The Dark Passenger

"She knows. She recognizes demons, dark passengers."

the tricky part about genetic permanence is when it involves chronic illness there's no escaping it

considering i'm fighting nature and nature cannot be defeated it's curious how i've managed to survive so far. it prompts the question, is there something more to it? there must be, something trapped inside the intricate circuitry of my brain, a truth embedded in chemical lies.
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my biggest fear is a thing worse than death. it is a thing beyond description, a sort of visceral memory with a merciless grasp on my consciousness should i let my guard down long enough to drift off to its dungeons once again. i used to write a lot. i like to think back on that time as an emotional purging, a relief for the nausea of the crushing numbness and terrifying uncertainty of mental illness. because of this i wrongly assumed that to write again would be to tear open those wounds, that to revisit those memories would be to reinfect myself with hopelessness.

wrong has never been so wrong. that idea is fermented in the supposition that this is something outside of my being, a sort of viral inoculation into my person. the reality is it is one and the same. i am the worst parts of me. they are inescapable. what i fear most cannot find me through the written word, it's already found me. it is me.

so here we go, off on a self exploration into my darkest depths...

Day 1.

Dear Time Gods

Guernica - Picasso

the time gods must have made a mistake. that was definitely not the full feel of a year. pretty sure some of the calendar pages stuck together and we skipped january and march, just bypassed new years and st. pats and went straight on through from mistletoe to Peeps. it cannot be true that i managed to truck my way through an entire year of med school lectures and exams, let alone pass them all... i'm not convinced, no, not until i have that white cape dangling off my disproportionately broad shoulders and a fat M and D chasing after my name.

much self discovery and recovery has transpired over this alleged past year and i am still attempting to catch up with myself. somehow i landed the role of the student psych clinic manager, a column in the school paper, the vp posish for the neuro student interest group, the recruiter for my fraternity, and i'm leaving for ghana in a couple weeks.... and all while in the secret chambers of my mind battling with a vicious genetics.

ghana? moi? avec mes amis de médecine? qu'est ce que c'est?? c'est ma vie?

c'est vrais.

if surviving my first year wasnt bewildering enough now i have to digest the fact that i'll be traipsing around on African soil for a month! a whole month! the luck of it all has a profound beside-myself effect on me, as if i am taking a looksie through a window into that parallel life i live in my cloudy sleep. i was pushing so fiercely through a deep dark hole full of thorny memories and skeletons and doubt and merciless neurotransmitters, just aiming to survive i hardly noticed what was passing under my feet.

now under the sticky summer sun and indecisive breezes i take pause.
dear time gods, i write.
dear time gods, what a journey we've had together, don't you think? you've done a fairly splendid job of sewing up my wounds these past few clock spins and somehow you've carted me away from an angry misery to this dreamy present. my vocabulary is shunted by an overwhelming urge to just stretch out my arms and open my madonna-gap teeth and let the surging emotions just channel the wind. just scream it out:

I DID IT. I FUCKING DID IT.

i survived.