re:read

by

Wow, I’m really not sure where all the time went, or where I even went.

I just read back through all of my posts – all of them, and I have no words.

If everyone around me witnessed the craziness that was my life as it was written, I can’t believe I wasn’t admitted at one point.

Oh wait, a doctor did try really, really hard to admit me earlier this year. But that’s just a tiny tidbit of fun you guys have missed out on while I’ve been on a crazy, unintentional hiatus.

(By the way, there seems to be something about my parents’ basement. It’s where I do a lot of writing and reflecting. Maybe I should come back here more often just to get a freaking scope of things.)

Okay, well seeing as it has been over six months since I last posted, here is a very abbreviated version of what’s been going on:

– end of 2013: changed out roommates, began living with my best friend and another close friend (spoiler: doesn’t end well.)

– beginning of 2014: decide it’s a good idea to take 20 credit hours and start working at the paper again. For anyone who hasn’t gone to college, the average college course is 3 credit hours, and the way they figure up a credit hour is how much time you spend in class and how much time you spend doing the work outside of class. Three credit hours is taken by most institutes to mean 45 hours are spent in the classroom and 90 hours are spent outside of the classroom on that subject during one term/semester. And I took 20. I also began working at the paper again as assistant news editor. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

– also beginning of 2014: started seeing a psychologist again through the local hospital in my college town, despite my horrible experience with the first one; this one turned out to be a little better than the last.. he didn’t charge me at least.

– um, the months run together so we’re getting out of this list for now.

I started seeing the psychologist really toward the end of the spring semester, I feel like. It’s all such a blur that I can’t really remember. I remember going to see the counselor at the University and she referred me to him practically ASAP, mainly because I hadn’t slept in days. The guy tried to have me admitted basically on the spot, and I refused adamantly. I WAS NOT going to the 2nd floor of that awful hospital (psych ward.) After calling my roommate and making her promise someone would watch over me for 24 hours, he gave me meds and an excuse from work and classes and sent me home. I took one of the pills and slept for the next 24 hours. No exaggeration whatsoever. It knocked me out and I swore I wasn’t ever taking those meds again. I believe that might have been a real manic episode, not just hypomania, and I think the doctor thought that too. He bumped my diagnosis up to bipolar I but I haven’t had any other crazy episodes like that since.

I managed to finish the semester somehow.

OH.

I also managed to finish the semester without drinking. I stopped drinking January 5 and didn’t drink for 5 months. It was crazy, and that’s a whole ‘nother post in itself.

As I saw this psychiatrist, I also started seeing an affordable substance abuse counselor. Between the two of them, I had a pretty good thing going for a while.

Until my eating disorder came back full tilt.

When I quit drinking, I was automatically consuming  hundreds, if not thousands, of extra calories each week, and my weight began to drop.. quickly. I also began working out per the advice from my SAC, and with the help of my best friend began eating very healthfully in an effort to maintain my out of control moods.

Three pounds, 5 pounds, 8 pounds.. it was a bad thing. 3 months and 20 pounds later, everyone around me freaked – again.

I was really starting to get sick of everyone panicking around me. I wrote a while back about how someone catching me in a moment of mess sent a thrill of satisfaction down my spine, but that wasn’t the case with this.

As I’ve written before, my eating disorder was/is/will always be MINE. It is nothing that other people have any business getting into, but by losing so much weight (for my frame) so fast, I basically opened the door and invited everyone into that crazy party. It’s only been within the last month that I’ve really, really tried actively to fight it again. In fact, I’m meeting with someone from Eating Disorders Anonymous tomorrow because I think I’m going to start attending their meetings.

Everything is pretty timey-wimey all through here, and I apologize. Between my moods and the food obsession, everything seems so.. strung out and far away. Even though I know these things happened only two months ago, they feel like another life time at this point and it’s still difficult for me to piece back the timeline.

Somewhere along this clockwork whirlwind, I stopped seeing the therapist. I skipped several appointments with the psychiatrist; at one point, I was only going because that was how I knew how much I weighed. (My roommate had taken the scale away at that point.) I finished the semester, and then took three summer classes, all of which are finished now.

I also relapsed, again. Drugs and alcohol seemed to fill the void – oh this dreaded word, again – as I tried to extract the eating disorder. As history goes to show, I just can’t let myself be: there’s got to be some destructive force chipping away at my life force otherwise, I’m obviously not content.

