high school

 high school

as much as i hated it. despised every second of it,

waking up at 4am and doing my whole routine.

(the routine that would make or break my day if it was messed up or not.)

driving to school for 30 minutes just to get there 2 hours early to sit in my car and do absolutely nothing. 

if i was a minute late i would loose my shit. 

so much work in the morning to not even care about the rest of the day. i didn't pay attention. i did about 50% of my school work and gaslit my teachers to up my grade. 

im genuinely surprised i graduated.

i will say that the first 2 years were decent, though i only remember the good parts. 

especially having friends.

i enjoyed school then.

covid hit and all hell broke loose.

about 2 years of online.

went through a total change. puberty? idk

dyed my hair, started doing things that younger me wouldn't even dare to try. 

genuinely had the 'fuck it' mentality. 

was it good or bad? idk

back to school senior year. to get it over with of course. 

i could've graduated early but i stayed anyways. 

hoping things got better.

ofc they didn't but who was i to know?

my whole life revolved around my body, eating, and my girlfriend. 

(ex girlfriend..)

still getting to school 2 hours early but now to cry. 

but the sunrise was always pretty. 

i let myself spiral and the only thing to blame was myself. though now i would apologize to past me. 

definitely wasted my senior year. 

but i will say it was NOTHING like the movies

(breakfast club, dirty dancing, highschool musical yada yada...)

here's a writing piece i had made in creative writing senior year. 

everyone told me how realistic it was 

(i think because everyone did fictional so mine was interpreted as such) 

but i had based it on myself. 

which made it easier to write lmao

it's a little sad to reread but it's well written at least.

                                                           

Entries

Avoiding eye contact, I shifted my view down to my boney fingers, intertwined between one another,    “I just don't remember.” 

“That’s okay, just try your best.” She replied in a somewhat comforting tone, yet I could feel the slight disappointment at the lack of answers I’d given at today's meeting. 

My brain. All kinds of fucked up. But recently there was really nothing. The weeks became one long day of fading in and out of consciousness, trying to function as a normal teen. Although, I’m not even sure exactly what that is. I can’t differentiate between the days of the week, can’t remember what class I had just been in or what I did, can’t pay attention long enough to absorb any actual information. I don’t think I’d even be able to tell you what I had for breakfast this morning. I get home and my mom will ask me about my day, about the classes I had, and all I can do is lie. The honest answer is that I have no idea. It feels like I’m going insane, a little me running around inside my empty head, trapped and unable to do anything. It feels as though someone had just taken my brain out and switched me to autopilot. This leads to missed assignments, failed tests, and dry conversations. But who really cares? I’ve already forgotten anyways. 

To add fuel to the fire, I’m all drugged up on antidepressants that don’t make me any happier. They just seem to put a little pink bandaid over the problem. So not only am I lacking a brain, but also lacking any personality or emotions at all. A constant blank stare and state of confusion, I don’t feel like me.

That’s what I wanted to say to my therapist, but I knew the response would be the same nonreassuring “mhm” and a nod while she scribbles away into her notebook. 

I looked back up and our eyes reconnected, “I don't know.” I think that gets the same point across. 

Another hour wasted. More of my mom's money down the drain, all for me to sit in front of a stranger and talk about how shitty my life is while she tries to find some deeper meaning in the mess of it all. Analyzing me like a confusing poem in an English class— the kinds you spend weeks on yet there’s still more to decipher. She can sit there and give me all the advice she wants, suggest yoga, or maybe even a different person to talk to that may understand me better. But she can’t change me. She can’t snap her fingers and fix everything in my life; make me hopeful. I have to be the one to actually make the effort. I sound ungrateful, but it’s exhausting talking about your past, the idiotic thoughts my brain musters up, and everything else in between. Already I feel crazy and it doesn’t help to talk about it even though I thought it might.  

I don’t want to dwell on a past I can’t remember. It causes more overthinking and overall stress. Luckily that stress is pretty quickly diminished because nothing stays in my head long enough.  

