LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2016-08-13 15:03:34 (UTC)

Half-Formed People


"La Loose" by Waxahatchee

I don't want to discuss what it means and
you're the only one i want watching me
my thoughtful consort
when the stars are holding court
we will be in another world
where my clarity's restored
and this charming picture of
hysteria in love
if i could fade or wrinkle up
i don't hold faith in much
i know that i feel more than you do
i selfishly want you here to stick to
and i'll try to preserve the routine
and i don't want to discuss what it means
and you're the only one i want watching me

August 13, 2016 Saturday 3:04 PM


I have still been going to bed really late but I'm workin' on it.

On Monday, I'm going to Polly's house to dog-sit for a week while she's in Chile. Her doggy is cute and her house is nice so it should be fun (and productive because hoMEWORK). Except her dog can only go six/seven hours without having to pee – understandable – so I will never get more sleep than that.

Still, though. Polly's got three pianos and an oboe and a thousand movies so I will be content to wile the hours away doing all that (minus the oboe lol) annnnd homework.

Homework isn't so bad anyways. I actually kinda enjoy it, especially BrainFacts.

I just feel bad having to turn people down all the time. Lily and Laney wanted to go camping and that sounds so nice :((( last year it was nice :(( but I can't go unless, by magic, I finish 99% of my assignments before the 27th, the last weekend before school.

I am terrified, I am terrified out of my mind, because I know my body still responds to the world in the same ways a small animal does, shivering and going numb and curling itself up when a sound is too loud, when too many eyes are on it.

I am really, really terrified.

I will be fine, but maybe not greaT???? great is not a guarantee. I hope everything will be okay. Let me stroke my anxiety back into its imaginary hole, where I can pretend it's not real – or I can just doubt its existence altogether until it comes out at the most inconvenient times, shit.

---------------------

(HOLD ON: In the following section, I refer to another diary writer as "this kid" but he might be my age. I know he's in high school at least. I think he's sixteen. So yeah. I use "kid" the way I use "guy." AKA to refer to people of many ages and whatever gender.)

As a note: I don't think I have GAD anymore. I recently came across the writing of someone who is very very anxious and depressed, constantly thinking himself sick and on the verge of death, and this is what has clued me in sort of (clued me in to my state of health, that is – I'm healthy).

I've thought about reaching out but I don't know how I would do that, or if he would even want it. I'm trying to remember what I would've wanted. I wouldn't have wanted advice, which is still true – it's leftover from those days – and I wouldn't have wanted people constantly telling me that I'm there if they need me, because I'd never contact them anyways, I was always hiding 'cause I worried they never meant it when they said they cared.

Basically, nothing was of comfort to me. I just wanted to be rescued, hospitalized, kept in a little box away from the rest of the world, which is exactly what happened in the end and it did me good, but it was also terrible and I don't want to think about that.

I healed and I've grown to the point where I now really, really, realllllyy hate the scars on my arm and legs. Which is different from last year and the year before, when I took them as reminders, evidence that I wasn't just imagining it all.

But now, looking at them makes me think maybe I WAS imagining it all, and it was driving me crazy and that's why I did such stupid thing – I hate thinking that I could've done something like that over nothing. Because it was nothing, there was NOTHING, I don't know what was going on in my head, I don't get it anymore– or maybe I'm not trying to understand, because why would I want to? What if it got me back into it?

Oh my god! The point is, I haven't been in the thick of it – depression, anxiety – in a long time and I don't know how to approach these people anymore. I don't know if I ever did, actually. I never really knew what I wanted. Everything was just dark and terrible and I'd take anything, twist it into a negative so I felt like I had a reason to feel the way I did. Got some validation and perpetuated the feelings at the same time (and I remember constantly thinking I was sick, in the head and in the body, and sometimes I still think I'm sick when I'm feeling stressed, but mostly not).

I see this kid doing the same thing. Not that I know anything concrete about his life. All I know is the stuff he has written. Still, I know there is escape for him. I know he can be okay.

But I also know that it might be impossible for me to convey that message to him??? He might not be open to it. Maybe he'll be okay anyways. I wish I could tell people the stuff I've learned without sounding patronizing or whatever. I just wanna help, I don't want anyone to have to go through the stuff I went through.

It's bigger than that, though. If a person were to go through what I did – the hospital – then at least I would be reassured, hopeful for them.

But if they go their own way, going down and down and down and down – my way was at least better than that. I'm fine now. It's not guaranteed, but I had more help, I was more likely to succeed with all those doctors. People who have to beat it back by themselves can go either way, no safety net to catch them...

