A sudden update to come out of left field

A few months ago, I started a piece on my phone's notepad app and it began with the line 'I don't think I'm depressed anymore.' I never really got past that sentence, even though the concept was zipping around my brain and I knew what I wanted to say. The words were there, but the words weren't...there.

It was supposed to be about how deeply I identified as sad, how long I linked my very definition with my diagnosis, and how it felt to lose that. It was supposed to be an optimistic bit of fluff with a chipper tone of 'You know what, you can do it!' But months have passed and the note has sat on my phone, turning from a to-do to a mocking reminder of brighter days and greener pastures. And unlike my sad sorry attempt at putting my feelings to words, my mood itself has been anything but stagnant.  So maybe that's why I'm writing now.

No one ever really writes when they're happy, do they? It's not just me? Sometimes I think it's the serotonin. When it's gone, I fill up with words and thoughts and they make me ill and the only way to get better is to write them down and - very millennial coming up - post them on the internet. Hyperlink my feelings with my Instagram. Swipe up to read my tragedy. Pay attention!!, I'm sad. That sort of thing.

It's been almost two years since I've touched this site, and I'll take that as a good sign for my mental health. Two years of being okay is a record! Give me a shiny star to stick on my forehead and an award for getting so far. Now take away my chips for falling off the wagon and hopping back on to the Self Pity Express. 

Sometimes I feel like I have a big rubber band tied across my waist, anchored on its opposite end to the Totem of My Low Points. The physical manifestation of how my head is broken. It feels like no matter how far I go, I'll always spring back to Point Zero. Like Sisyphus, stuck forever on a loop and doomed to a lifetime of never learning. Thankfully, unlike our tragic Greek hero, my loop does allow me to experience some of the good shit, some of those sweet emotions, that high-highs of happiness. For that, I'm thankful. For the past two years, I'm thankful. But right now, I'm scared that the plowing forward period is done and now it's time to spring back to my resting point of sad sad sadness and low low loneliness.

Or

Maybe I'm not sad, because this whole piece has been pretty shit so far. Bad writing, good mental well-being? At least I'm still being productive. I'm going to school and working my jobs and feeding my cats and sometimes even remembering to feed myself (when I can afford it, but that's another thing). Maybe the rubber band is loosening. Maybe if I run against it enough times, I can get far enough away to reach the limit of its tensile strength and SNAP I'm free. Or maybe I can just get so fat it no longer fits around me. Or maybe when I'm at my lowest and it's at its loosest I can just slip it off and stop playing this dumb game of mental cat and mouse. How many times have I used the word 'maybe' in this, again? How many maybes can a person have before they run out of uncertainty and finally know what the fuck is going on?

This has been cathartic. Talk to you again soon. Or not. I don't know which one I want.

Joke's on you! It never gets better!

Sometimes I miss being sick. On a related note, I would hide my pills and paracetamol to delay the relief from a fever until I absolutely couldn't take it anymore. Being sick was better than just being, and I seem to be doing a lot of the latter lately. But yes, and this I will whisper so no one can hear or judge or notice, I do sometimes miss my old buddy, mental instability.

Maybe it's just a sign of growing older. Or rather, despising growing older. Maybe I just miss saying my age and ending with that cheerful syllable, teen. Now it's all numbers, a counting up to, or down to, the time when I'm no longer young. When the real learning to walk starts, not that (excuse me for how stupid this next part sounds) child's play of toddlers, but actually learning to stand on my own two feet because my face and body and skin, all once filled with glorious collagen and blasting elasticity to make a rubber tree weep in jealousy, they will all be gone. Someday. And someday feels sooner everyday.

But my! When I was a teen, was I a kook! Maybe that's why I miss my debilitating mental disorder and it's frequent visits and former residency. Doesn't make sense otherwise. Because aside from being unable to do anything fun legally, the greatest symptom of my childhood was a mental volatility that could've earned medals (if there were awards for crazy, which there aren't because would that be insane!).

