⁂

Don't be scared, because there are no endings.

During my transition from "then" to "now," I was afraid of an asterism. The little signals were everywhere--coffee mug drips stained into triangles, my Cheerios broke into tiny asterisks, my heart stopped, then beat again. The television static that peppers closed eyes formed alive pools of punctuation. I felt like Robert Frost, and caesuras were my spider.

Yet.

I'm still here.

Not just my body.

Me.

I'm proud to announce the progress of my awareness.

Yet

sleep is still a sticky sphere for me. 

Death's cousin is depression's dominatrix.

Yet

the people that I love the most still scare me out of my skin.

Anxiety kills the filter of rationality.

Yet

today in lit class, while I savored the discussion, devouring thoughts like homemade pasta sauce

My own thoughts were clouded, clouded, clouded with the words: I need counseling.

I've decided that the best remedy is

living,

yet I have a lot to come to terms with.

There are still mute moments

but only he seems to notice.

Explanations are extraneous errands

but sometimes you have no choice.

It hasn't rained in a while

and I could snuggle inside

and brew tea 

and eat toast with

raspberry enjambment

genuine.

Times have been tough, man. Times have been tough. I remember a time in my life when misery was so constant that it was indiscernible. Tasteless. It’s not quite the dictionary definition of depression, but that’s what it was. And once you seek help, once things get real, they ask you a lot of questions. “Have you ever thought of hurting yourself?” “Have you ever thought of ending your life?” The answer to the first question was no, I haven’t. I never thought about it, but I have. I’ve never cut myself, but I didn’t allow myself to leave my room. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t shower. Often, I didn’t even leave my bed. The thing is, the thought of the action never materialized in my mind, but gathered like a haze around every other possible action I could have taken. A haze of inevitability. Of blindness. The same goes for not sleeping. I never thought of depriving myself of sleep, but my body left me no other option. It was the only action potential. Obligations make it easier, whether they are real or contrived obligations. Computers make it simple. You just follow the infinite path of hyperlinks until the sun rises again. Until you have to put on a layer of concealer and playact another day.

It’s summer now. But it’s the edge of summer. The sun’s more golden than white. It’s more forgiving than it was. The air is thick with wisdom, and is heavy with the crisp spice of a distant but impending chill. I spent the day alone. I’m trying to relearn what it’s like to be a body. To truly belong to yourself. I’ve been going to the gym every other day. Half the exercise is mental. Convincing myself that I exist, and not only comparatively. I focus on the heat of my body. The swaying of my limbs. The insular world of my thoughts. All of this instead of looking at the women on the ellipticals surrounding me, seeing if they’re looking at me, and if so, how they’re looking at me. And in turn, how I should act in response to that judgment. I try to stop myself from looking at the mirror-covered wall every few minutes to remind myself I’m there. I’m getting pretty good at letting my thoughts melt like butter into my surroundings, so that I’m in the foreground again. I like to dip my fingers in hot candle wax. Not for the burn, but for the small sculptures.

I haven’t forgotten the second question. It lies in the back of my mind, dormant, but awakened whenever I see something sharp enough to end things. An X-Acto knife. A table corner.  A cigarette. Words said in context. Her house at the end of my street.

The thought is pervasive, but never true. It’s never a want. It’s not even a conceivable path. I laid on the bedrock of my depression every night only months ago. I can still remember the distinct sourness of that cold sweat. I felt myself dissolve. But never disappear. There were way too many tethers.

It’s August now. I sleep, but never before sunrise. Heart pounding, thoughts racing, I spent all summer trying to figure out why. Yesterday it hit me. It hits me every night, but I never knew its language. I didn’t want to. The thought is: It’s all moving too fast. I want to stop time. I want closure. I want a say in things. Sleeping is acquiescing to the idea of turning a page. Moving on. Aging another day. Stepping one hour farther away from the time it all fell apart, and no one heard a sound.

