I don’t know what I’m saying

I’m eating again. I forgot how things just start coming back once I’m well. I’m eating again and probably too much, gathering up all the nice things I’ve missed out on over the last four months. I’m still eating plenty of fruits and vegetables because I love them so much, but I’m probably eating a wee bit more bad things than I should. This is not a good idea when I tend not to like nor do exercise, and that I don’t look as attractive as I feel. I’ve not suffered from self-esteem issues before, I wonder if I am slightly at the moment. There are days when I irrationally wish I were more attractive, then you wouldn’t bother to see if I had a great personality, you’d just fuck me anyway.

We divulge so many intimacies here, it’s such a strange phenomenon. I’m sorry for labouring the fact, you may be tired of it already, but I’m fascinated. Even if we pare everything back, restrict to the extreme what we reveal, it’s as if we’re so willing to reveal these tiny yet hugely significant parts of ourselves to our little anonymous community online. Again, perhaps it’s because in some ways, we can’t really hurt each-other.

We reveal these things of ourselves so readily online, yet in real life we, or at least I, do almost everything in my power to hide them. Not hide them in a bad way as to keep them secret, but hide them so that they can be sought out. So when I post intimacies online, I guess I seek empathy, which I receive from all of you – thank you sincerely once again. When I hide them from people in my real relationships, what I seek is that curiosity I so often allude to. It’s a check in place to test others’ level of commitment and interest. I want them to be so curious and assertive of their affection for me that they press questions and demand answers, of-course not in a callous way, but in an earnest and loving way.
I think we all want to be known.
Sometimes we fear so much others knowing our insecurities, habits and prejudices, but ultimately we want someone to be exposed to these things, to stay with us long enough to be subject to them, and see if they still love us. I know what many of my faults are, but I know that there are so many that I will never see on my own – it can be a greatly frightening thing to let someone see that, believe me. Nevertheless it signifies perhaps one of the greatest of vulnerabilities, to truly let someone see those ugly, imperfect, unjust parts of yourself. Everyone has them, and you may know some people who try their best to hide them. If they’re successful, they seem awfully two-dimensional and shallow. If they’re unsuccessful, their behaviour only amplifies their faults.

Wanting to be loved is such a complex thing. It involves so many selfish desires, yet so many threats. I’ve never been one to shy away from those things that frighten me, particularly when it comes to my own character, yet past experience starts to temper the enthusiasm that lends itself to a love conquers all attitude. While I still stand by that statement, that love indeed does conquer all, it’s not as easy as saying ‘we love each-other’ and hence we shall succeed. In-fact, when love turns out not to conquer all, you find that somewhere there wasn’t as much love, or the right kind of love in the first-place; it could not conquer because it wasn’t there. It isn’t all about emotion, nor is it all about intellect, nor will and willingness, nor experience, nor risk nor assertion of rights. It’s all of these things and more. At this point you may think I’m de-romanticising love, but you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Love should be a stupendously huge thing, the idea of it and its workings are larger than any one of us. It should make us fearful, it should make us curious, it should make us appreciative, it should make us respectful and it should make us humble.

The more I think about love, the more I think about my love; how I want to love, how I want to be loved, it seems I’m asking more and more from whomever this faceless lover might be, and I realise that I expect to be asked just as much from me. At first it was just my illness that made me frightened of asking so much, but now I feel that fear is going away. Regardless of the circumstances, I believe that I deserve to be loved in this way, and that I want to be loved this way. When I ask myself whether I could ever have the energy to live with and love someone with a mental illness, right now at least, the answer is a resounding yes. Perhaps my current perception is totally coloured by my place in the cycle and my excess of enthusiasm, in-fact I’m fairly certain that it is, but something else I realise is that I have to try and stop seeing these times in my life as times when I’m not myself. This is me, whether I like it or not. This isn’t me as altered by something that might go away some day, this is it. It’s permanent, enduring, and it will be my life whether I like it or not.

Given those facts, it probably isn’t a good idea for me to say marry and have children with someone who goes equally as batshit crazy as I do. I wouldn’t be so selfish as to firstly do that to my partner, and secondly to our children. I don’t know if I’ll ever have children, and my heart breaks at the thought of what they might see at such a young age (and now I’m crying for people who haven’t been born yet and may not ever), so having two crazy parents would be just horrible. I find it difficult enough right now to face my parents after having an episode where I totally did not recognise them; the awkwardness and fear and worry that follows, it’s a horrible, horrible thing, and I hate so much that it has repeatedly happened. It seems I’m already harming people I love, and there’s so little I can do about it – how can I expect to ask someone to join me in an eternal joining of souls? In fairness and justice, they will actually have to want to endure those terrible things as equally as they want to experience the joys and happiness we will also have, and all this additional to the normal selfishness that all couples have to deal with.

I’m resigning myself to being alone. I don’t think I could ever ask anyone to endure this, but in my heart I keep the tiniest hope that someone will be so crushingly strong and amazing and caring and nurturing and loving as to want to be with me not regardless of these things, or in spite of them, but because of them.
Easy for you to say there-there, and maybe that’s what I want when I write an entry like this for you all. Your support is so uninformed, but it’s genuine and I accept that your thoughts are with me and I appreciate it. But when you watch the movies, you see a scene that goes for five minutes, then it’s over. You don’t know what it’s like to sit in a GP’s room for hours looking at someone who you thought you could comfortably recognise as your son, your brother or your lover, but see them behaving absolutely nothing like it.