Things have gotten all mixed up, shaken, stirred and wobbled about in my head and I think what I mean is I hate growing older. But my age and my breakdowns have melted together so I can't help missing all those days of misery as well as my skin's lost collagen. One and the same. Same pot, all mixed up already and ready to serve to your dinner guests. That isn't normal, is it? What even is normal, and how the fuck did I somehow end up there?

Downwards is still a direction. And falling down a rabbithole still leads you from point a to b, where b is not bills and adulthood and responsibilities and working and being a competent and functioning member of society. I'm feeling more and more like I'd rather be rolling to the bottom to my sweet spot low point, than marching forward to a steady, stable life where my mood sits still instead of having field days. Because where is the fun in that?

for when things are too good, the things you were almost kind of okay at leave your skillset

Most of my life has been spent wishing for better days, but as the sun rises and sets, or so it seems to from our gravity-anchored perspective on this little blue planet, I'm finding that these days are pleasant enough to live in the Right Now.

Scratch that, white out and erase that. These days aren't pleasant. They're a dream. If this is what happiness is like, why on earth did I spend so many nights buzzed and about, holding insomnia's hand like I needed help crossing the street? Oh yes, because I'm an idiot. Still am, but now I'm an idiot who's fallen into a pile of luck stacked so high a leprechaun would shit its pants.

My god! Why is it so hard to write about happy things? Give me a breather from my mind, a good bad breakup, and a series of unfortunate events then just sit back, watch how I could light up the sky with words, words, words, pages and pages of misery and verbal vomit. Or speach diarrhea. Never shutting up or stopping the flow of puke and shitty ideas. Endless jibber jabber of how my mind is rattling around and my mood swings lower that the crotch on MC Hammer pants (because oh of course, those are the most important topics, lend me your damn ears). But no, not now. No happy fun time ranting and raving and reviewing. I'm left speechless and dumb with joy at the thought of this person who thinks of me too (I think he does, he says he does, exercises in trust breathe in breathe out). Should I live in the now, or complain instead? Hard choice, considering right now I'm trying so damn hard to write anything worthwhile. But who needs art and creative outlets when instead I could turn my faucets on full blast and spill onto his skin, drip drip drip down to the floor and puddle at his feet. I've never felt less of an urge to be creative and I'm not worried at all. But here I am, still typing it out. For that, my friends, I can't offer any explanation.

Don't you hate that narcissistic feeling you get when you read through what you've written and you realize your sentences and paragraphs all start with 'I', 'I', 'I'? For someone with such low self esteem, there seems to be much too much wind blowing through my own sails. But it doesn't just stop with punctuation, the thoughts continue on to bleed into every aspect of who and what my life is. Say, with this here, this happiness I've somehow found myself in possession of. I trust the world and Mother Earth and the deep rumble in your voice when you say you love me one last time before the night's scheduled unconsciousness whisks you away to DreamLand, but I don't trust my own hands to hold a glass without shaking. Tell me then: how can I trust them to hold this all together? I'm watching myself from my own peripheral vision, whispering over and over, don't fuck this up. Don't. Not this time. Don't fuck this up for me, me.

"I may be a fuck up, but I'll be damned if I fuck this up" is the daily chant, recited in front of the mirror. Though maybe this chanting isnt the best idea. It doesn't sound particularly encouraging, nor anything like a victory lap around and around my past, haha, I've found a good one and I swear I'll make it work. That sort of thing, not that sort of thing. The ritual might actually summon my fuck-uppery. Backfire on me, and I don't think there would be any points for trying then.

Ever feel like you're flying too high and just realizing it drags your ankles to the ground? The fuller I feel, the more worried I am that these thoughts will turn to lead and drag me back to the bottom of the ocean. Wouldn't that be a chore for my eyes, already poor from genetics, to adjust from the sunny bright atmosphere of the Big Bright Up Above back to the bathypelagic zone? I don't think they'd be able to do it, if they're as lazy as the rest of my body. And the worry of that threat, and the worry of me ruining things... well wouldn't you know it? My feet are stuck in the mud! That was fast.

