Do You Believe in Magic?

It's strange how sometimes I forget that my experience is unique. I don't mean in the way that everyone's lives are unique; some will never know mania or depression. These are emotional states that many can't begin to fathom. How can you understand or relate to something that you'll likely never know? I don't blame them, of course, how are they supposed to really and truly get it? And it's not like I've found a way so far to translate or make it comprehensible. Not that it's my job to do that anyway.

Sometimes I feel like a tragic unicorn. Bear with me for a moment, okay? There's some magic to it, right? I have an understanding and experience of emotion that is not widely understood. I experience emotion within a spectrum, a continuum that I have yet to find the boundaries of. I have a foot in the door of different emotions all at once. Time passes and sometimes I have forgotten the day or the month and the only way I can figure it out is to work my way backward through a cycle. What day was it that I stopped sleeping? How many days has it been since I left my house? These are questions I ask myself all of the time. It's hard to know what's me and what's my illness, as I think my beast illustrates. But I hold onto the belief that I wouldn't be as self-aware or emotionally intuitive without it.

Last night I went to class, shaking uncontrollably and overwhelmed by the people I found myself surrounded by. It always feels like everyone knows. I'm harmfully aware of my speech, body movements and all of the other parts of interaction. I become so afraid that I'll give myself away; am I talking too much? Is this the fourth of fifth time I've moved in my seat? This goes on for a while.

Today, I've done exactly what I told myself I wouldn't. I'm at home when I should be in class. To miss class won't ultimately harm my grade, I'm still within the allotted absences for all of my classes. But it's another time I've broken a promise, one more time that I'm giving myself less of a chance.

I miss the days that I wrote poetry, here. I haven't done that in a while. And I still haven't found a way to encourage people to talk to me about this. Ask me questions, tell me stories--I want to hear them. I want to know that I'm not alone.