Finally Finding out who I am: Living on an even tack

I'm on an even tack. It's unusual and wonderful. I haven't felt this normal in a long long time. I'm so happy that things are good.

I have a few things to talk about, though I really could (and would be more than happy to) go on all day about how my new drugs are affecting me.

It's been a weekend of papers and music. I played a show today with one of my bands, and this weekend I started another band. It's pretty exciting. I need to get back on recording my solo stuff, but I haven't really had the time.

I've really been enjoying all the creative stuff I've been able to do as of late. It's nice. I was worried that my new drug would hinder my creativity, or just change it in some odd way, but it really has made things better. I can create at will now. Before it required passion, or inspiration, now it just works.

That's something I've never known, being able to do something just by working at it. I always was able to do some things naturally and simply couldn't do the others. It's very odd finding that I'm actually able to change my abilities by exerting effort. It's weird being able to write a paper without having some spark behind the writing.

My friends have noticed the difference too. I was worried about giving up alcohol, and to a certain extent weed, but frankly, I know I'm not going to miss it. Another plus is the fact that one of my drinking buddies from when I was drinking a WHOLE lot, also has quit drinking because of the drugs he's on, so we can not drink together. It'll be interesting.

I'm feeling good. Even the stuff that's a cause for anxiety, debt, schoolwork, being single, isn't nearly as bad as it ever was. It feels good to feel good and not worry about the consequences.

It's nice loving music again. Before music was what got me through. I didn't love it the same way. It was like a relationship you have because if you didn't have that person to lean on you wouldn't be able to support yourself. Now it's one of those things where I'm not playing music because I need to, because I couldn't live without it, I'm playing because I love it. Of course I still feel like I need to play, I still have music coming out of me all the time, and just can't hold it back, but it's not so urgent. I can play music without the need for catharsis.

That cathartic turn that writing and music took for me is something I'm glad to be over. Writing to excise demons is always a study in futility. Those demons remain, and the things you write don't bring anything positive into the world about you. The writing is flat, and bitter, and full of the ugliness that language so brilliantly can display.

Language and writing can be so ugly and harsh when used that way. Music too can take on that edge. Music not made as a remembrance of what it felt like to be in a world that was ending, but which was played because playing it would make the world end.

I haven't known who I am without these vast fluctuations in mood. In the mountains I was stifled and so wasn't able to feel who I might be in less confining circumstances, and once I got here I went mad. I've never fully figured out who the hell I am. I know some things about me that couldn't be suppressed by depression, and couldn't be exaggerated away by mania. Those things stick out, but I'm still in a mode of self discovery.

Some would argue that who you are under pressure, in the worst of the worst, is the essence of your being, if that's the case I better know who I am than most people ever will. However, I think that who I will be in the rest of my life (drugs willing) is really about when I'm well.

It's such a trip finding out what is real, what isn't. It's so odd finding out which things really pique my fancy, and which were just infatuations enhanced by mania. It's great finding out that I really am this driven, exciting person I thought I was in mania, but without the arrogance and over reaching. It's also great finding that I'm not the waste of air, and paper, and space, and resources, my depressions had me so convinced I was.

I'm here, and I am finally me.

This is my first chance to find out what makes up my world, and what I am. I feel reborn, with some of the ties I had before, debts, and friends, and school, and memory, but that is no more than I was given at my birth. I am new. The me that will walk out my door tomorrow is going to be a different me than has walked out that door hundreds of times before.