Skin Again

At this point my "bad" skin--my acne--is as much a testament to my subtle self-destruction as it is to my oily, inflamed genetic code. Ah, adolescence.

I pick at it. I'm a crazy girl and I dot my face with raw-meat red. I am a corpse in progress, but then again I suppose we all are.

"Dermatillomania" is a relevant word. The manias are like phobias: irrational and passionate. Manias also carry obsession and action. I can't stop touching my cheeks, my forehead, leaning in close to the mirror to see the grime in my pores. (I knew I really was a dirty girl!) I am literally thinking, as I claw myself, as I go in with a safety pin, "I would have nice skin if I didn't do this."

I'm not saying I have derma--I don't. My behavior is not that extreme. I'm just a particularly impotent suicide. Don't mind me.

Cool Catahoula

I am at Catahoula Coffee. My coffee is too strong, my parents are disappointed in me, and the dude to my left keeps trying to strike up a conversation, but at least I look cute and I'm out of the house. Lately I haven't been venturing into the world except to drive my sister around--although my dad and I did eat supper at Kaliente last night--so I decided to take myself out, in the interest of mental health. I'm doing the same thing I would be at home--blogging--but I'm doing it with a social soundtrack, at least. People chit-chatting and the rhythmic growl of the roaster.

I've been significantly happier since I stopped caring about school, which happened on Wednesday night. On Tuesday, I abruptly left partway through my morning geography class, because I was swelling up with suicidalism and I couldn't just keep sitting there. I started crying on the train ride home, which was embarrassing. I stayed semi-suicidal for the rest of the day, and although Wednesday wasn't quite as bad, it was still horrible. I couldn't bring myself to do the work for my night class. I think I turned off caring about school (not intentionally) because caring about it was disabling my ability to function. To survive. I've been throwing my energy into blogging instead, mainly focusing on producing content for my fashion blog.

On the one hand, my mood has been good; I've had productive energy. Not in a manic way, either, which sometimes happens, but in a way that feels genuinely positive. On the other hand, I'm doing an academic nosedive. Somehow, it doesn't seem to matter to me. After all, what I want to do is be an online content creator--a blogger! You don't need a degree for that. But it's hard to turn into a viable career, or honestly to generate any income at all. I just applied for a Google AdSense account, and I have a plan to approach people about doing sponsored posts, but neither of those is a sure thing. Even if they were... well, there's no guarantee of significant profitability.

I don't quite know what to do. I don't want to go back to school--I feel like I can't do that, like that potential reality isn't even possible. I guess I'll keep working on my blogging empire until my parents sit me down for a Really Serious Discussion.

Notes On Depression

[Trigger warning for self harm.]

Depression is sinking horizontally through air instead of walking.

Depression is the blood in my mouth; I'm sucking on my finger because I picked at it too hard and it started leaking.

Depression is the buzzing sensation that fills up my eyes after enough hours in front of a screen.

Depression is cup after cup of hot chocolate; drinking it when it's too sweet, drinking the dark grit at the bottom, drinking and staring at my fingers on the keyboard. I gulp my cocoa. My tongue is thick.

Depression is agonizing over my responsibilities for hours, but only touching them for minutes.

Depression is not knowing the meaning of "keen interest"; not knowing the meaning of "keen" at all. The only things that are sharp are the things I do to myself.

Depression is knowing what to do, how to do it, and remembering having done it before, but still just melting like cheap glue.

Depression is finding small ways to destroy myself. Depression is feeling ashamed that I've never sliced my wrists, or truly ruined anything. Depression is wishing that my big burn scar hadn't faded.

Depression is liking the thought of torn fingers but being offended that the blood hurts when it comes out.

Freedom On This Canvas

I've been having a really hard time for the past few days. This Bob Ross remix helped a little bit, as did these two Mister Rogers remixes: "Garden of Your Mind" and "Sing Together". Thanks to those videos, I'm in a place where I can write about how I'm feeling.

In "Sing Together", Mister Rogers says, "It's so important to feel good." That's true, but today I'm not even looking for a way to feel good. What I need is a way to feel okay. Just okay--that's enough. Hopefully being okay means moving toward "good", but that's a secondary goal to simple stability.

