Paradox

Last year, my Lit professor called me a paradox. That was the last time I ever had communication with her before the attempt. Because well, she was right. I am a paradox. My life is spent in a wheel and all I do is spin and spin and spin...

I always have psych outs. It's how I live. I think "Finally, finally it's over. Finally I can be happy and productive and do what I've always wanted with my life." But I'm wrong. Always, always long. Such thoughts used to last for only a few hours. One time, it lasted for 3 days. This time, it lasted for months. Months, I tell you, months.

The wheel always spins back around.

Ah yes, the classic case of bipolar disorder. Fucking beautiful, isn't it? Each pole is as deadly as the other - mania which convinces you that you're on top of the world and nothing can stop you and the depression which is your reality check that reminds you that you. Are. Just. Human.

I'm in a terrible down.

It's almost the third week of college and I've already begun contemplating suicide. I thought I was stronger than that. Thought that all you needed to do was just dream and go but the truth is that I'm just flesh and blood and chemical imbalances. When I was a child, I thought I was a faerie. With all my heart, I thought I was a faerie that became mortal just so I could sing. I never fit in my own skin. This body is too small, it doesn't change fast enough. It's stringed up incorrectly and move funny. It doesn't listen to my nerves and impulses.

When I was five... I thought that if I just died, I'd be free and I'd finally fit. I'm claustrophobic in my own flesh. I STILL feel that if I die, I'll finally fit. That not even gravity will hold me back, the universe has no boundaries. If there is a universe. If I'm not just... that word.

I thought I was until I turned 18.

All throughout today, I've been crying. Not a few tears, but actual bawling. I try and hide it from my roommate (who just left to meet her boyfriend) and swallow back giant lumps that I don't remember feeling since I moved out of my mom's house.

My stepmom blames herself for my bipolar disorder. If she really cared, she wouldn't have abandoned me, would she have. Or she'd actually be there for me instead of swimming in her bottles of Merlot. Insects. That's the name of the poem I've been working on since I turned 15 and it STILL isn't finished. I never can write about her.

See, the thing is that you can succeed at whatever you want... if you've got the skills. For me, it's too late. My voice is already fucked up because of the different style of vocal training they have below the Mason Dixon line that they've been trying to beat into me. They're trying to make me into a mezzo. I can't go high anymore. As a child, I once swore that if I ever lost my voice, I'd kill myself.

I guess I thought about death a lot as a child.

See, there's something inside of me. And its been inside of me for all my life. The Scientologists would call it a thetus, the psychologists call it bipolar psychotics but I always called it Emily and she and I have been friends and scheming since the first time I caught my dad and mom fighting. She convinced me that we were more than normal, that magick was real, that we had powers and that we could do anything. I was always alone. But Emily, Emily was always there talking to me at night, egging me on whenever something was troubling me. Today, I can no longer hear her, but I feel her and she has brought with her other voices that remind me just how useless I can be.

Sometimes, I don't know what is Emily and what is myself. We've merged part way. I feel that if I died and both our spirits were freed of this body, we'd wind up traveling together, stuck at the side like conjoined sisters for all of eternity. Out of all the voices in my head, they can be sorted into two categories. The voice that tells me why bother when we are just going to fail anyway and the other one that yells "GET UP SOLDIER. STRAIGHTEN YOUR BACK, ONE FOOT BEFORE THE OTHER. THIS IS NO TIME TO BE LAYING AROUND WHEN THERE IS WORK TO BE DONE. DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE TIME WILL WAIT FOR YOUR SORRY ASS AND PATHETIC TEARS? GET UP. YOU WILL NEVER EARN THE RESPECT OF ANYONE BY BEING THIS WAY. CRYING IS WEAK - ARE YOU WEAK? DO WE JUST WASTE OUR TIME EXISTING? GET UP, SOLDIER! HOLD YOUR HEAD HIGH, NO ONE HAS TO KNOW THAT YOU AREN'T PROUD OF LIVING BUT THEY BETTER AS ALL FUCK BELIEVE IT. GET UP, SOLDIER. GET UP."

I can't differentiate which is worse.

I honestly thought this would be over. I thought I had finally saved myself.

I thought wrong. I am not meant for happy endings.