Dreaming IRL

Is this a fucking joke? Is this real life?

Before I started taking medication to help me sleep, I never dreamed. Or I never remembered them, not since I was very young. Then I had only one dream, a nightmare that lasted for two years.
Now, I dream almost every night and often remember them vividly. Sometimes people I have known a very long time ago, or not very well are in them. Sometimes I do not even make an appearance. I wake up too soon, or in the case of nightmares not soon enough. But I always am hoping that the answer for them will appear to me when I least expect it.

In just the past few days, my life has felt like a dream that I am unable to wake up from. It is senseless, although all of the people I know well and in places I am familiar are present. I was on shaky ground already, I know. But I had things to hold onto, solid things of which now I am unsure and do not trust.

I am in shock. I am in mourning, for all that almost was and now will never be. Wounds I thought I had healed from are being ripped open and I don't know how to stop the bleeding. I don't know how to do anything else but feel this way.

Somewhere inside me, I know, is a will to survive. Always a survivor. Like my mom and the other women in my family. My sisters, aunts and grandmothers. Warriors, each of them.
We have survived and so will continue to because it is all we know.

let-your-hair-down, road-trip-across-the-country type of women
strong, “We didn’t need him anyway” living kind of women
always there to catch you when you fall super women

It's just hard, you know? Each time you are shaken to your core. You are broken and must rebuild. It doesn't get easier like you might think it should. It doesn't always teach you something or make you stronger. It just is and it's hard and it's happening to you.

What I will do for Love

I think I've been manic. I don't know for sure, which is new. I guess it looks different now, with meds and everything. I've been shaky, paranoid and productive---I'm especially suspicious of that last one. My skin itches from the inside, buzzing like it's an electric current, instead of blood, that runs through my veins. The worst part is my heart; its beating is fast, but so very heavy that it hurts. And sleep. Oh how I miss sleep. Even with my sleep medication, it seems like it takes me longer to fall asleep every night.

But it might be all of the coffee. And the stress of school combined with my determination to pass my classes. This may actually be very normal. I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't know.

It's unfortunate that whatever this is, I'm not going to get to know it very well. At least for right now.

Did you know that I would do anything for my family?
I'm willing to sacrifice whatever this thing is for them.

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by my love for my family. But it's a scary thing, love. Isn't it?

A Portrait (Or Two, or Three)

I read an article the other day about a photography series a woman named Liz Obert is producing, called "Dualities". The series is a collection of coupled portraits of the same person. In one photograph, the subject is shot in a way that represents their experience with their mental illness. In the other, they present themselves in the way they present themselves to others. I'll link it below so you can see what I mean.

I've been thinking a lot about the article since I first found it a few days ago. I have been trying to conjure up images of what both of my portraits would look like. I'm still unsure. Am I only limited to two? The article and photography series specifically addresses depression, but I don't feel like it fully encapsulates the experiences of other mental illnesses. While each person and their life experiences vary greatly, there are also specific symptoms and behaviors that characterize each mental illness. At least for me, I feel like I would need three portraits. One to depict what my depression looks like, another for what my mania looks like and then possibly a landscape photo to show all of the ways I try to "pass" for "normal".

My depression is me, completely hidden from view underneath my blankets in my bed. The sheets ruffled like waves in the ocean and clothes piled high throughout my room like jagged cliff edges. Maybe I could convince someone to put on a fuzzy suit and be my beast? They'd probably end up looking more like a team's mascot (Go, Isabel, go! Fight, Isabel, fight!) than a beast that comes for me when I least expect it. I'm cocooned in my blankets and unaware of how close he is. His claws linger over the blanket as if he is about to rip it to shreds. Drool forming at his mouth and the almost human-like grin an intruder on his muzzle. That is my first portrait.

In the second, I am completely alone. Maybe I'm walking directly in the middle of the freeway at night, the bright lights of cars on either side of me illuminating my ghostlike figure so that I actually become invisible. Or sitting on the rail of a bridge, pointing my toes into the open air as if I'm stepping on the whole world. My eyes are vacant and I'm stick thin, my flesh is eating itself. I look as if I could break into a million pieces at any moment. But I'm smiling a huge merciless smile.

