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.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

One, Two, Three

I'm awake
I'm showered
I'm drinking coffee

Just this, is hard.
Just these three things, took hours.

I'm sitting in my backyard, the sun is out. I can feel the breeze, so I must be alive, right?
I just saw a butterfly, so I have to be real, yeah?

This isn't life, what I'm doing. This isn't living.
This is barely surviving.
I'm not even doing this shit on purpose, it's just happening to me.
I'm putting in zero percent at this point, and yet I've been waking up everyday.

I'm not fighting or struggling, but for whatever reason my beast won't fucking just take me already. Maybe it's just not fun for him this way, no challenge. But I'm giving in, I'm doing what he has wanted all along.
I'm here, I'm ready.
Take me, please take me.

I sound like the whiniest shit bag of a human but I don't fucking care.

1 comment:

UnknownApril 30, 2016 at 6:10 PM
<3 -Zandi
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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