I Guess That Was Goodbye.

I saw a couple standing on the sidewalk the other day kissing and laughing, and I started to cry. Not because there was anything wrong with what they were doing, but because I have no idea what that feels like. Not really.

Sure, I’ve kissed boys, and laughed with them, but not with a slight chill around, lights from storefronts gleaming around you, and thinking the person standing opposite you was the only human in the world that mattered. So much oblivion to the entire world around you that you don’t even notice you’re just laughing and embracing outside of a pharmacy and a pizza place with a crosswalk light blinking right next to you.  Ordinary things going on, the drool of traffic, teenagers sipping coffee drinks at a Dunkin’, leaves rustling across the pavement and falling into the lake only feet away; where they have found their end before they sink the bottom and become sludge. 

But there they were kissing and laughing, wrapped up in each other and no care to any of these ordinary, mundane, Tuesday night occurrences. They only cared about each other so much that even a Tuesday became the most amazing night of the week. 

And after I watched them for a few seconds while I waited at the stop sign for a break in traffic to make my turn onto the main road, I felt warmth through my body, happiness that other people were happy. That love seemingly did exist in the world. 

And then the traffic broke, I made the right, and with them in my rearview, I started to cry. 

Silent, warm tears. 

For what reason? I’m not fully sure.  I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t mad. It was beautiful to see people happy, in love, being themselves without care for anything else going on. It was honestly beautiful to see two people just existing in the world, but in their own little bubble of a moment.  Sometimes just people watching teaches you so much. I just didn’t expect to cry.

I guess when I think about it, what I was feeling was - envy. Not jealousy, not in that green-eyed monster type way - the one where you’re angry and want to step on whomever to get what you want - it wasn’t that; it was envy that other people seem so easily capable of giving and receiving love, and can do it so naturally on corners, in schools, at parties, and in bars, and I just... cannot. It feels so foreign to me. The concept of someone actually wanting to love me back feels like something beyond attainable. 

I used to say that it would just be nice for a boy to want to hold my hand, but then I went on this date and like four minutes in the guys asked if he could hold my hand, and it just felt soo... unnatural. Like it wasn’t the act of holding hands that felt unnatural, it was holding hands with this boy I’d never met - until four minutes before - and the fact that there was no natural chemistry with him.  It just felt wrong, and it made me feel so stupid and sad that the things I’d wanted in a crying conversation with a friend the day before this date, was the thing that started me turning off from this human. I felt like such a failure. Like the simplest thing that could occur made me feel awkward and strange. Like I couldn’t even hold hands correctly, or not be so in my head about how weird the entire occurrence was. 

Being a human was apparently beyond hard for me. And here were these two people just... in love on the side of a street and how easy it seemed. 

I was envious of the fact that I’m not sure I’ll ever feel that way, or have those things.  I’m not... easy to love. I fight my depression on a daily level. I cry in showers and cars more often than I’d like to admit to people. I have moments of mania and lows so low that somedays just accomplishing one thing - like the laundry - feels like a task so great my limbs are heavy just thinking about it. And sometimes I don’t think people actually see this part of me. I think I fake it so well, that even when my brain and anxiety filled heart are screaming at me to just lay in bed and be sleep; my body, for whatever reason, doesn’t always want to listen.  The sleeping the day away was something I used to do in my twenties all of the time pre realization and diagnosis of my depression. And I think since the understanding of my own brain - ‘understanding’ in the loosest of definitions here - I fear appearing too depressed, or like ‘I’m not trying.’  Like I need to stick to some kind of routine that involves accomplishing things on my weekends or moments of free time so people won’t worry, or worse, say ‘yeah, but you’re not even trying.’ 

Which, I won’t lie, this is one of the most frustrating things that people can say when I have my bouts of sadness and lows over feeling like I’m behind, or lost, of struggling to be a thirty-something human, it’s as if existing everyday isn’t even enough to count for ‘trying.’  Like slogging through, trying to appear sane and normal, and like other people around me, while still trying to recognize my own day to day emotions, brain space, and allowing myself moments and time to just... be a mess, just isn’t enough ‘trying’ for the people around me who seem to think they have everything more together than I do.  And I mean, they do, but I think it’s hard for them to understand the constant state I live in where I’m telling myself to keep going, to stay on task, to not make everyone around me worry that I’m falling apart, or not living up to my own ‘potential,’ or whatever else their opinions judge about me. 

And I guess that’s the envy I have of other people who are just so... capable or existing in the world around them. People who live up to their potentials so easily and without fear that they aren’t the biggest fuck up in the whole world. I don’t really know what my potential is anymore.  In fact, it’s been a long time since I really expected anything of myself.  So much of my life has kind of fallen apart around me, or I’ve watched so many people just walk away from me when I was at my worst, or in trouble, or desperate for help, that I’ve kind of stopped hoping or expecting anything. 

I’ve found that I’ve probably been holding on to the ‘happy ending,’ ideal or the something good will happen someday image, that I just keep breaking my own heart.  There is nothing magical that will happen. That’s just not how the real world works. People don’t just... live in a fairytale. So I’ve started to remind myself to stop expecting anything. It hurts less when at the end of the night, I end up in my bed alone, sad, and left feeling envy with the image of some couple I don’t know kissing on the sidewalk. 

I’m okay with the realization that I’m always going to be alone, but I’m just a little sad that those are the cards I was dealt. It just feels like I’m just such a fuck up. I I’m not afraid to be alone, I’m just afraid that it will just be very lonely. 

I was driving today and I really started to think about why my heart feels so heavy with the idea that I’m carrying a sadness about never having been loved by someone in the way that it feels everyone else is capable of doing so easily; why it makes me feel lonely or ‘less than’ other people. Why I feel so anxious about how outsider-ish these lack of ‘normal’ markings in my life make me feel. And I guess what I realized is despite how stupid it makes me feel for being unable to find someone who actually wants to date me - the actual me - it makes me more sad each time a date with someone doesn’t work out, or the guy I find attractive thinks the girl next to me is cuter, smarter, more funny, or talented, or more ‘someone he sees his future with,’ because what has really become apparent to me about these failures is the each time they happen, and the more time goes by where I haven’t met someone, I start to feel worse about myself and more alone because it feels like maybe I really am too weird for people, or that maybe there really is no one out there who gets me in the way I wish they would.  

Like maybe I’m just not someone anyone else can relate to. 

What it I’m the one girl in the world who literally wants to meet someone but isn’t actually meant for anyone? 

Like in my life timeline or whatever happens when you’re born, the parts of me that were meant to have a life with someone or be someone’s other half were just... missed.  What if I just wasn’t given them? What if no one in the world ever understands my weirdness or humor, or desires for how I see - or wanted - to see my life unfold. 

I’m afraid I’m going to have to live a whole existence alone; wishing to be understood, but never actually feeling it. 

I think that’s what I’m most afraid of.  Why every date feeling like torture or a panic attack waiting to happen; why I always feel so horrible after I leave them. Because I’m sitting across from people and I realize they’ll never understand me. Like I’m sitting there missing something in my own heart or brain as I speak to them.  Like I’m waiting for the spark to ignite, but the match just won’t catch, and I’m afraid that I’m defective. 

That I just wasn’t given the proper tools to connect with someone else on the level that you need to like actually love a human who you weren’t born forced to love. 

And it’s like in the middle of sitting there with this other human I just... detach. Like I know it won’t work, so I just check out. Like my heart has already read theirs and it... just didn’t fit. It’s like I’m preparing myself to be sad on the car ride home already, and cry in the shower for the next few days, so I just protect myself and close the door. 

I just don’t have time to waste on something I know won’t work.  Someone who doesn’t make me... all heart eyes and nervous. And I don’t want them to waste their time on me. The girl who just... doesn’t make sense to other people. The one who people just walk passed because she isn’t their type, or she’s too weird.

I’m been not the type for so many people I can’t even start to count.