Sleeping feels like giving up. The corporeal equivalent of saying, “Okay, universe. You got me. I’ll go on living like this.”

No.

I’m going to click hyperlinks until this all makes sense.

I’m going to dye my hair until it’s dead and brittle.

I’m going to write until my eyes crystalize.

I’m not going to comply.

There’s only one question that really matters at all: Why?

It often stems into:

Why did they leave me? Why do they look at me that way? Why can’t I breathe unless I’m alone? Why don’t my clothes fit? Why does nothing matter anymore?

These questions only serve to refract the answers. Forgetting about loyalties, forgetting about morals, I have to think about the root. I have to think about the psychology.

I’ve had social anxiety since I was thirteen. It felt foreign, like an alien abduction. Invasion of the body snatchers. It wasn’t a part of my personality, but it was a part of me. Eventually, I couldn’t distinguish them apart.

Which leads me to here. Grasping onto the realization I needed to allow myself to move on.

Goodnight.

just keep creating

sanity log x

I'm avoiding things again. There's a wall within me that emerges from the closed, dark room behind my lungs, blocking the neurotransmissions that prompt me to do any homework at all. I know that this isn’t a reaction to any distaste for boredom, because I'm genuinely excited for this psychology class. And quite honestly, reading about psychology appeals more to me than anything Tumblr has to offer at this hour. I hunger for solid knowledge, facts and figures that can fuel my observations. I want to feel the satisfying whisper of pencil against paper, the reaffirming squeal of hot pink highlighter against pencil. 

The good news is that I'm prismatic again. A long post-breakdown sleep followed by an amazing day with friends sparked my zest for life again. I never knew how to respond when I was asked if I lost interest in things and activities I used to enjoy. I don't think I could ever genuinely answer, "yes" to that question, but in retrospect, I can notice a dampening of my interests. An overflow of creative urges is the norm for me, and I haven't felt that in a while.

But I think the homework avoidance is more out of habit, like psychological muscle memory. I think that my subconscious consistently used to jumble my concentration in an effort to get me to face the truth of my emotions. My subconscious recognized that I had something much more important than work to take on. In all of its efforts to refocus my attention, I spent all of my energy trying to avoid that focus, immersing myself in low-intensity internet browsing instead of taking a simple fucking moment to look at myself. To ask for help.

I've fortunately passed that benchmark. Recognition is the most difficult battle in the war, but there are many, many battles. I have to somehow destroy the anxiety I associate with homework. I have to train my brain to focus on the present, because today, that's what I need. That's enough.

And I've come to many realizations lately, mostly fueled by my dreams. So many useful realizations, in fact, that today, I thought to myself, "WOW!!! I give myself the best advice in my dreams! They're exactly tailored to my deepest feelings, fears, hopes, and anxieties. It's better than a counselor!"

Hold up, Ali G.

Did you just (kinda) figure out the essential benefit of sleeping?!!?!?!?!??!?!?!?

And the invaluable reason for dreaming?!?!?!?!??!?!

That it prepares you for the day/days to come?!?!?!?!??!

That you can't just skip out on that, because you will be physically and emotionally unready as a result?!??!?!?!

That you are a human being, and that staying up doesn't make you a demigod?!??!?! That it doesn't make you stronger, doesn't prove anything at all?!?!??! That taking a moment (6 or more hours, preferably) of the deepest "me time" known to science is something you not only deserve, but require!??!??!??!?!?!?!?!?!

WWWHHHHHAAAAAOOOOOOHHHHHHHHTTTTTHHHHHHEEEERRRREEEE

Do I taste a breakthrough?

xxxxxxxxxx

I've been having a lot of ultra-clear, high-definition, super useful dreams lately. They seem to come in clean episodes. Maybe it's my mind mirroring the 40-minute blocks of Breaking Bad I down on a regular basis. Maybe I'm too clever for my own good.

