First post! I’m excited! Okay, so I decided to start off with a piece I wrote over the summer that can shed some light on how I think, my personality and my writing style. Please note that this was written three months ago and the events described are even farther than that and I’m in a better place/headspace now. Anyways, happy reading! Please comment as well if you want to, it could be about my writing style, you can give me suggestions, advice, or trash it (lol) it’s all up to you. Also, can you relate to anything I said in this piece? If yes, comment below and let’s talk about it!
I have lived eighteen years, five months and one week and I still don’t know how to read people. I grew up an only child with numerous cousins and I loved it, I loved having a big beautiful wonderful family. But when they left I was alone. I went to school and when I made friends, they weren’t just friends, they were family. I trusted family. Call me desperate, naïve, gullible, whatever but I always held my friends up to impossible standards. I expected them to be there for me for all the times I was there for them, I wanted them to be honest with me, I wanted them to be able to know what I was feeling without having to tell them. The years passed by and I let go of expectations, I let go of standards, and slowly but surely I let go of friends. I went through betrayals and deceptions and bad relationships. When pointing fingers I mostly pointed at them, the abandoners, the so-called friends forgetting that as I condemned them, I also condemned myself. Six years of secondary school left me broken, with more trust issues than I could count. I was tired of being hurt, of feeling pain, of never being good enough so I decided to block myself off from them and the pain I had felt for so long.
Shutting out the pain was easy but sometimes the easy road is the one with the most pitfalls. By shutting away pain and isolating myself I also shut out love, the opportunity to let other people’s love heal me. So for the one year I was in college although from the outside looking in I was whole, in reality, I was broken. And all I felt that whole year was alone.
University was worse for me. I had been depressed before but this time it was different, this time I was different. Living in isolation makes you weak on the inside, and that was what I was, I was withering. I started having thoughts, thoughts that scared me, terrified me. I thought, “I’m of a waste of space. I’m weak and useless. How nobody would even notice if I disappeared.” The word suicide came up a few times, but a few times were too many for me. So I did what I’ve always done and said to myself, “Nobody is going to pick up the pieces for you because nobody cares.” And that was how once again I picked myself up and hit reset on my life. Every time since then has been hard but progress has been made.
Today I sit here, again, close to where I was some months ago. Feeling sad and mad and alone and I just can’t help thinking how I never healed, after all that time I am still broken. I put up a good front, one very worthy of an award; I smiled, I laughed, I had joyful days, I pretended and I did it so well I even managed to fool myself. I’m not happy, I haven’t been happy in a long time, in fact, it’s been so long that if I looked happy in the face I wouldn’t be able to recognize it.
I guess at the end of the day what I’m truly scared of is being happy, because although I’ve only lived eighteen years I’ve gone through enough to learn that happiness cannot be caught and put in a box to be enjoyed forever. Happiness is a mirage, a veil to keep us hoping when we’re down, keep us hoping when a tragedy befalls us, to keep us hoping when hope is lost. Happiness is elusive yet powerful and I guess I’m afraid to want something so big, so beautiful, so strong and yet so tragic.
Millennial Haven 