Things are going too well. They have to be. Things this good/great/golden can't just be! What if this headfirst fall into bliss ends? What if we're just racing to the end of my personality and when we cross the ribbon he realizes there's nothing else? Just stares into the big wide open empty spaces within me and hears himself echo off my ribcage? Then what? I am tensing all my muscles in the vain hope that something this good can be sustained, cursing my inability to be anyone else or better than simply me, and thanking my lucky stars that I am carrying a baton with such a lovely human being. He truly is. A human being, flaws and pores and all, and lovely.

There are many things I want to say about this, him, but I'm not sure of the exact spelling for this stupid smile on my face.

I'll continue on more when I'm more miserable, or find something better to say or find a better way to say what I want to. I'm not used to articulating positive feelings, so excuse the dip in my already low standards of output. Say what you will about anxiety, at least it gave me something to write about! Or at least, the almost ability to. I think the problem is that I now have someone to blow wind into my sails when I am in need of a breeze, a task I used to have to do myself. With all this rest for my lungs now and the lack of hyperventilating, I've stumbled upon the horrible realization that my mind isn't all it's cracked up to be. I mean, I always knew it was cracked, but now I know that without oxygen deprivation, it's really not all that special (with the last few paragraphs/wastes of time as your examples!) And so, here. Take this shitty post and leave me to bask in my happiness for as long as I can.

Reviving the art of smiling

It seems the only time I find this space to be of any use to me is when I run out of real estate in my cramped skull. Oh, I'm sure there's more than enough space in there, but with all the clutter, the corridors I refuse to go down and so just board up, the blood clots that at this point it would be silly for me not to have, I mean, really, I barely have enough room to open the door much less put down all this anxiety! It's been months since I've seen the floor.

Either I'm sad, or in love, or heartbroken, or writing poorly. There is no in between. For here, at least. Because the in betweens don't inspire anything, the in betweens are forgotten. 365 days in a year and it would be silly to pretend they're all worth remembering. Even the good ones (or maybe especially the good ones). It fades from now to a while ago and now we're here, which was then, and it's exhausting keeping track. Imagine having to live without forgetting. I couldn't live like that, not that I'm living that well now and forgetting is my favorite hobby!

So where am I now? What's the point of this all? Sad, or manic, or happy, or in love, or heartbroken? Either way, the writing sucks, the punctuation is wrong, and there will be typos sprinkled like salt all over this because you know I don't bother to spell check.

I am in love.

Oh, boy, does that sound silly. Who am I announcing this to, and for what purpose? Maybe for myself, as a reminder, a note, a piece of proof to go back to for when (and if, and I hope not) this goes to shit. A testament to the State of Me Right Now. Because the days are good, too good, and I don't want to forget them, not this time damnit. I've lost enough of my own timeline. Maybe that's why I'm 21 but act like a child. I simply don't remember growing up but now I have to deal with the fear of premature wrinkles! If there's no space in my mind for the memories of these moments, I'll jot them down and keep them in the cloud. I'd rather get runs in all my stockings and tights or even run 10 miles, than run the risk of forgetting how happy I am at this moment.

Plot twist! Yes, happy! I am happy. I am a cup filled with foam and badly balanced on a tray and I am sloshing over the sides, just spilling over. My heart and my head are so full, but thankfully I keep my stomach out of that state often enough that my modeling career is going quite swell (more swollen than my own breasts, but don't get excited it's more like a shy B-cup of success).

For a long time, writing things down, how ever badly and error ridden, was a way to process the funny processes my mind goes through. But now there is someone who understands and I don't have to whine online and work through things all on my lonesome. Not that he takes the plow from my hands and does the tilling, rather it's just existing in that (this? my?) lonely world with me that's all I need. I'd say I'm not making sense, but when have I ever and also I'm giddy with happiness and love so buzz off. Partners aren't therapists, but goddamn does it feel good to kiss someone who understands the strange ticking and loopy, wonky thoughts that are part of me. And I try, boy, do I try, lips to mind telepathy to communicate what my clumsy tongue cannot. I love you, feel it, I love you, feel it.

And the idiot still likes me, despite having had several conversations with me. Despite seeing the skeletons in my closet and the spiderwebs behind my eyelids and the scars that form constellations on my wrists, he still looks at me and l-o-v-e pours out from his lips. The words are in the air and he can't take them back now (well, he could, but let's hope he won't).

