I spent my childhood much in silence. Though my head was constantly buzzing, my lips managed to stay sealed. Through the pain and trauma, my head screaming at me, the world already feeling heavy on my shoulders and I was only five. I was quiet. I was afraid. I was alone. It was as if I was watching the world through the eyes of a foreigner that stumbled upon a disaster on his travels. He sat down in silence and observed. And he observed and observed and that's all he could find himself to do. Never taking his eyes off of the disaster that seemed to go on for years.
That's what my childhood was like. Suffering in fear and anxiety and trauma and never being able to speak up. Never being able to escape from the experiences. My head never quieting. I think that is why I finally broke at age ten. I craved death. I craved it in a way that would not only torture myself, but my parents as well. I wanted to die in pain. And I wanted my parents to know so and for them to feel what I had been feeling for so many years; well because to a child, five years is forever.
It was two years later at age 12 when I was in Georgia and I got my first moon cycle; when I thought I was dying because black tar was coming out of me, that I experienced my first real sign of bipolar disorder. It was the realization of life and wanting to be a part of it. To experience it. I doubted myself and those thoughts. The dark part of me was still alive and well and mostly in the front of my face. But then I bled, and I danced in the desert. Danced my soul out. And experienced my first true mania. And ironically, it was the mania that saved my mind at the time.
I don't know what it is about puberty and the changes of your body that suddenly make you rush to be an adult. But the race started for me. I had a best friend who kept me quite innocent still and it was the only time in my life where I felt like a kid. But then when I left for high school, I met a girl who would turn my world upside down. It was over then. My childhood. The darkness crept up to the front of my face again, taking over. I regressed into my old ways of self-harm and sabotage. Envious of the wrong people. Ingesting more chemicals into my body and brain. Seemingly trying my hardest to fuck up my life and become a drifter.
The rushing. The racing. My evolving sexuality. My mommy issues. My daddy issues. All at the forefront of my existence and leading my future. It was becoming quite a disaster again. I didn't seem to have control over this disaster just as much as when I was that little girl. But perhaps this was a normal teenage experience? Mine was just...darker?
But it was full-blown mental illness as a result of trauma and not being allowed to process through any of it. It all sat inside my body. Creating Dis-Ease in all parts. My developing brain having been stunted or morphed into an organ that wanted to see my demise. Thrived in the thought, or so it seemed.
And then my 16th birthday rolled around, and I still sat there in quiet anger. The fire raging inside me, unable to escape. Instead I hurt myself as a means of release and punishment. Isn't it so fucked up how we blame ourselves as kids and take the world on ourselves?
My mother betrayed me and off I went to my new life. A new timeline. A destination of life unknown. Still, I sat in anger. Hurt. Pain. Escapism. I tried to dull it out with weed, psilocybin, and men. I was put into situations that could have ended terribly if I hadn't of done what they wanted me to do. I was vulnerable. And people knew and took advantage of that vulnerability. A trend which would become all too familiar through the next 13 years of my life.
I rushed through it all. Or I tried, I should say. Things went flying by me. Even though it felt like time had purposefully slowed down as a joke to my face about the things I was trying to do.
And then I ran into you. Well, you found me. And then all at once, the world collected itself. Time caught up with itself; enveloped us in an embrace as if it was relieved and proud of the destiny that was fulfilled. I didn't believe in destiny or fate until I met you.
There is something incredible about time and the way it gives us the ability to find our way and make our lives better, even if it takes a long time. I went from a Jean-Paul Satre "Nausea" life...to what it is now. And it's almost laughable. Never in a million years would I have ever imagined my life being what it is now. It took me almost 30 years to truly believe that truly, anything is possible.
