Backwards.

I’m so heavily medicated that it’s likely a terrible idea to put thoughts to text, but I’m going to ignore the voice of reason. I can’t help it anymore; I feel so lost and gone that I need to write. It’s all I have, the only skill that doesn’t fail me over and over. If I don’t write this down it will just keep flooding my thoughts in that crippling way, the one that is so overwhelming that I have to sit down and will it away before even attempting to feign normality again.

I keep saying the same things. I keep obsessing, allowing the crueler part to get the best of me. It must find this all so wonderfully funny; watching the struggle and making it worse and knowing that I am too tired, too jaded and through with all of this, to even attempt to overpower it. 

I’ve been considering volunteering to get job experience, since no one will take a chance with me. I feel…beyond useless. There is nothing I can say that gets across the self-loathing I am feeling. It’s surpassed hate, going into a territory even I am unfamiliar with. Is it possible to want to see someone dead this much? Apparently it is. I’m still breathing. It’s only apathy that keeps me from ending the worthlessness, ending the life that was never meant to be. I just can’t bring myself to care. I sit here, day after day, waking so late that by the time I’m up and about, everyone is going to bed. I don’t contribute because I don’t care, and I know that I should be doing something, anything, but even the most mundane of things makes me want to retreat into my room to sleep again.

The worst of it is that I don’t shut up. I bitch to myself in my skull, then here, because I know that saying anything to anybody else isn’t going to change anything besides perceptions. They will think ever the less of me, and will do nothing. I guess I shouldn’t expect them to do anything; it isn’t their life to save or be concerned over. I’m supposed to be able to do at least that much. My dad would laugh, my mom would cry. But they would move on. There’s no “let’s sit down and talk about it”, it’s more, “Let’s ignore it and it will go away”. I know they don’t mean to, and that it’s not their fault, but sometimes I want nothing more than to place the blame of something on somebody, anybody else. All my mistakes are my own. The only person who can be blamed is me. I should have either quit college sooner, or never have gone at all. I wasted a year of their money doing something that I knew in my heart I would never see to completion, and I am where I am because I was stupid and thought that I could get away with it.

I sleep and I eat, that is the extent of it. I’ve stopped caring. I starve and I laugh, or I binge and I cry. Seems to be the extent of my current emotional abilities. I starve to punish, and I eat to raise a mood that cannot be raised. Why? Why? There is no hope. There is no reason. I feel like I’m doing this just to push something that shouldn’t be pushed. Just to punish myself, to make someone pay. And I am the source of it all, so why should it not be me that has to sacrifice?

If I was truly what I wanted to be, then I wouldn’t hate myself like this. I want selfishness, not blind apathy.

Nothing changes, not when you look closely.

I was leafing through an old journal for lack of anything else to do. I’m biding my time still, and know that my chances are still incredibly low of getting out of this anytime soon except by an unnatural means. God, I keep saying that. I keep saying it and not doing it, and I still can’t figure out why. It’s getting to that point where whatever conclusions I have drawn are starting to disintegrate around the edges from being over-analyzed. I’ve gone and tattered what little hope there was.

6.26.07

“I want to destroy things. I want nothing less than chaos. My thoughts lately have not been good ones.”

Then another, undated one, just one line.

“Something horrible is growing.”

My oldest one is falling apart. The pages detach from the slightest touch, so it’s been wrapped with a rubber-band. The earliest entry is dated 12.25.04, since the journal was a Christmas present. There are several passages about God that I don’t recall writing. It starts off fairly benign, then progressively becomes more hateful. It sounds much like me, but different somehow. The bitterness isn’t quite so strong. There’s, dare I say it, hope.

1.13.05

“I keep thinking I want to die, but do I really? I’m not quite sure anymore. There must be something better than this, somewhere.”

I love my naivete. It’s sickeningly sweet, makes me want to jump into a time machine and go corrupt myself early. I was still in highschool in these entries, as there are references to my friends outside of school and my trouble with the very few “friends” I made in the home school program.

