Everything is especially hard right now
In the span of a month, my friend killed herself, my moms friend died of cancer, my dads fiance gave birth to a baby girl and my mom lost everything that meant something to her (other than me and my sister) to a fire that isn’t insured and that I need to now go through a legal battle with. I made a stand with my longest friend and properly told them they had no place in my life. Also, my antidepressants are at the lowest dose they’ve been in since I’ve been on them. So there’s all THAT for context.
Don’t get me wrong - my pain is not comparable to what mom must be going through. It’s not comparable to Emmy’s closest friends or family. But it is my pain, and I’m feeling it strongly, and it’s creating a giant tide that is threatening to sweep me under.
I like lists, so here goes:
- Singing and “being good at things”
I’m going to start with loss because, understandably, it’s the biggest feeling here. It is what I’m feeling in whatever hurt feelings i have about the other two items on my lift.
Mom’s storage container was completely burned down - but some photos were salvageable. I had to separate some from heat-damaged and waterlogged albums before they could bind together. I don’t know if I got to all of the photos that were most badly effected, but I did my best. Those photos were full of what we’ve lost. There were my mom and dad, happy and together. There was the home we owned, there were the family members I haven’t seen since I was six. There was all the futures we imagined and hoped for, and none of them were here. It could be worse. It could be so much worse. We are all alive, and we all love each other in our own, complicated ways. It will be ok, but I am grieving for what we almost had in those photos. The promises that never came through.
(I know in all of this that the “cure” for me feeling better is to be grateful - and I will - but I need to let myself feel bad first. I think that’s healthy)
I am talented. I am deeply lucky to have a natural affinity for a lot of things, and for those that I don’t, I am a hard worker by nature. But where the fuck do I find the time to study everything? Where in the day do I draw, learn to code, learn to read music, learn to play music, exercise, do my university work, do my tutoring work, go to my shit part time job, cook and clean, walk my dog within a day? Where am I meant to find this time? I’m mourning the fact that I need to make sacrifices in my time. I mourn the fact that I will never be a singer or an actress. I mourn that I can’t afford singing lessons. I mourn that I don’t have the time to nurture my friendships. And then... where do I rest? Where do I “take time off”. How can I AFFORD time off when I have rent to pay, a dog and a cat (who i love) to feed? The car that enables me to go places that bring joy? It feels like an impossible conundrum. And there’s this hurt, scared part of me that worries I’ve left it all too late. Like language acquisition, I feel like the time to become “good” at anything more than art and writing hightailed it away from me after i turned thirteen. There’s no need to be “good” at things, but I want to. I want to be better than I am. I want someone to hear me sing and go “oh my god, that’s amazing” and pay for me. I want a scholarship that means I don’t need to work at JB Hi-Fi. I want a lot of things. That’s ok. I have a lot of things, I know this.
The gym. God damn - the gym. I hate myself right now. I don’t like my personality right now because it’s raw and hurting, and its been pushed to the point where I am gaining selfishness back because I need to preserve myself. My hair is growing out - that’s a relief. But I’m FAT. And in all of these tasks I need to complete - surely the gym is at the bottom rung? Health and fitness top, but gym bottom? I won’t get my masters by having a body I am at peace with. I’ll get my masters by drawing and coding. But I also know that gyming (IN THEORY) will give me the energy to do these things more. But it’s such a fight. It’s a toxic space right now because every time I go there, I’m aware I should be doing something else. Every time I’m not there, I’m berating myself because I should be. Every time I feel ugly, I ask myself why does it matter anyway? And if I really think I’m ugly, why have I half-heartedly done this gym thing for a YEAR for a change of....2kgs?!! Back and forth?! My body looks the exact same through my frantic weeks of starving and bingeing and I’m just. So tired. I wish I didn’t have a body. I wish I was just naturally skinny so that I could go to the gym because I felt like it not because I felt my physical portrayal needed it.
I’m tired and I’m finished. But I will get there. It’s just so hard tonight. It’s threatening to be bigger than me.
