Ten years ago today, I walked into my grandfather’s bedroom to hand him the phone, and found him laying dead on the floor. I always remember because it was May 5th at 5:55pm. I hate the number 5. There is something that never leaves you about finding someone dead. There is something that never leaves you about having to tell someone “Your husband is lying dead in the bedroom.” After he died, my Grandmother turned into a very mean woman. She emotionally abused me until the day I moved out the month after my high school graduation. I don’t blame her. I am not angry anymore. She lost her other half, and she had no way to express what was missing in her life. She had nothing to fill that void except hate.
And I, I have felt the same void. I have also been abandoned, in this cold, cruel world. My grandmother lived for seven years after his death, but I think she finally just gave up and willed herself to die. I’ve been scared that I would end up doing the same. Last year was the hardest year of my life, and I am surprised I made it to 2013. I’ve tried to make it better. But even now, with all the pretty things I have, and the wonderful world I have built for myself, there is still something that i lack. I have worked so hard, but it still comes back to that emptiness. That hole. That hatred. Something is missing, and I want to fix it, and I don’t know how.
I never believed that antidepressants/antianxiety medication could actually work, but three months in to this SNRI, i feel like a different person. Three months ago I was plotting how I could kill myself most effectively, and now I am plotting how I can talk to people most effectively. Little things that have always been a problem for me, as simple as looking someone in the eyes while I speak to them, now have become so much easier. I’ve even been talking to strangers lately & sticking around to tell funny stories with coworkers, things I never thought I could do. So while I am not exactly happier, I am more adapted to living. I don’t think of driving off a cliff on my way home anymore, I think about how excited I am to go to work the next day. This is due in part to switching careers, but still. I don’t necessarily feel better about life, but I feel better about where I am right now. I don’t hate myself as much. I feel like I am a worth while person & that I have something to offer people.
There are still nights when I’m so depressed that all I can handle is crying myself to sleep, but now I have a little more to be thankful for. I have an awesome best friend who I love more than anyone on the planet, I have an awesome job that I love going to every day, I have awesome kitties who are sweet as pie, and I have goals and a future to look forward to. Whether I’ll ever find someone to share it with, who knows? Whether someone will ever love me, who knows? Whether I will figure out the secret to making friends in real life, who knows? But for right now, I am doing 100x better than I was at the beginning of this year.
So when people ask me if medication can really work, I can now say with great relief, yes, it can. it really really can.
i think that people sometimes forget that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. it’s not caused by a person being lazy, it’s not caused by a person not trying, it’s not caused by a person choosing to be sad rather than happy. sure, a person may not do everything possible to try to get themselves out of depression, a person may want to stay inside and sleep all day, not socialize with other people, not eat… but those are side effects of the actual problem, they are not THE actual problem. the real problem is a chemical imbalance. and i know i can’t be the only one who actually tries to be normal, and goes places, and tries to socialize with people (albeit awkwardly), and gets out of bed every single morning to try to maintain some semblance of normalcy. but it doesn’t make me happy. because there is a chemical imbalance. a legitimate, scientifically accurate analysis. next you will say—well then you should get on antidepressants. yes, obviously, but not everyone is as lucky to have health insurance, and even if they do have health insurance, it can take months or years to find the right medication that works with your particular brain malfunction.
i’m just saying.
It’s nights like these when it gets really hard to breathe and really hard to see beyond the blur of a dim future that I see in front of me. Honestly, I think all the time how nice it would be if I was just not here anymore. 23 years have passed, and I have felt the same. And now as I have nobody in my life, nothing to really live for, it seems so redundant to wake up every morning and do the same things and expect that one day I will wake up and not feel this sharp, awful pain in my chest, and this giant lump in my throat. But there is no way out, and there is no foreseeable way to end the pain. “That’s the thing about pain…it demands to be felt.”
When I was 15, I was pretty much a pathetic wreck (pretty much the same as I am now). I had gone through a bad break up, I had developed an eating disorder—things were generally just fucked up in my life. Like a normal teenager, I would blog about my fucked up life. Like a normal teenager, I made ~friends~ with people who had similar interests/problems as me in the blog world, and it made me feel not-so-alone.
For instance, I met one guy named Liam, who I had a lot in common with & really enjoyed talking to. From Liam I met Jonas, Des, Aiden, Airin, Dax, Jade, Julien, Carl, Tomo, Bia, Jiro, Jamison. Basically what I thought, was his circle of friends, people he knew and lived near him and people he dated. I have talked to at least one of these people almost every day for the past seven years. All these people had blogs, facebooks with pictures & videos of them, screenames on messenger, email addresses. All these people had distinctly unique handwriting in the letters and postcards they sent me. The one thing that these people would not do, however, is pick up the phone and call me, with the exception of one person named Des. Des, who I have considered to be my best friend for the past seven years. Who I have spent every weekend talking to for hours and hours. Who I have revealed the extremely intimate details of my life to. All these people, all these people I considered like they were my best friends in the whole world, and the only thing that got me through the day was knowing I could come home and talk to them.
