Toxic Tidbits

it’s almost as though i’ve been viewing life as a blur, the days merging into one, the nights long and lonely. the sun doesn’t shine as brightly as it used to, the moon’s faint glow brings no joy, the stars are merely footprints of my soul scattered across a gloomy sky. there is numbness everywhere i look, a dull ache that my heart has become besotted with, an obsession that i cannot cull, a phenomenon i thought i could run from. yet i am at peace, at peace from the thoughts running through my veins, the fear of existence, the horror of the reckless pursuit of happiness that i couldn’t bear to escape. and i look in the mirror, sleepless with despair, hopeless with regret. she looks so familiar, yet her face is lost in translation, forgotten by her own soul, washed away by the reminder of her sins. how could it be? how could i have lost myself?

i have spent most of my adult life lovesick, lost in a world where romance is our escape, yet we run from it the second it feels real. a generation so lost in a sea of options, that we forget that one is enough to feed our souls. we are suspended in water, neither drowning nor swimming, treading water, using our youth as an excuse for why we wait so long to figure out what we want from love. and i am guilty, guilty of running from love, guilty of choosing a love that has harmed me beyond repair, guilty of staying even when i knew that love was long gone, but most of all, i’m guilty of believing that true love, a peaceful love, won’t ever come my way – but how can it if i don’t even love myself? in the end, love is being okay with the chaos that has found a home in your mind, and letting your walls you have built crumble in your own heart. for how can love knock on your door if love doesn’t live inside you?

i’ve been drowning before, but it feels like i’m sinking to rock bottom, like my heart in my chest and my mind is disconnected from the world. and i’m convinced that i cannot fight hard enough anymore, like the decline has been so slow that i can’t believe it’s caught up to me. i am so lost, and i am so weary. i am angry, but i can’t feel anything anymore. i am numb. and i think that nobody understands. nobody sees me for who i am, or how i’m feeling. i’ve been drowning but no one has checked to see if i’m okay. i am so lonely. i feel like i have no one. and i know it’s not true, but i wish someone would do something for me. i wish i didn’t have to pretend. i don’t think someone will save me. i don’t know if i can save myself. i feel 13 again. lost. buried in regrets. wishing i was someone else. wishing i wasn’t alone. chasing for happiness when i don’t even think i’m capable. and i’m past self destruction. i’m at isolation.

do you ever just feel completely alone in the world? it’s a strange feeling, the feeling of deep silence, yet pure solitude. calm. sometimes i wonder, and forgive my rambling mind, whether this peace, so sweet, so encompassing… whether this peace is fooling me. because loneliness is deafening, and behind the walls of solitude, there is a revolution i cannot allow to occur. there is a revolution that holds half my heart, yet i refuse to go to war. and i think to myself, more often than not, if the price for peace will always be loneliness. if neutrality is perhaps the best strategy in war. the answer only lies in time, yet i cannot find the answers, i can only wait. and as i wait, the silence grows louder, and my heart finds itself lifting into place. peaceful, yet alone.

i am constantly trying to figure myself out. who am i? why am i here? i wish that i knew more than what i do now. i wish i could look to the future and believe in myself, give myself grace, forget my anger. i am burning red with desire and rage; desire for more, rage for my inability to reach it. and nostalgia has begun to seep into my bones, the idea of another year around the sun drawing anxiety into the shadows of my brain. another year rolls around, and i’m just as lost as i was when i was over a decade ago. the last year around the sun has hardened me. i am no longer the girl i used to be, but who really was she? you see, i don’t think i’ve liked myself for years. but would liking myself bring me happiness anyways? so many questions, and never any answers. i wish i could just stop asking.

