Trying to exist

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Lonelycore

No one knows where the fog comes from. You’re sure it exists though, you feel it blurring the world around you, enveloping you in a damp coldness that chills you to your bones.

The others notice it too, not the fog, but the effect it has on you.They cluck worriedly and tell you about how ashy-grey your face is and how thin you’ve gotten and how the bags under your eyes keep getting bigger. They tell you these things like you have never seen your reflection before, like you don’t sit in front of the mirror picking every flawed element that you are made of. You lean into the fog then, the familiar cold comforting you as you watch their faces slowly blur away. You are invisible, and you are safe.

The fog slowly gets thicker, and colder. You walk around astonished that people don’t notice the cloud of condensation that follows you. Your fingers feel stiff from the cold and your body shivers from the onslaught of the fog. You see people walking on the street, holding hands, hugging one another, sharing the heat you so desperately crave. Your body trembles, shivering in memory of the warmth you never really had. You put on a sweater. The fog thickens around you once more.

It’s cold, is the thing. It is so,so cold.You wait for someone, for anyone, to give you a hug. You wait for them to say words warm enough to melt the ice that fills your bones.You look at groups of friends and you ache to be like them, to laugh at nothing in the buttery glow of happiness. When was the last time you laughed like that? Have you ever been that happy? Your chest feels like someone has scooped out an integral part of you. You want to yell at them for being too loud; You want to beg them to include you, to make this pain go away somehow. You want so,so much. You look once more at the giggling group of friends and you are struck with the terrible, horrible realisation that you will never be one of them.

You fold yourself into the fog. You are invisible, and you are alone.

You can feel the colour slowly leaching out of you. You sit in front of the mirror for hours just to make sure you’re still there, to make sure you haven’t disappeared accidentally. People no longer comment on your looks, you phone no longer flashes with messages of people you wish you could call your friends. You open a chat and stare at the keyboard. There is dust on your friendship and dust in your lungs and dust on the person you used to be. You have been forgotten now. You switch off your phone with frostbitten fingers and stare at the bluish tinge of your palms. 

It is so,so cold.

You go to the beach one morning and look at the waves sluggishly roll out. The mist envelops you so thickly you can almost pretend the fog never existed at all. No one notices your absence, no one cares that you have seemingly ceased to exist. You know with a sudden, sharp clarity that if you looked in the mirror you would see nothing at all. There is a lazy river and it is uninterested in the way it pumps your blood. Your heart beats in time with the waves lapping on the shore. You are alive, and it does not matter at all.

You breathe in the ocean mist and make one last discovery.

You are the fog.

You are invisible.

Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?

(Or maybe that’s what you’ve always been, have you ever been real at all? Has anybody ever ever noticed you? Who are you trying to fool? You’ve always been the fog.)

You walk into the fog.

It’s not cold anymore.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Strangercore

You have always been a little too good at lying, too good at boxing up the imperfect version of yourself in favour of the perfect image that people want.

It’s a gift,at first.The ability to wear personalities like masks, shuffling through them with ease as you mould yourself to people’s liking. A distant part of yourself always flares up in warning, reminding you that telling a lie is, technically, wrong. That this is deceit. You are not meant to be a reflection of people’s wants and desires.

Unfortunately, that part is far removed and infinitely easy to ignore in the face of all the love your lies bring you. You are not meant to be perfect, but living as this made up person is the closest you can ever get.

It’s the happiness really, that’s the reason you continue to pretend to be someone you aren’t. Who else would keep everyone happy all the time? Who else would reassure them that their expectations are not being let down? Your own emotions are petty things that can be easily ignored, they’d just stand in the way of your persona anyway.

The thing is, you don’t mean to forget.You’ve been suppressing who you are for so long that you simply forget you’re supposed to be anyone at all. You slip into the mask, not noticing when it digs into your skin. It’s a mere discomfort, another trivial thing that is easily tucked away.

The fear comes much, much later. It comes when you open your mouth to speak in a voice that is not yours, a voice that has never,ever belonged to you. 

You talk in this stranger’s voice as people reassure you that it is yours. It has always been yours,they say, lying to a liar.

It only gets worse from there, the lies burrow into your skin and sit heavy on your tongue, weighing it down with the effort of being someone you’re not. You look at the mirror and stare at a person you don’t know. A person you have never, ever seen before. The person in the mirror blinks when you do, the face they are wearing is not yours.

