The Battle Within

"I'm bored." I lie on my back on our bed with Hunter beside me playing with his stupid Iphone. I kick the foot of our mattress as hard as I can with my heel. I pause and wait for his reply, nothing. I pick up my stupid Iphone and try to play a game of candy crush.

"I hate this game!" I throw the phone down. "I should walk the dogs. You know, I haven't written all weekend. Hunter! I'm starving! I should clean the house! What do I do right now?!" I sit up and stare at him, "I don't know what to do!" I glance at my journal on my bedside table. "I haven't journaled today!"

"Then you should journal." Hunter replies.

I groan. "I can't."

"Why not?" He asks, still playing with his stupid Iphone.

"Because, it's overwhelming." I turn to him. "We should go for a hike! Never mind, I'm tired." I get bored of sitting and lay back down.

He says he's sorry, that his stomach hurts, he asks why I can't just sit and be with him, not do anything for a little bit. I jump off the bed, stretch my psoas muscle, then am overcome with exhaustion and lay back down again. There is a familiar battle intensifying, magnifying in depth and consequence, within me. There is the one side, mind racing with a thousand ideas, energy so high it appears the world around me is in slow motion, slowly approaching the other side, checked out, liquidated, almost lifeless with fatigue. "Let me sleep!" "No! You shall start a business, go hiking, finish your book and eat dinner... all RIGHT now!!!"

This is a battle I've been trying to escape being in the middle of since grade school. Strangely, I haven't experienced it since I went on Lithium 14 years ago. Now here I am, slowly weaning off of my medication, and if feels as if war has been waged once again. I used to punch my locker until my knuckles bled just to relieve the dueling, disorienting energy inside of me. Now I lay here on our bed and kick my heels together, then my toes, then clap the bottoms of my feet. Then move them to one side, then the other, until I smack Hunter in the shoulder. He barely looks up from his stupid Iphone.

"You alright over there squirmy?" He asks. This behavior doesn't seem to phase him at all, which is funny, because it's shocking the hell out of me.

I moan in response and kick my heels back onto the bed then pick up my stupid Iphone again. I attempt to play words with friends and begin scratching and digging my nails in to any part of my skin that is openly accessible, my stomach, my neck, my arms.

The opposing sides grow nearer within me and I feel like I'm going to explode. I jump up, stretch my legs, lay back down again. Hunter chuckles and shakes his head. I turn on one side and moan, then the other before I return to my back and start pedaling my legs around as if I were on a bicycle. I moan louder as I dig my nails into the side of my neck then pull the hair at the top of my head.

This is what's it's like for me. This is what it's always been like. Lithium eased the battles within, mollified the energy inside of me so that it made just a little more sense. But then my doctor told me I couldn't be on it anymore on the account that it was damaging my kidneys. I then started on a 4 month science experiment with mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. I was either blowing up like a balloon and taking a nap every hour or I couldn't sit still and wound up hallucinating due to a lack of sleep. So I'm taking the tools I've learned with Dialectic Behavioral Therapy and combining it with herbs and acupuncture. This is something I've never tried before.

I take a deep breath and consider this fact for a minute as I stare up at the ugly light fixture of our apartment bedroom, realizing that what's happening to me at this very moment has happened before and like all feelings, it is temporary.  I look at the indentations my nails have left in the skin of my forearm and then look at Hunter. I access the non-crazy part of me, the one that has somehow not gotten involved with the two opposing entities that are engaging in a sparring match inside my chest, and understand a few things; one, I cannot make myself bleed, I've come too far to enlist in self-destructive behaviors, and two, I need to eat, it's time. So I stand up and ignore what's going on inside my head and my body and take the first step; I change out of my waitressing clothes and into my favorite jeans and a sweater. I take a deep breath and say the words I need to say. "I know you're stomach is upset but I need to get out of here and get some food."

Hunter and I wound up going to my work for dinner and I enjoyed a patty melt and a glass of wine with him. This journey is frightening, I'm experiencing feelings I haven't in over a decade. Sometimes I can't stop talking and other times tears well up in my eyes for no reason. I could wind up returning to the hospital and going back on a bunch of shitty medications or I could do just fine. Maybe I'll find a way to accept that I'm awkward and weird and that depression and mania is not something I need to necessarily be so afraid of, or maybe that's not something I'll be able to do quite yet, or ever. I have no idea. But with the help of my therapist, I've developed a plan, a list of tools that ground me, that make me feel like me, as well as an action plan when the thoughts get to be too much. This is where I'm at right now and I don't know what the next hour has in store, but I'm writing about it and sharing these intimate parts of myself with you, because that is one of the things that make me feel like me.

