Emily

Did he do this to you, too?

I mean, he paints you as a kind of ice princess. That's even what he calls you. You were his Ice Princess, and I'm his Violet Guru. That's a reference to the way I only see one spectrum of light, the best things about people, and the way I give advice. I see everybody in a purple light, he says, it makes them all sound more magical than they are, and I'm maybe a kind of spiritual teacher. You were an Ice Princess because he could do whatever he wanted to you, and you wouldn't care. You'd just blink and brush it off, he said. You were tough. Not bogged down with emotion like me. Nope. You never cried about anything. You'd let him get away with anything, because you were impossible to crack. 

He says he even told you about how often he'd cheat on you. He says he told you about how much he missed me, and you brushed it off. He told me that he'd leave you, then come back to you, over and over again in a cycle. This just reaffirmed your title, to me. I was there when he texted you that he was done with you. He and I were on a road trip in Oregon; we'd just left the airport and I gave him the last ultimatum I've ever given him: Emily or me. He texted you that it was over, and you said "Haha, okay." I thought that meant that you'd already moved on, or that you didn't really care about him. It was so casual. And I made him talk about you for hours on that trip. I wanted to know why he'd picked me over you, and what would stop him from going back to you again? Mostly, I didn't want to become you. I didn't want to be the girl he shook his fists at while he was cycling. 

Turns out, nothing. He tried to get you back a few months later, he drunkenly confessed to me in a hotel room. And you responded so succinctly, with so much pent-up anger, that I realized I was wrong. You hadn't moved on. You had just come to expect the same behavior from him that I had. You responded that he had ended the most significant relationship you'd ever had with a text message. You told him to fuck off, and to stay with me. I started screaming when I read that, and crying. I threw his phone at him and screamed "What did you do to her?" It was the first time I realized that Gideon just hurts people, no exception. I stopped hating you that night - from then on, all I could do was empathize. I thought then that you were doing me a favor. You were letting me keep him. Really, you were just doing what was ultimately best for you. I want you to know that you made the right choice, and I know how hard it was. 

We've never met. We're never going to meet and you're never going to read this. I'm sure after all we've been through, after he bounced from me, to you, back to me, and probably with ten other women in between, you want nothing to do with this anymore. I just want to tell you that I'm sorry. I think I understand now why you always reacted the way you did. I'm sorry I let his description of you color my mental image of this girl he left me for. You weren't an ice princess or the cool girl. You were another smart, beautiful girl that he enchanted and then hurt. You weren't really different from me, and I'm so sorry I ever hated you.

If I did ever meet you, my questions would all be selfish: Did you move on? How did you move on? When did you stop worrying that you'd never meet someone as charming, as creative, as fun, as sexy, as all-compassing as him? Was does it feel like to breath again? 

Surface Area

It's the same old thing. Every part of my body hurts everywhere, almost all the time, and I can't make it hurt less, but maybe if I decrease the surface area, it won't hurt in as many places. Maybe that doesn't make any more sense than, "I stubbed my toe, so I might as well cut off my foot."

But it is getting more clear, inside my head. I'm starting to feel a little emptier and the space inside my skull and inside my organs isn't so swollen. I think I've only cried hysterically once in the last week. That's the longest it's been since May. I know that the emptier I feel, the quieter I feel, and the less I can feel in general. This is the only thing that makes the humming stop.  

I have a hard time telling myself in the bad moments that it won't always be like this, when Gideon shuts off and I can't feel him, or I can feel him, sinking into the other side of the bed. I should start tracking it, somehow. I don't know how I manage to keep myself from vibrating out of my own skin. The best way I can think of it to just...lose a little skin, at least. That's the most I can do. I might not be able to crawl outside of myself, but I can at least decrease the surface area.

This could all be fine in five hours. Or it might already be fine. Or it might not be fine for three days. Or never. I have no way of knowing. Times like this, I can't tell where the diseases end and where I begin. I don't feel like a person, just a vibrating, crying, soft, exposed nerve ending. Wires spitting at the break. I worked for eighteen months to develop an identity, and in the last four weeks, I lost it all again.    

