Old Poem

You know, my love, I knew
I knew you were my first chance to run
You know, my love, I used you
I used you to convince myself out of here.
You know, my love, I needed you
I needed your help to get away
I knew you were a vessel, not a port.
I just didn't tell you.

And I'm not sorry for using you the way i did
There's no apologies floating around this girl's head
I have no problem sleeping at night, over you
I have not a single regret

You know, my conquests, I knew
I knew you were my chance to forget
You know, my conquests, I used you
I used you to convince myself of needlessness
You know, my conquests, i needed you
I needed your help to be free
I knew you were an adventure, not an undertaking.
I just didn't tell you.

And I'm not sorry for using you the way i did
There's no apologies floating around this girl's head
I have no problem sleeping at night, over you
I have not a single regret

You know, my boss, I knew
I knew you were my chance to nurture
You know, my boss, I used you
I used you to convince myself of my truths
You know, my boss, I needed you
I needed your help to be broken.
I knew you were the trial, not the lesson
I just didn't tell you.

And I'm not sorry for using you the way I did
There's no apologies floating around this girl's head
I have no problem sleeping at night, over you
I have not a single regret

You know, my boy, I knew
I knew you were my next chance to run
You know, my boy, I used you
I used you to convince myself I wasn't so lost
You know, my boy, I needed you
I needed your help to be reclaimed
I knew you were the journey, not the destination.
I just didn't tell you

And I'm not sorry for using you the way i did
There's no apologies floating around this girl's head
I have no problem sleeping at night, over you
I have not a single regret.

If you all formed a club of some kind
If you all got together in one room
If you all compared notes on my heartless technique
bruised egos, death threats, and slanderous comments abounding
but I know, guys, you knew
you knew I was your chance to boast
I know, guys, you used me
you used me to convince yourselves of bloated worth
I know, guys, you needed me
you needed my help to shine
i knew i was a chapter, not the story.
I just didn't tell you

And I'm not sorry for using you the way i did
There's no apologies floating around this girl's head
I have no problem sleeping at night, over you
I have not a single regret