12.25.04

“Is it normal to have such hatred for people? Or am I just insane? I ask others—and they hate people—but they still seem to like to be around people. How is that hate?”

I know who this is. It came to me the minute I read it. Those few ”friends” (who insulted me more than befriended me; my first taste of a purely selfish friendship where I had no attachment to the individuals), were the first open ‘misanthropes’ I ever met. It was the first time I heard it spoken about openly–the hatred of all things human with a pulse—even if it all was garbage from a bunch of ignorant, sex-starved morons who were more or less cowards when I finally confronted them. There was a short period where I idolized them for being so open. But then, as the year went on…I changed.

When I finally had gotten what I needed—gall—I tore their egos down without a backward glance. And they shattered. The feeling of power was so new and fresh to me, and the vitriol tasted better than anything. They had belittled me, laughed, yet  reluctantly acknowledged me because I didn’t ask questions and didn’t reveal their secrets. In truth, they hated me because I wasn’t openly cruel, because I didn’t seem like a bully. I was shy beyond belief, in a very innocent way. I used to let my anxiety overwhelm me back then—it still does sometimes—but I was so consumed by it that I never stood up for anything, I just hid away in a corner, willing it away.

But then it all made sense finally. They didn’t hate me. They liked me, because I was the sort they thought they could torture and get away with it: I was the perfectly willing masochist, painfully sycophantic. But…the snake always had fangs. And I bit. I snapped like a twig when everything came crashing down at home, and that sadistic, hateful bully inside finally snatched onto the hole in the curtain and ripped it clean open. Instead of hating only myself, I hated them, I let the evil in me lash out at someone new. 

And when the shy, demure girl in the corner struck, nobody saw it coming. They stopped talking to me. And all it took were well-placed words and a withered, pathetic ego that I distorted to the size of a cathedral. They were all talk. They were afraid. Action wasn’t something they did. No, they were the sort that laughed and harassed, believing that nothing would come of it, that there were no consequences. So when I was the one to stand up and ‘do’ something, it was enough to send them running, tails between their legs. And I always thought they were so brave. Fuck, I was such an idiot.

Undated, sometime in 2005.

“Everyone is their own god, their own devil, it just depends on which side we favor and allow the world to see.”

I honestly don’t remember any of this. When I open the pages, it’s my messy, twitchy script in black ink, but it feels like I wrote down someone else’s history. Was it really mine? I keep forgetting that I was once normal and had friends and people who were acquainted with me. Nowadays I walk into the local store and no one knows my face. Since moving, I’ve barely left my house. I stay home without leaving for a few months at a time sometimes.

There’s a strange awakening of hatred when I read what I’ve written. I guess it is the bitterness. I hate that there are weaknesses in those words that are so glaringly obvious to me now, but were only harmless words when they were pressed into the pages. I know that if I do manage to make it ten years (the thought alone is daunting) I’d end up staring at this and laughing hollowly. I’d tear it all apart like I seem to do with everything these days. I’d see the flaws, standing out starkly in the neat type reflecting back at me from the monitor. I’d look at everything I’ve accomplished and disregard it with a wave of my hand as a time when I was too dumb, too young to know better.

And by now, I should know better, but this time around I’m not stupid enough to think that this is all I can learn. There’s always room to become more bitter, to hate everything just the tiniest bit more. To lose even more of myself along every winding trail that I walk, without even noticing until it’s all fallen away.

Day gone wrong. The apathy.

I know I should be angry with myself right now, but I’m not. In fact, this is one of those rare occasions where even the guilt of knowing what I should be feeling still hasn’t managed to break through the apathy. It’s impervious, for the first time in a long while, and I am not sorry.

It started off as a bad day, the continuation of an irritating night. I never slept, but stayed awake well into the morning. I get very annoyed and hostile when I go without sleep, and that’s saying something.  I decided it needn’t be an entirely useless day as the past few have been. It was 6:30, barely 20 degrees, and I went for my walk. My mom was feeling ill before I left, and had laid down on the couch to try and rid herself of nausea. She took something for it as well, so I thought nothing of it.

