The 10% Fight

I didn't set up another blog just to write happy, dreamy, blithe, prancy pansy stuff. You can go to this other blogs where the girls post innumerable pictures of their mug like the one where she names it after rotted milk goo (which is another word for cheese) or the one whose address is her name and ends with a -kiss.

We only spend about 10% of our lives experiencing that which is called happiness anyway. 60% spent nursing a broken heart, losing a job, and arguing with your boyfriend who turned into a pumpkin once the mandatory honeymoon period was over, gossiping about this or that person in our utterly misplaced so-called righteous behaviour. The remaining 30% spent dreaming, yearning, for happiness. Or things we think will make us happy.

It pains me to think of my high school friend who just gave birth to twins and didn't marry the guy she made the kids with. In fact, she didn't marry anyone at all. I don't judge; this is the girl I spent hours talking to every night in high school, passing secret notes written in colorful ink during class, agonizing together wondering if this or that guy liked us or not.

But not judging isn't the same as not knowing. You can know what a person is. She is pretty, sweet, can charm the socks off anyone, but has the biggest victim complex for such a small package. Her life tapdances to the same tune where everyone she first meets sees her as a tough yet soft girl who's had many bad things happen to her in her life. The guy's protective instincts go into overdrive and he promises that this time, he'll be the one to make her smile. Those are the happy times. But it won't last. It'll start off small, like him staying out too late. She victimizes herself with such electrifying force that the guy winds up like a bastard, either ways. And of course, she affects others lives with it too.

I will be forever traumatized by the memory of having to circle dark neighborhood streets searching for her after she ran out of her boyfriend's car after a tiff, chasing her down on foot begging her to get in my car and go home, the night of the final straw where she took the key to the little lock of her bedroom window (which incidentally, is my current bedroom window) and wanted to launch out like a projectile into the nevernever. And oh, who could forget her slashing the guy's feet with a knife and then turning on herself?

She blames it on the medicine, her 'unstable' emotions. I told her before. Many times. It can be controlled. It can be harnessed and channeled elsewhere.

You think I've never walked that road? Never felt like taking just one extra pill to make what's numb feel number? You think I don't know that Prozac, Xanax or Rameron lets you glide emotionlessly throughout the days, til they blend into one big glob in your head?

But they also stop you from living. I live every day feeling I have a part of me that is so dark it will eat me to death one day. Most nights the hairs on my neck stand as I feel like I'm being watched, or some newfangled baddie (usually of the spiritual kind) from yet another scary book or TV show might pop out of nowhere and try to eat my face. The paranoia that my dad's schizophrenia is somewhere deep in me, waiting to manifest, follows me doggedly.

I've been told to will my mind to rest, but in the end I find myself getting out of bed to shut the closet door properly, close the curtains so nothing can peek in and scare me in case I open my eyes, and because spirits can't enter your house if you don't invite them in, I mentally think in my head "You are not welcome here" every time I go in the main door. And sometimes, things do happen. I've literally felt my spirit trying to be pulled out of my body while I'm sleeping, and each time that happens my spirit being, now seasoned with the technique of stopping those attacks, reaches across to clasp my spirit hands and mumble a Buddhist prayer. I've felt, while suspended in between consciousness, the sound of things passing by, trying to keep my nerves calm and heartbeat slow lest I be discovered and pounced upon. One, I can handle. A group, I may not be able to.

But you live. You go on. You harness every will to subdue your screaming nerves, and you fall asleep finally, exhausted after the internal battle. And then you go to work and give it your all in another one of your endeavours, because that's how you've approached life since you could remember. Every morning is another day. And the nights are but nothing you just endure, bit by bit, every 12 hour round by 12 hour round. And you live for that 10%.