We Laughed at Them But Never with Them

As a waitress, I often allow my ears to dip into the conversations at the tables I serve. Living in the bay area, at any given moment, I will listen to interesting conversations about gay rights, Teddy Roosevelt, or the latest in the tech industry, but for the past 2 days, everywhere I go, I hear a familiar tune resonating from the chatter, "Oh Captain, my captain."

I feel the need to say something about the death of Robin Williams. How can I have an entire blog dedicated to mental illness and not say anything? When I was 12 years old, Mrs. Doubtfire was released. I saw it in the theaters and it broke my heart. It wasn't a movie I could watch over and over again or ever had a desire to own. Sure there were funny aspects of the film, it was a funny movie. But it was the perpetual anguish in Robin William's piercing blue eyes that tormented me. This was a man who held his afflictions in his eyes, because every single other facet of his existence was owned by comedy. While the not-so-comical suffer in a state of overt despondence; crying excessively, head to the ground, 18 hours a day beneath the covers, speaking only of the heaviest parts of themselves and the rest of the world, comedians like Robin Williams, Jon Belushi and Chris Farley agonized and deteriorated in a way that was unrecognizable to the rest of the world. Looking back though, my 12-year-old instincts were always sensitive to fellow sufferers. I wanted to die and I could spot one like myself from a mile away.

I wonder what my life would have looked like if I had been better at hiding my depression. Would so many people have tried to save me, would they have known how much pain I was in if I had devoted my every minute to camouflaging it with comedy? With the stigma connected to mental health problems did these men stand a chance? I mean, men, growing up in America, admired by other men for their success and ability to entertain without ever exhibiting anything beyond the mirth they shouldered at the surface, no definitely not. We are a nation that honors beauty, power, money and fame over anything else. Suffering is for 3rd world countries and happiness is for those who have earned their faces on a magazine. All other properties of our existence is inconsequential. Which creates an unresolvable conflict, it's no wonder so many people are either killing themselves or each other.

It was Robin William's surface that made him who he was, that made him a success. What would have happened to him, his career, his reputation as a comedian, had he come forth and said, "I need help, this isn't funny anymore." When I imagine the jokes on Facebook and the cruel response of the media, I realize how grateful I am today that I have had so much support by my own friends and family. Perhaps, in this sense at least, it's easier being a woman and living in the tiny little world that I reside in. I have little to live up to and fantastic people surrounding me. But what about the cultural impasse impeding on so many others that are struggling with a mental illness in our society?  How do we even begin to challenge the stereotypes and social disfigurement that accompanies terms such as "Schizophrenia," "Clinical depression," "Bipolar Disorder," and "Substance Addiction" when they have been ingrained so deeply in our understanding of human behavior and what is and what isn't acceptable? Don't get me wrong, I'm just as guilty as the next one. In spite of my multiple hospitalizations and suicide attempts, I am still quick to plant the crazy card on someone. It isn't until I step back and access the sympathetic part of myself that I pick the card back up and remember how truly painful struggling with a mental health challenge really is. Unfortunately I have no answers to this problem, only the hope that talking openly about it might create a small crack in the barriers that have been built around the subject and that maybe one day it will spread and something will finally begin to crumble.

