I'm not a writer. Don't call me that, I hate it. I tiptoe around feelings and emotions and brush them under the rug in exchange for facts and logic. Give me a comforting fairy tale, talk of heaven and I'm likely to run to cold-hard facts, the only thing I trust. I've been fucked over by emotions too many times to count and now I'm getting older. But you're only eighteen, I hear it over and over again. But if I'm only eighteen, why does each morning feel harder. Why do I feel so burdened if it's only eighteen why do I feel like the important days of my life are almost over. I think life is monotonous now? What about the future? Will I be tied down to some wealthy boy I don't love, with a few hated children running around reminding me of a youth I've lost or a boy I should have loved better? Eighteen is too young to think about this. Eighteen is too young to think about marriage. Eighteen is too young to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
I'm afraid of commitment. I say it myself; other people say it too (about me and about themselves). What a load of crap though. It's so easy for me to maintain that façade in front of people who don't understand what commitment means and it's not just deciding that some man or woman is your whole world. Commitment is sacrifice, and there should be no sacrifice in choosing one person over all the others, it should be intuitive and organic. I've committed my entire life to my future career. I want to run away. I want to travel the world. I want to drop out of New England and learn that the United States is not the epicenter of the universe. Being a doctor is something I could love. Perhaps I can give life to someone who needs another chance. Maybe I'll save someone and they'll fall in love, and have a happily ever after. Or maybe I'll just be a source of inspiration for someone younger than me, who knows me, and knows the good things I have accomplished, ignorant of the nights of violent depression and isolation.
Once I heard someone say that your career won't get up one morning and say it doesn't love you anymore. How depressing. The girl who consumed Disney movies and literature from the time she could open her eyes for more than a mother's teat does not want to believe that. Love is real. Love is very real. And I try and I try to feel it properly and to feel like I'm not the only one who loves blindly and madly. My friends claim that they love too, but it's hard to trust their words. I can't believe them. Loving feels so isolating; it's easier for me to believe they are ignorant of that isolation. I am dumb when it comes to love. It terrifies me, and drives me to self-destruct because I feel like I'm in a straitjacket, unable to express a damned thing except fear. Fear takes over all the time and maybe it's a symptom of something else, but symptom or not, I am constantly imprisoned by it.
I want a job that I love because I don't think anyone will ever be able to love me properly. It's my biggest fear. The feminist part of me who parades around touting misandry and female empowerment is genuine, no doubt about it, but a part of it is fueled by this fear that I will never be loved. And I realize that this fear stems from a white-supremacist patriarchal society that tells me that I am too dark, my hair is too wild, my temper is too hot. I will forever be an angry black girl. My accomplishments will forever be obscured by the idea that I only got where I am because of affirmative action or some kind of imagined privilege. My accomplishments are zeroed by society. My looks are insignificant to most. It's hard to believe that people who are attracted to me don't see me as some sort of "exotic" mixed girl with a wild island-girl sensuality. I am alone. I am different, and I don't mean to make a big deal out of something that isn't but this is a big deal. Every interaction I have with the world is influenced by a preconceived notion of me and there are only a few boxes that I can even fit into. But I don't fit into any box, I am not either one type of person or another.
I am a summation. I am equal parts prep-school girl who loves to dress up and girl who cries for hours about a sad Doctor Who episode. I am equal parts a feminist and anti-racist as I am someone who has fallen in love with white men (despite them upholding a power structure I despise). I feel like other people don't look at me holistically. Something is always missing. I present a different person to each of the people I know, and I worry that in doing this I will further obscure who I really am. To some people, I am entirely misanthropic, always seeing a problem with society or individual people. To others I am a casket of lost loves, haunted by wraiths of regret. I can be an academic just as well as a girl who enjoys getting dressed up and feeling like nothing matters except feeling good and being beautiful. Everyone looks at the world so myopically and so filled with arrogance and unwillingness to change.
Is it normal to be so young and already so disillusioned? I cannot go a single day without fighting and I am getting tired of constantly being at war with myself and with others. I try to choose my battles, but there are some things that I can't afford not to fight against. It's strange, but it's almost easier to fight than to live knowing that I have allowed others to continue perpetuating injustice and ignorance. But I am exhausted. I am tired of struggling, although oddly enough, fighting and struggling prevents me from succumbing to some of the worse symptoms of depression. (Some might argue the worst symptom of depression.)
