There seems to be a culling of the stress pounding on my poor stable head. I would almost question why if in the corner there wasn't her, with her dark blue eyes, calling herself my old friend. I don't know if its a blessing or a curse that I almost forgot what depression looked like.

I have to adjust now. I adjusted to the anxiety and stress and possible mania. Now I must adjust to the lower end of life. She all done up, in the corner right there, drawing me in and I'm somehow hers once again. Always had a problem stopping her red-lipped words from dragging me to her.

But you know what's kind of nice? I never have to stay anymore. She never can chain me down and numb me down with narcotics until I can't run away. Yes, she traps me and I go back and its never pleasant. But after awhile I can throw my coffee in her face, tell her to get herself a different person to tear apart, and bid her adieu.

My limbs hurt. My neck hurts. I don't think I slept quite right chained in her arms. But I'm not there. I'm slower, I'm battered, I'm wounded. I need to recover. But I'm not numb, not dying. I am me. I am whole.

I can picture how beautiful I thought she was so long ago, her hair done up, her eyeliner perfect, her eyes an enticing blue. I was more attracted to her body than my own, and I gave her everything, anything. Then she took and took until I was ragged and too broken and tired to even die. I never knew human exhaustion could get so extensive; It only takes a twitch to pull a trigger and I just sat in the freezing snow, unable to even open my eyes long enough to find the gun, or lift my hand high enough to reach my ******* head. I was just too dead to die.

But now I look at her. She is so much glitter and polish. She is so much of what I caked onto myself, and peeled off until I was thin and weak and stressed, but something that could grow. I was organic, I was alive, I was human again. She is a paint-caked hollow woman whose only goal is to vindictively destroy my world because it doesn't sparkle with false reflections like hers.

I may be thin, and I may be weak. I can only carry so much with the little muscle I retained through all the sticks and stones I stuck to my body to try to make myself stronger with a nonsensical shell. But I am moving. I am lifting larger weights each day, my work, my academics, my friends, my family, my love. They may erode me a bit every once and a while; I am starting from near nothing and building a whole new person out of it. I am rebuilding the lost soul that got scattered among the cinder blocks. I am finally making myself be that person I wanted to be; not my parents' way, or my friends' way, or society's way. My way. Its hard and exhausting and sometimes so painful I can barely breathe.

But she's just some mistress, lurking around a corner to try to ****** me; a leech, trying to bite out little bits of my soul to wear me down again. And with each attack I push her further away. I can't completely ignore her, but she can't control me. We no longer share the same glitter and polish. Instead I and regrowing all the skin torn by her teeth, and its growing back too thick for her to cut to the bone. Eventually I'll grow a new skin that blocks her out, instead of me, instead of people I love.

Without my glitter and polish, she's nothing. Without my glitter and polish, I can breath, I can grow, I can see.

I can finally find my way back to me.