One, Of Which, I Know Nothing About

Hypomania will always be everything mania could never be. Certainly not in the way it's contagiously unrestrained, bright, fast, witty and ready for anything; a brain like a remote control that's had all it's buttons jammed deep into their sockets. And what idiot would dare take them out? But it's because no one knows you're crazy, that's the glory of it. You're simply a very "hyper" person; someone with a lot to say and someone who says it all very loudly. You're excitable, enthusiastic, you simply have a zest for life. Here's the kicker though...it only lasts a few hours at a time. And that, my friends, is why bipolar II is, in reality, the poor man's mood disorder. While the fabulous "Ones" fly high for months, creating, laughing, talking, succeeding, we are never quite manic long enough to accomplish anything and we're far too depressed to succeed in the first place. It's infuriating and no medication treats us properly. Mood stabilizers keep us from swinging out of control, but do not offer anything for the lethal depression that follows and antidepressants trigger a manic episode. We are the ones beneath the covers, desperately planning our suicides, experiencing wonderfully furious moments where we have no doubts we can achieve anything, followed by even longer ones where we silently analyze our thinking with the kind of tragic shame that would send anyone off their handle. "How could I have ever thought I could do this? Who am I to dream so big, to take up so much space that would otherwise be filled with the real, the capable, the...not me."

So here I am, writing as quickly as possible out of fear of losing this moment; of it running out. The funny thing is, we can drive as fast as we want on an empty tank, but it's always the distance that gets us, not the time it takes to cover it. In the end I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, feet frantically pumping the gas with nothing moving but my own head as it bobs up and down, peeking through the rear view mirror and wondering where the hell I just came from and how far I actually went. And what a disappointment it is! I have no grand story to tell of what my episode was and all the places it brought me and everything I did on the journey because it turns out I'm three god dam blocks from my house! So as a dreaded "Two," time runs out far too quickly. One minute I'm reading Rousseau and studying the French Indian War and the next minute I'm binge watching Orange is the New Black with the debris of my hypomanic episode wriggling out of my toes and my fingers like a dying fish. And what has anyone ever accomplished with a fiddling thumb? Nothing.

But none of it's real to begin with, right? This isn't me, this is a mental illness. I am not brilliant, creative or driven because I'm a "Two." And Twos are tired and desperate for change, but too self-deprecating to follow through. Twos take up space and are over medicated, resulting in bad memories, poor concentration and a lack of sex drive. Sit down. Be gentle with yourself. Be grateful for the dog on your lap and a movie going, this is what you need. You have a fragile system. Oh face it! I am BOOOOOORRRRING! This is what I've chosen to do about it. I've gone off my meds, started doing acupuncture and decided to see an herbalist. I am brilliant, creative and driven. I have to be. So I go to bed, sleep like a baby and wait for noon the next day to finally arrive, because, like clock work, hypomania will be back, and I'll take the wheel again, And I'll drive at 90 mph through my little neighborhood for a raving hour, if I'm lucky, two, until I run out of fuel then start all over again the next day. 4:35pm. I cross my fingers for a second wind, because today was not enough. One fight with Hunter. One page of my book. One blog post. One recurring fantasy. Son of a bitch, how is it that everything in my life is a One but me.

Ranting and Raving Beneath the Pinnacle of Madness and the Power of Judgment

"Oh my god, she actually started collecting donations to move. I was like, she's like, 30. You just don't do that."

I listened to the little group of them chatter as I cleaned the surface of the bar, carefully pouring steaming hot water over the draft levers. I wondered if you could either learn a lot by eavesdropping or simply excel at self-torture. I started a go-fund-me sight and accepted donations. I'm 30. Did my friends and family say that about me? But mine wasn't for a god dam move, it's to write a book, to better the world, but is that any better? Or am I completely full of shit? Big shit, no shit? Who gives a shit.

What the hell are we learning from judgement, what are we teaching? I couldn't go an entire minute without passing it though. I swear I couldn't. I'm terrified of being disliked but I spread my own distaste for the world all over their tacky clothes, their bad haircuts, over sized, hip eye wear and their sad tips which almost always follow a barrage of questions about our menu's prices. The secret is not to judge, per say, but rather to judge without apprehension about un-fellow judgment. You hate me, big fucking deal. You hate something she did, while I did it too, so fuck off. I hate the way you talk, like what you say has any significance beyond your own significantly large mouth and crooked front tooth, but I don't hate your front tooth particularly, it makes you human, it's simply your lack of self-awareness, which makes you stupid. I hate stupidity because I can be so stupid. Dear God, does everyone else know how stupid I can be? Oh fuck it, it's my life.

