I hate this feeling. The moment before it all changes again and you realize all those times Old You fought for what now seems fleeting. I used to cry thinking about going back. When my parents suggested it, I felt only fear. The terror of failing. The terror of losing some sort of fated future. And now I’m just tired. There is a life here. I’ve made it. There are things I want to keep, cling desperately to and never let go, but the things I actually get to keep aren’t nearly as appealing. Why shouldn’t I toss it back where it came from? What is stopping me from baiting my hook with a new lure or an old lure or no lure at all? Maybe I don’t want to cast out anymore. Maybe I’m tired and any notions I once had of needing to appear “successful” and “independent” have been swept away in the river. What if I don’t care if I have to tell old high school acquaintances that I’ve moved back in with my parents. Or that I’m taking classes at TCC. I don’t give one flying fuck about my degree plan or starting a fucking career. I don’t care about the Austin night life or queer community or art scene. Everything here is as plastic and manufactured as Los Angeles sunshine and New York spunk. All the quirks are purposefully generated in a fucking lab to sell t-shirts and the new American Dream. I. Am. Tired. Of pretending I want to keep up with it all. Maybe that’s the best way to be. It’s scary. I feel like something in me has broken and I don’t know yet if I’ll come away from it better or worse. All I know is I can’t stay still anymore. I don’t want to anymore.

The worst day in recent memory. Just the absolute fucking pinnacle of shit days. And to top it all off, my room is the hottest fucking room in this goddamn fucking ancient piece of shit of a house that I can’t afford to move out of. Because why not? Why not. 

Sometimes I putter around on local private investigator websites and contemplate sending in my resume. 

Ah yes. February. The saltiest month of the year. 

Despite my genuine dislike of Valentine’s Day for reasons other than my own perpetual singleness, (The whole concept grosses me out. Having a day specifically set out for expressing love cheapens the concept. Like when all your facebook friends comment on your wall when it’s your birthday. You know they aren’t really your GOOD friends. They rarely speak to you outside of the internet, and they wouldn’t have fucking remembered your birthday if they hadn’t gotten an alert mentioning it, but because it’s your birthday, and they feel obligated, they go out of their way to make sure you know they didn’t forget you exist. Obligatory displays of kindness aren’t real kindness. Obligatory displays of love aren’t real love. Etc, etc. Ad infinitum.) I still find myself embittered by the encroach of hearts and couples-themed advertisements. 

I don’t talk about it much, mostly because in my youth I talked about it far too often in an obsessive sort of way that verged on unhealthy, but finding a significant other to share my world with is pretty high on the list of things I want from life. I don’t have any delusional notions about how “easy” it will be or that it’s going to fix all my problems. I used to, but years of therapy and disappointment have rid me of that old naivety. Relationships, especially long term romantic/sexual ones, are hard fucking work. They take commitment and an understanding of how compromise and cooperation works on a deeper level. I’m pretty down for that hard work. It seems worth it to me and always has. I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid to put myself out there. I have done and continue to do so, even when it’s scary and disheartening.

Which is not to say I don’t have my insecurities. I’ve met a lot of rejection in my time and it takes its toll. I’ve never actually been in a relationship and It’s irritating to me how embarrassing I find admitting that. I’m almost 23 years old and my dismal track record with dating isn’t for a lack of trying. I’ve been on dates, but most have been unsuccessful, and the successful ones have never stayed that way for long. I’ve had a lot of near misses and almosts. I try to remind myself that I’ve been dealing with trauma and mental illness for the entirety of my dating career and that it isn’t surprising that such stuff got in the way. I try to remember all of the self-esteem and confidence building I did in treatment. Sometimes though, despite my best efforts, the old voices still creep in. Whispering that no one will ever love me. That my appearance and weight (lol thanks eating disorder) are to blame for my loneliness. That no one is capable of loving me as broken and unfortunate as I am. That I will forever be doomed to fall in love without ever receiving the same love back. 

And these thoughts, though I know aren’t based in any fact, (there have in fact also been those who have had feelings for ME which I have not returned, lots of people have found me attractive at various times in my life regardless of my weight, and plenty of people love me even if it isn’t romantically) just seem to fester when February rolls around. The internal pressure I feel to find someone or at least be TRYING to find someone comes to a boiling point. I get irritated and give up when the girls I’m talking to don’t seem to put in the same amount of effort. I get so scared that as soon as I open up, like I used to do as a reckless teenager, wearing my heart on my sleeve, the laughter will find me. The old shit will come back to haunt me and confirm the worst of the whispers. I’m terrified to tell people I’m still dealing heavily with my mental illness. I’m terrified to open up about my body image and food problems (doubly so when dates usually involve food of some kind). I’m terrified that my readiness to commit and love will be met with fear and intimidation. I am so so fucking scared of not finding someone, that I tend to be my own worst enemy. 

