Cyclothymia

I don't know what's wrong. I should be happy. I have a great job, a great boyfriend, and a great group of friends. But I get into this place where I think about how much more I could have done, and then I remember that I'm only 24 even though my overanalyzing brain makes me believe that I'm much older. It's my dream to be on Broadway one day, and I have no idea how to make that a reality. There's this idea that if you go for your dreams and fight for them no matter what, you will get what you have always wanted. I heard that, but to be honest, I always just assumed that things would be handed to me. I am more spoiled than I thought I was, and not because we had a lot of money or anything but because I am entitled and always wanting more. There are days when I do just want to get wasted and blot out my fears and anxieties, though I know that has proven to only make it worse. I think that I have Cyclothymia, but I don't know how to ask for help. Should I ask my medical doctor? My counselor can't prescribe medications, and I don't even know if I would want them if they're going to have negative side effects. I have already gained a lot of weight because of my unhealthy eating habits and lack of exercise. Is it possible to be depressed, because I don't have a lot of free time? It just sucks that I don't have time to exercise anyway, and then it's the last thing I want to do when I have free time, though I know it's necessary. And I am just aching for a release from this constant overanalyzing. I wish that there was a way to just step out of my brain for a little bit. That's what music does for me, and then I start thinking about Broadway and performing and I get stuck in this rut of "what-if"s and regret. And then it's like my brain doesn't want me to experience being happy. It is used to the crap, and so it gets stuck there and won't let me leave. I had a plan to move to New York at the end of the summer, and that was my plan for a while. I told my Bible study and my friends. I emailed everyone I know there to see how it would be possible. And I think I would love it. I would thrive there for the most part. Then the other part of me, the depressed part of me I guess, would not thrive and would isolate and scream and hate myself and want to move back where I would be surrounded by friends. I am afraid of the cost of an apartment. I am afraid of picking up and starting a new life. I am afraid because I don't have much savings, and I don't know how I would afford living in a place that is my dream. It has always been my dream to live there, if I'm going to be completely honest. I've only just started verbalizing it. I've only just started talking about it. I'm young, but I feel much older than I am. I've slept with a lot of people, drank a lot, and turned my brain into a pleasure-seeking machine. I'm out of that stage now, and it's interesting to feel older, when really I guess my brain was stuck in autopilot negativity for so long, so shouldn't it be the opposite? I feel like I have done enough thinking for 10 lifetimes, so maybe that's why I feel older. I ruminate on things and overanalyze things and start getting anxious about lots of things and panic and get upset for not being in New York City. It is my dream to live there, and I think I will make that a reality next year once I get put on some medication to manage my symptoms and my distractedness and irritability. It's to the point where I don't think I can manage it anymore. I haven't been doing that well. I haven't been eating well. I haven't been exercising. I don't think that a medication will magically change that, but it may give me some motivation and change my brain chemistry. I do well for a while and then sink back into the mess that my brain is used to. Maybe blogging regularly again will help me.

We Keep Going

I have Matt Nathanson's song, "To the Beat of Our Noisy Hearts" stuck in my head. I'm gonna have to start bringing headphones to work. It completely evades me how people can be organized and get things done promptly. My brain is swarming with thousands of things. I keep expecting to wake up one day and just have my shit together. Apparently it doesn't work that way. I get chills every time I make up a song. I know God has called me to be a songwriter. I'm just scared. I don't want to mess up. I don't want to give up. I think I'm more afraid of giving up than anything. When I was in middle and high school, writing was my way of getting everything out, my way of coping. Until I learn to accept myself at that age and not judge who I was, maybe I won't be able to fully engage myself in writing. I'm too afraid that it won't be good. Addiction stole that from me. It was the best release ever. I wrote incredible poetry, buried in journals and notebooks from way back then. Then I found alcohol and sex and forgot what it was like to have a healthy release. Alcohol can't steal any more from me now. I can't be looking back all the time, but my future is unknown. It's hard to put one foot in front of the other when I feel like I'm walking in the dark. And I love music. I always have a song in my head. It takes a huge risk to number myself among the songwriters and musicians I have so much respect for. I want to hole myself up in my room and write. I just want a break from responsibility. How free life was when I was just a kid. It never felt that way, though. I always felt trapped, like I had to follow rules that these adults made. I wanted to grow up and be independent. Now that I am, I don't like it very much. I guess I just have to suck it up and keep living. I felt the wind tonight and saw the stars. They reminded me that life is such a gift. That's what music does for me. It opens up my soul to receive beauty in a way that I can't when I'm sitting in silence. I have this standard of perfection in myself that I don't know how to fix. I REALLY need to go back to therapy. I can feel the pressure of everything weighing on me, and it is threatening to erupt at any point. I know the things that are healthy for me but don't do them.