The third, the way I present myself to the world: I don't even fucking know. I guess the person I'm working so hard to become, especially the more unrealistic expectations I have for myself, is what I want people to see. I want them to experience me as the best version of myself. But I don't know what that actually looks like and is it important anyway? I'm never going to be perfect and that is what it comes down to. That's what I want. I recognize (to a certain degree) that my own view of myself is warped. It is not entirely accurate and can't be trusted. So making a list of all of the things I try to be for other people would probably just lead to a mental breakdown. I can never measure up, that's the whole problem with having such high expectations of myself. I'm not meant to. I'm pretty sure, some part of me set it up that way. So I'd keeping working so hard to prove to myself, my value. I will never be all of the things I want myself to be and by extension feel that I am not what others want me to be. I don't know if I have ever managed to "pass", to be anything other than what I am at the moment. I guess that's the important piece though, isn't it? To come to a place where I can accept myself for who I am at any given time.
So maybe the third would just be a black space, open and timeless. Maybe that's all I can do.

I'm probably not making any sense. I guess it's a good thing Liz Obert isn't trying to take my picture.

What do you think? What would your two portraits look like? Or would there be more than two?

Link to the article: "Dualities"

Spiraling Down and Showing Up

The last few days have been reminiscent of this time last year...and the year before...and the year before that. Starting to see a pattern? I definitely have.

I think that this pattern has a lot to do with the change in weather (it's dark from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep at night), midterms and self-fulfilled prophecies. Mostly those prophecies, man. Those are killer.

What if I'm struggling so hard right now because I have been saying that this would happen? Maybe by saying winter is the worst time of the year for me, I have made it the worst. If I've been expecting to hit this low point for so long, doesn't it make sense that I would jump head first, down into it?

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Telling myself I've chosen this is hypocritical. I can't remind my mom so passionately that if "I could choose to do something different, I would have already", if I'm sitting here, right this minute, questioning whether or not I brought this on myself. Or maybe it's a combination of both?

I have a tendency to detach myself at the first signs of failure, although I admit I tend to read into those "signs", things that are not actually there. I miss a class, an assignment or piss an hour away instead of studying and I decide that it's all over, that I couldn't have done it anyway. I'm afraid of failure, I recognize this. That realization doesn't mean that all of the sudden I'm going to be able to push myself to do things that I don't think I'm capable of. It doesn't work like that, like magic.

The worst part, I guess, is that sometimes I feel powerless to stop it. I see myself spiraling, I see me screwing myself over by sleeping through a class, binge watching Gilmore Girls instead of reading textbook chapters or stuffing my face with leftover Halloween junk instead of getting off my ass and out of the house to get groceries. I know what I'm doing to myself, I know that it's harmful but I give up and give in anyway. I've got a stubborn side and fear of failure, mix those together and it makes sense that I might implode.

I'm aware of these things. I'm aware of them and that's why it's hard not to blame myself. I know what I'm doing, what it will result in and I'm doing it anyway. I'm choosing to fuck myself over. And at any point I could choose differently. Right? Maybe.

It wasn't too long ago that I was able to remind myself and record it here, that the hardest thing for me to do has always been to show up. I had said that I'm going to do more of that, above everything else. I haven't been doing that and my self-fulfilled prophecy is making it difficult to give it another go. I've been avoiding writing here for many reasons, I'm coming to realize. I was spiraling and gave the middle finger to everything, especially to the aspects of my life that may help me pin myself down long enough to find a way out. I didn't want to admit failure that was completely self-induced. I didn't like anything that I had to say, or was at other times, completely speechless.

I was reading through old Facebook messages between me and all sorts of people past and present, some of which might be a topic for another day, and relived the many voices of encouragement and appreciation during the early stages of this blog. Back then I wrote often and without restraint. Some of the time I felt I was impacting the lives of those who read and other times I was recreating (or maybe rediscovering) myself. It was my road to freedom.