Enough about judgement. It's me. I give a fuck about people I shouldn't give a fuck about. The cousins who think birth control is a sin and I'm a black sheep. The ones with their Old Navy-I-Puke-Rainbows-and-shit-out-organic honey-and-picnic-in-the-yard-with-my-white-picket-fence-and-well-behaved-Labrador-and-hair-extensions-and-botox-and everything I'm against but feel for some reason I need to live up to lives. Fuck you. If I never liked you to begin with it's fine, let it go, they never mattered. But it's the fall from grace, the connection that snapped, how did it snap, how did I snap? Is snapping the only true redemption and it's the people that fail to snap that are lacking something; so tightly wound they might collapse all over their loathsome expectations of the rest of the world? Then what, we catch them in our arms with their perfect smiles and glass houses with our hands full of our own bad decisions and our smelly arm pits, wobbling along on the balancing act of depression and ecstasy, always unsure as to what will hit next. Or maybe not, maybe I'll just giggle as they fall because it's funny to watch and hope no one is too badly hurt then skip along my merry way trying to overthrow depression once and for all and maybe, finally, not give a shit about what doesn't matter.

With Age Comes a Lot of Dog Hair. That's All.

The first memory I ever had was watching my mother playing with my handicapped brother at a forest preserve in Illinois. I was four years old and at that very moment determined to believe that she loved him more than me. I specifically remember thinking "what does he have that I'm lacking? What's wrong with me?"

Today I was invited to a dinner party on Friday with a group of people who live in San Francisco, one of the top 5 most expensive places to live in the country, and have more money than I could ever imagine. My first thought was that I needed to buy a cocktail dress to wear, because everything I own suddenly seemed completely inadequate. From my favorite summer dress to the gorgeous turquoise shawl I bought in Thailand, in my mind, nothing was good enough for the table I would be sharing with women in Menolos and Chanel. I found myself wondering how the hell this happened when I've spent my adult life wearing my artistic edge with so much pride.

I just recently celebrated my 33rd birthday and as I've watched another year pass me by, I've realized that, more often than not, my thinking has been monopolized by the very same classification of questioning that saturated my perception at the ripe age of four. Hopping back and forth between being cloyingly ingratiating and stupidly combative, I've continuously accented my identity crisis and questions of self-worth with hopeful materialism. Whether it be an outfit, a hairstyle, a body weight or a piece of home decor, I've longed to ensure that I never lack anything.  But I know today how fruitless it's all been. While my little world flourished with perfectly pretty little things, I failed to do anything to cultivate all that was inside of me. My sense of self and my confidence got pushed to the back burner while I plotted my every move for the sake of the favor of others. Yet still, after all that exhausting work, I was alone.

So here's to 33. Money, politics and technology both exhaust and disgust me. I have no tolerance for right wing, fundamentalist self-righteous Christians. Tuna melts and margaritas make me smile. I have a lousy memory when it comes to things that don't interest me, which means a lot of things don't interest me. My dogs take up 56% of my time and 89% of my thoughts. I hate big crowds. I love a clean home. Up until 3 months ago, I thought I was allergic to gluten, but it turns out I have an eating disorder. I believe vibrators can be very nice if you care enough to replace the batteries. Death and wrinkles still scare me. I hate pantyhose and I have yet to find a comfortable pair of underwear. Hunter makes me crazy but I know more than I ever have before that we have something extraordinary. Summer shadows and iced tea will always be the perfect combination. I don't care enough to paint my toenails or cut my hair but the perfect shade of lipstick means far more to me than I'm willing to let on. I no longer believe I'm the star of my own movie, but secretly, I wish I still did. I still struggle with wanting to fit in even though I hate the idea of conforming. A person's time means more to me than any gift ever will. And I hope that I will never stop writing, because it's the minutes in my day when I truly feel like me.

It's not much, but this is what I know and what I have to hold true to my heart. My world is small but it's mine. And as I watch the shadows from the maple trees stirring against the pavement on this hot July day from my little apartment with my three dogs sleeping on my lap I realize that the only thing I am lacking in my life is confidence and perhaps some gratitude. Everything else is just as it should be. So here's to 33, everything I do and don't know, all that I have, have always had and will one day finally do away with. Until then, I'll wear my favorite dress, my $5 flats and my turquoise shawl with pride on Friday night; with Hunter at my side and we'll both, most likely, be covered in dog hair. This is who I am and I would not have it any other way.