Which is literally the most bullshit. Because I’m a great person. I’m sweet and loving and funny and (excuse me while I swallow the bile building in the back of my throat as I even think the word) pretty and smart and ambitious and adventurous. I’m low maintenance and up for whatever. I’m interested in the people I care about and want to learn about their passions and become involved. I’m working on being more assertive. I’ve got so many ideas and plans. I’m strong and I stand my ground. 

There isn’t any one reason or flaw I can point to to explain my datelessness. It’s just how things have been thus far and accepting that is both necessary to my mental health and any hope of actually getting a date in the future. Confidence is hard. Being alone is hard. Wanting and waiting are hard too. 

I’ve got a lot of issues. And I deserve to be loved even so. I deserve to find someone worthy of the love I have to give and it’s so much. I have so much love. I just wish it didn’t become painful welling up inside of me. I wish it were all so much simpler. I feel so stupid having written this, like I’m trying to talk myself up to all of you. The truth is, I’m trying to talk myself up to myself. 

Because the whispers don’t stay whispers. They turn to screams and can quickly drown out everything else and I don’t want to ever go back there. I have to tell myself that I am worthy, that I am enough, because the alternative is too bleak to bear. I have to believe because to doubt is to doubt myself. I have to pretend I know that I’m great. It’s a part I’ve played with varying degrees of sincerity over the years, but I’m trying now. As hard as I can. 

I am not the whispers or the sadness or the fear. I am in the better things. I am in the great possibility of the next minute and the one after that. I am my present and that present might as well be good enough. It’s all I’ve got, after all. 

Couldn’t get to sleep so I watched a bunch of grainy psych fanvids I made literally back in 2008. I actually did a pretty decent editing job for being 14 and having only windows movie maker at my disposal. Like there are a lot of really great music beats and stuff. They’re super cheesy of course, which is the best.

I’ve thought about trying to get back into that stuff. I’d try to make mostly goofy shit though. I think crack is a lot easier to pull off with my limited skill set than actual serious fanvids. They get melodramatic really easily. 

As my angsty paramore psych fanvid displays fucking beautifully. 

Idk. Sometimes it’s nice to revisit the past, especially now. My self esteem is a lot higher than it was six months ago. I’m trying to be patient with myself and accept who I am. I was listening to a podcast today and the guys on it were talking about the fine line between giving too many shits and giving not enough shits. They posited that you needed the confidence and ease in one’s own skin that giving no shits provides you. However, if you give too few shits, you don’t have the drive to continue learning and getting better. But, giving too many shits is just as bad. Not only does trying so fucking hard often lead to perfectionism and a disconnect from those around you, but if you care too much you often don’t have the guts to take leaps and chances -- try scary new things just to try them. 

I’ve struggled with this very conundrum my whole life. 

The thing that I love the most about myself is my hunger for adventure. I love being spontaneous. I love doing things just for the experience -- just to do them. Mental illness is so fucking terrible for a lot reasons, but also because it sucks away at the things you actually enjoy about being you. I’ve been scared in recent years, terrified, to go outside of my comfort zone. I lamented that I “used” to be so fun-loving. I “used” to just sign up for shit or start bands or go off on adventures without warning.

I saw my new found lack of interest in life as just another one of my many weaknesses and proof that my best days were behind me. 

I now see all of that for what it really was -- a deep depression, amongst other things.

I forgot that in those carefree moments was an internal violence I held close to my chest. Oh I went and tried out for the school plays, sure. And when I didn’t get the ingenue, I berated myself. I was never pretty enough, never thin enough, never good enough for the ingenue role, I told myself. Something was wrong with me and I would have to work twice as hard as the other girls. Instead of celebrating leading roles in productions (even if I was in old age makeup) I tore myself to shreds over not getting a specific part. I put myself on strict diets. I got angry and irrational if anyone tried to suggest that I could have a little ice cream. I snapped at a girl once for suggesting I eat pizza -- the only thing we’d been given all day -- ordered for us at a competition. Instead I neurotically picked nuts and raisins out of trail mix and threw the M&Ms away. 

