my life in treatment

so it has been a few weeks since i got off the lithium. it’s also been a few weeks since i hurt myself. i’d like to say that i’ve been doing better, that i am better, but i don’t know, i am feeling a little weak. don’t get me wrong, things around me are going incredible. wendell and i just spent the last week celebrating our 2 year anniversary (i cannot believe it’s been two years since he told me he loved me, since we were sneaking around mclean psychiatric hospital, since all hell broke loose) and everything for the new apartment we are going to share is in order. i am so in love with him, it sometimes scares me. he makes me strong and he pushes me towards health. speaking of health, the last two weeks of choosing healthy options, walking when i would’ve normally taken a cab or the train, quitting smoking, and eating as healthy as i have in years is also making me strong. it is working well, i am loosing weight, and feeling better physically.

school is mostly incredible, per usual. i am getting virtually straight A’s and if i don’t hit above the 95% mark I am within 1 standard deviation of the highest grade given on curve. school is my escape, besides being with wendell, and it is my ticket to an incredible future filled with promise, success, and the feeling of really making a difference in this world.

things with my family are great. my sisters and i are talking more now than ever since we moved out of our family home in turn starting with Cristina in 2002 and ending with me leaving for good 2 years ago. My mom and dad are as close to me as ever. I don’t talk to my little brother, but he is in his own world. no one permeates his wall of seemingly antisocial qualities nor his complete ineptness with social situations. regardless, i go home this coming weekend to celebrate easter and i am looking forward to it. given, wendell will be by my side to keep me upright, and i am so thankful for that.

so, like i said, everything around me is going well. it is like my world is going on without me, leaving me behind inside my head. i sometimes loose time and  when i realize that i’ve lost minutes, hours, even days, my insides scream and i begin to panic. my world is moving on without me and i feel like i can’t catch up. right now i am feeling week, like i can’t keep myself going, like i may slip and fall onto my razor or onto the depression that’s kept me company for over a decade. i don’t want to admit that i can’t do this, this health thing, without the medications. the lithium, the haldol, the geodon, the risperdal, the thorazine… even the ritalin. i’ve been trying so hard to purge myself of the chemicals and i think my desire for a better life free of drugs has backfired.

why things can’t seem to go my way completely is beyond me. usually  only one or two parts of my life flow the way they are supposed to while everything else, usually my psychological state, fall and crumble.

i don’t know, i’m tired. i just needed to tell someone, anyone, even no one, that i feel unstable. st jude, please help me.

QUESTION:

I’m going back into treatment any advice for the second time around?

ANSWER:

absolutely!

firstly, and i mean this, sit down and make a list of everything you learned from your last time in treatment and why you think you learned them. this is important because you can see a pattern of what you did “right,” per say, and what you should do again.

next, make a list of the things that you WANTED to learn (or treat) and that DIDN’T happen. again, with that list record WHY you think that happened. this can be crazy difficult, but sit tight and i promise it will be helpful.

finally, make a list of what you want to accomplish this time. everything from wanting to make a good friend, to learning more about distress tolerance. you don’t need to explain this list, just put it in your pocket everyday and glance at it as a reminder to take advantage of every day, of every moment, and of every group.

ah! so, about groups… GO GO GO GO!!! i know they suck and can be tedious, but go! be MORE honest than before and take more in. TAKE NOTES. CRAZY, IMPRESSIVE AND DETAILED NOTES in groups. i mean seriously, even write down other people’s stories to remind you of the context of lessons. it is the best thing i learned in treatment and you should definitely think of it.

write, learn, talk, and have fun whenever you can. i am so proud of you for going into treatment and PLEASE KEEP ME UPDATED.

QUESTION:

I’ve been in inpatient treatment three times. I haven’t been back since May, but things have gotten really bad. I lost my therapy services in February (insurance issue) and refused to go to anyone else. Recently I have started to go to group therapy and I’m going to start up therapy again on Monday. I also really depend on this boy. Too much probably. When I can’t see him, I fall apart. I’ve been getting so suicidal lately. I think I may need to go back to inpatient, but I don’t know.

