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A blog of sub-mediocre writing and thoughts. Female. 21. "You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed..."

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“What does it say about our relationship that I cannot write about you?

I go back and forth between whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Sometimes I feel like I cannot write about you because I don’t feel anything worth writing about; other times I feel like I cannot write about you because I can only write about pain, and this isn’t painful—it is mildly annoying at best. Did I just say the same thing in two different ways? I’m not sure.

What if I can only truly love people who destroy me, and everyone else just feels mundane and unsatisfying?”

—Tragically Cliché |c.o.|

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“We go through little moments of happiness, or at least both of us are pretending to be happy for an hour or two for the sake if it. But the rest of the time, it is a miserable and lonely journey. With each passing day, I forget a little more why I ever fell in love with you. You are a stranger in a familiar body; an imposter in someone else’s skin. I do not know this man, and I do not love him.”

—Imposter |C.O|

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“We want life to be like a movie but movies aren’t like life. They say that life imitates art but not in the way that all endings are happy and there’s always some kind of resolution and everything happens for a perfectly outlined reason. Horrible things happen all the time, whether we deserve them or not, and there is often no silver lining, no rhyme or reason, no happily ever after. The boy you like that won’t give you the time of day isn’t secretly reading Nietzsche, he’s fucking the blonde cheerleader from your math class because she has a nice rack and she doesn’t talk much. The girl who makes you want to kill yourself isn’t bullying you because she’s secretly jealous of you, she’s just bored and you happened to be there. The woman down the street who died of cancer wasn’t a fallen angel taken too soon, she had a genetic mutation coupled with the fact that she smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day for over 15 years.

The universe doesn’t care about making things fair or making things right. The universe doesn’t care at all—it’s all a random series of events. Some are good, most are bad. There is no purpose, there is no heaven, and hell is here.”

—Life Does Not Imitate Art |c.o|

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This Is Not About You - Kindle edition by Courtney Ohlmann. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use f

My book is finally available for purchase from the kindle store on amazon! Thanks to everyone who has supported me and encouraged me in these past years! We did it!

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My father once told me that on my first day of kindergarten, I had come home and he’d asked me if I liked any of the other children, to which I replied: “No. They’re too happy. I don’t understand them.” Even at five years old, I was too smart for my own good. Happiness is an illusion. It is lively, comforting, colorful; a world of endless hope and possibilities. Happiness is children laughing on the playground, happiness is Christmas morning all wrapped up with a bow. But happiness is an illusion. No one is truly happy, and if they tell you they are, they are lying to your face. We experience happiness, we are not happy. That is the nature of human consciousness. No state is permanent, no matter how much you want it to be. And what is so comforting about a lie, anyway? We hold fast to the promise of a better future, a happy future, but what makes us think we deserve a better future? What have you done to deserve happiness? And don’t bore me with the ‘everyone deserves happiness’ crap. People only say that because they want to believe that they deserve happiness despite all of the sick shit that goes on inside of their heads. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see somehow who deserves to be happy. I don’t donate money to charity, I am not actively engaged in politics, I do not care about the starving children in god knows where. I am not a good person, and I have never wanted to be. You can sit there and pretend that you are a good person, keep up the facade, but we all know that deep down inside, there is sickness. There is ugliness. We are not beautiful creatures. We are messy, we are chaotic, we are cruel and we are selfish. We do not deserve happiness. There is blood on all of our hands—none of us are innocent. What makes you so special that you deserve to be happy, when no one else really is? Sometimes I think depression might not be a sickness after all. Sometimes I think misery is the only true state of being, where you can effectively see all of the absolute shit that is going on in the world. The air you breathe is polluted, the forests are on fire, the animals are dying, and the people are pretending not to see any of it. What a wonderful world. What if I want to suffer? What if I want to be in pain? What if it makes me feel alive? And then I think, “Well now Courtney, maybe you should start taking your pills again. Maybe this isn’t healthy.” But honestly, fuck being healthy. I don’t want to fit into the mold of society that says I can’t feel like this, shouldn’t feel like this. We all talk about this grandiose purpose, but what if my purpose is to be sad and purposeless? What if I don’t want to get better? What if there is no better? People have tried to diagnose me with bipolar disorder more times than I can count, but the label never fit. It is more that my being is split into two poles: the person I am, and the person I should be. The trouble is, I don’t know where the person I want to be fits in on this spectrum. Sometimes I want to be normal, and sometimes I want the pain back. Medicated Courtney is pleasant, but that is because she feels nothing. She cannot write, she cannot draw, she cannot feel. She exists only in a state of "This isn't so bad! Maybe it will get better!" Unmedicated Courtney is unpleasant, because she feels everything and nothing all at once. She can write, she can draw, she can whittle her pain into something others call beautiful only to make them feel like they are beautiful too. Is it better to pretend to be happy or pretend that happiness doesn’t exist?

ALL OF THE OTHER GOOD BOOK TITLES HAVE BEEN TAKEN |c.o|

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“I cut myself for the first time in two years today.

The pain was familiar, but not quite as sharp as I remembered. I thought it would hurt more, like carving out your deepest secret with a shard of glass covered in salt, but it felt...numb. I kept going over and over the cuts again, but still I felt nothing.