I get back, and she’s still not feeling good. I had promised I would make us something, so I lived up to it, and made a pizza from scratch for lack of anything else to do. While I was working on that, she got no better. When she ate, however, she seemed to be alright. She was sitting up acting normal, so I assumed whatever it was had passed, and that the bread had helped soothe her stomach issues. She has insomnia quite often, and due to her spinal cord injury, it can result in some very bizarre side-effects, that to anyone else would appear to have no connection to sleep loss. But of course, I’ve been through this before, I know the drill. But she feels sick again after awhile and lays back down. I wander away, unconcerned, not even thinking about it.

I’m watching some low-grade horror film while I dye my mess of hair. Which, by the way, went wrong. I bought a different dye (rather, my mom did), simply because it was on sale. It was only when I was opening the package that I realized it might have been a mistake. It says “Now done in ten minutes!” and I groan. My roots are a blondish red now; I’ve lost a lot of the brown I used to have a few years ago, though it is still very auburn, and dye just does not take well. I usually follow the “for a lot of grey” directions, i.e. leaving it on for 10 minutes longer, which generally manages to smother out all traces of my wretched, accursed red hair. Anyway, I apply it, and am disturbed by the fact that it doesn’t seem to be taking while I do the rest of my hair.

My mom comes in, even though she is sick (she just can’t stand to not help; it’s ingrained in her, it seems), and helps me get as much of the red as possible, though we still can’t tell what’s been dyed and what hasn’t. Between her terrible vision and my shitty mirror, we finally relent and assume that it’s going to take. The front does; it turns black. But traces of red are everywhere. I wait out the time, then go to the mirror to check, irritated when I see that the back still hasn’t taken. So I think I waited…20 minutes? The maximum was supposed to be 15…but I digress.

I wash it out, hop out of the shower and get dressed. My hair is toweled; I don’t bother to look at it. And as I’m sitting down to watch some other mundane video, my mom comes into my room again, murmuring, “Something’s wrong”. She’s shaking, can’t stop shaking, in fact. Says she feels freezing, and each shiver sends her into terrible spasms, which for an incomplete quadriplegic, are sheer torture. This is strange, because she is constantly complaining that the house is too hot; that combined with constant hot flashes means she sleeps with a fan on in the dead of winter. So I know that, indeed, something is off.

I make her lay down. She had been fluttering around the kitchen like she always does, obsessive compulsive about keeping it all clean and making sure that when my dad comes home dinner is waiting. But I convince her to come into my room, and set her up in my bed. I’m just the opposite; my heater runs constantly, so my room is a nice, balmy 80 degrees, much better alternative to the icy living-room. I’m not thrilled about her being in my bed; I have a very strong sense of smell and I can always tell when someone has been laying in my blankets. But I decide that if I don’t do something, dad will likely have a nice long talk with me later. Rather not.

My apathy was at its highest peak today. I didn’t feel anything the whole time. I just blinked, stared, getting annoyed by her whimpering. So I left her there and made her hot tea, then gave her a valium. She kept shivering and spasming, and had also developed a high fever. I snorted and walked over to the computer to continue with the waste of a movie. My tiredness was starting to set in, and I began to regret allowing her the bed I could be sleeping in. Yes, this is what the sadistic, apathetic monster thinks about. She also wonders briefly if the color came out right in her hair.

I decided to tend to it, since it was probably dried. I hear her whining even from the bathroom, but I pointedly ignore it. There was a tiny pang of guilt, but it died out as quickly as it came. I know she was in a lot of pain. But I kept thinking to myself that what is life but pain? What do I do everyday by getting up, but endure more of it? Emotions are covered over, buried deep down where they can’t come within miles of me. I start brushing my hair, and finally look up into the mirror. Great. Just fucking brilliant. I want to rip my hair out, but decide against it, instead just brushing rougher and scowling at how useless it all is.