ANSWER:

well, we know ourselves better than we think, so take the time and (i know it sounds dumb, but try it) clear your mind. truly think about if you need treatment right now. if the answer that comes to you is a yes, even a small meek one, then you should go. i mean it, you should. don’t second guess yourself, especially when you are being especially brave and admitting that you need help. that takes balls, and you’ve obviously got them!

i know what you mean about the boy thing. in treatment they teach you to be autonomous and to rely on yourself, but there are those people who don’t feel like separate people, they feel as apart of you as your arm or your knees or your nose or your toes. if you loose those parts of your body, you can still live, but you’ll never be whole, never experience life whole again. what i am going to tell you is that it isn’t good to have relationships, romantic relationships, dependent relationships, while in treatment.

i know it’s hypocritical of me to say that seeing as that is exactly what i did, but, looking back, i wish i had taken the time off for just ME. if he is your great love, he will be there when you get out, and if he isn’t, then your time is coming. take the time in treatment and treat yourself. learn to be autonomous, learn to deal with the pain. if you become this whole person, no one will EVER be able to break you down and you will NEVER be dependent emotionally on another person. i think that’s worth it, don’t you? i’m always around, please message me back whenever. i adore you.

so a few days ago, i kind of lost it i. i don’t really know, i’ve been feeling a little tipsy as of recently, maybe because of my cycle but more likely than not because i’ve been lithium-free for a little over a week now. whatever the reason and whatever the cause, i lost it, my sanity, my grip on reality, and, of course, my dignity. i hate it when that happens because i become this person i don’t even recognize. well, that’s a lie, i recognize her completely. she’s the crazy bitch who has had to be medicated since she was a child and who self-destructs anytime the world gets a little hard to handle. i just don’t recognize her as being myself anymore, something that comes with recovery, so it is unnerving every time she comes out when i think she’s long gone and six feet under.

to understand my state of mind, i have to explain that Wendell and i have a deal. it was hatched a few months ago out of his desperation to get me to stop self injuring and my reluctance to give up the blade all together. i needed a way to still feel in control of my self injury whiles still making it harder for me to cut. throwing away the sharps was strictly out of the question, seeing as i seem to experience rampant anxiety attacks when i can’t find them or when i know there’s none in the apartment.

so the deal goes as follows: he is allowed to hide my straight-edged razor blades (most of which were stolen from my bio/chem laboratory) somewhere in the apartment and he is allowed to keep their location a secret from me. basically i just asked him to put them somewhere i can’t reach and to keep his mouth shut whenever i casually mention my inner yearning for slitting my wrists. however, the deal has a loop hole: to retain that sense of control that i and many other self-injurers crave, when i ask for the blades he must hand ONE over. moreover, he has to be home for this to happen; no texting, no voicemail, no messaging. he has to be in the apartment next to me to hand over the paraphernalia and the location of the blades must remain a secret.

now, that may sound crazy and stupid but let me explain why i think it’s a brilliant idea for me. firstly, like i stated before, i still get that sense of control. when i need it, i can have it. it prevents me from rampantly cutting but it still leaves the option open for me if i need it. i know, it may seem like that’s a bad place to put wendell, but he doesn’t mind. he is a strong person who understands my condition and who is okay with helping me. the fact that he has to be home to hand over the blades means that he is there to talk to me before i do it. he gets to ask any question he wants and i have to answer: what’s going on? why do you want to do this? are you sure? is there anything i can do? it always ends with him making me laugh, reminding me that i am strong, and me admitting that i don’t really want to cut. in other words, the deal has worked perfectly.

until the other night.

i should say that it still worked perfectly and i didn’t cut by the end of the evening, but that is all because of wendell and his beauty. he’s so strong… anyways, okay. the other night… he was sleeping and i was itching with anxiety. the agitation was excruciating and all i wanted was to split open some skin, watch some blood drain out, and chill. it’s something i’ve been doing since i was 15 years old, something that has kept me alive up until i went into treatment, something i know i can always do. so, when i realized i needed to cut and my only way of getting to that release of calm was 2 hours into a 5 hour available sleep night (he has to work so early in the morning), i guess i panicked. what happened next was a blur, but it ended up with a step stool in the kitchen and everything above eye level flying to the floor in my attempt to find relief.

