ab initio, ad infinitum

fault.

NOT GONNA LIE, THIS IS ANOTHER HEAVY ONE. readers beware and please keep yourselves safe. this one has a lot of negative emotion, and it resonates very strongly with me, and due to its personal nature, it's a little weird to be publishing it. but the best way out is through, am i right? plus, i know that sometimes reading something that you may have felt can be cathartic and liberating, because the feeling of understanding is honestly so very integral in our lives. so the hope is that this piece, as heavy as it may be, may just have the possibility of clicking with someone.and friendly reminder; you always have someone to talk to with me, and make sure to check in with the people around you and yourself. especially yourself. do good, be kind. <3

F A U L T .

There is no word to describe the feeling of when everything you want and need is denied right in front of you, because no one knows. One of my biggest struggles with depression is an everyday one. It's the red-hot anger that I feel thrumming in my veins, slowly and then all at once, when I see that everything I so desperately yearn for is given so easily to someone else. And it's my fault.

It's my fault I don't speak up, it's my fault that no one knows that I can't make myself get out of bed somedays. No one knows that I'm seconds away from falling apart. No one knows that taking a shower is a victory some days, they don't know living is burdening sometimes, they don't know of the struggle I face with breathing. And that's on me. I don't say anything, so how can I expect someone to notice?

But I do. No matter how much I tell myself that I don't care, it doesn't matter, oh well, I'm fine, it is never true. Not a single atom in my body believes it, and nobody is fooled, except for the audience which I perform for every day. I just suffer in silence, seething at others, at the world, at myself.

I watch as someone who has had a bad day can talk about it on the bus, can get comfort, can get kind words. And I'm disgusted with the part of me which wants to scoff at their red eyes and waterworks, because please. Then I remind myself that every person's pain is valid, and I still do care, it's not like I don't. It's just that a part of me is so used to bad days I want to laugh at the person who actually cries at a bad school day instead of crying because they can't recognize who they are. But I tell myself, no that is wrong, because it is.

But the next day, it almost feels right when the same person comes bounding on the bus, smiling and blathering of how great a day it was, when I'm still stuck in my hole of despondency.

It's not fucking fair. How come I suffer from this every day, yet someone else gets reassurance? Is it because this is now my normal that it doesn't deserve anything? I know it's not the case, but it's still so damn frustrating. Watching as someone just says that they're going through something which you are too, yet you cannot even put it into words because it's so bad, yet they get comfort while you get nothing for the same thing.

It's beyond maddening when you have spent so long trying to blend in, look fine, that no one realizes that you are not. And that what once used to be your defense mechanism is now your greatest opponent.

And when you must comfort someone who scratches up their skin like you, who is seconds away from falling apart too, but instead tells everyone, I want to scream. Because how is it fair that I first have to deal with someone else when I'm barely coping myself? And furthermore when it's everything I go through yet no one knows? When everyone sees me as someone with no problems, an A-student, a quiet unassuming peer, the wise advisor, yet that's the further from who I can be.

I must be alright, because I have no reason to be the contrary, right? That's what everyone automatically assumes, and so every little sign that people can quickly identify in others because those people have reasons, is ignored when I show them. And so I'm stuck in this little bubble, so desperately wanting to be a part of something, yet unable to tell everyone about it, and further holed away when people unintentionally tell me all the ways the problems which affect others can't affect me, but they're wrong.

I'm screaming, and seething, and fuming, and boiling, full of anger and resentment and jealously and a desperate need to be seen, to be heard, even though I can't speak. I want someone to know, yet I cannot tell them. It is in every way my fault, but how the fuck can I fix it?

So instead I sit with my anger and resentment and jealousy and my desperate need to be seen, and yet it fosters into fury at myself. I did this.

And maybe the next day I will try and forgive myself, gloss over whatever I feel to get the fuck on with my life, but this cycle will continue, it will run its course again. Starting at one and ending back at ten, I will feel my hurt again, I will misguide it at others, it will reflect back on me, and in a case where no one is truly at fault, I will place blame on myself. And although I feel dread, knowing that this will happen, I can do nothing to change it but to hope that I prepared myself better this time.

And there is no possible word that can ever sum that feeling up.

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