Well, this is it. Take a good look.

   Hehe, cliche. 

   I don't do enough self-reflection, despite what this and many other blogs suggest. I revel in misery and angst but I don't dig deep enough to get to the whys or the hows of getting better. My last big step to recovery kind of happened on accident or of its own volition. I don't know how I went from that to this, honestly. I like this better, given, but the general ease by which this new mindset arrived also worries me, because it could slip out the door just as effortlessly.

   Hence the return of the sads. I leave in 2 days, and as I gaze at the last year here on this last day of it in an ever-the-traditional way, I am left with nothing but the thought "Well, shit."

   Let's recap, hm? 

   January: Spring semester 2012 begins with a fizzle as I return with naught but apathy for the college system at large. A long held outlook, I continue on in my usual way, assuming I will have just enough sass, as ever, to do extremely well with little to no care about the work I'm doing.

  

  February: Call from my mother. She's moving in with her boyfriend of one month that I have neither met nor heard much about up until this moment. She assumes I am doing fine and am mentally stable at college and will have no use for that pesky thing I called home for the last 18 years. What about my sister, fresh out of- oh, wait, she's still in high school? I don't know, guess we'll figure that out. I lose my shit. I am essentially kicked out of my house, which incidentally ends up being rented by my sister and HER boyfriend, which yet still bars me from living there (though, bully for them, really,) and I am about to have a mental breakdown. 

   March: I continue my downward spiral wherein my mother doesn't have a clue of what's going on, my sister has other things to worry about, and my best friend hasn't talked to me in months because his girlfriend has a burning hatred of me. I am isolated and confused and I decide that going to class isn't really an essential part of the college experience. I sleep 16 hours a day, wake up, roll over, and sleep another 13 on a regular basis, when I'm not out destroying myself and sleeping with people's boyfriends. 

   April: I begin to have feelings of unreality and lack of self and eventually have a panic attack in a movie theatre and call my best friend. We talk for hours and this is the first time he is given the slightest hint that I have been not okay for a while, and he starts to ignore the "my girlfriend never wants me to see or talk to you" rule.

   May: I go from a 3.5 GPA to a 0.4 (That's a cumulative of 1.83, folks. In one semester.) and lose not only my 100% Bright Futures Scholarship, but my full ride. I leave before I even take my first final for what I assume will be forever, clothing and suicidal ideations in hand. I have nowhere to go, but the Cosmos has the most hilarious timing, for the bestie has lost the girlfriend just last week, and has offered me a place to live.

This in and of itself is a disgustingly delicious tidbit for my evil twin to chew on while she plans my continual destruction.

   At this point I am back "home" in a room the size of a walk in closet and working full time as a waitress. Escapades ensue and tumultuous bad times are had by all. I hit the roughest mental patch of my entire life and almost completely detach from myself. I am found standing in odd places and staring into the distance numerous times. I spend the nights paralyzed in bed with panic, anger, and sadness, not sleeping at all, after a lifetime of hypersomnia. I scare my roommates and am void of personality or joy, am apathetic to the extreme, and no doubt threw the best eye-daggers of my life. I am a zombie. 

   Bestie finds me a final time standing and staring for what felt like 20 minutes but must have been 2 hours and tells me we're getting me therapy. This lasts for exactly 2 sessions. I don't know if I get worse or hit a constant, but I wake bestie and am shaking and sobbing and as close as I have ever been to killing myself. This is obviously prevented and I continue on in a daze for the next several months. 

  Somewhere in between the gray and the now, I decided that this wasn't working (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NO REALLY?) and think re-enrolling at school and focusing on that life might at least give me a goal-oriented mindset, and that even if I stay miserable there I will at least be some kind of productive.

   I email left and right and am readmitted on a probationary basis. I lose my job when the boss hears I'm leaving and spend the next month and half dilly-dallying. I spend a good half of that time in stasis: depressed but not suicidal, anxious and spacey but not dissociative. I somehow spend a whole day being lucid and want to figure out how to hold on to lucidity, and tell myself to stay present, reminding myself that back when I was healthy I used to help people, have some little reason to wake up. I want to be intelligent and engaged and useful and healthy again. 

   So I try really hard to make little changes in how I think about myself and interact with others, and I get to the first stable place I've been in a while. I begin to rediscover the self I was 4 years ago, though I now more wholly understand how far back my depression really reaches. 