And at this point, I’m not even sure what my type is. Like I know exactly what I’m looking for, but that’s never going to happen. And even if it’s not the ‘look’ of a human that I’ll never find, it’s that I don’t think I’ll ever find someone who can respond back to me in a song lyric, or laugh at something we both know is funny without having to say it. 

I just don’t think someone is ever going to love me on my hard days. 

And I have a lot of hard days. Even if I don’t always seem that way, I cry a lot alone in cars, showers, the park. I stress silently a lot about not being good enough, or doing enough, or not becoming anything. And I don’t mean a celebrity or some viral sensation bullshit, I mean becoming anything that makes me feel accomplished, filled with a sense of calm or pride. 

My brain overworks far too much, I’m filled with anxiety about big things and dumb things; stuff I don’t even talk about very often, but it’s always there. And I just stress that I’m going to be too much for someone else. Like it’ll be unfair for them to have to... try to understand me or deal with me. I’m afraid of them feeling like they got stuck with the worst apple in the bunch; the defective present they never actually wanted. 

And I guess I’m afraid I let the right person walk passed me or out of my life because I was just... too angry at something that was unfairly done to me and I just... guess I’ll have to regret whatever I did forever. That’s just life. I can’t change that. And if they’re happy now, than that’s all that matters. 

I think I’ve just admitted defeat in terms of finding love. 

I guess when I realized that I wasn’t finding anyone because maybe I really am someone no one else can relate to. Maybe my habits are too strange, or my heart is too broken, or my humor too dark, and thoughts too anxiety inducing. Maybe I’ll never find the person who wants to lay on a bedroom floor with me, or drive through a car wash, and listen to a song to decide if it really is perfect. 

Maybe I just have to live with the fact that the right person... met someone else.

Maybe it really just is that simple. 

At least he’s happy. 

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be thirty-four. I have accomplished nothing. I own nothing. I have never had a successful relationship; told someone, outside of a family member, that I love them. And I’m unsure what the next five years of my life will even look like. I have no plan. 

I feel like there should be an AA/NA type of meeting for people like me who feel this way, and need to introduce themselves like this. You know, the just lay it all out on the table of messiness that you have piles of tasks, emotions, and feelings that all just feel... unfulfilled, accomplished or ‘checked off on life’s traditional timeline.’ 

In the grand scheme of things I have done nothing to brag about. And I mean ‘brag’ in the most humble of ways. Like in the sense that at a high school reunion I’d have nothing to say about myself when everyone else was telling me about their marriages, children, houses, or promotions. 

I’m unsure what I would even say about myself. 

I’d be standing in that circle with high school classmates all around wearing smiles and diamond rings on their fingers, and their eyes would turn to me to see what I’ve been up to, and I’d pause, swirl the drink in my hand, and try not to laugh at the horrified look on their faces when I said what I’d really probably been up to since the last time I saw all of them.

“One year, a few years back in the tail end of my twenties, I realized I probably had a bit of an accidental drug habit, was insanely depressed, getting yelled at about chicken wings in a bar in the desert, single, beyond broke, and sold all of my stuff to move back home to my childhood bedroom. I’ve been there ever since.”

Even typing it I can feel the room fall silent and the awkwardness that would radiate off of the people who once sort of knew me when I still had potential. I mean, I think I had it; who really knows.

Regardless, I’ve been trying to think about things in my life that I’m proud of on the eve of my birthday, but there really aren’t many.  Sure, I did a lot of stuff alone. I learned a lot about myself in all the depression, sadness, manic times, but... I didn’t really accomplish anything.

I didn’t really check off any of the boxes that society, or even myself, would have wanted me to.

I guess I thought that by now, if nothing more, I’d have had one ‘relationship,’ that would have at least felt like it mattered. I haven’t. I guess I feel sad that I never got to have that teen romance, or twenty something romance, to categorize who I was during those times in the past vs. who I am now. I guess I sort of feel like I missed out on... allowing someone else into my life and helping me grow in the sense that love can stretch your heart or emotions, and allow your brain to see things in different ways. 

I’ve never had that. It’s not the worst thing in the world, sure. I guess I wouldn’t have done so much alone if I had allowed myself to compromise for another human, but all I’ve had to learn, I had to do alone.  And it’s kind of sad because I really can’t ever look back with someone and be like ‘can you believe that happened?’ or ‘can you believe we lived through that?’ Even if it didn’t work with that person, you’d at least know, in your heart of hearts, that there was someone else in the world who at least understood those moments in time you also lived through.

I guess maybe what I miss is forming relationships.

I used to have friends, I think, but in the last five to ten years, it’s felt less like that ever happened, and more like I’ve just become so isolated existing alone in a world that no one else seems to be on the same level as me.

It’s hard to explain how lonely things feel or are to people who have been married for years, or just welcomed their first, or second, baby. Sure, I realize they too can feel alone, but it’s a loneliness I also can’t help them with. It’s like were all just on one giant ride passing each other on different levels, but unable to jump our coaster cart to theirs and feel the same things with them. 

I’m two hours from thirty-four and I am alone. Literally, in a house by myself, and physically, emotionally, and mentally. 

And even though there are parts of being alone that do feel... ‘proud,’ like the fact that I’ve learned to change my own tire, my windshield wipers, my break lights, paint a wall, lease a car, drive across the country, binge watch an insane amount of TV in small windows of time, learn to recognize my own needs and wants, learn to say ‘no,’ to things and people I no longer feel make me a better human; it’s still very lonely. 

It feels a lot like everyone else figured out how to be normal and find their other human to build a life with, and I’m just on the outside waiting for a bus that’s never coming.

I’m pretty sure that bus that was meant for me went to someone else’s stop, stayed there, and got married. They honeymooned in Hawaii, and live happily in a small colonial type house in the middle of an open field with perfect sunsets happening in their backyard every night.

Sometimes I wonder if I died years ago and all of this is just... going through the motions. Like I’m fucking Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense and I just haven’t seen Mischa Barton puke in front of me yet, or a small child tell me they see dead people. 

I just feel sad. And that’s a hard thing to admit. 

I know being married, or in a relationship, or having a child, doesn’t mean you’re actually happy. I’m insanely aware of that. In fact, I fully know that everyone has their own timeline and path to be on for their own journey of finding happiness, but with those other ones, I still kind of think I’d feel less alone. Less like I’m the broken part. The item that needs replacing for the rest of everything to work.

I mean, I guess I just feel like even without having those things, I still haven’t accomplished much. Not career wise. Not saving of money wise. Not working out for a perfect body-wise. Not having a slew of interesting dating stories or tidbits. Not traveling wise. 

I mean, I can tell you pretty much every episode of The Office, 30 Rock, or Parks and Rec, but that apparently isn’t resume worthy?

And those don’t feel like I should brag about them for accomplishments, but maybe I should look at those and worry for myself more. 

Newsflash, I won’t, but I’m aware I probably should. 

It’s just been a really long time since I’ve felt.. happy. I’ve had moments - fleeting ones - here and there that I know I’ve felt the feeling of happiness, but I haven’t had a good year in... decades? Maybe ever? 

I honestly cannot tell you, which makes me feel even sadder, and somehow more pathetic. 

I guess, in a really honest and sad way, I kept telling myself, ‘eventually, something good will happen for you. Eventually you’ll get something good. You’ll feel happy with a human, a job, a life, an accomplishment. Eventually something will go your way.’ 

It hasn’t. 

I guess I believed in the fairytale, and I only let myself down because of it. Which I realize means I only have myself to blame. For all of it. And I understand I set myself up for that heartbreak, the failure of hoping. For dreaming that something spectacular could just happen.  But I guess I just thought... maybe there was some magic in some part of the universe still left for me. 

But I’m now an hour and a half away from being thirty-four, and it’s time to grow up. 

Magic isn’t real, right? People don’t win the lottery, and great things don’t just fall into someone’s lap. 

Hell, I’ve learned working your ass off at a job where everyone hates you, only gets you fired. Investing in yourself and your dreams to become a writer only gets you told by a professor, ‘that every year a food service industry working thinks they’re going to write something that matters - they don’t.’ Trying to be empathetic or overly friendly gets you made fun of’; seeking therapy and help when you’re struggling, only gets you called crazy by everyone else who doesn’t understand. And puts you on this list in people’s eyes that you’re just insane.

