growing up is drinking water lying down and realizing mom was right

Somewhere, somebody's dad died today. And I was driving and listening to Christmas music and watching the yellow leaves roll across the asphalt and thinking about how a lifetime ago I was sitting in the back seat watching the leaves and listening to the same song, simply having a wonderful Christmas time, and I was a different person then, and I was so happy, and I'm happy now but the happiness is layered with so much sadness and joy and grief and pain and hope and fear and there are too many layers to make sense of anything, and did I have any idea back then what I was in for?

That one day I would grow up but I'd never really grow into my feelings? That they'd grow with me and more would come along and I'd be sucked into feeling and seeing and knowing things I didn't yet have the strength for, like the fact that somebody's dad died today while I was listening to Christmas music in the car, and how they stopped making that sprinkle Laffy Taffy I used to love, and how mothers and daughters are so broken and lovely and can't see themselves clearly.

I'm too young to be feeling all of this. I'm too old to be putting makeup on.

Someone told me today, after reading a bit of my writing, that I romanticize things. That I make the little moments so much bigger and more meaningful than they really are. But am I romanticizing? This is how I feel. I feel it all so loudly, deeply, fiercely, and if I could romanticize it I'd romanticize the inexplicable heartbreak out of it, but the truth is I'm telling it how it is, how I feel it, and I feel it in a way that completely consumes me and somehow only takes up a corner of the page, like the picture on the cover of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower.

And I read something the other day that said I cry so often for the same reason I laugh–because I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention. And maybe in another body or mind or life I'd be content with stepping back and curling my hair and reading my book and following the cut-out of my life, of life itself, of this earth we've imagined for ourselves, but I am who I am, this is my body, this is my mind and my life and I feel all of it.

Sometimes I think I'd like to trade this incomprehensiveness, this acatalepsy, for a quiet mind, one that can read slowly and laugh and just be, but sometimes I see a penny on the sidewalk that reminds me of a best friend I had when I was little, and everything is perfect.

Everything is okay.

I just want someone. I want someone. My stomach hurts and I miss throwing up and my hair isn't the right length and who do I tell when I buy a wedding dress at a thrift store or can't bring myself to get out of bed? It's Halloween and the moon is orange and I carved a pumpkin by myself and I think I just want someone.

Feeling so discouraged. When is the friend thing going to get easier? I can't connect. People keep telling me it breaks their heart to see how much I dislike myself. Is it so obvious? The sad thing is this is the most I've loved myself in my entire life. The sad thing is this is the only kind of friend I know how to be. Not the friend I want to be. But the one I am. The sad thing is that I have a notes app entry of everyone I've lost, and I know I lost them because of me. I lost them because I loved them and it scared me so I pushed them away. Because my stomach ached every time they told me they cared for me, because something inside me was reaching for them, and when they had to hang up the phone or go home I was left feeling empty, fragile, broken. Like when they left me for a moment they were leaving me forever. And I don't like to depend on other people, or need other people, or even want other people, so I cut them out because I can't bear the void they open up inside me. The way loving them–and being loved by them–makes it so clear just how large and gaping the hole is inside of me, and I don't want to face that. I don't want to fill that hole with people I love, people who can leave me and change and forget me and die and die and die. I don't want to learn to feel full again if it won't last. I want to stay with this void, the one I'm used to, this loneliness that has grown so familiar it almost feels like another person. I bought a wedding dress the other day. For just sixty dollars at the DI. Today at treatment a girl's husband came for her graduation and announced to a room full of people, through tears, how deeply he loves her. I went out to lunch with some friends, people I love, want to let myself love, and I felt like I was watching them from another room, hearing their voices through the walls, muffled and melancholy and far away. Dad and I went to Coldstone and a boy and a boy were sitting in the parking lot, talking about some conspiracy theory while mosquitoes sucked at their arms and ankles. And I'm realizing that behind all of this, behind the five-year plan in a Google Doc on my phone, behind the scholarship applications and study abroads and language-learning apps and songwriting and storytelling, I think I've wanted to be loved for a long time.

