I’ve always been very resistant to change. I highly value sameness. And I always have. The first exhibition of my pathological craving for predictability was when I was in third grade. My k-3 elementary school only held those grades. And after third grade was over, It was time to leave my friends I had gotten used to and learned to love in k-3 for intermediate school for grades 4th-6th. It affected me so much that I was led to create my first memory box. It contained small mementos that reminded me of the times that were being left behind. I also wrote my first song out of the highly charged emotions, my ultimate dissatisfaction with having to move on. It was called “Friends Mean the World to Me,” which is rather explanatory for the message that song contained. Through the years, I have kept my memory boxes. To this day, all of them are in the attic, and I still create them. I felt my hatred for change this whole time, then things changed more drastically at age 14. When a crisis fractured my psyche. I became bullied by older girls in high school for being the “biggest slut in school” before I even got there. And there i was, the Virgin who had never gotten past second base, never touched a boy “down there”, and I was despised and bitched out on AOL Instant Messenger at least once a week from the end of eighth grade til the middle of 10th grade. And it broke me. Destroyed me. And I internalized all that pain. I was meek and timid to these girls who ended up literally ruining my life, yet a rabid beast to myself. My self hatred consumed me, comprised me. I grew to hate myself more than those girls ever could. And sadly enough, it was because they all convinced me with their cruel, malicious messages that I was worthless and I deserved the pain and hatred they inflicted upon me. I resorted to slicing and scarring my skin to numb the pain for the next 9 years of my life. It was at age 15 that true signs of mental illness revealed themselves. After multiple doctors, to trial and error chemical cocktails, to finally a nation wide bipolar disorder study at Mass General Hospital, the answer was uncovered. I had contracted a chronic, debilitating mood disorder. I was a manic depressive. The new change in my life with this illness led me to feverishly study this disorder the first years of the diagnosis. I became well-versed in my crazy, my dysfunction, what made me so different and doomed from other kids my age. I learned what elicits symptoms of my bipolar: stress and life changes. I had never put two and two together until just recently, but my hopeless desire for control over my surroundings seems to partly stem From having no control over the changes in my moods. I attempt to assume some control in any way I can. And change is something that is completely out of my hands- it takes me out of the driver’s seat and turns me into a passenger on this twisted theme park ride. And this need for control and avoidance of change has only become more clear with time. And another possible reason I cling so tightly to what is comfortable and routine and well known is because of my burden of knowledge I have accrued in my studies on myself and on what happens to me and others cursed souls chained to this disease until they day they die. The position that change puts me in, how it affects me so profoundly, is a fact always swimming in my unquiet mind that change is detrimental to my brain’s inefficiency to remain stable and free from cycles that this illness is comprised of. I fear changing jobs, and that has gotten in my way as an adult, staying stuck in part-time jobs in retail with kids in high school, in the face of my bachelor’s degree in psychology. I realize that with nearly every move to a new home i have made, a cycle of depression has followed me like a black raincloud ready to electrocute my middle ground of stability I work so hard to obtain. I need the green grass on sea level, my healthy, normal, cycle-free place that is required for me to function like a normal human being. I have spent an inordinate, injurious amount of time being whipped from my treasured green grass to the sky, being damaged by the sun because the hypomania makes things too bright, too hot, too good, too light, too euphoric where the crackpot decisions I make burn me to a crisp. I have spent a sickly, stifling amount of time drowning at the bottom of the dark black and blue bruised sea, trapped underwater in depression while the rest of the world, so far above me, functions normally without these cinder blocks chained to their ankles. This wisdom I have accumulated about the possibilities of the detriment that change and stress pose to my fragile skull scares me to be too weak to even try to leave my safe harbor, to tamper with my beaten path that I know by heart. And vacating my sanctuary of homeostasis, my port in this storm is what I am currently on the road to face. I am relocating my refuse, literally vacating my safe place, to a new home, three quarters of an hour away from my family, friends, job, and home I have had in my life for years. And this is all for him. He, who I have solidified a commitment for my future with. I am embarking on what will be the continuation of a connection unlike any other i have held in my hands. I trust him to hold tightly to me in his strong, capable hands, believing he will not let me slip through his fingertips. I am rearranging my existence for love. The symptoms have started. The ability to function normally has begun to to wane in a few ways. It is not full blown. Yet. It is a prequel to what may occur. But. The future is uncertain. I do not have a crystal ball to inform me, to warn me, of the damage that could take place. But It is worth it. He is worth it. We are worth it. Because love is worth it. All i can do is succumb to this lack of control this alteration of my world is eliciting. I may be afraid. Scared to death, even. But if I don’t accept and continue with this change, it would be the end of my other safe harbor. He is my port in the storm. I must simply remember. It’s worth it.
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