This past month I have ended all of my closest relationships. Multiple friends who all claimed to be my best, girlfriends, boyfriends, even my dad. I wouldn’t say it was ever on purpose, but then again I didn’t really stop myself. There were no fights or burning of bridges. I just stopped answering texts, stopped talking in school, and avoided any social media. Once again in that autopilot state of mind, all disguised with a false sense of control. The unfortunate thing was that no one really tried to reach out, to stop the drifting, to just check in on a now ‘old’ friend. So maybe it was for the better. Like it was bound to happen eventually.

These sort of ‘breakups’ always lead to even more isolation. No texts asking me to hang out, no more forced smiles in the hallways, no more effort.  Everything honestly just came to a dead stand still. 

This is what I wanted. Right? 

I had even gone so far to push away one of my closest friends, multiple times. Each time pretty much the same and every single time I had done it, I was upset, and I’m sure she was worse. For some reason I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that someone actually wanted to be there for me and make sure I was okay. I constantly told my therapist about how I thought that maybe being alone is better for me so I can focus on myself and not have to worry about anything else. I think part of me wanted to convince her, and myself, that there was good reasoning behind it. Trying to make it seem like I did it in a “bettering my life” kind of way rather than a “self destructing” way. Which was not true but I could pretend. In hindsight it never ends up being better, it just hurts more and makes more time for me to be left with my own thoughts and feelings. No distractions of going places or ignoring my own feelings to worry about someone else’s. 

I talked to my therapist more about losing my close friend, and how upsetting it is to really have no one there anymore. Although, she brought back up how it was what I initially wanted. I guess I really had convinced her that I wanted a break from everyone so I could work on myself. 

But I don’t think I’ve ever really known what I want. 

I didn’t want to put the effort in to get better, if I’m honest I just wanted someone to do it for me. Which isn’t really possible. 

I missed my friends, even if a lot of them weren’t the best for me, I missed going to my dad’s to have dinner during the week, I missed actually enjoying life even if I never really did. I just know that it was better than now.  

Every morning I force myself to get up before the sun, drink my bodyweight in caffeine, and try to stay awake for the 30 minute drive because I refused to switch schools senior year. There was no point in staying at the same school. I had no friends, any specific classes or teachers that I loved, nothing new to look forward to. It would have been pretty much the same to switch schools if I really wanted to. I go throughout the day avoiding any socializing with teachers or other kids. I don’t make an effort to look even remotely in tune to anything going on around me, which is apparent with the blank stare constantly displayed on my face. 

In class, every sound is amplified. Muffled voices in the hallways, the jingling of a teacher's keys as they come to yell at said students to be quiet. The constant sound of the ticking clock and kids moving around in their chairs in anticipation. As individual as all the sounds were, at points they begin to all fade together. Becoming more overwhelming by the second. The harder I try to focus on the work I’m doing or what useless information the teacher is trying to explain, the louder everything gets. It makes me want to fucking scream. 

So I gave up on trying. 

Once the neverending school day ends, I drive the same 30 minute way home. Due to my lack of risk assessment — and the fact that not even one part of me gives a shit anymore— I end up going 90mph the whole way which cuts it down to around 20 minutes. Driving this fast makes it seem like I’m eager to make it home, though it’s more just how much I don’t trust myself. There’s nothing I’m driving home to. Just an empty house and my cat who seems to know when I’m upset. In other words, he never leaves my side. 

I avoid my homework and the rest of the time I’m not quite sure what I do. Just a lot of waiting for my mom to get home from work. Being without her makes me miss her, although the moment she walks through the door, anger crashes over me like a tsunami smashing a town. Sounds poetic but feels uncontrollable. So I avoid her too.

 I think I’m just lonely. My mom I’d the only person who isn’t going to leave no matter how bitchy or difficult I am. She could leave, but I know she wouldn’t. So yes I miss her, but it feels more like I just need human contact— attention. 