I tried so fucking hard to be perfect and “desirable.” My old scripts are filled with notes scribbled down after run-throughs. They’re rich with venom. I called myself a fucking idiot, a stupid bitch. “YOUR’E TOO FUCKING RIGID.” “DON’T PAUSE AFTER EVERY COMMA. YOU’RE EMBARRASSING.” All my inner abuse written out for others to glance at worriedly over their shoulders. 

I had break downs twice a month. I would go crying to my mother about how I was unlovable and fat and ugly. She didn’t know what to do. I was on anti-depressants. I had done therapy. She had gotten me help at an early age. She didn’t know what was happening. I did well in school -- amazing even -- for the first time in my life. I had a goal. I had standards. And I ripped myself to shreds until I met them. And then when I met them I realized that the standards were, of course, too low to begin with and raised them again. It was never enough and consequently I was never enough. 

The moments when I threw caution to the wind -- took friends out to TP houses, showed up for my first school audition in a jean skirt knowing nothing about acting, drove to deep ellum to see a band play alone on a school night against my mother’s orders, stayed up all night crafting Chris Hardwick’s face out of dried fruit for a scavenger hunt and then went to work the next day, those were the moments when I was acting from a place of honesty. I am the woman who takes risks and puts herself out there. 

The hesitation and the self doubt is an obstacle to that truth, not some new truth. 

The part that cares too much manifests itself in the compulsions, food rules, bingeing, restricting, purging, shaming, doubting, and anxiety.

The part that doesn’t care enough gorges on the depression and the isolation.

But the part that cares just enough, the part that gives the ideal number of shits, that part is me. I have that. It’s always been there and this elusive search for what “used” to make me so bold has been a goose chase. I never lost that. I just lost sight of it. 

I feel that itch for the first time in a long time to do something. Start a shitty podcast or send horribly overconfident emails to blogs I want to write for. I want to paint and drive out to haunted places and go on terrible dates with people I might end up loathing. I want to be free from the shit I’ve bogged myself down in for so long. And I can feel myself wrenching my ankles from the mud. I feel it coming in waves and it’s not always so present. Sometimes I’m still sad and the old habits still tug at my sleeves. Sometimes they still win out, but they don’t own me. They aren’t who I am anymore. 

They never were in the first place.

Jessica Jones brought up a lot for me. This isn’t surprising. I knew going in that the themes of consent, rape, coercion, and manipulation would be at the forefront. I think the show handled them in a remarkable way. They didn’t shy away from the term, “rape.” They had Jessica define rape to Kilgrave even as he denied his responsibility. They present Kilgrave as a man who contains complexities. A man who has traumas of his own and can even be, however repulsive it is to feel, sympathetic in moments. And yet through that complexity, his actions are never excused by the show. He is a rapist and a murderer and he does not get a pass simply because he has experienced pain. He is portrayed as selfish and entitled. He victim blames, he makes excuses for himself, he tries to appeal to Jessica’s sense of pity.

“That’s not what I was trying to do,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do! You raped me again and again and again!”

That moment. I felt a vindication in my chest well up and bubble over. 

It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do. You raped me.

I have struggled for so long with this very scenario. Wondering if my rapist knows what he did was even wrong. Is he still out there believing I overreacted? Believing I’m just some crazy bitch who rejected him?

I have gone over the scene in my head, I can’t tell you how many times. I have tried to remember each word said -- mine and his. I ask myself if I did enough. If I had been more confident, more assertive. If I had said this instead of that. Would I be different now? Would I have walked away unscathed? Or was the trauma inevitable? Is that moment fixed in time, despite the variables. I have to believe there is a universe out there in which he was stopped. I have agonized over why I live in this world instead of that one. 

It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do.

It doesn’t matter, that I “let” him get on with it after saying no over and over and over. It doesn’t matter if he knows what he did to me or not. It doesn’t matter if my rape didn’t involve intercourse. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know to fight it. 

He raped me. 

I shy away from the term. I generally use “sexual assault.” We’re socialized to believe that anything outside of a penis going into a vagina isn’t “real” sex. But that’s wrong. For a billion reasons. And for a billion more reasons what happened to me is still rape. Not just sexual assault. Not just “unfortunate.”

Rape. It was so important to me that the show used that word. It was so important to me how they portrayed Jessica’s PTSD -- using the actual clinical term to describe it. 

I’ve been working with my therapist on the trauma recently. I’ve learned some techniques that really help me. I’d never heard the street names one, but violent flashbacks aren’t so much my issue. It’s more intrusive thoughts, the kind that gnaw at the edges of your internal conversation and you just want them to leave. I disassociate when I talk about it. I remove emotion from the equation. It’s easier that way. I stay away from the physical details, the feelings, the panic. I focus on word choice and what the proper tone is for the dark and cynical laugh I tend to throw out when I’m angry. 

