"when i was 24-" i wasn't. "when i was in college-" i wasn't "my boyfriend noticed-" i was too young "my bipolar breakdown-" i didn't know what it was "my bipolar breakdown-" there were many. i don;t know what a breakdown is "i was in college-" im in college. im in college and i have a mental illness. im in college and for the first time i feel like a human, like one who lives and trips and eats and cleans. one with a space and a means for food and a campus- a lovely campus- i look around and i'd like to walk but my legs tire so easily. not because of depression or maybe yes because of depression but not depression now. these are the side effects. i dont know if i longed for physical pain to feel more validated, but that seems very textbook illness, if the textbook were the stories ive seen, the stories of my own, the stories from others, online, tumblr, or in the hospital, or in passing, for those who may know not my pain but the similar shape of what we are and what has happened. but i am nineteen and i start to feel it. the brain zaps and the- maybe they're just from my glasses? i got new glasses, they press against my head. ive been seeing half blind and glassess-less but i decided it's time to fully wear them all the time the pinches and the aches. the sudden jolt of shakes, i never know when, i try to hide it, whats wrong? it's just a thing, im nineteen and i've been on SSRIs since i first turned 12. seven years. and in prime development, all the things that come first stick with you. and the pills stuck with me. i was there but i dont know the scope of how this medicine truly affected my body. anti psychotics, seroquel. my love. my coma for a lightning bolt. i hope i dont find this cringy, i hope, i hope, people around me, i hope, they say things like this, like what i used to say, and im uncomfortable because i feel like a fossil. those things happened, but they are not current. they belong to, not history- but the way of life before it was made aware of itself. a prehistory. i dont belong to history anymore. if i were telling story, it would be history. but this is my life. so it is my evolution. the prehistory. the imprints that were first made. maybe my history is my memory. the names and relationships and beliefs the way i know them now. the information. i was abused. i've been an abuser. those statements are information. facts dont care about your feelings, and it's a great thing. a fact is a fact. it's reality. when you feel joy, you may look back on that information, and find more joy. i was abused. ive been an abuser. but i feel joy. those statements are prehistory. they are at the bottom of my feet underneath layers of thick sole skin. i grind the ball of my foot and lift myself high. jump. or even jsut walking. i lift and it feels like air. there are many things in thebody left from the past. i have my own. ive been thrust into an expeditited evolution, one that propelled my change and my body at the speed of a train. i was 12 an i was 10 and i was an abuser at 11 and i fought and showed teeth and cried and sewed words and expression into spells to get what i wanted. and what did i want? i was 9 and i wanted friendship and i wanted love and i wanted to be adored and i wanted to sing in a spotlight and i wanted to be left alone and i wanted to play games all day and i wanted im afraid i want too much, when moments get like that now, i look at the endless cycle of wanting and see the satisfation it brings me. it doesnt/ it just brings me what i want. now i am myself. i eat. i exist in a space. i talk. i watch. i clean and i take care. in a perfect world for a perfect recovered person, my care lacks. but it helps me. when it lacks and it confronts me, i learn. and thats more meaningful. it comes in waves and spread across the shore melting into sand and finding itself again. it means more every time.