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.

Monday, November 17, 2014

A Smaller Existence

Sometimes I think I'm not meant to exist beyond my bed, or the couch in my living room. That doesn't always bother me.

Days like today I am pulled in separate directions. I wouldn't mind staying home; it would mean being productive but also protected from whatever I am convinced is outside waiting to hurt me. At the same time I am afraid that I will never be more than what I am inside these walls; I am pain, I am disappointment and I will lose everything I have worked so hard for.

I have chosen not to go to school. This is not the first time and I'd be kidding myself if I said it were the last. Only a few moments ago I was sure that I had too much anxiety about seeing other people but enough motivation to do my schoolwork if I stayed at home. Now I am sure that I have made a huge mistake. I have stopped doing the one thing I had said I would do: show up.

I could have pushed past the anxiety and gone. I could have just sat myself down and studied this past weekend. I am so full of bullshit. I am an excuse. I am a pretender.

When am I going to grow the fuck up and fulfill my obligations? Be accountable for my actions?

I feel sick to my stomach and I hate myself so here we go again.

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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