I let the anger out. Anger is the easiest of everything to feel. I appreciate and relate to the anger of Jessica Jones.  

My favorite coping mechanism is to imagine someone you feel comforted by at your side whenever the memory comes up. My therapist made me think back to my childhood. “Who most comforted you as a child?” I thought about my mom. We were kind of codependent for a while. Our relationship was complicated and I didn’t want her to have to come near the memory of my assault. With my dad it was similar. He wasn’t around much when I was a kid and I only now have begun to know him for the man he is. I couldn’t bring him with me either. 

“Can I use a character?” I asked, thinking back to days spent curled on the couch turning the pages of a thick paperback. 

“Use anyone you like,” she said. 

Whenever the memories intrude, as they are wont to do, I imagine a teenage Harry Potter, scrawny and goofy -- not Daniel Radcliffe, but the Harry Potter from my head -- laying his hand on my shoulder and telling me it’s okay. I’m safe now. It’s not my fault. 

I’m dealing with the fallout of this assault for the first time. I’m realizing how deeply the rape has impacted my ability to be intimate with others. I don’t trust people. I fear vulnerability. I fear my body being seen in the way he saw it. The eating disorder has more ties to the rape than I care to admit. 

I feel as if I’ve disconnected from the ideas of intimacy and romance and sex. I want to experience them, desperately at times, but I’m incapable of comprehending the disconnect, if that makes sense. I don’t want to let go of the safety that abstaining allows me, but I don’t want to abstain. It’s a constant battle of wills. One of my favorite things about getting wasted is my ability to let go. I get out of my head and I feel it. I feel lust or yearning or whatever else I tell myself I cannot act upon. I give myself all kinds of reasons. None of them hold any real water. 

And then, as if I wasn’t far enough down the rabbit hole, I go one step further and decide that I’m too fucked up for anyone to even want to bother anyway. I decide that if anyone who wanted me read the laundry list of my psychological issues, they’d run far away and never look back. Which of course only feeds my tendency to hold back. I refuse to let the people who are interested in. I pretend I am something I’m not and most people catch on quickly, subconsciously or not, I don’t know. 

I sat in the car once with a girl I’d been on a couple of dates with. I’d been weird and distant the whole date, analyzing and over analyzing and refusing to say anything past the surface level of interaction. We’d made out a few times before and there had been tension regarding going further. As she pulled up to my house to drop me off, I said, “I’m going to kiss you now.” It was a little dorky, sure, maybe. I’m a little dorky. And I felt honest in the moment. It was me. I was the real me, for perhaps the first time with this girl. Saying my intention out loud. And she laughed. She laughed and said something mildly teasing about it. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember what It felt like she’d said. “What the fuck is wrong with you???” I pecked her on the lips and got out of the car. That’s the last time I saw her. I felt embarrassed, like maybe how a normal person would feel, but more than that I felt this crippling sense of shame. I had been me, dorky and un-smooth and hesitant. Someone who likes things to be explicated so I don’t misread signs or get caught unawares. I didn’t take the time to explain any of this to her, of course. I just took her teasing as the nail in the coffin of our budding romance. She couldn’t want someone as damaged as me. 

I don’t know how to move past these hang ups. They anger me. All I want is to be 22 years old. I want to feel free to be a sexual and romantic being without constantly struggling under the weight of 18 year old me’s trauma. I don’t know how to get out from under the wreckage. What I like about Jessica Jones is that it doesn’t lie to you about how to accomplish such a feat. So often we’re taught that you don’t get out of the wreckage -- someone has to pull you out. But it doesn’t work that way. No matter how deep anyone digs they can’t ever shift all the debris. You have to do it. You have to crawl, bloody, from the corpse of what used to be and scrape the rubble into something worth living in again. 

All I want is to be freshly showered and all my clothes to be clean and my room to be spotless and the perfect temperature and to have a job that doesn’t induce panic attacks every day of my life and to not hate myself.

But do I get these things?

No. 

No I do not. 

...And Maybe Tomorrow

This morning I wanted nothing more than to unplug my alarm clock and pretend there were no responsibilities waiting for me in the light of day. My nasty little friends, the ones that crawl through my eye sockets and burrow into my ear drums, were in rare form. From the moment my feet hit the floor:

  You’re disgusting

                                             Fat Fat Fat Fat Fat Fat Fat

         No one will ever want you                          You don’t deserve to eat

                                        Insignificant

                                                          You’re going to be alone and fat and                       Waste Of Space                disgusting until the day you die and no                                                                one will even care when that happens

   FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT

                                                    Just look at yourself

                        How could anyone love someone that looks like that

                                                  I wish you would just give up already

Stop

I took a shower. I didn’t cry. I put on my clothes and apologized to my sister for not unloading the dishwasher the night before. I tried not to read into her dismissal. It was early. She was tired. 

