05/21/2012

I wonder, often, if there will come a day when my mind is not filled with this teenage-angst bullshit. 

I think it is fair to say that it has consumed me.  I would like to be bold and say, “I am more than depression! I am more than self-harm! I won’t let these things define me!”  But I do.

It is omnipresent.  I am reminding by the itching scars, by the long sleeved shirts, by the long list of things I cannot do without risking exposure.  I am reminded by songs and books, television, and by my dreams.  I am defined by misery.

And so I cling to it.

I do not know how to be happy.  Is happiness a natural thing, like breathing?  Where, upon exiting the womb, we instinctively latch onto life?  Or is happiness learned, like language, like faith, like love?

Happiness is not the absence of misery.  I can attest to this.  I have been…un-miserable, of late.  Not happy, though, just empty.  I have nothing to fill the void left by my pain, and so I am drawn back into suffering.  I am resisting, but it is hard.  Is this going to be the rest of my life?  Will it be a constant struggle against relapsing into abject unhappiness?

There is so much inside of me that is broken, or missing.  I do not know how to make relationships; I do not know how to love.  I do not know how to trust, or how to tell the truth.  I am alone, surviving on fantasy and loneliness, injecting angst like a drug so I can feel something, even if it belongs to someone else.  I cannot feel my own feelings or think my own thoughts.  I am consumed by my hatred for myself and for this disgusting piece of meat in which I am imprisoned. 

If happiness is a natural thing, then I am a freak of nature.  If it is learned, I am a failure. 

And I wander through life, shell-shocked from the trauma of existence¸ as if life is some horrific battle that has left me scarred.  But life has not been a battle, and these scars are of my own making.  I don’t know how I fucked up so badly that I ended up this way, and I don’t know how to be anything different.