Unreliable Narrator

Living with someone with Bipolar Disorder (2) is a little bit like living in a book with an unreliable narrator. There's Gideon. Sweet, normal, fun, affection, passionate, brilliant, creative Gideon. He likes writing, he likes basketball, he doesn't mind his job.

Then there's manic Gideon, who wants to run away to California and publish his novel in two weeks and quit his job to write full time and play twelve different sports and drink and flip his truck. Manic Gideon wants to get married next week and start a family, buy a house in the country and raise goats and have his own garden and fuck and fuck and fuck. He wants to go back to college for a degree in musical theater and start his own landscaping business.

Depressed Gideon is the worst. Depressed Gideon is apathetic. He doesn't love me. He doesn't hate me. He just...doesn't care about me. He shakes when I touch him. He cries when I look at him. He forgets to eat, leaves cold cups of coffee on the kitchen table, stares at his computer screen. Stares at the television screen. Stares at my face, mouth agape, while I sob and beg him to "just be nice." Depressed Gideon never loved me. I was just convenient, an escape plan.

He eventually cycles out of whatever phase he's in, holds me, tells me everything is okay and it wasn't real, not really him. He didn't mean that. He's sorry that it hurt. Some things he says are real. Some aren't. But in the moment he's saying it, it all seems real. And somehow, I'm expected to hold three truths at once.

And he didn't mean it. It was unreliable. But when you see a disease talking to you through the mouth of a person you live with and love, who you know loves you, it's devastating. You look like Gideon, but you don't talk like Gideon. Learning to separate the disorder from my very wonderful boyfriend has taken mental jumping jacks on a level I usually reserve for babying my own anxiety and neuroticism.

Is it any wonder, then, why I'm back?

Gideon's seeing a physician; he's diagnosed. He's medicated, takes his mood stabilizer, which he hates, because even though it helps control the mania, it makes the depression that much worse. The mania, statistically, is more dangerous. It could get lead to a manic break, a full-blown psychotic episode, and get him involuntarily hospitalized. So it's more important to treat the mania now.

I have a hard time, sometimes, remembering that as much as I feel like I'm suffering, and as much as I feel like I want to quit, it's somehow even worse for him, because it's inside his own brain, and he can't leave it. Gideon, when he's himself, he's the best thing that's ever happened to me. But sometimes I don't see him for a few weeks, or even a month or two. And it's weird, sharing a bed with a very cruel, tense, weeping, cursing monster with your lover's face. I know it's his disease, not mine; it just hurts. He knows it hurts, but I'd rather get this out here than lay this on him too. I'm sorry for anyone who takes offense to this pity party. I just don't really have anywhere to go to sort it.

So, is it any wonder, then, that I'm back?

Growing, up and quiet

My last post was in August of 2012. Since then:

I broke up with Blake, even though he was possible the best influence in my life over the last several years, and unfailingly kind. I've been stick sober since July 19th, from anything and everything. He even convinced me to stop taking my anti-depressants and flush my anti-anxiety medicine down the toilet (literally, I even took a picture). I haven't spoken to Becka since that day, either, and I can honestly say I don't even think about her most days.

I got that job at the gym chain. More than that, I was hired on immediately as a "baby" manager and I've since received a promotion, plus a big kid's salary, as a full GM. I'm very proud of my work and I do sincerely love my company. We do good things for people and they treat me well.

I haven't seen my family since I was home over the summer. My aunt tells me that Dad has four new white spots on his scan, but he's still totally functional and I don't think MS bothers him most of the time, as of now anyway. My brother's about to graduate from college and I'm so happy for him, and his girlfriend. My mother is still living with her parents on the farm, probably still dating her piece of shit boyfriend, and still doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. I'd resent her more if I didn't pity her first.

I've been dating Charlie for about three months. It's a pretty quiet affair. I'm busy at work about 50 hours a week, and he's got his own complicated life, but we make time for each other. We met very briefly at a bar while I was still with Blake, and though nothing came of it for several months, but eventually stumbled into a relationship, for which I'm happy. He's a good person and I'm grateful to have him in my life.

