it’s recently been coming to my attention how a lot of people in my life think i’ve gotten through this… thing. who cares what they think? but it does matter, because right now it feels like my identity. i know i need to shake that. hazy.. everything seems hazy.

my mom went on her first date since my dad last monday. last week she let it slip that there was someone interested.. i encouraged her. she was surprised and very emotional about it. “we just want you to be happy.”

life certainly is weird.

2010 is coming to an end… and i’m not going to be sad to see it go. 2010 has been the hardest year of my life. hands down. i remember last year when people were telling me happy new year i was just wondering if i’d live to see the end of it. sounds melodramatic, i know.. but i really didn’t know.

been struggling with my boyfriend. god i love him. i’ve been too dependent.

i’ve recently realized that there are two very separate things i need to work through. there’s the anxiety and flashbacks and depression and fear and all of that.. the memory of those 3 months last year… and then there’s also just the fact that i lost almost everything. school. friends. job. everything and everyone that inspired me… there was a lot. i lost myself. i threw it away. and i don’t say those things to beat myself down. it’s just the truth. i do believe i can come to be inspired again, i do have hope, but i also know it’s a long road. and there aren’t any guarantees…

if i don’t post again before, happy new year’s everyone. remember love.

At this time last year I was moving forward, maybe feeling a bit agitated, but passionate.. happy. But certain things were falling into place that would prove to be pretty harmful..

Mostly because of good things. I’ve been busy and that’s good.

I’ve been working third shift which has been really hard, but overall good. I’m also still playing a lot of music with my band and things are going well with my boyfriend too.

So in terms of “functioning” I’ve still been making a lot of progress. I know there won’t be a moment when I feel “better.” I know it’s not as simple as that. At some point though I think I will gradually realize that I have found a bit of peace again.. and passion… Until then I just keep pressing on.

I read an interesting article yesterday about a man from Milwaukee who died just last spring. Parts of his story were strangely similar to mine, but overall our situations are a lot different. He, too, had been largely successful until his early/mid 20′s and then for seemingly no reason just crashed. I struggle with that a lot.. wanting to “recover” but not really being able to say what I am recovering from. It is so hard to find understanding. In a sense it was comforting to see that I’m not the only one…

Some days the world seems so dark and everything seems… distorted and ugly. But then I thought of Jimmy, the neighbor across the yard who plays with all the neighbor kids, pushing them in the shopping cart from… where was that from? He’s always wearing shorts and a tank top. I can’t make out much of what he says but I don’t need to because who he is speaks more volumes than my life ever will.

So I think of Jimmy, and the world seems a little brighter.

He said that he thinks maybe it’s more important to keep the faith…

yet he’s an atheist.

I made an appointment with a different psychiatrist who I have heard good things about. I’m really happy about that…

My dad gave me copies of this paper tracing some of our family all the way back to the 1600′s. It’s interesting to see what my ancestors did…

My old roommate (and one of my very best friends) was asking me about the music situation. She brought up an interesting thought.. which is that a couple of years ago after I took a trip across the country I was really contemplating dropping out of school to just live and play some music. I didn’t end up doing it… but she mentioned how it’s funny that sort of happened anyway.

Man.. I don’t understand why I’m always so wound up at this time of the day…

Song of the day: At the Hop by Devendra Bahnhart.

Music music music. I had a show with the band on Thursday and Friday, my own show on Saturday, and Sunday recorded all day.

Had a rough couple of weeks with my boyfriend… but I definitely think it’s okay now.

I’ve just been trying to figure out too many things that aren’t necessarily meant to be understood.

I have a slight case of insomnia… started when we increased my effexor to the highest dosage. It seems to be helping but many nights I don’t fall asleep until 4 or 5 or later in the morning. Saw the doctor this past week and he gave me Ambien. I was a little frustrated but at the same time…

And lately at certain times I felt semi-numb… like I could still feel the pain but also felt sort of…. “off.”  You could even say I’ve felt lonely lately but that probably has a lot to do with my hermit-like tendencies….

My old roommates just moved out of the apartment we lived in for 3 years .I went down there last Saturday to help clean. Even if it all hadn’t happened like this it still would have been hard moving everything out of there. I had a lot of good times there… and as I walked around the apartment, I couldn’t help but recall some of the funny memories or things that took place there. I miss them a lot.

But..life continues.

Lately I’ve been realizing how often I worry or think about how I don’t want to end up like my parents… I think about how I could avoid it…

Lots of interesting stuff lately… will write more later.

PS: this post really reflects how my mind has been working lately… just so scattered and…

PPS: I almost forgot the song of the day.. (or post, whatever.) Anyway, the song is The Stable Song by Gregory Alan Isakov. It’s where I got the words to the title and first sentence of my post.

I’m learning more and more about love…

and how even when you’re worn out by your love’s actions… angry, or even hurt, you are no less in love with him.

Not so long ago I think one of the words that best described me was passionate.

One of the things I was most passionate about was… being alive, as awake as possible. I had some idealistic dream for us all to wake up and realize what a gift life is, how beautiful it is.

And now…

I feel like in a way…

The days are just passing me by.

But so many days I have to fight so hard to just get through that

I just don’t have the heart to fight for even more.

But I guess at heart I’m fighting for just that, to wake up again… to remember that beautiful things are felt even when hurting, when things just don’t make sense.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this… It’s just weird, I still remember things from those three months that I had forgotten… Not even just memories, but feelings, almost flashbacks.

