties, the ties Just. Will. Not. Cut. At some point in your life you just HAVE to realize that for your own mental health, some things are just…toxic. Some relationships aren’t meant to work. They are toxic, no matter how much you love and adore the other person.

And God how I love her, how I adore her, how I wish we could be together for ever and ever and never fight and never cry and never want or wish to hate the other. I loved her dark brown hair, how badly she wanted to turn it bright red because “Only bad bitches going thru a divorce do this kinda shit”. I loved her nose ring, and even when she took it out to put a stud in, it still looked beautiful on her. I loved her curves, even though she always stated the fact that she thought she resembled her favorite animal. She was always so soft, but I think that was thanks to her lotion that she put on every morning and evening. You couldn’t tell that she washed her hair just every Sunday, because it always looked so soft and shiny and amazing. Her deep dark, brown eyes had a smiling invitation, inviting you to give her secrets, and yeah, she was really good at keeping them. Her lips would twitch up in a way that made me smile when I knew she caught onto someone’s bullshit when they were talking. Her side-eye, the glance at me when a “beautiful man” would walk by because we both knew, we just knew, it had to be a big one. And if you don’t get that reference, you just don’t get her. Her laugh, when we really got goin’, she would snort and just continue and i’d bust my sides up crying because it was the best sound in the world. Her truths, when she was open and honest, but in a caring way, not her usual selfish way, was always warm. The way she would hold my hand, my tears sliding down my wet and stiff cheeks, and she would whisper words of wisdom and respect me with her opinions. And how I loved her, every inch of her, and I still do, and I always will.

Nicki, Nicki, Nicki was always my personal type of drug. And yeah, that’s cheesy, and i’m sure I’ve said it to her a million times, but she was literally like cocaine. There is no way of getting rid of her, no where to go, no way to let go at all. She’s there, in every crevice of my mind, my heart, my memories, all pilled sky high in her little white Honda. But, as addictive as she is, not all of her is good. I feel the need to write down the negative side effects of my own drug of choice, so as to catalog it.

I loved her, yet got to the point where I HATED spending any time with her. I was so fed up. So done. I hated when she would call, I hated when she would text, so I became distant.
She is/was exceedingly selfish. However, lest we not forget that I am the selfish one in the “friendship”.
Her dogs had no manners, didn’t know how to really be around people, and from people I’ve talked to who all have dogs, including dog trainer friends of mine, they were not well trained.
1. They always got into your food.
2. They were always all over your entire person.
3. Any available space was THEIR space.
Dogs are fine, and if they are your children I respect that, however; I hated the fact that if they were all over me, if we were sleeping in the same bed and they all were piled on, I couldn’t push them off without her saying “It’s their house first”. Simply forgetting that I am the friend and guest in her house for that night. Accommodate. It’s simple.
My life not only “belonged” to other people in my life, but also hers as well. She wrote out what was to happen in her gold quilled pen, writing fancy notes on the side in harsh words of “wisdom”, encrypted with the tone that “This is what is best for you”, when in reality, she failed to realize that everyone lives accordingly, and differently.
1. You need a car. You need to drive. You can’t NOT drive in this city. You have to just get past your anxiety.
2. You have to find a better job. This is fine for now, but $8 an hour isn’t what you need. You need a career, like me. Try Geico! I think you’ll hate it, but you should try it so we can work together.
3. You probably should think more about grad school. It sounds sketchy. Oh, lol you already researched it? I still think it’s not the best thing, but this is just me casting judgment on you and your decisions by “cautioning” you.
4. You talk way too much about your anxiety, bipolar, whatever. Yeah I know it helps you, but personally I don’t want to hear it because I don’t GET it, ya know? Sorry, not sorry.
Her opinions were gold. Tales of caution drawing streaks of anxiety through my life. Not wanting to hear them, begging her to stop. “I sugar coat literally everything for you and you STILL get upset and cry!” If you have to sugarcoat something that is STILL going to hurt someone regardless, why say it to them to begin with? Why not just keep it to yourself? You can only sugarcoat something harsh so much, then it just become pointless. Maybe think about this: I’ll give my opinion when ASKED, and in such a way as to not hurt them or make them think less of themselves.
She had a way of turning the tables, and turning them good, when luck was not on her side. She was the only person in my life capable of making me loathe and absolutely hate myself, and for a long time, I was okay with that. I felt I had always done something to deserve it, when in all actuality, I hadn’t really done anything to deserve her mistreatment of me. Hating yourself gets old, and when you start loving yourself, those kind of people will notice.
She was clingy. So, so very clingy. I think she knew that too. She never wanted to be alone, so she always had friends or guys over at her house because it was her comfort zone. I get that. My house is mine as well. Don’t expect people to go all the way to your house and never go out and do anything because “I’m so tired from work, you have no idea, you only work 4-8 hour shifts.” And like you wanting to sleep in your own bed, yeah, same. I love my own bed. Never have been fond of the couch, never, ever have I been fond of sleeping next to someone who so selfishly takes all the covers and then yells at me when I try and reason with them about sharing. But I tend to forget it is YOUR house, right? Wrong.