Charlie was part of a hotshot crew for three years, until he was in severe dirt bike accident which almost left him paralysed and severed a major nerve in his right shoulder. He wants nothing more than to get back to fighting fires, but it could take months or years before his arm's healed enough to carry a chainsaw. He does everything he can to take care of his body and I've never in my life met someone in better physical condition; but he doesn't do it for vanity - he wants so desperately to get back to doing what he loves. I know he's typically more frustrated than optimistic. Sometimes I think I have a hard day, but then I see what he puts up with and it doesn't seem so bad. I think we provide each other with some respite.

Academia and growing up

I'm making some pretty big changes in my life. The biggest? Dropping out of my grad school program. I'm not happy in academia and according to my advisor (and myself, if I'm being honest) I'm not cut out for academia either. She let me know, bluntly but tactfully, that I didn't have the chops to get into a Ph.D. program. When I started crying, it wasn't because I was mortified that my dreams of over a decade were crushed; it was because I was thrilled to finally be able to breathe again. Oh my god, guys, I don't feel like killing myself any more. Do you know how fucking crazy that feels? For the first time since October of 2010, I'm not suicidal. I actually want to live. And I'm tired of being a student.

I'm ready to grow up now.

I'm done seeing Becka, altogether. Things just got too chaotic and I cut that thread. I'm better off for it.

I have a new boyfriend, Blake, who completely supports my changes and is, if at all possible, the most positive thing about my life right now (though I'm pretty optimistic about all of it.) He understands my issues surrounding food and exercise. He's had problems with drugs in the past and he's more than willing to stay clean with me. It's one of the most major commitments of our relationship; (I know, statistically speaking, that this might not happen, but pessimism won't get me anywhere). He's got a good career ahead of him. I really like this guy and I hope we're together for a long time.

And, I have two job interviews lined up: One with a gym and one with a supplement chain. I'm happier than I've been in a year and a half.

Being happy is better than being sad

Happiness is a choice. I know some of you might not believe me, but with the last two years of my life finally under my belt, finally processed and stripped for meaning, I can honestly say that I choose to be happy, no matter what happens to me, around me, or because of me.

I'm just as committed to starving as I ever was, but it's for a sense of purity, not necessarily because I don't feel like I have any other options. It finally doesn't matter. You have no idea how long it's taken me to say those words out of peace, not in anger or desperation. It doesn't matter. It does not matter, I do not care.

It's like I've found this hidden ability, this new super power that I had all along. It just took a lot of humility to finally release it. I'm doing this for me, not because I feel like I have to, or because I think it will magically make my life better. I'm doing this because I want to do it for me.

Crave

I've been back in my home town for the last two weeks. Going back was a mistake. I can never seem to remember that I always leaving feeling worse than I did when I got there. I ate too much, like I always do at my Dad's house. I stayed out every night. I drank too much. I don't even like alcohol. I slept from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon every day. On account of all this, I'm looking even more tired now than I did before. But I'm proud of how my arms look right now, even if I've been slacking on my work outs. I'm also happy to report that I'm no longer an almost-A-cup. I'm an A-cup. I feel like I can see the difference between this photo and the last few I posted, especially in my face. Let me know. Click on the "photo" tag for comparison's sake.

[Photo Deleted due to Formatting]

I'm sort of happy to report that I didn't smoke much there. It's no fun without a partner, and Becka didn't come back with me this time. The only reason I brought it back was for Luke, and I didn't use with him. I used on the ride back home, but that's only because it's hard driving through four states by yourself without falling asleep. I could have made the whole trip in one shot, but that would have looked suspicious. I don't crave it like I used to, anyway. I don't crave anything, except maybe sleep.

Oh, and I finally had sex again. First time in two years. Someone new. But more on that later.

Lately, I've been texting more often with a girl I met on Red Bracelet Project (if you haven't been there, check it out). She's my age, height, about ten pounds lighter, and miraculously, a mother of an infant, but aside from that minor difference, we have similar behaviours. She's really motivational. Her name is Adrienne.

I care less now about my life than I think I ever have before. When I said goodbye to my parents before driving the 20 hours back here, I really meant for it to be the last time. I can't think two days into the future, let alone three months or a year or five years. I just can't see anything. I'm officially committed to starving now, more than ever.