mental illness - to have or not to have?

ever since grade 7, my mom has been chalking up my erratic behaviour, claims that i don't 'feel real' and nightmarish attitude to hormones. hormones, hormones, the natural expected social script of hating your mom and everything, wanting to rebel, hormones, academic stress, doing too many extra-curricular activities, hormones. 

i'm sure plenty of people who have had a mom will know that it's so annoying, isn't it? 

i'm pretty sure that not every 12 year old cried literally every waking moment of Jesus camp, begging incessantly to use off-limits camp phones just to hear her mom's voice. I'm almost positive they didn't skip out on planned activities in pursuit of an elderly lady from the trailer park beside camp who 'understood' her, listened to her teary admissions and gave her shoots of lavender. I'm pretty sure not every 12 year old broke into tears at the culminating camp concert while preaching of God's glory because she saw her mom in the audience but couldn't hug her just yet. I'm pretty sure not every 12 year old wanted to go home and never come back at the mid-week camp parent concert. I remember crying through everything. people say that, but I was actually that kid who was silently bleary-eyed at dinner, choir... even while learning sol-fa at theory or examining the cycle of fifths with a genius 7 year old who really knew her shit. i remember laughing through tears at the absurdity of it, when people asked what was wrong. "oh, i'm just homesick. haha!". what was really happening was that i was experiencing the first crippling bout of depression of my life and being forced to recover from an eating disorder i was convinced i didn't have.

now, i'm sad to say that i'm the same old kid. only now instead of a weeklong summer camp, it's my entire life that i want to run home to my mom from. i live 'on my own' now. but i'm a mess. a fucking mess. i roll around in fetal position (because it's the closest an isolate can get to being cuddled) crying, dreaming of sprinting off my rooftop to a euphoric death, wishing my boyfriend knew just how fucked i was that i couldn't rub up against his hairy, naked body each night like a cat. to be fair to myself, it's been over a week since we've shared a bed, and after about 4 days, i start to feel an emotional headache similar to that same home-sickness i suffered so drastically at camp. almost a biological drive that makes me anxious, frantic and ultimately gnawingly empty when left unsatisfied. 

Everyone feels like their story is unique; that no one else can understand the complexity and almost beautiful formula to their pain. and I know this is largely a cliche; that we all think we're the crazy ones, the ones who truly see and truly feel. and that's because, to us, we are. and i think this alone makes our feelings valid, no matter how erratic or possibly even deluded. 

I've been to psychiatrists and i've struggled to decide what i want to have, what i want to be, and what i wanted to treat. because there is no fine line and there is no boundary. some days you have everything. 
some days you have nothing. 
illnesses i have lightly grazed, flirted with or fully had include (in somewhat chronological but more likely concurrent order) obsessive compulsive disorder (more obsessive; less compulsive), anorexia nervosa, rumination syndrome, bulimia nervosa, depression, (whispers of) bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. 
I've even been fine. but that was my own diagnosis, and only for short but unsustained periods. 

i really do want to be fine. 
i want to regulate my own emotions, be my own master, but i know i have to forfeit this power if i want to reclaim it. 
i know in my core that i am ill. 
that these relationships are all wrong, that missing someone so powerfully, dreaming of them for 2 full years, to the point of full-on depression, is unhealthy. 
but that's the problem; i can't simply stop.
i can't stop using food as a crutch, as a drug. i can't stop bringing back up fatty, starchy, sugary foods to experience them again, and again, or perhaps to dispel them into the sink or toilet. I can't stop indulging in suicidal thinking, either literally or in terms of certain 'lives' i assume within my larger one. i can't stop feeling lonely, empty, devoid of any purpose, to the point where i can't sleep and can't stop thinking about how stopping every activity in my life (the good ones) is the only way i can really be true to myself. myself being no one. i can't stop feeling manic, feeling infinite, and then wanting to drop out, cut off my family, disappear. I can't stop crying in public or spurting out comments, always inappropriate, or hurting people. 

it just seems there's no promise i can make anymore.

it's not that this is me, or the primary me, at any rate. 
it certainly isn't and there have been long periods where i've almost thought depression or disordered eating had eluded me for good. i have gotten awards, taken on leadership roles, felt loved and accepted, achieved things that have made others envious. i have been an overachiever; someone who people have looked at and written off as someone that no one ever has to worry about because i'm just automatically on the right path to the right place, plodding along and staying true and being a good kid. i've been that kid, really and truly i have. 

