vague mystique.

Eminem is an extraordinary rapper who has been and always will be one of my favorite musical artists. Even when I was a small child I had an odd appreciation of his work, idolizing the person that he was regardless of the fact that I was too young to understand the meaning behind any of his lyrics or actions. I adored him simply because it felt right, and even now that I’m older and am able to understand more about his music and his being, as well as possess the ability to analyze and truly comprehend everything about him, I still hold a fairly deep respect for him. He is, as unbelievable as it may seem, one of my much-adored idols.

With that being said, I feel the need to quote the lyrics of one of his songs, Beautiful, to convey what I have been going through lately and use as a starting point of my explanation of why I’ve mysteriously disappeared for the past few months.

I'm just so fucking depressed

I just can't seem to get out this slump.

If I could just get over this hump

But I need something to pull me out this dump.

I took my bruises, took my lumps

Fell down and I got right back up.

But I need that spark to get psyched back up

And in order for me to pick the mic back up.

I don't know how or why or when

I ended up this position I'm in.

I'm starting to feel distant again

So I decided just to pick this pen

Up and try to make an attempt to vent

But I just can't admit

Or come to grips with the fact that I may be done with rap.

I need a new outlet.

And I know some shit's so hard to swallow

But I can't just sit back and wallow

In my own sorrow but I know one fact

I'll be one tough act to follow.

It is said that at one point or another, everyone has a life crisis – most of the time, it’s towards the middle of one’s existence, thus named the “mid-life crisis”. For some reason or another, I believe that I had my crisis a little early on in my existence, at the ripe age of sixteen. I had all the symptoms of one – extreme depression, a sense of panic at where I stood in life, a heightened urge to do impulsive things, an intense fear of my future, and basically all of that immensely fun stuff. My mental state was in shambles; I couldn’t handle everything that was coming at me – I couldn’t handle the pressure, the stress, of my current life. I spent years handling all of the obstacles that the universe threw at me, from a difficult family life (which has progressively gotten worse) to financial troubles, from maintaining good grades to preparing myself to have the bright future that my family and teachers expected me to have. Quite suddenly, however, it all became entirely too much, and I couldn’t handle it all anymore.

So, knowing me, I ran. I couldn’t balance everything that I was expected to, couldn’t balance having an extremely dysfunctional family that lived below the poverty line, putting my best effort into school, having a social life, working anywhere from ten to thirty hours a week, doing the swim team, anything. Somehow, someway, I lost my ability to cope, to handle things. So I ran. I put everything that I was expected to handle into a small box deep inside my self-conscious, and simply (metaphorically) ran from it all.

Unfortunately I cannot go into much detail about what happened during this period, because I really don’t remember much from the past few months. I feel like I became a completely different person, living someone else’s life. All that I can remember was that my grades dropped tremendously (I’m failing several classes right now), I slept more than I ever have before, I focused a lot on my social life, and had an extremely complicated love life. Everything else is a blur, literally. It’s like I was a zombie for the first half of my junior year.

Somehow, however, I was resurrected from my zombie state and forced back into my actual life of responsibilities and expectations. I’m not sure how it happened… I’m fairly positive that my creative writing teacher had a lot to do with it though. He saw that there was more to me than the zombie, fuck-it-all persona that I put on, and put actual, legit effort into helping me through everything. He’s gone where no teacher has ever gone before to help me, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

I don’t know if I’m fully back yet… I’m not sure if the zombie is completely massacred, or if part of it is still lurking somewhere inside me. I’m terrified that I’m going fail at balancing everything again, that I’m going to lose myself. I hope that doesn’t happen, but for now, I’m taking things one week at a time.

I’m also completely fucking terrified that I lost my ability to write, but I’m trying not to think about that right now. I have homework to do.

xoxo,

Rosalie

Oh, and by the way, one of the first things that happened after I was resurrected was the addition of James as a boyfriend. It’s only been about a week, so I’m  going to go too in depth, but just know that after a year of wanting this, it finally happened.