it woke him up.

he was upset.

i was upset.

he gave me the blade (after saying no 29 times).

he went back into the bedroom.

i sat on the couch and stared at the razor, contemplating what to carve into my healing skin. then it hit me: this is an opportunity to be better, to do better, to push myself back to recovery. instead of grabbing the straight edge, i grabbed a pen. i started writing all the horrible words on myself with this worthless black pen, covering my arms, legs, chest, and shoulders with adjectives i saw myself as: ugly, fat, whore, worthless, stupid, unloved… by the time i was done writing my skin was on fire from pressing the pen tip so hard into it. i cried, squeezing my eyes together until i felt like i’d go blind.

but i didn’t.

when i finally opened them, there he was, sitting on the couch next to me looking exhausted and sad. he smiled at me and then looked down at my body. i thought he was going to criticize or even agree with the words i had written, but when i looked down i was pleasantly surprised. all the hurtful and ugly words had been rubbed off my skin. the red inflamed tissue was the only reminder of them. moreover, where those ugly words used to be, now were beautiful words like loved, brilliant, loved, beautiful, sexy, and wonderful. in my moment of despair and self-hatred, wendell reminded me that  i am not always the person i think i am. i deserve more, i am more, and i will be greater than i ever could’ve imagined.

by the time he got me back into bed i was feeling stronger and more in control. needless to say when i woke up with a heart on my bicep with his name in it, i smiled as bright as the sun.

it was the most horrific experience. spending 6 months in a psychiatric hospital isn’t a dream to begin with, but when you’re as sick as i was and when you were in as much pain as i was in, everyday is a struggle. but here i am, almost exactly two years after my admittance to mclean hospital, and i am still alive. that’s a big thing, you know…. that’s epically amazing. no one thought i’d make it past 21 and yet i did. that doesn’t mean im still not a little broken, it just means if you tap me, i wont fall completely apart. you see, the cracks are there, but they’ve healed. i never really knew true happiness until after treatment. i never knew what pure contentment felt like until after i began electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). it’s beautiful, in a way, that a sterile environment like a psychiatric hospital residential house and a violent procedure like electric shock treatments could produce such a flourish and color of beautiful happiness and complete calm. it’s borderline poetic and completely wonderful.

two years next week. two years since i walked through those doors, since i first laid eyes on wendell, two years since i was at the lowest point in my entire life. i’ve rebuilt myself from nothing, from less than nothing. i was cutting all day everyday, completely lost in mixed and depressive episodes, constantly agitated, feeling abandoned and alone even in a sea of people yelling that they loved me. all i ever wanted was to die. but, of course, in my very own unique fashion, quick fix deaths weren’t enough for me, i wanted to suffer through it, make it hurt as much as possible. anything to feel something, right?

all the money i’ve spent, all the bonds i’ve broken, all the wounds i’ve cut into my body, burned into my skin, swollen and red and painful. all i knew was pain. all i craved was loneliness. all i lived in was darkness; blinds drawn, cover over the heads, nothing reverberating in my head; a static existence.

i still feel that way, you know, every once and a while. i fall back into that feeling of self-loathing and sadness often. it’s like i’m a shell, like the building i am fell apart on the inside while the facade stayed standing. no one sees it… well, no one but wendell. he notices everything, but that’s what you get when you live with someone you absolutely and completely love more than anything. and that’s the second best thing i got from treatment, from mclean, from ECT, from my treaters donna, felicia, marnie, flores, sarah, irvin, melissa, and the entire team at the ABII, NBII, and ECT clinics. the first being a new start, a healthy start, a chance and an opportunity to better myself and be the person i was MEANT to be, the person i was BUILT to be. wendell is only a close second because without the gifts given to me from treatment, i could never handle the love i have for that man. i’d have fallen apart by now, completely consumed by the craziness and emotions associated with such a deep and extensive love.

