And reflecting.
One month ago I was struggling to know what I wanted in a relationship.
Two months ago I was struggling to learn how to do my job.
Three months ago I was struggling to lose weight.
Four months ago I was struggling to figure out where I was going to GET a job.
Five months ago I was struggling to figure out how I was going to even get myself to Philly.
Six months ago, this was all just a spark in my eye- one of those things you tell people to which they raise their eyebrows and say, "Really? How cool..."
[You doubt they believe you. You don't know if you believe yourself.
But then you think of a year before that. January 2008. When life was just getting back to being OK. When things were just starting to clear. When the fog began to lift in the slightest and you started to peer out of the cabin on the ship and realize you didn't know where the storm had taken you.]
That was further along than 6 months before that. Two years ago- July 2007. Returning to Queensbury, NY with my head hung, not understanding why I couldn't find a job. Or take care of myself. Or face people. Or dress myself properly. Or find my lost confidence.
Where was 2005 Amanda? Where was the girl who kissed a stranger at the top of the world in San Francisco less than a year and a half before? She was missing. She was packing a UHaul with tears in her eyes, tail between her legs, begging the roommates she was leaving to try and understand. But there was nothing anyone could understand at that point.
Confusion had escalated or morphed or gained momentum since 6 months before that. When I was letting my lip (and my friendships) heal from a major tumble...and trying to grow out my 2 inch long platinum blond hair. Stacking soda cans in pyramids. Drawing pictures in finger paint on my rented walls. Running off to Albany to binge drink a week away in the snow and NY to spend my student loan money freely on unnecessaries. Not understanding how denying myself healthcare could possibly lead to another trip to the hospital.
The place it had seemingly begun a little less than a year before. March 2006. Defined as the beginning of the end to me when I reflected on it three summers ago, I can see it now more as a beginning of something bigger. Not an end at all, but a deeper understanding of my own brain and consciousness. And of how my own personality flaws or quirks could spiral into a massive web of madness that just knocks me down flat and out like no other person could do to me.
The most intriguing part of that crippling madness is that it felt like a privilege at the time- a flight with the gods. I felt I was privy to secret knowledge, secret dimensions in the everyday that others didn't see or know or even comprehend. I painted grass gold. I stole Bibles and buckets of change, leaving my own books and shoes and poems and drawings and clothes in exchange. I proudly presented a purple sign I'd bought [that said "Pimp Street"] to the 18 year old rental car staff member who helped me clean the junk out of my car while we talked politics. I wore 6 layers of scarves and dresses and t shirts, but no undergarments. I spoke almost only with strangers and wandered through different streets in California, ripping down flyers that I believed held great truth for my future. I did all of this as though I was doing the work of something greater.
I believed I was blessed; able to rhyme lines and lines and lines of poetry and prophecy, which, though it didn't make sense, was mildly entertaining to others. I felt I was blessed to be so happy, so powerful, so indestructibly full of life. Until something, from the smallest thing like hearing a beautiful song up to a big scary thing like being strapped down to a bed, made me feel so tiny and insignificant and young and scared that all I could do was cry and cry and ask [my kind young boss or my mother or the doctors] to be let out of my own head.
Seeing my loved one's reactions to my illness was hard. At first fulfilling- getting more visitors than any patient at McLean made me feel oddly popular and like I owned the place. I'd tour my friends and coworkers around to meet the locals. The man who spoke to his cane, which had the head of a dog (Gerard from South Boston). The girl who wanted me to share everything I owned, who traded me an Alanis Morrissette CD and disc man for my toothbrush (Arlainne from Armenia). The young man who promised to send me his screen play to share with my BU film maker friends (Scott, from Waltham...who did send me that screen play. I think I threw it out with a sigh.) I wheeled my friends and family around the wings of McLean as they came in and out, dropped by with gifts, only to leave sad and scared. I spoke nonsense, I didn't understand why it was nonsense and I was, in many ways, relatable to people I didn't know more so than those who were looking to recognize the old me- the intelligence or sense of humor or, at the very least, the honesty they had known before.
These three things are what I feel it has taken me over three years to get back. It took months of mis-medication, over-medication, numbness, mindless eating, lying awake in bed for hours, drugs, alcohol, learning how to think, talk, write, breathe, enjoy life; it took weeks of working out my own mind, something no therapist helped with in the least. It took years to get me to a place where I cared about myself enough to put my pain to good use and then shake it off like a cold chill or a summer shawl.
But now, July 2009, I have a job and a house in a city I love, see people I adore, try new things, branch out daily, travel, paint, dance, sing, walk everywhere, solve problems, make plans, socialize, stay in touch, maintain a busy schedule, extending and retracting my limits of time and space and constantly remembering at the back of my mind just how long it took to get here. A reminder that keeps me on track.
I feel revived. And though still challenged by things each day, I haven't struggled so far this month. With any of it. Any of it at all. It's like someone pulled the book down from a shelf I hadn't seen, handed it to me and walked away. And I'm flipping through it, looking up incredulously every so often wondering, "why the hell didn't I get this book 10 years ago?"
Maybe next month will be a different story. But for now, I thank the gods for their flight. It was longer and more enlightening than I ever could have imagined. And I'm pretty sure we're still on the tarmac.
Stay tuned.
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