My roots are dark red from the middle of my head to the back. The front came out just fine, since it was on the longest. So now I have black hair with darker red roots for pretty much half of my hair. What a waste of a bottle of dye. I knew that shit was doomed to fail. Thankfully, my apathy extends even toward myself and I just shrug after a moment after I accept reality. Oh well. Yes, I dyed it just in case I do happen to get an interview, and of course, the one time when I need it to look decent, it looks like a five year old dyed my hair for me. But that’s life.

My mom was unwell even after the Valium took effect. But she decided she needed to go to the restroom, and ended up, with much struggling, going back into the living-room. As I’m about to descend into sleepland, after making sure she’s still alive and breathing, I heard her steps in the kitchen. I wanted to growl. My eyes were bloodshot, and I hadn’t slept at all, but I dragged myself out of bed to go reprimand her.

Guess what she’s was doing? Defrosting the meat for dad’s dinner. Sometimes her ignorance is fucking astounding. She asks me why she is sick sometimes, or why she hurts in whatever place, and I ALWAYS know the answer. Because she won’t stop doing things. She won’t sit down and rest like I tell her over and over and over. She has too much faith in me as well. She always expects me to know what’s wrong, to know what’s best. I don’t, I’m not a doctor, and I only know bits and pieces about the human body. I can only guess. But what I do know for certain, is that in her state, overexertion can cause a hell of a lot of problems. She just doesn’t get it, clearly, since she repeatedly gets her neck inflammed terribly from working far too hard.

I don’t hate her. I really don’t. I did, once, when it all happened. I hated her more than I hated myself, and I wished the worst on her because she took what little I had away from me in one single go. I haven’t trusted her, or anyone else since, and I know now that I am likely completely incapable now. But I grew out of it, the hate. I know that she cares more than anyone else does, so I’ll be loyal to her, even if I can’t love her or be sympathetic. But I’ll stand there, be there in that small way, at least, since she usually does it for me.

We’re so different. I wonder sometimes how we can even be related. I know that if we weren’t family, we would never have any reason to be friends. I’m cold where she’s loving, she’s faithful where I’m skeptical and critical, I’m hateful where she’s forgiving. I try, I really do, which is why I no longer berate myself for not being a caring sort of person. My loyalty gives me the illusion of being caring, and so long as people assume that it’s love, it doesn’t matter, I can get away with it without being noticed. I’ve told her I don’t love her, because even as much as I want to lie and pretend that I’m all right in the head, the last thing I want to do is lie about something that important. I’ve told her. But I know she doesn’t believe me. She thinks underneath the moody exterior there is something whole and heroic beneath, but I’ve always been a villain, and with each day, that tiny bit of light that used to be there gets drowned out. I can’t remember the last time I did something that didn’t have fully acknowledged selfish implications. If I do something, I do it for me.      

I slept, eventually, after yelling at her to “lay the fuck down”. Dad is home, taking care of it. Off my shoulders now, not that it was ever there to begin with. Though I guess this entry is proof enough that it at least concerned me somewhat, maybe. I can only guess as to whether or not it is actually emotion or conditioning. Like crying at a funeral. I only ever did it because I knew it would look awkward if I didn’t. Girls are supposed to be emotional, supposed to cry, according to distorted societal ideals. I can’t be an emotionless, blank-staring monster. It would be suspicious. I have it ingrained in me to feel bad for doing something deranged, even though I know in my head that there is no such thing as right or wrong. 

I’m still tired, and this entry is far too long.

Negativity.

I’m awake, isn’t that shocking? I only got up out of bed so I’d stop planning. That’s what I was doing, laying there. It’s been so fucked up, I don’t know what I can truly do anymore. I’m drowning in all of those setbacks, and telling myself over and over, proving over and over, that the list of reasons to continue has nearly been erased blank, that this is all a useless, stupid struggle I would have been smart to quit back when I was 14 and knew better.