I don't know if either of those things were true then or if they are still, but I need to keep writing. I need to push myself past failure. Through the days where I feel like I have nothing important to say, or the ability to succeed in school. I need to refocus (once again) on showing up.

Showing up means:
Waking up
Getting out of bed
Getting in the shower
Getting dressed, brushing my teeth and hair
Drinking a cup of coffee
Leaving the house
Getting on the bus
Arriving, to arrive in all the ways that word implies
at the place I choose to be that day.

I'm getting ahead of myself and we all know how well that works out. That list is long and I can't commit to showing up everyday for the rest of my life.
But tomorrow, I will arrive to my hip hop class, so I can dance the shit out of it.

Afterthought:

HA. I just found a post I started sometime last week before shit hit the fan. "It's halfway through the term and I'm doing so well".........I am going to be my own demise. 

I guess I'm glad I didn't finish it, that would have really made me look stupid. Maybe I knew it was too good to be true.

I refuse to run away. I refuse to sink. This term has been different, I refuse to chalk it up to good luck.

I feel awful about everything right now and I don't want to write about it because ultimately I am a whiny fucking bitch and nobody fucking gives a shit.

"Knock-knock", "Who's there?", "Your worst fucking nightmare"

I am so unbelievably frustrated with the system of this university. I am more than capable of doing the work for my classes and earning good grades. But it should not be so difficult for a student to navigate so that they might be able to afford an education, get the academic support they require to succeed and for professors to treat them as competent adults who deserve respect.

I thought that giving in and allowing PSU to label me as disabled would be worth it in the long run.

But people still can't see him, my beast.
No one can hear his growling but me.
He pulls me to him but to others I am standing perfectly still.

They can't see him so they assume that I'm taking advantage. What game do they think I'm playing? Am I supposed to be thankful that my professors are obligated to follow the policies set for them through the disability resource center? That they're doing their jobs? I don't owe them shit. Not an apology, an explanation or a thank you. I work fucking haaaaard. I won't take advantage, because what advantage is there to admitting that you are incapable of making it through school on your own? I can have my accommodations as long as I stay out of the way. As long as I don't use them.

You know what?
Jokes on you 'cause I can play by your rules
I'm stronger than I have ever been
Watch me succeed in spite of you
If you can't remember my name now, you sure will one fucking day
one fucking day

My Own Wild Tongue

"How do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?" - Gloria Anzaldua, How to Tame a Wild Tongue
 
I'm taking a class called Writing as Activism and I think this just might be the best class I'll take at PSU. I get to sit among people who are intent on writing and changing the world for two hours, twice a week. These individuals have each come from very different backgrounds, have very different writing voices and are so willing to be vulnerable and share with strangers. It's been two weeks, four class meetings and I already feel like I'm part of something important. I'm ecstatic, determined and terrified. I did a big thing in class on Tuesday and read some of my writing. It's one thing to write behind a computer screen, far away from the reaction of your audience. It's another to read your words, out loud, and watch the faces of those around you as they take some of your truth for themselves.

In class we were discussing writing in all of the ways we know how. Not necessarily whether we prefer to write poems, short stories or opinion pieces--but what words do we use to convey what we mean? For some in the class, those words are in other languages or very specific to the place where they grew up.

I realized that my wild tongue has been the voice of my beast. And now, in this class, I may find a way to take back what is mine.

From my notebook:
I had learned to speak a language other than English and had not known it. I had studied the words while I lay in bed unable to sleep, my mind moving faster than the cars on the street outside my window. The words came to me through tears and the buzzing itch of blood through my veins. I had never been asked to speak it louder than a whisper until I met her, the guide to my wise mind. There are fewer words in this language I have taught myself. Fewer words but more emotion, than often times, I can face. Even without the words, my body responds and loses itself. Hours, days and sometimes weeks pass before I wake up and see the words scribbled on the walls and ceiling in cracks and crevices that swallow me whole.