Trying To Breathe

*trigger warning*I have no agenda, I’m just here | she/they (but they, please)

[sk8enby]

I know I don’t owe anyone androgyny just because I’m nonbinary but god I would kill to be super androgynous I want people to look at me and not even have a guess as to what my gender could be. I want to be a genderless void floating through space a mystery to all.

[hello-im-stillalive]

I feel threadbare

I’m still here, but I’m faded and fragile and not good for much.

[hello-im-stillalive]

I liked when watching the world burn

was a song I listened to on repeat

I liked when whether I would wake up tomorrow

was in my hands

I am doom scrolling

I admit

but can we agree it is stupid

to manuver numbers in excel

and write papers about covariance

when a collapse of my nation

seems within a strong confidence interval?

what the fuck, man

my father taught me this was a great nation

my father taught me to respect this democracy

taught me to uphold the system

the best system in the world

but my father today told me 

“sometimes we must do what is neccessary”

and it was the first time

I realized he has not changed

he is still my father, the man he’s always been

talking of values and god’s will 

praying for god’s will

(whatever it may be!)

while never doubting he knows what it is

my father taught me to person I am

I am the person my father raised 

(just a little to the left)

[hello-im-stillalive]

Hi, my name is El and I’m awful at the little things. I can’t throw a frisbee, I can barely throw a ball. I can’t whitstle, not even through my hands with a blade of grass to assist. I can cook, but very unreliably, and I can sing, but very flat. I can’t fold a fitted sheet and I can’t parallel park, I suck at hula hooping and my memory only works on song lyrics from 2013. But I’ll love you.

I can be good at loving you. If you can look past my yellow teeth and floppy hair and sometimes total lack of selfawareness- I can love you so well it will make your head spin. I can prove to you that you are worth the world and the planets and the galexies. I can make you believe me when I say “you’re my favorite person” and I can bring you your favorite coffee in bed.

I can do very little, but some big things I can do... so I can be good at loving you.

[demiiwhiffin]

everything feels weird you just get used to it

[adeles]

#me in 2020

[madmadmilk]

BLACK LIVES MATTER. YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. @ noturjacky on IG

[iamquietlydrowning]

[jarring]

me: *has feelings*

me: Pathetic. Disgusting. Won’t Let It Happen Again.

[no-the-sandwich]

fuck i love my mental health and the way it just [clenches fist] deteriorates

[hello-im-stillalive]

This all started at 13. I was fucking 13 years old when my death started. I’ve lived here for 10 years. I didn’t think it was that long. I don’t know what to do with this. 

[hello-im-stillalive]

I have lived here for years.

These cell walls contain me, 

These connections have destroyed me and preserved me. 

I am my mind. 

My mind has led me to the darkest places.

(That I never wish to see again)

I may do right to fear my mind.

But

My mind was with me in them.

When there was nothing else for me, my mind did not abandon me

I found all of the hurt within it

And also the only safety I’ve ever known.

At my core I am for me. At the core I always have been for me.

My mind has talked me off ledges 

Forced me out of bed a thousand times

Told me, “Eat, drink, breathe, try”

When I was defeated my mind found a sliver to hang on to.

Something to make it to tomorrow’s sunrise.

And I am not sure how it did that.

So you say “get out of your mind”

And do not mistake me, I agree with you

But at this moment that phrase sounds like a defeat

That phrase sounds like a death sentence

That phrase sounds like the ripping away of everything I’ve known.

My mind is all I have had, and I am not ready to give it up.  

My mind will take time to change. 

[pretty-little0ne-deactivated202]

I hate having a body, it’s so high maintenance! Shower this, eat that, drink this, sleep that, it’s all very stupid

[hello-im-stillalive]

I feel threadbare

I’m still here, but I’m faded and fragile and not good for much.

[hello-im-stillalive]

Thing I’ve realized this week that I probably should tell my therapist but probably won’t.

Trigger warning - suicide, self harm, panic atttacks, sexual assult

-I am mad at myself for being alive. I genuinely believe that I was supposed to die at 16 and part of me is genuinely angry that I didn’t. I resent the fact that I’m breathing and I truly believe I’m living on stolen time. I am mad at myself for saving myself. I wish I had let myself die. I really do. I shouldn’t have made it off that fucking bridge. I would have saved myself and a lot of other people hurt if I had just given in then. I’m not saying this is true, but this is what I believe. I am mad at myself for being alive. I always knew that I hated the fact that I felt things, that I was weak, that I was a person, but realizing that it was literally just anger at the fact of my own existence was kinda new, kinda, weird, kinda spicy. Keeping things interesting in this black hole of a brain.

- I really think that I was sexually assulted as a kid. I can’t even fucking write a lot about that because it terrifys me to even think about. I have always had weird, misplaced memories that I didn’t understand... but I think I understand them now. And I really just can’t fucking believe it. I can but I... can’t. 