it's just that some of us really are sick. we aren't just doing this for attention or exaggerating the ups and downs of normal life. some of us really do feel alienated from everything in a big way; to the point where we cannot manage our emotions or cope with the simplest facts of reality. 

and no one has authority, evidence or perspective to tell me that my problems aren't real. feelings, no matter their source or their context, are valid. and deserve, if not to be answered to and pursued , then to simply exist without condemnation. 

i absolutely understand that every 20-esque human faces a ton of shit and has their own never-ending existentialist crisis of a life. i get it. i see that. but that doesn't make us all exactly the same. we are not all swept up in the same reified epidemic of apathy and quick-fixes and bingeing on everything. maybe we are, but it's more intricate than that. 

the notion that unwell people have that they need to somehow prove the validity of their case by taking extreme measures is absurd. 

to have or not to have? 

i'm coming to realize that the choice is not mine to make. 

Tinder Memoirs of a Feminist - to be continued

Hi. I'm Jaime. And I'm here to tell you that it's OKAY to have Tinder. Really, I don't want to hear your sheepish explanations of how you're on it "ironically" or whatever. I've made them too. and will probably continue to make them as a sort of social reflex. but in truth, I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. 

Picture this. You're 18. You've been in two relationships, both of them short-lived and neither of them even remotely involving the elusive and sought-after concept of love. You've been single a while. And you really just want to get out there, meet people, have new experiences, embrace spontaneity and pour back a few pitchers of sangria with a stranger that might become a hot-sex prospect/something in that arena. You have nothing to lose and you're flexible, adventurous and open to trying anything. Except meth. One lonely night you are restlessly rolling around in your twin bed at your mom's suburban home dreaming of something more than this. The last person you kissed was your best friend on a bathroom floor in a condo while being high on M for the first and only time. You had to keep yelling at angry bathroom-users to "FUCK OFF AND USE THE LADIES' ROOM!". Basically, you've had it. So, you do the unthinkable. After much deliberation, you rationalize downloading the notoriously stigma-ridden yet increasingly more acceptable hook-up app, Tinder. 

It ends up being fun. And also, as many others can likely testify, a great way to inadvertently conduct your own social research project on sexuality and gender differences. Upwards of 10 of my matches commented on how I was (one of) the only girls to initiate a conversation. This is not exactly groundbreaking news. We still live in a culture where a girl is encouraged to play hard to get and where every self-help article tells women to hold back and mute their initial sexual desires, if they want a lasting, real relationship. The fact that the sentiment of "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" is still echoing through the poor heads of women floating around in the matrix of modern dating is a major problem. First of all, the "cow" is also getting milk from another cow! The cows are consensually milking each other, and in theory, benefitting equally! Everything is reciprocal; and a woman is not simply a commodity to be "milked". Furthermore, if a woman chooses to wait, that's her personal decision. But it shouldn't be because she feels that she will be cheapened or seen as "easy" if she fucks a guy on the first date. If she's great in bed on the first date, chances are that same chemistry will still be around on, say the 15th date... or over the course of a relationship. Of course no one assumes someone is "the one" on the first date. So how should you know whether or not to go for it? If anything, having sex or sexual encounters right away is an easy way to tell if you're compatible with someone. Or not. Believe me. 

blurry person

I am a blurry person

I do not exist in focus

I am the moment that you cannot recapture with sharp edges

I am the night you can never remember in chronological order

I am the large, loud girl that obstructs your field of vision, but ceases to exist when she departs from it

I am nothing but a misrepresentation of something that never existed

-circa September 2013-

priorities

I say my program is mundane bullshit. That I'm effortlessly doing well.

So then why am I dropping courses in droves?

because I'm not. 


because I need to get my shit together. 

because I'm actually letting everything slip. 

because Kyle is right; the only reason I need to actually try at my life is that I need practice learning to be great at something even if it's not the something. I know this reads like a John Green novel, but I'm not going for that. There's never a good excuse to be apathetic/cynical/unmotivated. If I'm paying large sums of money to go to university, then I better damn well bleed this institution dry. I must prove to myself that I can master a subject or write a good research paper. Because, presently, this is what I'm doing with my life, even if I have no clue what I will be doing with the rest of it. 


I'm going to dig myself out of this stupid ditch of self-pity and start caring. A lot. 

