This Thing

This thing, this thing is following me, it’s in my head. Head that’s where it is, in this messed up place that controls my thoughts and my most inner being. That screwed up faulty place. That’s where this badness is, and it’s not been caused by some awful childhood. No bullying at school, no messy parental split, no emotional or physical abuse, this never ending spiral is all of my doing. Its my head that is cause of the fault, and its my head that is the fault. The cause and effect in one place. This thing that makes me go up and down, in the same very way that the tide goes in and out. This thing, it has the ability to cause destruction, to cause the end of everything. This thing is everything and nothing. Nothing, nothing because you can’t see it there can be no tangible evidence of its existence and everything, everything because it’s the undoing of me. The end of me, that’s what this has the capability of doing.

Repairing the Wreck

I feel like I am playing catch up, catch up to all the years I have lost to crippling depression. Catch up with my peers, catching up with the many milestones I have missed. That is what this mood disorder has done to me, or that is what it feels like it has done. Catching up with having interests, catching up with nights out, catching up academically.

 Now, now that I am able to think in this clear way in this way without depression around my shoulders I can see what I have missed. And now, now I am catching up. Last year at the leavers ball I was one of the select few who didn’t bring a date, didn’t because I had become so rapped up in myself I didn’t have anyone to take, and this year. This year I have. This year I hope is different, different enough for me to catch up with all I have missed. And you know I am trying because, because instead of bunching it all up inside I am trying to let it out. So when I feel bad I don’t need to put on a fake smile and retire early to bed. So that, so that these two Hannah’s that seem to have been created will become one Hannah. Not the Hannah that I allow everyone to see who pretends to cope and the Hannah that no one can meet who sits in bed and plans those unplanned thoughts. To create the one Hannah who has bad days, but can cope with those days and, and who doesn’t retreat into herself. That’s what I am trying to do, to recreate what I was before I turned into a wreck. Instigate these changes, changes that my dreams enter. But still I fear, fear because I know that this wont last, in some time in the future I will return to the wreck, return to those well trodden ways. Because that’s what bipolar is, it’s the cyclical moods, the up and down. 

Wild Creature

The feelings they have abated and the plans been left unplanned. The dirty mist has lifted and I am turning away from it. Away because, because for now I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to talk about it. To pretend that it never existed. For today I am a wild creature and tomorrow I am lost again. And, and when that tomorrow comes and the dirty mist descends. Then I will see the mess, and think about the unsaid, and plan those unplanned thoughts, and attempt the attempted many times again. And then it will make people worry, and then I will be a shell of myself. But, but now. Now this mist has lifted and in this wonderful way I can walk to lectures, and go on romantic days out with my boyfriend. And today I shall indulge in my wild creature ways. And, and when I am lost again. Hopefully I will remember this, this clarity in the air, and this, this ability to see a path in front of me rather than stumble amid the cloud. This ascent, this ascent is not anything more than it is. It is me, embracing this gap that has opened above me. And when it closes, it closes. But until then I shall be a wild creature. 

Dirty

I have left it again. Returning to this place, with caution in my head, there seems no way to start again. There is so much left unsaid. Unsaid because, because I can see no ways to put it into words. To describe what has been happening in this head of mine, or to explain this raw like feeling that has seeped over me. I can think of disconnected words that feel like it, but to try to understand it, and then explain it here.

It all seems like too much. But this silence here, it’s unearthly. That repetitive circle that all my thoughts seem to go in, it’s been left uncharted here. This place, this place was left behind because I couldn’t work out how to make it catch up. Let’s just leave it that so much has happened that you can’t catch up on. Just understand that things have been changed irreversibly. Plans have been unplanned and then planned again, and there is this feeling all over me. Dirty.

The Vulture

Its coming down, I am lost. Again. False smiles. Underworld. Dead meat. Suicide motel. Today I am a wild creature, and tomorrow I am lost again. Black swan. Forest fires. Dead wheels. Good times will never return.

