And here I am, lying underneath this wooden desk in this empty classroom in the furthest reaches of campus.

There is something so unnecessarily dramatic about the situation and yet I cannot bring myself to emerge from my cavern of solitude.

Nowhere else is safe.

To be honest not even this cold linoleum is safe.

My own mind is a goddamn war zone. My heart is full of disquiet. I cannot get up. I cannot face reality. I cannot face myself or my issues or the light of day. I am fucking stuck here on this snot-green floor, staring at old pieces of chewing gum and this old dusty pipe, praying to Christ or Allah or Buddha or Vishnu or whoever the fuck has the divine power to get me out from under here.

Because I am not fucking strong enough to do it myself. I am a weak fucking person and I am riddled with flaws and now I am stuck.

And it is only when I hear the first footsteps, a set of heels click-clacking loud against the ground, that I will myself to stand up.

Keep moving.

Keep going through the motions.

Keep plastering that same fake smile on that same ugly mug I’m forced to look at in the mirror every morning until maybe one day that fake smile is not so fake.

In the end it will always be other people that save us from ourselves.

A set of footsteps.

A smile.

An acknowledgement of your existence that reminds you you are alive and that you are not alone in this fucked-up world.

In the end, everybody needs saving. In the end, divinity presents itself in something as simple as a set of footsteps. You just have to open up your goddamn ears.

And I will get through this life if I have to drag my feet the entire fucking way.

And I am at my worst.

Where as previously the nature of my depression would beg in anguish for someone to save us, it has now given up. My depression, now a discrete and discernible entity inside the four walls of my body, longs for the absence of love. On both knees it clings to the ankles of my life, asking for the departure of all light so that it may find solace in the justification of its own existence. So that we may both slip quietly out the backdoor. 

Without word. 

Without notice. 

The lack of reason amplifies the pain; makes it loud upon my ears. Dampens all other sounds. Brings an awareness of the now desperately beating cardiac muscle in that same cavernous space.

The lack of reason awakens another beast. 

A

  n

    x

      i

       e

          t

            y. 

And I imagine them at war with each other. I imagine my anxiety and my depression like monsters; cold and massive bodies covered in dark green scales, towering above the concrete giants of the city. Snapping jaws and sharp teeth and long white claws tearing into each other, fighting for control of my body. 

And I am helpless. I am left watching. Waiting. All I can do is sit, frozen, staring at this computer screen while they fight their bloody fight. Hoping that they will destroy each other in the battle.

I am drowning. 

I am literally drowning. There are words in my lungs where the air should be. 

Trying to stay afloat in the sea of depression and anxiety and insecurities while trying to stay strong and happy for another person and being enrolled in a full course load in your final year of university and working part time and ksljhdeiwyrgFDBCJEHKwrtuewadjsb

Ok. Okay papers. Write the papers, Lisa. Write the papers. That's your only job right now. In this moment. Just write the fucking papers.

Fuck.

Inadequacy follows me around wherever I go.
Like a stink.
A putrid stench of lack
I can’t get rid of.
And it fills my nose.
And it fills my lungs.
Asphyxiate.
Until I become desperate.
Until each breath reaches out like long and clumsy fingers.
Grasping at the air.
And I come up with nothing every time.

The downside of being a wallflower

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” 

For the longest time I refused to believe that this quote had any sort of validity what-so-ever. I refused this idea for a number of reasons, but mostly I just did not want to take responsibility for my own failed relationships. I didn’t want to accept that it was maybe my fault I had been broken up with 6 times in the last 6 years. I didn’t want to accept the series of never-ending heartache; the ebb and flow of a heart getting attached and detached and reattached to another. I didn’t want to accept that it was my fault I had been cheated on, and my fault I was left depressed and anxious and destroyed. Crushed beneath the weight of it all. A million scattered pieces. I couldn’t accept my own weaknesses; my reliance on others for approval. The need for confirmation that I wasn’t a completely useless fuck up. I couldn’t accept that I had settled simply for the sake of repairing my own deflated sense of self-worth. 

At the time, I struggled to establish the existence of that very fine line between driving the hand that hits, and standing in the way of it after you realize it’s about to collide with your face. Is there a difference between action and inaction? I couldn’t be sure so instead I felt all of it. Every failure, every pang of guilt. Every insecurity. I welcomed all of it into my heart, openly, without discrimination. I let these things infiltrate my deepest thoughts. I let them wrap their cold, bony fingers around the last bits of self-esteem that my mother tried to instill in me; let them cling desperately onto me until what remained inside of me was all but recognizable. A lot of people use the expression “a shell of what I once was”, but I wasn’t a shell. I wasn’t empty, or hollow, or void of emotion. Not even remotely. I was a complicated mix of a thousand other people’s damning disappointments. A thousand excuses. A thousand broken hearts. I was not a shell. My inner being was completely saturated with mistakes, unrequited love, things I dared to dream that were far too great for the scope of me, other people’s mistakes, other people’s unrequited love, other people’s unfulfilled dreams.