And somewhere along the way, love got mixed up with bruises under my sleeves and glass in my hair and blood in the back of the car, and it doesn't feel safe anymore. It doesn't feel safe anymore. Sometimes I'm a hundred years old, and sometimes I'm six and crying in the bathtub because no one came to get me.

Today while I was walking I smelled something that reminded me of my future and I’m realizing my future is so much more beautiful and lonely than I ever expected it to be, and I keep filling my life with lovely things but none of them are breathing and I wonder what it must be like to be able to love and be loved. I’m afraid that everything I’ve ever dreamed of, that life I designed for myself in a studio apartment in New York, taking walks every day and writing poetry on park benches, or that other life where I job-hop and stay in a different basement or Airbnb in a different city or state or country every month–I’m afraid it’s all a facade, a cover, an escape from the life I know I can’t live, a life where I love people and let them love me. A life I can’t even imagine. What if I never amount to anything? Or worse–what if I amount to something, something incredible, and it’s hollow and lonely because I can’t let myself be loved? What if I never learn how?

You know that feeling you get in an elevator, right when it starts to go up, where you seem to weigh a thousand pounds? And when you were really little you thought you might sink to the ground and never be able to get back up? That’s what this feels like.

I think that one of the most beautiful things you can do is realize that you don't owe anything to anyone and when they ask you why you are who you are or why you're still living with your parents or why you hate your parents or why you don't like country music or why you can't watch horror movies or why you're slow to open up or why you want to be a teacher or why you haven't graduated yet, you don't have tell them anything, and you don't have to be anything, and the person who deserves the most of your love and consideration is you.

I’ve lost so many people in my life but I think the person I miss most is myself. And I keep all the different versions of her locked up in my mind like china dolls and sometimes I take them out to comb their hair and love them but the me in the mirror is yelling at me to love the one that’s alive, the girl who bathes in guilt and nostalgia and regret every night, the one who is perhaps more beautiful than all of the rest but I can’t bear the sight of. Sometimes I think when I turn my head I can almost see my reflection banging on the glass, begging me to look at her, love her, believe in her, but reflections don’t have voices and I only seem to know how to love memories, not people.

Old Friends

I saw some old friends today, and the parents of a girl I haven't seen in years, a girl who used to be my best friend.

I don't know when we all grew apart, or why. If it happened naturally or if I had my eyes closed for too long. I don't know if I hurt them, or if I just forgot to love them loudly, forgot to tell them I needed them until it was too late, and they didn't need me anymore.

I don't know if they still think of me, occasionally, or if they're reminded of me the way I am of them. I don't know if they miss the carefree loveliness of it all, the way we could talk to each other about anything, complain and laugh and trauma dump, and no one minded, and it didn't have to be romantic because we loved each other enough to just be friends. I don't know if they have as many regrets as I do, if they stay awake wondering why we're not friends anymore.

I don't know if I have anyone to blame except myself.

I don't know if they get melancholic like I do, if they ever drive past their old middle school or come across an old screenshot that sends them spiraling, and I don't know if I'm supposed to feel like this or if I just have a bad habit of carrying feelings way past their expiration date.

I've never been good at throwing things away. I still have a box under my bed with every letter I've ever received, and the friendship charm I shared with a girl in fourth grade, and guilt that flutters in my stomach like bats whenever I think of the people I've lost.

I think I must have skipped the unloving part of growing up, because it seems that everyone is content with their lives and I am still grieving the people I loved and still love and will probably never see again.

I don't know if I ever told them.

Changing

Change is hard. Not just change, but changing.

Changing the way you think because you've finally realized, after nineteen years of living, that you deserve to love yourself the way you love your friends.

Changing your habits, like biting the inside of your cheek to hide the side of your face you think is flawed, or wearing oversized shirts because your stomach doesn't curve in the way it used to back when you starved yourself. Changing your sleep schedule so that you can wake up with the sun and stay awake at school, even though you'd rather ruminate all night and sleep the pain away all day. Changing your style because the clothes you've been wearing all your life don't feel like you. Changing the glasses you wear even though that means you'll get a few extra stares.