She was negativity incarnate. She burned bridges, relationships, wherever she went. And still, still I loved her, and I still do. I will adore her until I die, simply because we were always meant to be together, at some point, anyways. Our whole lives don’t need to consist of each other, but that was how we were living, and I got tired of the mistreatment. Why should I want to spend my life with someone so selfish, who only thought mostly about themselves? And hey, thinking about someone else from time to time is great, but it doesn’t count when all the other time you only care about yourself and your feelings.

I guess I’m just done. I’m done being a doormat, and i’m done standing up for myself to someone who will never understand why I do so or apologize when she’s been called out on her bullshit. This post is to keep me on track so that if she ever does come back into my life, i’ll remember the negativity she brought into my life, and the negativity she left with.

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My Day in a Nutshell: My Thought Processes.

I received my first comment on my FIRST post! Too bad it was a hate comment downing me on my ability to find luck in my life, despite the torrential downpour of emotions I feel regularly.

The thing is, I know where i’m lucky, and I’m happy to be able to see that I have luck shining through in my life. Be that in the forms of a good family, wonderful and caring friends, my ability and willingness to get outside of myself and accomplish my dreams, or whatever else that may be. I woke up this morning happy, saw the comment, simply shrugged my shoulders out of remorse and pity, and went on about my day. I’m doing this new thing where I cut negativity out of my life, no matter what corner of my little world it’s in. Trying not to let it deter me into hating myself, or questioning myself, is hard, but it’s an accomplishment i’m slowly learning to face.

As lucky and wonderful as I made my life out to be in my first post, that doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and daisies. I don’t even LIKE daisies! I much prefer sunflowers, more unique, less of a pain to pick. My life is turbulent, full of ups and downs and twists and turns. It’s full of happy laughter on a sunny day in July, it’s full of tears, a downpour of emotions displaying to the world my uneasiness and hate of myself, it’s full of anger and rage and apathy to any human in my life, because if I am angry, you do not matter. However, as much as people matter to me, I still feel that inkling of “They love you despite this” tingling in the back of my mind. I know I am loved, and I know I am disliked. That is another thing this year I have had to learn. Not everyone will love me, and not everyone will like me. That’s okay, too! I have plenty of people in my life who adore me, love me, care for me. I have few who dislike or even hate me, and even though it hurts to hear of those people that do, I have to be okay with it, because you can’t change people.

