I couldn’t tell you exactly why. It is a long and harrowing story I am uncertain of myself. But, growing up, I formed quiet conceptions I am just now attempting to unearth. To deal with.
My head is a tangled mess.
I search frantically for logic in any and everything. I never stop, cannot stop, do not know how to stop. The thoughts buzz and hum, leaving me shaking and lost and wishing. If I am imperfect, my world will stop. I bottle my thoughts up so well that they are obscured even to me. I hide behind my silence, I suffer from an economy of words.
In some ways knowing these parts of me exist makes them hurt more.
Why shouldn’t I matter? I have gotten into myself the idea that I don’t, that what I am now discovering shouldn’t hurt. That I must continue to build up walls, lock myself within my conceptions. I have to pretend. I have to be perfect, whole. What might be a decision has for so long been a reflex, an impulse, a
These things overlap. I cannot be perfect. My imitation is passable, is carefully cultivated, is
Sometimes it will all just hurt and my desperate hope will grasp for that which I have come to fear. Okay. I want to be okay, but okay is that place I reach at the very precipice of shattering once again. I am not allowed to be okay.
But I have to be perfect.
And I have to be okay with living with all these tangled thoughts and small hopes and
Before I knew
that something was wrong I still thought I had to be perfect and
it still hurt. I spoke to a counselor who charted my happiness and told me, once, “we’ve charted this for months. You should be happier now.”
You should be happier now. You should be perfect. You should you should you should.
I do not fit into your mold, world. I have tried, with everything I have, my whole life. To please you. To find answers, to pull myself apart so I fit to your specifications. My identity is largely a result of the elastic I have made myself.
For you.
And I hope you’re happy.
And I hope you’re happy.
Gosh Katherine, I love you so much<3
ReplyDeleteI love your beautiful words, even if they're beautiful in a miserable and tragic way.
I wish that I could offer you some sort of comfort, some sort of guarantee that everything's going to be okay. But I feel like that would be a hollow and artificial thing to say, because how the hell do I know that everything's going to be okay?
But I can legitimately say that I love you and I'm here for you and that you can always do and say anything you want to when you're around me<3
I would like to put you back together. Because I often feel broken, too; I find myself wishing someone would glue me together, make me into something functional. A vase, maybe. But I know that if we let someone else pick up our pieces, we'll become urns, our insides will hold the ashes of who we really are while our outsides will look like an abstract work of beautiful contemporary art.
ReplyDeleteHow do we deal with living a facade in which everyone thinks we're perfect and we have flawless transcripts and teachers love us, when really inside is just a raging inferno of anger and confusion and pain that no one bothers to notice--and all you want is for someone to notice but you know that the moment someone brings it up, you'll just smile and laugh them off because you are Perfect.
Happiness can't be charted to a logical conclusion. You don't reach a point where you are suddenly HAPPY FOREVER AND ALWAYS. That's stupid. That doesn't make any sense. Telling you that 'you should be happier now' is the most ridiculous and unhelpful thing I've ever heard. I hate when people who are supposed to be helpful aren't. These are my ANGRY EYES, Mr. Potato Head!
I would say not to feel like you have to live in a mold. And the truth is that you, we, don't have to. But we'll do it anyway. Because we'd rather let everyone think we're Perfect than let everyone see how sad our insides can be some days. Because who needs that sort of pity and judgment?