I drove to work and arrived on time. Not early, I told myself. You should be early. Everyone else is early. What’s wrong with you.

The stack of emails resting on my desk kept growing. Homeowners kept calling, irritated and ugly. I was drowning in my own mistakes. I had to beg and plead with my coworkers to cover for my missteps. I saw them looking at me. Looking at me how they always looked. But their eyes got twisted up in my funhouse mirror. They look at you like you’re something sad -- something to be pitied. I was sad. More than once I fantasized about slipping out the back door where the smokers take their fifteen and lying down on the wet grass. Letting the rain soak me through and wash me away. I settled for adjusting my skirt in the bathroom and trying to muster a compliment for the mirror. 

“You look depressed,” said Carol. She caught me off guard. 

“Oh! Do I?” Insincere and obviously so. “I’m just... tired, you know.”

“You should smile!”

A little part of me wanted to stab the pen bleeding ink onto my forefinger directly into my own eye. And smile. Then smile at Carol. Ballpoint lodged in my cornea.

I drove to H-E-B for lunch and managed to convince myself to buy a package of spring rolls. 210 calories. You don’t deserve them. Look at yourself. You don’t deserve to eat. I hadn’t had dinner last night. I’d slept right through it. And then kept sleeping. 11 hours. I picked up a bottle of Advil for dessert. Whether the head ache was from the stress or the hunger I couldn’t tell. I didn’t much care. 

The spring rolls tasted like nothing. I slid them past my lips without thinking. The peanut sauce made my teeth ache. You should go to the dentist. Your enamel is wearing away. Your sensitivity is getting worse. Another side effect of your incompetence. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Stop

It was one in the afternoon before I dragged my brain, kicking and screaming, into some semblance of functionality. I worked, scattered and with one hand massaging my forehead, but I worked. The cute IT guy fixed my printer. I got him to chuckle. I called homeowners and emailed builders and pushed work orders onto the schedule. I stayed late to get all my shit done. I drove home and belted showtunes. I unloaded the dishwasher. I pretended to be peppy and happy. I fed my roommate’s cat. I cleaned the fast food trash out of my bedroom. I collected and emptied the cups of stagnant water from my bedside table. I looked up how to use my roommate’s litter genie because I couldn’t figure it out. 

And then I sat down to blog about my day. 

Tomorrow I will do it all over again. Hopefully, with less negative self talk. With less stress. With less existentialism. With more food. 

Smile

Smile

Smile

Smile

Smile

It’s okay. It’s okay that today the cold, wet ground was calling my name. It’s okay that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here or with my life or even day to day. It is enough to pretend. To function. To want more and to want nothing. I am trying. I am doing the best that I can. And everything else is for another day. 

“A Song For You”

It saddens me that most people only know about Karen Carpenter, or even just recognize her name, because of her disease. Because of what it ended up doing to her.

I grew up on The Carpenters. Every road trip, every Christmas, every quiet moment with my mother by the pool (for that brief window of time we were wealthy enough to have a pool), it was Queen, and The Beach Boys, and The Carpenters. And most of all Karen, crooning sad and low about things I couldn't understand yet. Love and heartbreak and loneliness. What “they used to call the blues.” Things that would hit me hard in the years to come. 

I used to rag on my mother for playing them so much. There may have even been a part of me that didn’t like their music. Whether it was nostalgia that kept me going back to those numbers or a genuine love, I don’t know. All I know is that the best cure for bad day is to put on a Carpenters ballad and have a good cry. 

Karen Carpenter’s voice is like nothing else in this whole world. It’s clean. It washes over you, cathartic and yearning. It fills up, temporarily, those missing pieces you can’t seem to stop fretting over. It can hold you up. It can lay you low. It’s everything and nothing -- one smooth contralto hum. 

I’m never more at peace than when I’m lost in The Carpenters. 

And while I know their music is polarizing, a distinctly seventies kind of pop-jazz that ain’t for everyone, I wish more people knew Karen for her art than her struggle. 

