"There's more to life than trying to survive"—Annie, Vanessa Carlton

SO, when D at the the CHADD meetings found out about my trip (I'm in New York at the moment) he essentially told me to blog while I was gone. The problem with that, I have found, is that while doing things worth blogging about, I am, well, busy. Doing them. And when I'm not, when I have a minute, I'm not blogging because I'm taking that minute for myself. So I haven't really managed my time well enough to blog. I've only gone online twice before this, to email my family. I haven't even texted my friend like I said I would. I need to get on that...

But I digress. The only reason I'm (the following no longer applies as it is several hours after I first put pen to paper today; right now I'm at the computer. Duh.) sitting here right now, by myself in the basement apartment of my aunt and uncle's house with a blanket wrapped around me, scribbling away in a borrowed-without-permission-but-with-FULL-intent-of-returning binder is that, for once—or rather, for the first time this trip—the words came into my head and I couldn't stop them. Clear words, when I often think initially in intentions and impressions. The words were:

"I'm so overwhelmed right now. I'm so overwhelmed..." Completely and totally overwhelmed by what is going on with/to/for me. I had to "take a minute. Just a minute. Just a minute. A minute, a minute, a minute. A minute, I need a minute. Just a minute, a minute, a minute..."

Which I did, curling up with a blanket that doesn't smell like home wrapped loosely around me.

...
...

That reads, to those who don't speak panic-attack-ese: I took a blanket off 'my' bed, wrapped it around my shoulders, debated over bringing a stuffed animal with me, walked over my suitcase very carefully wihout looking at it as tears gathered in my eyes. It means that I sat down on the part of the couch I've spent the most time on, brought my legs up, and fell slowly over into the fetal position as I adjusted the blanket so it was over my head, still muttering (maybe, I'm not sure, I may just have been thinking it with increasing anxiety and decreasing coherence, as is often the case in such circumstances, about needing a minute, just a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute.

(Sounds poetic, doesn't it? It isn't.)

It means that I gave myself over to helpless, hopeless (I wasn't sure which so I went with both) shuddering as near-scalding tears rand across my face to my temple. It means I was listening to the sporadic pouding of feet over my head as my second cousins ran around and my aunt talking to my dad  on the phone, and it means that I was hoping, vaguely but sincerely, that someone (Jen) would come downstairs and find me and hold me or something. But that, of course, didn't happen.

It hardly ever does.

And then it means, if you read very carefully and think about your own experiences in such things, that I stopped listening to them and started feeling the heat of my own frantic-ish breaths against my face, and that I realized somewhat that I did not, in fact, want to get up and walk over to my bed for my inhaler so I had to calm down. I started feeling, slightly, the pulsing pf blood through my veins as I started, perhaps,  to regulate my breathing.  Which of course got me thinking about runnings laps outside in the winter in my seventh grade  year, and the female eighth grade Phys. Ed. teacher telling me/us to breathe in through our noses and out through our mouths. I did that for a bit, then shifted slightly and the blanket moved an inch or so and I could see light, which I didn't want, and smell fresh air, which I realized I kind of did.

I moved the blanket back to darkness and realized acutely that the blanket did NOT smell like home, or dreams, or anything familiar, not even, really, the house I was staying in, so likely it was the smell of the last person to use the blanket before me, which was weird. Then I rememberd, I think, that the teacher had actually said in through the mouth, out through the nose (so as not to harm the sinuses or somesuch thing) and started doing that instead.

That was about when I realized that there wasn't much difference between having my eyes open or closed. And no, that thought didn't lead to some for of epiphany. In fact, I'm not sure what I thought about then, but it wasn't long before the tears dried on my face, at that time proving I had taken several minutes, not one, and I sat up.

And started thinking about how D had said I should keep blogging while I'm gone. That was when I got the binder off the bookshelf. Then I sat back down and started writing.

As of now I'm starting (again, not true present tense as I'm on the computer, but whatever) my fourth front-side-only sheet of paper, and my hand is cramping because I've written so much in so short a period of time.

Yay me.

And Jen has come downstairs, though that was just to find out if I would prefer she drive me to the bus stop tomorrow, or her husband, my cousin. (I picked her because we get along really well, whereas I've never been all that close to my second-eldest cousin. [Hah, funny story: my eldest cousin was born on the due date of the aforementioned second-eldest, and vice versa—one was early, the other late, just enough so they switched birthdays.] )

I'm suddenly realizing I haven't eaten yet today, and that I should try to finish the "DEEP JUNGLE" level of Kingdom Hearts today AND that I need to  pack up down here because my "jast murried" cousin and his wife are going to crash here tonight. Probably. And I'm leaving this place. Tomorrow. Not never-to-return or something—I'll be back in about two weeks—but I have to go and get on a bus at about one A.M. on Saturday to go to Maine.

