I am an empathetic, manic depressive.

No, I don’t think empathetic, manic depression is an actual thing. And I assure you, the two concepts are not meant to live in one body. I’ve struggled with depression for maybe my whole life, but DEFINITELY for at least the last ten years or so. I’ve been reading The Body Keeps the Score lately, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t what I have at all… but I do think it’s the easiest way to describe what happens.

I am a better version of myself on the manic days, and I am forgiving of myself on the depressive ones. I’ve done this for long enough to know that it’s okay not to be okay. Although, for me, this is the beginning of embracing the idea that you’ll be okay if you know I’m not okay. That’s new.

I like my life. I really do. I like the slow days and the fast ones. I really like my people. Many of whom have played significant parts in the making of my wholeness [or glued-togetherness, really], with or without their knowledge or consent. In some of these cases, I am sorry. In all of them, I am grateful. 

I have a beautiful and impressive family that I am always humbled to be part of, and while I didn’t have a perfect or boring/typical childhood, we were well loved. There may have been a moment here or there that shook some trauma into me. There may have been a molding of thoughts that normalized death into a never-ending experience. There may have been some pain that I continued to choose over and over until I figured out the cycle. I have worked hard to forgive myself for most of this, and have begun to understand why I was so often able to be in love with the abuse. I am on the other end of my own little lifetime of this, and I want to keep leaning into it.

Why I am the way I am has been shaped by much of this, but I am starting to bend the bars. If you’d like to watch me climb out of the mind I have been captive in, stick around. I think I’m pretty close to a magic trick.

To escape, there is much that will need to escape me. And since I find so many things impossible to verbalize, I knew I’d have to have to write it all down. To do that, I knew I needed to create for myself a little space and accountability.

So, I’d like to thank this space for being here for me as a blank page. And I’d like to thank you for bringing your energy and light here too. It is a better space because you are in it for a moment, as all spaces are. 

You know, we’d all be better off if we just sat for a while and let Tom Petty sing songs to us. I got to see Tom Petty live once. It was even better than I could’ve expected, and I had pretty lofty hopes.

Remember in the past when MTV played music videos. That was good. I think I’ll end these with something to take us away for a minute. I’m having a great time here, y’all.