One lesson I've learned from them is that I not only crave, but need closeness more than anything. I had a series of dreams in which I either reconnected with past crushes or talked to current crushes, and the time we spent together was extremely brief, but honest and meaningful. There was no screen of superficiality. Just brief, absolutely honest conversation. One ended with an honest smile and a genuine wave of "’til next time," which opened the door to further communication between us. One progressed to hand-holding, walking together actually cheek-to-cheek, feeling each other's warm, energy mingling, bodies close. The third resulted in a public display of closeness, but there was no anxiety surrounding it. We exchanged a few words, but mostly had our bodies close, not looking directly at each other, but tangled in an embrace with our faces against each other, close enough to kiss, but not kissing. None of the dream encounters I had with these boys were sexual, or even romantic; they were mostly honest and spiritually powerful. What I need, and what I crave, is closeness like this--not just with crushes, but friends, potential friends, everyone I care about. Giving all of myself to someone can be done in small but meaningful actions, and it's always worth it. I could live off of that feeling alone.

So, friends and stalkers, here's my declaration: at the risk of rejection, I am willing to get close to people. That's step one, always. Romance comes in its own time. Closeness is the seed of all social meaning in life.

I better sleep before this entire post becomes hypocritical.

Love forever,
Ali

april was an existentialist

April was an existentialist. She only believed in moments she could taste with her tongue outstretched, and with that, she deemed her story less important than the others, especially that of May. April and May could have easily been sisters. When they laughed, the sounds wove together, and when they cried, daffodils found the strength to get out of bed in the morning. In the dark, you could barely tell them apart.

Yet everything was more saturated about May. She was brimming with consequence. Even her biology reflected this, her full body barely losing in a constant, precarious quarrel with her clothes. Her eyes carried the innocence and wisdom of sea glass, only made more beautiful by rogue tides. A guy could bask in her forever.

April was considered beautiful, but in an objective kind of way. Her clothes never seemed to fit quite right, either restricting her breath or swallowing her shape. Her eyes were often bright, but unstable, flitting from amber to dirt. You'd want to place April behind glass. You'd want to feature her under the gloss of a fashion magazine. You'd want to keep April at a safe distance. You'd want to fuck her, but only in your mind.

Many are colder than April, yet poets always consider her the cruelest. Maybe it's the way she warms your skin in one breath and leaves you frostbitten in the next. Maybe it's the way her harsh breezes overpower her subtle sunshine. Maybe it's that she's impossible to forecast, always one arm's reach out of your grasp. Maybe she's afraid of herself.

precarious

.

in which kendrick explains my mindset

                                                                Dude also gets me.

"I am a sinner who's probably gonna sin again
Lord forgive me, Lord forgive me
Things I don't understand
Sometimes I need to be alone..."
-Kendrick Lamar, Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe 

sanity log #3 (James Blake lyrics ensue)

My standard of life has reconfigured itself again.

In a stomach-tossing turn of events, happiness and self-love have become the norm.

It's the difference between writing on a frost white board with a black marker and writing on a midnight black board with milky chalk.

It's the reality that's changed.

Oh God, I can't believe the delusion I've been swimming in for the past few years.

Whenever I felt happy, it was temporary. And I knew it was temporary when I experienced it, knowing that depression was the center of my gravity. Perversely, depression became magnetic to me, eventually even cozy, a dark, warm, numb center of reality I could disappear in.

If I crashed down from happiness, it wasn't with the knowledge that I had to climb out of it. I convinced myself that I deserved it, tracing the patterns and mistakes of my past and somehow ruling myself to a life sentence of self-harm.

Not in the conventionally conceived way of self-harm. My scars were dark half moons under my eyes, self-imposed sleep deprivation, food deprivation, exercise deprivation. I stopped myself from excelling in school, from letting go of my inhibitions in social situations, from getting close to people. I didn't believe myself to be worth it. There was no tangible target for losing my friends in the past year, so I attacked myself. Like the Stars song, or like a strange inverse St. Ignatius, when there's nothing left to burn, you set yourself on fire.