Sobriety

There's a song I absolutely love by Kevin Devine called "It's Only Your Life." It talks about addiction and how this life is ours "to fix or ruin 'cause no one else is gonna do it."

I've "[gotten] back with [my] black hole": sex addiction. I would say that the alcoholism is secondary only to my preoccupation with sex. Many people have misconceptions about what that looks like. For me, I use it as an escape. I don't masturbate on the bus, and I would never harm a child. My addiction involves hooking up with men in an attempt to run away from real life. I am not nearly as promiscuous as I was in college. Right now, I am involved with only one man, someone who I definitely should not be involved with as we are both in recovery. I know it's wrong. People in ThirdPlace have pointed that out to me. I feel pretty lucky to have people who care about me more than I care about myself. It's really hard to be motivated to change when I don't really think that I'm worth the effort. It hurts to say that. Maybe if I come up with some goals instead of floating along with whatever comes my way, I will feel more like my life matters. When is it gonna start to matter to me? I'm waiting for some huge thing to happen in my life to wake me up and jolt me alive. This is my life right now. I had a rough go in college, and I have the opportunity to turn my life around. I am free from restrictions - I always felt like I was in a sort of prison when I was growing up, because I was bound by rules and regulations. Now, I am creating my own prison. It is not so easy to be sober from everything. I don't like exercising, and I don't want to smoke again. I suppose I could replace my addictions with performing music or painting. I haven't given myself the chance. I have been running away from myself in every way possible. More importantly, I have been running away from God. I get into this cycle of behavior that is very hard to just jump out of. My feelings become overwhelming and I look to what I know as a sort of escape. I wonder if God will ever be that escape for me, if it will ever feel comfortable to look towards Him.

For much of my childhood, I dreamed of growing up and being with someone who thought I was incredibly beautiful, smart, etc. Turns out that there are a bunch of men who think this, and I took full advantage of this in college. When I was gang raped at the age of 4, I thought that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow bad or dirty and that's why they decided to do that to me. Not much has changed in my thinking. I still think of myself this way. I would never tempt a man of God unless I wanted to tear his ego down for some reason. There is a lot of power in sex, and I became very good at wielding it over men. I know this isn't fair. I know a large part of me hates men for what happened to me. I have this book called the Purity Myth, about how this idea that women are supposed to be pure virgins has done a lot to destroy our concepts of ourselves when we don't remain pure. I have so many books on my list to read, and this is one I would like to pick up again.

Growing up, they always told us that having sex before marriage was wrong, but I never understood why. It destroyed me when I was in college. It's destroying me now. My goal is to one day start a ministry for female survivors of sexual abuse within the church. It's not enough to tell us that sex before marriage is bad. For those of us who had our virginity stolen from us, we need to know that there's a way out, that there's forgiveness. At 23, I haven't worked through a lot of these issues, and that's largely because I didn't talk about it. It was a taboo subject. I am finding so much freedom in sharing it more and more. My sharing it doesn't change how I view myself. I used to be obsessed with guys noticing me and telling me I was beautiful. I was so focused on my external appearance (and still have trouble with this), that I couldn't accept any compliments about my inner beauty. I feel broken and worn out on the inside. I know there is a solution in Christ. I don't feel ready to accept His love at this point, but maybe soon I will be ready.

Oppression

I'm in a much better mood than when I last wrote, though I am a bit concerned about finding a sublet for my apartment. My lovely roommate has 3 people staying with her this weekend, thereby preventing me from showing potential subleasers a clean apartment. Oh well.

I just discovered a recap of Daniel Tosh's January episode where he had a guest appearance by Antonio Dodson, aka the brother of a girl who was the victim of a break-in and was almost raped. The whole episode was dedicated to making fun of rape, it seemed. I am thoroughly disgusted with our media and our society. I want to escape, and I want to stand up for victims even more. Sometimes it seems like a losing battle when people in power and in the spotlight are sending messages that rape is okay. It's not okay. It will never be okay. It's existed basically since the beginning of time and is probably not going to go away, but I envision a world that recognizes that women need to be respected in the media. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this concept, because I haven't seen much that would make me feel hopeful for the future of media. It's going downhill. And why? Because people with money, people in power have the privilege of saying and doing anything they want to do.

