All These Things That I've Done

So many things have changed within the last year, and things will continue to change – I know that.  Looking back, I now realize that I don’t regret a single thing.  Not that shitty tattoo, or that bad-for-me ex-boyfriend, or even that stay in the loony bin.  I will now recap my last year.

            When it began, I was seventeen, going into my senior year of high school.  I was with the same unhealthy boyfriend that I’d been with the entire summer leading up to then, and I really thought I loved him.  (I will not disclose his name, but let’s just call him Zack).  Zack was fairly unattractive, really sweet, and most importantly, he adored me.  I mean, he absolutely adored me.  He thought I was sent from heaven as his personal gift to be honored for the rest of his mentally unstable life.  That was the problem.  I couldn’t handle his dependency on me, I couldn’t handle him treating me like I was God almighty.  So, I left.  That was in October. 

            Let’s move up to December.  In December, I went back to the hospital for reasons I will not discuss.  It involved some thoughts of death, some intense obsession of Virginia Woolf, and a horrible literary essay that was written under extreme stress.  After about a week, I was back out in the real world with everyone else.  I got back to school and the stress of waiting for acceptance/rejection letters from the multiple colleges I’d applied to arrive.

            Later in December, I began spending time with Zack again.  Honestly, it was probably a bad move, but I don’t regret it.  We started seeing each other again.  It started with some sex in the back of his car and moved on to us saying, “I love you,” all over again.  This time around, though, I really did love him, more than the last time.  This time was genuine.  He had become more independent and more worthy as a boyfriend.  I was grateful.

            In January, I took shrooms.  They were fun, to say the least.  Of course, I did them with my boyfriend, Zach.  He’d done acid quite a few times, so he said he knew what he was doing, and he did.  It was amazing.  I saw things I’d never seen, and life looked beautiful.  That didn’t last long, though.

            Now, we move on to March.  In March, I turned eighteen.  I was now an adult.  I could do whatever the fuck I wanted, right?  Well, wrong.  My parents still had a pretty tight noose around my neck.  They thought I was a safety risk.  And maybe I was, but they didn’t have to think that.

            April.  In April, I had a manic episode that lasted a few days.  I went kind of crazy…  I took my boyfriend to drop acid, got my first (real, not homemade) tattoo on the palm of my hand, and ended up slicing up my arms and stomach pretty bad.  They sent me to the hospital.  That time was rough.  The first couple of days I spent in the adult unit.  Adult males ran down the halls screaming and my roommate told me she heard God, and even sat on my bed and spoke in tongues.  They soon moved me into the teen unit because they thought it was more fitting, and that was a little better.  I got out, and moved on with my normal life as usual.  I had to keep going because I had to graduate.  The graduation.

            Oh, June, you were quite the month.  I graduated.  I was finally free from the constricting societal chains of high school.  I could move on from the wretched construction of my adolescence and go where I really wanted to go, and do what I really wanted to do.  I graduated in a floral white dress under a maroon cap and gown, and honestly, I felt beautiful.  I chose to go to the affordable and well-esteemed University of California, Santa Cruz.  It was a laid back school with a surprisingly spectacular writing program.  It was gorgeous and I was very excited to move hundreds of miles away from San Diego where my parents lived, as well as my psat.  I was eager to leave it all in the dust.

            July was the month I began working.  I worked for my father.  It was a desk job where I answered the phone, filed papers, and played nice.  I liked it enough, though.  The people all liked me because I was the boss’s daughter, and I was nice, too.  I was also making bank.  I mean, I was making ten dollars an hour working overtime on a full-time schedule.  It was great for my financial situation.  July neared its end, and I was getting ready to go on my family hiking trip through northern California, Nevada, and Utah.  Before I left, though, my boyfriend and I broke up for probably the third time.  It was over this time, though.  It was unhealthy, what we were doing.  It was bad for both of us.  We were hurting each other with our illnesses and selfishness and dependency.  We weren’t making any progress.

            August got better.  (Well, the beginning, anyway.  It’s only just begun).  I got home from my incredible hiking trip through the west coast, and was feeling a bit better from the brutal breakup.  My best friend Clara came to the rescue, though, and helped my through it with a big distraction.  We got tattoos.  This was my second, but my first real one.  The last one I got was a pill (life size) on my hand.  This one was a bell jar on my side about four inches high.  It was lovely.  I loved it like I used to love my boyfriend, except more.  It was a part of me and it was amazing.  I immediately felt much better about everything.  I got the bell jar, because in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Plath described depression like a bell jar.  It comes down on you, you can’t breathe, you’re isolated from the world, and your view on the world is distorted and foggy.  The bell jar can lift, but it can also come right back down.  I loved that idea, so I made it a part of me.

            I’m not sure if these things that I’ve done are bad, good, or somewhere in between, but I loved every part of it, and this past year has been truly, and awfully, wild.