Almost is the saddest word in the english language.
I was almost enough. It was almost me. I was almost loved. I was almost completely happy.
How are you supposed to move on from almost? How do you just forget about something that almost made life worth living?
Almost has killed me. Almost has made my life a living hell. Almost is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
How do I move on from almost?
I loved and I lost. If you wanted me to turn back into the untouchable bitch I was before I met you, congratulations, you win.
I will never understand why nobody sees me the way I see me. Why nobody can fall in love with me. Why I’m always, without fail, left alone.
I see my gravestone in my nightmares. It reads: Here lies the girl who loved with her whole heart yet died of loneliness.
I’m sure sometimes I come off as dramatic, or overly depressive. I can understand why. But you have to understand me to see why that isn’t just the case.
My entire life I’ve been searching for the two things I want most in this world: love and a home. I never had even a taste of those until recently. I got a small taste of both, and it made me the happiest I have ever been in my life. And then I found out I couldn’t keep them. They were never mine to have.
I got a glimpse of the person I am at my happiest, and she was crushed under the weight of devastation.
I have realized that I am not lucky enough to have that love, that home. I’m never going to. It’s not in the cards for me. I have lost all my drive, my will to stay on this earth. There is no point to me being here anymore. I have nothing to look forward to, no reason to try. No reason to get up in the morning other than a paycheck.
I’m not the type to kill myself, but I wish for death everyday. Should the people that love me be worried? Those people don’t exist.
So no. I’m not ok. I’m never going to be ok again. I will continue to float through life completely alone, going through the motions.
I’ll continue to write, it’s the only way I can get my feelings out since I have nobody that I can talk to about these things. Thank you to anyone who chooses to read.
I’m sorry I made promises that are killing me to keep.
I’m sorry I fall for the people who never want me.
I’m sorry I love so deeply I always end up breaking my own heart.
I’m sorry I waited so long to become my true self.
I’m sorry nobody loves me like I love them.
I’m sorry my mental illness can sometimes get annoying to my loved ones.
I’m sorry I’m not pretty enough to love.
I’m so sorry. Keeping all this shit inside is killing me. I love too deeply for this. I love too much for this. I am the embodiment of a dying star. I just want all this to be over. I deserve so much, and get so little. I can’t do this anymore.
Burning brighter than the sun
I don’t understand how I’m still fading
I found home but it’s not mine
I found peace but I can’t keep it
I found love but I’m not loved
I found sorrow and I embraced it.
Time doesn’t heal when you have depression. Time doesn’t always change things in your mind, or make the pain less. Being a good person doesn’t get you anywhere except pain and suffering. Being the bigger person gets you more of the same.
I don’t know how I got here. I was so happy in September. Apparently I was living in a temporary fairytale. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this level of suicidal ideation. It’s been 10 years since I felt this way. Back then I had friends to turn to. I had someone to hear how I was feeling and talk me down. Someone with a perspective outside of my own head to pull me back down to earth.
I have nobody. I’ve tried so many times to reach out to my best friend of 20+ years. She hasn’t answered. I don’t even know if she sees my messages. Every single day I have to talk myself down from doing something stupid, something deadly. Every time I cross the street I have to resist the urge to jump into traffic. Every time I walk into work I have to resist the urge to quit on the spot. I have so much fucking love to give and nobody has love to give me. I understand how people get to be so cold and heartless. I’m not that person, I’ll sit with the agony of my emotions until I die. I love with my whole heart but nobody has ever seen me that way, no friend, no family, nobody. They all leave or stab me in the back.
My time is running out. I don’t have the heart to do this forever. I need love, friendship in my life to survive and I am not getting either. I miss you. I miss her. I would give anything for things to be different. I’d give away everything I own for someone to love me the way I know I deserve to be. I would move across country, out of the country, hell anywhere to be happy. I’d get rid of my most prized possessions and leave.
I have the overwhelming urge to leave my entire life behind and start over. If I was driving I would have done it a month ago. I would have packed everything I needed into my car and drove off. Nobody would miss me, nobody would even come looking for me. I’d just be one of the thousands of people who disappeared without a trace.
I don’t know what to do. I need someone to hear me, someone to listen. I’m screaming into the void so loud I’m drowning out all the other voices and still nobody can hear me. I’m drowning and I can’t save myself. I’ve never been able to save myself.
I miss you. I miss her. I miss living a life I didn’t hate every second of. I’m just hoping that some freak accident happens and I end up dead. I don’t have any will left. I don’t have any fight left. And if anyone is reading this, please know, I can’t do it myself. I’ll still be here tomorrow, the same shell of a person, clinging on to that one time in my life I felt loved.
There’s a thought in my brain I can’t tell ANYONE. Nobody in my life. Nobody in my life knows this. I can’t vocalize it, and I can’t go an hour without thinking about it. It’s something I am hoping fades in my brain eventually. Or something I will someday have actually materialize in real life. Those are the only two options here. I wish I could just let it go, not get my hopes up and just let it fucking go, but it’s too much on my mind. It’s always there.