My favorite part of the day is when the sun starts to set and I can sit in my bed without needing an excuse or looking like a waste of space. “Lazy” as my mom usually mutters while walking past my door.

I journal to pass the time, I like to get everything out of my head. I know that I have therapy; someone literally being paid to listen to me. But I don’t necessarily enjoy telling someone the reasons I don’t want to be alive, the reasons I can’t even get through a simple day. 

So I journal. 

Unlike my therapist who feels they need to tell my mom when I even slightly hint to her that I may hurt myself in some way, my journal has never once said anything. It makes talking about things feel a lot less intense, no one is there to give me unhelpful advice or suggest a higher level of care rather than just talking. Just a piece of paper that contains almost everything I've thought about. 

It’s odd to re-read old entries, even ones from only a month ago. I used to sound so hopeful,for my future, for things to get better. I believed everyone saying things got better. I don’t think I questioned it even once. But maybe that’s only their experience. Do things really get better for everyone? It can’t be proven like some sort of science experiment. So maybe it's luck of the draw. Me being one of the unlucky ones. 

I don’t want to get out of bed each morning and do the same routine I’ve been doing for the past couple months. It seems to get harder each day even when it’s the same exact thing. So how are they able to step out of the box and look at the big picture, to see that things get better, or at least try to make an effort to want them to be?

After a while even journaling is too difficult to put any effort into. Which sounds pretty pathetic considering it’s just my feelings written with various colors in hopes of making them appear less intense. I end up filling the silence with tv or music. Nothing I need to pay attention to, more just because I hate the idea of being alone with my thoughts. Fortunately for me, my room happens to be a wall away from my moms’ who loves to talk just loud enough so I can hear her clearly. Unfortunately, she doesn’t talk about how her day was, what she’s looking forward to, nothing positive. She seems to only enjoy talking about how much money I cost; my therapy appointments, doctor visits, prescriptions, and all the other things she didn’t seem to expect when she signed up to have a kid. But the only thing she does is talk. Like I mentioned, she’s not going to leave. So I understand she probably needs to get things out, let out all the built up anger.

But at that point, I’d rather be stuck with my own thoughts about how shitty I am. It hurts more coming from someone else's mouth. Especially your own moms’. 

These past few months have felt like just a week. I haven’t done much of anything different, definitely nothing that is worth noting or helps me remember which days were which. When everyday starts to blend together or ends up being the same as the previous, you get bored. Not even just bored, more that you just want it to be over. I don’t want to sound so depressing but imagine living the same day on repeat, yet still you can’t remember what you just did. Pretty similar to those movies where the main character just continues to live the exact same day until they can figure out how to break the loop or kill their murderer or whatnot. 

I haven’t figured out how to break my loop yet. It sounds like too much work to figure it out. I know that it’s literally just that I need to take care of myself, figure out what’s wrong with me and change what I’m doing. Positive changes. But it's just too much work. And I don't think I even have enough brain power to accomplish that.

I think there is a common misconception that every story needs to have a happy ending, that the main character breaks their loop. Even like two characters falling in love, or maybe a kid goes on a trip and discovers his life purpose, or even just that the character gets better at the end—happier. That is just not true. It's not that I don’t believe in happy endings, but I think maybe they are more neutral or even just plain shitty. And as negative as it sounds, if I had a story I think it’d end pretty neutral. Maybe I’ll come to terms with how crappy I’ve made my own life with my pessimistic ways. Or maybe my story will cut short, if you catch my drift. 

But I’m okay with that. 

                                                              

ill be honest im in a much better place than when i initially wrote that. though there are things i miss.

i'm working through the grieving process and being okay with things i can't control.

the girl who wrote that did not believe at all that anything would get better.

she believed that all overly positive people were lying

(sometimes i still do)

but it does get better.

not completely yet but i hope eventually.

it just takes a long ass time

and maybe some therapy. 

-o