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.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

I got all of my studying done the for the next week--the whole week. This shit just doesn't happen to me.

It feels really good. The difficult piece is that every small victory like this one reminds me of all of my past failures. Every time I've been so paralyzed that I was unable to study anything at all. Every time I've watched the clock, knowing that with every moment that passes I'm closer to missing a due date, a class or a shift at work. Every time that I've convinced myself that I can sleep forever.

It's undeniable that successes like this can be taken away at any time. Today has been remarkable but it's unlikely to become part of a pattern. I have yet to figure out what the magic number is but I'm sure that after so many of these small victories a devastating loss is guaranteed.

It's fucking bullshit that an accomplishment should bring with it so much fear.

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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