Hope is a dangerous thing for me here. It means I will most likely break my own heart again. I don’t think I could handle that. I’ve matured and learned from the past, but I’m also a human being with emotions and dreams. I really really don’t know what the solution is, and I wish I could talk it out with someone, but there is nobody. I am just preparing myself for the inevitable heartbreak and sadness I will cause myself.
This is the closest I will probably ever get to telling this secret. I don’t want this in my brain, I want to be free of the emotions it makes me feel. I want it to be easy. But nothing in life is ever easy. I guess I’m just writing this for myself. I just wish I could enjoy the silence again.
Life can be so fickle and unpredictable. But life can also be so fucking worth it.
I don’t know how I got here, but I’m happy for the first time in my life. And it’s crazy. I’m still broke, I still live in a toxic household and I’m still single, but I’m overwhelmingly happy. Sometimes all it takes the right friends, the right people to come into your life and completely change your view of the world.
My entire life I’ve judged myself so harshly, held myself to an unattainable standard. I would never treat another human being the way I’ve treated myself. I’ve been living my life a certain way for so long, I don’t know how I could even change. I was stuck in this rut of self depreciation, self hatred and isolation for so long I lost count, but it’s been well over a decade.
Some friends you meet and you just immediately know they will become one of your best friends, someone you spend all your time with. And then some friends you meet and you think, yeah I’d hang out with them, they’re cool. And then you don’t for a long time. And it’s a slow burn, it slowly builds to a friendship you can’t imagine your life without. Someone you share your bits of your soul with, someone you trust with everything. A person who knows all the bad shit you’ve done and will still love you. Someone who will call you out when you insult yourself in passing, instead of just laughing and changing the subject. Someone who teaches you how to love life and become a better person by just knowing them.
I’ve had so many friends go in and out of my life. I’ve never voluntarily left a friendship, I always get left behind. Which is heartbreaking every time and to this day there are 2 friendships I still don’t know what went wrong, why I was left behind. I used to think about them all the time and mourn the loss, but I don’t anymore. They didn’t need me anymore, so I don’t need them.
I am always going to be vague here but I cannot imagine life without my best friend. They are the most incredible, kind, funny, sarcastic, silly, beautiful human I have ever had in my life. It’s taken 29 years to find someone who I genuinely can be 100% myself around and not feel any shame or anxiety. My default level of anxiety is non-existent around them. I can tell them anything and everything and I know they will not only not judge me, but will tell me when I’m wrong out of genuine love and concern. They are teaching me so much about myself, and the world and spending even 3 minutes with them makes my day 100% better. It’s the most important friendship of my life and I can’t imagine they would say any different. I was literally pulled out the worst stage of my life after losing Tito by one human being and I have no way to thank them but I will spend the rest of my life trying. They don’t know how close I was to ending it all. How close I was to going back to 2011 Chels who needed inpatient care to just exist with a depressive brain. I can’t EVER repay that, but I can make damn sure I never go back there again.
I feel like I’m at a crossroads in life in many ways. But not in the way I was expecting. Next month is 4 years at my job , 5 months from now I’ll be 30. I still have no plan, still no direction in my life other than forward. But it’s different now. I’m OK with forward. Any direction that isn’t backwards is a good direction. I know I might be in ‘limbo’ for some more years but limbo is tolerable with friends. Limbo is something I can handle at this point in my life. I’ve grown so much over the last 2 years and I couldn’t done any of it without the incredible people who love me. The people who might not be in my life on a daily basis still helped shape my daily mindset.
For once in my life, I’m happy. I’m satisfied. I’m ALIVE.
I’ve been doing a lot of self-evaluation lately. Looking inwards I have had some realizations that have made me rethink fundamental aspects of myself, things I thought I knew about myself. Sure, we can change, but I’m almost 30. Can I still change?
For as long as I can remember I’ve been lonely. I used to think it was because I was too picky, or too fat, or too ugly. Some of those things may still also be true, but the real truth is I have a mental illness. I have several I haven’t dealt with in over a decade, and one I have never sought help for. I have been pushing my mental illnesses back to the far corners of my brain and covering them with a pile like the discarded clothes chair in the corner of a bedroom. I’ve been pretending it wasn’t a problem, that I could deal with it myself. Depression is a disgusting, horrible thing to have to deal with, but I have been dealing with it since I was 4 years old, I’m used to it and it’s a part of me. It’s something I CAN push to the back of my head and forget about. It’s something I’m lucky enough to be able to deal with on my own. Do I go through spells of utter despair? Of course. Do I sometimes want to not exist? Yes. But I always make it through, with various coping mechanisms.
