“A lot of you cared, just not enough.”

"I've always been after the trappings of great luxury. But all I've got hold of are trappings of great poverty. I've got hold of the wrong load of trappings, and a rotten load they are too, ones I could have very well done without." Peter Cook.  There is this peculiar feeling I've been carrying around the past few days (months more likely), it's not despair and it's not quite apathy. Apathy is a lack of interest or concern and I am still concerned about certain things and people, but it seems to me that it's more out of habit than the actual feeling of worry or concern. It's like getting up in the morning and making breakfast, you're not actually physically hungry but it's what you usually do when you wake up. What else is there to do at 5a.m. apart from putting coffee and a slice of toast on? That's not to say the people I do actively choose to talk to (a select and dwindling few) and check up on aren't important to me, of course they are, if anything it shows how important and dear they are to me. I care about them, what they have to say, their "critiques" of my actions, thoughts and life. I listen and respond to all of that. All of that is important, but it's without the recent tendency to be overly emotional, to express all my greatest fears and my heart's desires. I've ended all that, if people don't understand after only a few months of it, how can they possibly understand years of wanting something so badly?  I spent the greater part of my teenage years wandering around, feeling completely isolated, "I was swallowing my pain" as John Lennon put it. I always felt darker than everybody else, too frightened to express my thoughts because I didn't want people to think I was completely crazy. It's just this inner monologue I have everyday with my own conscience, "Should I just say what I think? Oh no, no, don't do that! It's not acceptable! Trouble, trouble, trouble!" Story of my life. I think recently, since December, I got sick of having to constantly censor my thoughts and actions to "fit in" or to spare people from the brunt of them. I have been told by psychiatrists that it's better not to repress these things, that it is healthier to express things before they overwhelm you. I disagree. Maybe some people think it's healthier to express thoughts and feelings, but in my world and the people in it, my thoughts and feelings just seem to hurt people, especially years of pent up emotion.  An example of this was a dear friend of mine getting very cross with me a couple of weeks ago, not only for things I had done, but for things I chose not to do. That hurt a lot. It's extremely hard to keep so many people happy. I remember I was upset and turned to music (as always) to provide some form of comfort. I was on my floor and Jealous Guy by John Lennon started playing and that was bitter sweet. It always seems to play when I'm at my lowest, or I only notice it during those times, either way the lyrics resonated with me, especially that one line "I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm sorry that I made you cry." I thought on one hand, I've tried to spare people and that drove me crazy and on the other hand, I've just caused people pain by trying to release it. They may say that I haven't caused any damage to them, but they're quite wrong.  Things change when you're completely honest with a person, when you spill everything and leave yourself completely at their mercy, unprotected from their opinions. As someone who doesn't deal well with criticism, it took a lot for me to do that and I'm not sure it was worth it. Now every time I talk to those people I'm always wondering what they think of me compared to how I was before. The worst part of it is that I know most people would prefer the former version of myself, it may have been mostly a facade with genuine happiness at times, but I was a better model of a person. The present me isn't very likeable, isn't very loveable and doesn't even have the energy to pretend anymore. Conversations I have now with people I still talk to have shifted. There is this delicacy that wasn't there before and I can't help but wish it that it wasn't like that now. My fault, I changed everything, it's really no wonder I've ended up alone. The one greatest fear I had, the one thing that always kept me from being honest with people, was the fear that I would end up shunned and unloved. I knew I wasn't normal and the fact that my fear has come to pass only proves to me that I should have kept my mouth shut.  The only way to explain this present state of coldness and regret is to look backwards I think, with some help from a particular novel. There is a book I read last year, entitled "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher. If I could quote the whole book to you reader, I would, but to do so would infringe copyright laws and I can't afford a lawsuit at the moment (or ever). The novel is basically about a girl named Hannah, who commits suicide and tells thirteen people why she took her life (hence the title). All of these people were involved in her death to some degree, even though they all thought they made absolutely no impact at all, that they were completely insignificant in this girl's life. This isn't supposed to depress you, I know suicide has that label attached to it, but the reason that I'm mentioning this particular novel is because I think it seems so similar to my own actions, obviously with a different ending. I didn't record tapes or a chain letter for thirteen different people, but I did want to touch certain people just once more before I tried. Now those people may have thought they were generally insignificant, but they weren't. I didn't leave a letter to my family, I didn't know what to say, but to my dearest friends....how could I not want to remind them how much I loved them? That was selfish of me, that upset quite a few people and I regret that hurt, but I don't regret my actions. If it was the last time I got to ever "speak" to these people, I wanted it to count and I wanted to be felt. Saying something aloud to someone can only be captured and stored by a "faulty camera in our minds," (Death Cab For Cutie) but written words can last a lifetime. I suppose, in retrospect, I want something to last.  There are two great lines from this novel that I loved and I read over and over again. One of them is more of a paragraph than a "line," but you understand me. The first is what happened before.  "I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events of my life, the more my heart collapsed." The second is how you try to explain yourself.  "If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don't want to cry anymore, you don't listen to that song anymore. But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head." In the novel, Hannah dies, she doesn't have to answer any questions. Life is a bit more complicated than the plot of a best-seller. When you wake up unexpectedly you have to face reality, answer questions people have and try to ease the pain you have caused by wanting to be selfish, by wanting to just write things that you couldn't say in person. There isn't a good response to someone telling you "I'm glad you're not dead, because I would have missed you everyday of my life and wondered why I couldn't help you." What could I have possibly said to that? How do you reassure someone that there was nothing they could have ever done, that they were always there and it just wasn't enough anymore? I know firsthand, as much as you want people to forget about it, there is nothing you can do or say to take that memory away from them or that time of fear. People will be angry, people will be upset and some people won't know how to feel. I can understand that. I regret that, but I can understand it. My life has just reached a point where people aren't enough to take away my pain and I'm not good enough to overcome it. So is it any wonder that I can't summon up the energy or emotion to be passionate about life? That I go through the motions of living day in and day out, without any actual feeling? That I'm a borderline apathetic/depressive person? That I can't even be bothered to fix my physical health? I don't think so. Even if people doubt me, or want me to be happier, I think the least they could do for me would be to understand me. Not all of me, that's a bit of an ask, but be as accepting of me as I am of them. That's all I want right now. In return, I'll spare them any further pain and keep it to myself.