Summer hasn’t quite lived up to what I had set high hopes for… yet in its own way it has brought gifts I hadn’t even thought of before. There have been hots days of swimming, warm nights of sitting under the stars, more and more music… and yet…..

Well, I’m certainly drifting… which I had wanted to do in a way.

There’s so much more to my story than I had ever expected.

I like to play the role of peacemaker. I like trying to look at both sides of an issue and trying to understand where each side is coming from…. a lot of times a problem is just a riddle…

When I was growing up, especially during adolescence, a lot of things were going on in my family. I was blessed with a very good childhood- secure and loving and the like, but around the time I turned thirteen it all sort of fell apart. Slowly. I was sort of the wallflower… watching but always keeping my feelings to myself… shunning the little attention I got… But so often I would be called in to help pick up the pieces. Many times I would mediate….

My twin brother, Nathan, has special needs. I’ve written about him before… While he is delayed in many ways, he also can be very mature and smart. He has been having more emotional issues the last few months… fairly often. He and my mom will just have these long. loud fights. Nathan loses his temper and starts breaking down and what I see from my mom is that she yells back and loses her cool as well. I guess I don’t understand it. The worst idea to calm someone down is to get upset as well and start trying to fight over something that’s usually really trivial. At the same time, Nathan can really push her to the edge and he’ll say things that are so disrespectful.

So today they’re screaming at each other and I just told Nathan to lie down (the fight actually sort of started concerning how hot and humid it’s been here.) And I separated them. My mom was really upset… After I talked to Nathan I went downstairs by my mom and noticed she had this notebook out that she uses to plan her finances and she was looking at it… Nathan helps pay rent here with his social security and if he moved into a group home she would have to move as well.

I played peacemaker again. When I left Nathan was giving my mom a hug and apologizing.

But it’s not over. Because after Nathan apologized there was no … talk. No conflict resolution. That’s the best time to sit down and figure something out… instead of just ignoring it.

The elephant in the room.

Just like my mom ignored how horrible her marriage was for years and years…

The elephant in the room.

So I guess in a way it made me feel sort of nice to feel like the strong one again.. the one helping to get to a solution or at least sort of.. disaster relief. But.. I also know that when I left here to go to Milwaukee originally I grew a LOT because I was away from this sort of thing.

I’ve also come to realize that no matter what, I will never be able to express the depth of the pain I was feeling over the winter. There is no way. Anything I could say or write or sing would not reach… And no one will really grasp it. I try not to, but sometimes I remember. I remember lying on my bed in Milwaukee, completely beaten and alone and helpless.. so afraid. I remember getting a text from my mom and realizing that the answer to “why keep going?” was so simple… the answer is love. I remember throwing stuff in a bag, driving and just screaming and crying at the same time. I remember sleeping next to my sister… I remember… being cold, so cold, all the time. I remember slowly letting go of everything.. including the things I loved, that gave me joy.

I am not saying no one has suffered as much as I have. I do wonder though if reaching those depths of despair is just part of growing up.. but I don’t think that it is. But I know there are things I will never understand about how others have experiences whatever it is. And that’s okay. But sometimes I start feeling like a broken record trying to explain it…

See, I try to forget. But I don’t. But everyone else does. So while these things are haunting me… others seem confused or surprised.

So I guess it’s just frustration in…. expressing myself.

Frustration in the regression of things…

after five months of not having my own room… I finally do.

Sleeping on the couch was actually a comfort at first… for like the first month I preferred it. Then it became a little annoying… mostly just not having anywhere to put my stuff. Frustrating even.

But my sister moved out on Friday and I started moving my stuff into her old room. It is SUCH a relief, but at the same time so very bittersweet.

It’s like the last chance that I could subconsciously feel like this was just one long weekend at home is finally gone. It’s so final.. unpacking all my stuff. Feels good… but … really sad too. A lot of this stuff I haven’t seen in months and months.

God sometimes it feels like there is so much to grieve. But it’s steadily getting better… and in a sense I’m excited for the future in that it’s so wide open at this point. Even more than before…

I’m starting to realize that sometimes I have more social anxiety than I realized before…

Music.. art.. nature…

sorry for the rambling.

I’ve always been a really good sleeper. I’d read for a while and fall asleep… and I’d do my best to get seven or eight hours a night.

These days I don’t sleep well at all. Sometimes I wake up and feel like I didn’t sleep at all. A lot of times I just plain can’t sleep.

“So there still is hope,
Yes I can be healed
There is someone looking for what I’ve concealed
In my secret drawers, in my pockets deep,
You will find the reasons that I can’t sleep
And you will still want me…
Will you still want me?”

I’ve been doing a lot better since I wrote my last post. I still need to get my life in order and work to make more and more progress… but I’m going in the right direction.

It’s so important to look at your life, figure out what you can and can’t control, and try to make good decisions.

Good decisions…

I’ve been doing okay with that the last few months. I did make a lot of horrible decisions before I came back here though… with effects that I still feel every day.

I’m adjusting to this new way of life… learning to live again. Learning a lot about love.

It’s hard…

but still so worth it. Love.

The way you think… the way you feel… it controls so many things. I know that if I don’t BELIEVE I can get better, I won’t. I know that if I don’t fight the anxiety, the thoughts… they’ll beat me every time. Sometimes they’ll beat me even when I do fight… but I’ll keep fighting anyway.

“So hold up your fist
To the flame in the sky
To block out the light
That’s reaching for our eyes
Cause it would blind us…”

-Bright Eyes