Yesterday I wanted to die, or at least to have never existed. On a one-to-ten scale of suicidality, with one being "the thought crossed my mind briefly" and ten being "I'm currently jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge", I stood at about a six. I was turning over different methods in my mind, berating myself for not being brave enough to carry my potential plans.

I was also really angry at my parents for bringing me into the world. That anger is always there to some extent, but yesterday it bloomed into full rage. That happens sometimes.

I feel a lot of guilt and obligation toward my parents: Guilt about the burden I place on them, both financially and in terms of emotional energy. Obligation to be "successful", as a good student and yuppie-in-training. But I also feel tremendous anger that I'm in this situation--being alive and owing them so much--without my consent. I didn't agree to be born; I certainly didn't ask for it! Of course, there's no way a human being that didn't yet exist could consent to anything, and I think that's a good argument against having children at all.

As things are, I exist, and I'm someone who can't actually kill herself, as much as I may fantasize about it. So I have to figure out how to cope with my life as best I can. There are good parts--believe it or not, there are things that I enjoy: food, cuddling with Nick, my bunnies, etc. I just feel like the misery outweighs the joy. There seems to be so much more of it.

The Low Side

I've been pretty depressed over the past two or three days. Yesterday night my mom left for Bali, where she'll be on vacation for about a week. That means I'm going to be without my mainstay support, and that I'll have a lot more responsibilities than usual--taking care of pets, driving my sister around, etc. I think I can handle it, but I'm also apprehensive, considering that my mood has been on the low side lately.

I'm having trouble dealing with how much I like Nick. I feel so needy. When he doesn't text me back quickly, I start worrying; I wonder if he's ignoring me 'cause I'm annoying him. That kind of thing.

In practical news: What made me feel a little better this morning was when I took a shower and got started for the day. I made brownies. I took some photos for my fashion blog.

I guess I tend to get depressed when I have downtime. If I'm busy doing something, my mind is occupied, and I don't get stuck dwelling on the future, or whether Nick really likes me, or something else that brings me down.

I have therapy tomorrow. Hopefully it will be productive and provide me with some positive energy to work with.

Bit By Bit

It's much harder to produce content for this blog than for my various other blogs. Improving one's mental health is a difficult endeavor, and dwelling on the topic can be exhausting in and of itself. But I still feel like documenting my progress is valuable. I guess there's this (self-applied) pressure to write posts that other people will also be interested in, and that limits me.

Yesterday I felt quite depressed, but today was pretty good. I did some work for my online class, did a little bit of sewing, and restarted my art appreciation blog. That's a project I've let lapse for a while.

I think the biggest influence on my change of mood is that yesterday my boyfriend didn't text me, and today he did. I'm disappointed that his attention has such an effect on me. But then again, sometimes I sustain a good mood without talking to him at all.

It can be frustrating to try and figure out why I feel bad sometimes and good at other times. I guess there doesn't have to be a reason--my brain chemistry seems to have a lot to do with my depression, given how much my medication helps.

Just Like Descartes

I didn't bring my iTouch with me, so I have this hour-plus to write and eat pistachios instead of browsing Tumblr like I usually do. As it turns out, I have a lot to say. There's a bit of vibration in me, like I'm on the edge of mania. Shaking a little. That too-much-caffeine feeling. But I only had one cup of tea this morning?

Journaling is probably good for me. Stuck thoughts come un-stopped and get put down in raw, garbled form. I can use them later if I want to. I might want to. I'm putting down whatever comes, hoping I'm right to trust my intuition. Hoping to provoke catharsis.

I keep thinking of Sylvia Plath, of her beautiful journals, perfectly eloquent dashed-off observations that are more interesting than most novels. I'm interested in her the way I'm interested in myself, in a way that absorbs and inures me.

I don't want to chide myself for being a narcissist. It's the human creature's natural state and there's nothing wrong with it. If I weren't invested in my success and survival (or lack thereof) then I wouldn't exist. I obsess over myself, therefore I am. Self-reflection is supposed to be good, right?

[Written around 12:15pm, 9/17/2013, in between classes. Excerpt from a longer entry. Lightly edited.]

Turn Up The Color

In high school, I had terrible skin. In fact, all through puberty, I had pretty bad skin. I did a brief bout of Accutane, and that cleared up a lot of it, but I still have bad skin, although it's not extreme anymore. There have been times when it made me feel really unattractive, when I felt gross, when I felt like I had to compensate with makeup or what-have-you. But lately I've been pretty okay with it. I try to be positive about the way my body is naturally, and my spotty skin is part of that. I am good enough just the way I am.

