The stupid car.

I’m supposed to say something. I’m telling myself I’m supposed to say something. Use it or lose it?

I feel dried up creatively. Damn! And even that’s not putting it right. Where are my words? They went away with my feelings - I have buried it all.

And here I am, just waiting on the next burial. God I hate it. When I don‘t visit my dad and see him as feeble as he is - well, out of sight, out of mind. And it keeps ME from GOING out of my mind.

Work is busy, but not bad. I was a weird kind of tired today. No heavy eyelids, but slowed down. An peculiar static warmth.

So what next? Another 34 years of this, eh? I’m almost 31. Two weeks and change. I feel I must be starting to look my age. Perhaps I always did, and I’ve been lying to myself thinking I could pass for a 20-something.

But it doesn’t matter. Appearances and assumptions don't change facts and none of us can live in someone else‘s images of us.

I remember being in the psych hospital. It’s 2011. I’m young. I’m thin but still feel fat. I‘m blonde and a few weeks before all of this I stood smiling on some rock. I still have the picture. And I’m here because love is my biggest problem. I got in that car, didn’t ask for directions, didn’t ask the driver where we were going. I don’t even really regret the trip, but it seems like such a silly thing now. But it was more than love, of course. I got the answer I knew all along: I have bipolar disorder. So I was sent home eventually. “Here’s some meds for your forever. It gets better, it gets worse, and that stays the same.“

To think of what my world was then - if I knew where I ended up, would I have stayed? Impossible to say. Perhaps not. But I wouldn’t have had the insight I do now. So it’s always said “if I only knew then what I know now...” God am I glad I didn’t know then what I know now… because I am glad I stayed. And now I know that burning down everything and everyone is not the answer. Maybe I’ll stay average, unpublished, a spinster. And maybe that’s enough.

But I suspect this will not be the case.