Things in my life, literal and otherwise

On my desk, which has finally been organized, I keep a handful of rocks. There is a dark gray rock that fits almost perfectly in my fist, which I kicked along the park once, and decided to keep; the feel of it, solid, cold, heavy in my palm reminded me that I was real. The second rock is a polished tiger-eye, very reddish in color, compared to most stones of that nature. It’s very pretty, and it reminds me of Mohan, my friend. Then there’s a little piece of clinker, very dark gray, like a shadow on the bottom of a river, it glistens in the right light; I found it in my favorite park, by the riverside, upstream. Two more rocks my best friend gave me, smooth and flat and elliptical, one more tawny and one more gray, a pencil-gray, both the right size to hold in my hand at night. The sixth rock is a small lump of pink granite, black-flecked, that I found at the beach; the seventh is a tan, white, dark rock that I picked up from the sidewalk on my way home, last night, after a friend told me everything that was in my own heart, poisoning me from the inside out. I’d known; before leaving, I’d written something along the same lines, bemoaning my inaction and resolving to get off my ass and do something. But hearing it from someone else was kind of painful, which I should have seen coming. Perceptive friends are a double-edged sword.

I loved the person I was on the road to becoming; I wanted to be that person, I want to be someone who lives life to the fullest, someone who cares and creates and loves. I hate the person I am, I hate the person I am becoming now, instead. I have no creative energy, I waste most of my days daydreaming without doing anything about it, I sit around and do nothing. I am, quite simply, a waste of space right now.

There is a lot of shit being thrown at me in life right now. I’d love to use that as a shield; in my own mind, I have been, have been excusing all my lackluster as an effect of the world around me. This is basically complete bullshit. There are so many things that could be worse in my life, I have been so lucky, and there really is no excuse for my situation right now. I’m not going to college because I fucked up my grades and then didn’t apply to enough schools. I’m not going to Sacramento because I didn’t get a second job soon enough, didn’t save carefully enough. I’m still living with my family—well, because I’m not going to college and don’t have enough money to move to Sacramento. This is no excuse to laze around and whine.

There’s a mirror on the dresser, to my right. I don’t hate the person looking back at me, most of the time. I used to. I hate the potential there, and I hate the lack of energy. I hate the potential because it forces me onward, because I don’t want to waste the few things I do have. I hate the lack of energy because it’s my own fault, because I could do better. I hate that people see more in me than is really there. I hate that my friends think I’m so damned smart, I hate that I can’t hide my faults from them, I hate making an idiot of myself so often. I hate the irresponsibility, and I love the foolhardiness. I try not to hate myself. That way lies madness; most ways, actually, lead to madness. I try not to think about that too hard, or I wind up curling up into a useless ball in a corner for hours. I wish I was joking. I wish I wasn’t crazy.

One of the things I hate about mental illness, one of the major things, is that it really is a life sentence. That’s one of the first things a friend told me, when I told everyone what the diagnosis was: she said, “It’s not a life sentence.” But it is. It changes the way people look at you, even your best friends, even the people who accept you. For the rest of your life, people will expect certain things from you; for the rest of your life, if you show some quirk in behavior, people will ask, “Have you been taking your meds?” And if you say yes, they will roll their eyes in semi-disbelief, or wry acceptance, and if you say no, they will sigh hopelessly and either give you a lecture, or simply be content with quiet disappointment, far worse than any lecture. And it will never go away. And you will never be normal, and you will never be accepted, and you will never be able to fit in.

But, for all that, there’s really no excuse for sitting around whining about it. The only way to get around something like that is to take the shit you have, and do something with it. So, even if this story is horseshit, I may as well write it, if for nothing better than to satisfy the characters.