An Ode to Letting Go

After spending a week packing and preparing to put on the market the home I grew up in, I sit on my front porch one last time and watch the cool summer wind blow recklessly against the large Oak trees that hang over the street. Summer shadows aren't happening today. A storm is coming.

I think about letting go, how very rarely is it what you're letting go of, but rather, what it once meant. It was watching my dad blasting Pink Floyd in his old black and white flannel, BBQing on our old back porch, knowing at the end of the night, he'd be there, by my mom's side to tuck me in, to swat away the monsters, and to tell me he loves me.

It was the haunted houses my dad built in our garage, the tire swing, the snow forts and tiny ice skating rinks. It was waking up Christmas morning with both my parents and never imagining it would be any different. It was our old blue Oriental rug that I laid on next to my brother Mike while I fed him chocolate milk and watched Annie over and over and over again and he was always right there by my side.

It was counting down the seconds until my latest crush rang the door bell and crying in my friends arms each time my little heart got broken and thinking that I finally understood what eternity felt like. It was tea parties with my mom in the yard people think is not big enough to invest in today. It was looking out our kitchen window at freshly brewed sun tea, cherry blossoms blooming in the backdrop while my mom made finger sandwiches with the crust cut off.

It was falling asleep in my mom's bed to Moonstruck while my dad was away on business. She would put my tiny feet between her thighs to keep them warm. And by her side beneath the ceiling people now say are "just too low," I felt safe.

It was staring up at the moon and howling at it, hoping my cousin Joey might hear me all the way from California. It was lemonade stands where I fought with Jana and followed her home and at the end we both cried.

It was love and hope and innocence, it was the home I still remember today.
But this is no longer my home and this is the last time I will ever sit on this front porch and be able to think about the things that can make me laugh and cry at once. This is letting go.

Nights Gone Sour

"Last night went sour." Sour is what he said.
I remember sour.

Young, tight jeans.

Self-centered. Self-absorbed. I-am-the-world-and-they-are-all-watching and, look-at-me-I'm-stunning with small pores and, baby i'm yours, and push-up bras.

Sour. When the camera is always running and you're the star and your world is just too damn important to think about her.

Sour. Selfies like a rash all over your page. And my page. And I don't care because I just know you have nothing better to do than look. And lust. And envy.

Sour. When you giggle and blast bad music and don't realize how sensitive you are until it's too late.

Yes. Sour. When you brag with ingenuity about things that "don't matter" and drink like a fool until everything matters.

And then the tears.

But I would not cry.

I am a grown woman with a boyfriend and a man friend and the boy is the one I give my love to who cannot ask a simple question and the man is the one who's masculinity would be far more useful if only it were contagious.

Yes. Sour.

I am the small, hopeful idiot who believes all that he says with the this-time-it-will-be-different sentiment that only Sour holds and honors and assumes without shame.

Sour. Like sex without a condom and fat-free popcorn and lesbianism without veracity.

Can't we please call it something else?

Since I am disillusioned; old; bitter; disappointed cliche on a prayer flag

Larger than life and smaller than normal

Gray hairs and broken promises and unwanted ideas that have stained the walls of our little metaphorical dynasty

Liberated?

Underrated?

Romantically Ostracized?

Emphatically Wise?

Or Simply Understated?

Whatever.

I remain the big, bad, evil, angry, off-her-meds and ready to roll.

Violent and; she-doesn't-know-what-she wants; and condescending.

I am the one that speaks too sweetly and doesn't say what she means.

I am the enemy in all it's forms; Dark and empty and bleeding.

I am longing for control and can't seem to find it.

So gone with food and gone with sex and gone with all I enjoy because I deserve to be punished.

I am just a foolish woman who asks for nothing and demands everything.

I am barren.

I am spinster.

I am night.

And I am sour.

Eating Crow Beneath the Moonlight of a Thousand Possessions; A Love Story

I have three dogs that sleep beneath the covers of my bed. There are paws in my eyeballs, wagging tales that slap me in the face and harry assholes that rest thoughtlessly against my neck.  Their thirteen-foot-long ears lay damp against my calves and I try not to think about what they have been dragging in. The young one belches in my face and the smell of shit lingers in the air for a moment. He has a full belly and . . . God I wish he would stop doing that.

