I feel like there is a wall between myself and my reality. It’s always that sensation of looking through the glass, but never touching. Maybe that is why the world is so unreal to me, because I keep it at arm’s length.
Look, but don’t touch, they say, and for once I seem to be following the rules.
I had a bit of a bad day yesterday, regardless of anything I may have said. I almost didn’t leave the house to go to town for groceries. Again, one of those tiny things setting me off. I weighed myself, had a fit. It was literally like taking a trip back in time. I remember these moments.
I have ten different things piled on the bed, and I keep tearing new things from the closet, pulling it over my head. I walk to the mirror, reject it, and the process starts again. Then half my closet is strewn across the bed. For some reason I grabbed for my old favorite shirt. At one point when I wore it I weighed 190 pounds. And that’s what I felt like in it. Like I was back there again, out of fucking control and with no willpower to stop it. Even though it was as loose as a nightshirt, nearly down to my knees, I couldn’t take it for some reason. There was nothing comforting about it. It was horrible and painful, and I found myself fisting bits of my hair, wanting to rip it from the roots.
Oh yes, this is a possibility, oh yes, this is where I’ve been, where I’ve gotten to. We’re the same person this girl and me, no matter how much I want to dispute it and claim that I’ve changed. I can be there again, and I know exactly how I feel about that. I’d rather be dead. I feel like I’m there already, even if everyone tells me I’m thin already and can stop now. Doesn’t look that way. Doesn’t feel that way.
I ended up ripping the seams on a sweatshirt in anger and throwing it to the back of the closet. I wore all black again, layers over layers so I wouldn’t have to feel like I could be seen in any way. I even coated my face over in make up, which I never do. I almost couldn’t bear to go.
My father and I had an argument. He keeps telling me to keep a checkbook, which I should. Unfortunately banking falls into the ‘I absolutely don’t give a shit’ category, which is why I made a mistake recently. I look over to him and mumble that I’ll watch it from now on, and he goes into this whole, “well why are you saying it like that?” line of questioning.
“I don’t care. I just don’t.” Unapologetic, flat.
His irritation is building. It’s coming off him in waves, and he won’t even look away from me to give me a moment’s rest from that accusing fucking gaze. I stare at my computer screen, blinking rapidly. Not because of him, but because of myself. Because I really don’t care, and only ten minutes earlier I was laying on my bed studying the pattern on my comforter thinking about the next time I can go up the mountain. Thinking about going off into the snow. It would be a miserable way to die.
He goes on, asking me why, and I have no emotion. There’s nothing in me that wants to tell him. Now I’m getting annoyed myself and I want him to leave, and I’m hiding behind my hair because I’m crying from my own lack of caring. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t change it. It’s the one thing I have no control over, though I hate to say it. I hate to admit defeat. I loathe it. But I have lost. I lost a long time ago. This is why I continue my downward spiral.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I finally get out, still looking at the screen.
I feel like one of those angsty teenagers in a Lifetime movie, but I don’t seem to have any pangs of regret about it. I don’t want to explain. I could talk of it a thousand years and he will still not get it. I would not get it if I hadn’t felt it for myself. How is it possible to be so blank? This I can’t answer. It seems against everything to not care, to have not the slightest bit of feeling over your own life and where it’s going. I’m a feather floating around, soon to hit the ground, soon to lose all flight. But what does that matter to this head of mine? I make no sense; even I can’t understand myself.
What he says next almost makes me want to smile. All I catch for sure is: ”You can shoot yourself.” Then something about ‘this is your life, start caring about it’.
Yeah, I can shoot myself. You don’t think I’d do it, do you? How wrong you are. It’s nice to know you haven’t forgotten our little conversation.
I keep saying I’ll take care of it, but I don’t sound even slightly convincing. I can hear the irritation in my own tone, and he’s giving me one of those looks like I’m the most useless piece of trash he’s ever seen. I don’t care. I am not valued solely by his interpretation of my worth.
He walks out, finally, and I breathe in, embracing my own apathy.
I can hear him through the wall, in an angry, loud voice: “She’s insensitive to her own plight.”
Yes, yes I am. That is the only thing about me that can be called beautiful. At least I am smart enough to know that I am inconsequential and anything I do in this life makes no fucking difference. It’s over when your born; it’s even more over when you die.
You’ll get over it.
I never got to sleep last night. They called me at 5:30 in the morning, on my day off. It seems like a joke, almost, this life of mine. I don’t ever feel awake or asleep; it blends together into something indistinguishable. I also found out that coffee is free, which wasn’t the case at the first store I trained at. Needless to say, I’ve been taking advantage to the point where even my unaffected body finally gives in and reacts to the caffeine of all the black sludge I swallow down. I end up shaky and overly-alert with a bad stomach ache every time, but it’s better than being so tired that all I do when I get home is crawl into bed until the sky gets dark.
