Its been a long while since I rambled in the night, while my head won't get tired and everything feels like lightening.

But two years later and its just like I remember. Makes my skin itch a bit less, but here I am, alone late at night, whirling about in my in-congruent thoughts. There's an electric peace about it, the mix of its familiarity and its origin.

Not surprising after my first big low of the summer that I have my first big high. Just kinda odd how easy it all feels. Its no pounding, screaming, kicking, biting. Its just like a neighbor stopping by.

I guess now to the ramblings. The expounding expression of my random, endless thoughts to get them out of my head and try to get me to bed.

I thought about love a lot on my way to work. Granted, I work only a five minute walk from home. But I remembered how the definitive point in time where I decided what kind of love meant most to me happened in the worst summer of my life, the most hopeless depression I ever felt.

Mom liked that I was quiet about it.

Dad was oblivious.

Friends forgot I existed.

Then there was him, the one I never expected. He was angry. So angry.

He was so upset he was losing the person he loved to my depression and he felt helpless to do anything about it. He needed me to fight. He needed me to get better. He couldn't stand watching who I was fade away.

He yelled at me.

I don't know where I'd be if he hadn't.

I'd been content to float, to hide behind my childhood walls and use the same tactics that hid my mental turmoil all of my life. If no one saw it, it was ok. Its what my parents always taught me.

Yet he looked at me, heard my mentions of pain and non-existence, and couldn't stand it. He didn't want me to change, or never be crazy. He just wanted me to have a will to fight it. To get better.

He didn't want to lose me just because it was so much easier.

I think its why I began to hate my parents, for awhile. Compared to wanting to set me on fire to save me? How could their naive complacence compare? I hid a lot from them, I grant. But that summer I told my mom I wanted to be hospitalized.

She said no.

If no one saw it, it was ok, right?

I couldn't stand all the years I spent trapped between those walls, feeling like I was hiding some mythic beast inside me, like I had to do everything right because everything in me was wrong. Outside, I was their cheery, sweet, smart, empathetic perfectionist. Inside, I was a passionate, dark humored, fireball of curiosity and imagination and limitless possibilities. The two never quite meshed, but I never got the chance to find a way to do that. Only the chance to force them apart.

Makes relationships hard when you've become two people. And once the other one shows up, everything changes. You're a lie, now.

Things are starting to mesh better, little by little. But its been a long journey.

Seems quiet acceptance isn't the love I like most. Fire is.

And its even wilder now that, after years of moving away from that isolation and pain, I'm finding a new belonging in the things that I used to cope. I thought they were all just silly things I did because I had nothing else. Now I prefer to do them instead.

As if on cue, I'm distracted by some writing and my head is slowly calming. I guess its my cue to bid this adieu. Always fascinating, how a thought-dump helps settle an insomniatic head.