I know I felt like this before, but now I'm feeling it even more.

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."
Graham Greene

Writing for me has always been more of an exercise to unscramble my thoughts, to create something composed yet raw and realistic. I have absolutely no time to read things which are unmoving or so lost in fantasy that characters or people (as they should be) are only caricatures of human beings. There's a reason I'm drawn to autobiographies or writers who tend to use biographical details for their plots and characters, it's simply because it's easier to connect with something or someone which is possible and sound. As many of my philosophy lecturers told me in my first year of University, our minds cannot fully comprehend the impossible or the infinite, so literature/blogs/text in general has to be realistic enough for me to form some kind of connection with it. Good on all those people who love the imagined worlds and people of Sci-fi novels (I've read a few) or abstract works, they're not for me. I was never very good at creative writing, probably because of my preferences, so you will never see a blog post from me which is very far from the truth of the human condition. This is extremely autobiographical, especially this post.

The reason I'm telling you all of this (whoever you are), is because I'm going to do some soul sharing with you. It's a lot easier for me to share things anonymously this way, rather than express my thoughts or feelings vocally or visually, although I haven't tried the latter. I'm sure it would go incredibly wrong, I'm not very creative. 

I have so much to share and get off my chest, but I'm not going to overindulge and send you poor people crazy with my maddening thoughts. There is one aspect of myself I will share though, only because I don't have a choice anymore, it's hounding me daily and clawing at the inner parts of my soul. I'm not quite sure how to express any of this and I have tried so many times to tell different people, but I choke and nothing rational ever passes from my lips. I'll give it a go here though and if this doesn't work, or doesn't reflect any form of rational thought, than I will just have to carry it with me and hope it doesn't drive me completely insane.

I have failed. I've said that before I believe, but this is quite different. This isn't me failing to diet and be like those girls from the magazines, it's not me failing an exam and not being as intelligent as I had hoped to be, it's me fundamentally failing myself and the people I love more than I can express here. I'm sure we all can understand the love you feel for a parent or a sibling, that familial love is what I'm talking about. The people I failed, apart from myself, are my mother and father. That's hard to admit, but this is easier than saying it aloud. Saying anything aloud or face to face with another person makes thoughts or feelings much more concrete and real, perhaps that's why I never could say any of this. 

The one goal I set for myself, that never changed with my hairstyles, moods, age or "fashion sense," was to "fix" my parents. That sounds quite harsh, they're not terrible people that need to be cured of anything, but they're broken. It's not because they separated when I was young, they're far too alike to be committed to one another and are actually far better off apart. That insight did become more apparent as I got older though. My parents are full of problems, which I won't divulge here because that's their life and not mine to discuss, but their problems naturally affect those who love them. I love them, despite any issues they have, so it has always been my goal or the job I set for myself to fix them. The only thing I ever aimed to do was to make them happy. I've done that in some small ways I think. I did okay at school, I didn't rebel like my older sister, I didn't cause any problems for them, I even went to University, all of those things made them happy. That's not the sort of happiness I aimed for though, I wanted to make them genuinely happy not just with me, but with life in general. I wanted to take their problems away and cure them of any unhappiness, but obviously I couldn't do that. I couldn't make them physically better, I couldn't make them mentally better because I can't change the past they're both so unhappy with and being an adult, I have to deal with my own life and can't face all their problems for them. I wish I could though, every part of me wishes I could make them so much happier than they are. Instead, I'm reminded of this failure every time one of them feels down and likes to express how much of a fuck up their life is, how much better things would be had they done this or that, had they not had children or met each other. That's hard to cope with, especially after 15 years of it. Listening to your mother or father, when they're at their lowest, express just how unhappy they are and how much they regret, that's hard to ignore or forget about. Surely any child who loved their parents as much as I do would want to take that sort of regret and pain away? It's hard from me to accept I can't do anything about that now, that I can only comfort them in the present, even if that doesn't seem to help at all. 

To realise that you have failed at something you made your lifelong goal is heart-breaking, crushing and has without a doubt brought me the worst despair I have ever felt in my life. Perhaps even worse is knowing (I wish I didn't) that I truly can't change a thing for either of them, that the goal I set myself is impossible and I was always bound to fail. That's probably due to my stubbornness, I always felt obliged to prove people wrong, to aim for impossible things. Unfortunately that sort of attitude has only ever brought me pain and wasn't worth the effort. Not many things are worth much effort these days.

I just needed to get that one problem out of my head, to ease the pain a tad. I know I probably won't find any answers to my problems, I've set myself up to fail at so many things. I'm sorry this has been yet another post of me rambling my way through illogical depressing thoughts and feelings. I couldn't think of any other way though and I definitely couldn't actually say any of this aloud. It was hard enough typing this, to form thoughts and feelings into written words I can see on my screen, it of course brought me to tears (not a hard feat). 

We'll settle for this being a "secret," confined to this bizarre blog world, which is only a reflection of our digital personas, not quite reality yet. Reality bites.