The opening shift is really killing me. It fucks off my routine completely. I have to get up a bit after 4:00 in order to allow myself time to shower and wake up somewhat. Then I spend most of the morning at work having to do everything on my own. It’s just a very shitty arrangement and plenty of people are unhappy with it, coming to me and complaining about my schedule, which I think is funny. I asked for the closing shift and I get opening. Shows just how much my boss likes me. She’s been sick, fortunately, so I’ve not had to deal with her.
And this is what everyone wants, supposedly. I think if it was my choice I’d only work 12 hour shifts so that I wouldn’t have time to think about it. They’ve cut my hours quite a bit along with everyone else, so I am doing a regular 40 hours a week instead of 50. The extra time is hard to make up for, honestly. I come home and don’t know what to do with myself. I sleep for a few hours then get up, generally going back to bed at least three or four times for short intervals, trying to sleep out of sheer boredom. I either fall to sleep, or give up and watch some shitty television program until I’m too tired to sit up anymore.
Complaining accomplishes nothing, they say. But for some reason it makes me feel better.
Every day is becoming this agonizing trial in patience. I’m so used to my little world of nothing that this is all a complete shock to me. I was so far away from the petty squabbles and the gossiping, that even now I stand back and barely understand it. Why are feelings important, I wonder? I only ask this when I feel nothing at all. It’s as though all memory of feelings and what they mean gets shut down. I grow confused. Peoples’ reactions make little to no sense to me. Why do they concern themselves over such things? Why do they believe that I too am worrying over it?
It’s difficult to worry when you don’t care. I can’t form a normal attachment these days, and perhaps it is the people. But they are nice—a lot of them—we get along, yet the idea of carpooling with them or meeting somewhere after work makes me cringe. I instantly think, “how boring, how troublesome”. It would be my younger life over again, sitting in a friend’s bedroom in the dark trying to recuperate before returning to the screaming, giggling bunch in the next room. I often found myself bored and uninterested, and it used to drive me crazy.
And these days, the disinterest continues to grow. I’m losing hold on the things that meant so much to me before, and I have little explanation as to why. All I can conclude is that I am slowly letting go. I am slowly becoming something that finds no pleasure in anything. And it is so dull a mindset, so drab a future. I don’t want to bear more years in this room staring at the walls, or doing something new every five minutes to keep my mind moving. Why does it have to be this way? Why does this only grow worse? I am not sitting here alone all day, I’m interacting as everyone told me to, but yet I feel so much more discontent than before. It has solved nothing. I feel so ill when I think about it all later, when I’ve gotten home. I always regret every word I have said.
My little shows of rebellion are laughable. I am so weak now, moreso than ever. I’m losing sight of what I believed, falling in and embracing this hollow nothingness where everything is inconsequential. I didn’t want this. I wanted to be numb, but not all the way. Not to the extent that I can’t function. I can’t live in a place where I get nothing out of it, and even the suffering is pathetic.
All I want to do is lie down and sleep this life away. Sleep has become like a hobby to me. I still don’t hurt like I thought I would. It’s been days and I still don’t hurt. I’ve gotten past the worst of it, I think. I want to go on indefinitely, see what happens. See if I break. I don’t understand these extremes, but I will use them regardless. Sometimes I like to think I am indestructible, maybe because it seems funny to me: the thing that wants to die is the thing that cannot. I will fail; I always do. But I won’t think about that just now.
I feel like I’m waiting for a train that’s never going to come. I realize it’s hardly been any time at all, and that I need to give it awhile, but already I’ve grown very impatient with this whole deal. I feel like shit, and no matter what I do it doesn’t go away. This is beyond the regular numb/apathetic I-couldn’t-care-if-the-world-exploded attitude. I haven’t done anything. I had the day off yesterday and I must have slept a good 20 hours, if not more. It’s not tiredness either, which is what I first suspected. I’m not tired, not physically anyway. I have books to read, games to play, a quad to mess with, yet I find myself with no desire to go through with any of it. I’d rather sit and do nothing it seems, or sleep and dream my strange dreams instead of staying awake only to feel perpetually restless. Nothing pleases me, and that is a little scary.
Work was fine, though still as unorganized as ever. Two of the guys from where I used to work came to help out. I hate one of them, but the other and I are almost—dare I say it—friends. I pretty much spent every late shift I used to have with him, so we got more or less used to each other and traded bits of language back and forth. Today he somehow ended up with me, which was nice since it meant everything got done much more quickly than it usually would of had I wound up with someone else (e.g. one of the shift managers who STILL doesn’t know how to assemble). The other employee was cordial with me, even joking around a little, which isn’t anything new, but this time it was much less…vicious. He has that way about him that is joking bordering on serious, and the looks he’ll give you say enough to relay that he often thinks exactly what he’s laughing about.
