things i could never say out loud

she/her

[soanyfuckingways]

when i wake up, i wonder if this life is worth getting out of bed for.

do i brush my teeth and hair, unplug my phone, get ready for the day ahead out of necessity?

do i sleep in until the evening, stay in a state of bad dreams and fantasies until i cannot close my eyes any longer?

i get up take my medicine with a drink of water from the sink.

No cup, I put my head under the faucet.

I brush my hair, the feeling of the hairbrush against my head wakes me up enough to feel like a person.

I get dressed, finding the cleanest clothes I can. Sometimes I search through the dirty laundry for those pants I really want.

Finally, I’m ready to brush my teeth.

The teeth I have dreams about falling out in my sleep.

I grind them, and wake up the next day wondering if I have cavities in all of them.

When I walk, I try not to let them hit together because it hurts.

All day I think about the fact that I cannot clench my jaw.

I wonder if I can stop before it starts.

If the medicine isn’t working and that’s where my problem lies.

I take a drink of the alcohol I stole and wonder what I could do differently.

Does the medicine still work if I’m going to drink every night.

Does the medicine work at all if i never try it by itself?

I ask the doctor for a higher dose of antidepressants.

He says he can’t raise them at the same time as the other meds.

I wonder if he knows I was too scared to ever take the benzos.

I wonder if he thinks I really need them.

I’m out of bed, i get a cup of water and get into my car.

I find a can of alcohol, a small percentage but alcohol nonetheless.

i pour it into my extra cup, looking to see if anyone can spot what im doing.

They never do, I hope they don’t ever.

I drive to work, I see the kids I spend all day with.

I can’t imagine being sober at work and I am sad about it.

I can’t imagine being at work without something else to make it bearable.

Everyone comes in smelling like weed,

I wonder how much worse it is to be an alcoholic.

I have spent my time being both, and wonder where is the line on either.

[soanyfuckingways]

i have hated my own hatred.

how do i find something to love in a life i have found so much to dislike.

where there has been light i have found the tunnel of oddity and anger.

where someone has tried to pull me, strangle me out of the peril of loneliness, i have forced myself back in, and decided

i am better here.

there is not a darkness i have tried not to face .

but in the light there is much i have yet to decide that i am ready, in my willing, in my responsibility and displeasure to tune into.

in some ways, sadness is easier to know than anything else. i can reaffirm the grief i have felt since i was fifteen. moving past it is much harder than deciding it has passed me. i am always looking for a way out of this, but am not ready to actually move out of it.

A never ending debate of being ready to let go, or wondering if letting go is forgetting.

I miss my brother and who I used to be.

Will letting go ever allow us to become what we wanted?

i have wondered if I could find a way to fulfill his dreams.

help people in a way that was greater than me.

I dont think i can. i am destined to be who i am and he was destined to be all that he was. I look for everything that is good in the world as a sign of everything that was good in him. I look for goodness in the worst because I know he would have protected me.

I try to be the good in the world and for others because I know he would have protected me.

If there is anything I can do it is make the world better for others.

I do try to protect the people I come across.

I hope that the children i come across do not have to face what ive faced, but i know that they do.

i know there are some burdens that cannot be helped by others.

i hope when we do come in contact they can feel empowered to share their stories

I know that some, like myself, will never tell the sad things that have happened for hopes they can have a good time within the time they are given to have it. i know they will have lives tainted by their experiences, but also having learned that happiness can come to them even not easily.

At least that is what i hope.

In this life i think we can only hope for happiness and believe that it will reach us.

I know that many people believe that happiness is what you make it. but that is a privileged belief.

I hope these children reach happiness that is underneath the skies that I can give them. I know that sounds narcissistic, but I wouldn’t say it if they did not make me believe it was the only possibility for their positivity.

I hope that I reach happiness, not under the aspect that I have given anyone else anything. But under the idea that what I have to offer the world aside from taking care of someone else is good enough.

[soanyfuckingways]

im depressed and tired of living and wish i could do anything but wake up in the morning.

live in my dreams forever

i dont want to die

i know what death is like and what happens when people die

there is nothing in death, absolutely nothing

your family and friends live with nothing left of you, but clothes and memories and the labor of having to move on

i cannot die and give that to others, im scared of dying.

i hate living, the idea of the struggle to survive

i dont want to struggle

i want to live

[weltenwellen]

Ocean Vuong, from “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

[literaturecravings]

—The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

[feral-ballad]

Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic: Poems; "A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck"

[Text ID: "At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?"]

[kafk-a]

Raymond Carver, from Late Fragment

[gwyoi]

I hate dogecoin for bastardizing the noble shiba inu.

[tiredofname]

"And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in."

- Jane Austen

[weltenwellen]

Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923

[weltenwellen]

Forugh Farrokhzad, tr. by Sholeh Wolpé, from “Window”, Sin

[apoemaday]

Speech to the Young, Speech to the Progress-Toward

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, “Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.” You will be right. For that is the hard home-run. Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

“I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.”

— Gillian Flynn, from Dark Places

[nauseadaily]

“I have led a toothless life, he thought. A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on—and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

[rotgospels]

“Why can’t you see me? Why can’t I stop / needing you to see me?”

— Chen Chen, from When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities; “Nature Poem” (via luthienne)

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao

[soanyfuckingways]

“Sometimes, all you need is permission to feel. Sometimes, what causes the most pain is actually the attempt to resist feeling, or the shame that grows up like thorns around it.”

Olivia Laing