Adventures I used to have

When I was 13 I had my first job. I worked a few days a week, enough to keep me in video games. I'd stay up and write all night. 2008 was my first summer without a job. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had plenty of adventures though. I longed for something more to fill up my time. This summer will be my first summer without a summer vacation, except for maybe 3 weeks of break. I'm totally done with this.

OK, so that didn't explain a lot.

So now let me explain. I'm severely bipolar but even I'm deluded about it. I know people who are bipolar who are in less good shape than I am. I feel like I don't deserve to be called "severe."

I've always been like this so I don't really know anything different. I've been told that it becomes more evident as a person gets older, but I always did have this sense of inner turmoil, the mood swings, delusions in intense manic states. The violence, the outbursts, the punched-out picture frames and boxcutter thrown into the wall.

It's not normal, even if it was the only thing I knew.

I guess it's getting a little clearer that I'm severe. I take lithium now. The first day I started my dosage it made me so blank and slow. I could barely walk a straight line. I thought "If this is what normalcy is, it's way overrated."

But I kept with it. I fought the nausea. It got less and less. I could think more. More importantly, I could still create.

My mom, who once said "It is SO DIFFICULT to live with you!" remarked on how calm and even I was.

But I don't think I'm taking enough. I feel like it wears off around 5 or 6. I'll figure it out in time.

The success of destruction

I remembered. to work so hard on something, throw yourself into it so fully that you lose yourself. The end result is satisfying and beautiful but you have nothing left of yourself. Burned out and hating what you did for taking you over.

I don't know why it should come to me now. perhaps it's the subject matter of a final project--Beauty and the beast. Beauty undergoes a change that turns her into a beast. Maybe I made it too reminiscent of my life.

Brief rememberance

I started looking at apartments today. When I used to be bored I'd look at shoes, clothes, electronics, games, but never apartments. Shoes and clothes, I could play grown up Ms. Corporate (pink half-shaved bob and sexy black patent Dior pumps included). Electronics and games I could whisk off into a world and roll everything up into stars. Apartments though. That's the last frontier. Striking it out on my own, for real this time. I don't know when, but when the time is right it will happen.

The Wilshire Royale said hello to me. Instantly summer came rushing back, full of heat waves and iced coffee with shots of caramel sauce and hours sunning my bare unemployed ass and reading stories, beautiful stores about God and wholeness. I was learning to be whole after finding out my parents were divorcing, albeit amicably. I realize how blessed I am that my parents get along so well. They consider each other friends. The wholeness I saw in them inspired me to heal. To stop throwing knives at the wall. to stop drop-kicking lawn furniture clear across the yard.

Wilshire Royale. A gorgeous 1920s building in Los Angeles. I never met you but I saw your pictures online. I measured out your studio apartment against my room and tried to live in it. I pared down everything, anticipating the move. I had dates set aside to tour a few buildings I liked. I thought and thought and made plans. Inside I nurtured this idea of "my own place," my little studio apartment.

I interviewed with FIDM a few weeks after my imaginary nesting. The support I felt just from my first visit made me waver. Was I sure I wanted to put it off that long? So I changed to Fall (2010) Semester, Los Angeles campus instead of Winter (2011). In the meantime, I had lunch with a friend. Each step I took down Montgomery sealed my decision. This is what I have to do. I just have to feel it was right.
"Are you sure you want to move to LA?"
It'd been the first time I'd heard that from a non-family member.
"Yeah, it's a lot less expensive down there. I got a studio lined up, 750"
"But you don't have any family down there, do you?"
It hit me in perhaps the goofiest way possible.

In the video game Earthbound, homesickness is a real status condition. Alone, reachable by a phone call, but just not the same.

"I have some friends down there."
But I knew that their lives and mine wouldn't sync.

Why LA? A friend of mine moved down there. LA... a city I hadn't been to proper since I was 5 or so. LA. to start anew. To live an an old Hollywood building. Dinner parties with imaginary friends served Martinellis clustured around my bed/table/surface.

Come the second interview, I knew that San Francisco was the place. It wasn't indecisiveness. It was the right thing.

So why am I looking at this old sign now and feeling a twinge of sadness? Sometimes I just can't help but think what would have happened if I'd chosen to move there. I was enamoured with the idea of my little studio apartment. A little place to take care of, to own. The little prince and his flower.