Regretfully, Yours Truly

The cycles of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse start fires so big that the soot dirties everyone. And right now I feel like I’m choking on the smoke. 

I’m looking for a cure-all. Something that makes me feel like I’m not feeling now. Maybe it’s alcohol, sex, or apple cider vinegar. Vitamin D pills, or more tree hugging. I don’t know how to ask for support sometimes, I don’t know what kind of support I need. I don’t know how to talk about it. The pain that I carry isn’t just mine; it’s existed long before me. What I worry about is if it will continue to exist after me. What I worry about is if it will end me too. Like those before me, will the pain end me too? 

Everyone has skeletons in their closet—I know that. But for some reason my skeletons feel so much more bare-boned than anyone else’s. I feel like grinding them up into powder, or running away. Whichever one comes easier.  So many of my nights are spent sitting in my bed and talking to myself now. Wondering how to patch wounds I can’t remember getting. Crying about things I’ve cried about several times. And angry at all the empty people I’ve met who were hoping I could pour myself into them. 

Age 22 feels like a personal crisis. It isn’t just about shedding the old; it’s about loneliness and focusing on the lack. It’s about being overlooked and watching how the outside world doesn’t validate my inside.  It’s about focusing on depth, and realizing how many people don’t have it. It’s about observations. Watching beautiful women, pausing—maybe even crying. It’s about wondering why people don’t like me, and if I care or not (I do care, at least for now). I’m learning there’s a disconnect, maybe between how I view myself and how others view me. Or is it about how the world treats me versus how I think I deserve to be treated?  Either way, whatever is going on, is fucked up. 

I’m really tired of crying. I’m really tired of people telling me I need to heal. How do I heal? Where’s the step-by-step guide? What should I do? Do I need to journal more, stretch? How do I make my inside feel better? And how do I make my outside look like I’m not dealing with anything at all? I want to sleep more. I want happiness in everyday life. I want closer connections. I want someone who gets it. 

Can I talk to you about my family? Can I tell you about what’s wrong? Because I’m starting to feel like I’m sinking deeper into generational curses, and it’s starting to make me feel gross. I can’t help but notice the family resemblance. They look like everything I could be. 

Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of the most. Being just like them.  I’m really worried that I won’t live up to my full potential. I’m even more worried that I don’t have any potential at all. I’m focused on the fact that I keep making mistakes. And I judge myself too harshly for not looking like other women. I worry about my health, ‘cause food doesn’t taste good anymore. 

22 is learning that I am a spiteful person. I’m living in spite of the depression. I’m creating in spite of the exhaustion. I’m holding on in spite of the world feeling like it’s ending. I don’t need saving. I don’t need pity. I need to be understood.

What I hate the most about my traumas is that they shape me into the person I am, and they fuel me from the inside. What I hate most about my traumas, is that they’ve led me here, directly into this sentence. It’s taught me how to turn the pain into something meaningful. I’m still trying to cope with the fact that I had to go through so many things in order to be able to create the way that I do. In a way it’s unfair, but you can’t tell me that it also isn’t magnificent. 

Thank you.