Taking propanolol with borderline low blood pressure was a mistake. For what have I been prescribed this. Are there no other options to allay my panic attacks?

today my dad told me about my first tooth. he said that he came back from work and my mum so excitedly gave him the news, and when he asked how she knew she said it was because she could hear it against the spoon when she fed me. he said it with something so distant in his face. like he could remember when i was that small, small enough to only have one tooth, small enough to still need to be fed with a spoon.

stories like this always hit me because they remind me that i am not to my parents who i am to myself. because while my my body is just my flesh and my skin and my fat and my bones to my parents my body is their baby. it's the little arms they would rub baby oil on and the little face they would kiss every chance they could. it's the little fingers that would grab their hair and their cheeks and their clothes and the little feet that would kick when they tried to fit them into shoes. it was a body that didn't know how to have an opinion of a body, a body that needed to be loved, a body that they dressed in pretty dresses and bundled up during winter and held close during the night, to make sure it wouldn't accidentally roll out of bed. this was the body that i had for at least a third of my life. before my brain caught up and turned it into a body it could be mean to.

i think about how my parents must have felt when they first saw me cry over a plate of food. all the times i screamed at them when they tried to get me to eat a proper meal. the times i insisted that they didn't understand, that they didn't want me to be happy, that they wanted to ruin my life by making me eat more than what i wanted. i think about how they must have felt when the hair that first sprouted and was so excitedly pasted into the first haircut page of my baby book started falling out in clumps, residue left in the bathtub, on hairbrushes, on my pillow. how they must have felt when the baby that they used to wake up with tickles and kisses couldn't stay awake more than a few hours everyday, the baby whose first steps they cheered getting lightheaded whenever she walks up the stairs, when the baby whose first tooth hit the spoon for the very first time was telling them that eating a slice of her favourite cake made her want to die.

my body is my body in the same way that my phone is my phone and my bag is my bag. a resource. a utility. something that i can toss around a little without it mattering much.

but my body is also a baby, because it is my parents' baby, and if they can still remember the sound of the spoon against my first tooth twenty years on, then the body that they have watched me hurt so much is the same body they love with all their hearts.

i'm not sad all the time but sometimes i feel like it's my default setting. because i'm happy when i have schedules and routines and something i can work towards but when i'm sleepy or when i'm sick or when i'm with my friends i feel so immensely and truly sad, like it's who i am when you peel all the layers back. sometimes i worry that one day all the sadness is going to swallow me up and i just won't exist anymore

anxiety is such an odd thing because it feels so palpable. i feel like if i could break through my flesh and grab a fistful of whatever's in my chest cavity i'd be able to feel it pulse in my hand. i could rip it out. throw it in the bin and wash my hands with antibacterial and finally be able to sleep without this awful growth inside of me

you know what? ive changed my mind

i dont miss you. i miss feeling like i deserve your love. you never gave me anything spectacular enough for me to be up past midnight with a knot in my chest that started off as your name. it's me. it's me having believed i was a carefully-concocted version of myself back before i was hurt, back when i could give you controlled doses of myself without feeling 'too much'. but then you told me That Thing and now i cant dilute myself as well as i had before, and it's hard to feel like i deserve to be loved when i am not putting in the effort to filter myself out for you

i do not miss you. i miss my own love. and i will love myself unconditionally, tell myself i deserve it, because my value as a human does not change based on how much of me you can see.

i miss youuuuuu

i like you so much and i know i shouldn't which makes it all so much worse

because i want to talk to you and be close to you but is that friendship or masochism

i miss youuuuuu

i miss youuuuuu

for the first time in a year and a half, i feel happy enough to not miss the time when i was 15.

today i gave up trying to salvage a friendship after two years of her not trying herself. i'm finally done. and it hurts a lot. but i deserve better.

and it hurts because i've known her since we were eleven, and she was my best friend, and my life has molded itself around her so firmly over these years that i think the reason i hadn't given up sooner was because i was too afraid to lose such a core part of my identity. the idea of losing her felt a bit like having to cut off an arm or a leg.

but another person is not an arm or a leg but maybe just a bracelet or an anklet or a pair of earrings you might've worn for years. and they can feel like an arm or a leg because you've forgotten how you look without them, and you're not sure if you'll ever find something else to complete you the way they did. but they're not an arm or a leg, which means losing them doesn't mean we're losing a part of ourselves.

and i'm sitting here now and realising it doesn't hurt as much as it had during those two years of trying to salvage things. it doesn't hurt, because i realised that losing her is an opportunity for me to learn more about who i am.

who am i when i'm not her best friend? who do i speak to? how do i speak to them? how do i dress up? how do i do my makeup?

