Day New, Ma.

I've always enjoyed picking at scabs. The grosser looking the better. There were the kids who glued their hands together just to peel it off (maybe in one miraculously unbroken hand shaped piece of something that looks like dead skin) or the ones who pushed safety pins through their fingertips or ran their tongues through lighters to show it doesn't hurt--and any observing person of maturity would tell us to stop it; some of them later overplucked their body hair or tried suspension (not me...not suspension) BUT I still can't leave a wound alone completely.

I once asked a nurse why I couldn't just pick my knee scab open instead of her taking blood with a needle. She assured me I wasn't the first to wonder that and explained that the blood from my scab wasn't fresh anymore, that it was important to get it from the veins where it's circulating--and besides, reopening the wound would actually hurt more than that needle and make it take longer to heal, leave an uglier scar.

There's this phenomenon where we seem to feel the most pain where it concerns a wound not in the moment it's inflicted, but once we've looked down at it. Sometimes the hurt of knowing the injury may possibly occur is worse than the moment of impact itself. The regret and fear of doing the thing that put you at risk for the injury again might compel you to pick at it, stare at it as it changes shape and forget the parts of you that are still unscathed before getting back on the bike or deciding to give someone new a chance even registers as an immediate option.

I won't insult your intelligence by overexplaining a simple metaphor that could apply to literally anything. "Rip off the band-aid," "let it air out," "take this and call me in the morning ..." "What doesn't kill you..." This isn't a novel concept.

Emotional scabs can get infected if you don't quit picking at them...and what if you can't? What if it's more than morbid curiosity? What if you do it in your sleep?

Today my freshest physical wound is from a cat scratch. He's cuddling with my left foot now, sweet as can be...my cozy lion.

There's this story I found, curious about who wrote Peter Rabbit because Kristin chose it for us to watch on Netflix. I was staring at the scar too hard...and then I read this children's story and couldn't figure out what it was a political metaphor about because I really don't know much about the early 20th century. I guess that's why it's so maddening trying to fathom recreating some imaginary greatness of a past that looks like a bunch of horrific events from anybody with a textbook's standpoint...or a memory for that matter... and then we watched Russell Brand's new standup special and it was perfect.

All my scab picking obsession was tied up in wondering if anybody else was as angry and confused about the same things as me, stubbornly wanting to hyperfocus all of it as my own ugly scab only I could see and finally, I find myself validated. I'm not afraid to say I'm part of the flatulent 28 percent who wasn't sure if any and all of this was real.

My real diagnosis is schizoaffective. It's not bipolar and it's not schizophrenia. *sigh* The best way I can explain it from my experience is that real life experiences become hinged upon your imagination, your interpretations of new information rife for the relation and analyzation. I know what's real now but sometimes it's like I've run so fast that my brain's yelling at me from some other dimension.

I tell people I'm bipolar not only because it was my original diagnosis; I tell them because it seems more approachable--but it's actually more frowned upon and treated much less gently by medical professionals. Bipolar people, at their worst are easily given up on or written off as hopeless vessels of vice...a never-ending vicious cycle after another.

The drugs are all difficult to get off of and I did that song and dance, literally and figuratively for a solid decade of diagnosis. The before was better and worse.

I focused on it being better first so I became bitter and longed for a former self that still needed help anyway. Then I convinced myself that in order to get over it, I'd have to actually relive it all in my memory and couldn't help but focus on the freeze frame moments of pain, forget why I wanted to be me at all, love anyone I'd ever known anyway.

I got to the part in the story of the "Cozy Lion" where the lion gets to lie down and the little children are not afraid to snuggle him and tie a bow on his tail, and there's a boy in a sailor outfit...I cried uncontrollably when I saw this picture of an old picture my mom took of my baby sister and me in bed with my dad...he'd patiently allowed us to put plastic bow clips in his hair and I'm wearing my Easter hat and this red and white striped sailor dress.

I seized my photo album off the shelf to see if it was in there and brought it back to the couch, flipping through it with Kristin, viewing smile after smile, some in Deer Park, some in Cypress. That one must be elsewhere, but I saw my family in the past and old friends who wouldn't want me to think they HATE me.

Just like that, my anger was vanquished. All the confusion just dissipated.

I don't want to fear a future where we can't all be happy and delude myself into thinking that the lion in the story was anyone but me.

Everyone has to do their own healing. As for my part, I'm satisfied with the answers I already have. There's no one left to blame. THANK YOU.