I have, as stated above and before, many moods. They range peculiarly from extreme happiness, rage and seething hate, to despair and the hopes that somehow, someway, destruction of the Earth will inhabit us all and we will simply cease to live anymore. Hey, if everyone I love dies with me, i’d be happy. Going it alone? Nah, i’m good. As selfish as that may be, and yeah, it is. I can be selfish. I know my weak points better than most. I am a selfish human being, but knowing this about myself, I work myself into a panicked frenzy, willing myself away from selfish thoughts. Only purity, only love, only affection, only selflessness. I can’t be selfish. I refuse to catch myself in a selfish act. When I do, it’s depression, self deprecating thoughts flying through my ears on a whim, wondering why my carelessness caused others pain because I know, I know, I know how to treat others. I know how to treat people with respect, the respect they deserve, the respect that most earn, and even when they do not, respect them anyways because you don’t know them personally or what they may be going through.

My manic-depression washes over me in waves. Such as my dislike and hate and fear of the ocean, my manic-depressive personality scares me too. I am happy, I am sad, I am crying out of fury for myself, my mood, my dislike of others, my dislike of myself, my wanting to drown, drown, drown, deep down to the bottom. The ocean floor seems so shallow, looking up through the rays of light at the sun, the sky, the birds flying over head. But you are caught, way down, pushed to the bottom by unrelenting waves of depression. You see that light, it’s there, but you can’t get close to it or reach it. But, it’s okay. It’s coming, someone, somehow, will save you. My family, my friends, my cat, anyone. All I have to do is reach out and say “Help me, I feel too much” and they have me in their warm arms, the embrace sending flames of strength to my bones, my heart mending, healing itself, again.

My anxiety pulses through to my core, my very being alive, so alive, almost TOO alive. My bones trembling, my stomach queasy and in knots, my blood hot and yet somehow ice cold in my veins. My mind stutters, shuts down, goes on airplane mode, because to think? To think…to think is torture. If I give the demons in my eyes a chance to see, they will tell me to panic, tell me to scream, that everything is horrifying and getting worse! My skin slick with sweat, my hands shaky and unfeeling, reaching out to see, because opening my burning eyes, full of hot tears…is painful, so very painful. It’s like being blind, without actually being blind. You can’t see the reality of the situation. Your brain is hazy, foggy, and because it is as such, your reality has shifted on some imaginary axle that you didn’t know existed. You are turned upside down, running to the bathroom, throwing up and heaving and crying and blind because I CAN’T SEE THE TRUTH. “It’s all in your head”, “You think too much”, “You live in your head too much”, these are the songs the demons in my ears sing to me. Chanting their lies, their pretty dark lies, wanting me to believe that I am crazy. That somehow, somehow, it is my own doing that I am now in this position, huddled on the floor, wanting to pour bleach into my dry, puffy eyes, because seeing is believing, right? That’s what they say anyways. I don’t like that. I don’t wish to see what my own BRAIN believes. It isn’t fair. But that’s life.

My turrets, or as my mom calls them “tics”, plague my body in twitchy movements, panicky OCD, because it has to be even, the number has to be at LEAST 7, because it’s lucky! My eyes twitching, rolling around in my skull. I wish sometimes they would roll out of my head and onto the floor, away from me, so as to not have to deal with the monstrosity of the feeling and burden it brings upon me. Dramatic, don’t be so dramatic. Then how would you feel? How do you feel when you try to drive, because yeah, it would be rad to be normal, but your eyes twitching or rolling around in your head means that you swerve or go out of the provided lines on the road. “WATCH OUT!” “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” Um, living? Trying? Not succeeding? Evidently NOT living up to your expectations. Sorry i’m a freak, and sorry you have to know someone like me, someone who has issues they feel the need to discuss or rant about. It’s tiring, I know. But imagine yourself in my shoes, as I do you and other people. It’s not that hard, I promise.