i’m in love with the sound of my own voice. i have forgotten what it means to be a good listener, to remember every little detail i’ve ever been told, to be present and affable. instead, i now know so acutely that the way i ask for criticism then crumble when i receive it, the way i can’t see myself ever being incorrect, the way my anxiety starts attacking me every time i hear something remotely negative has convinced me it must be about me. so unabashedly selfish. and i’ve been told that selfish is okay, but selfish is not me. change is not sweet on me, change is angry. change paints a bright picture but leaves me torn inside. i’m in love with the sound of my own voice, but not with who i am.

the fragility i find when i look at life will forever scar me. the idea of life being fleeting, that every moment should count, that each second should be worth something, that there is nothing better than living but for some reason i can’t make myself want to do anything at all. i wake up everyday just hoping the day goes by as quickly as possible, allowing my brain to latch onto exhaustion with ease. i’m tired, but it’s not what it sounds like. i’m tired of existing instead of living, i’m tired of trying as hard as i can to do something worthwhile but realising there is nothing in my life that is meaningful beyond work and sleep and i watch as i see everyone around me thrive beyond measure and i think of myself as lost in the wind, someone who looks like her life is good from the outside, but from the inside, i’m crumbling. and i know it gets better but will it ever stop? will i ever stop needing to sleep to get through my sorrows? will i ever stop praying for peace but not peace in my life, peace in my mind? i don’t know the answers to life anymore. i just know it’s here one day, and gone the next. i don’t want to exist anymore. when will i start living?

my therapist said i contradict myself. one toe in, one toe out. almost as though i know nothing and everything about what i want, but i’m too scared to figure it out. like my heart and mind don’t work together. my mind is running at lightning speed. i love too hard, but never enough. i fight too dirty, but never know how to explain what i mean. i’m running in circles constantly. i don’t want to listen to what anyone else has to say. i think i’ve been alone in my mind so long that i have forgotten what it’s like to truly care. that truly caring would make me weak, and i’m already weak enough. it’s evident to everyone my brain is frazzled, like i’ve been electrocuted and don’t know how to fix the static inside me. i wish i realised that life will never be simple. i wish i realised how much i need to slow down.

in healing, i have found myself asking questions i don’t know the answers to. the way an arm around your waist can feel, the way your eyes can lock together in perfect unison, the way effortlessness takes on a whole new meaning, the way a gnawing ache turns into perfect calm with just a simple sentence. i find myself blooming again, fighting my way into a peace i didn’t think i could allow myself to ever have, finding myself enamoured by a feeling i convinced myself i never deserved. when you know you know, i tell myself, but how do i know for sure? anxiousness has riddled my brain, self-doubt has consumed me, and i spend time thinking of myself as someone who can never be perceived beyond a reflection of who she shows herself to be. how do you allow someone to look into your soul, and not expect to be broken again? is life so meaningless that even the most meaningful interaction can send my heart into a tailspin, wondering whether reality is supposed to be this sweet, patiently waiting for another touch like i’ve been deprived of something i didn’t know i wanted this badly. you can never be close enough, entangled in each other like a necklace waiting to be fixed, constantly feeling like an unsolved puzzle waiting to see if this piece will fit, and you don’t know whether you’ll wake up - pinch me i’m dreaming, is anything really too good to be true? in my healing, i have found that there are no answers, only questions. sometimes, things just happen. sometimes, you don’t need to know.

i don’t know who i am anymore. i spent so much time contorting myself into a person you’d want to love, that i forgot myself. i looked at myself in the mirror the other day, a face i cannot remember, eyes that have forgotten what lightness is like, an emptiness seeping through my cheekbones. i wasted time on what i thought was love, but did not look like it. and how do you look at your friends, who tell you they saw it before you did, but didn’t want to break you more than he already was. i wouldn’t have listened anyways, i had fallen too hard for someone who always wanted more. who never cared about what made me happy, who never thought that he should listen to what i had to say, suffer in silence, sit pretty, be quiet. and now i cannot trust a word people say, constantly biting my nails in fear of someone telling me i talk too much, always second guessing intentions and feelings and pushing away anything that has the potential to hurt me like you did. because you’ll never truly let go, even though i need you too. being without you has left me brighter than i have ever been before, but the way your eyes burnt into my soul can never be forgotten. the pain you left behind will always linger. but i will thrive, i will love. what cuts me down will never break me, and i will live a life where i have forgotten you ever broke me.

