Fall 2017

CW!! I was very depressed when I wrote this. I am so so much happier than I was when I wrote this. But when I reread this it reminds me that there aren’t enough places to share deep dark feelings. And it teaches me that we can heal.

I wish that I were happier. It’s seriously starting to feel like things are crumbling around me. I imagine sand bleeding out from between bricks and whole ceilings coming down in pieces around me. I’ve never felt so bad and so helpless. I question even the things that seem good in my life.

I look for purpose everywhere I can, and I can’t be sure what’s better – to admit my feelings or pretend that things are fine. And things are fine. How odd. Everything I know is not how I feel or what I think. I am always holding back my tears and my voice. So full of angst and stupidity. I feel like I need my meals spoon-fed to me.

I’m scared at how much I am able to empathize with su*c*dal thoughts and feelings. Sometimes I want to be in tremendous pain. I feel like a psychopath. I texted my mother, “I think I’m unhappy” but, in fact, I know that I am. I know there’s a crack in me that wasn’t there before – deep in the foundation of my self and that swallows up all my sweet things and my water and that dehydrates me.

I feel incapable. I never say what I’m thinking anymore. I don’t feel the kind of love I want. It is hard to face unhappiness and problems that have no good solution. I feel my steps backward much more intensely than I feel my steps forward. It’s almost as if I’ve widened my lens a bit and discovered that I’m not surrounded by crumbling walls, but instead I’m in a deep, deep pit; a hole I must dig and dig my way out of. And I’ll feel better if I just sit down in it instead, and get some good sleep.

That sounds like k*ll*ng myself. It’s not, but it’s some kind of giving up in a big way. I never feel more misunderstood than this, more unloved and looked down upon than this. There are so few people to turn to, and they are so far away, and they need me, too. I am meant to function in ways I do not, meant to be there for people in ways that I cannot be, meant to perform and be myself and I can’t do both at once. Constantly assessing the seriousness and danger of my situation, I become a quieter girl. I become a girl who feels stupid and gets younger and younger.

My insecurities nip at me like bugs, swell and swell to my every scratch and make me bleed. I bleed all the things I hate. Perhaps I lied when I said I’m happy on my good days. Perhaps there are realities I need to face – there are things I’m not and things I can’t do. [Redacted] says everything’s temporary, and I believe that but cannot feel comforted by it.

There’s a woman sitting behind me speaking Korean on the phone and I find that a great comfort. But then, fast – not one second later – I think about school or [redacted] or work tomorrow or [redacted] and my chest tightens again. I’ve written nearly four pages about what it’s like to feel like shit. I wonder all the time in public places if people think I’m crazy. I wonder that in private places too.

What is to be done? The question arises again: to perform happiness or to be myself, this way? Because I can’t do both. And both feel like the wrong thing to do and neither sounds like a good time. Everything I do and any way I choose to carry myself is work. I am heavier, heavier, heavier.

I find myself wishing to be the people I see around me: the strangers that are still and appear comfortable and focused and even content. Every noise raises my heart rate. I am going 100mph and also I am not going anywhere. I speed into walls, I crash violently. I am the car that injures innocent drivers. I say over and over again that I am so sorry. I am so sorry.