You've Got a Fire Inside But Your Heart's So Cold
Title from 'Haunting' by Halsey~
I feel like I should be happier than I am. I feel like I should probably be better at shoving out these empty spaces that keep trying to fill me up. And it's like I win, you know? I win the battle, and it convinces me I've won the war, so I stop being afraid to smile. And then as soon as things are good again, it all floods back in.
I don't really know where the person I actually am ends and the person my depression turned me into begins. In a lot of ways I think they're the same person. But I also think I had the capacity, once, to be happy, and naive, and innocent. I can remember being that way. I can not remember exactly when the chemicals in my brain starting turning against me and eating away at that person, but they did, they have, and they've been doing it for so long it's become my new normal.
And I worry, too - I worry that someday I won't beat it. Someday I won't be strong enough to swim against the black tide, but I will be strong enough to pick up a bottle of pills, or take that last step off a very high ledge. I wonder and I worry.
It feels like sometimes instead of being defined by what I actually am, I'm defined by what I'm not: like all these null and void spaces inside me I haven't filled up yet are spilling over, pooling on top of everything else like oozing blood until all I am is a long list of anti-accomplishments. Like I'm nothing.
It's funny how I win, too. Because sometimes it's as simple as drinking three cups of coffee and blasting some Katy Perry, circa 2011. And other times it's an entire November spent staring at the same blank ceiling and feeling nothing. Feeling like everything has spilled out a hole in the bottom of me and I'll never experience another emotion again. and when I do, it's fear.
But even when it's like that I always end up floating ashore one day or another.
I still worry though. It doesn't matter how many times you've been tossed overboard, how many times you've been unable to tell up from down or see sunlight through the surface - when the black tide swallows you up you panaic, even if these are the waters you were baptised in.
And the other ones? The anxiety? The paranoia? Those are a bit more problematic...
Depression is hot right now. It's sexy. It's hipster teens in black Adidos jackets, clutching cigarettes and torn sheets of loose leaf and turning blazed eyes into the cameras because they're gonna love this on Tumblr, it's gonna get five-thousand notes and every indie and pale blog in a hundred miles will have your face plastered on it! But it's the ugly mental illness indie blogs have never tried to make popular.
Because when I'm in the corner of my room at 3:43 in the morning with my shaking hands clutching a baseball bat to my chest like the last life raft in a stormy sea, that's not hot. Because there's not really someone trying to break into the house from outside, but hey, there could be. I don't fucking know: I'm crazy, in case you didn't get the memo.
When I run home from the bus stop so I'm panting and dry-heaving by the time I get to my lawn all because I think they're watching me from inside the trees, that's not hot. It's not hipster.
I can't help but think that if the lines I was broken along were smoother, more pleasing to the eye, that maybe I could cut myself some fucking slack.
But when it's 1am and I'm still shaking from that embarrassing thing I said today - why the fuck did I say that? - and cowering in the dark because my mind is convincing me that someone is after me, waiting in the woods and watching for the chance to catch me, it's harder to think kind things about myself.
But I still beat it, you know? I push away the pretty pills that pound my heart into oblivion because I want to be strong enough to swim on my own, without their help, without them keeping me up. But I remember how easy it was when I had them floating under my back, and sometimes I wonder...
I think there's a lot I could say about the ways people are broken in more malicious ways than I am, about the way they fall in love with their fault lines and try to paint them as pictures of love instead of working for recover. There's a lot I could say about how hard I am on myself.
But I still have it pretty good, and I feel like I should be happier than I am. So for now I'll just make some coffee and dig up some old pop music, and maybe I'll win another battle in this endless war with myself.
I feel like I should be happier than I am. I feel like I should probably be better at shoving out these empty spaces that keep trying to fill me up. And it's like I win, you know? I win the battle, and it convinces me I've won the war, so I stop being afraid to smile. And then as soon as things are good again, it all floods back in.
I don't really know where the person I actually am ends and the person my depression turned me into begins. In a lot of ways I think they're the same person. But I also think I had the capacity, once, to be happy, and naive, and innocent. I can remember being that way. I can not remember exactly when the chemicals in my brain starting turning against me and eating away at that person, but they did, they have, and they've been doing it for so long it's become my new normal.
And I worry, too - I worry that someday I won't beat it. Someday I won't be strong enough to swim against the black tide, but I will be strong enough to pick up a bottle of pills, or take that last step off a very high ledge. I wonder and I worry.
It feels like sometimes instead of being defined by what I actually am, I'm defined by what I'm not: like all these null and void spaces inside me I haven't filled up yet are spilling over, pooling on top of everything else like oozing blood until all I am is a long list of anti-accomplishments. Like I'm nothing.
It's funny how I win, too. Because sometimes it's as simple as drinking three cups of coffee and blasting some Katy Perry, circa 2011. And other times it's an entire November spent staring at the same blank ceiling and feeling nothing. Feeling like everything has spilled out a hole in the bottom of me and I'll never experience another emotion again. and when I do, it's fear.
But even when it's like that I always end up floating ashore one day or another.
I still worry though. It doesn't matter how many times you've been tossed overboard, how many times you've been unable to tell up from down or see sunlight through the surface - when the black tide swallows you up you panaic, even if these are the waters you were baptised in.
And the other ones? The anxiety? The paranoia? Those are a bit more problematic...
Depression is hot right now. It's sexy. It's hipster teens in black Adidos jackets, clutching cigarettes and torn sheets of loose leaf and turning blazed eyes into the cameras because they're gonna love this on Tumblr, it's gonna get five-thousand notes and every indie and pale blog in a hundred miles will have your face plastered on it! But it's the ugly mental illness indie blogs have never tried to make popular.
Because when I'm in the corner of my room at 3:43 in the morning with my shaking hands clutching a baseball bat to my chest like the last life raft in a stormy sea, that's not hot. Because there's not really someone trying to break into the house from outside, but hey, there could be. I don't fucking know: I'm crazy, in case you didn't get the memo.
When I run home from the bus stop so I'm panting and dry-heaving by the time I get to my lawn all because I think they're watching me from inside the trees, that's not hot. It's not hipster.
I can't help but think that if the lines I was broken along were smoother, more pleasing to the eye, that maybe I could cut myself some fucking slack.
But when it's 1am and I'm still shaking from that embarrassing thing I said today - why the fuck did I say that? - and cowering in the dark because my mind is convincing me that someone is after me, waiting in the woods and watching for the chance to catch me, it's harder to think kind things about myself.
But I still beat it, you know? I push away the pretty pills that pound my heart into oblivion because I want to be strong enough to swim on my own, without their help, without them keeping me up. But I remember how easy it was when I had them floating under my back, and sometimes I wonder...
I think there's a lot I could say about the ways people are broken in more malicious ways than I am, about the way they fall in love with their fault lines and try to paint them as pictures of love instead of working for recover. There's a lot I could say about how hard I am on myself.
But I still have it pretty good, and I feel like I should be happier than I am. So for now I'll just make some coffee and dig up some old pop music, and maybe I'll win another battle in this endless war with myself.
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