Maybe I'm writing now, only to get back into the habit. Maybe to give myself some proof, some solid thing to hold to remember that this little blink in time here is happening, has happened. Maybe I just want to brag and say I have a wonderful boyfriend and I am in love. Either way, it's all typed out already and I might as well hit publish.

I can't stop crying. I can't stop crying. I can't stop crying.

5 more minutes

The waking world has its many horrors. There's aging, the anxiety of whether or not you're using your time right, the literally infinite number of things that could go wrong at any moment with every choose or action you or anyone else makes. Just spitballing here. The biggest nightmare is being woke, literally and socio-politically (but that my friends is another topic altogether).

So its no surprise that I unironically list sleeping as one of my favorite activities. I sleep so hard I actively sleep. It requires commitment. Dedication. A free schedule.  Or at least a general disregard for whatever may be scheduled. Snoozing calculating has to be the most use I get out of my math schooling. Also, makesas a consequence, it makes me race against time so much I might as well put avid jogger on my Instagram bio.

But this lifestyle doesn't come easy or without a hefty price. Anything before 10am is an activity ill never enjoy, part of a world I want no part in but can't help but feel a little bit of go no over when friends post brunch pictures. I was supposed to go to that, but then again I did get an extra 3 hours of zzz's so...regrets? Call back later I haven't decided yet. Besides that, once I do actually get out of bed, its a constant exercise of will. Anywhere I am, whatever I am doing, there is a link between me and my bed and it pulls me towards it. Think gravity, but with pillows. And laziness-inducing. So really, its not my fault I'm yawning and not paying attention; there is a real force of physics dragging me back to my apartment and my eyelids shut. It's science. Trust me.

Now, god forbid I get less than double digits of sleep time. I know, I know. 7-8 hours right? Well why settle for the standard? Oh, because 'over sleeping is as bad as undersleeping'? I tell myself the same thing as I wake up from a 12 hour shut eye marathon. I tell myself, but I never believe myself. I've been trying to convince myself for years, with no success. Undersleeping is infinitely, infinitely worse.

And waking up to an alarm? Ugh. Good days are when I join the world when I damn want to.

In a conversation with a friend, he told me he needed a nap. He'd been up since 6 am. Gasp, shudder, and chills!

Though.

It was only 3 in the afternoon. He'd only been up for 9 hours. Granted, he didn't get the most sleep the night before. But who ever does? The limit cannot be reavhed, I think, is a good philosophy to adopt for sleep. But still, my friend was exhausted. He was in full nap time mode. No more can be done, until he takes a 20-90 minute break from consciousness.

Remember in high school and grade school? Where we woke up everyday at 5:30 and stayed awake and productive and learning all day? Often with just as little sleep (tumblr would often keep me up until witching hour and then if have to wait for that to be over cause I was too scared to turn off the lights). Every day! With no naps! How? Or am I so old already? I've accepted I'm a 21 year old who's hit social meopause, but has my actual body lost the very real physical ability to be awake for more than 5 hours at a time? Signs of aging!

I'm nappy af. Meaning, I take a lot of naps. I love naps. I wish I could be napping right now. I had a casting today and its over and all I can think about is rewarding myself with some shuteye. I got 8 hours last night. And yet, here I am. Thinking about whether the staff in this coffee shop will judge me for taking a quick snooze. Or if anyone will rob me. It ain't safe being a sleepy girl in a cutthroat theft filled world. It ain't safe anywhere but when you're tucked in at home.

Muddled and returning

I've never been very good at keeping friends. Sure, if the strange lines and threads that pass between my life and yours so happen to intersect, we'll be fine, we'll do fine, it'll be fine and fun and dandy. But once those urgent reasons for us to know each other dissipate, so as well will our presence in each other's lives. Because I'm not good at keeping friends. That's the first sentence you read here and I don't know why I tried to elaborate on the point because it isn't even the main focal point of what I'm writing right now. Tangents and word wastage. So yes. I am not good at keeping friends. 