Even amid the darkness of my psyche, I was prevented from falling completely from grace, because there were always present pinpricks of light. My family. My friends. Faculty at my college who supported me. Unseen friends from far away who supported me.

And there were always books. I have an entire adopted family that I owe so much of my wisdom and perspective to. Maya Angelou is my grandmother, John Steinbeck my grandfather, Alice Hoffman my mother, and Chuck Palahniuk my father.

Without them, and so many others, I'm not sure if I could have seen anything at all.

And I know for certain that if it wasn't for Chuck Palahniuk, I would have never had the strength to forgive myself enough to seek help. Helping yourself isn't glamorous. It isn't an insane road trip led by queen supreme Brandy Alexander, it isn't Plumbago and pastel colored pills, an elaborate path to self-destruction. It's making the very unglamorous call to Psychological Services and confirming that you're not a fictional character, and that your emotions aren't fictional or frivolous. They're real. You're real. And you deserve to give yourself the chance to heal.

I'm not perfect, and I'm not sure that I'll ever be. I never want to be. We're all damaged. But I am strong. I am resilient. And I finally have control.

Now close your eyes. Breathe. And feel it all.

James Blake, Retrograde

You’re on your own, in a world you’ve grown

Few more years to go,
Don’t let the hurdle fall
So be the girl you loved,
Be the girl you loved

I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now
I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now

Suddenly I’m hit
Is this darkness of the dawn
And your friends are gone
When you friends won’t come
So show me where you fit
So show me where you fit

I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

I’ll wait
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

I’ll wait
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

Suddenly I’m hit
Is this darkness of the dawn
And your friends are gone
When you friends won’t come
So show me where you fit
So show me where you fit

sanity log #2 (so much for brevity)

This will be short, and I'll expound upon it later. I can't come up with a neat & grandiose way to tie this one up into a hopeful, sparkly little package like I usually can. I wish I could. But the truth is, I've finally woken up. I've untangled my mind, whose synapses were for so long as intertwined as a thousand necklaces in a jewelry box. I know what growing up feels like. It's fucking shattering & scattering & scarring. But it's necessary, and in the end, it's good. The only wisdom I feel like I have the right to bestow upon any of you is this: no one is clever enough to predict the course of their life. Since I was a child, I held close, like a cozy security blanket, the false notion that I would be unaffected by society and time, that nothing could change me, that I somehow, with the power of will, could make everything perfect. You can never truly know heartbreak until you look it in the eye. You can never know pain until you're panting for breath every time a room falls silent, until all the words you try to read or say bleed into an indiscernible pool, until you can't think of one reason to leave your bed in the morning, so you don't, until every time somebody looks you in the eye you count their motives and plan an escape, until your body and your thoughts become separate entities, until you can't stop crying and you don't know why you started, until you can't start crying even though every atom is begging you to, until you're crying for the first time in months in the office of an intern psychologist, only realizing the depth of your pain as the words involuntarily escape your lips, and they stream out, and they won't stop, and you can't turn back. I tried to evade my issues for so long that they melded with my skin, not disappearing, but affecting everything I did. Everything took on the color of my depression. But I've finally found the strength to confront it. And while my peers, my friends, my professors, my teachers, my parents all look at my grades, look at my actions and think "she doesn't give a fuck," "she's not trying," I look at every individual moment and trace how I got here, to this point. And I'm proud of every single one. The only lens that's true and that matters is mine, I know that for sure now. I'm done letting other people define me. I'm done looking at myself through others' eyes. I know who I am and I'm unstoppable. Not because I'm perfect. Not because I have the delusion that I can be. But because I have no other setting. I wish I could have made it here faster, I wish I could have the luxury of sweet retrospection. But every shard is a part of me, and makes me stronger. Makes me, me. I exist. I am. I count. And I deserve to not only exist, but live.

