Poem titled “Leave Me”

 

Cheap in my silence

Unraveled and desire-less

My hopeless despondence

Existence of somnolence

 

Dreams of a sickened mind

Where all is blood and death

When pain keeps the soul alive

I yearn, the safe of darkness

 

A dearly met impulsive sting

For a moments honest peace

Leave me in this daze.

Leave me spilled beneath my blade.

 

 

The art page/slide is updated now: fifty five images total, not including the one above yet.   

 

I think it’s got to be more than just social anxiety now. I’ve gotten too comfortable with avoidance and I don’t think I can change how I feel about it. Avoiding social interaction just keeps the pain and distress low. I like being alone over being around others, but I know as well as anyone else that it can not be this way forever. Anyway, I’ve gone numb and it’s hard to write again. How many pathetic times will I say that….

 

A favorite song…

 This is a beautiful Evanescence acoustic performance of “Lithium” (more than a year old, I believe). Isn’t it funny how small things like songs can get you through so much when you are attached? I remember in ‘06 when The Open Door came out, I was hooked, and perfectly distracted with the new piano tracks from the album I wanted to learn and play. Anyway, this was one of those songs I listened to often because it turned out that at the time I was set in believing exactly what the lyrics talk about, equating happiness to numbness and preferring sorrow over that feeling. So when I heard this song, I felt very understood to a point.

A Life Undeserved

 

 

A tiny pill, happy, numb

A death-like sleep, soulless blood

Conditions were set long ago

Potential burns, the ashes snow

 

Up that night, looking at scars

Whisperings, those many marks

‘Want death, feel sad, depressed’

‘Sit still and wane in worthlessness’

 

My soul should be thrown in

And spread for all it’s worth

Whatever blessed glow is left

Is fully undeserved

 

 

 I have the time now, to sort through the disorganized lines I wrote weeks ago and put a message together to explain what’s really been going on in my head. I don’t think too highly of myself, ever. I am taking things day by day, with a small goal to make it through November.

 

My mother and I were out having dinner a few nights ago and I blatantly rushed in the question to her about what she wanted me to do, I hoped in a way that gave away my desperation. To get more specific, I asked her about school and the ‘what if’s’ regarding my student loan. Like what if my loan doesn’t cover certificate programs, only degrees-what am I to do after that (since I really don’t think I’d make it through finishing an entire degree’s worth workload, whether it’s two years or not)? She didn’t go into things that far into the future, because I could tell, it left her just as unsettled as it leaves me every second I think about it.

 

Inside I’ve gone very quiet. Knowing that this winter I could be out on the streets by choice, or dead the same leaves me with nothing else to say. I know it’ll be something unpleasant, but deserved, waiting for me. After all, aren’t I too lazy, or broken and screwed in the head to finish school, or get a job, or live at all? Aren’t I too selfish or too stuck up to live for what I’ve been given, no matter how I feel?

 

You know, it’s settling in again. The whole ‘I’m not going to be around to care’ thread of thought. What a failure. And I can only guess that a part of the reason I’ve drastically messed with when and how much I eat and drink now is to prove to myself that I can commit to something. Stupid, but what else do I really have to manipulate but this body in which I’m trapped? Who’s it hurting?

 

It’s just that I can’t stand myself, I mean look; I don’t really own the mateiral things I have because I am not the one who earned the money to buy it all you know? I still can’t legally drive, so going places is not on my terms, always someone elses, and even if it were on my terms, I have no where I would want to go, I have no friends to see, no family that wants to see me unless it’s necessary, and I’ve lived so long in this house feeling taken for granted. But even if I were gone, what I do for others wouldn’t be missed. I’m not enough to consider, nor should I be. I don’t need to stick around.