   I was and am again excitable, and can more easily hold on to a good place, but at the end of the day when I don't have to be a buoy for others, I return to a darker place and fight to stay sane. My mental state is still delicate, but nowhere near the mess it was a few months ago. I want to continue to improve it, and need to promise myself to seek out help BEFORE I get really bad. Go to therapy, Becca. Talk to your mom, your best friend, your roommate, tell them what's happening in your head and then maintain control. Remember how dynamic your brain is and revel, USE it, for gods sake. Get out there and interact with new people, explore their minds and expand your own. Read and absorb nonstop and write, write, write.

   You're worried right now, and very upset that you're leaving. I understand that, and know that you're scared. But really, why do you want to stay here? It's not good for you and you need to get to your own space where you can all around self-improve and THRIVE. Stop being upset. Just stop it. This is good. You are strong and totally awesome. Tell you what: Give yourself some time at the beginning and the end of the day to just mope. Brood like you've never brooded before. Get it out and then make space to move on with your life. You can do this.

   Go kick ass.

Man, you are CRAZY.

Like. Don't even.

Potential Borderline Personality is fresh and exciting, all that crying and twitching and trying not to pull your skin off or hit yourself. You don't sound incredibly unstable when you talk to yourself like you're standing right beside you. The fact that you identify with otherings of yourself more and more often is definitely probably nothing to worry about. Kids these days, right?

But really please don't let yourself slip again. You did a really good job today coming back. I stared into space for 2 hours and it only felt like 20 minutes, and time did a speed-up visual trick which was overwhelming and upsetting but the fact that you actually responded to your friend's concerns for you is nice.

I don't know what was up with not wanting your best friend anywhere near you until after the other one hugged you though. I think I couldn't do the hyper-rational everything stems from some fixed point or stimulus in the recent past thing. I needed someone who understood that crazy is as crazy does sometimes and I really can't do much better than I already was right then.

I went back and read my old blog just now and I have to say it is a little unnerving how early on I was experiencing a lot of this and how crippling my depression was. Like 2010 was bad, but DAMN. I described things with a cryptic clarity that can only now really hit home. I'm kind of upset that I didn't fully realize how bad things were. I thought a lot of it was stupid teenage emotions but nope. Nuh uh, between the borderline delusional thinking and the huge gray blocks of time in my memory I know I started really slipping a lot earlier than this last spring.

Good news though. For the first time in what has to be years, I was laying in bed and marveling at the complete lack of bad feelings helplessly blocking me from feeling anything else. Content isn't the word, but I was kind of calm I guess. I wasn't totally miserable or inescapably angry is the point. I did notice though how it felt like that relatively good was actually its own sort of trap, boxing me in and putting a pane of glass between me and the very very real and familiar thoughts/feelings/states of badness below, and not being able to dive into those and figure them out was its own kind of torture in a Vicodin Barbie sort of way.

Buuuuuuut I'm getting better at not getting stuck on a negative emotion or thought. I usually try to remember how I used to live (looooong time ago, seems like) where my actions were driven by wanting to do good for other people. Being thoughtful was MY JAM, man. And I think one huge thing that actually grounded me a little to get this doing-for-others thought process started was bestie making some kind of comment about wanting support and finding it lacking from people it shouldn't be lacking from, and that definitely hit me in the face since mostly-healthy me was ALL ABOUT being a proper friend to him especially.

So yeah. I bought everyone *read: the only people I really talk to/care to see ever* Christmas presents this year and I really love the anticipation of waiting to see if I got it right or not. Reminds me of the Spring break in 8th grade where I was SUPER productive and crafty. I was at the absolute top of my game for that one single week and I have NEVER gotten back to that point. Which is concerning given that I had a huge eating disorder back then. BUT I do now notice that was perhaps the only year I was without a singular central "best friend" figure to attach to, which resulted in this giant net of 12 friends who I had the most fun with, and I still think of that as one of the best years of my life so perhaps there's something to that. Lack of singular external person to focus on equals more self-reliance/internal reflection in order to enable stable and enthused interactions with larger more activity driven groups? Hm.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks in my head. I'm still scared as hell to go back to college. WILLINGLY go back to the place that saw my utter loss of mental control and completely broke me apart? Sure, sounds dandy. I do keep saying I'll be fine and maybe I'll believe that when it really counts, but I DO really know that I have people behind me this time. I won't just be floating alone out there. The best friend and the other one will talk to me and visit, and my mom is a little more aware of my mental state and sister is still sister and I'm trying to feel like I'm worth it for me too. We'll see. I want to do things, not just lay there all day again. Don't do that.

WOW, NOVEL.