I knew it then, I know it now, but I hesitate. Over and fucking over, like an idiot. A stubborn, worthless thing that is too obsessed with trying to win, trying to show that all those people that they were wrong about me, that I can be this way and breathe. But I’ve been lying. I’m always lying, even to myself, because sometimes the thought of not being here is more scary than surviving. It’s my parents, I guess. My dad will write me off as yet another mark against him, some cruel joke of the universe to grant him a child that didn’t want to survive beyond 20. And my mom will cry and ask all those stupid questions about what she did wrong. I don’t know mom, don’t you remember when I told you that I wanted to die?

Every time I try to say something, the words catch in my throat and I choke on them. I feel the bile rise, and I swallow it down, thinking, “Now don’t be a weak, snivelling child”. But it’s not the voice of my tormentors anymore; it’s my voice. I am the enemy now, because I built up these walls, laid every fucking brick, and it’s my right to tear it all down. Tear it down and begin anew with an even stronger foundation, with even more hate imbedded in the walls. Or…I can just end. If I don’t want it anymore, my castle can be torn down and never rebuilt. It can wither away, dust on the wind, as I do that deed everyone is going to hate me for.

But didn’t they always hate me? Wasn’t I always the bitter disappointment? These days it’s hard for me to sympathize with them. They should have looked, should have seen it coming. Truth be told, it’s not their responsibility anyway. If they blame themselves that their choice. But my reasons are my own. My choice is my own. I’m so dreadfully tired of people believing that parents own their children, that they can somehow control them by laying down the law. I care a great deal for my parents; they have kept me after I failed their tests. But I never asked for this life, and I never asked them to hold me above the water. I think I would have preferred to drown. I deserve to be left behind, learn life’s lessons without a protective safety net to catch me when I make a mistake. I want consequence, because this life of protection has done nothing but make me will away being human, will away that survival instinct that is supposed to save us all like a life raft. But it’s not their fault; it’s mine. I should have strayed a long time ago. They made their mistakes, so I am entitled to my own. I should have ran.

Unrelenting.

I keep forgetting that I’m supposed to be waiting for something. Everyone is so interested in goals. The other day someone asked me what mine were. I just stared for a moment, blinked, and said flatly, “Nothing.” I guess I didn’t feel like lying. They didn’t ask, I didn’t tell. I love making socially awkward situations where the other person emerges stuttering, incapable of making any sort of response. Anything that requires an answer beyond the simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, is far too much it seems.

My nightmares have been gone, replaced by bizarre puzzle pieces gathered throughout the day. A little bit of information here, a little more there. It adds up into the congealed mess that makes no sense and proves more infuriating than restful. I wake up feeling like I never slept. Then the music….god the music. Lyrics get stuck in my head, just a line sometimes, and when I wake up it’s the very first thought that comes to me. Usually it’s a song I haven’t heard in awhile. The other day the lyrics were: “This was never my world/you took the angel away/I killed myself to make everybody pay”. It repeats and repeats throughout my day, a sick little mantra that won’t shut up, won’t grant me the silence I need so badly.

I wish I could shut the thoughts of, flick them like a light switch and send it all down into the darkness, somewhere else, anywhere else. But I like the torture, somewhere I must, because it doesn’t stop. This is all me. All of it. The evil that lurks around the edges? Just the me void of a conscience, the one without morals carved out all neatly from childhood brainwashing. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all, even if it is terrifying sometimes, so dark even I have to turn away to keep a shred of myself innocent.

I went for a walk. This little beetle got hit by a stray car tire and was belly-up in the dirt. Usually I have sympathy for such things. Yes, I have more sympathy for an insect than a human being. I’ve seen people bloodied on the side of the road after a nasty traffic accident, and had not a flicker of anything. Just a shrug. Yet I see a fluttering, pitiful little butterfly and I’ll reach down and pick it up off of the ground and set it on a branch, looking back hopefully over my shoulder as I walk away. I crushed the beetle. Crushed it and crushed it. Wouldn’t want it to suffer, right?

