These are the days that I hate. I wake up suddenly with a sharp intake of breath that cuts to unused portions of my lungs. I reach for the time and then flop down on my pillow, almost regretful of the fact that I really did survive another night. I'm not sure what I expect. It's not like I've ever actively tried to off myself. Waking up should be expected. But on days like today it strikes me as an unpleasant surprise rather than normal progression of events.
It is a bad week already. Tuesday began to pull me into a depressive state, and Wednesday is doing nothing to lift my spirits. I crave a combination of company and isolation. Company would be nice to take my mind off the "bad thoughts". I want to draw just pin pricks of blood from my arm. I want to sit in the rain for three hours and fall asleep, wet and drowned by sickness and cold precipitation. I want to light my bed sheets on fire and watch the flames lick up all my possessions until there is nothing. For this, isolation would be great. Nada, y pues nada. Relating my insanity to my favorite Hemingway story brings a twisted smile to my face that my friends interpret as tired and sad. Not quite, mes amis. I am not tired. I am not sad. I am nothing. For this reason, I feel a compelling need to destroy things: my possessions, my health, my body, my relationships. I want to prove I'm real.
"Prove that you exist". This is how I'd respond to that tired trope of an essay question. I'd spill my blood on a page. Burn the edges of the paper, dip it into a cup of cold coffee. This ability to destroy would be proof enough of my existence. I suppose one could argue that our ability to create proves this as well. But what could I even create? I create sadness. I create anxiety, stress, hatred, irritation. I haven't created anything good in so long. I believe that I have lost the ability, or buried it very deep inside myself. Even my precious words are scattered and disorganized. My metaphors are tired. I cannot make a reader feel my emotions anymore. I can barely feel them myself.
I'm trying to understand my emotions again. I'm trying to make them real, to prove that I can still feel. Going on and off my medication is only confusing me further, rather than helping me to figure my emotions out. I am not sure what is helping or hurting more - the medication or the lack of it. I need someone to take care of me. But all the people who knew what to do are gone now. Even the ones that theoretically remain are so far away that they seem like characters I've made up to cope with being alone.
You can take care of yourself. Little Ms. Kiernan's words were pounded into my skull months ago but it's hard to believe she is still right. I can take care of myself over the summer, when I have no commitments, no people to love or disappoint. What about now? Can I still make myself happy with external factors pushing me to implode?
Although I have nearly forgotten my Groton ghosts, I can't help but conjure them up when I'm feeling like this. A mixture of comfort and guilt. It sits well with numbness.
"I don't think you will ever be happy." A smile. I've become so good at making them genuine. Eyes turned up at the corners. Perhaps throwing in a girlish giggle and clearing my mind of emotion, dedicating every muscle in perpetuating my façade. You may be right. You may be right. I haven't loved in years. I haven't been content. I don't know what I want. Put a voice to my biggest fears. Make them real and cruel by saying them out loud. Give those fears a voice I trust.
I am too angry to really react at all. Rage is contained so well inside of me. Almost an emotion, but so heavily suppressed that I cannot even conceive of how to express it. I imagine taking a fist to your face: raw and shocking. Or I picture holding your hand in mine and making a gentle and precise incision across your palm just to see dark red blood wash over both of our hands, proving that you too are human. I want to prove that men bleed. Men feel. They are just like us, not stronger or weaker: the same. But just writing about my violent thoughts is not enough to satisfy me and I have a twisted desire to cause pain that takes all of my strength to suppress, especially on the "bad days". My super ego rules my aggressive id unfortunately, leaving me to womanly things like smiling and pretending all is well.
This is it. Proof that I have gone mad. I want to see blood and fire. I want to destroy. I refuse to take my little-yellow-helpers and I've started skipping classes when I damn well please to maintain control over something.
What I normally do next is stop eating. I let my stomach feel empty to distract from bad thoughts. Say nothing. Feel nothing. I must melt into contemplative silence. Maybe the only way to get out of this episode is to let it happen to me, not fighting feelings of fear or melancholy. The only thing I have control of, is what I destroy or don't destroy. I can let my super ego reign for right now, and keep myself grounded in smiles and laughs rather than free myself to the temptations of burning and bleeding. For the good of humanity I will stop trying to create things in my life. For my own good, I will try not to destroy others anymore than I can help it.
Maybe I won't ever be genuinely happy, but if I hope that if I get through this little bit of melancholy, I can work on faking happiness long enough to make it real. If I believed in a God, this is where I would pray, but fairy tales and precious myths stopped satisfying me long ago, leaving me alone without the sweet opiate of religion to fool me into the ignorant joy of the masses.
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