Which is perhaps the reason why my brain and I don't get along very well. The gravity around me, the things that keep your family and friends and job and dreams and life in place, well mine is loose or weak or wonky or wack and I can't hold anything to me, much less get a firm grip on something so slippery as my sanity. 

I feel like I've used a bunch of these sentences before. Rehashing, wrist slashing. It's a party!

Right, so, well, apparently the strength of my spinal cord and nerves is not enough to firmly anchor my head in place. Not that it's rolling on the floor, but it's definitely floating away. It's riding some sinking ship, sinking perhaps because it has an anchor much better at its job than my own, down down down under all the way into the far away and what I thought far buried land of depression again. And it's taking me with it, however I kick and scream and drag behind.

My brain and I used to be friends. I don't know when, my memory is kind of shot on this but I think I have pictures to prove it. In my baby albums, or maybe an ultrasound. We used to get along. Ideas would come and my fingers would create nice little diaries or knit things to give to my little brother or accomplish things that I could tell my parents about and everything would be good. But these sepia tinted memories are just that, long forgotten like my old myspace page. And as far back as needed to look to call this the norm, my brain and I, my moods and I, my mind and I, we have not been on the same page. Heck, we're not even reading the same book. We're in different libraries.

So now when my mind has an idea I let it sit because there is no messenger going from up there to down here and I don't get anything out of it but more disappointment in my own lack of action. Which leads to the action of more inaction and the misadventure of anxiety. Oh the places anxiety takes you. Ive only been out of the country once but I feel like I've lived 5 lifetimes full of worry. 

My body is fine and my life is fine and my world is fine but for some reason my brain didn't get the memo so now I am crying and wishing I was dying and making morbid little rhyming schemes to deflect from the fact that for the first time in years things are dark again and I've actually gone all the way to square one. Like a game of snakes and ladders and you step on that one damn reptile placed on the square right before you win and slide all the way down to the beginning. And I was about to win I was about to be a depression survivor and not I'm just depressed again. I should add it to my calling card. If I could ever fight the anxiety enough to be able to answer my phone when people call.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except maybe to try to say that the monsters are back. In many more words though.

Several endings later

It's a strange concept, love. And I'm calling it a concept because it feels even stranger to accept it as a thing. It's not tangible, though my aching fingertips would argue otherwise. It's not quantifiable, though the stories we have seem to measure it in some way. Is it a collection of memories, or is it a separate entitity to experience? Where do we find it? If we were to take the human life and dissect it like an orange, would it be found? Can we take the scalpel and point to it, teach the students, here we observe love. 

It's stranger still the things it makes you do. I feel like a dog, running in circles, jumping in hoops, all for a treat. A kiss. Affection. Or maybe I feel like the typhoons that so plague this little country of mine. Because what's the point of all this rain? All it does is leak in through my ceiling and make the air moist.

I don't know where I'm going with this. But my father told me I should start writing again, even after failing to finish all my measly attempts at novels and failing to dedicate myself to my even more pathetic attempts at blogging. So I'm going on, without knowing where I'm going. Maybe that's love. Unsure what the next sentence will be, but labor ing over each character anyway, pixels on pixels making some sort of words to eventually make a sentence to let out these ideas in my head. Maybe love is building things from pieces so small that unless you view them macroscopically it's all just jumbled scribbles.

The tightening of my chest could be due to the fact that I'm losing weight because everything tastes like cardboard. Or maybe it's a reaction to the lack of air in the room. Since you left the gravity around me has loosened again and now I'm losing things I didn't even know I could lose. Like colors and oxygen. I didn't think these things were mine enough to end up not being. But apparently they are. You learn something new everyday. 

Your pictures are still up on the wall. I never took them down because the burning my palms would feel as I lift them off their hooks would surely be worse than looking at them. I've even moved some frames closer to my bedside so I can see them clearly as I close my eyes, even with my terrible vision.