And I'm not sorry
I have not a single regret

Holiday Monday

I am sitting in a lovely park on a sunny holiday Monday of the May long weekend. There are families all over the place, enjoy quality family time. I feel extremely numb about their experience. I am on a hill overlooking a half a dozen sets of parents and young children who are staring at the pond, leaning over the water to feed the swans. I am unsure of how I feel about it. I feel as though I am sitting in a bubble. Am I the one who is not normal, or are they just deluding themselves?
I really feel that I have no concept of what is real anymore. It’s not that I have a mental disease like schizophrenia or anything that really inhibits my ability to distinguish reality. Depression really just leaves you so emotionally vulnerable and confused. Most of the time I feel that I am either pretending so intensely to be a part of this ‘normal’ world or I am so overwhelmed and unable to control my own mood to the point that I find it necessary to isolate myself from the world because I am unable to blend. Vacillating between these two poles leaves me completely unable to answer my own questions. What is the real state that I want? Where is the middle ground? How can I possibly find a middle ground of reality? Because if I am going to do so, I would he to hypothesize first that I could find a middle ground between my varying far flung ends of the spectrum. This hypothesis then assumes that this middle ground, the universal reality that I am trying to find, can be determined by my extremes. If reality is determined by my extremes, then it is arbitrarily determined. If that is the case, then what is the point in trying to determine the middle ground? Why not just continue to try and survive in this tumultuous and bizarre existence that I am already suffering? At least here, I know the enemy and I can recognize the ups and downs. I am known here and I know where here is. I may not be able to control it, I may feel as though I am being scraped along a gravel road of emotion sometimes, and that trying to stand up and dust myself off is futile. But then other times I am so number by the experience that it seems not to matter that I am slowly being ripped to pieces. It seems as though trying to hold myself up and keep myself protected is a silly thing to do. I know that this isn’t true, even as I say this. I do want to be better. I don’t want to feel so out of control of myself or my moods and thoughts. Most of the time, however, it seems like the really crazy idea is trying to fight the truth. If I didn’t make myself this way…If this is something that I can recognize in myself and yet not be able to turn off, like diabetes…If this is something that I can gradually manipulate slightly in order to continue to push my way through society and yet never fully calm down…If these things that I have been old are true….If I am inherently unable to change my own universe, then what is the point in attempting to do so? I want to forget adhering to rules of society and to “fit in” as it were. I want to be able to live in each moment. Not having to regard whether it is a moment that makes me want to throw my head back and scream a bloodcurdling, cathartic scream in the middle of a park full of families or a moment where I want to close my eyes and imagine how sweet it would be not to be alive.
I do realize how all this must sound. I can imagine the different sentiments of people reading this. Any young women who has suffered through depression, mood/personality disorders or anxiety disorders will be reading this and feeling a certain amount of understanding. Anyone else reading this will be thinking that I am a tide of negative emotions. That’s the craziest part of being ‘crazy’. I am not upset right now. I actually find pretty energetic and optimistic today. This is just an accurate perception of how my thoughts travel. I have been told more than a few times in the past few months since I was admitted to the hospital that I show no outward indication at any time of what is going on inside of me. One person even went so far as to suggest I am Oscar worthy in performance. I am a good faker. Just like anyone with a mood disorder and many people with mental illness. We can pretend enough to not set off too severe a warning bell in those around us. There is enough indication given that when something drastic occurs, like me having a complete breakdown and being admitted to the centre for addiction and mental health, people remember details of past events which seemed out of place at the time. Though never did they think that it was so severe. We have all trained ourselves to look away from the unpleasant. And we all play along so well. I may have been unable to always completely hide my ups and downs, but I did my part by concealing enough to allow others to look away without guilt. So that we could all continue our lives under the guise of ‘normalcy’. Everything is always fine. This is the way that we all continue to function when things go to hell. I wish that everyone could wear signs or shirts that said something real about themselves. They could say different things on different days, but they would be true. Passively, these shirts could fight our need to all be fine. My shirt would say, “I have been admitted to a mental institution” or “I had a mental breakdown”. I have a deep-rooted need to tell people that I am unbalanced because I hate the idea that people think I have it easy because I am pretty and thin and young. Nothing bad happens to you if you are thin and blond, right? That’s what I keep getting told. Each time it makes me want to stab the person in the eyes with broken glass. Really, we don’t know anything about anyone. Not even the people we think we know best. Some of my favourite reactions were “but you’re super Laura! You have such an amazing life and you always have it together!”… “ok, so what’s really wrong? No, seriously what could possibly be wrong with you?”… “you are the one who holds everything together? How could you be upset?”.
It makes me sad how little anyone really knows me. I feel as though there is not one person who has ever known me. I have faked it for so long and built my own protective prison. And yet, people will walk by, look up at me in my tower cell, and be envious of it. Which makes me so sad for reality, for the ‘real’ world. You look at me and you see a pretty, thin, 25 year old blond woman. You don’t actually see anything real.
Is it any wonder that I feel as though I don’t really exist most of the time? That I am wandering around trying to get a grasp on reality as you all see it? You don’t see me as actually existing. You see my aesthetics as being in existence, enough for you to segregate me for it. But since my shell is only that, it is not really me but the shell that carries me around…I am left with feeling like a shell that walks around. A vessel that cannot properly contain or control or even define what is on the inside.