This show was aired in January. It should have been taken off of the air after this episode. I think the saddest part about living in a society that is based on and attached to oppression of those who are less privileged is that I have come to expect it. I'm not surprised they didn't take the show off of the air. And this makes me very sad. Oppression works very slowly - the enemy is sneaky. It slips into humor and then becomes acceptable to joke about it. Then it becomes acceptable to perpetrate. Oppression is never justified. That the jokes are acceptable is the problem. That people laugh at the expense of others is a problem. I feel lucky to be surrounded by friends who don't think that's funny, but staying in a bubble is not going to address the problem. I need to find a way to act instead of escaping from reality, as is my tendency.

Drinking and Sex

My two favorite vices - how did I get so lucky?

I am painfully wanting a drink. It's 12:00 AM on a weekday night and I want a drink.

I slept with someone in AA. It wasn't worth it. I know why people warn against it. It made me feel like shit, and now I want a drink to make it better.

I feel out of control, like my life is completely turning upside down and I have just been along for the ride. I'm not sure how "normal" people deal with this kind of thing, but me - I sleep with someone or drink it away. I loathe myself after doing both of those things, but man what I wouldn't give for a six-pack. They say in AA that the first drink could kill you. I wouldn't doubt it. The way that I want to drink would probably do the trick. Sometimes I want to die. Lately I have felt so powerless to dictate my own life that I just haven't really cared either way.

Jared and I had a breakthrough in my healing from the abuse in my past last night. He's the only guy I trust. He's the only person who I let get that far into my psyche. I feel out of control.

I keep trying to change my circumstances so I won't feel so crazy. The reality is that I have almost no control in my life and that 1. Scares the shit out of me and 2. Makes me kind of angry.

I don't know how to cope in a healthy way. Next on my list is probably starving myself. I've done that before. Not for long. Just long enough for me to forget a little bit about what's going on. I am tense. I don't know how to get out of this rut. I need to paint. If anyone was wondering, painting is perhaps one of the most relaxing ways to get out stress. I don't exactly know what caused me to hit this breaking point. Oh yea - I remember. I slept with someone. And I feel empty. And I feel used. And I never want to do it again. Ever. How am I ever going to have normal intimacy with my husband?

Healthy coping mechanisms:
Pray that God would wrestle my addictions for me every day.
Running
Painting
Blogging
Writing
Crying
Singing

What do I do when I just don't have the strength to fight anymore? When the face I show to the world is beginning to have huge gaping holes in it? I can cover them up for only so long before everyone will start to notice. I am falling apart, at least right now. But just for this second. Already I am starting to feel better, and tomorrow is a new day.

23

When I was 18, my ideal age was 23. I figured then I would be out of college without a care in the world. I was listening to Relient K today, and it got to the 23rd song on the Birds and Bee Sides album. I realized that 23 is not what I thought it would be. I get wrapped up in my own shit a lot of the time. My brain goes around in circles. Chad described it very well the other day when he said that he thinks so much and his brain goes on 10 different roads at the same time. I have been picking the negative, lacking road for the past few days. A lot has come up from my past, seemingly to bite me in the ass and remind me of what a terrible person I am. But in reality, I am a new creation. No matter how I feel, I am Jesus' child. And nothing can harm me when I am in His arms, not even my past. And especially not my past! It doesn't exist anymore.

I'm listening to Jimmy Eat World right now - first 23, now Futures. I forgot how good they are. It makes me kind of sad, because "Futures" (the CD) reminds me of freshman year. That was such a different time. There was so much that was new, so much hurt that I had never experienced before. I found solace in music and hanging out at the HUB and football games and movies with friends. What a great time that was. As much as I hated myself when I was immersed in addiction, there were some really good times when I was sober. That crew from freshman year was amazing. We had so many people all in one group that all loved each other. I'd never experienced anything like it. And now, here I am in another amazing community (ThirdPlace!). I am trying not to dwell on my past - I am not that person anymore as much as I'd like to prove myself wrong. I messed up this past weekend and hooked up with someone (no sex) and was surprised at how much I hated myself afterward.