It’s all fading, those little bits that are holding me together, holding this abomination of a living thing in one singular piece. I’m reaching that phase again, I can feel it. The one where all I’ve learned will mean nothing for several weeks and I will have to go without. Just a consciousness and a pursuit of pain. Oh, and how I hate it. I want to strangle the apathy then, I want to grind it beneath my heel and make it submit to me. But it won’t. Because we’re the same thing, the same person. Relentless and weak all at the same time. It carries me when I swear I can’t go even the tiniest step further. I owe it. It’s what keeps me here, and I despise it for that. If I could just care! If I could only decide!

But there is no deciding, just mundane existence. No action. Complete inaction. Because my mind grows lazier and the numbness gets a nice tight grip around my throat, dictating my existence for me because I can’t handle the control any longer.

I’ll never win.

Sticks and stones.

I never went to sleep. I must have somehow built up reserves from all the nights—or should I say days—of a mere ten to twelve hours of consciousness. I may ward off the hours, but my hatred and feelings of helplessness toward it all, continue to seep into my skin. I can feel it there, spoiling, infecting like a disgusting pus from a festering wound. It’s not going to end until I’m dead and gone. Pity.

I will say with little doubt that my struggling was worthless; I see nothing coming of the brief two minute interview that was more laughable than serious. I was nothing but a bundle of overexposed nerves, tapping a foot against the leg of the chair I was sitting in, in an altogether vain attempt to hide the shaking of my rebellious limbs. Even the cruelest of conversations with myself could not calm me. Anger boiling in my gut only made the shaking turn to shivers as I waited for doom. I’d have preferred the noose; I wouldn’t have been half so nervous.

Over, done with. Like all things human. Just more worthlessness and stupidity to add to it all, more lines for me to draw in chalk as I tally up the never-ending list of cons that living comes burdened with. I don’t know why I try.

I went to a health food store, and found more joy in sorting through the strange food than I’ve felt in awhile. I was struck by how pathetic that was, that something so positively inconsequential could make me smile. But it all has ulterior motives, strings attached, especially the smiles.  Torture comes in many forms, some glaringly obvious, but easily ignored by outsiders who would traitorously deny me one of the few pleasures I still have left, that I can still call my own. We reach the danger zone, and all I want to do is laugh. They think they know me. They think that there are bones in this body that care and still are capable of compassion. I’ve never considered those ‘heroes” emotions to be ones that came preprogramed; completely learned in my opinion, and therefore nothing but another construct of this place and its cancerous people. I bleed malice these days. All the sleep in the world won’t take the dark circles of weariness from beneath my eyes. It’s been over for so long already.

I play my games for no audience but myself. It’s so blatantly narcissistic. Wait until night, which doesn’t take long anymore. I wake at 6:00 in the evening sometimes. Then it starts: the enduring. Wait, wait, wait. Night falls and I wait some more, for everyone to drift off to sleep, on a plane not connected to this one. It’s the only way my paranoia will leave me even partially; if I have reason to believe I am somehow less observed.

Nights staring at a computer screen. Nothing causes a reaction anymore. It’s all so useless now. Depravity doesn’t mean a goddamned thing, as its cage is the same that holds sway over everything: all in the eye of the beholder. To me, the only thing that is depraved or perverse is the fact that people get up in the morning believing they’re making a difference, or that the little useless shit they do all day somehow piles up on a list that is going to be reviewed after they breathe that lovely death rattle. I revel in the knowledge that it has always been over but they are merely to blind to see it, too vain, too determined, too scared.

I keep finding bits of gold in my self loathing. I find it too in those moments where my own uselessness and unimportance smile malignantly back at me. Yes, I know this. Yes, I accept it. And doesn’t that just make your skin crawl? It angers the darker side of myself, that on my best days I embrace my own worthlessness as though it were the entire point of my existence.  I don’t fight it anymore. It is the one enemy besides breathing that I have finally yielded to. I see now that my dreams were pointless, that planning beyond this is nothing but masturbation. Pining after something you can’t have, waiting for it, planning for it, only to have it torn away like everything else by the harsh winds of reality. It is useless to hope, and I wish to stop doing it. The future will be as bleak as the present; no amount of money or creature comforts are going to shift what already has come to pass.