You go about your life in someone else’s skin, desperately hoping someone will finally notice, will finally ask where you’ve gone and where this stranger pretending to be you has come from, ask them why they have decided to steal your life.

The lies turn into truths and you continue on. Speaking muddled half truths with a tongue that feels too big for your mouth, living a life that you realise has never really been yours.

The lies start seeping out of you, they become so natural that you know it is only a matter of time before you lose your consciousness, before the person you used to be ceases to exist forever. You don’t bother to think about people’s reactions, you know for a fact that not a single person would notice the difference.

You scream and cry and struggle uselessly to remember the person you used to be, to recall the face you wore before you were forced into wearing the unfamiliar one staring back at you from the mirror. You try desperately to separate the truth from your lies, scared that you will find nothing at all, scared that you will peel back the mask you wore so easily only to realise it was never a mask at all, scared to admit that maybe you were never real.

You fall to your knees and the perfect plastic you are made of creaks underneath your weight. You are terrified to get hurt, terrified you will cut yourself because you know that you would only bleed lies.

You talk to the people who call themselves your friends and ask them for something, anything to prove that you were a real person, to show that you existed.

The stranger merely smiles, making your cheeks ache with the effort of being someone else.

You have always been a little too good at lying, maybe it's because you have never been anyone at all.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

So here’s the thing about being replacable: It sucks.A lot.

Have you ever examined your favourite book from the point of view of a background character? From the point of view of a character who was present in the situation but not important enough to make any lasting impression?

The thing about stories is that there are always background characters. Characters with whole lives that are brushed aside because they didn’t make enough of an impact.

And so in a world filled with seven billion people who have seven billion different stories, some people are just background characters. Because they didn’t make enough of a lasting impact.

And that’s fine. Because no matter what, you are always the lead of your own story. You are always someone’s closest friend or worst enemy or favourite person.

Until you’re not.

Because in a world full of seven billion people, you need to cling to the stories you have. They are what make you real,after all. 

Because once you start slipping, once your story becomes nothing, what have you got left? Once you stop being someone’s closest friend or worst enemy or favourite person, what even are you?

None of us start off as background characters, some of us just fade away until our stories are nothing but whispers hidden in the rustling of trees, waiting for someone to be quiet enough to listen to them.

How many people have you forgotten? How many people’s stories have you erased? How many people have been a background character in your story until they faded away to nothingness? And if they faded away to nothingness, were they ever really there at all?

Was I ever really here at all?

[stardust-and-papercuts]

do you wonder what it’s like to be loved? to be the kind of person that people wait for ? to be the kind of person whose absence feels like a physical ache? to be surrounded by people who know something’s wrong because they’re so attuned to you that they can just tell? to be the the kind of person who is remembered?

do you ever wonder what it’s like to matter?

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

[tricornking]

I'm just going to leave this here

[stardust-and-papercuts]

I don’t know

I suppose everything that’s anything starts and ends with I don’t know for me.

What exactly do i not know? Well, everything honestly. Everything feels fundamentally wrong somehow. I don’t know how to make it better. In fact, I don’t know if I want to make it better.

Everything feels wrong.

This is a fact.

It’s a fact like “I’m smart” was a fact. It’s a fact like “I like writing” was a fact.

As I sit in the aftermath of low marks and empty pages, I need to cling to all the facts I can get. So yes, everything feels wrong. And yes, I’m mostly sad.

But all I know, whether it’s good or bad, is just another place where I don’t need to say I don’t know.

I hate those three words,I think. I hate the fact that I say them so much. But how much ever I try, I can’t bring myself to find any other words that encompass a total sense of loss and cluelessness.

Not knowing feels like and aluminium can being slowly crushed on my chest. Sometimes hopelessness surrounds me like an invisible bubble, like all the blood in my hands has slowed down and thickened. ‘Sadness in my veins’ sounds like I’m trying to be edgy, but that’s the only way I can describe it.

The worst part is, I can’t remember. I know I felt a weight on my chest and I know I felt sadness in my veins but I can’t remember what it was like.I’m sure a couple of days from now I’ll feel it again. “Oh,” I’ll say “I remember this, I don’t like this.”

But then I’ll forget again. Then I’ll want to be sad because I know what sad feels like. And I can’t forget what being sad feels like, because then I won’t know anything at all.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

I don’t have anything to say.

Which is strange and weird and stupid because I have so,so much to say. I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to catch the swirling thoughts that float around my head and flutter away before I can find a way to say what I mean.

It’s about talking? 

More importantly it’s about i don’t know how to talk, or who to talk to.

