back to square one.
i thought i was getting better. i really thought that maybe i was just overreacting, that i never really felt this way and that i could just move on without letting the word ‘depression’ enter my regular vocabulary.
i should have stayed. why did i leave when my friends were all there and it was a rare chance to hang out with all of them?
it’s because of this fucking depression and i’m so angry and frustrated because now it’s preventing me from doing the exact things that would make it go away. and now not only do i feel like shit, my friends are probably angry with me for being such an asshole and i can’t even repute it nor do i want to. i wish i could be closer to them but i’m drifting further and further away, carried by the tides of bad feelings and i don’t have an oar.
and i’m so scared. i’m scared that if i try to get back to dry land i’ll tip the boat over and i’ll drown. i’m scared of people leaving me. i’m scared of the what seems like inevitable moment when i become a nuisance and someone to let go. i’m scared of the outside but i’m more scared of the person i’m becoming, the ugly blackened ghost that threatens to swallow me the more i struggle against it. i’m scared of settling into complacency, but it seems safer than trying to break out.
and why
am i so scared, always tiptoeing around anything that might be a risk, always worried about what other people think of me? it’s a stupid, useless trait to have.
i’m
tired. i was going to write more but i finally cried again and it’s really draining.
i play it off like i’m worried about you, but maybe i’m actually the one getting hurt.
distraction
is all i am to you, and in a sense, that’s all you are to me. but i suppose that distraction is not enough for me anymore. and i suppose i’m just tired of being treated more like a plaything and less like a complex human being with good traits further than the layer of my skin.
and i’m stupid, and it’s completely my fault but for some reason i didn’t expect this from you. and now you are just added to the list of people who hurt me without realizing.
at least you are honest.
and it’s not even like i ‘like’ you or that i want to ‘be with you’; i guess the selfish part of me just wanted to feel like i was on someone’s pedestal. and that’s all i want lately, is just for someone to like me genuinely, no baggage, no doubts.
it’s too much to ask, isn’t it?
losing grasp
as i care gradually less and less about other people, i focus my attention on myself.
i’m all i think about and i hate what i see. i wrap further and further into myself to the point where i can’t effectively interact with the outside world. i don’t want to talk; socializing is tiring. i forget to react, i forget to listen. i become blank and cold and scared.
all i want to do is go back to my room.
my daily life has become a plain, boring straight line, with sudden, fleeting spikes of emotion. i laugh uncontrollably for one minute, or shed one tear. i’m sad - the bored, lonely, lukewarm kind of sad that just makes me feel less human and more like a gray mass that is neither desirable nor detestable.
i’m there, but it’s nearly the same as not being there.
i dislike people. no, that’s perhaps too strong. i am wary of people. i see the people who have hurt me in the past, whether intentional or otherwise, and i back away. i can’t with clear conscience interact with them; i don’t trust them. i think it’s noticeable, but it’s too painful to try to act just as before, hang around the same people, have the same failures stare me in the face and mock me as i struggle to move on.
i always told myself i’d forever save face, that i’d preserve the mask even if it was the only thing i could do. but i’ve become so tired, so absorbed in my own self-pity, and consequently disgusted with myself, that i can’t smile anymore. at least, not constantly.
i can’t even write well anymore.
my sadness is no longer poetic, if it ever was. this is the point where the critical voice in my head tells me to get over it, to stop because it’s making me ugly. i run towards the poison, cushioned part of my mind that says it’s okay to feel bad about yourself for awhile. i fool myself with promises of happy tomorrows while i’m still being pulled deeper and deeper into what i’m allowing myself to call depression. even typing that word felt fucking stupid. how do i even deserve to be depressed? nothing even happened and it’s not even that severe.
i’m fine.
i’m not fine but i’m not ‘not fine’ enough to call it a serious problem. which makes me feel even worse about feeling so badly about myself. why am i doing this? why am i allowing the past months of my life to define how i feel?
sometimes i find myself really angry about my life. i’m angry about how it turned out but i’m also angry at myself for caring so much about such trivial things. i broke up with andre, which sucked for a second before i tricked myself into thinking i was over it. i was a weak and bad person and latched onto poor jisoo before soon cutting away. i felt bad about it and then phil helped me to feel better but more accurately helped himself to recover from angie and later find emily. i slept with matt, and then started to actually like him. ceejay flirted with me and i felt like hot shit for a second. i explored a moral gray area and made out with him while i thought me and matt were still a thing. matt broke it off with me while i was crossed and then me and ceejay had sex a couple times, after which he stopped showing interest. i entered a bitter spell in which hating matt was something that i simultaneously wanted and didn’t want to do. matt quit the team and i felt a bit betrayed but more relieved. phil and emily got together and now i don’t want to hang out with them anymore because it feels weird. markus talks to me about emily and sometimes says he likes me. i listen to him and give advice because i feel bad for him but it still kind of stings when he says he likes me because it feels not genuine. i still somehow feel second best and like reaching for anything is hopeless and pointless, relationship wise, dance wise, … school wise i think i’m okay but i’m not that great at that either. i slept with joe but that doesn’t really mean anything to me, it just made me feel like more of a slut. it doesn’t pile on that much because i already feel like a dirty piece of trash. (ironic, my nickname is actually kinda hurtful for once)
i’m writing all this down so i don’t forget. and one day hopefully i can look back on this and think ‘wow that was a shit time, but i’m glad it’s over and i’m fine now.’
