"Almost Normal-->But Only When Drugged Up"

I have not written any posts lately.

I have nothing to say.

Or rather, I have no desire at the moment to show the general public just how psychologically damaged I really am. My true friend, my ex-boyfriend, the only male I returned to, died. I am shattered. Mourning takes its toll on my listless body and mind. I gained 3 pounds since my last psychiatrist visit. She noted that point on her paperwork when I showed up at her office a few days ago.

"I  need anti-anxiety medicine," I said. I do. Apparently, she is not willing to prescribe medicinal marijuana so instead I got a non-addictive pill to take twice a day. Good enough. If only it could erase the knowledge of my precarious mortality and replace it with the drive and passion I once had.

I might have taken a dose of strong anti-anxiety drugs while listening to Nine Inch Nails album, "With_Teeth" and now I am feeling irrational, strung out, relatively relaxed, but jittery all at the same time.

I slept with this guy from my past. I spontaneously texted him and he asked me to come over. I slid past my parent's room and did a silent exit from home. I drove to his apartment. I slept with him. Then I left. He complained that I was leaving so soon. I patted him on the back and said I didn't want to get caught. I might get into trouble if my mom found out I took off in the middle of the night. He seemed irritated. I left.

I have issues with men. That is not my musing, apparently that is what the professionals say. I submit to their decision. I have an electra's complex from never having a father in my life, from all the damage I acquired from various damaged men, from needing, always needing, love or a reasonable facsimile.

I need my friend, my ex-boyfriend. My true love that I never told how much he meant to me, how I needed him. I miss him.

The cup of diet coke is empty. I slurp air instead. It feels like my life, an empty cup, a hollow space that I cannot stop trying to get substance from. Emptiness. Man, this turned out to be a heady entry.

I will post a pleasant entry later. Thanks for reading!

Pizza Binge, Nap, Feeling Calmer

Earlier today I posted a long-winded weeping, mournful wail of a blog entry. I assure you, I feel much better and I am not as emotionally unstable as I was when I wrote that.

Writing out my feelings to the cybersphere felt amazing and healing. Maybe it is the exhibitionist in me, but speaking out about suicide, mental health, and my personal life makes me feel like more than a speck in the world. I feel like a human. Not bad for a dead doll.

Oh my gosh! I am watching a National Geographic youtube video called "Forbidden Love" where a female therapist (therapist, mind you) has sex with male patients for money. Where is this woman and how far ahead must one make an appointment?! Sorry, that came out of nowhere, I happen to be multi-tasking, which makes me a little skitzy in my writing, ha ha.

I still deeply miss my friend and I still feel like curling up into a ball and hiding from the outside world for days and days, but I am not as hysterical as I was this afternoon. I always thought he might have considered me attractive, just because he would always approach me and he never approached other females. Also, he used to smoke his cigarettes, stare into my eyes with a tender look, and smile a crooked smile that was charming but indecipherable. I myself caught myself thinking about him romantically from time to time. One time, a bunch of us were sitting around the table talking. He only made eye contact with me, never my friend. He smiled, laughed a low chuckle, and gave me that askance look he always threw me.

I don't think I ever told him that I considered him a friend. Our graduate program is so tightly knit that I just assumed that he knew I thought of him as more than a classmate. I felt a bond with him not only because we spent so much time in the same circle, but also because he chose me to approach when he had a question. Now, I feel guilty about not seeking him out more when we were still in school. He was always so composed. I felt so scattered, like his opposite. After a teary nap, I woke up and felt a sense of longing and a tiny bit of acceptance. Wherever he is, I will see him on the other side. Then I will see that crooked smile and those tender eyes once again......

I Am Dead Doll

It is all over the media in the next town from me. My friend committed suicide in a public manner. So far, my county has yet to pick up the story. I only found the story by digging through the internet. I don't think anybody else knows. I don't think any of my classmates know how our friend died. His name and mode of suicide is plastered on the internet. Animals, barbarians, hiding behind aliases, debate about his mangled corpse in the comments of their town's online newspaper. One slandered him by saying he traumatized the bystanders (with no mention about how he is DEAD now while they get to LIVE and that his grieving friend is reading every gory, ugly, callous comment they are making...). Ugh. Normal People are so incomprehensible to me. They think us mentally ill are the sick ones?! We are genetically different. THEY are jerks and dogs. They have all the normal mental health and what do they do? They joke about my classmate's suicide like so much Jimmy Fallon fodder. I sent a complaint about the comments to the online newspaper. They never responded.

I cannot believe I missed the signs of suicide. I had more than 4 classes with him this past year...if not past 2 years. We saw each other every day. We greeted each other every day. He would approach me and ask me how I was, what did we do in class, how was my work going. I would make chit chat with him. I was very fond of him. He was tall, handsome, quiet. Withdrawn--I should have known. He has always been a little aloof, I thought maybe it was a cultural thing. No, it was his psychological wound not a personality trait.

This is hell. I drove around in shell-shock, trying to get an emergency session with a therapist. Next week, said the campus health clinic. I went to the county out-patient center where I am a consumer (I am bipolar but currently I have/had no symptoms). Next week, they said. Next week, next week, where will I be next week? I might take my student loan and flee this country. Forget finishing the Masters program. Forget everything. I just want a new start in a country that does not despise the mentally ill or laugh when we end our lives.