Sex positions (or not)

I think sex positions, or lack of a plural with regard to them, are very important. 
I mean. 
It's true, every couple who fucks for an extended period of time develops some semblance of a routine, right? right? well. that's the case with me. 
and the thing is, considering i met my man-pie on Tinder, i thought maybe he'd be a little more... spontaneous/adventurous in bed. 
well. he's not. this is rare for a girl, but I'm the member of our duo who wants to give anal sex a try. i'm of the "try everything if you only get to fuck one person" mentality. i mean, seriously. let's fuck in other places ie: not only in your bed. or maybe let's try the lotus position, or that position i saw Marnie doing on girls where the dude fucked her from behind while lying on her back. agh. that would be so cool and nice. idk. i think maybe my boyfriend has a secret fear of crushing me to death and that he's also just a monstrously lazy fuck. but i literally am game for anything he's ever wanted to do, and i'm tired of that not being reciprocated. cowgirl is great, and i really like fucking him that way, but it's exhausting and getting a little tired, and it's hard to be like, "hey, you know how i said that you're really great in bed and stuff? well, we've been fucking the exact same way for 4 months and now i'm ready for shower sex/rough sex/anal play/every goddamned position we're physically capable of." even missionary would be a refreshing change of sexual scenery. he's a creative person! so am i! can we not improvise? can we not write a completely novel, eccentric story? can we not tease and tantalize each other in new ways? or at least put a much-needed twist on our usual sequence? it seems that this has not occurred to him. so i guess it's my job to be like "ehhh... so i was thinking. you know when you asked me if i thought you were boring in bed? well, tbh, friend... y'are."

I do things i don't want to do for him ALL. THE. TIME. i come out with his friends when i'm dead tired or sick. i go down on him even when i'd rather not. i fuck when he wants to, i leave him alone when he clearly doesn't. i get him water; i buy him food. i do all of this because i love him and i want him to know that he's important. but what about MEMEMEME? MAYBE JUST MAYBE WE CAN TRY THINGS I WANT TO DO INSTEAD OF STAYING IN THE SAME BORING, SWEATY COMFORT ZONE THAT WE'VE BEEN STAGNATING IN FOREVER. 

one more comment; i've heard him say "oh, i'm a dom", like that excuses everything and automatically makes me a "sub" by default. well this is annoying. can't we take turns? can't i lead the way sometimes? what if i'm a goddamned "dom" too, ya dummy? jesus. who else hates when people state things like this without any regard for the other person, or the fact that they like occupying more than one role instead of having one thrust upon them? thoughts?

have a good day, and remember to get ANGRY about your sex life! 

much love and erotic energy, 

your bitch, kate


- An Sexy Lil Afterthought Added Two Days Later -

so, friends. on the topic of sex/sexuality, i believe my whole masturbating mechanism has, in effect, been blocked. i've always been heavily discouraged from watching porn/doing anything sexual and have a relatively conservative Christian mother (she lost her virginity at 22, which albeit late, came as a shock since i was convinced that my conception marked the date of her deflowerment. apparently not). all this to lead up to the fact that, i've only recently been exploring the grittier corners of the web, searching for erotica that actually resonates with me. well, it turns out that porn with a chubby guy (who does that remind me of? hm) tends to be a lot hotter and more real to me. like a lot hotter. so here. check out this wonderful thing i found in the bountiful porn-filled garden of eden (aka pornhub). it's hot and cute and amateur and real and damn... there are like 3 positions there that my boyfriend and i have never even ventured near. give it a watch. it's interesting and nice to see normal weird bodies be so sexy and confident. i can't stress enough how much i love imperfection; how much it turns me on. my boyfriend thinks he has a shitty body because he has a beer belly and a double chin, but i think he's a wicked sex god because idk i like that he writes and doesn't obsess over eight-packs or how much protein's in his hemp-seed breakfast shake. ya feel? i want meaty, hefty, yummy him. who else loves someone's unconventional body? 

i've never been suicidal but i would now like something to happen that would merit an extended order of bed-rest