Which is what started all of this, by the way. Talking about bus tickets and the buying thereof, and getting to the bus stop. And I'm proud of myself; I never once mentioned that I HATE BUSES.

I really do.

But, yeah. So, hmm, let's see... a quick (HA!) run-down of events since the night before I left.

I was supposed to have started packing the day before (Saturday) but I went and got my hair cut and then spent a few hours with my mom talking to my hairdresser, as apparently I now have one, and I'm not realy clear on what happened then, but I only got around to packing my new $60  purple suitcase on Sunday, late-afternoon at best. Then the Secoind Degree Sunburn for HELL that I got on Friday started acting up and giving me incredible amounts of pain.  At which point I became essentially uselkess in the matter of packing my own luggage. I could and did, however, prove the case I've been making agains cleaning my room: I know almost precisely where nearly everything in my room is, even if you can't find it, thankyouverymuch.

In fact, there's a Marvel Universe character, Dr. Modern (not a superheo) who deals with things so case-sensitive that he doesn't use a filing system—he names folders things like "Weird" because he thinks the contents are weird, and leaves all the oddly labeled folders stacked around his place of residence/employment, I'm not sure which. And he can find anything he needs to because he memorizes the information and where he put it. No one would ever be able to be all in-steal/copy the file in question-out  because they would have to look through everything!

So, yeah. Just because my room is terribly disorganized doesn't mean I don't know where things are. And a good portion of the tisme I can't find something it's because someone else touched it since last I did. So there! (Can't you just imagine someone stamping their foot and sticking their tongue out immediately after saying that? I can. But I didn't.)

Anyway, I proved my case, and after hours of intense discomfort I passed out on my mom's shoulder, my arms (where I was burned) wrapped in a towel or something with an ice pack and calami lotion, doped up in Benedryl. And they still hurt when I woke up.

But whatever. Dad drove me to the airport, and having already gotten special permission to come with me past security due to my anxiety issues, came in with me. He helped me with my bags, felt triumph over the fact that my larger bag weighed in at exactly 49 pounds... and got chosen for a 'random' search. Grr. And my bag was searched too, my carry-on! Apparently my tube of toothpaste was too big. I had to let them throw it away!!! I mean, this was a totally new package of Aquafresh, bought just for me, for my trip, and they threw it away! I felt horrible, terrible. That was money, that was mine, that was... in the garbage can. I could've killed somebody. I swear, if I weren't so anxious... And my arms, which had calmed down as I had? (My body has this neat history of having actual, legitimate physical problems crop up when I am uncomfortable with something. Like, I would be panicky-nervous about a class before school and I would throw up, thus ensuring I couldn't go to school for 24 hours.)

But back to my arms. Yeah, they started acting up again. Just like that. A tube of toothpaste, a theoretically "...entirely random, I promise. A lot of people think it isn't true, but the system really does just select random people..." search, and I was almost back to full-blown agony. And I still had to repack my carry-on ! Then, of course, as we were looking for my departure gate, this announcement comes on both the speakers and the TV screens that we don't pay attention to. Then we realize that it mentions my flight number and includes the words 'about to depart without you'. My dad and I looked at the nearest screen.

Yep, that's my last name, but... "Victor", it said. My first impression was more or less, I hate it when my name has too many characters. as my whole eighth grade year my name in teh school system was Victor. My second impression was more along the lines of oh my god no way.


There are four and a half more pages that I wrote earlier this afternoon, and I'll post that tommorrow or the day after, but I'm burning time and, frankly, sick of transcribing things from paper to screen right now.  I mean, I already wrote this once today! And, yeah, okay, I figured this point made a nice cliffhanger.

If your nervous, however, I suggest you go back and read the first sentence.

I obviously made it here.

But thanks for the concern.

Ja na!

"Just ignore all these present tense"— It's Beginning to Get to Me, Snow Patrol

"Some people don't know what depression is like. Others do. I know some of both, but for some reason many are unable or unwilling to accept that having depression is not the same as being depressed. They are very different things: you are depressed when your boyfriend breaks up with you three days before Valentine's; you have depression when you spend days, months or even years at a time feeling like a waste of space. I am not embellishing anything. I'm not exaggerating to get the point across or emphasizing any one particular idea or stereotype. Okay?

When you have depression, it's not like being bipolar or moody, okay? It's not just being sad all the time. When you're sad, you are sad. When you are depressed, you are at the bottom of a ten-foot hole with no ladder, no rope, no helpers, and not enough [self-]control to stop digging. You can't stop digging. You can't. Every time you try the ground caves in just a bit more, so you get even deeper, farther, without ever having lifted a finger. You fall down into what amounts to an emotional pit of molasses. You can't really move all that well because you can't gather enough energy to try. You can't see your way out because some of it got in your eyes. You can't really call for help because you're choking—on everything; loneliness, pain, failed hopes, fallen dreams, and an unyielding, God-like fury that this, whatever 'this' is, is happening to you. You want to scream, "why do you keep doing this to me" at the top of your lungs, shout out to the heavens, "leave me alone" and whisper in the darkness where only you can hear, "help me, someone please help me".