So now, I guess, I’ll just ... learn to settle. Be more realistic. Stop living in a fantasyland where I just keep getting my heartbroken waiting for a really great surprise that’s never coming. 

 After all, a job is a job - I expect nothing from it - I don’t have a desire to try super hard to get promotions or build a career life - especially if I’ll never have a love life or a family life - I don’t expect to meet someone on a dating app, at a job, at a bar, in a grocery store, on the street walking by. 

I guess... this is just an honest letter to my own heart - stop being so foolish with yourself; you’ll only keep crying yourself to sleep on the eve of all your future birthday’s. 

I guess, for this birthday, I wish it could all be different.

I had a meltdown about Christmas lights the other day. I realize it’s only October, but I was using the lights for a party we were having; draping them in the bushes in my backyard to try and make it more cozy, and give off some light, as well. Regardless, I was putting these lights up and wanted to extend them to another side of the backyard that had bushes, as well, but I didn’t want to drag lights on the ground in a place where people would walk, so I needed an extension cord. So fine, I went to the store, I bought a 12 foot cord, and headed home. 

Here’s where the issue starts though, the cord didn’t fit. One side of the plus was too large for the lights female end plug. Now, this made me think I just was buying the wrong item. I mean, these lights were only like two years old, and this cord was brand new. But fine, shit happens. And it was hot out, and I’m fucking putting lights places and trying to help do other things for this party, and I’m searching for old extensions cords everywhere. I even unplugged the one I used for the record player in my room. This cord still doesn’t work.

So now I’m getting annoyed because my next decoration part was supposed to happen where the extension cord would be laying, and I can’t really move forward until this light portion is resolved.  So I’m at an annoying stand still.  An adapter was bought from the store a while later, and while very thankful this person went out to get this item for me - this item still does not work. Now I’m getting very annoyed. I’m tired, hungry, hot, sweaty, and angry at electrical cords.  

I’m told shortly after that these don’t fit because the cord is ‘polarized.’ Whatever the fuck that means. I thought sunglasses could be polarized, a fucking polaroid picture could be polarized (in the joking manner), and my god damn anxiety polarizes me all of the time, but this was something I’d never really come across, and the way these items were made infuriated me. It meant that even though these items were basically new (two years is nothing in the life cycle of a decoration), it also occurred to me that this meant any time you wanted to update anything in your decorative yard, you’d basically have to throw everything away and start all over. 

And this is where my freak out started.  And to be completely honest, I realized about two minutes into the freak that this wasn’t really about the lights, but so much deeper, so I almost feel like what I’m about to say now can almost be looked at in a self actualization type of moment, and a very deep awareness of my own brain and self that was causing me to cry in my basement near the crawl space with Christmas lights strewn around me. 

And to be even more honest, recently, as I’ve read things and learned more about specific parts of my depression and anxiety and mental health issues, I’ve started to realize that some parts of me for sure exist on the spectrum.  I have a hard to with change in terms of having a vision for something, and it not going the way I wanted it to easily.  I can course correct and adjust, but sometimes I have a meltdown over something small, like a plug on a cord. I’m not ashamed of my ‘spectrum’ landing issues. I’ve come to realize my own ‘ticks’ and ‘quirks.’ Sometimes I’m not even sure other people notice them, but I live in my brain, and I know them, and I’ve existed with them for a long time. I’m sure if I had to go through school over again I’d be diagnosed with something along these lines. And realizing this is only something that has made me relook back at a lot of parts of my life and why I am probably not ‘dateable.’ I’m just probably too anxious and weird about trying to act like everyone else and how ‘normal’ seems, that I have so much panic inducing anxiety about even friendships, let alone relationships.  I don’t really let people in that quick because of this, I think, and then when I do, I just feel very deeply for them being in my life that I tend to break my own heart a lot when I realize that despite the fact that I’d do pretty much anything for anyone I’ve let into my life, that isn’t really the case all of the time with them in return for me.  And that’s okay! It’s on me that I am this way, and not their fault they are not the person I want them to be, or need them to be for me at that time.  I guess I’m just too naïve, in some sense, and when I let someone in - I let them in. So I put down my guard, and this is what hurts in the end. That for me, being so particular about the life I’d like for myself means that my brain narrows in on specific things and expectations, and sometimes that even extends to how I let people into my life and how it feels when they leave. And even sometimes when I have to remove them from my life, as well. 

I’ve had to do the removing a bit more in recent years. Some of it was to save myself, and other times it was because I had to protect myself from the fact that while saving myself, people started to turn me into a joke; something to talk about behind my back, or in code while I was sitting right there trying my best - for what my best could even be in the time of the trying to save myself. But it still hurt all the same. Becoming more closed off was lonely, but what really hurt was feeling like I would walk into a room or a store and the whole world would be judging me for stuff they didn’t even have to live through; for things that didn’t involve them in any formation. It felt hard to be a human. I was scared about how I spoke, or what I did, or worse didn’t, do. Where I put my hands, how I carried the weight of my shoulders, even how quick or slow I was walking. Every part of my brain was spiraling with all of these thoughts all day long, all the time. I was constantly in protect mode, it was panic inducing, and I didn’t sleep for days, I couldn’t talk to people, I couldn’t look anyone in the eyes. I started to realize maybe I’d always been this way, but only really started to notice it about myself when I was in the ‘save myself mode,’ of trying to come back down from foolish drug usage, toxic lifestyle choices, and all around bad behavior. 

In the come down, I was seeing a therapist to help, and he did. But I realized a lot of the times when I was trying to be the most truthful, I realized I couldn’t look at him - not directly. And maybe this was something I’d always done when it came to relationships I had with friends, family, etc. in my life, I’m really not fully sure. Maybe I was always doing it with out really noticing it, but now, in that room with the red couch and old as fuck twisted tree framed on the wall next to me, where I was speaking to someone and taking accountability for myself and the things I’d let myself become, I started to realize that I wasn’t able to make eye contact as I said them. Maybe it was mostly the shame of admitting to a human out loud how lost I was, or how fucked up I’d let myself become, I can’t really specify the reason, but I did recognize that this was something my body did. Hell, maybe I did it just so I didn’t have to see another human hear how awful I was and have to see their reaction to me at my worst. Maybe I was protecting myself from that shame, also. The one of having to witness that look into someone else’s eyes when they also realize you are a disappointment. 

And now year’s after, even still trying to privately come to terms with how stupid I was at parts of my life, and how much I even disappointed myself, I still think back on these moments in those therapy sessions where I would just be honest, and cry, and then the session would end, I’d try to not cry on the walk to the subway, and hope that by the time I made it to work I wouldn’t be blotchy and too obvious at being unstable and lost. Sometimes I miss those twenty minutes in between the therapy session and the arrival at the office where I was dazed, or proud, or annoyed at something I’d just spoken about. After I got fired from that job I couldn’t keep that same therapist, and I became even more closed off from the world after that firing. It hurt so much because I was finally starting to feel like - maybe I could be better? I could become something? That I wasn’t such a fuck up all of the time? And then they brought me into that HR room, told me I made people uncomfortable, and asked me to leave. 

It was a Tuesday morning. And I was going through the motions of what I even took with me. And when I left for the last time, through that turnstile and into that white marble entryway, I said “Thank You,” to the HR people who had just basically told me that me, as a human, was the problem in me existing in society and at that office building. Once again, I was just - wrong. My entire makeup, and being, my thoughts, or topics of conversation I had with people, was what made everyone hate me; even a career opportunity. I felt stupid when I said Thank You. It’s one of the things I regret the most in my life. Especially since after I lost that job, pretty much everyone stopped speaking to me. And in that, I became very reclusive. 