My boyfriend is angry with me for hurting myself again. He said I broke a promise we made to each other, but I am more upset I broke a promise I made to myself. I never promised him I wouldn’t hurt myself, only that I haven’t done it in years and that I was “fine” now. He should have known that someone whose darkness runs as deep as mine could never be “fine.” I’ve never been as strong as I pretend to be, but I guess I deserve an academy award for my performance. No one ever suspects that underneath this mask of skin and bones, I am a hollowed out shell of bitter disappointment.

I wonder what he will see the next time he undresses me. Perhaps betrayal, resentment, maybe even disgust. That is not unlike what I see in the mirror, although I have never claimed to see anything else. Sometimes, he lies and tells me I am beautiful. I wonder if he will be able to lie to me now.”

—Relapse. |C.O.|

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“He tells me I’ve been giving him “a look” recently, something smoldering behind my eyes. I ask him what he thinks that look means, and he won’t answer even though I know he knows.

In the car on the way to the airport, I read aloud a billboard “Asthma, Depression, Constipation, IBS...Call somethingsomethingsomething” but what I really meant to say was that I’ve been thinking a lot about that word we aren’t supposed to use and I say it out loud in my head a lot more often than I’ll ever admit to you.

When I was trying not to cry in front of you or at all—that was the moment I realized I loved you. Because in that moment, I couldn’t be sad if I loved you. If I loved you, I was safe.

I was happy.

I was whole.

I was yours.

If I loved you, I always had a piece of you with me. And if I had a piece of you with me, everything would be okay. And if you loved me, then everything would be better than okay.”

—If eyes could talk, here’s what mine would say.

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This…place. This place makes me feel things I haven’t felt anywhere else. I can feel the depression seeping in behind the thick layer of paint on the walls and the anxiety crawling out from under the floorboards. Too much has happened underneath this roof; in between these four walls. I have died here many times—and you can’t live in a house where you have died before.

Home |c.o|

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“My favorite thing to do is watch people fall in love with the version of myself I spun for them, just to see if I can. It’s a fun game to play, like a predator stalking its prey. Maybe it’s the thrill of the chase, or maybe I just like to see my puppets dance. Yet I’ve disposed of so many carcasses, and never once did I feel full.”

—Puppet Master |C.O|

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“I don't care much for loyalty. I should, I know I should. But I have found that eventually, all those who have appeared loyal will betray me. They always have; I assume they always will. What I care for is who will not leave. Lie to me, betray me, destroy me--but do not leave me. That is what I care for.

— Loyalty |C.O|

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Update II

Hi guys! The book is finished and on its way to the publisher! I will share the link to view/purchase the book once it's available; thank you for your interest and again, I apologize for my lacking presence recently, but I will be back as soon as this is done! 💖

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Updates:

So I wanted to let y'all know that things have been going pretty well with my book. Obviously this is a pretty long process, but I think I’ve finally finished the book and have sent it to some people to edit before I send it my publisher. The last step is to organize it, which I’m doing next week. With any luck, by the end of the week, I will be able to send the final copy to the publisher and get things rolling. Thank you all for being patient with me, and I promise to keep you updated on its release for anyone that is interested.

Also, thank you all for reading my work and always giving me positive feedback. Without you, I would never have had the courage to go through with publishing a book, let alone writing one. You are the reason that I am doing this, so that maybe I can reach others the way that I have seemed to reach you. Thank you for all your encouragement and praise, and most of all, thank you for being there, week after week, reading my work and sending me your own. I wouldn’t be here without you; I wouldn’t have shared or continued to share my work with anyone if it were not for you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for all that you have done. This book is as much a piece of me as it is you, and I hope you are as excited as I am for this to be a real thing!

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How to say goodbye

Before I say goodbye, I want to tell you that I will always love you, whether you are downstairs, across the street, in a different neighborhood, or in a different part of the world. And even though my heart is still breaking, I know that you will always fiercely and unconditionally love me. Those who you will meet will be lucky to have been in your presence, even just for a moment, just as I have been lucky enough to have known you for as long as I have. It has been a privilege to know you, and an even greater privilege to love and be loved by you. You will always be a part of my life, and I will always be a part of yours. Thank you for being the best person that you could be, and above all, the best person that anyone could ever ask for. Thank you for going above and beyond in what started as nothing and became a relationship that will far outlast our time together. Thank you for the memories, both the good and the bad, and thank you for the memories that are still to come. We are not finished; this is not the end for us, only a new and slightly painful beginning. And so now here it is, the moment we have dreaded and dreaded to wait for: Goodbye, I love you, and I will see you soon.

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<em>Humanity and the Human race.</em> A preview of some of the pieces I am writing for my book.

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<em>Return Policy</em>

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So I always said I wouldn't write a book, and I'm not sure if anyone still cares, but things change and I've actually been working on compiling a lot of pieces that I've posted and a lot more that I haven't and hopefully creating a book of sorts. I know I'm not very active on here but it's mainly because of how much time I've been spending writing and because I don't want to post a lot of the new material, because then what's the point of the book? I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen or when it will happen, all I can say is I've finally taken the initiative to do a little more with what I've been doing on here for years, so I hope you can be patient with me for anyone still listening!

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Not for one second do I regret kissing you that night, but sometimes I do wonder what my life would be like if our paths had never crossed. I think it would have evened out: I would have been sad without you in those moments when you seemed like mine, but I would have been happy if I did not miss you now. I have never regretted the moments with you, only those leading up to the moments without.

Happy Birthday |c.o|