I wish I could do the same with my other disorders. The first time I can remember dealing with my crippling anxiety was in middle school, and back then I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was just average everyday fear. Average fear doesn’t have side effects, it doesn’t put a stop to your life. I had my only known panic attack when attempting to tour a college with my Mom. I started shaking and crying and couldn’t speak, it was like I was falling apart at the seams. I don’t think I realized till now that is probably another reason I have yet to go to college. Then the pandemic hit. For months and months I was working, dealing with the anxiety of interacting with hundreds of people who could potentially kill me. I thought I was handling it pretty well considering, but then the physical effects of prolonged anxiety started creeping in. My heart started pounding out of my chest in random, no-anxiety moments. My stomach started acting up even if I hadn’t eaten anything. I’d hit a wall of fatigue and random body pain so hard it left me spiraling. This has all continued, it’s still happening and I’m trying to find help. It’s overwhelming and it genuinely feels like my body is failing me at every turn. Every time I need my body to get me through something it fails me. Every 5 years its another life-changing pain, or diagnosis. I genuinely don’t know how long I can do this without help, but that’s not why I’m here.
Last year a friend of mine told me about her body dysmorphia. As I sat on her couch listening to her heartache, impressed that she has clearly thrived despite her debilitating mental illness, something in my brain snapped. What I had thought for years was just my crippling self-hatred had a name. Body Dysmorphia. I was a figure skater for the entirety of my childhood and into my teens and I had always been a skinny, healthy person. But I had always, my entire life, thought I was fat. I remember how much I hated those skating costumes and how tight they were because I thought I had a gut. I remember only wearing full-length skirts in middle school because I hated the way I looked and those covered me up more. I remembered the 2 year period where I wore hats to cover my hair. I remembered the years and years and years of sweatshirts and jackets to cover my stomach and breasts. I spent my best body years covered, and now that I am an overweight adult, I am utterly disgusted with myself.
I wear makeup every time I leave the house to cover my severe acne scars because I genuinely believe that nobody should have to look at how ugly I am without makeup, despite the fact that I hate wearing foundation. I spent years buying XL and believing that was my size because they were baggier and I could hide my stomach more. Turns out I’m a Large and I’ve been wearing giant clothes this whole time and making my self-image worse un-intentionally. I have spent so many years living in this large body, thinking I was bigger than I am. I have spent years in this body looking into mirrors and wanting to break every mirror because I hated what was looking back at me. I wore corsets to my physical labor job every day for 2 years to try and hide my gut. And the most egregious of all? I have spent years as a single person, because the thought of anyone seeing me naked is a level of embarrassment I could never overcome.
I don’t know what the point of this all is. I continue to think of myself as a good person, trapped in a body that won’t make it through this world for very long. I see myself as a side character who doesn’t get much happiness out of life, but brings happiness to the lives of the people around her. I see value in who I am as a person, but I don’t think people see me as more than a disposable friend, good for a few years, and then when they don’t need me anymore I’m just phased out of their lives. I’m not always an easy friend to have, I can be frustratingly stubborn, I can’t take a compliment and I get angry about stupid shit. Friendship the the only thing that gets me through life. I need to have someone to tell about my day, someone to tell about my struggles, someone to tell about my joys. If my life is headed in the direction I believe it to be headed, I am going to have to figure out how to be alone with myself comfortably. A romantic partner might just be something I never get to have. Friends fill that hole for me, and I hope I can see them again soon. Tolerating myself is something I don’t want to become an expert in, but I think I will have to to survive this life I’ve been dealt.
I miss the movies, even though I went only once or twice a year. I miss being able to jump in an Uber and go to the mall. I miss the Orange County Fair, which I attend every year. I miss my Grandma, who I have been unable to see since Christmas. I miss my best friend who I haven’t seen in even longer. I miss being able to breathe at work. I miss every shred of normalcy I used to take for granted.
I am considered an essential worker. I don’t work for a grocery store, hospital or drugstore. I work at a hardware store. Us, like many other professions who have been deemed essential are struggling through a sea of customers. They either fall into the nice and friendly category or the outright nasty. There is no in between anymore. We don’t get thanked, we don’t get talked about in the media, we are somewhere between essential and not, and it’s bizarre.
I have been social distancing for months. I haven’t been anywhere but work and my house in months. And yet, there’s these assholes. The protestors, the crowds gathering at the beaches, the people having parties and friends over like nothing is happening. The ones ruining it for the rest of us. If everyone would just sit their fat American asses down and stay the fuck home this would clear in short while. The death toll, is higher than you imagine.
As a person with Depression and Anxiety this is having a profound effect on my already bad mental health. The level of stress I am under is the highest it’s ever been and there is no escape anymore. I live with family who I don’t get along with and now there is no escape. I have nothing, nobody to turn to, no place to go. And I know the same is happening for a lot of people. When I say the death toll is higher than you imagine, I’m not being a conspiracy theorist. The suicide rate is up. All the people who are lonely when the world is normal, are struggling and some are finding it impossible. My Grandmother is the only thing getting me through this, or I, myself would be in the same boat.
So this is my plea. My last stand. If you care about anyone, anywhere, STAY THE FUCK HOME.
The heart is never neutral