I made the most money I’ve ever made in two weeks. I guess that is something to be excited about, though I was as flat about it as ever. I really wish I could feel a sense of accomplishment or something, but nothing has happened, not even the slightest rush. If there was one thing I could change, it would be to make myself feel something about all of this. Even if I can’t care about it, at least feel as sense of self-worth or something, rather than constant hate. It’s hard to get by when you loathe yourself this much. But I feel like I can’t stop the cycle that has already begun. Maybe I am nothing without it. Maybe if I didn’t hate, I would never have tried to do anything at all.
I have to say though, I no longer consider nothing to be a bad thing. I think it’s all just a matter of where you are in your head at the time.
I must be under stress, but I’m so numb, I can’t tell. All I know is that I hate myself a lot more than I usually do, because I am completely out of control. I feel like it’s horribly obvious, that everyone must know, must have figured it out by now. I realize I am probably just being paranoid, but I can’t shake it. I’m fixated on this notion that I am failing. I must be breaking, but I’ve been too far in my own head to stop the degradation. Now I’m watching the fractures crumble further and I can’t bring myself to care. I’d rather the destruction. I’m too lazy to fix this anymore. I can’t care enough.
Apparently I am going to repeat myself over and over. I still haven’t figured out much logic to any of this. But if it makes me feel even slightly better, I suppose it is serving its purpose for now.
I went in at five this morning. Naturally, for the entire restaurant, they scheduled all of three people to open. I spent the entire time running to the freezer prepping everything, which is the job no one is keen on doing. Somehow they expected me to have all of the food ready by the time we opened. Right. No one bothered to tell me this either. Somehow I got it all started up, late, but at least it got done. No one else showed up until later. One of my favorite people ended up doing grill (the meat and all of that), and for the whole of breakfast, I did all the orders alone until the changeover to lunch. I was incredibly grateful that she was there. She’s a bit like a mother hen with me, and she did several extra things that she didn’t have to just to help me out. I really wouldn’t have made it without her; she was one of the few people to even pretend to give a shit that I was having trouble keeping up with everything all on my own.
There’s no use getting pissed off about it anymore. They just don’t care, therefore I won’t care. It will get done when it gets done. I’m passed the point of giving a shit. Fuck them. Fuck their business. They aren’t worth this misery, and on second thought, neither am I. I don’t know where this will go, but I guess it’s not all that important.
Day two of feeling like a train wreck. There were a couple of days last week where I literally rolled out of bed, did my hair, then got dressed and left, wearing the same clothes underneath as the day before. I didn’t do anything that wasn’t immediately required, because I was so out of it I couldn’t be bothered to care. I have never been like this. A shower has always been my top priority, which shows just how fucked up this whole thing is getting.
I’m whining, I realize that. But I haven’t told anyone about the reasoning behind my perpetual sleeping yesterday, or the extreme feelings of misanthropy the other day. All I want to do is sulk off by myself somewhere and not be asked any questions.
If this feeling lasts longer than a week, those pills will get fucking flushed without a second’s hesitation. Yes, they need time to begin working, yes I need to be patient, but when your mood has a tendency to change from alright to extremely suicidal within the span of a few minutes, every day counts more than anything. Maybe that sounds melodramatic, or childish, but when you’ve lived it there’s nothing more terrifying then suddenly deciding you hate everything about yourself more than you ever imagined, and that in a sense, for being such a failure, you deserve to die for it. Because it’s not as though you’re going to amount to anything or you’ll be good enough to change anything, is it? Might as well be done with it now to not only save yourself further humiliation, but save what little self-respect you have left.
I hate this. Waking up and feeling like it’s over when it’s a brand new day, because now I’m going to think about it, obsess over it. If I get tired today or fuck up like I sometimes do, I know that silently the words that always hit me at a moment like that will seep out of my subconscious to remind me of my constant, inevitable failure at nearly everything.
“If you had just taken care of the problem this morning, you wouldn’t be here doing this right now, would you?”
I’m numb. So incredibly numb I didn’t get out of bed until night had fallen, and only then because everyone was going out to dinner and I was expected to attend. I feel as though my body and my mind are not attached. We are two very separate things, and neither has any control over the other. Overly drugged. That is what it feels like. I know it must be the pills. This is such an awful feeling, like being in a prison. I know I wouldn’t have left my bed had I not been coaxed. I didn’t eat or go to the bathroom or even get a drink of water, I just laid there waiting for the hours to pass.