I wish it was like a switch, depression, but it's not. I wish everyone had my opportunities, but they don't. I was lucky enough to be born into this environment where I got a lot of help from everyone around me.

I'm not sure this kid has the same thing. I don't think he has a safety net, and I have been thinking about this for days. It's not fair. I want to help, but how can I?

I am bad at People. My friends are all pretty independent people and they still get mad when I disappear.

My problem is I focus too much sometimes. On my schoolwork, on my writing, on whatever. All solitary activities.

Say I offered my ears (to the depressed kid). Say he accepted my offer. Say he called me (it's just an example) crying in two months.

What if I didn't answer? There's a good chance I wouldn't. I don't like phone calls and if I were getting a call from that kid, I would be able to guess on the subject matter...

(Oh, good, it's raining!!!! Wow it's raining hard. I'm looking out my window. The sky is white, everything else varying shades of green.)

I would make a choice:

1. this kid who requires so much maintenance (and I know that it's not his fault. Mental illness does that. I think my past with depression has made me especially impatient with the way it alters people's personalities, though, with the way it makes them so terrified, so angry, pointing fingers at anything and everything, even themselves – I succkckckck)

OR

2. school, a possibly bright future, greater knowledge in certain subjects than is typical of people my age.


So this stops me from reaching out to the kid. A lot of things do, but this especially, the fact that I could offer a hand that isn't actually there. And if I were to do that, it could mess everything up even more, scramble up his brains. Ruin his trust.

This is making me think about Brennan and how he told me he was depressed.

God that makes me sad. Sometimes I think about calling him up, making plans, and then I remember that it won't ever happen because I've already maxed out the available slots in my life. They're filled, over-filled, with people and plans.

He's not one of those people and it would be an asshole move on my part to make him think that he is.

I already did that once. In my defense, I wasn't aware that I had no more room in my life, but yeah. I did it, and then I cut him off and I wasn't sure why so I let it drag on like we could still be friends.

Yep. I did that to Brennan, who is just a cool guy, god damn it... I do that to other people to. It's not on purpose.

I don't wanna do that to this depressed kid either. I desperately wanna help him. Fix him. But I'm impatient and I'm busy in a way I'm not willing to sacrifice

(and I don't regret my unwillingness to sacrifice this own part of my life. Maybe its selfish, but it seems stupid to throw all that away from a series of sad strangers – what I mean is it wouldn't just be him I'd be trying to 'save' or whatever... But then again, maybe I wouldn't even try saving him if I had the time.

Sometimes I don't think it's the schoolwork that keeps me from my friends. Sometimes I think that space was already there, and I was tired of seeing them across the ways from me, staring expectantly as I made up excuses as to why I couldn't go out with them. So I built a more tangible wall – it was there anyways, but at least this one is opaque, you know??).

All I can do is read about this kid quietly, feeling frustrated and upset and just. Waiting for the day, when someone will approach him, stay by him until he can get up again (and this kind of person can't be trying to comfort him all the time, that never works... that's all I can say though. I don't know this kid well enough to know what he really needs).

He keeps thinking he is dying. That, to me, looks like GAD but I'm not a professional.

I don't think I'm generally anxious anymore. I think I get anxious about very specific things – social stuff and the future. That's about it. It hurts still, but I'm mostly calm and happy... and also stressed, haha.

Man. I really, really, really hope he can be okay.

---------


NEWS:

My new piano is getting tuned!!!

Laney was accepted to Johnson & Wales. She might be leaving for college in three weeks. Holy shit.

Oh. I was kind of an asshole to Adrian. Not on purpose. I didn't know how to act around him for a bit, and he could tell. Liv told me I was just thinking too much, so tried thinking more objectively about it last night. This is what I got:

He likes me. I don't want him to like me, but I can't do anything about that. I want to be his friend. I don't want to hurt him.
I suspect that too much of his emotional well-being relies on how I act around him, but I have no proof that this is true and what if I'm just being... what's the word for that... ego-centric??? Self-centered?

Point is, who is to say I really matter THAT much to him.

So I apologized to him and he said, "I'll forgive you this time," and I can't tell if he's joking because that is the type of thing he would say as a joke but?? Maybe not.

Anyway, whatever. Plus I have put a rule or two into place for myself: I won't talk to him past midnight. Something about this seems to intimate. And I won't cuddle with him anymore. Also too intimate.

Okayay.

Things are good. I love Liv a lot.

And I got my hair cut. It's very cute, up to my shoulders. C ya.

PS:

!! Did I tell you!! Mr. Rayes handed me the end of my story yesterday, the last day of class. He said it was great and that he really liked the ending

:DDDDD :DDDDD

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ASHHHHH AHHHHH

this will be the rest of my life.




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