 

I don’t know what an expert would call it, chroniclly suicidal, or with suicidal ideation, whatever this is, I don’t know why I keep it such a close thought. I don’t know why it brings me comfort or why I see it as an option always there for me to consider. It’s just been this way for a few years now, and maybe I should be labeled a coward or a loser because I will be the first to say that I want to run away, that I am afraid and pathetic. But mostly I will say I am angry with who I am, and with it being dificult for me to make the changes within to make my life easier. And also because I simply don’t know what I want, and feel my time has run out to think about it. I always thought and belived that by eighteen I had to know the plan for the rest of my life, that I had to want this and that in order to be called a success. I turn nineteen in what, three weeks, not any closer to a solution, besides disappearing all together. Not that any of this matters….I don’t have a plan, for living or dying right now. Just getting through November without completely losing myself to my thoughts is enough of a plan/goal.     

Terrified, not much of a plan here…

     It takes a long time to do anything at my college, so I am not totally withdrawn yet, and unfortunately it has me thinking again about what I am doing at all. I tried looking for jobs today and it hurts knowing how unfit I am for every (seemingly) simple, out of the way job. Cashier?- not me, just thinking about that has me high in anxiety.

I also filled out two change of major forms just a few minutes ago actually. One for a degree in Graphic Design, and another for a Production Artist Certificate (this would take way less time to earn). Those titles fit me more than “Coding Specialist” or “HIM tech”. Now I don’t know how far I’ll get with actually switching my major, money wise. I hate having loans like this, it is so messy and puts a lot of guilt on me (as if I needed more). But right now I don’t care because I am satisfied that I made a move I didn’t expect to make. How long have I been talking about changing my major?…lol. For too long. But it scares me because I’d be starting over, once again with no clue what I’m in for.

It’s better than assuming my options are out, knowing I’ve not tried all my options yet, I’ve not tried. And while I know art is what I go to, it has done nothing less than save my life, I am not confident in being creative you know? Who cares though right? It’s not the college’s money that is being wasted, it’s mine. It’s the money I don’t have to waste being wasted….

Whatever though, this isn’t easy. It’s written all over my poor arm at the moment- I am losing and shutting down fast. I’m going to make an appointment with my therapist one last time, just so he knows I’m off my medication and that I’m not gone and dead yet, or maybe not….If I did, I would not hold back anything this time. The funny thing is I don’t feel depressed, I just feel completely out of options. I can’t become a brand new person over night, or even over twelve months time because it took longer than that to become the mess I am. So, my mother can be angry or feel at a loss with me, and my father can stay clueless as usual, and the rest of my family can cut me out, it’s not going to fix me and it’s not going to give me a reason to want the rest of the life I have. I can only try so much, and continue to see it fail so much before nothing matters anymore. Until my family’s feelings are nothing, and until my thoughts about disappearing and breathing no more aren’t even important, but are all I think about and all I am left to work toward. Do I make sense? It doesn’t shock me that I’m thinking about suicide, and neither does the fact I’ve sliced my arms open again shock me. It’s all so small and insignificant compared to what’s been going on forever in my head.   

I am already disappointed in myself. It doesn’t help that people in my life don’t know how far on the edge I am. They need to know I am hanging on desperately for something to work and for it to save me you know? Why I have to make things so hard, I don’t even know…why am I still here is the real question. I shouldn’t be and I don’t want to be, yet I’m still trying…silly right.

        

Shadow… an old drawing; it’s relevant now though.

Soon To be Over With

       Well, tomorrow I will withdrawal from school. And I guess sooner or later they’ll send me a bill for whatever I owe on the loans. This is hell. My mother doesn’t get it. Nobody does. I want to tell her that I don’t want what I am expected to want. What is life? Working at a job you don’t care about, just to get money to buy things you also don’t care about. God, why don’t I just starve. I want her and everyone else to be so angry with me. They should hate me with everything and then I’ll disappear, just the way I should. It would be easier if they said they hated everything about me…confirming what I already feel, making it easier to fall completely through.

