Cycle

The downward arc begins again. I’ve thought about drinking every day for the last two weeks. Everything makes me mad.

I cried three times today. I hate that I fall back on an old habit as soon as I kick another.

I’m beginning to despise my friends again, sneer at their patheticness. How could they be friends with someone like me, so sick and cruel?

If only they knew how I thought of them behind closed doors.

That’s not true.

I know that I love them, and I know that, and they love me, and I hate that.

But I struggle with this thought over and over again.

I know for sure that this would hurt so many people, a thought I have no fear of enacting, I’ve tried to do so many times before. My fear is surviving this thought, as I’ve done so many times before.

That’s the thing, it’s a cycle, a loop, as my friend calls it.

But isn’t it just life?

Doesn’t everyone feel like this?

No. They don’t.

Some people never struggle with this thought. I envy them. I envy how simple and gentle life might be, how much easier they have everything. Their glee would be crushing for someone like me.

I get that it’s a cycle. I go through it quite often, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.

I really thought I was doing better this time.

I always do.

As if there are other sides to both the positive and the negative, that if I’m in one, I may never touch the other again. Yet with each cycle that is proven wrong again and again, that is the cycle of life, everything is temporary, as you are born, you must learn to die.

When I was younger, it was just considered depression. Then they thought I was borderline.

I think it’s bipolar, just like my mother.

How I hate her in times like this, how dare she pass down her suffering when she hates living just as much as I do.

But that’s what fixed those thoughts back then.

Have a kid, find your joy for life in the eyes of another. In the reflection of your misery, a baby giggles back and calls you mother.

No wonder so many parents hate their eldest child.

I must be getting better, though.

I at least know now whenever I think I’m at the thick of it, I’m always wrong. It can get worse. But it can also get better.

I really hope it’s a short cycle.

I fear every time I start my journey through the downward arc, the harder it gets to get back up. And I feel incredibly insufferable when comparing this struggle, this life, to that of Sisyphus. But every time at each end of the spectrum, it feels almost impossible to push back to the centre, to keep going feels unimaginable, to get out of bed, to eat, sleep, to live feels beyond my means, like pushing a boulder up a mountain.

But really, what do you do to a violent dog?

You put it down, don’t you?

That’s what I feel like a lot.

I know I have to talk about my feelings, process them, learn to care about myself a bit better, and stop looking at myself as this wounded dog that was taught to bite at those who get too close.

But what am I to do when this is all I know?

And how I hate the trouble I put the people in my life through. I hate how winy I sound, oh woe is me, just go to a therapist. But I don’t see the point of what they can do that I don’t have the means to do myself. Probably their job.

Sometimes I think I enjoy being sick. It’s easier to deal with than push through.

I wish they would string me up. I’m tough.

I’ve got nails like God.

Don’t they know?

How their crinkles in their face, the shine of their eyes when the sun filters over them, the snort in their laugh when I’ve said something stupid, is the only thing that keeps me going sometimes.

I just have to get through this cycle.