The Beast: A Diary

I was diagnosed bipolar when I was 14 years old. During one of my mom's pep talks on one of many mornings that I refused to get out of bed and go to school, she said to me "Isabel, you can't let the beast win." And thus the affectionate pet name for my lifelong companion, my illness. I believe we all have our own beasts, and we struggle with them in our own ways. This blog is a record of mental illness, and the memoir of a beast within. This is a story about a girl and her beast.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

YOU

How do I explain?
How do I make you understand how important this is?
To me? To my life?
To those like me?

How do I make you care?
Care enough to change the way you feel?
The way you treat me? And those like myself?

I am consumed by thoughts of this
I think about it everyday, all of the time
It is so big, this illness of mine
So big it could swallow me up whole
Some days I drown in my thoughts of it

Do you know what that feels like?
Do you?
DO. YOU. FEEL. ANYTHING.

You're reading this. I know you are.
So say something
Anything
about it. Any of it.

Or you are just like anyone who has ever called me
crazy
nuts
psycho
overdramatic
sensitive
emo
possessed
selfish
self-centered
intense
moody
weak
a drama queen
a liar
a baby
a bitch

Acknowledge me and my experience. Can you do that?

2 comments:

KatieFebruary 1, 2014 at 1:49 PM
I acknowledge you!
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IsabelFebruary 1, 2014 at 1:56 PM
Thanks Katie, that feels nice.
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"my beast comes in the afternoon he gnaws at my gut he paws my head he growls spits out part of me.

my beast comes in the afternoon while other people are taking pictures while other people are at picnics my beast comes in the afternoon across a dirty kitchen floor leering at me

while other people are employed at jobs that stop their thinking my beast allows me to think about him, about graveyards and dementia and fear and stale flowers and decay and the stink of ruined thunder.

my beast will not let me be he comes to me in the afternoons and gnaws and claws and I tell him as I double over, hands gripping my gut, jesus, how will I ever explain you to them? they think I am a coward but they are the cowards because they refuse to feel, their bravery is the bravery of snails.

my beast is not interested in my unhappy theory—he rips, chews, spits out another piece of me.

I walk out the door and he follows me down the street. we pass the lovely laughing schoolgirls the bakery trucks and the sun opens and closes like an oyster swallowing my beast for a moment as I cross at a green light pretending that I have escaped, pretending that I need a loaf of bread or a newspaper, pretending that the beast is gone forever and that the torn parts of me are still there under a blue shirt and green pants as all the faces become walls and all the walls become impossible." -Charles Bukowski