Life is a Roller Coaster
Tuesday, Jun. 04, 2013 4:03 PM

�Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be�So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one�s mind.� ― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

Yesterday I finally finished my "update" e-mail to Manfred. It took me forever to reply to him, which makes me feel bad, but for some odd reason it really pulled a lot out of me emotionally. Not in a negative way or anything, but more of a... "wow. This is my life. This was my life." kind of way. I'm not dwelling on the e-mail 24/7 here, but ever since I finished it, and also finished reading The Silver Linings Playbook, I can't help but feel a tiny tornado stirring inside of me. It's like twirling deep inside the pit of my stomach, almost forcing me to think about things from this completely different perspective - one I've never truly used to look back on my life with.

Let me backtrack just a little bit. First of all, the book. I never expected this book to relate to me in any way - especially since the main character Pat Peoples was so hungrily obsessed with his wife NIkki. But here's the strange thing... his mental state of being, his friend Tiffany's mental state of being... their trek through life attempting to move beyond their current state of being and reach for something better while dealing with so much on every level... it touched me in a peculiar way because in this strange kind of way the two of them are a little bit me. That may not make sense, and it probably won't make sense unless you've read the book. I haven't seen the movie so I can't say whether you'd understand just from watching it.

This is what I've discovered: My life is definitely 100% an emotional roller coaster. I'm not bipolar, but I have many ups and many downs - and the downs usually come unexpectedly and they last for days. Maybe even years. I don't know. But my silver lining is waiting around for the good moments to come even if they don't last very long because these silver linings remind me how good it can be.

I look back on the very few photos taken of me and in each one of them I look extremely sad. The only ones I seem somewhat happy in are the same ones I put up on Facebook and have left there for years. I never update my site with future photos because in every photo taken of me I look like I'm holding back tears, and my face seems swollen.... like I've either been crying or I'm suffering from the worst allergies ever. If a stranger looked at them, I wonder what they'd see. When I look at them, I become slightly depressed because it saddens me to know that who I used to be when that photo was taken was a very sad person. And I don't want to be a sad person. I don't want to be known as a sad person. I wish, when a picture was taken of me, you could see something there besides that sadness.

It bothers me when people take pictures of me without my permission, too. And it's all because I don't like seeing who I am in those photos. I have asked repeatedly not to be photographed at family functions, but they don't hear me. I log onto Facebook and see that I'm tagged in yet another family photo - the lone ranger off to the side just randomly sitting there while all the others live their lives. I hate that they tag me in these photos. I hate that they even take the photos to begin with. I don't want to be in them. In fact, I don't want to go to family outings anymore because while I may no longer feel like the 5th wheel, I am very tired of being surrounded by their eagerness to be happy - to act like a family. I feel so removed from them, it's not even funny. I'm not talking about my immediate family here. I am talking about my aunts and uncles and cousins. I don't relate to them at all.

I'm not the sun they orbit, but more like the moon that orbits them.

I see a doctor on the 19th. I wonder if this one will be able to help me get my life back. So many doctors - and yet I still haven't lost hope that there's a solution out there somewhere.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm like Hemingway or Plath... but I highly doubt I'll ever shoot my brains out or stick my head in the oven. Nor do I, for that matter, believe I'll write a novel - let alone one as depressing as theirs.