Dear you:
It’s been forever since I really thought about the point that I am at in life.
On the one hand, I will be turning seveteen in September. Door of opportunity opening, right? More jobs, more respect, rated-R movies, one year until i can buy alcohol in Canada vote, etc.
On the other hand, I’m still in the proverbial rut. My comfort zone is still only about three feet wide, I still hate myself in brutal fashion, and I’m no where closer to being the art-lady extraordinaire that I want myself to be so bad.
I have all of this want and need and tension inside of me, waiting to get out, to kick and scream and vocalize, but I feel like I’m dead. I don’t go outside, I don’t wake up, I stand in the shower for hours hoping that all of this shit will wash away and I can step out fresh and clean and Perfect.
I was on Prozac (30 mg) for three months straight. I was Happy. Or so I thought. I don’t know. I think I was high on the power of choices. It didn’t matter if I did my homework or not, I was Smart. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have a 4.0 GPA, I was going to be an Artist.
And summer kicked in. There is no choice, no easy option, just logging onto Facebook and seeing the other Happy people interact without me. I don’t have: a car / a pool / rich parents / friends with connections. I have: an ugly piece of rectangular plastic with my mug slapped on it / mosquitoes and sweat / a mother about to quit her job / friends with plans and futures.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when COLLEGE! kicks in. The only friends I’ve ever felt comfortable with will be gone. I hate facebook, in all of its “your friends ignore you” glory, but the only way to not lose friends is to stay “connected”. Why do we need an internet connection to be connected?
My grandmother has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t remember me. Her home, my childhood haven, will be sold to some shit family and will be filled with cigarette smoke, rap music, and have all of its trees, roots, and wires torn out. My great aunt (who is in her mid-nineties) can’t function alone. As soon as I get a car I will be a caretaker, not a person. It’s already gotten my cousins. I’m next.
My mother has a. no thyroid and b. multiple sclerosis. Because of the lack of hormones from her thyroid to keep her energized (supplements don’t work like she needs them to) and her MS medication, she is tired all of the time. She comes home from work and sleeps. She fell asleep while we were driving about a month ago. We went headlong into oncoming traffic and I had to scream and help her steer back to our side. We almost died. Now she cries and thinks she’s a bad mother. She’s not. Life is just bad.
When she gets older, my mother will slowly lose the ability to walk and even think.
A lot of this may sound like random problems with no real connection, but bear with me. I can’t tell my mom that my whole family reminds me of death and consequences. I can’t tell my dad that it hurts that he won’t hire me for his internship, despite the fact that I NEED the money or I’m afraid I’ll lose everything: dreams of a car, trips with friends, clothes so I don’t look like this horrible piece of shit. Lord knows I can’t talk to my brother. I think he has anger issues. I get scared when he gets angry. He has already punched me in the face and broke my glasses, and that was years ago. I’ve been pertrified ever since.
A few weeks ago he started to “sass” my mother. My dad told him to shut the hell up. They both exploded in rage and anger, and my dad hit him. Now Tim is getting ideas of running away as soon as he can. I can’t handle this.
When I was in sixth grade, someone called me an emo, because I wore all black. I wasn’t an emo, it was just that clothes for twelve-year-olds back then came in either sassy-hip-chick pink or black. Black hides fatness well, and I hate sassy pink. So yeah, black.
It was in seventh grade that someone noticed some ‘wounds’ on my arm. Short, ragged, scratchy cuts. I told him and my parents that our dog, Max, had scratched me. In actuality, I had cut myself. It looked so shitty because I had no pain tolerance and was using a dull Swiss Army knife stolen from my brother’s Boy Scout equipment. Over the next few weeks, I wore sleeves and dug my nails into my palm when I cut myself. It still looked like dog scratches, but they were deeper.
I have scars now. I don’t know if anyone believed me.
I once told a mutual friend about it. I said something like “it makes the pain in my head feel unreal” or some wierd and equally lame excuse. She said if I needed help, she was there. It’s been years and I don’t feel any “there”-ness. Just empty promises and cancelled plans.
I stopped cutting myself for four years. I went back, once. I used to hit my head against the wall hoping that my skull would crack and I would have an excuse to not go to school/function/have to deal with anything. I have thought about driving off into trees when I drive. I don’t like to drive alone anymore.
During the infamous week of school last January when we had three essays due, I was suicidal. For the past two years of high school I would walk through the halls, envisioning the bliss that would follow if someone could just cut my guts open, let me die bloody and tragic and not have to walk alone in the echoing halls. When I had those essays due, I got legit suicidal. My parents had to fight me to go to school. Every waking second was a battle between me and the horrible aching sensation in my arms, my legs, my stomach, my eyes. I shook. I still shake. If I need to “push” with any kind of muscle, I shake, like a quivering spine.
Obviously I got out of the kill kill kill thyself phase, because here I am. None the better.
I’m off my medication now. The woman who prescribed me said that she needed to “check every month on whether or not I needed them.” She apparently thought I was using them to get high. She doesn’t return our calls now, and I am on my way to seeing a new therapist.
I had so many hopes for myself this summer. Lose weight = self confidence = happy school year = maybe someone will actually want to hang out with me = maybe I’ll get invited to parties, spontaneous or otherwise = maybe some dude will actually like me.
But it’s all fallen to shit. I don’t have any motivation. At. All.
And honestly? I might be asexual. Not a crowd-pleaser to our “driven by the lower-half” student population.