I’ve been awake for hours now and this has yet to subside. Even my mom made a comment that I was more quiet than usual, along with another statement from my dad that I looked ‘doe-eyed’. Tomorrow I have to go to work, and I can only hope that this will lessen by then. This is not living, not at all. What is wrong? Why is this happening? I can only think that it is my body adjusting. Hopefully it is only temporary, because even a week of this would be more than I could bear.
I’ll wake up from my nightmare soon. Nothing lasts forever.
Chains, these chains. I really am strangling myself with them. I go one way one second, then suddenly I bolt the other, only to get choked regardless. I want to hang. Let me hang. I feel like I’m doing this so damn publicly, right out there where the world can see it, but they only gape or say the all the wrong things to me. I don’t expect them to step up and stop this. I don’t expect consolation. I was a stupid kid once (oh, wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves), and yeah, at one point I thought that it was possible to accept an offered hand and maybe move onto where this would be emotionally bearable.
I know now that I was wrong. I didn’t need a friend, I needed an enemy. I needed someone to beat me into place, to tear out those pipe-dreams and give me a colder world to look at. It explains my fucked up relationship with myself, at least. All sides against the middle, all fucking propelling me toward doom. I’m waiting for impact. All those times where I sit here and tell myself it isn’t coming? Lies. Fucking lies. It’s coming. There’s no avoiding it. Sooner or later it’s going to come down to the end. It will be me against myself against the world, if you want to romantisize it. We’re going to brawl, and we’re going to look each other in the face, all bloodied and destroyed, and we’re either going to come to an agreement to suffer and pull this pointlessness along until breaking point together, or we’re going to decide to take the other path. The brighter one.
Oh, and how it is brighter. Like a beacon in this black that I’m crawling to, hands and knees scabbed over, all subservience. Torture me until it makes sense or until I get so jaded by it that I can’t feel it anymore. I am weak and petty and I want to lose myself in this. I want compulsion and confusion and pain and recklessness beyond anyone’s understanding. I want my pursuit of stupidity to blow up in my face and prove something to me, be it reasons for an end or reasons for continuation.
I know that maybe it hasn’t been long enough. Maybe I haven’t hurt enough. Maybe there’s a lot more to come before I’m worthy of being granted an exit. Or maybe I’ll tear the gatekeeper’s throat out and go early. I never was one for waiting for permission. Worthy, there’s an idea. As if I owe this world anything beyond what has already been given so unwillingly….
I bled for you. I bled for this place even when I didn’t believe in it. I beat myself for you. I took pain for you. All those people, I died a hundred times over for, and they never even knew. And it was all my fault. I act like I was valiant, like I did something. Oh, but how that was not the case! I did nothing but stand by stupidly, a monument to inaction! Brave? No, I was the coward. I was terrified of being alone. I took it all on for myself, to prolong the fantasy as long as was possible. I did not really bleed for them…no.
I bled for me.
Selfishness. It’s a start, at least, is it not? How’s that for optimism?
Last night there was a thunderstorm, quite a rarity here. I had my window open with the fan in it, trying to rid my room of the heat of the day. I was sleeping heavily—also unusual—as a result of taking too much cough medicine to get myself to rest a little more fitfully. Must have been 8:00 at night, but there was light to the world still, along with that strange glow of yellow we get sometimes when the weather decides to try something new. I can hear the rain pouring down, then that boom of thunder, not quite a crack, more like a drum beat, faded into echos.
At first I can’t figure out why I’m awake. The cat is hunkered up right next to my face, I quickly realize, scared of the sounds and trying to get as close to me as possible. He never did like storms. Then when I turn my head, I see my dad standing there, smiling excitedly. He gestures toward the window and says something like, “Look!” It takes a lot of effort through my haze, but I halfheartedly glance at the window then let my head fall back to where it was. I mumble something, and he keeps talking, even laughing a little. He leaves after a few more seconds, probably to go outside to get a better view.
It takes a moment to register, but I finally maneuver myself so that I can see it. There’s a bizarre flashing, the yellow blinded by white. The cat is unsettled. Normally I would have gotten up to go look and enjoy the rain, but something in me has died, has been slowly dying. Suddenly, it doesn’t look so interesting and the effort it would take to get up and go watch is too much. At first I have the thought that it’s only the medicine talking, but then I recall that the last time my dad and godfather went fishing and caught the biggest trout they’d ever managed, the only reason I hadn’t gone was because it hadn’t seemed that interesting. Sleeping sounded better, even though I hadn’t been tired.
Instead of getting up, I went straight back to sleep, because I realized that I simply didn’t care. I realized that I really don’t care about much at all anymore.
It can all happen without me.
It will happen without me, and I don’t believe I’ll be sorry for it.