It will not change the world. Nor will I. But more importantly…it will never change me.

I am already set in stone.

See it through…if only for proof.

I’ve been caught up in reading, consuming my waking moments in dark, cruel characters that are always on the brink of suicide. Rampant self-destruction. It’s funny that these things almost propel me in a way; they provide some weak, watery resolve in me. It shatters in the dark though, always does. When I’m lying there, thinking about how useless my toiling truly is…it all just falls away, then glares back at me like the fragments of a mirror. So many little pieces, my pathetic reasoning cast aside in one fluid, hopeless motion. It’s so easy to fall into the darkness, to let it take over the living aspect of this, to be my automated savior that does the awful deed of existing for me.

Tomorrow I go to where my dad works. They’re having some sort of job fair that I’m being forced to go to. I already put in my resume for a few jobs, but I know that with my useless talents it will do absolutely no good until they see my face. I know that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been hired; my anxiety was always too strong to permit me to bear the thought of facing a possible future employer face to face, where through sheer humiliation and misery I would have to list just how much I am unqualified with a fake, disgusting grin. I’ve never been one for begging. And to me, that’s what it would be.

I don’t feel it today; my apathy has been washing over me the last few weeks, thickening like a fog until I am blinded to all else. It’s best that I don’t feel it. It’s best that I’m distant when my failure—my hopefully final failure—becomes apparent to everyone. I already have seen it coming, but they are ignorant of it. 

I lie in wait for it to be over. For that last precious shred of my sanity to be torn away, where my stupid, weak mind catches up to the fact that has been blatantly clear to all other sides of me for some time: I am doomed to fail. It was meant to be this way. I don’t belong here.  

I wish for it to be over. I wish not to have to do it myself, that one damn pardon. But I know that I am the only salvation now, that I always was. Let it be done, let it be finished. I just can’t bear to breathe and know what I know anymore.

The awkwardness of living.

I left the house for the first time in at least a month, it might have been two; I have lost track of time. It’s strange, trying to integrate. I feel dissociative. I feel like I’m not a part of this place, just an observer, just someone watching with the flat affect, that humdrum numbness that is beginning to seep into everything. It is right sometimes, that apathy; it makes me perfect. It makes me…unaffected.

I didn’t feel any anxiety, more of an awkwardness. This hasn’t happened in a long time. There was no pulling from the bottom of my stomach, no lurch that made me want to run to the nearest corner and vomit. The cold sweat never came, my voice was quiet, but steady. Acceptance, I guess. Acceptance that though I am nothing to these people and they are nothing to me, in order to survive I have to tolerate them. It didn’t hurt; I can’t feel anything right now anyway.

I was standing in line for coffee. No, I didn’t force my mother to go get it for me; I took the money and went to the register myself without even thinking about it. She was on the other side of the store. It sounds like nothing, but my misanthropy and introverted nature have made simple tasks like that absolute torture. The looks, the eyes I can feel burning into me. The knowledge that my ineptness is completely and totally visible, that I am making a fool of myself before I even speak. This usually floods me, but not this time, not when everything is so impossibly cut off, disconnected. I’m more like something automated than something living.

The awkwardness came when I realized I didn’t know who was next; I assumed I was, but the woman behind me had moved toward the register and I just stood there. I blinked, thought about it, and stayed exactly as I was. I wasn’t in a hurry, and I really couldn’t care less if she went ahead of me. Then she tells me to go, smiling. I say sorry, and mutter something about not paying attention.

Again, this sounds normal. It sounds like any everyday event. But the fact is, standing in front of a cash register and having to order something and converse with an employee is more painful to me than something dying. I feel it like a tragedy. It builds like some sort of fucked up finale: standing, waiting, knowing that impending doom is coming for me. That soon, I’m going to have to talk to whoever is standing there, I’m going to have to feign that the last flitting thought through my head was not about sticking one of my hands into the blender sitting on the tabletop. Then, ding. I’m next.