My partner beside me; breathing, farting, his face angelic in the light of the moon that seeps in from my bedroom window where my 1...2...3...4...5...6 pill bottles sit on the window sill. Exposed. They wave at the neighbors in their stigmatic manner.

We harbor a junkie beneath the stairs. He kicks a heroin habit like an overcrowded steam room in an earthquake; our friend; our brother. In the second bedroom of our disgusting apartment where skid marks the kitchen tile floor and the dogs have teethed on our cabinets, our dining chairs and the trim around the windows; and I often hope if they piss on our carpet enough it will all be one dark, beige color so I never have to rent a steamer; we're not getting our deposit back, a teenager dwells drunk, lazy, up until 5 smoking weed in the house when we've asked her not to, drinking and bringing home ridiculous misfits I once was myself but now I just want to slap hard and kick them the fuck out of my crowded house.

I have a handicapped brother I haven't seen in years, please don't judge me, you don't know the story. But he fell in a pool when he was two and now he's married to a prostitute. Her best friend is now his best friend; a drug dealer with a record, a record of molesting small boys. My brother had money from the settlement. Now he has none. She is black. Now he is black. Regardless of his white, spoiled, privileged suburban roots. But he speaks in Ebonics anyways with that slow, cerebral drawl that makes me want to cry, scream and punch him in the face all at the same time. He says he won't see us unless we accept her as his wife. My mother tried to salvage his trust and his safety but now she is the enemy. She is the money grubbing whore who has taken his freedom. I stay far away because time is precious and he is angry and the target in the pit of my stomach has become too small for any archer to see anyways. I keep my distance because I would rather be happy; and he wouldn't. I keep my distance because guilt and shame and brotherhood and family are the bright and colorful jack in the box you want until you are terrorized by. Eventually, it's best not to open at all. You know the outcome. Turn the handle and twist the coils until they're taught and strained and the fucking clown can't stay put for much longer. Like a toxic family member. . . like my brother. . . and my father, it's best not to crank out an invitation.

I have 8 years worth of coins from the AA meetings I thought I belonged in. I wanted to belong in. Like the sad little girl that lives next door to us, whose lazy stupid mother lets run around the complex knocking on every stranger's door and asking them to play with her, I wanted to be somewhere I belonged. Yes I'm selfish. I'm self-centered. I even get drunk on the occasion....and like it. That big book was my shield against the battles that rumbled deep within me, torturing me as I fought against the most paramount identity crisis the world had ever seen. I faked it. All those poor sons-of-bitches who desperately longed to drink like a "normal" person but knew it was too dangerous and I sat in those dreary, smoke-filled rooms and I desperately longed to drink like an alcoholic, just so I could have a title; an explanation; anything besides all the things I never knew I was. And I donated and I sponsored and I spoke, but I did not be-long; I simply continued to long. I had an 8 year fling with alcoholism. It took 8 years to realize I was better off sticking with my vibrator. What can I say. I'm slow. Very slow.

I have a dual diagnosis that I'm questioning and live in a strange world where I contemplate suicide and my heart nearly explodes when I'm happy but I wonder if that is just me, living, or if I am "psychologically disturbed." Of all my hospitalizations, my favorite was the one with the smoking room and the woman that kept asking me if Christ was my savior. I told her Jesus Christ could go fuck himself...she didn't like that, which made me like it more.

The world could be worse and I could be better and my brother could not be a jackass and my boyfriend could take gas-x and I could muzzle my dog to keep him from eating shit and AA could not be an embarrassing memory and my pill bottles could stop waving at my neighbors, but 'could' are the fingers hanging on by a thread while my feet dangle 2 feet off the ground; hopeful, half-witted and completely unnecessary.

I have underdeveloped; socially awkward; everlasting entertainment; story after story; I hate you don't leave me; smile wrinkles and frown lines and crow's feet around my pretty green eyes; pharmacy on my window sill; corporal discontent; spiritual, emotional, perceptual befuddlement; confinement and release in a heartbeat; eternal chagrin that sometimes I can laugh at; and me. And love. And . . . me.

