Dear Stranger, I suppose it is strangely comforting that you don’t know who I am, or the state I am in right now. It is hard enough trying to pretend around the people I do know that I am fine, but in reality, it feels more like who I am is falling through the cracks of what I feel I am supposed to be, and no matter how hard I try to catch myself in my hands, they crumble like old Grecian statues, and I continue to dissipate further. I can feel myself pooling into some shimmering silver liquid on the ground, easily stepped on and trailed about like mud you forgot was on your shoes. Gathering myself together after episodes like this is like trying to catch rain in a bucket full of holes. Have you ever felt like this? I hope that you haven’t, but if you have, I hope there is some solace in knowing you aren’t alone. My therapist keeps reminding me that this time of year is the season of change, and that change is so welcome in our lives right now. But just because I can admire the beauty of the reds, oranges, yellows, and leaves so bright in the sun they look neon, doesn’t mean that I necessarily empathize with the change happening in the world around me. I feel stagnant. My appetite remains missing, nausea is a constant rolling in my stomach, my eyes are still sore from lack of sleep and left with smudges of grey underneath. I wake up and go to work at 5:30AM and I come home in the afternoon, or I go to doctor’s appointments until 4 or 5. I keep getting no answers for my ailments other than diagnoses that mean ‘well, we don’t know and here is the name for that’. I am getting tired and frustrated after 10 years of this. I hope you cherish your health and what you are able to do, stranger. It is a blessing to wake up without feeling dizzy, without stars in your vision already. To go to work and not feel your heart trying so damn hard to keep up that your chest starts to hurt an hour or two in. I hope you can take your dog for walks without getting winded because your heart works like it should. I hope you can do yoga and bend and stretch and move up and down. I hope you can lift weights and that it doesn’t always feel like you’re carrying them. If you could do me a favor, close your eyes for a moment and just savor that feeling. I hope you’ve never wished to die so much it hurts. I hope you don’t freeze at work because you wake up from dissociating and realize you didn’t hear anything a customer just said to you. I hope the rumble strip on the side of the interstate isn’t the thing that startles you and you have to figure out where it is you’re meant to be going. I hope you want to be alive, stranger, but I know that feeling is getting less and less common. I am trying to push through, like I have before, but my friends have left me. One abandoned me during one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through without a word, two more acted like friends until it got too hard and lied to me about who they were. Another left for something better, something I can’t blame them for, another isn’t responding to my messages anymore and another is leaving work soon for a brighter future. I won’t see them anymore because even though we say we will still hang out; I know that I’m not in that future. I barely see them now. It is my biggest fear to be forgotten, but I can feel myself fading out of the eyes of the people I had gathered close to me for once. I hadn’t really had a group of good friends before this, the friends I had in high school and middle school were awful and I didn’t really have any friends in college because I didn’t know how to make them, I’ve always been too sick to learn. I thought I was finally having those moments I saw in movies – making dinner together in the kitchen, dancing to old songs, decorating for Christmas with people who chose me, not just my family who is stuck with me. But now it’s all gone again. I am alone most days. I don’t know if I necessarily want that to change because I don’t know how much longer I will be here, in all honesty. It will be easier to die when they all forget me. The only thing I stay for now is my dog because I know she would be confused without me, but I think she could live the rest of her life with my family. Since moving back in with my parents, she’s had my family dog to play with and she seems happy enough with him. I think she could forget me just fine. Don’t worry about me, stranger, this doesn’t have to be anything more than ramblings to you. Goodbye for now. I’ll write again, someday.
fuckupoftheyear
