Yesterday was a good day. For the first time in a month, I looked back on a day and thought hey, that wasn’t so bad. And then today happened. First sign of drama and I’m back to the land of lead bones and lonely nights that I thought I’d finally left behind. Daily I am confronted with the reality that somebody I’d loved had revealed himself as a deceptive charmer with a penchant for watching animals die.

How did I get here? This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. When I imagined my adult life, this suffering did not feature in my plans. Things were supposed to be easier. Yet here I am, as broken as I ever have been. I am a black hole of a human, I have no more tears, and no more plans. Maybe reincarnation is real. Maybe I fucked up in a previous existence, maybe I was a fascist or a genocidal dictator. Maybe I was Catherine the Great and this is the universe’s revenge for my failure to protect Russian peasants.

But I think it’s much more likely that reincarnation doesn’t exist, that there’s no order to anything and I am fucked by chance. I have this damned illness because my grandmother had it, and so did my great-uncle, and probably other relatives I don’t know about. My great-grandfather killed himself. Blood’s thicker than water, and madness is too. And why the hell is it so  important that I stay around? Why avoid death when I’m already dying inside? Somebody please explain to me what I’ve done to deserve years of this misery, because as far as I can tell my only crime is losing the genetic lottery.

I have always been in two parts, and they have always been at war. Occasionally one wins a Pyrrhic victory over the other, and right now the black hat half is supreme. Congratulations, Black Hat Sarah. Now neither of you gives a fuck about anything and whoever I am whenever the two of you come together is hiding under the bed. You’ve made White Hat Sarah cry.

I pity my new therapist. Not even the mighty powers of the psychopharmacology industry are enough to hold me together.

Nights like this make me think I should give in and go completely mad. It would be easier. It wouldn’t even matter if my ward was shitty because I’d be too far gone to care about anything at all. I think I’d be easy to manage. Except for the random spells where I think I’m a telepathic prophet put on this earth to avert nuclear holocaust, I’m quite tame. I sit and lie around and live inside my head because frankly, I rule there, and here I’m just fucked over. Put yourself in my position. You’d long for madness too, believe me.

I’m supposed to write a memo to the President for my White House internship application. I should put this shit down. I’m a walking advertisement for reforming mental health care in this country. They should put my picture on posters and show me to elementary school children: Guess what, all of you on medication, this is you in twelve years. Take one psychiatric disorder, an unstable home life, a psychopathic ex-boyfriend and shake.

At least I’ve got still got my intellect. I don’t have quite as much hope for my looks. My nose has a bump and my hair is frizzy on top. Maybe I was supposed to be Jewish. That’s what Jews are supposed to look like, right? And black people like long gold chains, and all women want babies, and men have one track minds. Everybody knows.

Well, fuck everybody. There is no justice. There’s no enlightenment. We’re all idiots. We’d eat each other if it were socially acceptable.