And so I don’t talk to anyone. Which is counterproductive honestly. 

Because then nothing’s been said, and the small sliver of confidence I had shrinks and twists and warps until it’s nothing at all.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

[stardust-and-papercuts]

I don’t know if I can talk.

These words come out of my mouth and they feel strange. Of course I can talk, I do it all the fucking time. I’m constantly saying things and starting conversations and laughing at things people say.

And it feels strange. 

It feels wrong.

My throat feels closed up and my body feels like it’s buzzing with the tens of thousands of words that keep swirling around in my head. I can’t talk to anyone because the words get stuck in my throat.

Here’s the thing, right? : People are pretty great. If I told anyone I was sad, they’d tell me I was awesome and cool and amazing without a second thought. And that’s a good thing! Sometimes I want people to tell me I’m awesome and cool and amazing.

But I always feel like I’m lying. I don’t know if people are lying to me or not. I sit here with labels that people have given me wondering if I’m lying to them or not.

Even now I’m writing this on my laptop instead of in my diary. Even now I’m saying things without really saying anything.

My head’s a loop of thoughts that go nowhere and say nothing.

If you’ve read this, I’m sorry.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Rooftop thoughts

I look at the night sky sometimes, an endless sea of black drowned out by the thousands of lights that power the city.

And I think, Is it really worth it? Is it really possible to be happy in a world where everything’s gone wrong?

Resignation feels dark like smoke that coils around me, like disappointment and like the sky that’s too dark because I can’t see stars anymore. 

But then I look at the people around me. 

I look at people laughing while they talk to their friends and I look at strangers helping people they don’t know. I see thousands of signatures on petitions and think about people miles away trying to make a difference.

Because there’s people wishing on eyelashes and dandelions hoping things will get better. There’s tens of thousands of people listening to the same song and seeing different things.

And I think of smiles sticky with chocolate and sprinkled with happiness, I think of a time not-so long ago and how everything still wasn’t perfect.

Because everything’s never perfect.

I look up at a night sky that’s gone bleak because of the city lights.

And maybe if I look hard enough,I can see stars twinkling. Faintly blinking, not forgotten, just lost.

And I think maybe, just maybe, things don’t need to be perfect.

Because maybe, just maybe being ‘okay’ is good enough.

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Gifted kid (burnout)

I have always been a good student. the kind of kid you hold up as an example because ‘look at how much studying they do’. A mini genius with certificates that mean nothing but you show them off anyway, a tiny piece of paper telling everyone I’m smart.

And I never had to try. It was always easy to be the best and be smart. It was easy to have friends and act like I knew everything.

And then it wasn’t.

Because then I didn’t know what I had been doing right.

Because then I didn’t know how I talked to my friends without lying to them. I was perfect right? Why wasn’t I perfect anymore?

It was a slow kind of crash. A gradual descent that I didn’t realise until I had already fallen down. Because if I’m not smart, then what am I? 

I’ve always been smart, I’ve always loved reading and writing. I’ve always been good enough. But that’s all I’ve ever been.

‘The smart one’ and ‘the nerdy one’ and ‘the bookworm’.

What do I do if I’m not smart anymore? Who am I if I’m not smart anymore? 

Because now there’s unread books that I should be reading and empty pages that should be filled and I don’t know how I did it. 

“You’re such a bright student”, people tell me, my parents and my teachers and my friends and a thousand other voices that crash together like cymbals ringing in my ears “Why don’t you apply yourself more?”

And now I’m getting examples of people I should be like.

And I can’t help but ask : “Am I not good enough anymore?”

Because I’ve always been enough

Who am I now that I’m not?

[stardust-and-papercuts]

Screaming into the void

Ok, so it’s not like this is the first ever tumblr blog I’m making, this is just...realer.

Everyone I’ve talked to so far sees tumblr as this void where they can’t be judged. Where they can be themselves without being afraid of what anyone thinks. And that’s very strange.

Not because there’s something inherently wrong with that, but because I don’t feel like that. I feel like I’ve picked up another persona that I have to justify, another person who I’m supposed to be.

People tell you to be yourself, and that’s weird, because I don’t know who I am just yet. I’m kind of drifting through life trying to define what I think I might be.

I know I like writing, I just don’t know if I’m any good at it. I don’t know if people are judging me or wil judge me if I try to be my ‘100% true unfiltered self’.

So yeah, this is me, ‘screaming into the void’.

Here’s to hoping it screams back.