Perhaps loss would be easier to talk about. So let's try. What I know is losing you the first, oh, half dozen times? Has driven me to the ends of what I thought pain could be felt. I've been through mental facilities and rehab clinics and more emergency rooms for wrist stitches than I can count without my head getting dizzy from self pity, and yet the worst I've ever felt was you leaving. Talk about a lack of air! I've tried to kill myself more than half a dozen times and yet that was the only time I ever felt like I was dying. Because I found out I don't just need food aid sunlight water and shelter to survive, I also need you. And your leaving punched a hole in me so wide that those goddamn dogs could use it as one of their hoops. I've bled out through almost every major vein and artery reasonable reachable using a surgical blade, and yet I never experience losing as much life force as I did with your departure. Hence, the things that transpired after you left that I won't write down here. 

I got my cat Salty because I had rabbits that all died. And I was sad. So my father said the best way to mourn is to pour your love into something new, otherwise it'll spoil like milk left in the sun. So I got a cat. When my cat Salty died, I got my dog. When you left, I tried the same replacement method to stop the bleeding but it didn't work so well this time. Apparently, human relationships don't work the same way as pet ones do. Because nothing could fill the hole. Nothing could plug it up. I was running out of blood and, heck, it was so wide my damn intestines were pouring out into the floor and it was all I could do to just try and scoop everything back into me. So I tried. Because I can't even describe this pain, and I've made myself an expert on writing about depressed shit. 

Basically, I'm writing things down because my heart is broken. And my heart is broken because you're not here. And the absence is filling up with these goddamn scribbles we read, instead of being occupied by your much missed mass. Why is it I can't explain what stupid old love is but I can feel it, and especially its absence as felt through your absence, as if I know what I'm talking about? So now I'm writing things down to try and pick apart all the tangled threads of thoughts that are somehow masquerading as my brain. Whatever is in my skull definitely feels like gray matter.

The end

I tried really hard to write down every day with you. I wish I'd tried harder. Then maybe I'd have more things to post mortem-ly dissect, more words to go over and wonder and pause and bookmark and suspect. Is this the day? Is this the moment? When exactly did you stop loving me? Could this be when the tectonic plates that made 'us' shifted enough for you to go from I will never leave you to I am at the airport. To yes, this is what is want. 'This' being us being over. This being nothing at all.

Honestly, I was happy. What a funny word, honestly. As if something as flimsy as human consciousness could ever produce an absolute truth. But I was happy, is what my flimsy mind is telling me. I was happy, so happy, when it started. It was like here, you are loved you deserve love. Look at this person who you made an impression on who is back now and look how excited he is to see you. Look at what you can do for him, look, you are good. You can be loved and love back. You have that ability, in your pouch of talents. The way you looked at me could shake the earth. The way it felt like a finally, a sigh of relief, of homecoming, the way you held me. It felt like that to me and I believed it felt like that for you as well. Holy high hells it was good. It was the pure excitement of wanting another person, me to you you to me is together. It felt, pardon my French, honest. 

But I fucked up in a lot of ways. Big ways, small ways, in between sizes of mistakes. Somehow, somewhere, you didn't get out of the car to greet me anymore. I reached, you reacted but not so often anymore anything else. It felt lonely. I know why. I didn't help anything, especially with the big mistakes. Distance grew. Between us, when we were once skin to skin, lay all of these things that weren't us. Will she, will he, why won't she just. Why can't she just. Why isn't he. It all built up to put a wall, or a sea, or I don't know, some sort of barrier between us that stopped it from being what it once was. All of the expectations constantly being let down. All of the feelings so sensitive and raw, bristling at any touch. All of the things that weren't us. Because when it was just us, in your car, talking... It was as it was meant to be. Good. But even then, things -and bad things at that- , crept up and settled between us and they never left, I think. They just grew stronger. So strong the wall or the ocean or whatever dumb metaphor became almost physical. I could touch it as easily as hold your hand. It was there. That close. Real.

After having time to think, being stuck in my own head and locking myself in a room for three days now, this is probably for the best. Because the best wasn't us. We weren't that for each other. But how I wished and wanted and worked for us to be. I didn't give things up, not really. I just always felt that whatever it was I wanted, you were more. You were just more. More important, more valuable, more. 