I just figured it was easier to not get hurt anymore, or put myself into any more paths that would cause me pain or heartbreak, or possibility of falling apart again, so I just didn’t. I didn’t go places. I didn’t talk to people. I cut off so many people I knew in my life on social media platforms - and by this point, I only had an Instagram, and it was beyond private, but I made it 10 times more private. I’d comb through the list of ‘followers’ I had, and I’d remove people; people I only knew in passing, people I hadn’t seen in years, people I loved, family. I committed to myself to protect myself at all costs - even if that meant having to stay lonely; it was safer that way. Put yourself into the trenches, bury your head, stay out of the line of fire for anymore bad shit.

I came to rely on my loneliness. I got really into cooking alone in my kitchen. Hiding in my basement with the lull of a Yankee’s game playing in the background. Binging the shit out of TV shows. Crying alone in my car, or parks. Hiding out with my dog, who was still alive then. I just hung tight to the things I did trust; myself, in those moments, and the odd comfort of existing in a world where no one actually saw me. It was nice to be invisible, sometimes.

And I think this is where I learned about my brain more and more, and even just myself; in the privacy of my own space. I started to notice my ‘abnormalities,’ if you can really call them that, more and more. I started to realize the way my mood could change, or the way my brain spun over and over with certain anxiety about situations that just kept destroying me. Like I was playing chess against myself, I was playing out how all of the scenarios should have happened, or could have, or didn’t, and somehow, I was the only one always losing in each of the versions. It was me vs. me, and I was never the victor. I never came out on top of beating my anxiety or getting the ‘dream job,’ or the happy ending relationship; it was just me always saying Thank You to people who just wanted to discard me so easily despite how hard I might have tried to be ‘better’ this time, or kinder or smarter, or less annoying, or easier to deal with. I played with all the possibilities of the person I wished I was in certain moments, and somehow, the real me - the one I was also okay with being, the weird girl in the basement who thought too much, laughed too loud, knew too many random useless facts from TV that I’d heard fifteen years ago - I came to realize I was kind of odd, but I didn’t hate that about me. I was growing to be okay with being slightly naïve and a little bit spacey, but that didn’t mean I was opening myself up to humans, I was just opening myself up to myself. 

And I was okay with that person. She wasn’t great, or perfect, or drop dead beautiful, but she made me laugh at random musings, and well written TV shows. She made me remember that sometimes sitting in a field on a nice day with a book was more than enough. I grew back into liking her; even if no one else did. 

And the one thing I liked the most about her, was she was loyal as fuck. She may have cut people and things out of her life, but she never stopped loving them or thinking about them, or hoping good things for them - she just chose herself. She loved hard, and she lasted till the end of things. She was able to let people go when they no longer wanted her in their lives, and she also let other people go from hers because she knew they both deserved better.

And sometimes she was angry at the wrong person, the one who she probably hurt the most was someone who I’m sadly sure I’ll never see again, and I doubt he would even forgive me if he wanted to. He didn’t deserve a lot of my anger, especially because I’d have forgiven him in a second if everyone else had just been honest, too. Regardless of how fucked so much of the story was - he would have never been someone I’d have wanted to hurt; in any form. Also, there were a lot of mitigating factors to this person and I existing in the same sphere, but he didn’t deserve how angry I got; especially because most of that anger came from an accusation someone I thought was my friend, made about me that sort of destroyed my life. It was beyond cruel of this person to do to me, and it caused so much depression, anxiety, and self hatred in me that in passing I was angry at him because it felt like some joke that everyone was making about me, a joke I thought he was making about me. And this wasn’t a funny joke - not even a cruel high school joke a person makes in jest at someone else’s expense before they realize how hurtful those things can actually be. And in this case, this wasn’t a joke, but a disgusting accusation that would ruin a person’s life. And it did; mine. For a really long time - despite knowing how fucking untruthful it was - it caused me so much depression and deep-seeded self hatred and disgust in how the world thought of me or what people assumed me to be that I tried to kill myself over this. I thought about it a few times while I was struggling with coming to terms that people really thought of me this way, but one day I was so fed up at being the butt of some disgusting untruthful joke that I parked on the side of an overpass over the Turnpike and tried to climb the fence to jump. Right there in a neighborhood I used to walk through to get to the 8th grade soccer fields, I wanted all of it to end.

If the fence had been slightly lower, I would have. 

Sometimes I still look when I drive over that bridge, but I mostly wonder about what would have happened after - to the people I left behind.  Even if they hated me or not, I still thought about them, and I still worried. Maybe that’s how you decide not to jump - you worry about other people more than yourself. Strange how that is, I guess. 

And to be honest, I got really far off topic of the Christmas lights, but all of this came from me feeling like a throw away human, like everything in the world was just so easy to get rid of; like even this person who I owe an apology to, will never really get to hear it, and I’ll never really get to know the other side of the story - because so much of me at points was just so easy to toss away. To forget about. And between clothes, phones, electronics, toys, gifts, paper, plastic, blah blah blah, all of it was just so easy to toss out. And here I was, about a little over a month from another birthday coming, getting older, still lonely, and still really lost without a ‘career’ or anything that is really my own, and all I wanted was to decorate something nice enough the way my brain wanted it to look. I guess I wanted it to ‘look perfect.’ Like I just needed one thing to be the way I wanted it.

And these fucking cords weren’t working, and it was making me crazy. And it was the meltdown that I was about to have that made me realize the meltdown wasn’t about the lights, but about the fact that everything just seems so - fleeting. Like people don’t stick around, relationships don’t last, and nothing just ...stays the same. That everything really was temporary, and it made me sad. Because I wanted something to not be temporary. I wanted something to not be a passing fad, or a replacement for someone or something else. I wanted a stupid plug to work, and I wanted shit to be built right, and for items to last longer than a year before everything was just upgraded and something new replaced something else, and so on and so forth. And I just - was tired. I was tired of always having to say good bye to stuff, and people, and things, and places, and homes I’d built in my heart. I was tired of living in some idea that something good would really happen. That if I just held out long enough, I’d finally get ‘the happy ending.’ That I’d finally find someone who could love me even though I was crying in my basement with Christmas lights all around me and sweat and dirt stuck to my whole body. 

I wanted to be surprised by something. For the first time in my life, I wanted something to just work the way it should - to be easy. For a plug to connect and stupid white lights to just turn on without having to have a mental breakdown at the thought that eventually everything will just become garbage. I wanted to be surprised at the simple joy of something just... working. 

I wanted to stop feeling like I was ruining everything. Like everyone hated me, and that I was just the problem in the room that needed to be solved because it was easier to just ‘fix me’ and make me the way everyone wanted me to be, then to let me just try and be me in any way. 

And even if the way I am is too weird, or too perfectionist-like about things that I either create or try to put together, I’m also aware of these things about me. It’s hard for me to show people things I do because even if they like them, all I see are the imperfections, and they somehow make me feel shameful, like I should have been able to do it better. Or even worse, that they’re just saying they like things I’ve done, when really all they see are how awful this part of it is, or how askew that part is. And the real worst part is, I don’t need everything to be perfect - I’m not perfect at all, not by any means; no one I know is really perfect, I just want things I make to come out the way I vision them in my head. 

Like I know I have some mania in me, but apart from spending too much on pumpkins this year for these decorations, I usually can control it. My mania really comes when I see something I want to make, even just a vision in my head, and I need it to come out that way. Because I don’t want to have to change the one small thing I can control - even if it’s just a dumb pumpkin hay bale fall decoration setup - it was mine, and I wanted the vision I had to be that as it was in my head. I wanted the lights to work when I wanted them to work, and I just - wanted something to go right. I wanted things to last. 

I was afraid of being temporary. Afraid of another birthday on the cusp of approaching, and looking at my life and realizing I was still... nothing. That I was ashamed of not having achieved anything. I was afraid nothing I would ever do, or make, or have in life would last. 

I was afraid I was too late in the showing up to my own life, and I’d missed all of the stuff that was meant for me. All the roads I should have taken, successes I should have felt, but instead, all I had were failures to my name, cruel stories about the person I was, and lies from people both pretending to like me, and people who also hated me so much. 

