stories of Christmas past

I have this tendency to reinvent myself every so often. I don't know if it's because I am living with a serious identity crisis or whether it's part of my being mentally interesting or what...

About six and a half years ago I met my best friend through a website called The Garage. It was an online refuge for teens struggling with all flavors of mental illness from bipolar disorder to multiple personality disorder to "simple" clinical depression and anxiety. My BFF and I shared a common thread before we ever realized it - we both have bipolar disorder. She fought off any sort of treatment and thus diagnosis for years and years until she finally gave in and started seeing a therapist and shrink on a regular basis. Now she's on appropriate meds and seeing a talk therapist regularly.

I, on the other hand, have been medicated since I turned 19. (Courtesy of my paranoid parents who thought happiness came in pill form. Personally, at the time, I felt happiness came in a bottle. A vodka bottle to be specific. I spent a year of my late teens perpetually wasted to the point when people would ask about me they would refer to me as "that drunk girl". Nice, huh?)

I was a pretty screwed up kid and an even more screwed up teenager. When I became a 'young adult' and moved into my own place, things just got worse. I was seeing a shrink and took my meds faithfully but I still seemed to be spiraling out of control. I had no one to monitor me 24/7 anymore so I pretty much did what ever the hell I wanted. I got mixed up in all sorts of bad relationships, some that I'm not very proud of. I replaced alcohol with weed and ecstasy. Oh, yeah, and lots of sex. I stayed suicidal and depressed for the most part. But sometimes I felt on top of the world and loved everything and everyone in sight! Nothing could stop me! Those were the days that I loved to gather up all my friends in my 1982 Mercedes (aka The Green Beast) and fly down the Autobahn to Nürnburg to blow my entire paycheck. Oftentimes I spent my rent money.

If I knew then what I know now, life may not have gotten so out of control. Maybe I wouldn't have had to spend a week on the crazy ward in 2001 for a suicide attempt. Maybe I wouldn't have as many scars as I have now because maybe, just maybe, I would've stopped cutting a lot sooner than I did.

Then again.

These former selves of mine like to remind me that they're still a part of me. I still long to be that punk-rocker, crazy girl that blows bubbles at random strangers and dances in the snow at 3:00 AM in the middle of January. I'm still that girl I'm just a little bit older, a tiny bit wiser, and a lot less selfish than she used to be.

To be perfectly honest... I'm doing nothing more than waiting to break free.