I previously wrote that I did not want any anger inside me, but when I read those callous and cruel comments on the article about my friend's suicide, I felt rage. Rage, wrath, hatred, deep-seated anger. I wanted to tell them exactly what I thought of them and their pathetic little personalities. I wanted to cross the line with the people who wrote those comments. I wanted to hurt them psychologically. Hence, the sudden drive to find a crisis therapist. I do not want to be that barbarian that these people are. I want to be able to snub my nose at them. I did not want to cut my wrist like I used to. I did not want to go screaming my anger over the internet like they do. Instead, I sat under the fluorescent lights of the out-patient treatment center and waited. "Next week," the counselor said. "Fine," I said. I left.

Outside in the parking lot I started to cry. I wept tears but I kept walking. I was a robot, a walking dead doll. Crying, floating outside of myself, feeling everything, feeling nothing. Limbo, then hell, then limbo, then emptiness, then over and over and over again, that endless cycle of grief and pain. I drove aimlessly for ten minutes.

I could see my life as endless opportunities. Death was not one. Neither was admitting myself to a psychiatric ward. There are many ways to self-destruct, to erupt like a volcano. I decided to binge eat. Off I went to the pizza joint for a large pizza and a bottle of diet Pepsi. I wanted nothing wicked to come out of my mouth so instead I stuffed it full of carbs and grease, swallow, repeat, until the heaven of sleep comes again, where I can pretend like all this is a nightmare. It is too bad, I ate 1200 calories yesterday and I even exercised. Then I found out exactly how my friend died and I went into a frenzied binge eating, remorse-ridden, tear-stained rollercoaster ride. I still feel like a dead doll. I put make-up on. I stare at myself in the mirror. I see large, oversized, kohl outlined eyes with a look in them like somebody vacuumed out the life out of them. I am dead doll. Hopefully, this will pass. Until then, I am going to eat my pain away.

Empty Summer Days

My classmate died this week. He was a very kind man who spoke to me in a gentle voice. I miss his presence already. Next semester will be a little difficult not having him in my graduate classes anymore.

I still have no therapist to replace my last one. I am slowly adjusting to the new cocktail of medications my psychiatrist put me on. I have no job and all I do is care-take my grandmother during the day and take walks in the evening.

Some days the reality of having a public blog makes me feel doomed. "What have I done," I think, "I am too exposed." But, I cannot help that I am mentally ill. Maybe my little wails and rants in cyberspace will make somebody else feel a little more normal. Also, it is healing to feel so emotionally stripped. I have nothing to hide anymore, my deepest secrets are posted online for people to root through and pass judgment on. Well, I always did want to be a confessional writer. I just never wanted to actually confess. I guess I wanted to be a fiction writer but that did not pan out. None of the writing panned out. Instead, I have milled about in academia, making friends who have no idea about my mental illness, feeling both accepted and alienated at the same time, struggling to come to grips with how society perceives me, and back in mourning after another classmate passed away.

In case you have been reading throughout this blog's timeline, I have actually experienced quite a bit of loss these past few years. My cousin committed suicide a few years ago. That was actually the impetus to start writing online. Next, my classmate whom I was secretly infatuated with passed away at a young age. Later, my grandfather passed away from a heart attack. Now another classmate has died at a young age. My mother mentioned to me that it was strange that so many people close to me had died the past few years. I really wish she had not mentioned that, because it actually is true. Three out of four of my close contacts died before the age of 40. That is far, far too young.

Now, I feel mortality like a chiffon dress that is delicate, transparent, and quick to rip. I wear my mortality like my new tattoo-- on my sleeve and open to the elements.

Tragedy always brings to mind the shame I feel over my own anger. Anger in words, anger in print, anger in general makes me self-loathe. I feel like anger is arsenic, slowly devouring my insides until one day I will stagger into the desert and die. I don't want to die with anger. I want to live. I want to be free of anger. How to escape the anger of being hurt, traumatized, alienated---that is something I have yet to answer. I try to find positive things in life to focus on. I try to accept that I will get angry and learn to control it so that it transforms into a butterfly and not some mutant caterpillar.

I will now list positive things about my life for balance and peace of mind:

I knew two great and kind men who were fond of me and whose memory as classmates I will hold in my heart for the rest of my life.
I am half way to earning my Master's degree.
I am sticking to my new diet of raw vegetables and I am not weighing myself obsessively.
My grandmother and mother spent the majority of their lives taking care of me and I will become a better person so that they will be proud.
John Nash is awesome and a genius whose schizophrenia did not stop him from winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
Despite having schizo-affective disorder, I achieved a B.A. and entered a graduate program.
Puppies.

On Sorrow

Dear public, online diary,

my secret crush died two weeks ago. He had a wife and child and I could never tell him the truth: that I was enamored with him. Now, he is gone from this world forever. His death has made me a new person; somebody desperate for love, for affection. I need somebody to hold me, to love me, to make me feel whole again. I know this is not possible---nobody can make another person whole, but in my time of mourning I feel restless and needy. I need.

I have a study session with my partner in one of my foreign language classes tomorrow. He doesn't know that I've taken in interest in him since my secret crush died. This new man stares at me with a strange intensity. He invited me over to study last week. He gave me white wine and homemade dumplings. Nothing romantic happened. At the back of my mind, I imagined my secret crush was watching me from wherever it is the dead go---and disapproving of it all. However, the need for affection is overwhelming.

I am sorry that this entry is so bleak---I decided to be honest. I need someone to be honest to. Nobody I associate with at school or in my social life knows I am a paranoid schizophrenic. Also, nobody knew I had deep feelings for my secret crush, who was a classmate of mine. I feel fragmented; this identity split into little compartments with nobody to share my secrets with. So, rather than risk losing friends and close associates, I will reach out to total strangers (you) and beg for understanding and tolerance.

My future epigraph: splintered no more.

Rest in peace, love, you have a hidden nook in me!