so here i am, learning to love myself because i want to be great. i want to be great for myself and i want to be great for him, for my family, for my future children… they’re all so proud of me, of being honest and working hard for recovery. i don’t tell everyone everytime i stumble and end up crying alone the bathtub, BEGGING myself to not use the fresh single-edged blade balanced on the side of the tub. everytime i can’t sleep, everytime the depression is suffocating and i can’t do anything but bury myself under the covers and silently scream. i get scared, you know, when i feel like i can hear the voices again, red, blue, and yellow, the tyrants that hijacked my life for so long and determined the outcome of every day (which, of course, was exclusively a bad outcome). it’s almost like i can hear them echoing down a really really far hallways or tunnel, the sound waves bouncing of the walls over and over until they reach my ears. that’s what is the most frightening thing, that maybe they will come back.

the good news is though, that if they do, i’ll be ready. i trust my treaters, i trust ECT, i trust mclean (even though i have to fight my gag reflex every time i go back). i can do this, i just need help.

so, as i sit here thinking about the next few days, i know that if this blip of insanity develops i need to just turn to the dozen people around me who care enough to ask if that smile is faked or if those tears of from yawning or a hidden sadness. it’ll be hard, but i think i can do it. i’ll keep everyone updated.

this disconnected feeling of the stale pale and dry nothingness has crept back, albeit slowly, into my life. usually this feeling of emptiness is followed either by a mixed state or depression, both equally resulting in further self injury, suicidal idealization, and psychosis. i mean, seriously, can’t i get a break from wanting to seriously injure myself or from talking to the 3 voices in my head that tell me everything from what to wear, how to feel, or even to believe in a made-up psychosis-driven delusion that Wendell is trying to kill me or my parents are really giant birds in human skin suits. it’s a strange place, this in-between, this knowing that it could go both ways and that if i don’t really take care of myself i will destroy everything I’ve built up over the past dozen months of my recovery.

who would’ve known that a 6-month inpatient residential psychiatric stay followed by 3 separate acute inpatient stays, 40 electronegative therapy sessions and over a dozen prescriptions would still leave me unsure as to how i actually feel in this moment. i want to feel more but every time i stick a toe out and try to feel something, all i get is pain and this throbbing mass of heat in my chest. i wish i knew what to do, but it seems like my options are all use up. i’ve cut therapy down to once a week, psychiatry down to once a month, and ECT is a PRN now, used when needed and still exceptionally helpful… if only i would start going back again. I don’t know, I don’t really know what to think. I have lab write-ups due but it seems so worthless at the moment. I am still getting the continual A grades that are expected of me, but i am feeling less proud of my accomplishments. I love going to school and learning in class, but I am beginning to miss sleeping all day. I’ve let myself miss a few classes, something i vehemently don’t agree with because me skipping classes is categorically me attempting suicide; school and wendell and my family are the only things keeping me on track and on this road of recovery. without one of them, the pyramid can’t hold itself up and i find myself falling.

not to mention, missing class is something that perfectly predicts my decent (or in some cases ascent) into an episode.

I miss talking to people in my situation. That was the best part of being in treatment, i always had someone either in my room or across the hall who was in almost the exact position i was in. it was so easy, no lies, so puffing up… we were all completely broken and knew that our friendships probably wouldn’t last once we got out, so we made the best of a dark situation and had fun.

i mean jenny, my roommate at appleton house at mclean hospital and i would run around the building, climbing up walls and taking 100s of pictures. obviously wendell and i are living together now so things worked out with us, but he’s healthier than i am right now and sometimes you just want to tell someone you want to kill yourself without them looking so worried.

anyways, i should probably stop writing so much. i miss this, though, this pouring my soul out like i used to every day before i left for the hospital almost two years ago. it’s crazy that i still write, that i still reach out into this invisible cyberspace hoping to connect with someone on a different screen, in a different town, in a different situation, feeling the exact same way. i guess that’s all i want. to not feel so unique. to not feel so broken.

