Justin Mark Campbell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
likefatherlikeson) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
muserevival2015-07-18 01:43 pm
likefatherlikeson) wrote in muserevival2015-07-18 01:43 pm
096.3. Private Diary
Something Special
It's no secret that I don't know what I'm supposed to be thinking or feeling most of the time. I looked up the definition of "bipolar" once, and it literally means having two poles, or two extremes. That's exactly what this fucking thing feels like. To the point that the middle ground that could probably be loosely termed "normal" doesn't seem to happen very often. You go from one pole to the other, you're usually hanging in one side or the other. I mean, I have this thing. It's me, it's my life, and I still don't get it most of the time.
But I don't want to talk about that again here. I've already filled pages and pages of journals talking about that shit. Sometimes I read back and can barely make sense of what I've written. That happens when I'm sick sometimes, and it's the same trying to communicate in person. I don't have the answers, and sometimes it feels fucking impossible to help give the answers to other people.
Today, I'm just feeling really proud of my dad. He's the reason I can sometimes get into that "normal" common ground, and he's the reason I'm still living and breathing today. He keeps saying he was a fuck up and an asshole when he was younger. Maybe that was true, but it doesn't matter. Not to me. I just know I've got one of the best dads to ever walk the earth. I don't tell anyone this, but I still have a lot of days where I feel pissed off or upset that I had to wait until I was 15 to meet him and have him as my dad. When I start to think about it, I get frustrated and everything hurts inside. It's just another thing I carry around with me all the time. At least the therapy is helping me figure out how to carry it all in a better way.
People think therapy should be some miracle fix. I've seen it. I see the judgemental looks. "Justin's mentally ill, he has bipolar", "Oh? Does he have a good therapist?" As if saying yes should mean I should be miraculously fucking cured if I'm a good boy and do everything the therapist tells me. It doesn't bloody work like that. In fact, I have two therapists. I have a psychologist AND a psychiatrist. I have to take enough pills to sink a fucking ship four times a day. None of that takes the bipolar away. I wish people could understand that more. But I guess it's the same as trying to get homophobes to believe you can't be "made gay" or "turned gay", you just are. You can't switch being gay off anymore than you can switch off being bipolar.
My dad gets it. And he helped my new mom get it too. I know it had to have been pretty fucking shit on Mom when I first showed up out of the blue without warning. I know that, to Dad, she was really something special. Even the first time I met them, I could just tell. I was sick as a dog and off my face, but I still remember the way he looked at her, like he was desperately begging her in one look to not go and to help him. He knew he needed help, but I know he didn't realise then just how much help he would need trying to figure me out.
It never gets easier. The knowing you're hurting people you love. It doesn't even matter that there's a reason, that it's because you're sick that you do these things that make life really hard. I don't do it deliberately. It just seems to happen when I can't cope or I feel like I'm spinning out. You know that ride at carnivals, the Gravitron? You get into this thing and it spins you round and round and round until you stick to the wall? That's how life feels for me a lot of the time. And then others, it feels like someone hits the stop button and everything grinds to a rapid halt and you don't know how to even fucking stand up.
I've been through a hell of a fucking lot in my life. Yeah, maybe I'm the epitome of a fucking up, damaged kid with mommy issues and cunt behaviour. Don't you think I don't know that? Of course I fucking know it, I lived it. I don't need armchair amatuer therapists trying to tell me that therap will fix everything. The fact of the matter is, if I hadn't found Dad, I'd be dead right now. I would. I didn't want to keep living. If I couldn't find him, or I found him and he wanted nothing to do with me, I would've killed myself.
But I found him, and after that, everything changed. It wasn't easy. How can anything like that be easy? But Dad never gave up on me. He wanted to do everything in his power to help me, and try to stop even just small parts of the pain I was feeling. All the time, I was in pain. It's a pain you can't even describe. You can't even figure out where it's coming from, let alone how to stop it. I still feel like that a lot, but not all the time like I used to. Dad fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself. He held me when I was sick or couldn't stop crying. He saved me more than once when it got too much and I couldn't figure out how to keep going.
No, I don't know how to make life work. I never professed I did. I don't often know how things should work, or how I should be feeling about something that's happened. I know it's completely my fault that I couldn't find a way to stayed connected to Will. I tried. I really tried. But then when everything felt like it was exploding around me again, cutting him loose was the only way I could figure out how to make it at least a little better.
I think maybe I made it all worse. I know it hurt. It keeps hurting. It feels like it'll never stop. I couldn't let it get to a point where whatever I was doing would hurt him way, way worse than just annoyance over having our time together interrupted. It would only have been a matter of time before I hurt him in much worse ways. I didn't want it to get to that. He's better off without me. I think, for now, I'm just better off trying to figure out how I work as just me, and not work as me with someone else. I still get sick way too much to reduce the chances of any of that.
Fuck, sometimes life is just hard. Am I happy now I found my dad and have a better life? No. I'm never really completely happy. This is something else I've never told a soul. It's hard to admit stuff like that, because you see the looks on their faces. Like they're failing, or they're failing you. Or they don't think they're doing enough to help you be happy. I just think I need more time to heal and recover before I start to learn what happy feels like. I've never been happy. I've been content, and I feel loved and protected all the time now.
But happy? No one realises that happy is a gift, not a certainty. Even if you're given that gift, you don't always know how to open it without damaging it. I hope I can feel what happy feels like one day. Right now, I know all I can shoot for is "Okay", and every day, I'm getting better and better at perfecting that.