Rest In Peace

Yesterday my mother and I went to an exhibition of Victorian mourning clothes at the Petaluma Museum. The most striking part of the display, aside from the beautiful beadwork, was a wall of eerie Victorian death portraits. The ones that creeped me out the most were of brothers and sisters. Sometimes children were made to pose with their dead siblings, who would be held in place by a stand or propped up in a chair.

I understand the urge to document things. I'm a blogger, after all, and blogging is the real-time creation of a personal archive. But some things, I don't know why you'd want to document them. Maybe just so you could remember your child's face? But ugh, your child's dead face next to their stiff, uncomfortable sibling.

My mother observed that it's amazing how much social mores change over the course of just a century or so. (Even the decade-to-decade changes can be astounding.) I'm glad that mourning clothes aren't mandatory these days, but I'm intrigued by the performative aspect of wearing them, and the possible solace to be found therein. I feel tempted to perform some kind of grief ritual for my past self... But I would want to do that in private, I think.

Accomplishments

The idea of a future is mesmerizing and terrible.

I think about supporting myself, not being taken care of by my parents, and I can barely fathom it. My mind immediately goes to, "Who else can I find to look after me?" I have to reassure myself that some man would want to support me. Maybe I'll be that girl who gets handed off straight from her father to her husband.

Independence just seems impossible. It's a nice daydream--for instance, I like thinking about how I'd decorate my theoretical future kitchen--but when I consider it as a possible reality, I get so anxious. I can feel the beginnings of panic in my throat.

I mean, I can't handle the idea of maintaining a job. How does that work? What do you do when you're depressed and all you can manage is watching copious amounts of television?

I can't even keep up normal relationships with people. My "friendships" are waning connections that I don't bother to try to renew. For the most part I'm not even interested in them. When I can muster enough interest and energy to arrange to meet up with someone, it's gone by the time the day rolls around, and I flake out.

I'd love to stop existing. I don't want to kill myself--I don't have the guts, anyway--I just want to go out like a dead light bulb. No presence.

On a lighter note, I got these things done today: Drove my sister around a lot. Went to class. Fed, walked, and washed the dog; gave him a haircut. Did a photoshoot and wrote a blog post for my fashion blog. Did some reading for my online class.

I wouldn't characterize those activities as "productive", because I didn't literally produce anything, but "useful" is accurate.

The Unbanishable Feeling

[This is a quite negative post, so be warned.]

I can feel myself getting depressed. As I sit here writing this, I can feel it happening. The world is swelling before me, and I am shrinking, drying out. (I've always liked the word "desiccated".) Funny how your perspective can shift: one minute everything is regular, and then you're tiny and your context is very large, and it's altogether too much to handle. Yes, that's how I feel.

In less than two hours, I'm supposed to leave for a class that I don't technically have to attend. Basically, the choice is between "stay home and feel depressed" or "go out and get anxious". I hate my brain. I hate that I can be full of energy and inspiration in the morning, but quickly slip into agonizing semi-apathy and fatigue during the afternoon. I can't rely on myself, and of course no one else should rely on me either.

I'm supposed to finish two years of community college and then transfer to a prestigious local university. That's the general plan. I'm smart enough to get into that university, in the sense that I can achieve whatever test scores I need and write a good admissions essay. But my academic history is such a trainwreck: left high school early to go to Reed, left Reed after a month on supposed medical leave, took barely any classes at community college for several semesters, dropped more classes than she took, practically...

I'm not even sure that I want to go to college. I feel like I'm wasting my parents' money by aimlessly taking classes, even though community college is relatively cheap. I don't really want to go to school, but I don't want to work at any accessible or profitable job. I just want to blog and do artsy stuff and live at home and never be a grownup. God, I'm so spoiled.

I'm not trying hard enough. That's the unbanishable feeling: when I fail, it's because I'm lazy. The times when I have failed in the past, that was why. When I fail in the future, that will be the reason. I am so weak-natured.

Privileged Position

I have access to a lot of wonderful technology that makes it super easy to create and share art: my laptop, a scanner, my tablet, the high-quality camera, etc. I feel so blessed that my socioeconomic position enables this; so grateful that my dad has worked hard and been successful. Grateful that my mom has worked hard and been successful. Grateful that my grandparents worked hard and were successful!