I’m still afraid I showed up to my life too late, but I guess that’s the way it goes for some people. And it doesn’t mean that people like me are the worst, or too fucked up to have faith in, or that we can’t be successful, it just means that some days are harder. Sometimes I cry over lights not working, or not being able to solve a puzzle, or that I’d just like time to stop for a second and things to last longer than a second before they come pointless, or feeling really awkward when I try to date or someone holds my hand. I realize I’m in my head so much I can’t relax. I’m so worried about doing things wrong, or being the me that makes corporations ‘uncomfortable’ around me, that I overthink doing simple tasks. That my brain and mouth have too many thoughts or ideas or things people don’t want to hear or like. That I’m too annoying, and too particular for people. And even if I feel like I’m just doing something normally - or whatever normal is - I start to worry that I’m doing these things foolishly. That I’m doing too much, or not enough, that I won’t find footing somewhere, or that I’ll never level out and find my own little place in the world. That I’ll just always be... the one people have to worry about. The one that they can make the joke out of and compare themselves to in the ‘well at least I’m not like that,’ type of person. 

I just want something to come along that makes me feel like I’m not that ‘crazy’ or lost or foolish for thinking that something good could come along. That maybe so much of me being awkward and weird and a loner makes sense for something good to actually happen. I’m afraid all of my worrying about why my wheels are always spinning and why I can’t just... be like everyone else is what gives me so much anxiety and prevents me from having anything in my life that can last. That I can be proud of. 

I’m just so worried about being shunned anymore than I have been that I just fear so much of the unknown. I used to not need to make a plan, I just - existed and hoped for the best.  But now, I stress so much about not being who I want to be that I’m afraid I’ll always feel like I missed out. Like I’m just one step away from being the Christmas lights that are always getting thrown out because they are build wrong, or nothing can adapt to them. I’m afraid of being temporary in everyone’s life. That I’ve made it this far alone - and maybe that’s how the rest of my time here goes, as well. 

And if I’m being honest, that’s what scares me the most. The hope of the ‘happy ending’ and it never coming. And I don’t mean a movie script ending happy ending - I just mean someone who loves me regardless of my brain, and my ticks and quirks, and spectrum-like issues, and the crying over lights, and the fears that I just... won’t be enough for someone to stay. 

I just don’t want to be broken Christmas lights in future dumpster of the world that everyone and everything forgets about.

Sorry this was too long, and rambling. And unsure it even makes any sense. 

If anyone even reads this. 

Thanks.

Sometimes you just desire to be heard. To be seen for even trying to be authentic or honest. For trying to find your way back to yourself in hopes that you reach other people who are also lost and searching. 

That maybe you can throw them a lifeline after you’ve made it to shore. Not necessarily safely, but you’ve got the footing, a branch near by on land to anchor yourself to, and a desire to try and help reel them in so they can at least see the possibility of hope.

That doesn’t mean wanting to make a difference or being ‘seen’ means you are a ‘fame seeker’ or a ‘fame jumper.’ Or just looking to step over people or cash a big check.

In fact, I kind of feel like the antithesis of that is why I’m even trying to write anything here, or even trying to write anywhere in general, or reach anyone or be heard, I’m just trying to remember that moment of feeling like there was no hope is so much harder to get through when you really don’t feel like any one understands. Like the only way out is disappearing.

It’s hard I think for people who have never felt lost, or fucked up, or not like the people around them, to really understand how scary and lonely those feelings are. And I think people put so many people who say they do understand these lost souls feelings on pedestals that they become so larger-than-life that they kind of can’t relate to the feelings of being ‘worthless’ or ‘beyond repair,’ anymore.  It’s hard to stay the same as you were when you were truly at your lowest when you haven’t felt that way, or lived in that darkness in so long.

And this is not to say that people who do get out of their depressive episodes, or have managed them well, and made something of themselves just automatically become people who can’t relate, I don’t think that at all. I just think that over time, if you’ve grown into successes and create a following that loves you for being ... whatever - honest, authentic, sincere, beautiful, handsome, kind, famous, or any other label driven thing people adhere so they can place you properly in their world - you sort of get far enough removed from the day to day struggle of even existing that it’s really hard for the person still in the swamp to think you could ever really understand them. 

And this isn’t a knock on fame or people who have beat the odds, or picked themselves up and gotten through hard times, or woken up from depressive episodes and have seen the sun, it’s an understanding that those people are are so lucky to have even made it. In any form. If that just meant you survived the next year, or you created a following that allowed you to live out you deepest dreams and desires. It’s admirable really. The hope that any one else might be able to make something of themselves, also, and maybe get somewhere in their own lives and goals that they too feel like they can turn back and help the person behind them. It’s beautiful when it happens.  

But the truth is there comes a time when those people have turned back so many times and so many people have been helped by them that they become almost otherworldly. Beautiful beyond comparison because they did the impossible, but hard to relate to from someone still down in the trenches. Someone who is still fighting a war in their mind that is so hard to navigate no one who has made it out of the war can even be acknowledged.  See, when you’re in the war and so beyond scared and broken, you care barely see tomorrow, let alone someone lending you a hand.  Especially if that person is one of the people on the TV trying to relate to you and tell you ‘they too understand’ while they wear luxury clothes and smile wide for the cameras following them and garnishing them with praises. 

It’s hard to think people make it to the even being okay stage, let alone successful or the turn back to help stage, because when you’re so fucking lost in the dark - it’s hard to even think you’re nothing short of invisible to the whole world.

I think my real reason for writing this post is the inner fear I have of people asking (if they ever do) why? Why are you writing this? Why are you trying to create something? What do you want from it? There must be this ulterior motive, right? Are you looking to be ‘famous’? Whatever the fuck fame means in any perspective or to any person just trying to be creative and reach people in any form and plane of existence. And that fear of the latter question is what scares me because deep in my heart I don’t see that motive in my vision. As much as I fear the realization that I may only exist in obscurity, I fear the idea of being known most of the time almost more. 

Sure it would be nice to be known by someone specific in your life who becomes your whole world and keeper of secrets and your heart, but that’s not what this is.

This is putting my thoughts out there and my feelings and being nothing but honest because - well, because I’m afraid I haven’t been honest for so long with myself, other people, or my own heart.

I don’t want fame. I want freedom.

I’m tried of hiding in fear that if people saw the real me - the scared, lonely, lost, depressed one, with bouts of anxiety so bad there are days I cannot make it out of my house or own way, or can’t create another story or original thing - that they’d think I was too weird or too much of a liability to love or let into their own lives. 

And see here’s the thing, everyone at some point in their life might dream to be a movie star or a rock star, but those aren’t wide reaching attainable goals for most of us in the world. I don’t seek that, I just seek seeing something I’ve written reach someone who really needed it. Because if I’m being honest, I owe so many people my existence, because there were so many days I didn’t think I was going to make it - hell, there still are so many days I feel that way - but somehow, I always feel like some sign from the universe comes along and puts a good song, a good book, a lovely quote, an episode of a TV show in my line of vision that makes me feel like maybe I’m not that awful, unrelatable, or so far lost that parts of my story can’t be seen in something someone else somewhere created when they finally reached even a glimpse of shore. Sometimes those signs also break your heart, again, but sometimes another comes along and helps fix that.

I don’t desire being adored by millions, I desire being honest enough so that someday, hopefully, I can hand someone I love all of these thoughts I’ve had, and the scared moments I’ve put down on paper, and the things I’ve never been able to say, even in therapy sessions, will be known by them, and they won’t walk away from me. That they won’t think I’m not worth the risk because they’ve seen the growth; as small as it may truly be.

