Purgatory

I've never met anyone quite like myself. On the one hand, I'm weirdly proud of that. On the other, I am isolated in loneliness and fear.

I'm nothing special, yet I am quite unique and, despite the opinions of a few rogue sheep, stupidly charming.

I am a force of nature. I have moved mountains for others. I am also the weakest person I know, and growing dimmer by the day.

I have a house, but no home.

I have love to give, but none to give it to.

I have hope, but I am hopeless.

I want to live, but so desperately wish to die.

This is the space in which I reside, among the ever-present ambiguous fog that refuses to lift and reveal a path—any path—that will allow me to either live, or cease to.

I'm ambitious but afraid, attractive yet self-conscious, optimistic yet cynical.

I am an intelligently idiotic, complacently passionate, morbidly inspirational, misdirected, misunderstood, introverted extrovert of a compass with no true north.

I'm a god damned meat sack of paradox.

This is my Hell, but in truth it is a purgatory.

I wander aimlessly through an endless mist of gloom with no concept of time and not an inkling of when I'll receive a judgment condemning me to one world or the other.

And I have never met anyone like this.

You see, the archetype of depression is outwardly happy, inwardly miserable.

I exhibit no such trait. I am vehemently open about my mental states of mind. Yes, "states." As in plural. As in I cycle through emotional episodes and existential crises like a depraved groupie passed around at a hardcore show.

My thoughts and emotions completely own me, and they come fast and hard without missing a beat and with blatant disregard to my rapidly declining degree of resilience.

I am a slave to my illness. But I don't even know what that illness is. I've been slapped with the labels of manic, borderline, bipolar, "problematic..."

Of course, most of these were back in the days when I was a teen with close to zero autonomy whose parents forced her to sign contracts to reside in her own home and attend therapy against her will and had pills shoved down her throat.

All because I spoke the truth. No one liked that. Not in my "family."

Oh, and I never did receive a proper diagnosis. I've had psych evaluations out the wazoo. I've seen so many therapists, social workers, psychiatrists and neurologists I couldn't ballpark you a number if I tried. I've had MRI's, EEG's, EKG's, CAT scans. I've had 27 wires buttered to my head, wrapped in gauze, and plugged into a wall for three days with not so much as the freedom to shower.

"We could find no evidence to determine any abnormalities in your body or behavior."

Whole lotta good all that did, eh?

It took me nearly 15 years to come to terms with the fact that there is an overwhelming possibility that I suffered a trauma that really f*ed me up.

I don't know what that could be, either. I've effectively archived any memory that caused me pain and overwrote it with humdrum code. Of course, there is a very real chance that everything I just told you was the trauma. Guess we'll never know.

I'm shocked that no one has realised how the repetitious preaching of "self-help experts" shouts loud and clear how necessary it is to "confront your trauma," "forgive yourself" and "heal your wounds" yet none of them ever tell you how. Not even that, but they don't tell you where to begin either.

Of course, they're speaking to an audience of uniformed malaise and I'm just hanging out here in Purgatory trying to get within earshot of a useful piece of information.

I don't belong with the masses. I don't belong alone. I don't belong anywhere.

To be continued.

Hiraeth.