Race

I've been running a race for 3 and a half years and it's almost over, and I am on the final stretch. My heart feels like it's about to explode. my head feels like it's floating. Everything hurts. It's all racing so hard. I don't feel like me. I don't feel like who I am, who i want to be or who I used to be. I feel detached from the world. and everything feels distant. Everything feels elusive. and I want everything to just pause so I can catch my breath. Drowning.

It feels like an exaggeration, but I almost drowned in a pool when I was 10. I was too stubborn to stay in the shallow end, when I knew I couldn't swim well enough... The plan was to hold on to the rope. but I went under and the water took me out too far and I couldn't' find the rope when I came back up. I remember feeling panicked, and gasping for breath, but probably most telling, and I remember feeling so stupid because I knew better.  Why didn't I use my good sense? My brain in the midst of regret and shame while my body was gasping for air.  Then as quickly as I lost myself underwater, I felt my feet touch the tile. It was over.  But it's never over.   That memory runs through my mind more often than it should 27 years later. In a montage of stupid choices I've made. and somehow I feel like I'm here, panicking right now, drowning, and just like before. it's my own fault. And even when I finally come up for air, I know that this feeling will follow me forever. 

Write... Right?

“Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.”

I'm scared almost every time I pick up the pencil or pen, but I can't stop myself from doing it.  Each time i sit thinking I should write, but I find myself hesitating, but I know that without writing, I won't be able to release the tension, the pressure of emotions that won't be okay until they spill onto the page. 

I write to find my way. Through journals and letters, pages of poetry and prose, I have found a way to at least in some ways clear the cobwebs from my mind. I read and re-read what I write and in it I find corners of myself that would be so easily forgotten were they not marked with the permanence of the written word. 

When I write, I understand how I feel and in so many ways I read back those thoughts and emotions in such an amazing way that is brilliantly poetic and so many times I impress myself.  The fact that I've been writing about the depth of depression and anxiety and the way that it permeates every aspect of my life from my job to my body to my relationships and my life. It is so much of who I am. But those are the parts that I so desperately want to get rid of. How can you embrace the flaws that have affected your life so profoundly and that you know are not going anywhere?

May is Mental Health Awareness Month

Mental Health is the bane of my existence and alternately the core of who I am.  Since I was a little tiny girl, I knew that there was something different about me. A hollow space that wanted to be filled.. an emptiness, a sadness, something that was just different. It was off.  I was sad.   So sad.  I cried myself to sleep when I was 5 or 6, as a teen, all that got me out of bed were responsibilities and plans. I languished through hours, weeks, months of melancholy, wishing and hoping it would go away, but learning to love that darkness like a blanket. It became my security. 

It smothered me. It smothers me.  I've been in therapy for 3 years. Under the care of an amazing therapist and a psychiatrist who keeps my care consistent.  It is amazing how difficult it is to be successful in life, and successful in self care and be aware of mood swings, ups and downs and round and rounds that come with life.  I want all of the pieces to fall into place.  I want the symptoms to not affect my mood or my cravings. I want to be able to breathe easily and freely.  without anxiety also knocking at my door.  Knocking at my door. always knocking at my door. waiting outside. hanging in the driveway. Casing the joint, making the rounds looking for weakness.. for that moment when I am not tending to myself. When I am too tired, or too stressed, or hungry, or dehydrated. When I have too many things to do, when I am normal sad..its waiting right there to invade. to break in.  to break into my life. and to break into my life. and to stay for as long as it wants to. 


Its my job to practice active self care to prevent it from overtaking me. From making it a worse thing that It is.. to stop it from taking root.