No one even realises how hard it is for some people to nail the simplicity of "Okay".
Justin Campbell
Original Character
It's no secret that I don't know what I'm supposed to be thinking or feeling most of the time. I looked up the definition of "bipolar" once, and it literally means having two poles, or two extremes. That's exactly what this fucking thing feels like. To the point that the middle ground that could probably be loosely termed "normal" doesn't seem to happen very often. You go from one pole to the other, you're usually hanging in one side or the other. I mean, I have this thing. It's me, it's my life, and I still don't get it most of the time.
But I don't want to talk about that again here. I've already filled pages and pages of journals talking about that shit. Sometimes I read back and can barely make sense of what I've written. That happens when I'm sick sometimes, and it's the same trying to communicate in person. I don't have the answers, and sometimes it feels fucking impossible to help give the answers to other people.
Today, I'm just feeling really proud of my dad. He's the reason I can sometimes get into that "normal" common ground, and he's the reason I'm still living and breathing today. He keeps saying he was a fuck up and an asshole when he was younger. Maybe that was true, but it doesn't matter. Not to me. I just know I've got one of the best dads to ever walk the earth. I don't tell anyone this, but I still have a lot of days where I feel pissed off or upset that I had to wait until I was 15 to meet him and have him as my dad. When I start to think about it, I get frustrated and everything hurts inside. It's just another thing I carry around with me all the time. At least the therapy is helping me figure out how to carry it all in a better way.
People think therapy should be some miracle fix. I've seen it. I see the judgemental looks. "Justin's mentally ill, he has bipolar", "Oh? Does he have a good therapist?" As if saying yes should mean I should be miraculously fucking cured if I'm a good boy and do everything the therapist tells me. It doesn't bloody work like that. In fact, I have two therapists. I have a psychologist AND a psychiatrist. I have to take enough pills to sink a fucking ship four times a day. None of that takes the bipolar away. I wish people could understand that more. But I guess it's the same as trying to get homophobes to believe you can't be "made gay" or "turned gay", you just are. You can't switch being gay off anymore than you can switch off being bipolar.
My dad gets it. And he helped my new mom get it too. I know it had to have been pretty fucking shit on Mom when I first showed up out of the blue without warning. I know that, to Dad, she was really something special. Even the first time I met them, I could just tell. I was sick as a dog and off my face, but I still remember the way he looked at her, like he was desperately begging her in one look to not go and to help him. He knew he needed help, but I know he didn't realise then just how much help he would need trying to figure me out.
It never gets easier. The knowing you're hurting people you love. It doesn't even matter that there's a reason, that it's because you're sick that you do these things that make life really hard. I don't do it deliberately. It just seems to happen when I can't cope or I feel like I'm spinning out. You know that ride at carnivals, the Gravitron? You get into this thing and it spins you round and round and round until you stick to the wall? That's how life feels for me a lot of the time. And then others, it feels like someone hits the stop button and everything grinds to a rapid halt and you don't know how to even fucking stand up.
I've been through a hell of a fucking lot in my life. Yeah, maybe I'm the epitome of a fucking up, damaged kid with mommy issues and cunt behaviour. Don't you think I don't know that? Of course I fucking know it, I lived it. I don't need armchair amatuer therapists trying to tell me that therap will fix everything. The fact of the matter is, if I hadn't found Dad, I'd be dead right now. I would. I didn't want to keep living. If I couldn't find him, or I found him and he wanted nothing to do with me, I would've killed myself.
But I found him, and after that, everything changed. It wasn't easy. How can anything like that be easy? But Dad never gave up on me. He wanted to do everything in his power to help me, and try to stop even just small parts of the pain I was feeling. All the time, I was in pain. It's a pain you can't even describe. You can't even figure out where it's coming from, let alone how to stop it. I still feel like that a lot, but not all the time like I used to. Dad fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself. He held me when I was sick or couldn't stop crying. He saved me more than once when it got too much and I couldn't figure out how to keep going.
No, I don't know how to make life work. I never professed I did. I don't often know how things should work, or how I should be feeling about something that's happened. I know it's completely my fault that I couldn't find a way to stayed connected to Will. I tried. I really tried. But then when everything felt like it was exploding around me again, cutting him loose was the only way I could figure out how to make it at least a little better.
I think maybe I made it all worse. I know it hurt. It keeps hurting. It feels like it'll never stop. I couldn't let it get to a point where whatever I was doing would hurt him way, way worse than just annoyance over having our time together interrupted. It would only have been a matter of time before I hurt him in much worse ways. I didn't want it to get to that. He's better off without me. I think, for now, I'm just better off trying to figure out how I work as just me, and not work as me with someone else. I still get sick way too much to reduce the chances of any of that.
Fuck, sometimes life is just hard. Am I happy now I found my dad and have a better life? No. I'm never really completely happy. This is something else I've never told a soul. It's hard to admit stuff like that, because you see the looks on their faces. Like they're failing, or they're failing you. Or they don't think they're doing enough to help you be happy. I just think I need more time to heal and recover before I start to learn what happy feels like. I've never been happy. I've been content, and I feel loved and protected all the time now.
But happy? No one realises that happy is a gift, not a certainty. Even if you're given that gift, you don't always know how to open it without damaging it. I hope I can feel what happy feels like one day. Right now, I know all I can shoot for is "Okay", and every day, I'm getting better and better at perfecting that.
No one even realises how hard it is for some people to nail the simplicity of "Okay".
Original Character