call me oat

k:

being in a relationship shouldn't take away your sense of self or your own life. that person is not your entire life.

loving someone won't make them choose recovery, nor can you force them to choose recovery. they have to choose it themselves. being in a relationship doesn't mean becoming that person's 24/7 therapist.

you deserve better. i deserved better than being hid by her family because she wasn't out yet. i deserved to be loved loudly and proudly.

don't give 80% only to get 20% in return. match the person's energy.

breakups can happen even if you still love each other.

breakups will always happen, it's not the end of the world. i thought i couldn't live without her, let alone breathe, but i can (even though it's painful).

your identity is not tied to the person you're in a relationship with. you should be able to be in a relationship AND have your own identity. if you lose your identity, then get out of that relationship.

you can't be in a lasting relationship for someone who cannot read/act your love language. you can't teach someone to read you when they're not even interested in learning your signals.

don't chase after people that let you go, even if they didn't want to let you go. just because they didn't want to doesn't mean you chase them--in the end, they did let you go.

you deserve someone who will go out of their way to love you loudly (or in a way that you appreciate/desire).

am i projecting? yes, yes i am.

it seems i have them when exciting or nerve-wracking events happen in my life.

the person i want to see this never will, but i want her to know how dearly i miss her.

my dreams of you aren't 'nightmares' in the sense that bad things happen... it's the opposite. they're 'nightmares' because they show me what we would be if things were good again.

i miss you so much that your name is one i cannot utter anymore. it pains me to see it, let alone say it. my friends don't know your name, neither does my therapist.

i don't know if i want the dreams of you to stop--that's the only place i see you now.

i've thought about you every single day for the past two years we haven't been together.

two excruciating years thinking about you: someone i could reach with my phone. i didn't just lose a girlfriend when we broke up, i lost my best friend.

i miss you, but i don't know if you miss me. there was a point in time that i knew you better than you knew yourself, and that part of me is convinced that the pieces of yourself that you've showed me in the past two years are part of a facade you put on to push me away.

that's the part of me that won't stop missing you--the fragment of my heart that is convinced you're just pushing me away because you're scared and not because you don't want me anymore.

i don't know what to do anymore.

i fought tooth and nail to get here.

the topic of high-functioning depression is such a sensitive and important topic for me.

i've had MDD for the past four years, and i went through the first year and half unmedicated.

the high-functioning part of my depression is why no one saw what i was going through.

i graduated salutatorian of my 8th grade class while simultaneously having panic attacks, anxiety attacks, suicidal ideations, and more. everyone saw my success, but no one could see how badly i wanted to kms.

for me, my body physically could not show depressive symptoms around other people. it was reaction formation--a defense mechanism is which someone acts the complete opposite of how they feel.

for some people, and for me, we can't turn it off. it turns on without permission.

high-functioning depression is why we see so many academically successful people kill/harm themselves--we only see their successes.

that's why more people being aware of depressive symptoms and taking each sign seriously can save a life.

i'm not sure how i did it, but i'm still here today. if you are physically or mentally unable to reach out to people around you, please call 988.

988 and support groups helped me so much. it was much easier for me to voice my problems/pain to strangers rather than to people in my life.

reach out to someone. someone will listen. make yourself heard.