- I have SO MUCH religious trauma. I tried to read a Bible verse this week and genuinely worked myself into a panic attack. My whole life, before I had any idea who I was, I was being berated with the belief that everything about me and eveyrthing that I believe and all of my values were wrong, sinful, evil, and going to put me in hell. Asking to be called by my name would is a sin in their eyes. And I knew that I was hurt by it, I knew that them saying shit now hurts me. But I didn’t know how bad it was. notice the theme of all of this being “I didn’t know how bad it was” because

- I didn’t know how bad it was. I knew that I had shut myself down for the past unknown number of years of my life (and I only knew that because my therapist told me and I was like, huh yeah that sounds right) but I didn’t know that it was really because eveyrthing that had happened to me up until that point had hurt me so much that it was my only option. I didn’t know that it was because if I had been able to actually ask myself how I was doing and acknowledge what was happening I would have completely dissolved. 

- I’ve been trying to actually check in with myself this week. When I’m getting stressed or anxious especially, I’ve been trying to take a second to ask myself what’s happening and what I need and... I’m so fucking sad. Like that sounds stupid to have as a realizaion, like didn’t I know that? But I didn’t really know. Same as before I guess, I didn’t know how bad it was. I thought that when I numbed out like this it was just because I was numb, that I really didn’t feel anything at all. I didn’t know that I numbed because I had to. I should have probably. But I didn’t.

Fuck. I hate this so much.

 I’m mad I didn’t die on a bridge at 16. 

I don’t want to be.

[quotemadness]

I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood.

Unknown (via quotemadness)

[hello-im-stillalive]

sh trigger warning

There’s a lot that I’m not sure how to say. I’m not sure if that’s right or not. I feel a lot for someone who can only say “I feel nothing, that’s the problem.” when asked by a therapist what they feel.

My therapist is going ask how I am in two days. I’ve been wondering what I’m going to tell her since she asked me the same question 5 days ago. How am I. Bold of you to assume that I have any clue.

Option 1: I’m fine. This is a tempting one, for several reasons. One it implies that I have a positive outlook on my state, that I’ve not given up on the possibility of being fine and gotten stuck in a circle of negative descriptors. Secondly, it isn’t technically a lie. I mean I got out of bed this morning. I ate today, I ran, I did some work, I haven’t relapsed so overall ‘fine’ is technically an apt description of how I am functioning. However, it is not about how I actually am. And it’s also just a lazy option so I feel like I should avoid it if possible.

Option 2: Ummm, not great *lol*. The lol is important to sway the tension. This one is a nice deflective technique, like yes I’m going to acknowledge that I’m not in an ideal state but with ~sarcasm~ so it’s funny and quirky and less concernig. However, I’m pretty sure this is what I ended up saying last week and is defintely a very tired coping mechanism that I feel like I should really try to move past specifically when talking to a therapist who will know I’m lying anyway.

Option 3: I’m doing okay overall, but this week has been hard. See, now we’re getting somewhere. This lets her know right upfront that I’m not actually that bad but that I am being realistic about my mental state. Honestly very promising, almost a top teir response however I have a couple bones to pick. First of all, this just sounds so dumb to me. Now that doesn’t make it bad (or mean that it’s actually dumb) but it does make it less likely that it will actually come out of my mouth. Secondlty, this opens up to teh direct follow up of “What made this week hard?” and I don’t have an answer to that either so this seems like it’s just causing more trouble than it’s worth.

Option 4: I really don’t know except that I’ve woken up every morning and desperately tried to go back to sleep and sleep as late as possible because the idea of being awake and alive sounds so exhausting that I just need to sleep as long as possible to put it off, to delay getting out of bed and facing the pile of work that I haven’t looked at and emails I haven’t opened because I looked at an assignment and had a panic attack earlier in the week and I’ve been in trepidation ever since because I haven’t fully recovered from it yet and I think another one like that might really just put me out right now especially since I talked to my parents and they told me that I should pray more because they didn’t want me to make the wrong decision and my sisters are looping me into a bible reasing challenge for next month which is stressing me out more and the daily anxiety of just everything right now is making it hard for my brain to function and if everyone starts screaming again I’m not sure I’ll be able to get them to shut up and if I can’t get them to shut up I don’t know what might happen because I had a dream this week that someone stabbed me and I didn’t die and i woke up from it feeling like it was a nightmare and I’ve been seeing scars where there aren’t any again and I can’t wear short sleeves without being triggered and if I let it go for even a second I’m scared of what might happen to me so I leave the house when it gets bad and I cry whenever I cross the road to get away from someone and I saw a mom holding her child the other day and thought I might break but being out of the house helps until I think about stepping into the road stepping off of the curb stepping over the side or just stepping and stepping one foot after another and continueing on and on and ending up somewhere that I don’t know just somewhere or anywhere that is not here because when I sit and think about th life I am in and the person that I am in the place that I am I think that my lungs collapse and my heart speeds up and stops all at once and I believe beyond believing that every thing that the voice in my head tells me is true and that they’ve been right all along and I really wasn’t meant to live on and I should have given up on it long ago. I don’t think I have to elaborate on why this is a bad option. 

Option 5: I’m not sure, I’m not really good or bad I just am. Which is a bit of a lie. But is also the closest I think I’ve ever been to the truth.