october-december

I wouldn’t say there's been any one singular event of the last few months that would make sense to write about on its own. Things seem to have been snowballing into some sort of alternate reality. I think things really started to pick up in october. I had a full blown manic episode out of nowhere, followed by two weeks of suffocating depression. Bipolar runs in my family, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the unexpectedness of it all was terrifying. The first half of the month was a blur of art, impromptu parties, and rushing headfirst into what felt like insanity. After that, time seemed to stop completely, and I watched the minutes melt away from my room, the number of missing assignments pile up, and the reality of the situation set in like a rock. By the time November rolled around, I had acquired a couple tattoos I have no memory of giving to myself and was ten pounds lighter, with a drug addiction I thought nothing of until the withdrawals hit me like a truck. Little white bars took hold of my life and held on so tight I felt as if they would never leave me alone. I spent much of the month drained, living each day waiting for the weekends, which were spent with my best friend and whichever group we were going out with for the night. Country club parking lots and apartments of absent parents became our safe havens. Her house was of course the spot we would always start at and end up just before the sun rose. I would return home to my parents and take a few shifts at my job, and then sink back into the pit of school work, just hanging in there until friday. December rolled around, entailing getting bellybutton piercings in the back closet of a sketchy tobacco parlor, a gym membership we actually had the motivation to use, friday nights with our jordan friends, and saturdays with the cary ones. It’s felt like a movie. She just found out this morning she has stage three lung cancer. And just like that everything else seems to fade into the background. The invincibility we’ve always felt disappears, and all the things we’ve always talked about doing together when we got older seem now like a story neither of us believe, but keep telling each other, because while we used to cling to having time, and the idea that when we grow up everything will be okay, she might not have too long left. Living everyday as if it's the last is only fun when you know it won’t be, and it terrifies me that one day I will wake up and she might not, and I will have to face the entire world alone.