Whew.

And now I’m here. I just got back from spending about a week with my boyfriend. We spent the 4th of July together, the first one for us. Even though we’ve been dating for nearly three years now, we still have a lot of firsts to come. I had a good time, and I didn’t want to come back. I told him so, and when he asked me why, I said “I feel better here.”

His damn response?

“You can’t run forever, Lauren.”

Where the hell did I find this guy? Why does he always seem to say to me the things I need (but really, really, desperately don’t want) to hear at the precise moment I should be hearing them?

So there’s the last 6+ months. There’s a lot I could go way more into detail with, which I’m sure I will at some point.. although now is not that point.

I need to try to sleep, because being with him messed up my sleep schedule as he’s working nights currently. I should really get back on track and this isn’t the best start.

Good night, all. More later, I promise (as I always do, yeah? Let’s find out if I’m better at keeping my word yet.)

Economics.. ugh.

by

I’m in the middle of trying to do economics homework. Not working, because I’m really having trouble wrapping my head around these concepts. Which is ironic, because that’s the topic of what I want to write about for a minute.

How are you supposed to truly explain something to someone if they just can’t wrap their head around the concept? 

In this situation, I’m not talking about economics, but my condition and my boyfriend. He absolutely, positively does not understand what it’s like to have your moods run your life. He doesn’t understand that his advice to “just don’t think about it” is literally the opposite of what I have to do to keep my life under control. He tells me, “You’d be surprised at how much control your mind has over your mood and body.” 

I’m not surprised, because I understand that entirely too well. I have to constantly monitor how I’m feeling, what I’ve been doing, my actions, my moods, my thoughts.. if I were to just let them go, I’d end up where I’ve been in the past, and that’s not a good place. I’ve learned this isn’t something that’s going to go away, and it’s not something that can be ignored. It doesn’t have to run my life (which it’s not right now, I’d like to point out) but it also can’t be something I sweep under the rug anymore; it’s just not possible. 

According to him, “the normal person doesn’t consider any of this. They just go day to day.” 

When he realizes I’m not a normal person, what’s going to happen? When it finally gets through his head that this isn’t something that will go away or lessen, what is he going to do? What’s he going to think? 

I’m terrified of the answer. I’m scared of what will happen when we don’t have a long distance relationship anymore, what happens when he is here to witness my moods, my habits, my.. crazy. There is nothing normal about this situation and it’s making me sick to my stomach.

Have any of you had problems like this with explaining your disorder to friends/significant others/family members? How am I supposed to fully explain to him that this isn’t something I will grow out of or that will fade out in the future without scaring him away?

Return of the Mack

by

//Get up, what it is what it does what it is what it isn’t, looking for a better way to get up out of bed instead of getting on the Internet and checking the new hit//

Number 1) I love Macklemore. Namely Otherside, Neon Cathedral, and Starting Over. Along with just about everything else he and Ryan Lewis have put out.

Number 2) I’ve been gone for a while. Kind of a long while. Lots of shit’s gone on, but I’m sure that surprises none of my regulars. In my life there is always one thing or another going on, and even in the midst of the calm I am doggedly searching the horizon for the next disaster. So that brings me to

Number 3) I’m sorry I’ve been gone. Not only because it’s resulted in me falling out of touch with several people on here with whom I genuinely enjoy regular correspondence, but I’m sorry for me, because this is a healthy respite from the ridiculous ramblings that happen within my head. Laying out the phrases and spiderwebby ideas that continually flow from my cerebral cortex is a way for me to recognize what really matters because I find the words that float from the depths to my mind to my fingers are the ones I truly need to either get rid of/read again/say “outloud” (yes, outloud is relative here, but fellow bloggers will understand typing out words that pain you is almost as cathartic as using your larynx and producing the sounds.)

Anyway.

I really don’t want to regurgitate the same bullshit I do every time I get back on here.. how much I’ve been drinking, how hopeless I am, how much I miss/love my boyfriend, the things I want to change but can’t, blahblahblah.

I think I’m going to try something different ant talk about the good stuff happening lately. As I am a fan of the list form, that is how I will do it.