I didn’t know that Karen Carpenter had been dead long before I was born when I heard her as a child. I didn’t know she’d died as a result of her anorexia nervosa until I’d already had my first encounter with a similar disease. I simply didn’t know what most people only know. And when I did learn, when I did know, it hit me square in the chest. Hard. Because maybe there’s a connection in my bones to the sounds of Karen Carpenter. Maybe people, spanning decades, separated by more than time, can find kindredness in one another so frank that it’s impossible to outline all of its facets. 

Maybe my relief, my comfort, in her heart isn’t so coincidental. 

Maybe it’s her relief. Her comfort. Her heart. 

Living on the only way it can. 

Today I:

Today was a very adult day and I did it. 

Adult things are hard and being unemployed is hard 

But I just kind of realized a few days ago that all this pressure I put on myself for "the future" and the over all picture of my life is kind of pointless. I worry that I'm not measuring up or that I'm wasting my potential -- as if potential is a private reserve that goes bad if unused. And I fuss so much about how I'm appearing and how I'm coming off and how I didn't do x and z right that it actually makes me incapable of doing anything at all. And if I can't do anything I can't make people hate me. So I do nothing. But that's stupid. It's so stupid. Because it hit me that I don't have to be a universally good person? I can be whoever the fuck I want to be and that's perfectly satisfactory. I could even wake up tomorrow and decide to deal drugs and kill people for money. 

It's like I got so worried and so anxious and so sad that I just kind of hit a wall and went "wow what am I doing?" I had so little energy that I just stopped having the energy to care about all the stupid shit that zapped my energy in the first place. And it was just kind of a "well, might as well wash my sheets and take a shower."

I make the choices. I decide what matters. What I care about. Who I am. So why spend hours agonizing over stupid little things like my size and what people I went to high school are accomplishing. Eh. It's not even worth it. I have what I need. And as long as I keep trying and moving forward that will always be the case. 

There are very few things that upset me so instantly and profoundly that I have to curl up into a ball and just pretend I don't exist for a while and some of them are the stupidest fucking things. And I hate that they upset me so much. It takes me back to when I was twelve and the littlest stuff set me off. When I didn't have the skin I have now. But for some reason sometimes the stupidest stuff just hurts me so much. And I feel so heartbroken and betrayed that I can't even touch it. I can't even go in that door and I just have to shut it down and pretend I don't care. 

But I do care. And I want to be able to care. But I can't because it's everywhere. If I care I'll be crying 24/7

about the stupidest stuff. 

Today I did two things. 

First, I voted. Because I am a good little cog in the machine and I do my civic duty even when it will make no difference because I live in a conservative state. 

Second, I officially withdrew from the University of Texas. Which is a weird thing. But I did it. And I don't really have plans to go back. Not soon anyway. I just am really lost now and I don't feel like I belong on a college campus with the bike racks and grass lawns and old classroom buildings spread out like monopoly houses. If I'm gonna be lost I'd rather do it for less than $5,000 a semester. I'd rather feel like I'm accomplishing something -- even if those accomplishments are small adult things like taking out the trash and paying my utility bill. 

I always thought I would be one of those people to thrive in college. And I believed for so long things would be one way and they just aren't. I'm trying not to care that college isn't for me right now. I'm trying to ignore the ideas about success and intellect that have been shoved down my throat for so very long. I know I'm smart. I can write papers and take tests and read. I can do all of that. I am capable of it. But it all has come to seem so pointless. Striving for a degree I intend to do nothing with. At least not anything I can't do without it. So I'm trying to get a job. And get a handle on my mental illness. And live. I just want to live for a while. 

I'm not going to pretend that I'm not terrified, I am. I'd just rather be terrified than apathetic. 

Today's mantra is: Cried but did it anyway.

Needed to wake up at 6:30 AM to drive from Arlington to Austin and be at UT for my first class. 

Cried but did it anyway. 

Needed to sit through said class despite the fact that I've missed it a bunch and it's German and I barely understood a word of it and apparently we have a test tomorrow. 

Cried but did it anyway.

Needed to haul ass over to my second class and hyperventilate about the paper I have to write four pages of by Wednesday and finish by Thursday. 

Cried but did it anyway. 

Needed to eat something to up my energy levels without bingeing on junk food. Even though when I'm anxious my first instinct is to fast so I can binge later, because I tell myself I'm not worthy of food until I complete all of my tasks. 

Cried but ate some sushi anyway. 

I am anxious and shaky and exhausted and terrified and I am still wearing pants and am relatively clean (shit I forgot to brush my teeth) and get to go to choir later today and sing and have a break from this stress for two hours before going home and studying like mad for my German test and my Chemistry test and doing homework and crying some more. 