sanity log #1

 "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"-Kurt Vonnegut                 

I can feel a physical shift after crying, a sweet calm-after-the-storm, dust-settling clarity that I never know exists until I reach it. What's tricky is that I don't know I'm holding my breath until I let it go. When I'm depressed, I don't see it as depression, but a false clarity. I see it as reality finally hitting me, and so I wear it like an ugly cardigan and pretend it's a blood orange Michael Kors blazer, shifting my tastes to fit this "objectivity." Because really, all I want to do is exist on the same plane as everyone else. I too often feel like my thoughts and emotions are at a completely different altitude than those of my peers, so it's difficult to converse with them. I constantly feel like there's a hurricane brewing under my skin, and it rushes and rushes until I can't even hear myself think anymore, least of all hear anything else. But when I cry, it's gone. But it's always a matter of time until it collects again, starts spiraling and spiraling, just gradually enough for me not to feel it coming. Like a lobster in the cooking pot.

I cried today, but it was a different kind of cry. It didn't feel torn from my lungs like the first one, it wasn't violent or sharp. It wasn't a downpour. It was almost a happy cry, relief. The tears rolled down my cheeks, involuntary, but cathartic. I can feel myself finally beginning to heal.

And I feel in control, at least for today. I chose to write this, not out of knee-jerk escapism, but out of inspiration, knowing that I need to listen to Vonnegut and keep note of when I feel this way. Here's sanity log 1.

tyler, the master

"Fuck buying studio time, I'ma go purchase a shrink/Record the session and send all you motherfuckers a link"-Tyler the Creator, Rusty

                                                                       dude gets me.

en rose

"She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris."-Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary 

That is one of the most beautiful strings of words that I've heard in a long time. It's a string of words that makes me feel. Where I am is a dull, pale ocean, but where I'm going is a marvel. Paris, my honey-colored lover. I'll meet you soon when my lungs are ready.

And I was coincidentally drawn to the novel Madame Bovary when I was at the Strand last weekend. I had to have you, but I didn't know why. But now I think you're just what the celestial doctor prescribed.

I have a difficult time believing that I'm real. I see myself so objectively that I think every word that falls out of my lips is a lie. If personality is is an unbroken string of successful gestures, then no wonder my vision of myself is shattered. I can't utter a word without tearing it apart in retrospect.

I close my eyes, and all I see are the sunglasses.

The sunglasses I'll wear in Paris one day strutting down cobbled streets.

The sunglasses I'll wear in New York walking to the publishing office.

I see lots of striped dresses and peacoats in candy colors.

I also see the other sunglasses.

The sunglasses I wore in high school to shield my tired eyes.

The sunglasses I wear Wednesdays after crying.

But I never wear sunglasses to hide. I'm always making a statement.

My gait transforms when there's plastic resting on my ears.

My breathing eases. All of the muscles in my body melt.

I'm hot and I'm heady and I'm ready to take you on.

C'est la vie en rose.

                                               Shameless selfy

                              "Let us play with your look"= life motto

confessions

So I'm just really mad, okay.

I have an anger burning a blinding white exploding in my core,

atoms splitting in my spine,

fire ravaging my veins.

I'm honestly done with this.

I'm done with segmenting myself for everybody to match their expectations of me.

I'm done with letting my fears manifest themselves into my reality.

I'm done with hiding my intelligence as a cry for help,

as a way to make my limb-splitting pain

tangible to everyone who

refuses to recognize it,

myself included.

I'm done with squandering all my potential

in rebellion of the atomic war inside of me,

a war against myself and everything I stand for.

Just because the problem is myself doesn't mean I should punish myself.

There's nothing else to burn, so I set myself on fire.

I feel powerless otherwise.

It's the only control I feel like I have.

When "Just" makes sense to you, you should probably go to therapy.

So I did.

It helps me understand myself, but it doesn't do anything to help anyone else understand.