My anger is muted by my medicine, but deep down, I have a cold set, burning rage. A fire ready to always erupt from my lips, burning embers spitting into people’s food at work. Words so hot that they scorch your heart, leaving burning trails upon your skin. Melting lava forming pools of rancid, utterly disgusting liquid in the pit of my stomach. When I am angry, I get heart burn, acid re-flux. The feeling of smoke filling my lungs, wafting upwards, my throat burning. A smile forming on my lips, because happily, I can most times control whether the smoke bursts forth from my nostrils or not. I am angry, at myself, other people who disrespect me, or just life in general. Life isn’t fair, people are mean, and a lot of times I hate myself. It all causes me such horrible anger. Seething rage, wanting to kill, kill, destroy. But, it ends just as quickly as it begins, and for that I am happy, and yes, lucky.

My bipolar-schitzoeffective disorder is probably my least favorite, and one I don’t talk about often, but to do so here is okay. As it does many, it doesn’t play on my anger. It notices when I am quiet, when I wish to sleep, to close my eyes, to block out the day and live peacefully, asleep and un-bothered. As I close my eyes, visions and voices pop into my head, my ears ringing of possibilities, of my own hand, my own doing. Murder, suicide, killing everything in my path. However, it is not just anybody. It’s family, it’s friends, it’s animals. I would consider myself to be a pretty tame person, soft as feathers, warm as the sun, and downright loving. I could never, never, never hurt anyone physically, unless there was no other option. But, my mind plays tricks on me. Voices whispering “You must do this”, “Look at what you CAN do”. It never stops, but luckily the medicine I take makes it stop as soon as it starts. But before medicine, it was gruesome, gory, bloody details, flitting into my mind quickly, but not leaving as suddenly as they came. It makes me hate myself, because truly, only a monster can think these things. Carvings in rib-cages, the twisting and popping of necks, blood, bathing in blood, the thick odor of defeat as I cry and cry and wonder what happened and how it all went so wrong.

My mind is fucked up, I admit that. I don’t know any other way to be. All I know is that I CAN change my mind by simply taking my medication, taking hot baths to relieve stress and anxiety and to decompress, going on walks in the sun or on Autumn days when the leaves puddle the ground. I can change myself by thinking positively as well. Hoping for the best, being the best, wanting what’s best. But, life is funny and adventurous and crazy and beautiful and SO many other adjectives. Life is great, it’s bad, but also great, and I wish I could put it all into words, but I just can’t. I feel unable to simply describe my life effectively. I would ask others, but they don’t know me as I know myself. They see me through a lens, just as I tend to see myself. But I love them anyways, and I have support and love, and yes, I am lucky. Happy, go-lucky, and loving life. At least right now.

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Living With Bipolar: The Gross Underbelly That No One Talks About

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a while now. So, here goes.

I’m a writer, as well as a talker. I’m avidly talking about what interests me as well as what pains me. It seems that I speak too much on what I know, yet what others do not understand. But, it isn’t wrong to do so and it’s taken me years to realize that. I’ve lost friends due to me being who I am; Mental. That’s the best word I can think of. Mentally impaired, mentally disabled in the sense of mental illness and such. It fits, right? I’ve lived my whole life on the cusp, on the edge of a downfall. Slow and steady wins the race. Slow and steady, a descent into massive depression, overthinking, abuse in the form of caffeine and carbs, the loneliness of not understand what’s wrong. What’s wrong? What’s NOT wrong, is the real question.

Don’t get me wrong, life is beautiful. A beautiful picture painted by a clear sunny day, sketches of art written in the clouds. A beautiful, but pitiful nightmare; full of tossing and turning and demons. But, beautiful nonetheless. I am lucky enough to have amazing friends. Three specifically close friends: Danielle, Mariam, and Lobo. Friends like these only come once in a life time, and anyone would be lucky to have friends like mine. Every once in a while, I get “growing pains”. I like to call my mental state of well-being, while crashing, growing pains. It fits simply because it’s a battle, but one I will grow from and overcome. A pain it is, but growth still bursts forth from my chest, nonetheless. These growing pains come in the form of a headache, growing too weary to wake up and simply “take on the day”, hunger clawing at your stomach and yet, you are too lonely and sad to eat. These growing pains form a sort of abscess in your mouth, making your words and expressions turn sour; rancid. You wonder why you feel alone, so alone, always alone. But the thing with depression and bipolar is, you really are not alone! Your mind, when impaired, is a really curious thing. Full of doubt. A seed planted at birth, ever growing and blooming, but instead of a beautiful lily, you simply are met with a gruesome image of what COULD have been something lovely.