1) I got a job at the local daycare, and I love it. I’m in the infant & toddler room, which is a little unnerving. I haven’t spent a lot of time taking care of newborns and their little jello necks and unfocused eyes make me kinda nervous sometimes. They feel so fragile to me so I’m so careful, then I see their parents come in and just whip them around willy-nilly ha. It’s a new experience but luckily the woman who is training me is very nice and understands to have the experience, you’ve got to get the experience. She’s quick to show me how to do things and (so far) is tolerant of my repetitive questions and showing me how to swaddle the little ones (which is a lot harder than it looks!)

2) I quit my job at the paper. I’m not sure that I’ve talked about it, but I’ve been writing for the school paper for the last two semesters. It’s a LOT of work and while I enjoyed it, the stress was becoming too much. I began to wake up on Thursdays (assignment day) and Mondays (deadline day) with a feeling of dread immediately building in my stomach. It would be 8:30 am and although deadline was 5 pm, I would begin to panic and my head would spin and everything would go downhill from there. So I quit. I have to write my stories for this week and probably one next week, then I will be finished and honestly, I’m pretty excited. I confessed recently to my boyfriend I might have been holding on to the job because it gave me an outlet for more friends. I spent high school being unpopular and friendless and I’m determined to not do it again in college. His response, of course, was what I expected: being unpopular doesn’t correlate with how many friends you have. 

Sigh.

I know, I know, I know. Those things do not correlate. Not having a thousand fake friends doesn’t mean I’m not a cool person. But still, isn’t it kind of nice to have those fake friends sometimes? You know they’re not real, but it gives you somewhere to go, somewhere to belong.. eek. Okay pause, focusing on the good.

Good number 3) I really like living with my roommate. She’s one of my best friends and it’s really, really working so far. I love her and we have so much fun together. She’s also one of my friends who has no problem with telling me to get my shit together.. or off the living room table, in the case of living together. There may be one downside, her own emotional struggle, but I’m hoping that instead of dragging each other down, we will buoy each other. I’ll keep her from snorting salt water as long and she’ll keep me from getting my hair wet, which we both know I absolutely DESPISE.

Um. Good number 4) My boyfriend tells me he loves me on a pretty regular basis now. Each time he says it, especially the times he says it first, just nudge the little glowing fire in my heart I have for him and it burns a little brighter. He means the world to me. The end.

5)… I saw Macklemore in concert. It was pretty great.

6)…

I think I might be out of happy numbers on my list. (Also I’ve been writing this post for three days now.) So I think I’m going to post this for now.. this way, you guys will know I’m alive and I’m letting you know now you will have something to look forward to again in the next few days.

Stay tuned, friends.

re:lapse

by

I messed up, guys.

Like really, really, really messed up.

The last two months have been a whirlwind of finishing classes, alcohol and pills. It has not only been bad, it’s been horrible. I’ve been battling myself and I lost.

I thought I had the words. I’ve been waiting and waiting for them to come, and they almost did. They’re almost here. I just need patience.

Have you ever

by

been on the edge?

Ready to take that step, take that plunge.. ready to drop yourself into the ice cold ocean in which you’re not sure you can be saved?

Have you ever been ready to throw everything possible away because you can?

Ready to lose everything for that rush, for that feeling you miss but wish to hell you didn’t?

Have you ever? 

To be an addict encompasses so much. 

Fuck.

An eternity in waiting.

by

I know it’s been so long and I’m really sorry about that. I think about the time I fell out of touch with this blog is about the time I fell out of touch with reality. I don’t know what’s been going on the last few weeks with me but.. end of story, shit sucks. 

I moved into a new house with two new roommates, an event I am enjoying more and more as each day passes. They’re heading back to Wisconsin tomorrow though, and I’ll be here for the summer by myself. There’s a very good chance that isn’t a great idea. I suppose if I survive it’ll be somewhat of a miracle. 

Right now I kind of feel like going to sleep and not waking up. I did something very bad last night, very very bad. Honestly, I did the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do and I hate myself for it today. I hate myself even more for it because I don’t feel very guilty. 

I’m just sipping on Jameson and ginger ale and trying to get a handle on things. I think a few more muscle relaxers might make it easier to handle. I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain right now. This is indeed an episode and it’s a very, very bad one. I haven’t taken my medicine in several.. possibly weeks and my mental state is now paying for it. 

