I Don't Want To Be Crazy

I crave broken men. When I try to save other people am I trying to save myself? Am I covering up for my lack of strength by putting people back together? I am tired. I want someone to save me - build an intricate web and place it beneath me in case I fall.

I am not happy. I am not unhappy. I am frozen somewhere in the middle that is so much worse. I am nowhere. Nothing is happening and I am getting more and more sad.

Where you are and what you are doing is something you have done dozens of times before without any problems Recognize that you are going to get out of this that you always get out of this that you are going to live that you won't go crazy I am telling you that you will live, because you always live, because you are strong and beautiful.

I want things so bad that I force them, push them until they tear.

Even the pigeons are dancing, kissing, going in circles, mounting each other. Paris is the city of love, even for the birds.

I am the cure and the disease.

I am trying to find myself in all of the chaos, find something that I can call me inside the screams and inside the 'you shoulds' and 'you have to bes.

When I try to save other people am I trying to save myself? Am I covering up for my lack of strength by putting people back together?

I can't believe no one else can hear I am screaming inside my head. Things are moving too fast. I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to die. My hands are shaking. I try to squeeze them, try to make it stop, but now my fists are shaking, and this shaking is working it's way through me. It must look like I am having a fit. I want to let the scream out, but I think if I start, I'll never stop. It's not supposed to be like this. I am too young to die. I don't know how to make this end, and if it doesn't, I'll have to go to the hospital, be medicated, force-fed soft foods. I don't want to be that person. I am not that person. I am not. I am not.

I am fearful of romantic dinners, huge crowds, dusk - of normal things- afraid to be loved, the one thing I want most. Maybe it's because I don't think I deserve it because I am not that perfect little girl that I was supposed to be, well manicured and well groomed, because I have nervous breakdowns, and take pills, and keep moving on.

All bad nights come to an end.

I am jealous of the little kid spinning around near the fountain. What would these people think if I were to start spinning with my arms spread wide? A lunatic on drugs, probably. My greatest accomplishment here is not caring, letting go of other people's opinions. I am not wound as tight. I can let go, just no spinning yet.

Most days I go home crying and my dad tells me welcome to the real world.

When kids make gross face, parents say, "One day your face is going to stick like that." I'm afraid that one day my panic's going to stick and it's going to be my entire life, every second, and there will be nothing else.

This hurts more than anything else because I cannot stop it.

Most days it feels like I am watching a movie where the sound isn't in sync, the speed is all wrong. Either I'm moving too quickly and the world is dripping along, or the world is moving too quickly, cosmic, and I'm oozing like a slug barely able to pull my own weight. It's best if I keep moving because if I stopped and stood still people would see me shaking.

I am so close to the edge that I could vomit, so close that it would be easy to jump.

But waiting is killing me. Don't they understand? Don't they remember what it feels like? I want to have things settled. I can't stand the idea of not knowing.

I have been telling myself that these feelings are new, but they aren't, I just didn't connect them before

I cry and wonder how I'm going to fall asleep because sleeping means waking and going through all this again

It's weird to hear this again - to hear how I was perceived by people before they got to know me. Some of the girls thought I was a bitch - aloof, distant - but now they see the truth.

I am in a house. I am in one room and my anxiety is in another. It's close. I can feel it. I can go to it. But I won't.

Protection does not come in a bottle. It is in me, in my actions, in my thoughts. I am the best medicine for myself. I am the cure and the disease.

I visit him a few times downtown while he paints. We talk about how he's going to Spain for the fall semester and he shows me a painting he did and points to this one part, a bridge, and tells me he thought of me when he painted it. It is so sad how knowing something so small can make me so happy.

She says it's like a switch - a big red PANIC switch - gets flipped in my head and I can't turn it off. She says we're going to figure out how to turn it off.

All of a sudden the world opened up and it's doing it again now. In this garden there are so many stories, so many other problems besides mine.

She becomes the voice of reason when there is none

I have only a general sense of the pain, of not being able to control my body and my thoughts. All I ever wanted was to have control- to be in charge of myself and the rest of the world.

I don't think that I am happy, but then again, I don't know. Sometimes I get so caught up in the process of living-- of eating, dressing, taking the train to work, that I don't give it enough thought. Maybe happiness is being content. But is it really?

We need a voice from the outside because our own voices cannot be trusted.