Pieces Of Me [an online journal of sorts]

Entry 1 1 8: changed

I don't know who I am anymore. Or maybe I do, and I don't like what I see. I've lost interest in pretty much everything I used to hold close to my heart. I don't write anymore, I can't, and it feels like something inside of me has died. I tried writing an end-of-year sort of entry, but I hated every word of it. It was real, as honest as I could write it, but it didn't feel right. It felt like fraud, like a half-assed assignment I submitted just for the grade. Writing used to feel like it was a part of me, but now it's like I'm reaching for something that's not there. It fucking sucks.

I hate that this is all I have to show at the end of those 365 days. I hate who I've become, that I couldn't stop it from happening. I'm a different person now, duller, lesser, a little more faded around the edges. There's a lot of reasons for the way things have turned, but I know, deep down, everything leads back to me. I've always been the root of all my problems.

I just wanna know, how do I get her back? That girl from a few years back, who loved her friends with all her heart and knew it and felt it so much it hurt.

The girl I am today willfully let go of two her oldest friends, one cut off to save what was left of our hearts and the other put at a distance because I couldn't find the truth in my words anymore when I told her I love you too.

How do I go back to being the girl who used to grab a novel in the morning to read on the way to school because I couldn't stand not reading in all my waking moments, who loved stories more than anything? The girl who used to have such a rampant imagination, she built world after world with her words, thousands of them crowding a screen before, inevitably, a new idea would strike, another world born before the previous ones could fully bloom?

The girl I am today hasn't read a novel in six months, hasn't even written a word of fiction in more than two years, all her hopes of finishing her own novel laying idle in a dusty drawer.

Where is that girl who excelled in her studies and was the reluctant but competent leader of every group she was in, a friendly face her classmates turned to when they needed help? The girl who took time out of her days to bake pastries because she loved the look on her classmates' faces and their praise when they tasted what she'd made?

The girl I am today has had enough emotional breakdowns and mind-numbing spirals over the past two semesters to realize, with painful clarity, what a mistake choosing my major was. It's almost visceral, the hatred I harbor for it. I don't have enough space in my heart or in my mind to get up, let alone walk. I'm not the reliable figure I used to be. How could I help others when I can't even help myself? What hope do I have of making others happy when I don't even remember what it feels like?

I miss the person I used to be. She felt things. She loved.

I need to get her back, please. Somebody tell me where I can find her.

She's gone now, or perhaps lost somewhere I can't reach and there's no other way for me to convey how much it fucking sucks that I can't seem to get her back. I'd give anything to be someone other than myself and I hate that I feel this way. I hate that I'm my own worst enemy.

This isn't how I imagined my life would turn out to be.