Changing the way you interact with people, the way you analyze their every movement to determine if they're bothered by you, if they want to leave, if they're not interested, if they don't like you, if if if. Changing the way you jump to conclusions, read minds, apply rules and expectations to yourself that don't apply to anyone else, filter out all the things you've accomplished and disqualify the good things you've done.

Changing the way you talk about yourself, and to yourself. Changing what you've believed about yourself for so long. What you thought you deserved. Changing the way you take compliments–learning to accept them, believe them, even though your stomach aches, burns, when you hear kind words. Almost like you're not used to them.

Almost like you're afraid of them. Afraid that they're not true, or maybe you're afraid that they are–afraid that your friends really do love you the way they say they do and you're going to disappoint them, inevitably, the way you've disappointed yourself. The way you disappoint yourself every day by setting expectations no one can reach, expectations you think you have to reach to atone for all the ways you've failed, all the people you've hurt, all the signs you missed.

Changing is hard. Saying thank you to a compliment instead of shaking your head is hard, writing a letter to yourself saying that you're proud of yourself is hard, letting yourself waste time and relax is hard, feeling your emotions and letting them exist, exist, exist, without judgment, is hard. You think you're supposed to feel a certain way, so you run away from the sadness that's been chasing you, but it's okay.

You can feel sad. You can feel lonely and isolated and angry and afraid and empty all at the same time, and you don't have to justify any of it. You're allowed to just be. And you're allowed to love yourself in that sadness, too.

You don't have to be happy for everyone. You don't have to be perfect, a perfectly good influence, a perfectly healthy friend, the perfectly polite and quiet and invisible wallpaper you've made of yourself because you don't think you belong anywhere.

You don't have to be anything to deserve love. I'm sorry it took you so long to realize that.

Changing is hard.

I know you still check half of your face in the mirror, ruminate on year-old conversations, apologize for expressing your opinions, bury your emotions in that corner of your mind that's getting full. I know. But you're trying.

And I'm proud of you.

"And today I feel like I must be broken, because I keep swallowing second-hand emotions and choking them back out like blood, feeling everything twice over, and at the end of the day, I feel nothing at all."

gotta love being an empath

Depression

The ugly truth about depression is that it doesn't just make you sad. It doesn't just make you quiet and lonely and withdrawn.

It makes you horrid.

It makes you cruel to the people you love. It makes you burn bridges, cut off relationships, isolate yourself until there's no one you feel comfortable opening up to. No one you can truly call your friends. It makes you lazy and lousy, too exhausted to get anything done, to even shower, and too gloomy to reach out to the people who need it.

It makes you bitter and unkind and selfish, but not selfish enough to love yourself, just selfish enough to think about how much you hate yourself, and how everyone is more wonderful than you and too far away to connect with.

It makes you wish you could sleep for days, weeks, years, it makes you hate your job, it makes you a complainer, a failure, it makes you something you're not. It makes you avoid assignments and lie to be alone and skip all the social gatherings you were looking forward to because you don't think you deserve them.

Depression doesn't just make you sad.

It ruins you.

"I keep saving and screenshotting and putting together words that aren’t mine, because maybe if someone else said them they will make sense, I will make sense, and someone will find me in the chaos of my mind and finally, finally, understand me."

How many people do you feel truly understand you?

Things I'll Never Be

And I'll never be the one who wakes up with that beautiful kind of messy hair. Or the one who looks perfect in the picture she didn't know you were taking of her. I'll never be the one who can make sweatpants look good or pull her hair back in three seconds with the scrunchie on her wrist. And I'll never be the one who makes people laugh without trying or looks cute when she's angry or focused or sad. I'll never be the one who doodles perfect drawings in her notebook or seems wonderfully carefree or gets straight A's even though she was staring at you the whole semester. I'll never be the one who walks elegantly and whose hair falls perfectly in front of her eyes as she looks down at the book in her hand.

I'll never be the girl I've always wanted to be or the girl you wanted from me.