But you can't. You can't, because there is an overriding knowledge that you are not worth it. You are useless. You are a genuine, certified, waste... of... space... so why would anyone help you? You don't even have the right to ask. Your advice and opinions are useless, your questions a waste of time, your shoulder unworthy of anyone's tears, and your tears unworthy of anyone's shoulder.

So why even bother?

Surely not because some part of you that knows these things aren't true is crying out in denial. Not because you can see the concern on the faces of those around you—if you have them. If you can find the strength to look.

While it's easy enough—or no, not easy, simple—it's simple enough to find a good day or thirty during a lingering, soul-deep depressive state that goodness, optimism, hope, or even joy is truly only skin deep. Maybe it permeates through to the bottom layer of skin. If so, you're lucky, and I envy you because for the rest of us, or at least for me, something happens every day to strip away one more inch of what, where, and who I wanted to be at this point in my life until the picture I held to so strongly is riddled with holes and rips and scorch marks to the point of being unrecognizable. Those single days of skin-deep happiness are slowly chipping away at the life I wanted to have, the life I dreamed of that got me through my senior year of high school. At this point, even my memory of the full and clear image is more than fuzzy around the edges.

Here is a brief report of my life since graduation in June:
I've done some things I wanted to do, but there are more, important things that I haven't done.
I've seen and spent time with people I never thought I'd see again, but the people I really want to see are completely out of my life.
I've done things I never thought I'd be able to do, but other, personal things that used to come naturally have become incredibly difficult.
I've met, and as such now know, more people than I expected to know, but the people I spent the last six years with are no longer accessible to me.
I've matured in ways I never expected, but my coping skills have regressed to what they were during Frosh year at the latest and/or six years old at the earliest.
I've proven myself capable of so much more than I ever dreamed, but I haven't done anything more than spend my days in a constant state of idle, depressed boredom.
I've decided that I deserve more than I was settling for in so many aspects of my life, but I'm expecting progressively less and less in others.
I've got so many good ideas, but I lack the self-discipline required to actually be productive
I've been working hard to be a better person, but I've started to hate myself again.

I don't know what to do."


I wrote this several weeks ago during, obviously, an utterly downer mood. But that doesn't mean that those feelings don't follow me around from day to day. They do. That's what true depression does. Sucks, doesn't it?

Yes, yes it does.

No matter how many good, or even amazing, things happen to me, there is still always something that can be taken away. You can lose things even more quickly than you gained them, and when that starts happening with frightening regularity, the scales tip because suddenly the list of things you've lost is much larger and heavier than the list of things you have, many if not most of which are of little consequence.

I'm not trying for sympathy, okay? I'm trying to explain just a bit of what it's like to be in my head when things are going wrong. When things start going bad, my head is a very, very unsafe place to be. Not because I'm going to be so overwhelmed that I kill myself—I won't—but because there are times when I desperately want to.

Really, I'm so lucky in that regard: many people just give up.There's nothing around them, nothing within sight or reach, that is important enough for them to fight themselves for. Many people, an average of about 3000 people daily, in fact, just give up. And I, for one, don't actually blame them. I mean, yes, they're at fault, but I can't bring myself to be angry at them at all. Frustrated, yes—why didn't they try harder?—but the fact that they did it is pretty much evidence to the fact that, in most cases, they couldn't find anything worth living for. Which brings me back to my being lucky.

See, I've developed, after several years persisting misery, a respect for myself that I did not previously have. I was told hundreds of times, by several different people, the words which are paraphrased below:

"It gets better."

And after a few years, without even realizing it, I began to believe that things would, in fact, get better. Lo and behold, they did. Those simple words, or rather, that simple and persistent sentiment, fought its way to the core of my being through the thick and thin of the misery I was in without any help from me whatsoever and it has stayed there all this time. I do not always remember that I have this solid assurance that things will get better within me, but I know that it's true. I know that the pain, however terrible, is temporary. It will go away, and I'll be okay again.

That knowledge created within me another truth: If I give in and let myself die things won't get better, because there will be nothing at all; I'll be dead. Whatever kind of afterlife claims me, be it heaven, purgatory, hell, rebirth, or simple nothingness, I won't be in my life anymore, and that will be the end of that.

I can't kill myself because things will get better. And if things will get better I can't kill myself.

Simple as pie, really. It's a miserable existence, but I can and will keep living with the hope that the best of my past will be the worst of my future.


Ja na!