Today is the day of crying and hyperventilating and shaking and doing shit anyway because sometimes what feels immediately horrible is worth it in the end and what feels immediately good will eventually lead to this kind of anxiety as I struggle to catch up. 

So here's to not succumbing to the urge to curl up in a ball and pretend the world doesn't exist and beg for someone to stuff me into an asylum. 

Here's for crying but doing it anyway. 

I didn't go to school today. 

Either of my classes.

I had a doctor's appointment too that I absolutely flaked on after I read yelp reviews for the doctor and discovered he's actually being sued for malpractice. 

I still don't have a home for my cat.

My financial aid still hasn't come in and I don't know what to fucking do about it. I was going to go talk to the financial aid people today, but I didn't because I didn't go to school. 

But I can't buy books that I need to do my homework without that financial aid. Basically I'm really stressed and I started to get that feeling of wanting to cover it up and pretend I was fine. 

But I'm not. I'm not going to pretend. I didn't do any of the shit I was supposed to do today. I just didn't. But I can come back from that. I am not going to be embarrassed. I am not going to lie about it. I had a bad day. Fine. I'm gonna take a shower and do my homework for tomorrow. Then tomorrow I'm gonna get up and go to class and talk about my financial aid. Maybe I'll make some calls tomorrow. Maybe I'll make some calls today. I can do this. I can recover from this setback. This is what I was in therapy for. This is what I trained for. (lol)

But really. This is what all of that therapy and preparation was for. So that when I had a day like this I didn't let it define me. Fuck what anyone else thinks about today. Fuck what anyone else says about me not getting up and doing the day. It just didn't happen today. That's fine. Tomorrow is a different day. 

Let me tell you about today. So today I was supposed to go to a thing for my choir except I got the times wrong for it and thought it was at night and not in the morning and I ended up bailing on it. I'm trying to just feel guilty as opposed to shameful -- because I've just now been fully taught that they are different (Dear Ally, I now owe you a snocone and a "you were right" speech). Guilt is something you learn from. It's temporary. It's "I did something bad. Shame is "I did something bad and therefore I am bad." Which I know I am not. But I do feel guilty and that's okay. That's good. Because I messed up and I acknowledge that. 

But yeah, so I flaked out on that and then woke up pretty late in the day to excruciating pain in my arms and back. Like. It literally felt like the muscles in my arms were peeling back from the bones. Which I think was from lifting all the stuff I did while moving. But yeah, so I could barely move my upper body.

I tried to call the financial aid department because my aid has STILL not been released and I don't know why because I've done everything, but I couldn't get through because they were so busy. And then I began to develop what would become the worst migraine I've ever had in my life. This, combined with my aching upper body sent me into a panic attack. I couldn't get comfortable. Everything was too warm and I was hyperventilating and if I had been in the house alone I would have just started screaming. I settled for silently doing so and crying. I called my dad, just bawling I was in so much pain and he drove an hour from his work to come take care of me. Because he's amazing and I love him so much. He brought me medicine and food and caffeine and I just wanted to cry again because my dad is the absolute best. So I slept off the headache. 

Then I woke up and I finished putting my bathroom stuff away and helped my sister lay out the new rug. I'm about to look into a site for finding Ella a home too before crashing because I'm exhausted. 

But, shockingly, I feel okay mentally. I had a bad day. A very bad day and I'm still able to validate myself for what I did manage to get done. As far as bad days go -- this was a good one. It's funny because while having my panic attack, I started to hear those negative self thoughts creep in. All the dumb ones about not having a romantic interest to take care of me. About how I "should" be able to get shit done and work through my pain and exhaustion and I just flat out told that shit NO. Like, I was in agony. Depression, you don't get to use this as an excuse to put me down. Like fuck you my brain was on fire and I did well considering. 

Tomorrow is another day. I'm gonna call financial aid, maybe do a little shopping, and hopefully go up to the school to get a parking pass. And I can totally do that. I absolutely can. And if I don't get it all done, I'll work it out. I am not defined by what I have not done or cannot do. I am defined by whatever I choose to be defined by. And today it is by my successes despite "failures."

- Tori

Sometimes I start to realize that I have power in my own life. Like I have choices and options and I am in control of what paths I walk down. I am limited in some ways, sure, but I have power. I choose. I decide. I am not run by cosmic forces or even shoddy brain chemistry. I am the master of what I experience and that isn't something anyone can willingly take from me. I don't have to be anything I don't want to be and I certainly don't have to ascribe to social expectations or norms -- which are absolute and utter bullshit. 

