Brain

Every so often, I get like this. I'm hyper. I'm all over the place. And it's late. I feel like I could do anything, like I should DO everything, but I get so distracted that I don't actually do ANYTHING. And by every so often, I mean pretty often. But then again, there are those times when I feel like absolute shit and want to kill myself, or I simply don't feel like moving out of bed, or don't make it even if my brain tries to tell me to get out of bed. And it seems like a pretty quick change from one to the other, though sometimes, I really do feel like both are happening at once. I'm pretty good at detecting patterns. But labels are, once again, the tricky part for me. (I'm actually struggling to keep my focus on just this little paragraph.)

Is this all part of having Asperger's?
Or...could I actually have bipolar disorder instead of chronic depression and what I believe to be are worsening ADHD symptoms, in addition. (I have started to believe the latter simply because my focus is completely out of whack. I have never had problems like this, though perhaps my lack of a structured environment for the last several years has taken its toll.)

The labels are pretty irrelevant when it comes to practical matters. You only treat symptoms when it comes to medications for Asperger's, and most of those symptoms just happen to occur in biploar disorder and ADHD.

I'm not currently taking the medications I have been prescribed. It's been months. One reason is that I simply can't afford them, even with my mom's insurance, which is absolute shit anyway. Another reason is that I'm not a fan of the side effects. I lose an absurd amount of weight on them. The last time I started them, I was down over ten pounds in under two weeks. And I don't have too much to work with here. (Sitting around 142 right now, but I probably went from 135 to 122, if I remember correctly.) I looked sick. And it was definitely affecting the way I worked out. I felt a little bit better mentally, but maybe I am just saying that to try to make myself feel better about not taking them. Anyway, I doubt something like Ritalin would be any better.

I have goals. I have plans. But they are very subjective right now, and that is what is difficult. There aren't very specific directions or deadlines. And I'm not quite sure what I am doing with most of it. I hate this grad school application process because I don't know if I am doing things correctly or not. Hopefully, my meetings with my letter-writers will help to clear some of that up. But I will feel stuck about everything else until I get those questions answered. I won't be able to really work on any of this until I have these answers, or at least that is how my mind feels and is telling me to operate, despite my best efforts. I have the research statement completely finished (and have had this done for quite some time), and I know it is solid, based on the feedback I've received.

I'm worried because I haven't published any papers, and I know I have forgotten some things. I'm afraid I'll be interviewed and asked a question I will not be able to answer. I'm afraid of what it will mean if I fail to get into graduate school. I honestly don't think I will be able to handle that.

I am terrified because I have no idea where my life will be in 5 years. But even if I weren't terrified about that, the fact that I'll be 30 in five years would still terrify me. So why the hell does it even matter?

I'm physically afraid all of the time, if that makes any sense. Not of particular things. It's just the physical feeling. And that is how I know fear. It just so happens I experience varying degrees of that literally every second I am awake. There are very few things that can make that feeling subside.

Old Notes

I found an old note from a former snare squad leader inside a journal I kept throughout my freshman year of college. In addition to a little homework assignment, the note ended with a little piece of advice at the bottom:

Trust.
Faith.
Fuck 'em.

Breathe

Meditation for me is about reminding myself to breathe. About reminding myself to allow myself to breathe. About taking in each breath and letting it nourish my starving cells, and about letting each exhalation whisk away that which is nothing short of poisonous. I inhale and feel the resistance of a body struggling to survive an invisible pain. My lungs push against each inward breath as if it to refuse it, like children determined to get their way. But I am still here. I am still breathing, which must mean I am stronger than all of this. But it is difficult to be strong in a way that no one can see. It is difficult to allow the air to flow freely when you know so many others would have severed its passages. I sometimes lose the words for which I have been searching just to keep this rhythm going. Like fireflies.

I look at the words I have written on paper, today and over time, seeing their curves disappear long before I even noticed mine. Words about life and love written before I knew anything about either. Words. Not breaths. And I notice through all the stories of pain, and of passion, and of promises to myself written on post-it notes along the way, that life is so much easier to live in words than in breaths. It is easier to live eternally than to allow yourself to float towards the sun on the wings of your mortality.

I have been watching the wax drip. And I have been missing all the light permits me to see.

I want to be able to have breaths without counting them.
I want to be happy with a life that cannot be measured.

I may be capable of inhalation and exhalation.
But I have lost the ability to breathe.

I am scared, always.