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, June 5, 2014

Home Again

It has been such a long time since I have written anything that means something. I don't know why it always seems to happen like this. I become so overwhelmed by living my life day to day, that I don't feel capable of expressing that to another person. I am rendered speechless. Days turn into weeks that turn into months and then when I feel a lack of meaning in my life I realize it is because I have forgotten to give it any.

This blog used to give meaning to my life. My beast, he meant my demise, but struggling against him meant something to me. Survival has been my purpose, my only reason to persevere. I have wanted to survive.

When returning here to write something, I asked myself where I should start, how I should speak for lost time.

This is all I've got:

My beast has not been vanquished, but I am claiming my life as my own.

He is not the reason I want to begin again here. This is the dedication I am making to my own self-discovery.

He is me and I am him, but then again, not at all.

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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