Into the River

You think you're nickel slick but I got your penny change.

I've always wanted to say that to someone. This will have to do.

I've begun to think about my life. I know, I know... yap yap yap, heard it all before. However, this time my thinking may be counterproductive... that's why I'm THINKING about it.

I've been feeling tired as of late. Yawns go unnumbered. I'd like to think that maybe life is just catching up with me. The paranoid part of me thinks I'm getting sick.

The truth:
I AM sick. I have been for a long time. I feel it, like dirt that won't come off your skin or the feeling you get right before you sneeze. It's there and you don't want it to be. Sickness hangs over me like a bad smell. Everytime I shut my eyes, it lingers in my thoughts.
The thoughts I'm plagued with now are ones like, "Should I go off my meds? I so miss the person I used to be. This person is lifeless, listless, not worth giving a name."

When I was off the medicine (Lamictal, Pristiq, Risperdal, Ambien CR, Cymbalta) I felt buzzed, alive, fresh. My worst problem was being too electric and "shocking" everyone that cared for me. It also led to self mutilation, more than I let on. It was like that feeling you get when you're so pumped for something, you just scream into the air and/or hit something. Well, the person that was there to hit was me. I needed something that would release all the energy, so I turned to cutting. Not your run'o the mill "teen girl cutting" but I mean deep lacerations on my legs. It was so I could stitch them back up.
Only half of my concentration goes to cutting the epidermis and down into the adipose tissue. I let it bleed for a few minutes, then I get out my steralized equiptment and start to working on fixing me up right nice. Curved leather needles and dental floss.... Everything so put together. I am both ashamed and proud of my scars.
I must here apologize for a lie. Maybe two. Last fall, when I woke to suddenly have a swollen cheek and black eye, I had done it to myself. I couldn't sleep, so I got up, grabbed my large jar of coins and started hitting the side of my face... slow and soft at first but then, gaining speed, beginning to see the actual vessels break beneath my blows. I continue that for a good ten minutes or at least until I could no longer feel the right side of my face. I look in the mirror at my slowly bubbling portrait, caress it, then lean onto my bed, starting to feel the flush - what's left after the rush. I slowly, but surely go to sleep, not caring about a thing in the world.............


This part, I don't miss. If I really care about my heath and life, I don't miss it. ......but I miss it.
Nothing I've ever found has been able to do that for me, and I swear to God I will not take drugs.

Herein lies my dilemna.

I wish more people would understand what it feels like to be an adolescent and to be labeled with everything mental illness in the book. Schizophrenia was one of the early ones, anxiety diorders, major depression, panic disorder, and now.... Bioplar Disorder. My initials, you see. I belong with it and it belongs to me.
Bipolar and I are one.

No, I just wish more people were able to see what was going on from the outside, tell me, then let ME choose the right decision. It is my life, but I need others as tools for the outside world.

Sometimes, early in the morning or during the middle of class..... I imagine myself leaping out the window and flying. Flying, not falling. If you fall, you're doomed. If you fly, you're free.
I need to get out of this. I need to break free from this bubble. I need to burst forth and leap from a tall building, splatter myself on a canvas and say, "See?! That's how it's done!" It's not suffocating. Its more like the frog in the pot with the water's temp being slowly turned up.

I know it's coming.

Yeah, it's scary not knowing what "it" is, but that's part of life. The unknowing.

I could never explain this, I don't think.

I leave you with this: life is never what we hope for and death is relative.