I don’t know how else to say it other than to be honest and open about this whole situation and the feelings involved. as the title insinuates, i think my days of shameless psychiatric self-promotion are over. what do i mean by that? i mean all the “secret” bragging, the overly-open nature of my condition in an attempt to meet people, to gain sympathy, to garner awe and attention. i mean all my psychiatric hospital name-dropping, wearing the shirts that declare my condition, the way i try to justify bringing up ECT in random everyday conversations just to see the look on the other person’s face. it sounds really dirty and low-lifey when i write it here, but in reality i do it every day. i may not do it to the extent as other people that i know in the system, but i do it nonetheless.

i guess i should take a step back and explain why i do these things in the first place. you see, ever since i was labeled as sick, i noticed that divulging my psychiatric sickness to people made them feel a sense of trust with me, like i was telling them a delicate secret that tied us together in an unbreakable connection. even more than that, though, i wanted the attention that developed from that divulging. it started small, i got out of class when i was hyperactive as a child because i was diagnosed at seven and-a-half with ADD. i got to play with toys no one else got to when no when else got to. i realized there was a reward for my sick behavior and i intended to milk it. i really was sick, and i really am still sick, but i figured fuck it, if i have to live psychotically unbalanced, i might as well reap SOME benefit. that immature thought pattern followed me the rest of my life.

i went through a period of self-repulsion, however, when in our society having a psychiatric illness was something severely negative and teenagers hid their depression like the acne that covered their faces. emo hadn’t really hit hard-core yet, and those who were considered “emo” were undeniably outcast in my high school. i self-injured, but nobody knew. ever. i was on my high school pom (dance) team, a leader academically and socially. after a few years of faking it, i got sent to treatment my senior year of highschol. my parents told everyone i was suffering from a physical illness. everyone believed them and that’s how they wanted it to be. when i got home after three months, i told a handful of friends the truth. most of them started ignoring me, embarrassed by my story and where i’d been. the remaining embraced me tighter than anything, and our friendships severely flourished. it was fun, in a way, having them ask me what treatment was like and telling people my secrets. my whole life up until then was filled with deceit and lies, so being honest felt so good and right that exaggerating the details and embellishing my emotions came natural. i felt free and instead of stepping tediously out of my cage for those first few steps, i bolted, full speed, towards the horizon.

by the time i got to college, being all college depressed and lonely was a bit of a trend. my depressions at this point had become so severe that i would purposefully do anything i could to force myself into mania just to escape the pain of painlessness. most of my first two years of college were a maniacal haze. i was in a sorority and fit in perfectly. everyone knew who i was and knew i was the craziest bitch around. i was loved. as i got depressed though, i felt trapped. i didn’t want to break the facade, so i began exhibiting PHYSICAL symptoms. expressing those physical symptoms garnered me the attention and trust i wanted. i was having psychotically-induced seizures, so my sorority organized an epilepsy walk for me (Which is no way related to what i was experiencing). if i had been honest, we would be walking for suicide prevention, psychotic illness, bipolar disorder, and self injury. i felt taken care of again. i felt comfortable.

when i left school for the year-and-a-half break i needed to go into treatment for my worsening depression i lost all my friends from school. they couldn’t understand how i got so depressed. they didn’t see i was depressed the entire time i was at school. going to the hospital for stitches or a stomach pump after a suicide attempt can easily be masked as having to get treatment for a hangover.

it wasn’t until i got into treatment that suddenly i had a group of people i didn’t have to hide for. i could be the fucked up, crazy me and people didn’t care. we through around our diagnoses like proper full names and bragged about how we were at the best psychiatric hospital in the world. we boasted about how crazy we were, exchanging stories and making tallies. who is the craziest. who takes the most meds. who is the most fucked up. i guess it made us all feel better to know we weren’t alone, but even in our journey to feel better, we still wanted that ultimate title: the craziest. i can’t explain it other than we found other people to talk to about our issues and suddenly we were in a black-white reversed world. suddenly being hospitalized was cool and how many stitches you got was a competitive number. you only attempted suicide once? rookie. look at my arms. they wont even let me hold my meds because i attempt so often. 23% of my body is covered in burn marks because my dad threw a blanket on me before the rest of the gasoline could catch…

i started this blog as just a way for me to tell my story, all of it, from an honest perspective. no games, no exaggerations. and i have done just that. everything here is exactly what happened to me, every time i write i get lost in the words and find myself somewhere magical where there is no competition and i can be myself without judgement. when i talk to people on these sites, however, i find myself confused all over again. where as i just wanted to tell my story, others had fallen into the old pattern of treatment: lying, bragging, begging for attention.

