epiphanies

Perhaps it is perfectly natural for someone who has been at times psychotic, depressed, manic, and suicidal -- all specific, medical symptoms for the more vague and vaporous condition "crazy" -- to constantly ponder the meaning of the word and more importantly, the basic concept of sanity/insanity. I worry quite often that feelings I have are not normal. When I am assured that they are, I still have doubt. Sometimes I feel like I have emotional dementia. It's not 1943, I'm not back from the war, I'm here, in the present, and things have changed and progress has made and by all accounts, I am a different person.

It's the continuum I struggle with. It's true that if I could go back in the past and change even the slightest thing in my life that I wouldn't turn out the way I have - which, by most accounts (if not scales) is not a bad thing. As a kid I'd always flip backwards through Choose Your Own Adventure books to determine where I made mistakes, to figure out how I should've progressed. Not sure why I still do it in real life as obviously there's nothing that can be done. I guess I am hungry for lessons and knowledge. If I'm going to have pain, if I'm going to fail, I want to know why and figure out how to do better next time.

And I finally feel I'm at the age when it's possible. If I can keep my wits about me. And that's why I analyze and overanalyze everything. Why I'm so hard on myself at every twist and turn. I want to play life like a game. I want to decipher the puzzle so I can control the outcome. That part comes from fear and also the scientific, logical side of my brain. Funny how both are related. But the poet in me, the child, the lover of adventure and romance wants to just let go and let the winding river take me where it wants. But is that irresponsible? Is it irresponsible not to?

Maybe I feel and think such things because I am of the sensitive, creative, reflective sort. I'm not a Wall Street cod. Maybe I am home today, worried about unemployment and money, because of not some failture in my character or series of bad decisions (or a worthless union, actually) but because I am someone who is supposed to live life a bit more slowly. Is that narcissism? Rationalization, I'm sure.

I don't think that writing a poem or spending more time than usual to examine the petals of a rose makes me a better person, a more spiritual person, or any close to "god" or the central meaning of life. Or if I do perhaps I shouldn't. There is a direct correlation between 'insanity' and artists. Between irresponsiblity and creativity.

I wonder what it's like to not have had such sharp identity crises. I wonder what it's like to not have been psychotic and trying to throw myself off a roof. Not many people know what psychosis feels like. It's traumatic. I don't think I've ever really sat with that. It's uncomfortable and terrifying. It feels like this division from other people that can't be scaled. Most people have at some point in their lives been depressed. Maybe even manic -- or at least super "hyper." Most people have made bad decisions. Sadly, most girls I know have also been sexually abused or assaulted. But... as I sit here writing this I see what the real issue is. What really makes me feel so lonely and alone -- the psychosis.

It feels like you're in a nightmare. You know the dreams where horrible things are happening and you're panicking. No one around you is making any sense. And you are just so scared. You are pure nerve. There is no memories, there is no prolonged logic thought process. There is caged animal that is screaming and terrified and reacting. There is nothing but that very moment where you are filled with fear and paranoia in every cell of your body. It splinters you from reality. It is a nightmare. You can't control it. You have no idea why it's happening to you. You don't know what lead up to it. There are no shadows, just dark and threat. Ive felt it acutely and in the form of a slippery, sneaky predator. I've had it for weeks. I've had clear moments. I've had it like a knife in the gut. But the difference between me and you is that I HAVE had it.

Maybe that is why I feel that I am always outside of society. It is someting I can't apologize for or make amends for. Sometimes I feel like I wear it on my chest. I don't seem to think or feel like other people do. And so I slip back inside myself and turn to writing and poetry.

Or maybe I am jsut looking for something special to make me me. An excuse for faults and cracks and defects?

Don't take away my sins, my faults, my quirks. Because -- as I wondered one day in fear and nausea -- who would I be if I were not over weight, undisciplined, illogical, and poetic?

Fuck.

Epiphany.

That is the fear and anxiety I feel when I think about losing weight or exercising. It is the dread I feel when I think about a 9 to 5 sellign my soul to corporate America.

This is all so freaking confusing.

And why -- oh why -- do I share these struggles and feelings so publically? As a way to scream it out into the cosmos and hope for an echo? As an explanation for my self? As a way to relate?
As a way to ask for acceptance and salvation?

I don't know. But it feels more natural than leaving it inside to rot. The way I did as a child and suffered and suffered and suffered until I learned how to escape. Or so i thought. I just put the pain in a locked box. Where it seethed and grew and fed on itself all these years.

But anyway. Yes, fuck epiphanies.