zip

Everything is worse now.

I am so isolated and always in my head. I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know how my existence can feel so wrong. How my being there can be so bad. How my life can be such a mess. I always felt so... on top of it. But I just got broken and haven't gotten back up. I ddon't even know what actually broke me. But I kept spiraling. And it just keeps getting worse.

My sister's a shitty parent. A shitty person. She would rather try for a man's attention than take care of her child. She terrifies me because she wanted her kid and is doing an awful job. Meanwhile, I don't want to be a parent. I don't think I'll be a good one. I hate the mother. I gotta get over that, though. I gotta get over a lot, I guess. But I'm getting through days. I didn't used to be able to do that. The pit is back and it is so wide but I am not laying in it all day, even though no one is pulling me out. I am climbing out myself. I'm not getting better right now but I'm coping and I've been failing that for years now. I failed to cope. And now I'm here in what feels so weirdly like a strange place. I feel so estranged and different and other. And now I have to convince someone else to leave to make sure I don't have to come back here with any regularity. This place is a black hole, and it ruins people. I feel so much fear. It is the only thing keeping my feet under me at this point. I'm not suicidal, I just fear so terribly what happens if I fail again. Will this be the one where I ruin my life, for real? I have gotten through so much, eventually I can't slide past the wall.

Today I cried when I remembered a note that was left for me during a break up once. That it would be wrong to love someone else knowing how they felt, because they wouldn't be entirely there. That's how I feel now. The word stasis was used. I don't think we broke up in the end after that letter, I think we stayed together then. But god if I don't think about it every time they cross my mind: it won't be fair to anyone else because I am so drawn there. I try and shut it out and I'm trying to swallow everything but it is killing me. They aren't a bad guy but they've done bad things to me, and maybe we're doing bad things to each other. But I'm trying not to, and I always feel like I'm doing better, being casual, friendly, and then it gets serious about things I thought we weren't talking about anymore. And every conversation, on my end, feels like they're picking a fight and it's my fault for not taking it. The only thing I've said is "my feelings won't go away. I want someday. I want friends right now" but every time it's about how apparently they want to be around but it is so shitty and I feel awful to be shitty for them and I don't know how to make it better and they don't even know why its shitty. They don't know why they want me around. They don't know why they keep coming back. They were my best friend and that's what I want back, more than anything. That's why I forgave her. She told me her hurting me was something she didn't know, was her trying to let go, not realizing that I thought she was doubling down on the feelings, just not the relationship.

I had a fight with my mom the other night. My mental health was a big part of it: how withdrawn I am, how antagonistic I've been, how secretive I've been. But she was upset when I explained to her the time I was actually suicidal. When I actually thought about it. I didn't tell her I'd gotten to batting around plans, I spared her that. But she was upset that I didn't come to her. That I wouldn't speak up or that when she asked me how I was that I didn't tell the truth. For years she has complained about feeling like she is keeping people alive. My own mother, when my reaction to the pregnancy I'm part of was so grim and furious, told me she can't keep me alive too. And it was those words I said to her, the fact that she'd complained so many times about people coming to her that I couldn't. That I had carried so much of her emotional burden over these years, that I was always the listener. And she realized that's why I drew away: I couldn't do it, I was too unwell, I was carrying too much to carry hers too. And I watched a mother's heart break. And it felt awful, but I know it wasn't my fault. But now I know how that feeling looks, and can imagine how it feels. And I see it in my future. And I'm scared.

I feel like I'm in a surrealist painting. Some liminal space, a niche of reality where everything is wrong. My friend described it as the worst soap opera, a life she wouldn't wish on anyone. Another said that Murphy's law is shitting on my chest. Nothing is right. Am I just crazy? Have I stared at these walls a few hours too long? Not gotten enough oxygen?

And today you admitted it. You admitted you've been abusive. And when I told you the problems between us, right now, other than the child, were you, and that you keep doing this, and that it's your turn to change?

You told me you don't want to be in this situation. Reminded me that you are able to turn it off or push it down or whatever.

How can I be your friend, Amy? How can you expect me to take that? I want to send this to you as a text but I am scared. You have me on eggshells because you've emotionally abused me for two years now. I know I abused you before. I'm sorry. But I have changed. I actually changed. And I believe in you. I know there is good in you. You don't have to be like this to me. Neither of us has to be toxic and we can grow. But it takes choices.

"But yeah no I meant entirely her figuring out if this is what she wanted. To test drive me living in the same place, sharing the same life. To see if that was fulfilling, worth the hard."

Goodness knows I don't like sadness, she cries before she wakes, and so my friend: if you love her, don't turn away. Don't fight it. Don't run away. We're people, and we're animals. You're thunder, and the heart is a cannibal

But you're the same as you and I'm the same as me; and hopefully we can find ways to let us be reasonably fine.

She took me back in early 2017. I had spent the past years growing, learning to be better. Not the monster I know that I was. Not someone who inflicted pain and called it love. I spent, and spend, every waking day trying to right the people I've hurt, be it directly to them or to others, maybe in some way to balance a karmic fate. When she took me back, I learned of the treasure I had squandered, the woman I had hurt. And it burdened me further, to see the damage I had wrought. We were together, but the past weighed on both of us. We felt it better to break off. I never knew, but she left a note in that same black book, tearing a page from it and writing about the future. How I had always left, always hurt her. But it talked of how intense and real our love was. How it's understandable to fear that I'd hurt her again. I found this note in 2018, when I came home for medical leave.

Since coming home, it has been a source of comfort. Regardless of my feigned hatred for the pain inflicted on me, I knew the words she wrote. I had hoped her heart echoed still, but I was scared. I had came to sit in the place she was in May 2017. I pushed her away, ignored her, and was evil. I tried to find someone new. However, I now hold this book fearing that my very desperation and anxiety has damned me from my soulmate.

In 2019, I read the book at least weekly. It warms me even in the coldest moments. We went out once, and she peeled two labels from her bottles, asking me to keep them. She told me one is for me to carry, and the other is for the book, another memory to add to our story. And I hung on the words our story, and I recall quotes penned by her. "We loved with a love that was more than love." "It is a risk to love. What if it doesn't work out? Ah, but what if it does?" "I love you for all that you are, all that you have been., and all that you're yet to be."

I have come to learn that I am yet to be a father. I am terrified. But I find her again, still here. Truly my best friend, whom I cannot comprehend why they stand by me. And I am scared. I have been angry. I have been so many things. But scared pervades them all. And for all her pain, she still comforts me. I don't deserve her friendship, I can't believe I do. But I know what love does. It makes you cherish books and notes, unable to discard them. Unable to give up any piece of something that you may have if they leave. And maybe that's why she's still here. Because "I will be stuck waiting for you, even if I don't want to be. Unless you move on, I am stuck" can cut both ways.

I wish I knew the words to say to her. I wish I knew how to make things okay. I wish I knew how to achieve the perfect life that this woman deserves. I wish I was to be part of it, but I am growing to not see it. I simply want her to be her best, and I don't know that I can be. But I want to be. I want to be the man that little black book made me out to be.