what are my plans for this summer, now that i'm no longer meeting with her every chance i get? what restaurants do i like eating at? will i keep having sushi every time i go out or will i have something cheaper instead? will i keep going to the same part of london we've been going to since we were fourteen or will i venture to other parts? will i visit more art galleries, since that's something we never did together? will i go to the cinema more often, since she never really was in the mood? do i actually prefer staying in the thriller section of book shops, or would i spend more time looking at books about art?

what shows do i watch, now that i'm not taking her recommendations anymore? what music do i listen to? what kind of stuff do i draw? what jokes do i laugh at?

it hurt when i saw it as losing a part of me. but it feels better now that i've realised that i'm getting to know myself again.

when i'm at my worst, i become incredibly convinced that my life has stagnated. that i'm never going to get better. that, from here on out, my life will be nothing but a pattern of either 'sad' or 'trying not to be sad' and will never get much better than that.

but then i remember when i was eleven, i dreamt of being able to take part in all the music that i loved so much, not knowing that a year later i'd learn guitar and start recording myself singing.

and i remember when i was twelve, when i'd dreamt of wanting to be beautiful and confident and have control over how i looked, and a year later i cut my hair short and put lipstick on and had the biggest ego ever but i felt incredible.

i remember when i was thirteen, and how i'd always wanted to make fan art for my favourite anime, but could never get any of my drawings to look right, and a year later i'd started an art account.

i remember when i was fourteen and my best friend at the time made me feel awful about myself. but i loved her so much it hurt and i knew she loved me too, so i thought i just had to accept it. a year later i told her to fuck off and we haven't spoken since.

i remember when i was fifteen and had an eating disorder that i wished would kill me before i killed myself. i remember my teeth aching from all the stomach acid and the way my body wailed at my torture. how pale i was. how tired i was. how my cheeks turned puffy. how the vomiting killed me just as much as the secret did, and how i never thought i'd get better. i didn't know that a year later my teeth wouldn't hurt anymore and i could take a bite out of a cookie without my stomach rejecting it and my face looked normal again.

i remember when i was sixteen, and i was so mean to myself. unforgiving and cold and ashamed and mean. i berated myself for feeling jealousy or envy or sadness or insecurity, and had written down a two-thousand word bullet-pointed list of things i should be thinking and should be feeling, all aggressively in the second person, trying to keep myself in line when really i was hurting myself more and more. i'd never think that a year later i'd speak to myself with so much kindness, phrases like 'i never do anything right' and 'i'm such a horrible person' feel foreign to me. i'd never think that a year later i'd have kept a journal for over two-hundred and twenty days, wherein i've grown to become my own best friend.

so my life hasn't stagnated. and i hope the next time i feel terrible i come back here and see this, and wonder to myself what'll happen next year. how will i grow when i'm eighteen? how will things get better?

i'm learning that memories don't have to be viewed through a glass wall, where i can do little else other than press my face to the surface and watch myself sit in paradise while not even knowing it. i'm learning that memories are there to be relived, to be turned over in my hands like souvenirs, to be inhaled and exhaled because those things will never die as long as they stay alive inside of me.

i miss being fifteen so much it aches. the further i scroll down my google photos the harder it becomes to fight back tears.

i remember being fifteen and leaving the house at 07.45 in march, when it was just about warm enough to test my fate and leave my coat at home. i remember waiting at the bus stop and listening to my favourite songs and chewing on my cold lips (because it was colder than i'd thought it would be) and hoping to god that my bus wouldn't be late because i hated being late for school. i remember being fifteen and sticking my arm out for the bus and tapping my oyster card on the reader and gripping the railing extra hard as i went upstairs because the driver is in as much of a hurry as i am and will usually accelerate down the road before i can get myself onto the upper deck. i remember finding a seat with a bell at the front because no one else ever got off at my stop and i hated reaching behind me to push the button.

i remember fussing with my belongings in the bus. no coat for the first time in six months - where do i keep my phone, again? my oyster card? my debit card? throughout the weeks it switches from the inside pocket of my bag, to the front pocket, to being shoved right inside with my blue maths book and english anthology and it's always hell to fish out when i eventually need them again. but i keep my phone clutched in my hand to see if my best friend or my mum or my brother texted me, to see if someone commented on a drawing i posted last night (but probably no one did - people don't follow me for miraculous ladybug just yet, but i love it so much i don't even care), or to skip a song i'm listening to.

but back then i didn't skip songs that much. not when i was fifteen in march. because i loved every song i listened to and every video i watched and every lamp post i passed by because i was so alive. and i miss it.

but the best thing i've learnt is i don't have to miss it. it's not gone. not really. because when i close my eyes and lay in bed i can still feel the cold on my cheeks and still feel the bus window judder under my temple and i can still hear those songs i don't listen to anymore swimming in my ears. i've lived that life and i've kept it shelved away inside of me, so i can unbottle it like old perfume and dab it on my wrists whenever i want.

and i still ache with envy of myself when i think about being fifteen. but i'd like to think that happiness is much easier for me to get back than i thought it was.