Functioning

I can manage to deal with each day. I can deal with getting up. with being me. It seems, however, that I am only able to do so when things are predictable.
It only takes one thing, not even something that is perceivable to others, to completely unravel me. I send a text message and don't get an immediate response ( or goodness forbid i should get no response at all!). I am in an instant state of spiralling thoughts about what I have done, what a mistake it was to text the person, how weak I am to need the person to contact me, and a million other thoughts smashing themselves against my insecurities like stormy ocean waves trying to tip a fragile fishing boat. I panic. I have to resort to trying to pull myself out of complete breakdown mode. Then the day becomes entirely about trying to get out of crisis mode, and then recovering from my crisis hangover. the slump of weakness and self-hate that follows and leads me to be hopeless. so, one small catalyst, leads me to a state ruminating thought during which I am so overwhelmed by emotions that I am unable to function. Emotions that are rushing, battling to be the top wave. Instead, while each wave brings a new onslaught of volatility and danger, they just continue to blend into the preceding wave. Joining the other waves as the ocean itself. Pulling me in all directions under water, choking, gasping for air as each time I resurface I am pushed under by the next wave and yanked around in it's undercurrent. Then, when the storm clears, when I manage to find some plank to hold to for dear life, I am left with the crisis hangover. I am exhausted, half drowned, bedraggled and feeling that rescue is never coming. So, why bother to hang on? Everything is hopeless anyway at this stage. I have survived the crisis but, not through any strength of my own. I have now proven to be not just all the negative things I was struggling with during the crisis (weak, needy, desperate, not good enough for anything in any real way), but I have also proven that I am too emotional to even be in control of myself. I am unable to maintain my own thoughts and emotions. So, I am even more hopeless than the initial onslaught was nagging at me.
At a time of crisis, I am unable to function and have no control. During the aftermath I don't function simply because I cannot make myself believe that anything I can do will make a difference.

How am I going to retrieve my life?
So much of what I used to have was based on the callous, angry woman I had become out of necessity for survival. the need for self-preservation fueled my functionality. So, even if i knew how to retrieve my life, would I know what to retrieve? Most of the time I can't seem to remember what I have been thinking over the past 5 or 6 years. So, who am I trying to retrieve? I don't want to continue to live as a woman who acts only out of anger and hurt. I don't want the life back that I had, though I had crafted it exactly as I wanted it, because it was based on choices made while I was that woman. Since being discharged from the hospital I have felt myself slipping back into being the volatile, fiercely independent woman that I was when I was 18. The woman who, while running on anger and hurt, had yet to suffer through the battles. She may have been fueled on negative energy, but at least she was hopeful of getting somewhere on it. Somehow, without even noticing, I slipped from the independent raging woman. She suffered the bruises and scars with me and lost her edge. It was too late. She was so set in her persona that people never questioned the manic episodes and life-altering decisions that resulted from those episodes. Everyone saw the 'super' side. The highly-functioning, super-capable, take-no-prisoners Laura and never thought that she of all people might need help. That she might need it more than someone else. No one, not even I, saw how deeply I had sunk inside the despondent pool that I had dug out for myself. Now that I am standing in the pool instead of laying face down in it like I was a few short months ago, I can't see where I used to be. My world only seems to exist until you get to the edge of the pool. While I am gradually pulling myself out, I can't see that anything else exists. It is a bizarre feeling to have faith that you can pull yourself out of a pond, but be hopeless that anything exists outside of it's murky edges.

Soundtrack to a breakdown

Most days I feel like I am walking around in some sort of pretend world.

It's similar to when you go on vacation. You fool yourself into thinking that you are leaving all your problems behind you, at home, and you manage to pretend that for a week or so. Long enough that you can enjoy your holiday and return to your stress-filled, 'real' life when you are rejuvenated.

I walk around in several different realities at all times. I am in a constant state of fooling myself. I would say that I am fooling others, but so much of it is just the fallout of my own pretending, my self-defense pretending, that I can't say I fool them as though it was a conscious decision. I get up in the morning and just try to hold things together and to remember to breath all day. Sometimes it sounds so easy that I am ashamed that other days I am proud of myself for achieving it. Achieving the impossible, to continue to pretend, to continue to function, to continue to let everyone think I am holding it together. To continue to live.

Would you please get out from under my skin?

You think it’s so strange

That I’m waiting all the time

You think I’m not grounded

Because I am happy

You think I have everything

And that’s why I’m lucky

You think I’ll get down on my

My beautiful knees

Don’t mistake forgiveness for weakness.

My resilience isn’t proof that I give in.

I see you and how you perceive what you do

But I won’t change

I won’t give up my bliss to fit you

That’s where my strength lies