Rolling Up a Hill

How many times have I started writing with the same word on my mind: again?

Here I am again, thinking that I had beaten every obstacle in my life only to get struck down immediately. This may have been the longest manic episode I have been on, for two and a half months I bounced between fully manic, hypomanic, and a little bit about normal. Up until the last few days of this period of pure bliss, I felt invincible, which yeah is the entire definition of mania, but I thought that I had figured out how to tell.

I thought that I had a grasp on how to gauge when I was slipping into one or the other. For God’s sake I have a fucking calendar that I color in each day to track. I keep forgetting that it’s barely been a year, that I’m not supposed to have a firm grasp on it yet, but how am I supposed to go through one of the biggest transition periods of life while trying to also keep myself from slipping away into my own mind?

How am I supposed to figure out how to live while also figuring out what I’m doing with my life?

I just spent two and a half days glued to my bed feeling lower than I have in so long. I had forgotten just how deep my depression can be, how lifeless I can feel. How am I supposed to keep living and keeping figuring things out when I lose myself into nothingness every three weeks?

I know it’s repetitive and I know it’s redundant and yet I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m going in a circle. The only thing that is grounding me and giving me some semblance of hope is that the circle is rolling forward. It’s rolling somewhere and that’s all I can hope I’m doing.

Humor and Human Nature

The cruel irony in my life is that I used to be so opposed to humor when I was deep in the trenches of my mental illnesses. I used to scream at my parents when they tried to make me laugh with a joke because I was so stuck on the idea that if I were to laugh or be happy at any capacity, then I would be diluting the very real and very intense emotions I was feeling in the moment. And god forbid I wasn't constantly in a state of personal reflection where I sulked and sat in my own misery.

Now I use humor as a wall for actually facing my internal self. I guess younger me was on to something in a sense.

Humor around my mental health and well-being is something I have become comfortable with to the point that jokes and quips escape my lips before I even think of them. I almost feel obligated to lighten the tone because I’m afraid that what I really am feeling and want to say is too heavy for any one else to carry with them. And in all honesty, I am probably not wrong to think that. When I have moments of true self-reflection without the constant distractions I have implemented in my life, I realize just how much I have neglected myself.

Sometimes I think what would be different if I was more open to humor when I was younger and more at ease with other’s help. Maybe I wouldn’t compensate for myself now by trying to make it all one joke.

It’s almost human nature to try and find the deeper meanings in life and look for every dot to connect in the end. Suffering makes us want to believe in a bigger plan. That’s probably why I was so opposed to humor, I thought it would hinder me from being able to “truly look within” or whatever the hell my 13-year-old self thought was provoking and influential.

Now I fear what’s at my core and what makes me up. I push aside any real semblance of what I’m feeling in order to maintain a fun and happy mood. I feel like I’ve gone full circle in my growth. Instead of trying to put on a facade of perfection to hide any problems from others, I have deferred to mitigating my own struggle from myself so I don’t have to come to terms with who I am.

Humor is a vast and incredible tool to help us cope, but somewhere there is a line between helpful and harmful and I’m afraid I’m too far gone down the harmful tract now.

The Addiction of an ED

cw: eating disorders, addiction

Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional gut-punch watching episode 5 of Euphoria season 2. I would like to preface that I love both of my parents with all of my heart and I have grown substantially in the past few years, but as far as I have come I still have a long ways to go and I am aware of that. There’s a part of my ego that feels the need to preface this in order to defend myself since I am about to tear myself to shreds.

If you told me that I would relate to Rue of all characters in Euphoria the most when it first came out, I would not have believed you. I would have argued that Kat and I have more in common or made a list of all the ways Lexi and I are the same person, and while I do resonate with both of those characters greatly, it is nothing compared to the heart-wrenching reliability that Rue has. Watching Rue yell and scream at her mother is what made that connection unbearably clear in my mind.

I have done that.

I have woken up with my room in shreds knowing that I had done it in a rage. I have watched my mother cry knowing that my words are what provoked her tears. I have seen her heart break from what I have done. And despite all of that agonizing pain that I caused upon one of my greatest role models, it was never enough to persuade me to stop.

Eating disorders have that all-consuming power (no pun intended) to infiltrate every crevice of the mind and poison it. They ruin the rational processing and they taint the ability to feel empathy. The only thing that matters is food and the lack of it and your body and the mass of it and your face and the flaws with it. No one matters, not even you.

I distinctively remember a trip I took with my mom to New Orleans and the overpowering pull my eating disorder had on me. I had won a contest with the Phoenix Suns and had gotten to travel with them to Louisiana. I took my mom with me on the trip and what was supposed to be an amazing experience was clouded by my own selfish intentions.

On our one free night, my mom and I walked around the city trying to find a place to eat. It ended with us sitting in a crowded restaurant that my mom picked. I was crying inconsolably and my mom just sat across from me. She had wanted to enjoy the delicious food and culture of the city and I couldn’t appreciate any bite without thinking of what it consisted of.

This was in the early stages of my ed, or at least the early stages of it being noticeable. My mom didn’t know why I was so obsessed with food and exercise and I didn’t know how to tell her I hated myself.

There were so many moments like that, where we would be talking, specifically about food, and then I would get upset and lash out and scream and cry and I can only imagine how little it made my mom feel. To watch her only daughter fall into pieces all at once while expelling cruelties.

That trip to New Orleans is one of those memories that has stuck in my mind ever since I stepped off the plane back in Phoneix. Not for the reasons that it should’ve but because all my mom wanted to do was eat a beignet and I prevented that.