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.

Hate is Not a Mental Illness

Mental Health America posted the above quote on Instagram on May 15th. Something that I have seen time and time again when scrolling through Twitter or Facebook or any other social media platform is people using mental illness to either justify or penalize people who do bad things.

The most recent example is the tragic shooting in Buffalo where a white supremacist coordinated a hate crime against Black Americans. It makes me sick when people equate racism to a mental illness or try and blame a mental illness for harmful actions. There is plenty of stigma around mental health as it is and inaccurately equating acts of hate and violence to mental health is harmful to everyone involved.

It not only places negative stereotypes around people who have mental illnesses but it also provides an excuse for racists, homophobes, and other hateful people.

Before I dive any deeper I want to preface that I am not a mental health professional and I am basing my opinions on my own personal experience and knowledge about mental health. While I have done thorough research, I am not qualified to offer mental health advice or guidance.

Another thing that irks me a bit is the argument that because the shooter was coherent and intellectual means that he can’t be mentally ill. I have seen a few tweets using this as a way to “debunk” the notion that what the Buffalo shooter did was due to a mental illness, so I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume they come from a good place. However, by using the ability to function in society and intelligence level as means of ruling out mental illness, people are reinforcing the idea that everyone with a mental illness is incapable to live normally and cannot be smart or functional. And as a mentally ill person, I would like to state that that is simply not true.

At the end of the day, it is important to note that the conversation around mental health is still new. Genuine discussion and debate about it are starting to become more normalized so it is vital that we do everything we can to ensure that authenticity and accuracy flow through our words.

Mental illness cannot justify acts of hate.

My heart breaks for Buffalo and the families that have been affected by this event. If you are interested in donating to help the families of the victims please click here for a list of verified GoFundMe fundraisers.

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.

Anhedonia

I haven’t cried in almost nine months.

If you’re my therapist, you see this as a good thing, cause it means there hasn’t been anything particularly stressing to cause me to cry. And this could be true and one hopes it could be true.

But, if you are me, you see it as a slight issue.

Almost a year ago I was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and since then a lot of puzzle pieces have fallen into place in how I operate and function. However, the puzzle has grown a lot as well so the amount of unfinished puzzle hasn’t really changed and in fact might have increased. And within the unfitted mess of my life puzzle is the answer to why I cannot bring myself to cry.

I used to cry at least a few times a week, which isn’t necessarily healthier than where I am now, but I felt enough emotion to cry. There were times when I was overwhelmed with emotions whether good or bad and crying was the only form of release that could aid in dealing with said emotions. My fear now, is that I am void of emotion.

Every time I’ve spoken with my therapist, all I can say is I feel diet happiness. I do things that should promote a feeling of joy but I’m not entirely sure if I actually feel the joy or if I have just convinced myself that it’d be weird if I wasn’t happy so I should just be happy. It’s like I’m forcing myself to experience emotions and I’m doing it well.

Imagine after every time you laughed at something, you immediately questioned if it was forced because you don’t know if you remember how to genuinely laugh. That's not the most comfortable feeling in the world to say the least.

I did a quick Google search the other day, which is never a good idea when you’re worried about something and I’m not a big proponent on self-diagnosing based on 10 minutes of internet research, BUT something called Anhedonia almost sums up what I’m feeling.

To simplify the definition, it’s a common symptom of psychotic disorders and some depressive disorders, where the person no longer feels pleasure in anything. It’s like an extreme form of apathy. I don’t think I’m fully at that point, but I can feel myself getting there and I don’t really know what’s up with that. As much as I enjoy being a little more mentally stable now than I was a year ago, I miss being able to experience feelings.

That’s putting it bluntly but I miss feeling something and not constantly questioning if it’s real. I think this also plays into the new over dramatization of my life. Nothing feels relevant to my living unless I make it overly important and that is something I feel like I should probably unpack but that is neither here nor there.