She used the words ’she’s dropping out’ to my father, since he’s taking me to the college tomorrow. It sounded like a knife going though me. As if she’s stating finally that I am a failure. I have not lived up to her expectations. But it doesn’t hurt worse than wanting to escape this whole thing. I am scared all over again. Stuck all over again in my own failure. It’s easier to curl up into my mind and block the rest of the world out, pretending I don’t need to eat or drink or feel, and pretending I’m not distressed despite the tears and the blood. I don’t want to hold on anymore.

Looking back trying to see how everything could have led me down this path, I start to remember the things I just didn’t have, things that I see my cousins and even my parents have had. They all haven’t and didn’t lose their friends when they most needed their support. They all had some kind of support from their immediate family. They never got completely lost in themselves like I have, driving sharp things into their skin to dig out a reason. They never got this far. I look at my three younger cousins, all girls, three to four years younger than me, and non of them are where I was at their age; friendless, hopeless and hanging on to nothing at all. They are fortunate right?

I am still running. From life and from relationships and pressure. I avoid and it’s been that way for so long. Nobody ever told me how to handle this. It’s as if they all assumed I’d know everything I’d need to know to be on my own in life once I turned eighteen. No option I am left with is one I want to stick up for. What would they do with me, if anyone knew I wanted to end my life and would not accept anymore “help”, no more pills, no more talking? They would shut me out for the lost cause that I am and forget just as they should. It’s not so hard to understand anymore really. Disposable, useless, filthy and deranged…who could look at me and not call me a throw away?

Somebody should call me out. Send me on my way down, because I will not ever complete what my heart is actually hoping for, for my life. The population is full enough and I am useless. Art is not needed, and if it is needed, there are better people out there to overshadow me. My poems are probably too dark or boring to be published. They always find reasons to reject things…I could try, with the short amount of time I have left though. I’ll try and sell myself as best I can, and when it doesn’t work, at least I will be content with taking the risk at all.

A disgrace, a failure, and maybe I’m just lazy. Who cares? I don’t.

      A cousin of mine, who’s in her second year of highschool, gets to go to Japan soon. It’s part of something like a “People to people” thing. I used to get those mailings when I was in highschool, but we never got into it. I always figured that of course, my family doesn’t have the money to waste on a trip like that. And I will admit, when I first heard she has this “chance of a life time”, I wasn’t happy for her. I was bitter once again about the opportunities I manage to miss out on. That bitterness only leads to more self directed hate. Very harsh thoughts about what I am limited to; not only limited in a general way by what I look like or where I am from and what my means are, but I am limited by my own (lack of) personality, my fear, my lack of skill at anything practical. Basically, it all falls back to wondering cold about what I am doing here.  

Anyway, truth be told, I would love to go to Japan one day, but there’s no way I am ever flying again - which means I may very well never see that part of the world. Fine (what would it mean anyway? It’s not as if I am going to really do much at all with my life, sending me anywhere would be a waste at this point.)

And school…oh, I think there’s only a matter of days now before I snap about the situation. Hopefully it will be ugly, maybe then I will be convinced that my feelings are very real, and do something irreversible. God, I am not fit to be here. I don’t know what good looks like anymore, what progress means- no way of thinking seems to connect well with what I actually do (absolutely nothing) in regards to taking necessary risks to get along in life.

What do I have to do before I can actually live doing what (I think) I want to do? I have been painting, drawing, piano playing, crocheting and writing for the last three days, persistently. Trying to forget and stay distracted. No thoughts of school, or of the future, or of what I need to take care of myself on my own, or of how I will react when I lose everyone in my life eventually. No thoughts of what worries me. I haven’t wanted to eat or drink or move or look away from what I am doing because it all reminds me that one day, so soon, I will have to find away to sustain myself alone. I will have to find the motivation to keep going and I won’t have time for my distractions, for doing the things I only live to do and be part of.

Do I have to suffer decades of sleepless nights? Or day after day of looking at myself in the mirror with darkened eyes for who knows how long? I see my mother, she’s tired. So tired of everything she’s brought onto herself. Tired of work, of seeing her sons get themselves in trouble, tired of paying bill after bill, and I know, tired of me and of the progress I haven’t made. Tired of me for being something she doesn’t understand anymore.  