Tiny Little Tickseed

My mother always told me I'm a late bloomer. Those who are familiar with the term may have had it described to them beneath a similar sweet sugar coating: perennials are the strong ones, they shine bright while the rest of the garden begins to sink. Since I can remember, my world has been filled with lovely analogies to illuminate all the inconveniences of my defects. Perhaps I'm ungrateful, but I just can't justify celebrating my own Tickseed-hood when fragrant Roses are hanging, in full bloom, off their metaphorical vines of sophistication.

No, let's call it what it is; I'm slow, very, very slow. While my friends were all involving themselves in high school events and festivities, I stayed frozen in the same thinking I had held since the age of four; life was a movie and I was the star. And since the fads of my generation centered around the three 'J's', Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Hendrix, I didn't stand much of a chance at playing a 'healthy role' in the little false masquerade I was starring. The consequences of my own delusions, unfortunately, left me friendless, cashed out, and far too terrified to engage in a good old fashioned heroin overdose like the rest of my heroes from the 60's seemed to have done.

Consequently, after a total of three hospitalizations due to what was diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality, by the time I hit my twenties, instead of having fun like everyone else was doing, I was picking up the pieces of my adolescence. As I began to realize the "role" I had been playing wasn't working too well for me, I chose a completely different one that involved fantasies of me telling my life story and talking about how far I've come in a large room in front of my mom, step dad and all the other AA and Al-Anon members I had spent my life growing up around. I deemed myself to be a recovered alcoholic. And that's where I spent eight more awkward and ill-suited years of my life.

So, here I am, thirty-two years old and while the rest of the women my age are having children or focusing on their careers, I'm broke, unemployed and out almost every night.  Faced with a sense of ambivalence that is completely unfamiliar to me, I have become less and less concerned with my own future and more concerned with where my next adventure lies. Last night Hunter asked me what drives me and all I could think was, 'where I will get the money to pay my next bill.'  I am officially twenty-two again, but not at all the way I did twenty-two ten years ago. There is no skittish planning and excessive caution. Is is bad that I'm enjoying it as much as I am?

Sadly, the voices of AA and my mother still ring strongly in my ears. "You're regressing. . .You're going down a dangerous path." "This is what happens, you're becoming numb, it's a progressive disease." "Normal people don't think like this." I find myself wondering if I would still feel guilty and ashamed had I not; one, grown up in a culture that perpetuates this belief that we're just all supposed to know what we want and where we're going by the age of thirty or there is something inherently wrong with us; and, two, spent an entire decade of my own life being told that the kind of behavior I've been partaking in is part of a disease that will one day kill me. Although I'm in no way unhappy, I can't help but feel like I'm supposed to be.

I will admit, I am discouraged. Lately it feels as if the rug just keeps on getting pulled out from under me. I spent so much time planning out my future and believing I was taking the proper steps to inheriting whatever pretty little life package was supposed to come my way, yet, life package still has not arrived and I have no more idea what my place is in the world then I did ten years ago. So what the hell was the point then?  When I was a gymnast I would get rips in my palms all the time from the bars and my coaches would come over, tell us to close our eyes and they would tear the thick layer of flappy skin off of us so fast we hardly knew it happened. This terrified me, no matter how much evidence pointed to that method as the superior route. I tried to pull it off on my own, thinking I would somehow spare myself the pain by doing it slowly, but it never ended well, it hurt twice as much and I usually wound up bleeding. I made a decision last year to stop trying to slowly pull the skin off; to not let fear and caution rule my life. Since then I went down to being a part-time waitress, I committed to being a full time writer, I traveled to Thailand by myself, and I relinquished the eight years I spent sober and hoping to prove to my mom I was capable of making healthy decision; that I'm not crazy; that I am grounded; that I'm not going down a dark path. I made the decision last year, that I was going to live for me. There have been consequences and benefits from this decision and I'm just hoping it will all balance out eventually. Or not. I know today that I'm not starring in a movie and that my life is not determined by my mother's concerns. I'm just a tiny little organism that knows very little about very little and strangely after so many years of inflating myself and the circumstances around me, my smallness and my insignificance has never been so comforting.

The Fine Line Between Our Blood and Your Bullshit

It's only been a month since I last talked to my dad. Honestly, we've gone longer even when we weren't fighting. It's the fact that I went home for the holidays and we didn't see each other that still has that whole fist driving into my nervous system effect on me.  Not that I miss him. This is a man that showed up at my little sister's work drunk and stared at her breasts the entire night. This is a man that hits on sixteen year old girls while his wife is at home, pregnant with his child. This is a man that locks himself in a room with his youngest son and beats him with a belt. I still wonder if he locks the door so that my half brother can't escape or so that none of us can save him. I don't want him in my life yet there is this strange instinct within myself and my siblings that urges us to protect him.