Despite my deepest desires to have a great fucking year and turn my life around --SURPRISE-- that hasn't happened. In fact, I know this is a cliche, but everything has gone from pretty not good to SHIT. absolute shit. three ensembles that I auditioned for, I didn't get into. THREE. and the thing is, I get into almost everything i try for! I used to be a music MAJOR, can't you see? yeah, I know i haven't sang in 4 months but i'm                     , ex-voice performance major and entitled princess who succeeds at absolutely everything. ha. well. it's funny because last year I used to beat myself up for not studying enough or doing too much extra shit and filling my schedule so that I couldn't give each thing enough attention. i wish it was like that now. you see, now, i have nothing. i have classes, which i don't do jack shit for. and i have yoga classes which i have put down money for but have yet to attend. and i have a mother who i continually use exploit and disappoint. and i have a job teaching kids to swim which is probably the only good thing on this list but is still exhausting. and i have a boyfriend who i am on a "break" with because I got black-out motherfucking inebriated on Friday and made out with my ex for 10 seconds 3 meters from my current boyfriend who didn't notice but was told by his best friend the next day. yep. and this is the first and only male i have been in love with and have loved and been loved by. this is the guy who i could stare at for eons; whose head i want to cradle in my lap while we watch Space Balls. this is the perfect, funny, happy, amazing, infinitely magical, intelligent, attractive, smooth, beautiful, different, incredibly perfect for me guy that i wanted to be with for a long-ass time. and i fucked it all up because i'm a promiscuous drunk who insists on being irresponsible beyond the normal point of funny or cute or even mildly gross. I'm fucking 19. i should actually know how to drink without losing my week-old iphone 5c or throwing up on another person or drinking to the point that someone calls an ambulance OR being unlucky and stupid enough to find myself kissing freaking                           MY FUCKING EX WHO WAS STUPIDLY AT THE SAME BAR AS MY BOYFRIEND AND HIS FRIENDS AND ME. holy shit. i am so done with myself. 

i guess all i can really do now is give my boyfriend space and try to pick up the pieces of my in-shambles life. 

this really is an all-time low. (ugh. i'm not referencing the band.)

- Kate

love is blind - that is, until all your partner talks about is how they look like shit

let's call him frank. 

i should capitalize that, eh? anyways, let me sum up our (once?) flourishing romance. we met on Tinder 4 months ago when I was in the heated, axe-drenched midst (or should i say mist?) of my first and latest internet dating frenzy. between Tinder and this dumb app called "How About We", I had (unprecedentedly) met up with 6 men in a series of weeks. i fucked 3 of them (including my current boyfriend). i had webcam sex with one of them. i performed for a portuguese foot-fetishist. two of them were jewish. 3 of them attended the University of Toronto, and one of them still does. one goes to the same place i do for psychological counselling and told me so, directly before presenting me with the most cringe-worthy pick-up line of my entire 19 years: "how about we put our lips together and see what happens?". we were on the roof of some campus building across from New College, so it was hard to slip away, but slip away i did. anyways, i digress. back to my current beau. 

i didn't want a relationship. i was doing the whole going-out-with-guys-every-fucking-day, grinding-on-them-at-concerts, seeing-wes-anderson-films, eating-at-allegedly-hipster-joints thing for a while and it was pretty okay. single was okay. i wasn't lonely for the most part, albeit i was a tad sad. but not while i was pouring back budweisers with guys who studied human bones or watching screenings of documentaries about mad-cap couples circumnavigating the globe in dilapidated London taxi cabs. not in those situations. 

anyways. it was may 30th, 2014 when i met philosophy/poli-sci grad, Frank. (which is a horribly unhot name, but i assure you the real one is much more fuck-worthy). i met him at the divest of bars before a James Murphy DJ set that i had been pretty excited about. i had chatted with him a little on Tinder, saw he had photoshopped Drake into his picture and that his ideal date was sipping gin while watching Nic Cage films. it was good enough for me and really, all i wanted was a spontaneous concert buddy to laugh with while i sipped on my 9 dollar beer and beat to the formidable drum that was James Murphy. never, in my wildest dreams, did i think Tinder was capable of yielding someone i would date, let alone love or think of really being with. on our first meeting though, i took a small mental step back. he wasn't skinny. and i had only been with beanpoles. this guy had a gut. a cute face and an affinity for nice paisley dress-shirts, but... a gut. i (shallowly) wrote the date off and poured back some dirt-cheap beer while airing my grievances over a past (and failed) Tinder romance, of which he had some connection. I ended up losing him at the concert (not deliberately, but my phone was notoriously dead) and going home with a Jewish app-developer/DJ who i had previously fucked. it was a lucky night. i was a mess, but a happy, liberated one who even may have had a second chance to reiterate my affair with said Jew. of course, the next morning, while gazing at the Bata Shoe Museum and spooning, I checked my finally-charged phone to find a plethora of apologetic texts from my relatively unmemorable suitor that i had nonchalantly lost. "i am so sorry for this mishap. free drinks on me next week?" and "i actually had a really great time despite not expecting much of Tinder". they were sweet, almost tragic. i felt so superior, so light; like i had cheated the system and won. but really, i hadn't cheated anyone. i hadn't owed anyone anything. 