I forget that humans have such power when considering myself. My emotions are only at the wheel because I allow them to override logic and complex understanding. It's not a function that is out of my control. I can easily toss the conductor out and onto the tracks and replace him with whomever I deem fit. I don't have to hate myself or hate my body or hate my face or even hate my 'failures.' I can choose to be enlightened and unburdened. I just have to loosen my grip on the tedium of perpetual emotional guidance. Feelings are feelings but they don't own me. Rather I own them. And they pay rent -- which I can raise at any time. 

I can do this. 

I'm doing this. 

I choose this. 

I'm really stressed right now. I have a big list of things I need to get done or get worked out and I'm just ready to have finally caught up with all of the stuff I avoided and ignored while sick in Austin and be back to a more manageable schedule. 

Getting better is hard and I'm realizing that now. It's really hard. And I've been mentally ill for a long time and I have gone through therapists and medications like it's no big thing. But I've finally gotten a hold of this crucial concept in recovery that I never seemed to get before. And that's that recovery isn't all about the why. It's about the how, too. 

I'm a why kind of girl. I'm very very good at defining my emotions and pinpointing what triggers them. I understand my neuroses and why they aren't rational. I can tell you specifically what triggers my faulty thought processes and downward spirals. 

But I don't know how to stop them. People have tried to teach me before, but I get caught up in... myself, to be honest. I don't think I really ever understood the nature of recovery or the kind of will it requires until now. There are also things about me that I'm very adept at denying. There's a reason it took me 19 years to realize I was gay. I'm pretty good at lying to others, but I'm fantastic at lying to myself. 

And that's a big issue of mine. I'm kind of a liar. Not pathologically, I don't think. I don't lie just to lie or to get attention. I lie to cover and to avoid and to pretend. Maybe that's why I was drawn to acting. Acting is just lying. I lie to make others feel good. I lie to try and make people like me. I lie to stave off the inevitable. 

So I'm accepting that about myself and trying to be more honest. I'm also terrible to myself. Just, really horrible. And I always have been. I know that, but it's got to stop. Rarely have I done things or made choices in life because I love myself and want to do what's best for me. I've made choices based on expectations and skewed perceptions of who I am and who I'm going to become. I have sincerely hated myself for so long that I can't even remember a time when I didn't. And it's so fucking shitty. 

I think about all of the opportunities I have probably missed out on because I didn't think I was good enough. I've always been told that confidence is what makes a person attractive. And it's always seemed like bullshit to me. I still think it's bullshit, but I sense that there's a nugget of truth in it. It's not that people can magically detect when someone is self-hating and when someone isn't. They don't seek out people who love themselves in lieu of those who don't. Surely there are factors like body language and eye contact subconsciously involved -- I'm not denying that. But I have a strange ability to fake confidence. And I think I do it well. Yet, I don't reap the benefits that confidence is apparently supposed to afford me. Yet, still other people like me do reap those benefits. People heavier than me and less intelligent that me and less funny than me and less pretty than me live full, happy, wonderful, productive lives every day and they probably don't give a shit if somewhere in Texas there's a 21-year-old girl who's 'superior' to them in any number of arbitrary ways. They don't fucking care. 

Maybe luck is a variable in all of those scenarios. Or maybe, just maybe, what I've been force fed my whole life is somewhat true. People who are genuinely confident get more out of life. But not simply because they're confident. 

It's because they believe they're worth that confidence. They honestly, unironically, believe they're worth it. Maybe not all the time, maybe not everyday, but sometimes. Somehow. They don't shut themselves down. They don't seal off possibilities all on their own. They don't do what I do to myself. 

And I have a disease -- it's true. And I'm not to blame for my genetic predispositions. But it's not the world doing this to me. It's not a cosmic force or retribution for something I did in a past life. It's not. It's just me. It's just me hating me and refusing to quit. Hating myself is almost like a security blanket at this point. I think I secretly held onto it -- clutched it tight in my fists and drooled on the edge of it. I didn't on purpose. I just didn't understand. And I probably still don't. Not all the way at least. 

But I know now that there's only one way out of this. 

And that's to just let it go. And learn that there's a different way to see myself and I just have to get there. It'll be a long trip, but I gotta get there. 

I can't keep cloaking myself in anger and fear and blame and turning it all inwards. I'm only hurting myself. More than superficially. More than I realize, I'm sure. 

I'm ready now. I'm ready, you know?

I'm not Sisyphus anymore. Scrambling up that mountain just to roll back down and do it all over again. There is no mountain to climb. 

It's not a mountain. It's a marathon. A fucking long one. I gotta pace it.