Sometimes I try to pinpoint the exact day I became a ghost. I go over days and nights and try to decipher if it happened pre or post certain parts of my life. Was it before I finished college? Maybe earlier, maybe the day my parents finally split? Maybe it was the day I realized a boy I loved in my twenties was never going to love me back, and I just needed to focus on myself while life kept unfolding? Was it somewhere in the move across the country to finish college, and try to do something for myself that might better me, that my actual self flew out the window somewhere in Texas, or some other dusty road, and the entire years following were just my ghost years? Or maybe it wasn’t until after I let myself fall so far away from what I remembered myself to be, or what I stood for, or dreams I had, that I shrunk into myself so small and became a walking shell of who I used to be. Maybe it was the day I stood next to someone else at a bar, a different one than the bar I’d left that earlier unrequited love behind at, and thought for the first time in so long ‘is this person perfect?’ while I was introduced to him, and instead of being cool or sweet, or like someone a person would want to talk to - I blabbered on about some snowboarders who had a TV show that this person had never heard of, and I realized in the walking away from that person as a blush rose to my cheeks and my hands shook just enough to let me know that deep down I wanted to cry from my anxiety, that I was just too fucking weird for people, and not just that person, but maybe all people. These same type of ‘outer body’ or anxiety induced conversations and moments just kept happening over and over so I started focus in and realize I was the common denominator and that I must be the cause to my inability to relate to people or not be so fucking weird that I could practically feel their eyes rolling at me while I spoke to them. Clearly, I didn’t become a ghost because of any of these specific moments, but probably due to all of these moments all swirled together with so many others, and also due to my brain makeup and what I imagine is some missed diagnosis from childhood that today would for sure have me on the spectrum. Which, for the record, I’m completely okay with being on. Actually sometimes I think it would give me some kind of ease that maybe I’m not as ‘crazy’ or ‘out there’ as I’ve compared myself to be when I look at other peoples lives of my age. There’s no shame in thinking differently and having to work out how you do think so other people who don’t think the same can sort of understand. So please don’t take that as a cruel joke, or something to be angry at. It’s just me recognizing that people can be different, and sometimes they don’t know the reason for it because they were never seen properly. 

So, I’m not exactly sure of the day I became a ghost - fuck, maybe it wasn’t one of those moments or days specifically, but a lot of days, weeks, or months; full of falling further from who I’d been at seventeen, even twenty-one, or twenty-three, or who I even thought I would be by thirty, that made me disappear from myself one day and just become this person who just existed in the world day to day, but wasn’t actually living. I ate sometimes when I wasn’t trying to disappear fully so clothes would fit me better or boys might think I was beautiful, I laughed when I was supposed to, went on dates like I was trying, got up and went to work like I was supposed to, read a book here and there, binged watched TV shows to have conversations and social interactions with people like normal people do, and tried to convince myself that this was what living was, I guess. Between all of these day to day things and smoking myself to sleep, crushing up pills in private places and snorting them through straws, or dabbling - to put it lightly and politically correct - into cocaine, just to pass the time and make myself feel anything most of the time, I guess vanishing became easy.

Becoming a ghost was easier.

It’s just not exactly clear to me to be able to figure out the exact date and time I fully realized I’d become a ghost. It’s not as easy as like providing an alibi for myself for one specific night, and not because my brain was so hazy and filled with anger, sadness, and drug fueled smoke and pills for most, but not all - and not all at the same time - of the years between twenty to nearly thirty, that I cannot fully recall the moment I fully realized I wasn’t who I remembered myself wanting to be, but really because I think it happened slowly at first, somewhere in between being lonely, living in a place that I kind of had a hard time fitting into, not in terms of the weather or nature, but in making a friend or two or feeling like I wasn’t so... annoying-to-people-based-on-reality-shows New Jersey in a non-New Jersey place, and even if maybe it didn’t fully seem that way to other people, trying to finish school and not feel so old being basically a junior at like twenty-three when every other person I knew had already graduated and was moving to the next levels of their lives - whatever those were - while I was working as many hours as I could to just pay the rent, trying to make a friend in any place - which is really hard for me if I’m being honest. To cut it down to brass tax, I think I’m socially awkward and full of so much anxiety that I either shy away and appear unapproachable, or I let people in too quickly and my heart gets broken by them when I realize I probably care too much for them than they do for me. 

I think I’m just afraid of disappointing people.  So instead I just disappoint myself. 

I let people leave me because it’s easier. Why make them stay when they don’t want to? Why hope they’ll call first when they won’t? Why hope they’ll love me back the way I would have loved them?

It’s easier to let them go on and be happy and just... disappear. 

It’s why I think I let myself slowly start to slip away from who I had been my whole life. Some girl who was hoping for the ‘happy ending’ the ‘good things to come,’ as embarrassing as those things can sound for a person to imagine, the successful life that I sadly felt I would achieve with the promises of getting an education and working hard, but instead was just always left outside of the winners circle.  Not that anyone wins in any of this, but you know what I mean. The truth is, in life - from what I’ve come to understand - there are just people who lose less often than other people. I just got tired of losing, and feeling like I was losing all the time.  I got tired of making it to my twenties and feeling like I was never going to be the girl who would ever become anything or the one that anyone ever actually wanted back.  Sure, I had ‘romantic entanglements,’ if you could call them that, crushes, and drunken kisses, but nothing that it felt like everyone else was so easily able to get.  Boyfriends, flowers on a date night, fucking date nights in general, a birthday party thrown for them; not one they had to put together themselves and hope at least five people would come. The things one may think matters, but don’t - not in the grand scheme of anything that actually does really matter to the world - but these things still add up as years go by, and as I kept getting older and older and it felt like everyone I knew had this laundry list of relationships and ex’s and I was just kind of aware of how... no one has ever asked me out properly on a date or reached over to hold my hand in a crowded room. Or knew the thing I wanted to laugh about in public without me even have to say it.  Those stupid wishful, movie, dream life, fantasy land bullshit things that everyone tells you aren’t real outside of movies, but I just didn’t fully believe because I’d seen my own friends make eye contact with someone they loved across a room and I’d seen that feeling occur in real time. Maybe it wasn’t in a movie script ending kind of way, but it still happened. Small and simple, but it still did happen, and it was probably more beautiful than Hollywood could even fathom or conjure up.

And once I started to kind of realize that this kept occurring to people around me all of the time I just started to think that I was invisible. And soon after I came to realize I was. 

And it isn’t just the relationships that make you feel invisible, it’s the other things everyone around me seemed to be doing or achieving that makes me feel sort of ‘less than.’ People getting - what seems like to a twenty-something - a big fancy office job out of college, or buying a house, travelling with a group of friends multiple times a year.  Fuck, even just having a group of friends, that was actually amazing to me after like twenty-one. I could honestly walk through a store, or down a street and I’m not sure one person may have even noticed if I was there - or if I wasn’t. Even if I did daily routine items like where I bought my coffee or the days I shopped at a grocery store, or when I went for walks or not, I’m not sure if people would notice when I didn’t, or if I ever even did. Even when I was working in the office I got fired from, and commuting day to day, I’m not sure any one on that bus would be able to pick me out a line up even if I took the same 6:50 everyday.  Hell, I’m not sure people who I worked with and spoke to would even notice if I wasn’t there. And when I would wash my hands in the bathroom and the automated sensor wouldn’t even recognize me, I really started to wonder if I wasn’t actually a ghost after all. 

And day in and day out, month in and month out, year in and year out, all of it just started to add up. All the good things that were happening for everyone else - which was something I truly was happy for, despite how fake that sounds typing, like I’m trying to make myself sound like a decent human in hopes someone won’t just think I’m being whiny or jealous, I really was happy for them because I think a person - even some of the worst ones - does really want the people they know and care about to be happy; even if that happiness is seemingly impossible to hold for themselves. Regardless, deep in my heart I know that I was happy for them getting all of their desires, I was just sad I wasn’t getting my own ‘good things,’ or desires. And I felt like I had nothing to talk with people about. Like when I came to their table I was just... the person they knew who wasn’t progressing on any kind of timeline; even my own.

I started to feel ashamed about it. Embarrassed and stuttery about any kind of topic any one might speak to me about. So I sort of just stopped going to people’s tables. I didn’t want to see them look at me out of the corner of their eyes with pity as the thirty-something year old who had no direction, no love life, no career type job, and had not created or accomplished anything; at all.