Should I feel guilty about this? I have no illness killing me, I am not in poverty or in a terrible neighborhood. I have both my parents. Some may say I have no right to bitch about anything. But while it may look right on the surface, it all disconnects beneath. It is so stupid and pointless and disgusting beneath. Or what is wrong with me? (Left alone too long) Why do I go from one second believing my life is impossible to fix and figure out, to the next second scolding myself for thinking anything could really be wrong.? Once again diminishing the problem or saying there isn’t a problem at all…

You can probably tell I have stopped going to therapy all together. No one has called me in about my medication or sessions. See? They don’t really care. Because they just don’t have to. See they only care if you can pay up and if you actually want their help. Well, I don’t want their help anymore. It wasn’t enough, and I don’t think I’d be willing to seek or accept any more help. I’ve stopped trying. Nobody can save you if you don’t want them to, if you never let them know you’re even going under.

I could never tell my doctors the whole truth. And they are nothing special. They cannot read my thoughts and know what is real and what I’ve really done. I need to stop pretending my life, or the sudden end of it matters, because it doesn’t.

Here’s an image I drew and painted to represent the hand full of good things I keep breathing for. I liked it a lot more a few days ago. It’s sucks now, but I thought I’d post it just to show art is where my hope is.

  

Familiar Ways

           I’m getting back to my normal self again it seems. The withdrawal is pretty much gone from going off the medication and I can sleep a little better, but it’s the days now-I feel this day to day reality getting to me the way I remember it did before I took any pills or had a therapy session. Certainly not as bad as it was, but I wonder, will it only get worse? Have I learned enough about being aware of how I think and what my habits are to predict the worst and decide on a different approach to situations, for the better?

Just to give an example, today my mother and some other close relatives (my aunts in town) went to a shoe store. I saw some cute shoes there, I pointed out some styles I thought my mom would like since she was the one who needed shoes to go with her clothes for work. I saw styles I would have liked to buy, but instead of just taking and buying them as my mom was trying to persuade me to, I decided against it and thought to myself “Why buy shoes when I have no where to wear them to?” or “I don’t have a life, I never leave the house, what’s the point in new shoes, what’s the point in buying anything anymore?”

My mom was mentioning that I might need new shoes for when my classes return to the classroom and aren’t online anymore. I didn’t really give her a response to that, I only shrugged and looked away. And though I did not think the actual words, I felt a familiar way that in the past has led me to think “I’m not going to be around long enough to worry about that.”

In all honesty, I still want an escape from all of this. Just as Lupe Fiasco says in his song, Fighters, “You just wish there was a door that would appear that you could go disappear through…”, exactly. I don’t feel horrible yet, not in the way I know horrible to be with my own mind, but I would still walk through that door and disappear if I could.

Anyway, yesterday hurricane Ike remnants, combined with a cold front came though the midwest where I live (I think I got it right), with wind gusts between 30 and 75 mph from what I could gather from radio reports (again, pretty sure). Trees large and small were uprooted or split in half, more than half a million people are still without power and cable, I think about four people died from fallen trees between yesterday and now, but I am not sure exaclty, and lots of people got injured trying to clean up the mess of branches everywhere (with saws and so on)…Yeah, it was a bad weather event and the result has people rushing to the few gas stations that are still open that weren’t affected by the power outages that happened, it has people being greedy with the ice being sold at the few stores still open (some people were stock piling ice bags and selling them from their own garage to people, according to my aunt, doing what she could only assume was price gouging). This whole thing has really reminded me that mother nature can snatch any thing you hold as important with no mercy. Those winds could have been much stronger and could have swept away houses, cars and who knows what else. She can let you know your very life isn’t important and that if you want to live, you better make worth in every second you’re given. I have been thinking long about that. Whose side am I really on…?