I have this beautiful hand-carved wooden box that my high school boyfriend gave me. He bought it for me at a little Indian shop in Chicago. Being a broke teenager, he collected some soft stones on the beach and placed them inside along with a poem he wrote for me. This was during a time in our relationship where his own human decency was most palpable; during a time when he wasn't sexually abusing me and telling me how hideous I was without make-up on. Although, that time lasted all but 6 months and now here I am, nearly fifteen years later, still struggling with the reality that I chose to stay with him for two whole years of my fragile adolescence. But when someone tells you that you're stupid and ugly long enough, it begins to feel as if you should be grateful that that particular someone is even with you, because "who else would be?"

Although the repercussions of that relationship still haunt me, I can't lead myself to let go of the gift. The stones are gone, along with the poem. Now it's a pretty box, with nothing inside, that causes me a little bit of heartache at the sight of it because of what that young woman suffered, but it seems to represent the tiny fragment of goodness within him and within our relationship; the reason I stayed and maybe the only good thing that came out of what we had.

My father is like that box, the idea of it is beautiful, but when you open it . . . nothing.  This recent episode began with him calling me drunk and me asking him if we could modify the plans for our visit home.

"Dad, me, Jeanette and Charlie will all come out to your place over the weekend and spend the day there. I'm just asking, for the visit with Hunter, if you would be willing to come out our way because he's got a lot of driving to do that day and it would make it a lot easier on him."

"Well, I just don't understand Angie I though we had everything planned out. I mean, it's just sad, you know, I'm sure you're making time to see your uncle and your friends and Hunter's family but you can't even take some time out of your busy schedule to see your own dad. It's just sad."

"Again dad, the rest of us will come over that following weekend. I'm just trying to make the day a little easier on Hunter. He has to drive 45 minutes to Chicago and then another hour and a half to Indiana. It's a lot of driving in one day and your house is thirty minutes in the opposite direction. We're spread pretty thin here trying to make time for his parents, his sister, his grandparents who live in Indiana, mom and you guys. I'm just asking you to help me out here. I don't know why you're being so inflexible. I've spent the past twenty years coming to you. I think you can come to me, just this once."

"I'm not being inflexible. I just think it's sad. I'm really confused. I thought we had concrete plans."

"You know Dad, I'm a little confused as to why you're so confused." 

We pretty much went around in circles for about fifteen minutes until I offered him my ultimatum.

"You know what, you're being ridiculous. Here's what's going to happen. Plans with Hunter are off. Obviously it's too much to ask. You can call me tomorrow and apologize for being a jerk or don't plan on seeing me at all. Don't call me again tonight though." And that's when I hung up on him. Needless to say, he chose the latter and on my annual trip home to Chicago, I didn't see my father.

This didn't exactly give me the feeling like the roots of my existence had been chopped down from beneath me, I mean, I don't really believe he has that kind of power anymore. It's, more or less, the knowledge that this common behavior on his part, is not common to so many of the families around me. Every so often I have to check with Hunter. "Is this normal?"

"No, no Angeline, this is not normal. I don't understand this natural inclination you and your siblings have to want to protect your dad. I mean, the guy's an asshole. If it were me I would have dropped him years ago. I don't believe you should keep people in your life if they make you feel like that, family or not."

The thing is, when it comes to family, I'm pretty sure deep down Hunter knows it's not that easy. Every once in a while I see a ray of light come out of that darkness that has encompassed my dad and it touches me so resolutely my memory suddenly becomes a false perception. "There's good in him. It's really not that bad. He can't help himself." It's as if all the concrete understandings I had collected from my past that have aided in putting together the pieces of the strange and confusing puzzle that is my dad, suddenly shatter and the puzzle goes down with it. Then I'm left with a thousand pieces and no recollection of what the end result is supposed to look like. I don't know, perhaps it's time for me to stop living in this mindset that his puzzle is mine to put together.  Let him pick up his own dam pieces.