If you know this is happening, why don’t you stop it? says my friend. 

Because I don’t give a fuck. says me. 

Heart palpitations + alcohol + this music + this mood. I may renew my friendship with the x-acto knife before the night is over, if only to make myself cry. I think if I could just cry I’d be alright. 

 

Uh. Yeah.

I didn’t mean to spew all of that via my fingertips. Between the fact that it’s like 32 degrees in my room and I’m having a crazy out of body experience, my language skills are less than satisfactory right now. I’ll be back sooner than a month again, I promise. Maybe later tonight, or tomorrow. We’ll see. I just know I need to get back on the right fucking path and this is most definitely not it. 

Bottles.

by

I live in bottles. 

That phrase has been bouncing around my brain for the last 48 hours. I’ve been mentally.. narrating my life, or something, since my last post. I’ve been conscious of the fact that I’ve wanted to write something, but until today, I literally lacked the ability. I fell into – practically tripped and landed face first with my arms full of sharp objects – a horrible depression. It was sudden and unexpected.

Sometimes the depression creeps. It rolls in like a fog. This was a summer thunderstorm. It came out of nowhere, the rain of shame torrential and stinging my skin. The lightning flashed – I was blinded – the thunder shook my bones – I was terrified. So what did I do?

I got drunk. Didn’t take my medication, because I’m not supposed to take my medicine with alcohol. Just.. bad. Made bad decisions, hated myself. Cried and wandered the streets because I was too drunk to drive. I ended up on my friends couch with a pounding headache and a stomach clenched with regret. I had an intense 12 or so hours. And after that, I got in my bed.

I stayed in my bed.

I thought.

And you know what I thought?

I live in bottles.

Pill bottles, bottles of alcohol, bottles of makeup. Bottles of water, bottles of lotion, bottles of nail polish. I dwell in glass receptacles, plastic containers, delicate vases of storage.

These bottles run my life.

They make me stumble, they open up my mouth, they take off my shirt. They let me color inside the lines, they refine my appearance. I paint and prod and slurp and gulp, I depend on these bottles. Without these bottles, I lack things.

I lack sanity.

I lack numbness.

I lack a sense of self.

I. Hate. That.

I refuse to believe that I am 21 years old and already dying before I’ve even started living. I refuse to think that I am wasting away my life and my body, that I am painting myself for the war that our society wages on me and thousands maybe millions of people just like me. I fucking hate those bottles. I hate drinking. I hate depending on the 30 mg of this, the 100 mg of that just to function.

I gave myself a tattoo. (Bear with me here; this is not a random transition. Well, it is.. but just wait. I’m going somewhere with it.)

I gave myself a widdle stick and poke tattoo on my wrist. I’ll include a picture. I’m quite proud of it and what it means:

tattoo

It means I’m not giving up. It is just four, small circles. Which is why I did it myself. Don’t worry, I sterilized the needle, used clean ink, blah blah. Also, I’ve been slicing myself open for over five years and I’m not dead yet. I don’t see how poking holes and adding ink is going to make a different.

Anyway. Moving on.

It means I will not give up. My boyfriend keeps telling me: your past is your past. And I know that. I know the past is the past. Duh. It can’t be anything else.

But.

I realized he said that because the past is why I live in bottles. I escape to bottles of rum and vodka because that is my “fail-safe” way of numbing myself. It’s the way I “deal” with things. I crave those white tablets out of the green pill bottle because that is my past. My past is creating my own oblivion and disappearing into it when I don’t feel safe. My past is a fucked up sexual development and a stymied sense of who I am. That sounds cheesy as fuck, but I don’t know. Hence the bottles of makeup.. the cover up, the enhancing solutions. I don’t know who I am, so I create it. I create myself and so far I haven’t liked it.

I’ve been floating from break down to break down. I claw my way out of the black turmoil that is depression, and those first few breaths of calm are heaven. The first few hours out of the blackness are bright, they are beautiful. My vision is crisp, smells and sounds are vivid, bright, intoxicating. I’m fucking alive.

Until I’m not.

Oh, right, so the arrow?

I am moving on. Time goes on whether I want to die or I’m flying high. (Ha, I’m a fuckin’ poet, and nobody likes a sentence that doesn’t end as they POTATO.) Days pass. Hours fade. Life slowly dwindles away. And while those precious grains of sand are sinking through the hourglass, what am I doing?