for example, i talk about ECT because it is important for other people to know what it is like from a young adult perspective. it is serious and scary and isn’t a joke. when i run around social media sites and see people lying about their situations and saying they are getting ECT in a few weeks when they clearly aren’t? i know it is for attention and it is sickening. trying to make yourself seem sicker just so people will talk to you? i know, i’ve abused that before. telling a teacher when i am drowsy after an ECT weekend the truth is a bit of abuse, seeing as they look at me different and forgive me more easily. i get attention because of it. people think i’m cooler. the more people react semi-positive to it, the more likely i am to divulge. before i know it, i am telling my lab-partner after 5 minutes that i get electrocuted every so often just to liven up the conversation. needless to say, THIS NEEDS TO END.

i can’t do it anymore. i cant run around and brag about being at McLean. I can say truthfully that i’ve never lied, i’ve just brought up irrelevant things to make myself seem a certain way. ECT has nothing to do with lab work, and it doesn’t belong there. and yet here i am, so needy for attention so i do it over and over. the same goes with the internet. i find myself repeating things i shouldn’t, saying i am sad when i’m not really that sad, and bringing up irrelevant things for attention. if someone asks me something about my life in treatment, of course i will answer. but, really, what’s the point of beating a dead horse that is BEGGING to be buried? when i develop a friendship i will NOT hide anything about my past or current state of psychiatric well-being, NOR my history with hospitalization. i wont, however bring up treatment willy-nilly just for shock-and-awe factors. it isn’t worth it. it is much more special to reveal those secrets when they come up in a gentle and sincere way. that way those connections will be made but on trust and experience, not attention.

i am sick. i will always be sick because it’s the nature of my illness. however, i think that by my shameless psychiatric self-promotion, i am keeping myself stuck in a place i don’t want to be. i am tired of searching psychiatric tags and i am tired of looking for really super depressing photos to post and look at and save to my hard drive. at the end of the day, i just want to be happy. at the end of the day, i want to go to sleep feeling like i did something good, that i felt good most of the day, and that i am excited for the next sunrise to bring more challenges and beautiful things and crazy adventures. i will always write, always post my writings, answer questions, do research to better myself, and accept new challenges. i think that immersing myself into a lifestyle i don’t want is just triggering as self-sabotage.

i am freeing myself once again, but this time, i am going one step at a time.

feeling a little cold. i am amidst this phase of undiluted and gray sadness, the type of sadness with no obvious cause and with no obvious way of shaking it off my worn and bent shoulders. i find myself wishing it was snowing hard. i wish it was snowing hard enough for the world outside my highrise apartment window to be white, muted by the cold and by the snowflakes ripping so violently in the air for such delicate little things.

there’s something about being snowed in, about having nature dictate your schedule, about having an excuse to stay inside amongst warm things like fleece blankets and hot tea. it’s an excuse, really, to not do anything. it’s an excuse to spend all day in bed and feel no guilt about it. it’s an excuse to fuck the world, fuck expectations, and let lethargy and unrequited adoration for terrible television to take over.

i love school, i love learning, and i love being outside and breathing the cold air that runs up on shore from the Atlantic ocean. that doesn’t mean i like doing those things all the time or the effort it takes to just get dressed. someday it wont be so difficult, like this past summer once ECT started and the treatments began to ease my depression. since i wont go back to ECT, i guess i will have to find another alternative to coloring my dull and tasteless depression into something beautiful, bright, and happy.

my favorite colors are lavender, mint, and glitter. i guess we will start with those.

i don’t really know if it’s a new sadness or an old one that is just vibrating and resonating within me, growing with the occasions of negativity that seem to pop up constantly inside and around me. for example, I’ve been fighting the self injury urge for months now. last time i did it, i didn’t even like it. it was a pain in the ass to actually go through with the cutting and slicing, and in the end i didn’t feel anything beneficial or positive like i used to.