well, i did end up seeing him again. who am i to refuse free drinks? we went to a turn-of-the-millenium nostalgia themed dance party that proved to be clubbier than we had hoped. but i guess it really started happening then. he was still meh in the looks department. i didn't really know how exciting he was in the others. but we got drunk, wetly made out on the dance floor and, on our second date, i was already telling him about my dad, my cousin's hilarious appearances in both Nicolas Cage and Robin Williams' shittiest movies and how i really, really should be in a band. and then i told him something deep. or maybe i was just so drunk that it seemed profound. but at that moment when my forgotten sadness began to seep back into view, he passionately kissed me. and then we kissed in an alleyway. which was nice. although i do remember internally/possibly-externally rolling my eyes as he tried in vain to grope my breasts through my tight late-'90s turtle-neck dress. we parted our separate ways, me eating pistachios with a strange man in his 40s who wanted me to come to an after-hours place with him and his friends and Frank eating a shawarma (he actually confusedly passed me and said strange man on his way home). let's not talk about my convoluted and tipsy bikeride home.

i don't think we'd really have hit it off it weren't for the remake of The Wickerman. the. shittiest. movie. of. all. time. but it was so bad it was good and my cousin was the main freak in it and we made it a date. and we fucked. and he was beginning to be so sweet and special and hot. although, somehow, in our alcohol-laden fog, the bastard pretty much never used a condom, complaining that he wasn't brave enough to buy the big ones that fit him (till this day, i think there were two instances of condom use. not that i put up much of a fight. morning-after pill it was. i know. you'd have to be there to understand why i could possibly be so stupid.)

by the fourth date, another wild dance night, i was blubbering embarrassing phrases like "i really like you" and "we match" and "this is special". and it all went to hell. before i knew it, i was seeing him every second day. drinking with him. seeing mac demarco with -SURPRISE - all his friends. and we were having the best (condomless, but now semi-protected) sex i had ever dreamed of. after 2.5 dates, i had forgotten my initial reaction to his weight. a face that may have seemed funny-looking or childish was suddenly my new ideal. his caramel eyes were captivating; his style, his demeanour perfect to me. i was proud to be with him. he had money to do fun things. he paid his half. we took turns treating each other. it felt good. he felt right in my body and right in my arms. i wanted him and only him; craved lying excitedly awake with him, recollecting childhood experiences, laughing about what we saw in the world that was funny. 

fast-forward 3 months. 

somewhere between now and then, he became self-conscious, cripplingly so. "i'm a piece of shit". "i don't know why you stay with me." "you're going to break up with me because i have no job". "i look like shit". "this shirt used to be loose on me". "fuck it; i need a smoke". i'm trying to love him no matter what. but the fact is, nothing about him used to bother me until he started loudly complaining about virtually everything. suddenly he is tarnished. i liked his face; his hair. i admired him for being bold, adventurous, fun and not giving a fuck that he wasn't Channing Tatum. i thought it was hot as fuck how he grabbed me in bed and loved his carnal, hungry facial expressions as he tossed me around and talked dirty. i loved his hairy body, his meaty thighs. i loved it all. but something switched. maybe he got too comfortable. maybe he started to get nervous, scared, that if he didn't voice his insecurities, i would think them first. but the God-honest truth is that i never saw any of that. initially. 

now, i look at him and i feel sad. i see how broke he is; how self-conscious he is, yet unwilling to solve his money problems and it makes me angry, hopeless. i see how he makes me buy him panzerottis, shawarma, subway sandwiches late at night because he can't afford to feed himself throughout the day. i see how he's thrown up the last three times he's had alcohol (embarrassingly enough, I had to find out from my roommate that he left noticeable evidence in my bathroom). i see how he sleeps hours after i leave the house. i see how, maybe my unconditional love and acceptance are not helping either of us, but encouraging him in his secretiveness, shame and sloth. and it hurts my heart and makes him ugly and makes me sad. 

but i still love him. 

now, don't think liberated, free-spirited, self-preservationist Tinder-Kate is dead and gone. she's not. i'm going to stand my ground. i'm going to celebrate the sweet, funny, intellectual, creative dude that i fell so hard for. but i'm not going to pay for every drink, every sandwich, every subway token. because that's not my job, and it's a shitty deal for both of us. i'm not going to sleep into the late, late morning just because he does and ruin the productivity of my whole day. that's not how i can function. and i'm not going to go out and stay up all hours of the night just because my boyfriend is unemployed and out of school. because i'm neither of those things. and by having low expectations of him, i implicitly have low expectations of myself. 

so that phase is ending.

and if he can't adjust to the realities of post-graduate life, and life with me, then maybe we'll have to end too. i have to be open to that, regardless of our love.