And in the meantime, in trying not to fail, or having something to speak about that I felt I’d done a good job on or created, It felt like any kind of outlet that I tried to create to promote my own dreams or wishes just kept never hitting the mark. Trying to make a clothing line? Fail. Like even having one of these Tumblr’s years ago for my writing, anything I actually did write was pointless; or at least felt that way. Any story I’d completed, I wished were different or more original. I just kept feeling like other people had done the ‘path’ correct and they were all getting their foot in the door at the right times, and I was just... behind. My lack of being able to commit to a major at school, or even get an office job or internship doing something basic and day to day just didn’t appeal to me.  Not in a way that made me excited for the next thirty years of my life, especially because that’s what I always thought being an adult was. Finding a place to work that allowed you to build a career, and just getting through that until you were able to retire.

I guess I didn’t really think much about the joy in any of it, or what adulthood really held for me that didn’t seem so mundane and boring. Like just something you had to do and there was nothing super exciting about it. By the time I made it to like twenty I kind of realized dreams I’d had since I was younger were already out of question.  I was clearly never going to be that Olympic Gymnastic’s Champion I thought I would at eight - which even as I type this I want to laugh at how farfetched that dream even feels to remember - and the odds of me becoming Georgia O’Keefe, who I dressed up as for a 4th grade biography day - felt impossible, especially since my desire to possibly go to art school after college were kind of laughed off by my family because what are the odds people make any money out of art school? Plus, she mastered flowers, it’s hard to compete with the beauty of that.  And I was clearly never going to be some teen idol movie star or popstar princess. Which was also very far off dreams that I guess I recall having around 14. But I was like twenty-something now, and I’d heard myself sing, it is not good, even just speaking I have a voice most people wish they could unhear, and the most acting I’ve ever done is pretending I was just fine for most of my entire life. Even though I could feel the sadness deep in my chest and gut that felt so heavy and dark I was afraid of even admitting it was there in fear of what other people might think about me, hell, what I might think of myself.  

That’s the thing I’ve learned the most about trying to pinpoint when I became a ghost, I think I always was in some way, I was just never honest with myself about feeling that way. Not until I got much older and everything got out of control, that is.  It’s why I’ve always felt more comfortable in my own space and house. Where I have confidence in myself and my own little secret hiding spots for where I keep the sadness or fears of inadequacy. It’s easier to be me behind closed doors and in the stillness of my bedroom or solitude of my basement. I can be me in places where everyone isn’t watching, or it doesn’t feel like they are. Where I can’t hear them laugh about me as they pass around a group chat or some other joke I’m not privy to. Where they aren’t looking at my messy bun and unfashionable clothing and the smattering of pimples on my chin, or sad eyes and splatting of goofy childish freckles. I don’t feel so odd when I’m alone. It’s when I’m actually around people - especially people who I don’t know, or who have job titles much more important sounding than my name, or people who have travelled all over, or created something beautiful that they are proud of - that I notice how inadequate I feel in their shadows. That any small useless fact that I might know, or place I’ve travelled, and job I’ve held, feels unimportant or less.

I am also aware that a lot of these feelings are just that, feelings, and not actual facts. That these people are probably not actually feeling these things about me, but that’s the way my anxiety and depression feels. It keeps me in the basement of my own heart and mind because it feels safer. Like assuming all of these people already think those things about me will hurt less when I find out they actually do.

And that’s the part that also hurts - a lot - is when you do find out that those people feel and think those things about you. Sometimes you only find out because someone tells you, and sometimes you have to hear them making fun of you behind your back to realize it.  But it hurts all the same. 

And it hurt the most when I was actually actively trying to reorganize my life and try to pull myself up out of my own depression and self induced spiral, and was honestly trying; going to therapy weekly, removing myself from bad places, narrowing down my circle of people, and mostly cocooning myself from the rest of the world outside of throwing myself into a desk job and reading books on my commute to and from said job. I stopped using social media, stopped talking to a lot of people, stopped doing a lot of anything. 

And still I was a joke to people.  Turns out, the people I worked with were just... making fun of me without me knowing. I was trying my best to find a footing and ‘build a career at a company’ or whatever the fuck that really means, and they were just laughing at how uncool I was, or terribly dressed, or the annoying voice I posses. I mean, I understand why they didn’t like me - most of the time prior I barely liked me - but it just sucked to know that even when you were trying to be an okay human, one that wasn’t fucked up all of the time and actively working on yourself two mornings a week where I cried so often about how much everyone hated me and how much of a fuck up I was, hurt so much worse than all the times when I was a teenager and felt like I didn’t fit in. When the mean girl in our neighborhood would invite all the other kids out to play manhunt, but wouldn’t include me. Or the girls in middle school wouldn’t include me because I wasn’t an A-Team soccer player or whatever other bullshit made me weird to them.

Because now I was an adult, who knew she was a ghost for so long, and when I was finally started allowing myself to be seen in any formation - people laughed. It made me wish I’d stayed hidden in my night shift jobs, basement hideouts, and in the comfort of the naps I took that were basically second nights of sleep, just with daylight shining on outside. It felt worse to realize not staying a ghost allowed people to see me, and even then they didn’t like me. 

So I became a ghost, again. I cut off more people, stopped responding to others, asked some of them to stop reaching out to me, and just existed alone. I cried - a lot. In fields with my dog, who then was still a live, in parked cars outside of a job I hated, in the bathroom of that same job when I was constantly messing up and being allowed to have no responsibility, privacy, or final word on anything I did, I also cried in my bed, silently, almost every night as I stared at the ceiling fan spinning above my head and tried to transport myself to another place and time where it hurt less, I felt more secure, and maybe someone, or something, loved me back.  But most of the time when I cried it was for the life I thought I was going to have, the one I realized I was mourning even though I never lived it, and crying for the other part of the person I let myself become which was a person that people at these companies, and ‘friends’ I knew in some parts of my life was a good reason for them to laugh at.  

I cried a lot because I was never able to be someone, but what I think I was really crying for - and still do sometimes - is that I forget when I stopped wanting to be me.

Even the me that people in offices don’t like, or girls in middle school don’t understand. Sometimes I cried because I wished I could like that person more because at least than I’d feel like me. It’s hard to come to terms with that, hard to realize that I’m okay with not being liked by people, but it gets lonely realizing that having people in your life means all they want is for you to change. For you to fit the mold that they are okay with you being or who they would be comfortable bringing around their other friends. Someone who doesn’t laugh at the most inappropriate stuff, or snores in their sleep, or cries at commercials, whose car isn’t a mess, doesn’t hate folding laundry, knows when to call it a night at a bar one drink earlier than I do, or has a clear direction in their life and a slew of opportunities waiting for them at every corner with so many points of contact to makes those opportunities reality. Things for them to talk about at dinner parties or weddings as someone's date. 

Things that people who aren’t ghosts know how to do naturally and effortlessly. 

So I guess the real answer is, no, I don’t know when I actually became a ghost, if it was my whole life, or one morning when I woke up and just thought, ‘none of this is fun anymore,’ none of the getting high, or buzzed, or pretending I’m okay, or doing jobs that don’t make me happy, or never feeling the love of another human in the full ways that I wished I could, but instead tried to ignore and pretend I didn’t desire or want in my life. I’m not really sure when it all happened, I just know that I remember it all happening; slowly in random bouts of progression and over so many minutes of a life I kind of feel I’ve wasted to some extent, and hell, I’m unsure if I’ve ever really stopped fully wanting to be one. Sometimes it just feels easier to move through places and moments alone because it hurts less, somehow. Like it’s easier for everyone else if I just never get too attached to anything in fear that I’ll hurt them, or worse, they’ll break me, again. And I’m really tired of being broken by things that I may have thought were for me, but ended up not being. 

And then there are the random moments where I peak out into the world around me, fully noticed by someone - in a normal everyday running of an errand kind of way - and walk away from a conversation or an event and feel a slight bit of content in my heart that I think maybe it really doesn’t hurt worse than never actually feeling anything fully. It’s an odd catch 22. Wanting to be seen, and being fearful of being seen in fear, on both ends, that you’ll end up broken somehow. 