Perhaps I am destined to be a warrior on the small scale of my existence. Perhaps this is the greater purpose that I desperately seek. Maybe I am not meant to be loved or to really love others. I ought to be content with a life of relative selflessness, and perhaps dedicate myself to being a little bit better at perfecting that selflessness. Wouldn't it be better to avoid hedonism and dedicate the entirety of my being to fixing other people and the world or at the very least trying? Is this more noble than trying to find a boy to love or satisfying my base desires for money and power and control?
I want to shut my brain off. I want to stop thinking all the time. I want to be able to be entirely present. People are beginning to notice how absent I am from life. When I roll over, unable to look into his eyes for fear that I will become too involved in moments that can only be temporary, when I stare off into the distance mid-sentence trying to hold onto a single instant and keep it close to me forever or when I ignore and neglect my academic commitments, it's my way of avoiding the present moment because I fear the temporary far more than I fear permanence. It's not commitment to anything that I am truly terrified of, but the idea that I will commit to something that will go away. This may be a person or success or really anything that I give myself to entirely. I want to be less empty. I want to be here, now, with everyone I know but I can't do that. So I want to find meaning by picking off pieces of myself, and giving them to those who need something from me. I want to ignore my desires and give and give until I'm essentially dead. It's the stuff of suicidal dreams without physical death.
How do I eliminate fear? It's a question I ask myself almost constantly. I want to be less scared of existing and less scared of being happy. I may settle for a life of selflessness and giving until I am nothing, but what I really want is to feel free to be totally hedonistic and throw myself at all kinds of pleasures. Being intelligent is a prison. Being black is a prison. Being beautiful is a prison. I am eternally held captive by something.
This is why I want to die. I want to die in order to be free. Don't worry, I haven't worked up enough selfishness to let myself be truly pursuant of the freedom that comes with death. I am not done with this world. I am not done fixing everyone and fixing everything. Injustice still exists. Sadness still exists. Feeling needed keeps me alive. A shock to the heart. A quick jolt of reality. I'm a masochistic child, kept alive by the same anguish that places me on edge and very nearly pushes me over. I might feel alone in my head, but that doesn't mean I am not needed. And I say it again and again until I believe it. I am needed. I may not be loved, I may not be wanted, but I cannot yet die.
I'm afraid of commitment. I say it myself; other people say it too (about me and about themselves). What a load of crap though. It's so easy for me to maintain that façade in front of people who don't understand what commitment means and it's not just deciding that some man or woman is your whole world. Commitment is sacrifice, and there should be no sacrifice in choosing one person over all the others, it should be intuitive and organic. I've committed my entire life to my future career. I want to run away. I want to travel the world. I want to drop out of New England and learn that the United States is not the epicenter of the universe. Being a doctor is something I could love. Perhaps I can give life to someone who needs another chance. Maybe I'll save someone and they'll fall in love, and have a happily ever after. Or maybe I'll just be a source of inspiration for someone younger than me, who knows me, and knows the good things I have accomplished, ignorant of the nights of violent depression and isolation.
Once I heard someone say that your career won't get up one morning and say it doesn't love you anymore. How depressing. The girl who consumed Disney movies and literature from the time she could open her eyes for more than a mother's teat does not want to believe that. Love is real. Love is very real. And I try and I try to feel it properly and to feel like I'm not the only one who loves blindly and madly. My friends claim that they love too, but it's hard to trust their words. I can't believe them. Loving feels so isolating; it's easier for me to believe they are ignorant of that isolation. I am dumb when it comes to love. It terrifies me, and drives me to self-destruct because I feel like I'm in a straitjacket, unable to express a damned thing except fear. Fear takes over all the time and maybe it's a symptom of something else, but symptom or not, I am constantly imprisoned by it.