My academic advisor asked me how everything is going, but the answer to that question

can either be answered in three words or a thousand.

So of course I chose the former.

And I can't help but compare my problems to others' problems,

and in the grand scheme of things

my issues seem frivolous,

and the fact that they're burning the edges of my life

makes me feel frivolous as a human being.

How dare I be destroyed by this when there is so much greater pain in the world.

But everything is relative, and this pain has too many layers to unravel so simply.

It's my fucking disposition, I can't target it.

I broke my foot playing dodgeball recently,

and in a way it's the best thing that could have happened to me.

It's given me a lot of time to think.

And I can't help but think that I wish people reacted to my mental health

in the same way they reacted to my physical health--

sympathetic, but confident that I'll be okay,

and proud of my strength in powering through the difficulty.

I wish I could address it with a funny anecdote,

and I wish we could all laugh at it so I can begin to move on.

I wish I could bedazzle my psyche

and have my closest friends sign it with

sarcastic pseudonyms so that

every time I feel it

I can wish it away with

sassy adrenaline.

But instead I get an academic advisor to tell me that "it's okay that you're not an A student,"

while I want to scream that I am,

I am I am I am I am I Am,

I know I

A

m,

I'm just trying, trying, trying to find a way

to show you without completely

falling apart.

And one day, when I finally get there,

you'll rue the day that you defined me,

and understand that a 4.0 will mean

much more to me than a

GPA.

Me and my BFF Johnny

4AM college rants

OKAY SO IT'S 4AM IN COLLEGE AND I HAVE AN ESSAY DUE AND I PUT OFF MY HOMEWORK TO WATCH THE GRAMMYS WHICH WAS SUBPAR BUT THEY'RE STILL KINDA LIKE MY SUPERBOWL AND I JUST GOT MY PERIOD SO I'M GOING TO BE SUPER CANDID.

                              Enter ghostly complexion and dark circles.

1) I REALLY WANT SOME MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM, SODEXO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

2) I KINDA REALLY REALLY WANT A NOSE RING BUT IT'S MORE PERMANENT THAN OTHER PIERCINGS BECAUSE IT IS ON YOUR ACTUAL FACE AND COULD LEAVE A PERMANENT MARK ON YOUR ACTUAL FACE.

3) I RAN OUT OF BAND AIDS SO I'M MAKING MAKESHIFT BAND AIDS OUT OF PAPER TOWELS AND MASKING TAPE AND ALL I CAN THINK OF IS HEROIN BOB'S MAKESHIFT BAND AID FROM SLC PUNK AND HOW IT GOT CRAZY INFECTED AND HOW THIS CANNOT BE ME.

4) I SWEAR THAT I WILL NEVER BE UP THIS LATE AGAIN. IN LITERATURE THAT TIME BETWEEN 2 AND 5 AM IS CALLED THE WITCHING HOUR BUT I HEREBY DEEM IT THE BITCHING HOUR BECAUSE THERE'S ALWAYS THIS ONE GIRL IN THE LOUNGE BITCHING TO/ABOUT SOME GUY AND SOMETIMES THAT GIRL IS ME.

5) MY STOMACH IS MAKING SAD MOUSE NOISES AND THE BITCHING HOUR GIRL CAN DEFINITELY HEAR IT AND IS SILENTLY BITCHING ABOUT THAT IN HER HEAD WHILE SHE'S BITCHING ABOUT THE GUY.

6) TAYLOR SWIFT MAKES HER MONEY OFF OF BREAKUPS AND I CAN'T TELL IF I HATE HER BECAUSE IT'S MORALLY SICKENING OR BECAUSE I'M SLIGHTLY JEALOUS OF....NOPE IT'S DEFINITELY THE FORMER STOP THE PRESSES.

7) I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKE IT HERE.

I've been making some slightly irresponsible decisions lately, and I still feel lost, but I actually feel like I'm exactly where I should be. And that means more than anything at this point in my life.