it’s 5am as im writing this, for the same reason i always do: compulsively, and so i don’t forget when i wake up like i always, always do. april is coming, the bluest month of the year, at least in my head, it has been for years. i am ruled by the compulsions and intuitions of my childhood, it’s my belief system and my inner compass, i’m really just a child and my adult mind is begging to negotiate some rationality into the deal, but i’m really just undone most of the time.
i feel so out of touch with myself, so fragmented and all of the versions of me (or maybe they’re pieces of me) have peeled apart, adhesive dried up. i’ve always had such strong convictions and such optimistic outlooks and i feel most of the time like i’ve let that version of myself down. i just watch myself now and judge her, and hope i look cool enough and happy enough and put together enough. the issue is i am happy, relatively put together, my friends think i’m cool enough to be friends with and thats ultimately all that matters, but i think i find such purpose in crafting coarse voices in my head, like sandpaper to my psyche. i try to remember the voice is cracking and hoarse because it is sick, and it is making me sick, and it mustn’t. i have everything i have ever wanted, but i don’t know what i want next and it scares me, and worse, it paralyses me. everyone keeps telling me i’m young and smart and have so much potential and life ahead of me and i’m so sick of hearing it. i was born and bred to be outstanding, and i want to be, and i was. i think it’s just the grandeur of adolescent prodigy fading, being replaced by what i have deemed to be sad mediocrity in early adulthood, but i know that is self enforced, and that i mustn’t enforce it because it isn’t true and i have the absolute duty of keeping my mind healthy, and my messages true. i am still sparkling but these days i feel less prodigious and more prodigal child.
don’t get me wrong, i’m really proud of myself, i haven’t yet peaked and i know that, but it’s just so directionless in the real world. everyone tells you you are going to be brilliant but nobody tells you how.
another thing which i feel is truly at the core of this crisis is that i feel so incredibly removed from my inner voice, from the friendly voice, from the person my family would recognise as me. it’s really hard to notice you’re floating while you’re doing it. i’m so untethered. i have god and my mother and that is enough but i’m not sure i have myself. i felt a moment of being back in touch with her and i ran to my laptop, rolling out of bed, ready to excavate, hopeful and wide-eyed. it’s kind of sad, it makes me tear up to think about it too much. i wonder if i let the city kind of chew me up? london is my favourite place in the world but maybe being somewhere more low-key is making me notice i’ve been doing things wrong while i’m over there. i’ve never considered this before. i wear ballet flats so you’ll know i have cool taste but my heels are bleeding and blistered, i wear makeup even though i texted you that i’m so sorry but i’m running ten minutes late, i’m outraged because you’re outraged but i don’t really care. i’ve come a long way in terms of being authentic and honest in my conversations, in my relationships, in life, but the performance hasn’t ended. it’s not even really performance, it’s just the way i’ve been treating it like one. realistically, if i just didn’t build it up in my head i would probably wear the same clothes and do the same things, but the endless overanalysing and watching myself from the outside and fragmenting myself is so tiring. i think it must be a defence mechanism against being self conscious, something which i have already conquered, but i guess the fear of it lingers longer than the thing itself? i guess fear works that way, it blows up the balloons at your pity party, it strips you in those weird dreams where you’re always naked. i need to not be afraid of being seen trying, of being seen ‘naked’.
i keep waiting for blaring trumpets or maybe a letter from hogwarts, not really sure which or what, not sure i really care. it’s underwhelming and concerning that this is all there is. its overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. that’s it, i’m twenty this year and nothing changes, no truman show reveal, no hidden cameras, no secret life coach or lifelong mentor or daddy issues absolved. this is literally it? and this has been it all along. it makes me wonder how my parents ever coped living as adults throughout my whole childhood. realising that adults don’t know some big existential secret feels like losing religion. like how rednecks must feel about QAnon truthers, how it must feel to have your cult leader taken from you. i feel betrayed by the cult of teenagehood, betrayed that nobody pulled me aside and told me. teenagers feel like the whole world is theirs, is ours, and growing up is realising you’re actually just on the fringe of a much larger, much more obscure world where everybody wears ill-fitting clothing and can’t agree on climate change. it’s so disappointing
being around my family helps me so much. i definitely think this is an over independence issue, a way of filling in the fault lines that you get from trying to stand on your own too feet too soon, too quickly, too stubbornly. i’m so defensive and so scared to let it down, i’m trying to fill in for the voice i don’t give the people i love in my life and i’m going crazy in the process. i should pick up the phone more, i should text back faster. i try to be sincere but i often feel that i just come across as macabre . i let superficiality take place of openness, of vulnerability; i trace the lines of my problems until they erode, and i fill in the valleys with hot, cheap plastic. i’ve made a mess of kintsugi. the silliest part is it makes it so much harder to untangle everything and god i’m so scared of sediment, so scared of concrete, so destructive like my fire sign.