I’m fucking sniveling. I’m whining. I’m drinking myself into a stupor because I made a mistake.

Are you fucking kidding me? 


Twenty-one years old, and dying.

So I’m stopping. I’m climbing out of the bottles – all of them – except the necessary ones. I will take my medication. I’m going to go to class. I’m going to fucking succeed, because at the end of my life, I’m still going to be here. I’m still going to be me. I don’t want to look back on this time and regret everything that I’ve wasted. I refuse to regret any more because I’ve done enough for a couple lifetimes. (Speaking of lifetimes, I’m pretty sure I used to be a cat. As in, a past life. If those are real, I was definitely a cat. I’ll talk about that another time though. Cos I think my original line of thought was rather serious.)

Ahem.

Constellation. Arrow. Bottles. Right.

I am moving forward. I understand this disorder is not going to go away. I have over the last year watched myself – as if from a third person viewpoint – go up, down, way below down, when-the-fuck-is-she-going-to-stop-down, and then all the way back up and beyond up. I’ve wanted to die. I’ve hated myself. I’ve cried and cried and cried.

I fucking hate crying.

It hasn’t fixed a damn thing. The alcohol and pills.. I wasn’t managing shit. All I was managing was to keep fucking up my life. I admitted to my best friend my methods of “sanity” haven’t exactly been working. They’ve been.. maintaining? I’ve been coasting. I’ve been making excuses.

I feel like that opiate addiction commercial, because this is my moment. This is the moment that I decided I’m better than this. Yes, I have a mental illness. Yes, I am an addict. But I refuse to lose.

Sigh.

Have you had enough cheese with your whine tonight? Because I feel like that post was the equivalent of a ninety-cheese macaroni with a bottle of Bitchey. (If you say that with like, a French accent, I think it makes it kind of funny.)

In the end, I want to finish this post by repeating the first sentence, with a tiny itty bitty baby tweak.

I lived in bottles.

I lived in bottles for over half of my life.

And never once did I meet a genie. Boy, did I get gypped.

Fell off the earth.

by

I was gone for a bit. Not on purpose, but mostly because I find it difficult to write lately. I’ve struggled with my news stories and putting down any kind of written word, fact or fiction. Anyway.. it’s spring break now. I’m in Louisiana with my boyfriend. I have to leave tomorrow to go back home, and I hate it. I hate leaving him, but I honestly feel like he might be ready to be alone again.

I don’t know why I get that feeling, but I do.

Today was wonderful. Actually, the whole weekend with him has been pretty great. He was recently switched to nights (11pm-6am) and it actually worked out in our favor. We hang out, he goes to work around 11, I stay up for a while, fall asleep, he comes back between 3 and 6. Not bad, cos then we both go back to sleep and wake up around noon or so and do things until he goes back to work at 11. Today we went to the boardwalk for dinner and it was just really nice. It’s been chilly while I’ve been here but today it happened to be sunny and the wind died down so it was really beautiful. We ran errands, walked around the boardwalk.. it was great. I forget how playful he can be but days like today remind me.

Sigh.

Honestly, I wish I didn’t have to go back home. Friday night we went to his friend’s house (a married couple.) They just found out they’re going to have a baby, and they’re pretty excited about it. They’ve been trying for a long time. As much as I don’t really care to have a family just now, I wish I could get married. I wish I could marry him and move down here. I’d be content seeing him every day, even if he wouldn’t want to see me every day. I miss him so much when I’m away, but it somehow seems I miss him even more when I’m with him. I’m a thinker.. I just think too much. When I’m here, I think about leaving. When I’m gone, I think about being away from him. So in all reality I just miss him all the time.

I’ll write more later when I get back home, but for now I’m going to curl up in his bed and read some more Harry Potter. I’m reading the fourth one again. I tend to start with the fourth one and read through to the seventh. I don’t like reading the first three for whatever reason. It might be that I’ve already read them so many times. I’ve read the first through fourth tons of times and the fourth through seventh tons of times, but I enjoy the latter half better. The first through third is just.. ugh. I can practically quote the entire books haha. I’m a Potterhead. Oh well.

Back into the Goblet of Fire we go, time for the Yule Ball! Good night.