The Bid

Black hole is where I have been, chucked down and spat out. The black hole is where I tried to be. I left for skiing with this foolproof plan in my head, and, and now. Now I know that the plan isn’t fool proof, its not anything, its nothing. Nothing enough for me to get that close to the black hole and to be dragged out by a hospital. I know that I took enough, I knew that it was going to work, it was going to work. Work it would. But, but when you stop eating and drinking for long enough you collapse, and if you collapse at random in a pub its normal for a friend to take you to hospital. That is the mistake, it was, it wasn’t the pills, or of me being scared but my body not having enough energy. That’s the fault in my black hole bid.

Exile

I am going skiing in the morning. A week of white wonderful snow. Just a focus on the next turn, the next life, the next run. Focus on the glowing white. White. White. White. Snow is white, white and wonderful and cold. Banishing the woes that fill my head. Banishing it all to a miserable grave. Banishment, that is where I am going. Exile to the wonderful white. I will be back next week. I have much to say, much to say and think. Things are bad, but, but if I write it, if I write it its real and then I have to commit to the awful path, the awful path that is consuming me. I am banishing myself and my parents worry. This time last year will pass me by. It will as I am in exile.

Letting It Happen

I have lost my place, lost my grip, lost it.  I know I have, and it’s spiralling, spiralling out of control. I’ve known this for a few days now. It’s all added up, one thing on top of another on top of another. Life without medication is pretty hideous, I feel like I am in a car, I know the brakes are not working and that I am hurtling out of control I know what is happening and am incapable of stopping it. But of course this is how it feels and not how it is, because I know how to fix my breaks, I can fix my brakes with the swallowing of my pills. But I am not going to fix my breaks; I am letting the car roll on.

Can’t Sleep, Wont Sleep

Haven’t known what to write recently. It’s all the same, not as in Manchester the same but overall impression of everything. It’s the same old same old. The wake up, stay awake, go to sleep and repeat. I’ve done some pretty stupid things recently- the medication test. I knew what I was letting myself into I just wanted to test that I really do have some form of a “mental illness”, the results have been very much in the region of your ill. I can see that, and I cant blame this crash on anything but my medication test I entered myself for, and I can see that I am ill but I don’t want to do anything about it, I don’t want to get the pill boxes out and take the pills like a good little girl.

I am angry, really angry. Angry with myself, myself for being this way, myself for stopping taking the pills, angry that, that, I am just angry. Disappointed with myself that there is a guy who I like and he seems to really like me to, but, but whenever anything happens I have to make it stop because, because my legs are a mess. I am angry that when he stays over I cant sleep and, and however much he strokes my hair or whispers sweet nothings in my ear I still wont sleep, and the reason I wont sleep is because I am not taking my medications, therefore I don’t have the antipsychotics and sleeping pills to knock me out.

Its It

I went to my exam today, that’s all I have done. Ticked boxes labled A to E and went back to bed. Things are awful. Awful, awful. Its dawned on me at last. And is not depression awful, its this whole thing. This Manchester, this university, this all. I can so easily throw it all away and I don’t know what to do, its so easy to drop out the difficult thing is to start again. I don’t know if to phone my parents and ask them to come and collect me, to drop out and to resign, resign to all of this. I don’t know how much longer of here I can take, this horrible room with just myself to battle this with. I just don’t know what to do anymore, don’t know at all. This place, it was meant to be my future, my better, my clear start. But, but its all starting to become too much,  I have slipped to far down. This place, this place is hell, and pills wont solve it, nor will talking, this isn’t mental illness this is me. I am just not happy here, not remotely ok. And I don’t know what to do. Because giving up here, it is not just leaving, it’s the end of so much, of the family tradition to go to Manchester, or the family of successful people who don’t give up. Its all I have dreamed of for the last two years, and all I have worked for, its what drove me to be discharged from hospital and to continue to take medication. I just don’t know what to do anymore.