I couldn’t believe “we accept the love we think we deserve”, because believing it meant I thought very little of myself. And it also meant that I willingly allowed these things into my life, and as a result of my inaction, I let the hand make contact. These are things you cannot feel when you are trying to find strength within yourself. When you are trying to connect with your own intrinsic worth.

So, I left blame where blame was due. At the source. 

But did that make me happy?

No. 

And did that send me into the arms of someone better?

No. Not initially.

All it did was create a host of unrealistic expectations and caused me to project those expectations onto my partner. Disappointment followed suit, as one can imagine.

So now what?

Okay, so we really do accept the love we think we deserve. I get it. You can’t expect anybody to be anything. You fall in love with someone and you accept their flaws and that’s it. If they’re shit, you leave. But when you truly, truly think you deserve nothing (or less than nothing), even when it’s perfect, you find flaws. Make excuses. You hold onto depression and anxiety and broken hearts like they are goddamn security blankets; they make for really good fucking excuses not to get out of bed in the morning or get involved with anybody who wants to love you. And you hold onto those flaws, and you hold onto those excuses, and you push. Push for the sake of pushing. Push because you are convinced you are a completely fucking unlovable human being. Push so that whoever has decided to love you, doesn’t ever see the things you do when you look at yourself in the mirror. Push so that you never have to be vulnerable, or afraid, or sad. Push so that nobody can break you. Because everyone ends up breaking you. Keep pushing until all of the good things are completely removed from your life, so that you can justify your own emotions. So that it starts to make sense. So that you can cling to that depression security blanket and avoid all the fucking unanswerable “why?’s”. “I don’t know” is not an answer. Push away every single goddamn thing that could bring any sort of meaning to your life, because good things force you to face the bad things that you don’t feel strong enough to face yet. And especially push away everyone who wants to help you be strong. Because you are too busy stubbornly holding onto the stigma that people need to have it all figured out before they’re allowed to let anybody into their life.

Then find somebody who feels the exact same way. See how much pushing results.

When will we ever be ready to let each other in? 

I guess that’s the nature of the fucking beast though, isn’t it?

I wish any of that made sense.

Sometimes love means letting someone go.

Were love a choice, you could have chosen to love me. You could have chosen to be certain about your feelings. You could have chosen to be better for me.

I tried my absolute best to be what I thought you needed. Until I realized what you needed and what you wanted didn't really match up.

I am sorry that you are hurt, but I have done nothing wrong. I will not apologize for pursuing happiness. I will not deny myself those things that make me feel good. Especially for someone who believes everything in life is a conscious choice and who subsequently chose not to act.

I gave you all of me and every opportunity to love me the way I deserve to be loved. So it was your choice not to be what I needed.

You can only hear "my heart is not open" and "I don't know if I will ever introduce you to my parents" and "I don't know if I can ever love you" and "maybe we shouldn't do this" so many times before you begin to pull away.

You pushed and pushed and pushed. Where did you expect me to go?

Never forget that I love you. My heart is big enough to love the world.
But I never fit into your definition of love. I wasn't the "one" and you made that pretty clear.

"MY DEAR
FIND WHAT YOU LOVE AND LET IT KILL YOU.
LET IT DRAIN YOU OF YOUR ALL. LET IT CLING ONTO YOUR BACK AND WEIGH YOU DOWN INTO EVENTUAL NOTHINGNESS.
LET IT KILL YOU AND LET IT DEVOUR YOUR REMAINS. FOR ALL THINGS WILL KILL YOU, BOTH SLOWLY AND FASTLY, BUT IT’S MUCH BETTER TO BE KILLED BY A LOVER.
FALSELY YOURS,
CHARLES BUKOWSKI”

“I said goodbye again
sucking up all that was left of her into the
little that was left of
me. I said, 'don't look for me again. fuck it.
we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye.” 

It was silent. Completely. Which didn’t make sense because everything around me appeared to be making noise. The speakers  were pulsating. Everyone around me was talking and laughing; deep belly laughs that spread through their faces and caused them to clap their hands together in amusement. Glasses were being dropped; glasses shattered. Cars outside the windows hurried past. Men and women were all grinding against each other, moaning in pleasure. But all I heard was silence. Dead on the night. Not even the whir of all the hundreds of sounds occurring at one time in front of my eyes. It was as if every sound wave in the universe collided together at exactly the same moment and destroyed each other. Or as if I had been deafened by the blow. 

The only thing ringing in my ears now was the hum of a million of my own thoughts swarming in my head all at the same time.  What and why and how could this be happening? Because none of it made any sense and it all went against everything I ever thought I knew about myself. A million thoughts but the feel of it all remained a consistent and unwavering guilt; gripping at my stomach like the chubby hands of a child, making it impossible to move, and even more impossible to sit still. 

Empathy is the world's greatest gift, but the individual's greatest weakness. 

Will I ever allow myself to be happy?