They don’t really exist.
Seven years later, I find out that all of it was a complete and total lie. One sociopathic girl’s idea of fun. To mess with someone who is vulnerable, for seven years. To create these fake people for someone like me to love and care and worry about. To create a fake person i was legitimately in love with, whom i wrote my entire last album about. I destroyed relationships, because the idea of being with this person was better than the reality of what I had right in front of me. I have been in love with a person that doesn’t exist for seven years, I have been best friends with someone for seven years who told me that they were a gay asian man named Des, when in all actuality they were some extremely warped girl. My life for the past seven years has been a fucked up game to some sick, sad girl who knew how to take advantage of someone who didn’t have anyone else to turn to.
If I had been thinking like a logical human being, it should have clicked in my brain—why don’t they have other friends on facebook besides each other?? Why is only one of these people willing to pick up the phone and call me and talk to me like any other real life friend? Why do they refuse to skype? Why do they refuse to let me come visit them? SOMETHING should have clicked. But no one wants to think that the people they care most about in the world don’t exist. No one wants to think that there is a person actually so fucked up in this world that they would create ten different facebooks, blogs, emails, HANDWRITING styles, all to fuck with one person. Who would do that? That is criminally insane.
But it happened.
The past seven years of my life have been a complete and total lie. And I am left with nothing. Which is probably what she wanted. Which was probably the whole point in the first place.
How sick. How fucking sick.
i feel like the only reason i am still here, the only reason i am still moving forward in time, is because i am waiting for something to get better. waiting for that point in space where two lines converge and it all makes sense. but how long do i have to wait? how long should i keep waiting for happiness? is it really worth it? 22 years later, and i am just as sad and alone as i was as a little girl crying alone in my bedroom closet. why will it never go away? why can’t someone take this away from me? honestly i just don’t know if it’s worth it.
laying in bed all day and crying like all the cool kids do on a Saturday.
the worst feeling in the world is waking up alone, to a quiet house, going about your day trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, when inside you are screaming—someone please, someone help me, please get me out of this fucked up, miserable hell hole that has become my life. when you’re with someone in a committed relationship for a very long time & then suddenly lose them, you have to learn how to become an entirely different person. because that person you were for the past 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years… that person was a part of someone else. when you are in a long term relationship with someone, and you live with them, and you spend every day with them… it is really earth shattering when you suddenly are thrown out into the world alone, with no life support. no one there to help you. no one to tell you things will be okay. no one to look forward to at the end of a long day. no point in time or amount of waiting that will lead to a happy ending.
simple things like going to the store, seem almost unbearable to do alone. and i know everyone in this town will probably think i am crazy, wandering around the isles of a grocery store with tears in my eyes, wondering what i am even doing there as i have lost all desire and will to eat or sustain my life. it literally physically pains me just to breathe. every breath i take sends a sharp pain through my chest. everything reminds me of the life that once was, the life that could have been. everything reminds me of the fact that i am completely and utterly alone in this world. the fact that i could kill myself right this minute, and no one would know for days, weeks even. the fact that i could kill myself and no one would care with the exception of my mother and brother, who are 1400 miles away and living just fine without me there. i’m having such a hard time grasping the concept of life right now.
as early as i can remember, all i have felt inside is pain. all i have felt was alone, and like there is something missing in me that makes it impossible for me to connect with other people, impossible to appear normal so that people will want to be around me. i’m not normal, i am the farthest thing from it. but with him, i could pretend. we pretended to be this happy family for so long, even though we made each other miserable. somehow it was still okay, because he was my anchor. even though i literally hated him, despised all the things he did without taking a second to think how it would effect me, even still i loved him and he was my family, he was my everything, he was all i had. it scares me to death now to realize that i will never have that again. where am i going to find someone else who wants to be in a committed relationship with someone with as much depression and anxiety as me? i often meet people, and they always put on this front like it’s okay, and they understand, and they still want to be with me anyways… but ultimately i find that those people, most people, are fakes. no one ACTUALLY wants to be there for you when you feel like shit, no one ACTUALLY just wants to hold you and listen to you cry until it gets a little easier, no one ACTUALLY will deal with the fact that you worry about everything, constantly. because that is a burden to them, and they don’t HAVE to deal with it. it’s easier to walk away and say ‘fuck it, i don’t need this in my life.’
but do you know how badly i wish that i could just walk away? do you know that i would give anything to not feel this way anymore? i would give everything i own and be homeless the rest of my life, if it meant i could be happy. things don’t mean anything. having a job doesn’t mean anything. having a place to live doesn’t mean anything, when you don’t want to live.
but ultimately, it does not matter. it doesn’t matter to anyone, and no one will ever comprehend what it is like inside my head. and i really wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