Night Drive - good song. I listened to this song while I was getting ready to go out. I remember the view from my dorm and working on English papers and just being young. I just realized that I agree with the first step in AA - I admit that I am powerless over alcohol. Something in me clicked while listening to this song and thinking about freshman year. I was alcohol's slave. I did whatever it told me to do. I could not control my reaction to it or how much I drank or any of that. This is no excuse. I could have caught this before, and I did. I didn't get serious about quitting until my therapist pointed it out to me. Then I realized that it's not okay that I was using it as a coping mechanism.

I miss Dan. It has been really hard to let go of him, not only because I was basically in love with him. He was there for 4 years of memories for me. I met him freshman year, when I was relatively innocent and naive. But Grace is right - I am constantly thinking about the good things in our relationship. I can't think about the bad, because it never was that bad. Unrequited love is extremely painful. I want the best for him and wish him well. Of course today, when I felt out of control with my living situation and the fact that my past was coming back to haunt me, I wanted to call him. I just want to know that he's there. I've done this to him before. I stopped talking to him for something like 3 months last year. It's not that I was giving up on the relationship. It's just that I couldn't do it anymore. Loving someone who doesn't feel the same is draining. And I always felt like I was manipulating him into loving me. Friendship wasn't enough for me. Maybe I'm in a different place now. He hasn't reached out to contact me, and I have no idea how he feels. I want to know how he's doing and how school went, how his trip up here was. He was always Dan, my favorite, my good friend, the person I wanted most in the whole world. I hope he understands. I hope he knows that I just couldn't do it anymore. It was too painful. I really want to tell myself that I'm ready to be friends with him again, but I don't know that I am. Hearing people talk about New Jersey opens up a wound. His high school was in a movie I watched on the plane back from Rwanda ("Win Win"). I need to write about Rwanda, by the way. My brain gets stuck on the Dan road, and that's all I can see for about an hour.

Rwanda was incredible. I wouldn't even know where to begin. It might be a good idea to copy down my journal in this blog. It is a little too painful to evaluate it at this point. I was talking to Amy tonight about it - the hardest part of coming back is getting used to the same routine. It sometimes feels like just a dream. I haven't fully processed it yet. I was in Africa! I need to spend some time processing it.

Maybe I shouldn't be listening to Jimmy Eat World. It brings back SO many memories. Feeling what I felt back then is weird, because I was a different person. I kept some perfume from back then and it just feels like such a different place. Mark said that Dan's okay, so at least now I know.

Jesus

The thing that blows my mind is that Jesus can save us from ourselves. I was very very very close to sleeping with someone last night. I haven't been digging into the word, and I have been gradually slipping closer to giving into sexual sin. It's my number one vice. I was using the language with him that I used to use, getting into the dark corner of my mind and not looking back. He fell asleep last night in his car and then we had an inappropriate conversation. Then he slept through when he was supposed to come over this morning. The sad thing is that I met him a week ago, and I didn't want to be more than friends, but he texted me and so I thought it was a great opportunity to have someone to snuggle with. My roommate has someone, so I thought it was okay for me. It is decidedly not, as I learned last night. I am so grateful for my friend Kari who knows the struggle. Luckily, this guy had work all day, and so I texted her and she was SO wise and SO sharp with me that I was finally jolted back to reality. God is working really hard on me right now. I am absolutely not doing anything to ruin what He has for me, and I am not gonna let some guy come in between us. He loves me so much, and He even died for this sin that I can't seem to shake. But IT NO LONGER HAS A HOLD OVER ME. And finally I am surrounded by people who would be affected if I fall. That's the thing about community. If one person falls, we all are affected and we all work to pick them up. God is bringing me into a place of beauty and leadership. I honestly dodged a bullet last night, and now I know this is a vice I can't beat on my own. I am like a spider, like a temptress who will not relent until she gets what she wants. Kari might be the only person who could have talked me out of it in a way that was relevant. I am so grateful for her. I am so grateful to God for putting her in my life. I am so grateful for the new life that I have in Jesus. I don't have to prove my worth to men. I don't have to identify myself by who I am in bed. I AM NOT A TEMPTRESS. I certainly used to be. There are former strippers and prostitutes who are serving the Lord. I am decidedly and 100% not that person anymore. I AM A CHILD OF GOD. I am tired of holding onto lies and identifying myself by who I WAS rather than who I AM in Christ. Praise His holy name. He is always always pursuing us even when we get ourselves into messes.