But I also know that part of the reason they all succeeded is that my family is White, my parents are heterosexual, and so on. Thus I also feel guilty. Guilty that I have this wonderful technology to play with when other people can't afford it. Guilty that I have it not due to my own effort; other people work much harder than me and still can't access the bounty I have in my home. And then I feel like I'm wasting all this amazing technology by just doing my own silly projects, and not producing some grand piece of art that would be impressive and moving and beautiful.

But this guilt isn't productive. It just makes me feel bad. I only have so much energy and inspiration, and what I do is enough. I kinda don't believe that, but I know I should.

West Is Best

Lately I've been worrying that I'm gaining weight. I hate that I even think about it. I really want to not care about my size! Unfortunately, it's one thing to intellectually understand that someone's weight doesn't determine their worth or attractiveness, and another thing to apply that concept to yourself.

I was just looking at Mae West quotes on Brainy Quote, because I'm depressed today and her witticisms tend to pep me up. This one seemed relevant: "I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond." Maybe I'll just fantasize about diamonds to distract myself from eating-related stress.

Spider Sense

I'm sitting in my therapist's waiting room, trying to feel like an arachnid.

While walking from the sidewalk to the door, I passed a large spider web. Its owner was perched in the middle, a folded-up package of eight exoskeletal legs. The web stood out against the damp green of the garden; sunlight was teasing at the silk. The threads were very thin and silvery. Wind blew through them, and the fibers trembled. But the spider seemed unperturbed by being shaken.

I thought to myself, "I'm like that spider. I've put myself in a certain position, one I want to stay in, and I'm held there by a myriad of those proverbial 'gossamer wires'. They're fragile and I'm precarious. So I worry all the time that the wind will rip them, or someone will blunder through them, or I'll get too heavy to hold. The difference between me and the spider is that the spider seems calm. The spider isn't scared."

Now I am trying to feel like the spider looked. I'm perched in the center of my web, and there's not much I can do to ensure the safety of my threads. I have to let go of the anxiety. I have to not panic about how easily everything could be destroyed.

It's hard to just tell myself, "Stop it. Panicking does no good." My brain wants to stay on the brink of being seized up with stress, searching for some kind of solution. When that happens, I gotta breathe. Break out somehow. My therapist gave me this simple breathing exercise: Inhale for a count of four, then exhale for a count of five. It's good because I have to concentrate on doing it, which helps me calm down.

Okayness

About two weeks ago, I wrote this in my journal:

"It will be okay. You are okay. You will be okay. You can exist in and move towards multiple states of okay. You can handle what you can handle. You won't find out until you tackle things. It is okay to be scared and shaky. You can manage. You can cope.

It will be okay. You are okay. You will be okay. It will be okay. You are okay. You will be okay.

Hail Mary, full of grace..."

Right now, I am having a hard time believing any of it. I feel so on edge. I just said the full Hail Mary to myself, and it did make me feel a teeny bit calmer. But only a teeny bit.

Maybe some days are just anxious, or maybe I had too much caffeine this morning.

I've just spent hours pouring over my fashion blog and Tumblr, trying to get them to feel right. Things keep niggling my aesthetic sense, and then I have to fix them. But even after I've fixed everything I noticed, I can't stop worrying. Presumably there are flaws that I didn't even see, and they need to be remedied! Ugh. It makes me feel out of control.

I need to work on being okay with being just that: okay. I don't have to be perfect. I am lovable and valuable even if I'm not perfect; not trying to be perfect. I am good enough the way I am.

September Starts

I didn't exactly wake up depressed, but today is not a good day. I checked the website for my online class this morning, and I realized that I'd missed the deadline for an assignment. Immediately, the sad foggy dullness, the hopeless disengagement of depression, started creeping in on me. It wasn't as bad as it sometimes is, but I felt like a failure. Like missing that one assignment meant that I was ruined.

I'm feeling somewhat better now. I told my mom what was going on, and she got me to make up the assignment right away, so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. That helped. We also watched some funny videos of cute animals, like this French bulldog trying to play with a solemn police horse. But I still feel down.

As I'm writing this, my friend Nick is trying on a suit. He looks handsome.