I am lucky enough to have a beautiful family; a wonderful and caring mother, a loving and doting father, a simply magnificent and reassuring sister. Not everyone in this life get to have people like these, always rooting and cheering for them. Screaming from their hoarse lungs “I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!” Love spilling over in the form of a home cooked meal, coffee on morning runs to a job you hate, basket ball dates on a sunny day, or even watching Westerns in the comfort of loving arms and a warm home. Cats displayed throughout the house, perched on the piano or on the cedar chest blocking the view of a football game that your father simply can NOT miss. Georgia is in the lead, and oh so much happiness fills the air. Happiness you wish you felt daily and regularly. A cycle of doubt “Will I always question my happiness?” or “How long will it last until my next downward spiral?” If only it were as simple and easy as football.

I am lucky to have been given many chances in my life to travel. I have met many people in my life, changed lives for the better, conversed with the lonely in a back alley in South Korea, gotten life changing advice in a rusty chair while getting a cheap tattoo in Japan, met strange and unfortunate people with attitudes that ran off of their spine in the form of hurtful glares and stares in the Turkish airport. But, I have been lucky to have experienced these things. Each place has taught me more about myself than I can digress. I have found myself, a little part of my soul, in each corner of the world. Breathing life into me that I didn’t know was missing. My heart beating faster, faster, closer to that destination. My life changing moments, made agonizingly and beautifully real in the form of warm food, noodles and rice on every plate, books read in quiet coffee shops while rain pounds on an Asian looking roof, tears pouring into the glass of a margarita, confessing your sins and distaste of the public with your mother, chasing cats in an alley way, not afraid of the dark because others will keep you safe even if they don’t personally know you. It is luck that I find in these moments, and it is these moments when I realize just how alive I truly am.

I am lucky in the fact that all I have to deal with, mentally, isn’t entirely too much. Bipolar and depression and anxiety and so on that can be treated with modern medicine, drugs that send chemicals into a dysfunctional brain running off of caffeine and too little sleep. Sleep deprivation is a symptom of the moments when I am at my highest depressed state. The demons of apathy and self hate, pulsing with pride that I notice them, greedily rubbing their hands together as I cry and hope that sleep takes me away from the awful, hazy, dark image. But, when my happiness hits, when I am riding on a sky high wave into Heaven itself, God flashing his teeth at me and screaming “YOU GOT THROUGH IT!” I sleep like the dead. A kind of sleep that I so often fight with in my mind. To sleep like the dead, to want to BE dead, both sound, at times, pretty wonderful. I sometimes joke saying “I would kill for a small coma right now. Maybe two months. Just enough to make me understand that being dead isn’t all that great.” Perhaps it is quite morbid, and something I should joke about, but joking about my depression and bipolar actually gets me through the rough stages. Like I always tend to say when times are tough, “It is what it is.”

I am lucky enough to call this life MINE. I am living it, no one else. I am flourishing in my life, no one else. I am lucky enough to simply be lucky. I often believe in magic and other things, the old rusted penny facing heads up on the ground, begging me to pick it up so as to rub off its luck on my hot cheeto crusted fingers. I don’t know if luck has anything to do with it, because I believe we also make our own luck. I work hard to make things happen. I often sacrifice to make myself happy, and that’s okay. Sacrificing sometimes pays off, not always, but most of the times.

One day i’ll write or finish my book on this subject, it shall solely be named “The Adventures of a Plagued, Yet, Unique Mind”. It kinda rings a bell, doesn’t it?