So many mistakes, but I always tried to fix them in the end. I'm a growing girl, so I didn't always get it right the first time. But I did eventually. Or tried to. And I'm proud of myself for that. Some shitty consolation prize for being alone now, I guess. We always tried to fix it. The understanding that we are different people, and the understanding I have now that we were fundamentally different people. We don't get the fantasies in our head of how things should go when we're with someone because we don't get to control someone else. How I think you should react is never more important than how you actually do. I tried to see what you thought and react how I could but I guess trying wasn't enough. From your end, I think you did the same. We both did, but it was just not enough everytime to stop the wall or the ocean from growing thicker and taller or deeper or vaster. And now it's so much we have a country between us. Me in my room, you in yours. We tried until you didn't anymore.

One day I will have a happiness just as real, so real I can touch it. One day I will have the safety from anxiety that assured love brings. One day I will have someone who can't stand the thought of not eating breakfast with me every morning. One day I will be looked at like I'm the only thing that matters. One day someone will be so excited to see me, everytime they see me, that they can't stand to have the steps between us take as long as they would for me to walk and they will cross the distance and meet me half way. One day I will have someone excited to hold me and feel excited everytime. One day I will have some one who says fuck it, I love you. One day. Not today. 

Today I'm still not okay. Today I'm still in this room. Today I'm still trying to accept that that person won't be you.

6/29/16

Erasure

I think I missed out on a lesson somewhere, some vital piece of information that was never passed on to me most probably due to my many absences and general disregard for formal education. Am I the only one who doesn't care if someone is on their phone the entire date, if someone has no ambition or doesn't try to make great romantic gestures? All that is secondary in note for me and far behind in importance, in terms of relationships. 

When I love someone, I feel it in my gut. I feel a holy shit I love this person and I blurt it out and we go from there. I don't make a choice to feel it, but I decide to stick with it (occasionally - when you don't feel it anymore, there's nothing you can do). 

Did I miss the lesson which defined love? Because for me it's that. You love someone wit all their flaws, everything about them!, or you don't at all and let them be themselves. So why is it that love seems to be translatable to everyone else ass an opportunity to change someone? I would truly like to feel that, whatever it feels like, to actually feel loved. I don't think anyone ever did that for me. I've felt loved, because of who they can make me into. But is that really the point of it all? Why can't we see people and just dive in, head first, fuck it all! I love you! I want to find out everything about you and I will love it I don't care! Why is it that diving in means finding things you want to change?

For once, I'd really really really like to feel like someone actually loved me and not who they wanted me to be or expected me to be or saw me growing into. Why does everything have to be prefaced with correction? Yes, you didn't mean to get me to stop and change all of a sudden, it was a spur of the moment ultimatum, but you always wanted to change me. And why? I was, relatively, happy. I just wasn't what you pictured.

I mean, I get it. I'm a piece of shit human being and trash and of course no one will love me as I am because I'm awful and don't deserve it. But it would be nice to not have all that affirmated again and again and again.

I don't think anyone will ever feel that way for me and it makes me sad. The me that I am, the me that I hate, apparently you despise and wish to murder, irradiate, alter, banish too. Hell, you don't love me, who I am, at all. Just parts. And people aren't parts. So I'll degrade and crumble, if it will keep you here. Because I really love you, even how you want to destroy me, so I will do what you want. Death is what I've always wanted, and this is just a new form. I may have stopped the cigarettes and the booze but I'm indulging more and more in another bad habit - self loathing. Oh what fun times! Hobbies include: knitting and selfmutilation, physically and emotionally. 

But where was I? Oh yes. Molding and shaping and demanding and pulling and pushing and erasing and ownership (because that's what this is right? Seeing yourself owning someone, the right to their identity and the right to change it) and love. No one will ever look at me, know me, listen to me, and think, wow! She may not be perfect but I'll take it all. No. There must, as the universe commands it to be, be a transaction for all happiness that comes my way. This particular deal is: you can be happy, but you cannot be you. And I accept it.

It's just a shame. But it will never happen. Know how I know? You were my best shot. And you'll never love me for who I actually am and that's okay. I'm awful.