Mean Girls

On Control:

How do you extricate yourself from a situation in which you're willing to give nothing up? If you cared less about the outcome, you could just walk away. If you cared more about the outcome, you could take steps to rectify things. Instead, you're in a perpetual state of blah.

You won't confront it. You will sit back and watch it fall to pieces without wielding any control, and you will probably laugh about it in the end because the outcome truly does not matter. But having no control is a double-edged sword. You make no choices, but you may not like the aftermath.

On Fake People:

I'm not good at spotting these people. Ali has a gift. She can size a person up in seconds. It's uncanny. I'm wildly unsuccessful. When people are nice to me, I assume it's because they like me, or because they are kind people. It turns out, this is not true. Who knew?

Perhaps I am exceptionally naive. I look for the best in people. Maybe their best blinds me to their worst ... because as soon as Ali points out the fakeness, I'm appalled. How could I have missed the sidelong looks, the gossip behind hands, the gloating?

Ali, in short, protects me from the Kim Kardashians of this world.

On Girl World:

Outside of high school I didn't know this world existed. I can be in a room full of people, and am completely oblivious to the undercurrents of metaphorical cat claws. The fake people (see above) are the main players in this world that I only recently discovered. They are malicious and manipulative and their minds are distorted by their own strange hierarchies; hierarchies that, predictably, center around boys.

But this is what makes us girls: we don't stick together because we put boys first. It's just like Lana del Rey said.

They aren't worth it. They never have been. There are a few in the bunch who are good, solid men. The rest are just boys; immature, hollow things who, when measured against something meaningful, are found lacking.

I wish girls had such a credence as the boys do: "Bros before hoes." But our culture doesn't allow it. We can't afford to treasure our girlfriends more than our boys because there is a stigma against independent women. Something must be wrong with her, if she is still alone at the age of 28.

Girl world is an understandable, though sickening, product of our need to be wanted, adored even. It's easier to cut a rival down than to take the higher road.

In conclusion:

I'm not a fan of shallow people.

Grievances

"Emotions that are not acknowledged or expressed tend to escalate."
-Dr. Redwood

I know that I'm coming out of the darkness when I want to write again. I'm good with words, but only on paper. In person I am awkward and clumsy. Only on paper am I ever eloquent.

Back to the point: when I am in the darkness my thoughts go unexpressed, which is why I think I lash out at some of the least deserving people. I pick fights that I cannot win.

When my dad was alive, I fought with him constantly. We were ever at odds, my father and I, being much too similar and far too stubborn. The difference: he let his anger go (mostly through yelling), and I implode on myself.

I hold grudges.

Grudges are, simply put, ridiculous. Even I, a master at grudge-holding, can admit it. The problem with grudges is that they can only hurt you, never the object of your resentment. People often don't care what you think of them, or they are unaware of your animosity. Instead the grudge only eats at you. Any mention of their name angers you. Any glimpse of their face puts you on edge.

It's tiring!

And what is the point? What good does it do you to embrace the bitterness? Why should someone have that power over you?

How many bridges have I burned by holding grudges? And yet I still can't find it in myself to be nice to people I don't like. Perhaps that makes me a bad person, but I have so little energy, I can't justify wasting it on people who care nothing for me.

My people are few, but they are my people, and I am fiercely loyal to them. So to those of you I love, and to those who love me back, let me say thank you for putting up with me when I am at my worst because at my best, I would most definitely die for you.

Maudlin Thoughts

Sometimes I think I write characters who have so many legitimate problems because my own problems are so intangible. If I had heart disease or diabetes, there would be proof that I was ill. I would be able to see the symptoms. Instead, my sickness is in my head. I can't see those symptoms; I can only feel them... And I'm left wondering if the people I care about think I am making things up. Sometimes I wonder if I'm making things up.

Someone told me recently that I need to find what's making me so miserable and get rid of it. But I've had these problems for so long now that I have started to believe that what is making me miserable, what has me locked so tightly in fear and sadness, is that my mind is actually broken. Is such a thing even possible?

There is no one thing that has made me depressed. There isn't a handful of things. It isn't causal. It isn't even rational. There is only disease. A disease that no one believes; that few understand. Because unless you've lived through the terror, or felt the agony of watching your life, as you stand utterly helpless, fall to pieces around you, you cannot understand how painful depression can be. You can't understand how words cease to make sense, how actions seem always a way to hurt you, how you can be surrounded by people, people who genuinely care about you, yet you feel completely alone and hated.

Depression feels like dying. Every time you close your eyes to sleep, you wish you would never wake up. And then you do, and it hurts. You make yourself bleed just to remember that you can, that you are still human, even if you are soulless. And, dear God, you can't stop crying.

I think Kay Redfield Jamison said it best:

"Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images; I would not go through an extended one again. It bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish, and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music, or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you're irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't."

I was, like Dr. Jamison, diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder. I have felt the opposite of the spectrum and can say with great sincerity that it is not worth it. I would trade every one of my manic episodes for any semblance of normality. If I never had to be depressed again, if there was any glimmer of hope that the horror was over forever, I would gladly give up the mania. Mania is fleeting. Even hypomania lasts only months. Depression makes every second feel like hours. And I will never get that time back. It's gone. I can't even remember most of it. It's a memory of darkness, like everything was cast with a vaguely gray shadow, punctuated every so often with my wretched misinterpretation of life actually proceeding around me.

This is the fourth time this has happened to me since Kelly died, and I'm only 26 years old. If there is any mercy in this world, I beg I get some time to heal before the next one hits.