September.

I am so scared of September.

Terrified.

And it is here in eleven minutes.

Oh God.

I'm not ready yet.

This Too Shall Pass

I've been thinking about how to write this, how to say this. How to take it from in my head to out in the open.

And I have no clue.

Because everything is so inside my head. Everything is jumbled, it runs in circles.

It starts with this, I go back to school soon. Way too soon. I am scared. Really scared.

I know the kind of person I become at school. It is not the person I love. It is not the person that other people love. I am the girl that sleeps all day. I am the girl that has no appetite for food, for life, for anything. I am not me, I'm a shell.

I know it is coming. It is already creeping in with the fear. They are filling the empty space, the places that were hollowed out by the summer and the ease. What I don't know is how to stop them. I have positives to focus on. I have good things in my life. But school is the dark cloud that pushes all of that away.

I see the reasonable side of this. I see the logic. I know how to be happy. I know how to look past the scary things. I do. But when it is right there, on top of you, pushing against everything you have- what you know doesn't matter.

I can't explain it. I can't put into words the fear that comes with so much...nothing. I have tried, many times before, and I get lost in the cliches, the descriptive bullshit. But I found this...

"What the books fail to tell you is all the things that are almost indescribable. They tell you that you don't want to get out of be in the morning. What they don't tell you is the moment you wake up, you have a short peaceful second that allows you to be calm. It is the moment that you've first awoken and you don't know you're supposed to be depressed. You've temporarily forgotten the pains of the world. If you're reading this, you need to listen to me. You need to hold onto that moment as long as possible. Grasp it and breathe it in, because for the rest of the day you will never feel something as calming. After that moment, your heart and stomach sink in harmony together. Your body feels as though every muscle is limp and all the blood has drained away. You no longer feel any weight in your body and the whole room all of a sudden is a new shade of grey. So then you sink back under your sheets and lay awake with all the emptiness filling your head and you wait. You wait and you wait and you wait until maybe, just maybe, you have the strength to get up. Depression is a lot of waiting. You wait till you can get up, you wait till you can get the nerve to talk to people, you wait till one day, you're cured."

I know, it's long. But I do not know how to emphasize how scarily accurate this is. I read this, and, (I am so going to regret this) I cried. Because here is the thing, when you're in it, you know it. Inside and out. You hate that you know it, but you do. And no one else is going to know it, no one else is going to be able to perfectly understand.

That is just the way it is. It is not right, or fair, or easy. In fact it is hard, and scary, and really shitty. But it was the damn brain I was given. I can't change it. (Let's not talk about drugs.)

I know I have a long year ahead of me. Which, truthfully, is the scariest thing I have ever faced. But I know I can do it. I have done it before. I went through a lot of tissues, a lot of marshmallows, and a lot of, you can do this. You have to do this'. I did it. Seemed like an eternity, but I did it.

So, my new school year resolution is simple, (ha!) 'take the good for all it's worth and work through the bad.' I have spent months of my life in the bad, in the dark, in the shittiest hell hole of life, but they passed. They were gone eventually. Yeah, it comes back. When it is not there, I have to do everything to take advantage of those days, hours, weeks.

Because I know this too shall pass.

It has to.

The Weight, Again.

Well, here we are, at the beginning of the last full month of summer.

This summer has been... a lot. A lot of good. A lot of fun. A lot of hard work.

One of the biggest, and arguably, one of the most important parts of my summer was being able to the take the confidence that I have and use it, make something of it.

I bought a bikini in March for the first time since before I could read. I promised myself I would wear it. I promised myself I would go in public wearing it. I promised myself that I would try.

Guess what? I did it. A bunch.

(I'm the one with the orange bum.)

And you know what? It felt awesome. Because, here's the thing, do you realize how many people actually look like Ashley Tisdale, or a Kardashian? Next to no one. (Alright, yes there are a bunch of Kardashians, but that's not the point.)

It took me a lot of years to figure that out. It took a lot of standing in front of the mirror and convincing myself that there was nothing wrong with what I saw. It took a lot of telling my head to back off and let me eat, because food isn't an enemy. It took a lot of trying on the swimsuit and taking off the swimsuit.

But dammit, I wore it. And I looked good.

I don't make promises for the future other than this, I will keep trying. There is nothing stopping me from walking across the Miss Vermont stage in June looking like a knockout. I will not let the thing that keeps me from confidence be... me. So here's to the confidence to keep my chin up and my cover-up off.

So far, I give me a thumbs up.