A glass of wine and an epiphany.

So I've had a headache all day, am possibly a bit dehydrated, and have generally felt like crap, most likely due to a minor case of altitude sickness, yet I still let my cousin talk me into a glass of wine. Which I don't regret because it was the first red wine I've ever enjoyed and it was delicious. But as I was sipping that glass, I was looking through my facebook feed, and then I had an epiphany. The hit-you-in-the-face holy fuck kind of epiphany.

When you've spent more than a decade actively fighting the effects of your Broken Brain, epiphanies are something that actually happen pretty often. Some stick a little better than others, others disappear almost as quickly as they appeared.

And then sometimes you're pretty sure you've just fixed your life.

The most amazing part is that the ones that you're pretty sure just fixed your life are usually the simplest ones.

And this one is simple. Just a quote a friend posted in his status.

"Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.” 
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

And holy shit, that's it, isn't it?  In my head there will always be the terrible shit - the capital-D Depression, the self loathing, the Anxiety - and there will always be the hilarious shit too. I will always have the grief and the high delight... but I don't have to run back and forth between them.

But wait, Mk, isn't that how the cycling works?

Yes, Imaginary Blog Reader, technically that is how the cycling works, but let me explain. I will always feel the highs and the lows, but I don't have to let myself get lost in them. That's what I tend to do, let myself become totally consumed by the feelings. There's having Depression, and then there's letting Depression have you. There's having Mania, and then there's letting Mania have you.

And yes, this is absolutely something that is easier said than done, but I can talk myself into all kinds of shit.

Quarterlife Crisis Mode, Engaged!

I... don't know what I'm doing anymore.

And I don't just mean here on my blog, though I have definitely lost sight of that. I call myself a blogger and vlogger, but I haven't made a video in literally years, and I don't do much blogging these days. ...Except on tumblr. But that's a whole other animal.

No, I'm talking the big picture. I don't know what I'm doing anywhere. I don't don't know what I'm doing with my life, because I don't seem to be doing much of anything. I'm trying really hard not to be as hard on myself about this as I really want to be because I know a significant factor in this is the whole Broken Brain thing, but it's really difficult not to blame yourself for fucking up your own life - if it's no one else's fault, it has to be my own, right?

This is the sixth or seventh 'I'm Back!' post I've drafted in at least as many weeks; a few of them happy and excited, a few of them... not so much. I also spent a really long time writing a long, detailed explanation of the recent Great Big Heartbreak that so many different people heard bits and pieces of but rarely the whole story, but by the time I got around to finding the point of the whole thing, I just got tired of talking about it. I'm sure the subject will come up again at some point, anyway, but for now all you need to know about that is: it's a foreign situation for me for a few reasons, but I'm slowly navigating my way through.

Also, for the record: we don't have to hate this one, okay? Not yet, anyway. If he fails to learn from this mistake, then that's another story.

At this moment, I'm alone on the second floor of my college's library, trying to finish revising an essay to turn in, but I have so much other crap bangin' around my brain pan that I can't concentrate on this silly 4 page little paper that ordinarily should take me less than an hour to pound out. (Not that I'm entirely sure how to articulate any of it anyway.)

In two hours, I have an appointment with a counselor I've been seeing. We're exploring the possibility of meds, and to be perfectly honest that scares the shit out of me. It was realizing this that made me realize how much I have let the Broken Brain define me; I don't know who I am without this. I hear so many horror stories about medications changing a person, and not for the better. I keep hearing people talk about how the meds stole their personality. My personality is volatile, unpredictable, and even I'll admit, sometimes down right insufferable. But at least I have one, right?

...or do I? Do I actually have a personality, or am I just a product of my own chemical imbalances?

I don't know. I feel like I don't know much about anything anymore, but I know talking about it and writing about it has always been the only way I know how to deal with anything. I'm not saying I'm back. I'm not going to start another grand project to keep me blogging or whatever. But here's this one. Maybe I have more in me; maybe I won't touch this again for another year or so.

I don't know.