I'm going to be a downer.
For the one hundred millionth time. I know I seem like I have a mental breakdown every month, but the truth is, it is just an ongoing thing.
I have sad news. My last post wasn't my 100th post. I apparently have made 100 posts + drafts, but only 84 of those have actually made it out to you.
Ok but really.
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| Yes. My shit is purple. |
This is the only picture I could bring myself to draw, and honestly, it's just so there is something attached to my Facebook link. I'm sorry. I just don't have the heart for anything more.
I don't have the heart for anything lately. If I could, I'd melt into my bed and become a sullen little Meri monster that exists in the abstract time and space between the rusting springs of the mattress I've owned since I was three years old. I'd only come out to mingle with dust bunnies and pretend to the boogeyman for small and vulnerable children.
Or maybe I could just be nothing.
I think I might prefer that, actually.
It all started with community college.
When I was in high school, I always thought of community college as the dumping ground for students who failed to live up to basic academic standards. Since I was always reassured I was smart by every grown-up who was relatively familiar with my writing and reading comprehension scores, I scoffed at the thought of ever going to such a place. I was in mother-fucking Gifted and Talented when I was 13, yo, community college had no place in my life. I would much rather expand my horizons by going to an out of state college where everything was so miserable that I would never leave my apartment. That was definitely a better life path.
I mean, being as insanely intelligent as I was, I knew community college really was more than just that. It is also an economically logical school for attending and useful for people who want a new or different start, not just a place where all those kids who smoked cigarettes by the road in front of my high school went once they finally realized the horrible life choices they'd made. But it still had that stigma in my mind when I stepped foot inside for the beginning of the spring 2014 semester one month ago.
I felt like a failure and it did not help that everyone around me in the hallways looked like kids I used to know in high school, AKA not weird looking art students. Oh and the fact that there were actually people in the hallways. Like a normal school. Haven't seen that in awhile. On my first day I passed two people talking seriously in the hallway and this is the actual conversation I overheard:
Boy: Well, what can you do?
Girl: Die.
Boy: ...Yea. True.
It was like they were speaking to me. It was a sign. Because I wanted to die right then very much.
I did not feel right about being in the whole place until a series of other shitty events made me dead in the eyes just enough to fit in with everyone else. Now I can walk with my head lowered in defeat like the rest of the student population. I even bombed my first math exam like a real high school failure.
The first math exam of the semester should be the easiest, since in theory it mostly covers review material, but it was not so easy for me. I spent the entire 2 hours and 15 minutes to work on it and bullshitted at least 8 out of the 42 questions because I ran out of time, writing down equations and random answers hoping I'd get some partial credit for "showing my work" (I did). By some miracle I managed an 80%, which is the very bottom rung of "acceptable" in my universe, but that did not mean I didn't want to burst into tears during the test because I could remember anything about the difference quotient. Which I first learned about when I was 15. Eight whole years ago.
I know I can be a good student. I've done it before. So why am I seriously fucking things up so much for the first time ever?
It's not that I didn't study. I studied for hours. I studied my little anxiety-ridden student heart out, the way a girl who always haughtily thought she was above community college would. In theory I should have nailed it. I am chalking it up to the fact that last week, a day before the exam, I was dumped for the first time ever.*
As it turns out studying through a literal veil of tears isn't quite so effective.
Well alright, that is not 100% accurate. I've been dumped before. But I've never been dumped by someone I didn't already want to break up with. Hey, I wasn't very mature about communication in high school, alright?
This time around it really stung however, and on top of watching another dream job fall into pieces in front of me during the same week, I haven't been doing so well ever since. I don't even know what I want to say in words-- my precious words that I usually have so many of-- because I feel so hurt. There simply aren't any words for it, just memories in my head that I run through over and over again wondering where I could have done better and stupid pointless hopes lingering in the back of my head like hungry stray dogs waiting outside of a restaurant that already know there aren't any scraps to spare. And the desire to melt into my bedsheets of course, of which my face is working very hard to achieve.
On the whole, I am unsure of how I am processing. This is what I do know:
1. My feelings towards the universe change every six seconds, with the default being my standard "I hate everything" and at best things are "Maybe one day somehow things will get sort of kind of ok. Maybe."
2. I almost got through a whole day yesterday without crying (almost).
3. When I hit a mood of "I want to go out in my badass ponytail and yoga pants and fuck some shit up," I felt like I was making a breakthrough.
4. I can't tell if I am overreacting or not. I probably am. I overreact to my whole life. In a very quiet, unassuming way. Somehow.
5.Other than that I have thus far resisted the temptation to surprise my family with a new dog. I've been missing my
6. I went on a date on Sunday hoping it would help me deal with things or at least distract me. It was alright until the guy kissed me goodnight and I nearly lost my shit. He hasn't contacted me since. Yup. Definitely way too soon.
7. My only consolation prizes are that I am saving a fuck-load on gas money not driving to Denver multiple times a week and I no longer have to sleep on the world's shittiest bed.
8. I made a tiramisu for a date night awhile back (think Superbowl time) and brought it back home with me after things ended thinking it might still be ok and maybe someone in my family would want it. It has sat untouched in my fridge for a week but I refuse to throw it out until I feel more emotionally capable of letting go… I am pretty certain it will rot in there.
It was a lucky coincidence that the day after shit hitting the fan I started therapy, something I have long avoided. Everyone kept telling me to do it and feeling trapped in a corner, I foresaw a shitty future, so for once in my life I was on the ball about my emotional health.
And then I went and wrote this super personal post and we can all see I'm turning into a train wreck. So that undid all the good steps I've made so far.
Anyway. Take me setting foot in community college, losing a job I've been working to have for months, getting dumped by the first person that made me feel genuine happiness and gave me chronic nausea at the same time, having a severe reaction to that, therapy, and well... All of these events have made me begin to face the fact that I ended up in community college not because I am an academic failure but because I have mental health issues.
There. I said it.
A lot of things in my life are because I just don't know how to deal with people or with my own emotions. It is not because I am not smart or good at the things I do. There is just some bridge in my brain that got knocked out somewhere down the line…. y'know, the whole "social intelligence" bridge.
So here I am. Everything feels shitty. Nothing anyone has said to me in the past two weeks has made me feel even remotely better. When I turn off my lights and lay down at night I feel like I'm being strangled in the chest, if that makes any sense, which is why is almost 1 AM and I persist onwards in writing.
I dunno. "Everything feels shitty." That is just all there is right now. And that is probably all there will be for awhile. Maybe hopefully one day it kind of sort will be ok. If I'm lucky. I don't have any choice but to wait and see, do I?
I'm going to try to write a lighter take on this next week that will hopefully make the both of us laugh.
*Not to mention two days before valentines day and two weeks before my pole competition, of which the latter makes me more upset because now I have no focus and seriously decreased motivation to care.
**Because apparently that doesn't make someone your boyfriend. Also sorry if I don't know how to properly use "whom" in a sentence. I can never remember the rule. And frankly, I don't give a fuck because you know what I meant. So actually no. I'm not sorry.
***Hooray for passive aggressive footnotes!
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