I'm too young to be old. My room is hazy right now.

Clouds of stale cigarette smoke provide a

more suitable environment for breathing. There's no smoke in here, though. Not that kind. There's a fog
in my brain that I take with me everywhere I go, and it's hanging thick in the air today. I don't know
why it's so hard for me to be happy. Depression and negativity are such deep-seated feelings, they've
become old friends. Right now, it feels like they're the only friends I've got.

I think I've struggled with depression all my life. I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; by a
real doctor and everthing, not just the wikipedia article. I'm sure I've got a few other undiagnosed
issues. Every girl I've ever dated swears I have autism for some reason. I've spent a lot of time
wondering what was wrong with me in my late teens and early twenties. Sometimes I feel like I have
this total inability to connect with others. I'm told it's a common problem. Relatable to most people.
The modern world has us all living in cubicles, a broken consumerist culture with a polished exterior
and nothing below the surface. An understandable loneliness pervades us all. Even among all these
lonely and broken people, I still feel out of place; too broken for the broken and too much an outcast
for the outcasts.

I feel like relationships bring out the worst in me. I'm probably a terrible friend. I'm an abysmal
romantic partner. I'm usually too busy waging my own private war against my own mind to really “be
there” for people in the way I feel like I should. In the way they need me to be. I can't really connect
with others past a certain point; cursory, surface-level, polite small-talk is about as far as we can drive
down the road of human connection before the dead end appears ahead.

It's hard to trust anything when you don't trust your own mind. I can't even understand my own
thoughts and feelings half the time, God forbid I introduce other people and their complexities and
irregularities and idiosyncrasies into my own twisted flow-chart of moving parts and social
dysfunctions. It's too many balls in the air at once, and I don't know how to juggle. For the past few
years I've done a really good job at being alone. Isolation. It's almost addictive how nice it is to be
alone in my little room. There's no performative people-pleasing to engage in. There's nobody to argue
or fight with or misunderstand. Or misunderstand me. Nobody to distract me, and nobody for me to
worry about; whether I'm bothering them, what they're thinking, whether I'm being “weird” or not. It's
just peaceful. Sometimes.

Other times, however, the ballast tanks of the mind become overfull and need to be emptied; I
can smell nothing but seagull shit and dead, rotten fish in the water when they drain. I go crazy down
here in my little room in the basement. There's claw marks on the walls. Every few weeks, maybe a
month or longer, if I'm really lucky, my own mind comes for me again. Parasites in my brain all wake
up from their catatonic hibernation in unison and decide today is the day. Paranoia, anger, guilt,
sadness, insecurity, all come rushing in like floodwaters over the levees of sanity. My rational brain
shrinks down into a shrivelled little raisin and some other, sinister force takes over the reigns. It
becomes a debate with myself over the stupidest little things. A voice that just tells me I'm worthless.
I'm not enough. That everyone and everything is against me and that all of this is fruitless. That I
should just give up. That voice has an antithesis as well; another, softer little voice that tries to talk me
down from my ledge and guide me back into the land of living, but try as he might, he never seems to
be able to yell loudly enough to be heard.
 I tell people a lot of the time when I'm “in my moods” that I'm just tired or my back hurts or I'm
stressed out from work, because I know I'll probably feel “better” in a few days again. The counterpoint
of that, unfortunately, is that when I'm feeling good, I know another tidal wave is coming soon to knock
me off my feet. I promise my friends and girlfriend and family that I'll be okay after I get some sleep
and I wish I could tell them that nothing like this will ever happen again, that I exorcised every last
demon from inside of me and there's nothing left but a cathartic emptiness we can start filling up again
with only happiness and positivity, and that “true love” and “friendship” can save the day. The hero
rides off into the sunset with the girl and the treasure. Credits roll. The story ends with a nice neat bow
on it, wrapped up for the film-going audience. Everyone throws out their little plastic glasses and goes
back to their cars, happy. That's all a fantasy, though. I've seen this pattern unfold enough times to
know that. Once I'm happy again, it just means an invisible clock is ticking above my head. Sometimes
I wish I had it in me to lie.

There's ways to let the good side of me “win” in the arguments against the bad side of me. Little
tricks I can use to cheat the system and get out of torturing myself. I wish I could remember what they
are right now. Some times it's harder than others. Honesty is one of the best techniques for shining
light into the darkness that I've found yet. When you can't trust anything around you or within you,
being truthful is the best place to start. And often, that begins with being truthful to yourself. As
humans, we tell ourselves lots of lies. It's natural. We even believe our own bullshit. It's really amazing.
I don't necessarily think either of my “voices,” my soft and kind little shoulder-angel or my
mischievous little shoulder-devil, are representative of truth. As usual, that exists somewhere in a
subjective world of interpretations. I don't even necessarily think we can see the objective “truth” about
ourselves. We're all biased when we look in the mirror. I know what a terrible self-view I harbour and
it's something I'm sure I'll be working on and dealing with for the rest of my life. The only truth I'm
sure of right now is that I need to keep finding ways to amplify the positive voice inside of me and
silencing the negative.

I've accepted that I'll probably be at war with myself for the rest of my life. At the very least, I'm
gonna try to put up one hell of a fight against Me.