i know, “cutting” or self injury and the words positive and beneficial probably don’t go well together, but in my experience of 7 years filled with hurting myself, every incident was in some way or another just that, positive or beneficial. so you can assume my surprise and disappointment when after all those years my usual tricks do nothing to ease my sadness or irritability.

i thought that meant i would stop it with the cutting, banging, and burning. but the urge is still there. i only succumb when my mental health immune system is down and i am prone to dangerous, crazy, and just fucking bad things. i think tonight is one of those nights, no matter how many times i try to make my day seem brighter than it was.

even though starting school has lifted me up and wendell is just literal perfection, i am finding faults in everything, finding the darkness even in the brightest of moments. i really don’t want to hurt myself, i really don’t. i can’t believe i am hurting myself, still, after all this time. i mean i am a highly educated 23-year-old woman with 20 years of therapy, 15 years of psychiatry, and 5 treaters primed and ready for me to call them with help. not to mention wendell, of course. he keeps me grounded and alive, and i mean that literally and sincerely.

i guess i should really talk about why i’m so numb right now.

you see, my family, this beautiful web of people and personalities that don’t always get along but who always end up alright and full of love is feeling strange and disconnected. a few days ago my dad left chicago and my mother to go cool his jets in california, something i’ve never known him to do. truth is i don’t really know what’s going on with him and it worries me. we went from talking every single day, literally, to every few days. it started once the whole MF global going bankrupt thing happened, putting my father’s massive wealth in jeopardy. MF was the clearing house for his trades on the floor of the board of trade. well, MF was the clearing house for everyone on the floor of the board of trade, so he was in full company. that doesn’t lesson the pain or the financial burden.

anyways, i’ve never truly worried about my parents until recently. i don’t really want to write about it now, it feels too fresh and delicate and somehow personal. what i will say is i am confused because i don’t know the truth as to what is going on and that’s a weird place to be.

so school started this week, thank god. i don’t know what it is, but going to class and sitting through lectures and bobbing through labs just makes my heart sing. nothing in the world makes sense to me until i am in class, doing the work, and learning. oh to learn, it’s truly my absolute passion. i wish i could spend my life just traveling the world, learning about each culture i visited, the history, the sociology of the environment, the philosophy, and the eccentricities.i want to study everything. i want to be able to open scientific American or national geographic, pick a random page, and study or see or do whatever i see. its the only madness within me that i deem sane.

you see, i have this strange asperger-esque tendency to obsess over topics. for example, two years ago i began an interest with paleontology while volunteering at a museum in Chicago. this interest led to various promotions and positions and an eventual station at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. i was so highly regarded and had done such good research (that had nothing to do with my neuroscience background at the time) that i ended up getting offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Montana on a dig with some of the most premier paleontologists of the world. unfortunately i had to turn it down due to the fact that i was slowly but severely unraveling.

that’s the thing, i always end up sick. go to a premier university with exceptional laboratories and fuck everything up. i can never seem to keep things going longer than two semesters. so you see my conundrum: i am officially into my third consecutive semester since my sabbatical of mental health treatment. i am so afraid of fucking this up. i just can’t. my current obsession of microbiology (sub-subject immunology) has gotten me through this faze of questionable mental stability and i just want it to last longer than my obsession with dinosaurs.

i have literallty survived through my textbooks and classes. i literally wake up only so i can learn what is new, what is next. i just want to fill my brain with facts and equations and problems and solutions, just in an attempt to quiet out the screaming voice telling me i am not good enough and i never will me.

i guess that’s it. my only true self esteem comes from grades and doing well. so far, 4 days into the semester and i already have developed a report with all of my professors, including the one taking me to Prague on the honors summer semester in may. every one of them has already had an at least 25-minute long conversation with me, either about the topic of the class, my goals, their goals. or in a few cases, my current situation. i kiss ass, eat shit, and empathize with them until i know i can trust them. anyways, im too tired to really talk anymore about school.

i guess i just wanted to write down my feelings about the first week of classes. so much is going on inside my head and i just want to remind myself that i can do this, that this is worth it. no matter what, no one will ever take my education away from me.