I want a job that I love because I don't think anyone will ever be able to love me properly. It's my biggest fear. The feminist part of me who parades around touting misandry and female empowerment is genuine, no doubt about it, but a part of it is fueled by this fear that I will never be loved. And I realize that this fear stems from a white-supremacist patriarchal society that tells me that I am too dark, my hair is too wild, my temper is too hot. I will forever be an angry black girl. My accomplishments will forever be obscured by the idea that I only got where I am because of affirmative action or some kind of imagined privilege. My accomplishments are zeroed by society. My looks are insignificant to most. It's hard to believe that people who are attracted to me don't see me as some sort of "exotic" mixed girl with a wild island-girl sensuality. I am alone. I am different, and I don't mean to make a big deal out of something that isn't but this is a big deal. Every interaction I have with the world is influenced by a preconceived notion of me and there are only a few boxes that I can even fit into. But I don't fit into any box, I am not either one type of person or another.
I am a summation. I am equal parts prep-school girl who loves to dress up and girl who cries for hours about a sad Doctor Who episode. I am equal parts a feminist and anti-racist as I am someone who has fallen in love with white men (despite them upholding a power structure I despise). I feel like other people don't look at me holistically. Something is always missing. I present a different person to each of the people I know, and I worry that in doing this I will further obscure who I really am. To some people, I am entirely misanthropic, always seeing a problem with society or individual people. To others I am a casket of lost loves, haunted by wraiths of regret. I can be an academic just as well as a girl who enjoys getting dressed up and feeling like nothing matters except feeling good and being beautiful. Everyone looks at the world so myopically and so filled with arrogance and unwillingness to change.
Is it normal to be so young and already so disillusioned? I cannot go a single day without fighting and I am getting tired of constantly being at war with myself and with others. I try to choose my battles, but there are some things that I can't afford not to fight against. It's strange, but it's almost easier to fight than to live knowing that I have allowed others to continue perpetuating injustice and ignorance. But I am exhausted. I am tired of struggling, although oddly enough, fighting and struggling prevents me from succumbing to some of the worse symptoms of depression. (Some might argue the worst symptom of depression.)
Perhaps I am destined to be a warrior on the small scale of my existence. Perhaps this is the greater purpose that I desperately seek. Maybe I am not meant to be loved or to really love others. I ought to be content with a life of relative selflessness, and perhaps dedicate myself to being a little bit better at perfecting that selflessness. Wouldn't it be better to avoid hedonism and dedicate the entirety of my being to fixing other people and the world or at the very least trying? Is this more noble than trying to find a boy to love or satisfying my base desires for money and power and control?
I want to shut my brain off. I want to stop thinking all the time. I want to be able to be entirely present. People are beginning to notice how absent I am from life. When I roll over, unable to look into his eyes for fear that I will become too involved in moments that can only be temporary, when I stare off into the distance mid-sentence trying to hold onto a single instant and keep it close to me forever or when I ignore and neglect my academic commitments, it's my way of avoiding the present moment because I fear the temporary far more than I fear permanence. It's not commitment to anything that I am truly terrified of, but the idea that I will commit to something that will go away. This may be a person or success or really anything that I give myself to entirely. I want to be less empty. I want to be here, now, with everyone I know but I can't do that. So I want to find meaning by picking off pieces of myself, and giving them to those who need something from me. I want to ignore my desires and give and give until I'm essentially dead. It's the stuff of suicidal dreams without physical death.
How do I eliminate fear? It's a question I ask myself almost constantly. I want to be less scared of existing and less scared of being happy. I may settle for a life of selflessness and giving until I am nothing, but what I really want is to feel free to be totally hedonistic and throw myself at all kinds of pleasures. Being intelligent is a prison. Being black is a prison. Being beautiful is a prison. I am eternally held captive by something.
This is why I want to die. I want to die in order to be free. Don't worry, I haven't worked up enough selfishness to let myself be truly pursuant of the freedom that comes with death. I am not done with this world. I am not done fixing everyone and fixing everything. Injustice still exists. Sadness still exists. Feeling needed keeps me alive. A shock to the heart. A quick jolt of reality. I'm a masochistic child, kept alive by the same anguish that places me on edge and very nearly pushes me over. I might feel alone in my head, but that doesn't mean I am not needed. And I say it again and again until I believe it. I am needed. I may not be loved, I may not be wanted, but I cannot yet die.
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