Editor's note: I drew some pictures for this, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out where to upload them too. Imgur wasn't working for some reason, and I'm not in the mood to troubleshoot. I'll transcribe them for you.

Editor's note the second: The soundtrack for writing this were 3 garage rock albums I'd been meaning to listen to. I'd recommend all of them: "96 Tears", "Black Monk Time", and "The Inner Mystique". Black Monk Time is famous, I guess, and it was in an iPhone commercial. This post is sponsored by Apple.

My mind's gotten a lot worse over the past little while. I hadn't realized how bad it was. I'll draw a timeline:

TIMELINE

  a pretty little graph with some colored lines, accompanied by the following text:

Throughout 2015-16: Periods of apathy and no energy. Fall behind in responsibilities, then panic and catch up on them. Fall out or flame out of friend groups. Come back sometimes, leave again.

October of last year: Start getting out of the house more for school purposes - encounter difficulties with speaking in front of strangers.

January-February: Mood swings start getting quicker.

March: Have panic attacks, but make them sneaky so I don't figure it out yet.

April-May: Love!

June-July: Love! Obsession! Emotion! Recognize things are going downhill, but cling! Cling! Cling!

August: Run away, then crawl back again. Stay isolated, except for this one guy...

September: Run again and things get more complicated

October: Love him sometimes, but just feel sick most of the time.

Then, late October - talk to a therapist about it. Apparently I have symptoms of being bipolar, or something like that. I already knew I was depressed. Apparently if you feel manic also sometimes, that's a bad sign. Now I have the trifecta:

TRIFECTA

  a pretty little triangle with some text at the corners that went something like this:
    TRANS, drawn in big pink letters

DEPRESSION, drawn in grey letters going in a spiral

BIPOLAR, drawn in red letters right-to-left going backwards, then upside-down, then forwards again

And I don't think I can trust what I think, and it's frightening. I'm scared that my actions aren't under my control - at least as much as I want them to be. I feel cloudy mentally, and the only times I feel clear is when I'm feeling sick and can't move because i'm overwhelmed with how immense and terrible everything feels. It takes an hour or two. I can tell when it stops when I start feeling stupid for how I'm acting.

But why post about it here?

Because I feel better when I complain. When I complain, I get attention. Sometimes it's people trying to care, which is a nice feeling. Other times it's people giving advice, which is helpful. A lot of the time, though, it's about getting a negative reaction. If I act inappropriately, I can get tough love advice or even people yelling at me, and when that happens I feel like I have a good reason to be upset, and I can finally cry, and get some emotional release, instead of just feeling empty or sick.

The interesting part is that this is probably the best my life has ever been, otherwise. Somehow everything outside my own head keeps working out in the long run: school's fine (gonna be finer soon), i'm the femest i've been, I've got all sorts of commodities and accoutrements to enjoy, I've got music to listen to and music to make, I've got food and a house and clothes and all that jazz, and a family that tolerates me, and people that would probably accept me back if i wanted to talk to them again, and plenty of other things that don't make me happy. I guess happiness isn't really related to having things. I think it must be related to not having things, because I'm absolutely certain everything would be worse if I didn't have the things that I do, so I'm grateful every day for how good things are, and angry every day at how terrible things are.

Every couple of weeks I have a revelation about myself. It's very cyclical, and by that I mean that it's a lot like a wheel that keeps running me over. I don't know how many times I can make substantive change into something that has to happen again and again, but I guess i'll see how it goes.

I broke the 1000 days mark 8 days ago. I was planning on writing a big long post about Hubski for it, but I forgot. I forget about a lot of things, which worries me. A lot of things worry me. Hubski's been really important to me for some reason. I've barely used it, and I wouldn't say I've made any important relationships on here like you're supposed to. (sorry galen - we don't talk enough, guy! we could have been better friends if i was better at counter-strike.) But again, important to me. It's a good example of the kind of pattern I was talking about earlier - continually refiguring things out and coming back to something, then bailing again.

I've been resisting the temptation to quit on here, too. It wouldn't make much of a difference, considering I only post when the mood strikes me once in a blue moon, but symbols are very important to me, and deactivating this account would be an important symbol. I deactivated an account that I talk to internet people with in September. It was important to me, and I think it was the right decision, but I worry about it. Maybe I'll go back eventually, but I want to be stronger then. I feel weak right now, which means it would probably be a bad decision. Anyway, I'm not going to leave here yet, except if I change my mind over the next little while. I guess I don't know.

I'm running out of steam. I don't think I had a point in the first place, so I guess I'll stop writing here.