life is rollercoaster and people will not have the same heart as you but it is what you do with your heart that will always matter. you gave your heart and in turn it will come back to you. the pieces you’ve given away will find their place again. you cannot lose hope in something as pure as love because even if someone taints it for you, the truth is that it is so pure that when it is real it’ll feel like none of that ever happened.

i used to love to write. watching the words move across paper, finding my voice and being more honest than i’d ever allow myself to be otherwise. the way my sorrows wash away with each sentence, carrying the weight of my shoulders in such a casual manner, creating peace for my soul. but words have not come from my fingertips in months, the stories i wish to tell are too dark in my heart and i am hardly ever at peace. not in the sense that my world has come crumbling down, because in some ways, it’s better than it’s ever been. but in my heart, i am lost, and sometimes i pray that words will find me again. that i can be honest to myself no matter what, that i can love myself like i want to be loved, and that i can pick up the pieces like i have before. life may have lost me my words, but it’ll never capture my faith.

i used to define love in poetry, as though paper would turn into reality and nightmares would become dreams. i used to believe in eternity, in soulmates and true love and pathetic fallacies but the world seems dull now. as though the colour has been sucked from my soul, and i am grey, dismal, lonely and longing. i am fractured, no longer trusting, constantly doubting myself and the world around me. the world has been punishing me, the universe taunting me, how could i believe this was real, i should’ve known better than to give myself so easily but our love was a puzzle that was never meant to be complete. now i’m stuck picking up the pieces of myself that i broke to fit you and i keep searching for you in everyone i see, how can i feel whole again when you have pieces of me?

the nights are starting to get longer again, my eyes are more tired than they’ve ever been and sleep has been my favourite escape that takes too long to reach and i’m tired of existing but not living and my heart is broken all the time and i’m really just a shadow of who i used to be…will it get easier? will life ever be happy for me, will i keep crying myself to sleep, will there ever be peace? i am lonely, i am sad, i am angry, i am a mess of a person, constantly negative, never optimistic about life and love and happiness because every time it’s so close it’s so far away and i’m a burden on everyone i know and i’m miserable, i just want to be saved from my end but i can’t get myself to want to live again. when will i stop existing and start living? when will life become mine to cherish not mine to hate and when will i feel peace again, i’m tired of feeling this way, i’m tired of being this way, so unloveable, so unworthy, so unwanted all the time and i try, i try so hard but trying isn’t working anymore and i’m just another girl, used and thrown to the side and i don’t know what being happy even feels like. well at least it doesn’t last long enough to be real.

i feel lost again, like i’m so close to having what i’ve always wanted but now the idea of losing it all has become so strong that i can’t cope and my mind is numb again, my mind cannot feel again, i am in love i am in love i am in love. but i am not enough, nothing is enough, because i am unloveable, i always have been, a human of sorrow, a person that cannot be seen beyond her mistakes, a person that cannot be seen beyond the lack of clarity she tries so hard to mask and i am lost again, my mind is a fog again, will you love me if i try harder? will you trust me if i show you i’m not who you think i am, will you trust me if i tell you a million times that my heart is yours because i keep my promises and i promised you forever but i don’t know if love is enough because love is never enough and trust is the glue that binds us to a life worth living and i am scared beyond measure that i cannot show you the truth, i cannot show you i love you, i cannot show you that i would never bring you pain the way i bring pain to myself and i beg the world to show me forgiveness, i am tired of suffering, i just want to feel your lips against mine and know that i am home again. i am asking for a love that i don’t deserve, because i have never deserved love and i am lost. i am in love, i am in love, i am in love.