I'll be the one who looks a little frightening when she studies, a pencil between her teeth and her forehead crinkled in concentration. I'll be the one whose face gets red when she works out in the sun for too long, whose nose turns pink when it's cold out and she tips her head back to catch snowflakes on her tongue. I'll be the one who rudely avoids eye contact with you so that she can finish writing the scene or poem in her head. I'll be the one with poor posture who looks a little younger than her age and whose hair never seems to sit right on her head. I'll be the one whose glasses make her eyes invisible in pictures and bright light. I'll be the one who walks a little too stiffly and can't help but bite her nails in social situations.

I'll be the girl I've tried so hard to erase and the girl you replaced.

I'll be me.

I hate this idea we (I) have about what beautiful looks like. Not just when it comes to looks, but also when it comes to personality and hobbies and lifestyles. I hate that I've created this ideal version of myself that I'll never become, this version that is mysterious and creative and carefree, this girl that everyone loves and notices and wants to know. But the truth is, I'm not that way.

For all intents and purposes, I'm invisible.

I could go on a two-week humanitarian trip (yes, I'm using a real example) and not show up in any of the pictures--not because I'm camera shy, but because I'm just not the person anyone would think to take a picture of. I'm not photogenic and I'm not outgoing and I don't love attention and it doesn't cross my mind to ask for a picture when I'm having a beautiful moment. It doesn't cross my mind to go tell the group about the beautiful rainbow I just saw, or the child that I met, or the lesson that I learned. I tend to keep those things to myself, tucked away in my mind and my journal, and for that reason, I will always be invisible.

A ghost.

That used to really hurt me. I used to wish people saw me, that I was the kind of person people noticed and wanted to know, that I was beautiful in the way I've always imagined beautiful to be. But I think I'm becoming okay with the ghost kind of beautiful, the beautiful that shows itself in little traces--a warm feeling from the kind thing I said to you years ago (though you don't remember it was me), a soft smile when you see the heart I carved into the bathroom door, a laugh at the joke I made too quietly and someone else took the credit for, the kind of beautiful that grows in sidewalk cracks and plants seeds that blossom long after I'm gone. I think I'm okay with that kind of beautiful.

I think I'm okay with being a ghost.

I Want This Life

Most days I feel strange and empty, like I’m leaving my potential untapped, a part of my purpose unfulfilled. But when I’m at school, teaching–when I’m with children every day, playing with them, laughing with them, loving them, learning from them–I feel at peace. Like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

It’s such a rare feeling. Rare in the way that makes you forget what you’re wearing, lose track of time, overlook your hunger or thirst and overcome your weakness to give a child one more piggy back ride, write one more line of a story, read one more page of a book. The feeling that makes you forget that life is hard and painful and ugly, and makes you believe that maybe it’s more beautiful than anything else.

I want that feeling. I want it every day. I want to live not for myself, but for the little children whose smiles touch my soul, the moms who breathe sighs of relief to be given a break, for my brother when I watch him play Minecraft and tell him he’s creative, for my sister when we play Go Fish together in the park, for my mom when I clean the kitchen for her and then we go out for ice cream, for the people I live to see happy, the people I would spend a lifetime loving just to hear them laugh one more time.

I want to keep living in this way that gives me purpose, on this plane of existence that is far from marketing and high school and Instagram. I want to live so that at the end of the day my body is tired, but my mind is alive. My heart is alive. I want to go to bed each night with more love in my heart than the night before, more faces in the book of people I love, more reasons to stay, more light in my eyes, more words burning behind my lips and dripping from my fingertips, waiting to be written. I want to live so that I overflow with love. I want to live so that loving is like breathing, and hate cannot fit in my chest, so that anger cannot burn in my mind that is already filled with lovely memories.

I want to live fully, bravely, loudly.

I want to change the world. But mostly, I want to know it.

I want to inhale its colors and exhale a few more, taste its music and teach it my own song, hear its quaking beauty and never forget the love that shimmers in every sunspeck, every grass blade, every whisper.

I want this Earth, this life, with all of its sorrows and knifepoints and loveliness. I want this life.

I want this life.