i want to mean it when i say i’m okay. i want to be able to have fun again. i want to feel like a functioning human again and like i’m worth something and someone’s time.
i hope it’s intuitive that wanting these things isn’t enough to get them. even if it was, willpower wavers. i teeter between this proactivity and the lazy dullness that sustains my sadness but is sometimes so comfortable.
it’s a black hole and i’m trying to grab onto a ledge
but i can’t see
and the darkness, so constant
makes me want to just accept it.
rebound girl
everyone tries their hardest to climb back up. i thought if i reached out, we could go together, but in the end my hand is yanked and i fall while they reach the surface.
it’s a bitter ache to realize that i’ve been used. it mingles with the knowledge that i’ve done the same to some and thus i lament the detrimental self-serving nature of humans. and i suppose i should stop wading in the pools of my self-pity but no one’s apologized and despite hurting this much i still must be as ‘fine’ on the outside as those around me.
i just feel dirty. there are so many things i’d like to say to them but at the same time i don’t want to say anything because i know they don’t care. perhaps i am too possessive of my words and my thoughts; they comprise my being to me and i can’t give them away else be left with nothing.
i want to feel better but there’s no way to confide this without becoming the subject of others’ concerns and i don’t want that; i don’t want to be saved.
i always want to do it myself but it’s more than apparent that i can’t. i’m crumbling in my own fingers and as i try to rebuild myself, my hands shake.
seasonal depression is no longer a thing for me. it’s almost summer and i still feel like shit.
you’ve taken it from me
it pains me that i must simultaneously pity you, envy you, and treat you as my equal.
why am i the recipient of your cold shoulder? you’ve already taken enough from me.
and now as everyone pays their attentions and worries towards you, i’m left broke. broke from paying too much eye to others’ thoughts, broke from thinking i had more where i didn’t.
i search for strength and confidence but it’s locked up and i don’t know the combination.
all there is left to do is sit in solitude and attempt to remember the algorithm.
nothing is your fault.
it’s mine.
the worst thing to be is lonely
feeling as though no one understands me, but more heavily that no one wants to. i retreat to silly notions of a knight in shining armor, an ideal person who will ‘someday’ come along; i scoff at this even as i cling onto it to survive.
i’m starting to let go.
no person can climb to the pedestal you build in your mind.
i’m realizing this as i pick apart your personality and as you continue to walk away both physically and mentally. from me, from us, from the family i thought i shared with you. i smile bittersweet as i realize it’s not just me on whom you turn your back.
as i settle into my newly quiet existence i sincerely hope you can find your way. i worry about you, not because of lingering expectations but because i care. i hope you know i cared; i still care, and i hope you meant your words when you told me you cared about me. you were something to me, Matthew, as short and trivial the time we spent together might seem. you were the one who genuinely interested me, my testing of the waters, my reality check.
i let myself be wild last quarter, tasted the fruits of apathy, but when you left i started to learn that the selfish, dignity deficient lifestyle i lived was poison. i’m a hole right now, no capacity to think about anything but myself and no tools to love.
but someday i will love with these hands. and someday someone will lace their fingers into mine and tell me i’m worth it. someday i’ll regain the humanity to cry and the courage to look at one person only.
today is not that day, and i’m not saying i’m fine yet. it still hurts to see you, and him, and them, and wonder why none of you wanted to stay. but i suppose my facade is a bit too transparent, my heart a bit too empty despite wanting desperately to love.
i held my hands out but had nothing to offer, and thus was left to grow cold, bruised and alone. so, today i close the box and lock the key.
to love others, you must first love yourself.
i’m so deeply buried that it’s hard to keep my head visible
and now that people have pushed off of me for their own reasons
it’s impossible for me to see the way out
is this what you want?
do you feel good, running away from me?
does it give you some relief to ignore me, to make me feel like a contagious disease, a face to turn away from, the only stranger?
i know this is most likely not your intention, but sometimes i get so angry. in these moments i really dislike you. you’re hurting me without even noticing. and i watch everyone around you get closer to you as you lengthen the distance between us, so helpless. you’ve tied my hands to my back, but as i search for the knife i realize that i tied myself.
i can’t get out.
all i can do is hide my arms so that people won’t notice what a stupid situation i’ve gotten myself into.
i change my mind every minute on what i want to do about you. right now i can’t even be friendly. it hurts too much.
it hurts because you don’t care. you really don’t. if you did, i wouldn’t feel like this.
the worst moments come in the late night/early morning, when i’m left with no one but myself and the darkness of the sleeping world. i think about you, i think about anything possible other than focus on my studies. i tear myself open and pick at the broken glass, the details of used makeup wipes that hold the masks and smiles of yesterdays and long-agos. they’re not real but i believe them to be, i wish and hope them to be because they portray a version of myself that i like. not the dull shell of hollow laughter that wisps her way through, hoping both to be noticed but also to flow with the normalcy that doesn’t come naturally to her.
i smile large and sometimes it bothers me that you don’t do the same. what’s wrong?
i want to know. i want to know because i know things about you already, useless knowledge from the phantomed intimacy we used to have. why did you tell me these things, comfortably with my head on your shoulder, staring at the ceiling which seemed farther than the distance that separated our beings? why do the same sets of your words echo in my head? why do you treat me as if we are acquaintances and never anything more? why can’t i shake the feeling that you used to ‘care about me’, but now you don’t?
why did my eyes swallow the tears that right now almost came?
