Brain Machine

I’m still in this panicked frenzy where my brain is shouting “off off off.”

maybe I’ll just keep saying sorry and maybe one day it’ll make a difference. 

Maybe it is my fault. 

Maybe I’m just too fucking sensitive. Or maybe I’m expecting something that I’ll never, ever receive. 

Maybe living at home in my mid-twenties, having food available to me, having shelter, having a nice bed, a nice room, a cat, a nice yard, my music, my phone, my....

Having the ability to leave this job and not be in grave financial worry

Maybe having all of this and still complaining about my relationship with my mother, at this age, makes me no better than she was.

Maybe I really am like her.

It isn’t justifiable to be this sensitive. It isn’t fair to say “you need to be gentle with me because I need it right now,” maybe. 

But the reality is this; I cannot voice how I feel lest I be accused of making someone else feel bad. I cannot say, “please think about these words you use and how, even if their intention is innocent and playful, right now it hurts me and I don’t appreciate it,” without being told that I’m in the wrong. And I cannot simply keep these things to myself, keep me to myself, without being confronted with the “I’m worried, you need to talk about what’s going on,” rhetoric. 

so... I really can’t do anything. 

because you think I’m still the same emotionally-charged, ‘irritable,’ ‘angry,’ ‘aggressive,’ person that I was when I was thirteen, fourteen, sixteen years old. 

But I’m not. I’m a rational, compassionate, empathetic, intelligent person who, despite the debilitation that my mental illness provides me year after year, tries their damnedest to not only see others’ perspectives as well as possible as a human being, but to choose words, thoughts, timing, everything as harmlessly as possible.

You’re the one who is governed by your emotions, but if I say that to you, if I try to say “this is why our relationship doesn’t have communication, this is what I need from you, and this is how I will accommodate better communication on my part,” you’ll tell me to stop blaming you, that I’m the one at fault. If I say, “I don’t feel heard. I don’t feel that you listen to the words I’m saying objectively, without calculating it into your own agenda,” if I say, “I feel hurt by the way you use your words sometimes,” then I’m the one who’s being unreasonable, and I’m wrong. I’m wrong. Because you’ll say “I hear you, I listen to you, I walk on eggshells around you because I don’t want you to explode at me.”

You’ll tell me that my feelings are wrong. 

And even if your objectivity is obscured by your care and worry for me, you need to learn how to put it aside when I need to talk. So that I can be heard, and not interpreted. 

And even if you say things that hurt me, I can’t tell you that it hurt me without being vilified for being hurt by your words. 

And even if I’m gone, it’ll still be my fault. 

But I can’t say any of this. I can’t say it because I say “I’m hurt,” and you hear, “I think you’re a malicious person.”

Suicide isn’t selfish. It’s a symptom. 

But hearing someone you love say “I’m in so much pain, I’m so hurt, so lost, so trapped, so hopeless, so sick that the only thing I want is to turn it off,” and replying with something akin to, “Think about your loved ones; think about me....”

That’s true selfishness.