I had a bit of a breakdown today. I threw a silent tantrum and binged on everything I could find in the pantry. I must have eaten two days’ worth of food (at least by my meager standards). I had to get my mind off of the thoughts, I had to concentrate on feeling something besides complete agony. Breathing, existing…it hurts more than anything sometimes. I wanted to sleep, but it seemed that no one would have it. The cat meowed, attempting to rip the tape I’d stuck to the bottom of my door to block out the sound of existence. I locked the door, but people tried to get in anyway. Finally I managed a few hours. I woke up ravenous and dull feeling. I ate sugar like it was a drug; I needed the shock to my system because I was feeling so incredibly low.

I hate these mood swings. My six month diet change has altered everything, made it all worse. I’ve menstrated twice this month, which to me is bizarre after having times in the past where I’ve gone years without a single period. But it makes me emotional in a very strange way. I cry for stupid reasons, but yet I don’t feel it…. How to explain…. It’s like I’m crying for how sad I am, but I’m using other things in order to pry the tears out of myself. So I’m not crying for the movie, I’m crying for the residules of whatever this is. The darkness. Because I can never cry for it. I never get to shed it; it just stays there, impervious to everything. Perhaps then, I do need to mood swings, if only to vent.

It’s ridiculous what effects me and what doesn’t. My boldness shows in some places, yet shrinks in others. I wore my corset to the stores, and didn’t cover it up with a jacket. Just didn’t care. I like it, I felt like wearing it. People stared and I didn’t care. Where I live isn’t exactly the place to dress up; I was out of place. How fitting. Sometimes I think I like that they know it, others…I’m not so sure. But why can I wear what I wish yet not present myself without feeling incredibly inadequate/out of place? I want to laugh at the sheer stupidity of it. 

It’s been a long day. I need more sleep.

It’s a lost cause, always was.

Sleeping the days away doesn’t make any difference. Nothing improves, I just waste time, purposefully, laughingly. It was a joke when I got up this morning, and it was a joke the day before. It’s always a joke, yet for some reason—stupidity I would guess—I continue to stay. I was thinking yesterday and this morning about how I would do it, deeply considering. I should be scared of this, I should feelsomething about it all, but there’s nothing but bleak blankness, blind, uncaring acceptance. The voice in my head isn’t protesting like it usually does, instead it’s like a shrug of the shoulders that more or less says ‘do as you like’, which makes me beyond frustrated.

I’ve tried to concentrate on other things today. I even broke my useless diet (it’s more a torture device at this point)and ate a few things that I wanted. I went running. I braided my hair in sections. I focused on playing videogames, but soon got bored, wandering back to the same thoughts from earlier. I won’t ask for help; I’m still to proud for that. This is my misery, I’ll deal with it in any way I see fit.

I’m sick of living for the sake of others. It’s useless—I always know it is, but the truth is I don’t know if I’d be around if there wasn’t some guilt there.

In two weeks there’s going to be a job fair where I’d put in my resume where my dad works. And I don’t care. In fact, when he told me, I kept thinking ‘I need to die before that happens’. Real optimistic, don’t you think? I don’t want to live anymore, I see no reason. That’s why I’m so confused that there is still hesitation. I feel as though I’m waiting for nothing, but yet if I don’t wait, I’ll miss it. Miss what? I don’t know. I think part of me is still attached to that idea of finding some sort of happiness, somehow. I want it badly sometimes, even though I vaguely understand that it’s not going to be possible in this state I’m in.

People say ‘change’. They think that it can all be willed away. How, by being with others, by caring for these pieces of garbage? They’re supposed to mean something to me, they don’t. I love that when I say that people assume I am joking. The only way to get rid of this is by willing the world away. I’d have to hole myself up somewhere, alone, all alone. That would make this go away.

Why do I insist on fighting this? Why is it so fucking hard to accept? Years of this bullshit, yet I keep sticking around. And I hate myself for it. I am my own misery, and only I can offer any kind of salvation.