I’m unsure what any of it fully means, I guess for anyone. Do other people feel that way? Is it just a whole group of us who exist out there and feel - lost? Or scared? Or afraid to be who they actually are in fear that the life they lead now will no longer suit them or make them actually happy? And I know that this must be something people struggle with in terms of sexual orientation, but in a way, even as someone who does not struggle with that and knows I am into a certain sex, I still understand it in the sense that faking who I am feels wrong.  It feels like selling out. Like I’m only living to appease other people, and I wish more times that other people were willing to live to accept other people for who they were; faults and all. Even in this cancel culture world, not everyone is good, and not everyone is bad; people can be so many things, it’s the idealization to put a label on everything that makes things harder I think. We aren’t ingredients in a candy bar for consumption, we’re people - ghosts and all - but we are all allowed to be phases of ourselves sometimes. Sometimes, you have to become what you’re not all of the time to maybe even fully realize who you are, or want to be, most of the time. 

Unsure if any of that makes sense, but I think I’ll have to break it down even further. Maybe next time. In another post, where I don’t ramble on forever and come to no conclusion. This thesis would fail if I had to hand it in for a grade. 

Unless of course it was a scientific experiment hypothesis; and maybe that’s all life really is - one giant cosmic experiment where the rules will forever change and the points don’t really matter. Some giant game of Whose Line is it Anyway?

From one ghost behind a computer to another reading, goodnight.

Do people still get excited for stuff as they get older? 

Like I literally realized today, while making a rice concoction that I came up with years ago when I was supppppeeerrr broke, stoned, and very hungry with only leftover ordered in white rice sitting in the back of my beige fridge - which while totally disgusting, and embarrassingly unhealthy; I do not care - that I can’t remember the last time I was honestly excited for legit anything.

I mean, sure, I’ve been happy for events that have come up, like peoples weddings, their newborns, a TV show releasing a new season, even a band putting out a new album, but apart from the understanding of a feeling of some kind of form of happiness in my system, I honestly cannot remember the last time I was excited for anything.  

Like that kind of excitement that exists in your bones. Where your entire body feels palpable to it. Where it radiates in the pit of your stomach and makes your whole being buzz with an aura of glow-up radiance. Like the feeling of being at the top part of the rollercoaster, right before the weight brings the entire car speeding down the hill and kinetic energy takes over and makes you feel like your in freefall. That kind of excitement feels like it left me in childhood. Like the days you’d get to school and see the Book Fair setting up, the last day of school with a whole summer waiting wide open full of so much possibility, or when I was in the 4th grade and they brought a Planetarium to our school. This inflatable grey blob made basically out of tarps, glue, and an air mattress pump, would come into the school every year and be set up on the stage, all droppy and unappealing just sitting there off to the side of the lunchroom foldout picnic tables, until one day - BOOM - the lesson plan reached the constellation phase and all the Greek Mythology that came with it and suddenly that heap of grey shimmery tarp inflated to this magical bubble of wonder.  And for like one whole month your whole world was a new galaxy full of so many stories and dreams littered in starry skies.  And since this was something you only did in the 4th grade, it was about the biggest deal in a elementary schoolers life. 

And the climb in. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; that fucking climb in. Which was really a crawl at the slowest of paces because you were school children going at a speed of about .05 mph and one at a time, but only after your about 60-something year old teacher had crawled in and motioned for you specifically to follow when it was your turn, but holy mother of pearl, was that the most exciting thirty seconds of my life up until that moment the first time we were allowed to go into the Planetarium. And then the minute those stars shot across the black inside of the bubble, I really think I fully peaked at that moment. 

I think I’ve been chasing the high of that feeling of excitement ever since.

And part of me is slightly worried that I can’t really think of anything in recent years that has made me feel... excitement. Not a date, not a job, not a piece of art.

Well, maybe that last part isn’t fully accurate. I did sort of paint something recently that made me... feel something. But I ‘gave it away.’ And I use quotations around that because I’m unsure if the person who it was made for - who I think it actually belonged to; someone that I had a dream about and painted the dream - ever actually received it.  Either way, in the grand scheme of things, I knew the painting didn’t really belong to me. I mean, I was very proud of it - one of the few pieces of art I’ve ever created that I was actually proud of in a way that made me feel... accomplished or something - but just because I made it, I knew I couldn’t keep it. Regardless, I hope the person it was intended for did actually receive it, but I guess I’ll never really fully know.  

Either way, maybe that was the last time I felt... some kind of feeling close to excitement. Maybe it was more of a hopefulness for the unknown. I’m unsure. Whatever it was, it was the closet thing I can correlate to the feeling of excitement. 

Granted, deep down, I sadly knew it wouldn’t amount to anything, just another thing I created that in the end didn’t really mean anything. I guess that was goodbye to just another fleeting feeling of pretty much anything. 

If that person is out there, and ever sees this, I hope it made it to you. With no obligation about what you did with it from there. I just had to throw the Hail Mary.

I think I’m a little worried that I won’t have that feeling of excitement again. Like what if I am a person who never falls in love, or has a baby, or gets my dream job, the promotion you deserve, or even the home you saved so long to buy - or create. What are the small things I keep searching for that will allow me to feel excitement? I’m just... afraid all of the truly exciting things are behind me. 

And I don’t want to sound like there is nothing to live for, just nothing that truly excites me. Not in the way that makes me feel potential.

Maybe that’s why I started this? After all the therapy sessions, drunken deep conversations, self introspection, crying in my car alone in parking lots of malls, offices, churches, parks - maybe I just felt like I needed to provide myself some kind of potential for... anything.

Like what if the excitement I had about ‘becoming a writer,’ or whatever other dreams I’ve had in my life, needed to be re-examined and relooked at after all that time. What if it took me this long to think I was capable of even being close to those childhood dreams, or fantasies, because I am far enough removed from them to look at them in an actual insightful way, and not as a fucking dramatic end all be all of who I was during those moments, embarrassed, ashamed that I wasn’t perfect, or on the same path as all the people around me who were accomplishing things, getting promotions, finding love, creating lives, while I was just - slogging through work days in hot kitchens, sticky stained bar counters, random office jobs where I was making no difference to anyone or anything, and just hoping to make it to my days off, have a few laughs with the people I loved, enjoy a mid-grade priced bottle of wine with a roommate, and smoke a bowl or twelve while still trying to figure out where I belonged in all of this complex existence. 

Maybe you can’t really live through something and be fair in your judgement of it at the same time. Maybe removing yourself from it - even by about a decade - allows you to actually see it for what it was; part of just the timeline that turned you into whatever you are now.

I guess I’m still unsure what I am. I’m not really... good, or bad. I’m not really super smart - or fully stupid. I’m just me. And even though I know myself, my actual self and not the drug riddled one, or the imaginary dream life living one, or the one people assume me to be, judge me to be, or create in their own mind about me based off of whatever they’ve seen, heard, or think; I do know myself. But I am still learning new things about my own brain, and heart, all of the time. And some of that comes from looking back on the part of me that existed before, the past. It doesn’t mean I want to live in the past again, or that I can’t get beyond the things that happened, but maybe I just never got to fully imprint them into the stories I wished I could have written while I was going through all of it. Maybe I just didn’t know how to be honest and objective about it; not in the way that would make someone care or relate to it. 

Maybe I was just afraid that I felt so sad, lost, scared, and like I was always failing at everything I tried; that everything I wanted would always be out of reach, and that I just wasn’t on par with everything everyone else was achieving in their real life - not even so much their online social media portrayal of their lives.  I guess I just thought other people wouldn’t understand, or even care, why I felt any of these ways. That one person experiencing anything at all meant nothing to any one else’s journey or story.  

Maybe that’s when I really stopped feeling excitement, when I equated excitement, or hopeful possibility, to the end result being disappointment. 

I guess I’m trying to work on that. 

I’m trying to remember that excitement can happen for the most ordinary things. I’ve just got to remember to be present for those ordinary things to feel it.