Dysphoric Days

"I hate myself," the girl giggles as she raises the wine cube above her head to get a sip, a gulp, a swallow, a drag.

Dysphoric days were all that lay ahead for her. Could be worse. Could be better. But no, this was fine: just hiccups and headaches and partial seizures and awkward smiles into her only pillow because dammit, her bedroom was the only place she felt safe.

Separation

I am sad,
and I am scared,
and I am lost.

I am angry,
I am young,
and I am full of lust.

This blind rage illustrates day dreamt homicidal tendencies
but easily vanishes through an expressionless demeanor.

Alone, I can fight the shadows
of those who have hurt me the most.

Together, I am weak.
I am inhuman.
I want none of this.

What I Know About Love

It's the morning after Valentine's Day and I'm drunk on champagne, so let me ramble.

Have you ever fallen in love with someone so desperately--so intensely--that it no longer feels like you are just friends? Ha. Really just acquaintances. What do I know of friendships? No, but someone who you know you could love in the most amicable of ways for years, even decades?

But it's impossible. Not only is this love unrequited, it is impossible, for any dumb old reason: they live two thousand miles away; your sexualities don't align; they don't technically exist; they died; they're locked into a "serious" relationship--fuck, they are married. It's impossible. The kind of unavoidable conclusion whose sureness is only outmatched by the truth that you will die some day and that nothing will come after that.

I don't like that level of impossibility. So I don't let my mind wander on the topic for very long. Or at all. But the dreams. Oh, how I dream. Everything I want that is so very wrong, I get as soon as my consciousness taps out. I don't understand it. I don't understand this. Shouldn't I dream of things that happened to me? Shouldn't I dream of the big stressors in my life?

Or is this just telling me what I've already known? The greatest fear in my life is that I will spend it not alone, but perpetually lonely.

Because there are people--there are these days, there is this person--that I am intractably in love with, and I will never be able to be with them in any shade of reality.

I know I will not feel like this for much longer--I will fall out of love because that is the only option given to me--but it pains me to know that at one time I could see so clearly my own happiness wound so well around another's.

So I will say a short prayer before every bedtime: let me let this feeling go. Let me know that there is no great romance in this life. Or any other. Tell me what I need to do to have you. Let me forget all of this. 

Please. Let me forget.

[future elora, do you remember who you wrote this for? it will be an obscure reference from november 2012. but at this very moment, it troubles you incessantly.]

Commendable

....and then sometimes my diabetes just deteriorates and I have so many lows in one day it just kind of feels like I'm literally fighting to stay alive. Yes, yes, yes. I've had this disease for almost a decade now. I should be better at controlling it. But it keeps goddamn evolving. There are also outside factors that come into play. I gain ten pounds, glucose is always high. I decide to randomly exercise for about fifteen minutes, suddenly my glucose drops. I don't know how, the last insulin I had was over two hours ago. But I guess it was just waiting around in my capillaries, you know, being a dick. I'll get used to waking up with moderate lows, and then my mom will tell me that I'm going to die in my sleep and suddenly I'm waking up with highs because the fear of death makes me eat everything in my vicinity during the few minutes of consciousness I have before I pass out. Already today my blood glucose has been under 60 three times. At least three times. Actually, four. Because I woke up and it was 50 something. I. Don't. Want. To. Do. This. Anymore. When my glucose is low I feel like my life is shit and I can't breathe and I'm coerced into an obligatory panic attack. Me?! Panicking?! So uncharacteristic. And so fucking crappy.  When my glucose is high I feel like my life is shit and I am just waiting for the feeling in my feet to disappear and then I'll lose my vision and then my kids will develop metabolic syndromes and my life is shit. Seriously. This is the most annoying fucking disease ever. It's serious enough to make you fucking hate everything about yourself and the way you live. But it's not serious enough for anyone to really care too much--I don't get optimal parking spots and nobody commends me for being brave. No, yea--it's not cancer. But it's not easily manageable either.

I don't know what I want. Clearly a cure would be nice, but I'm not that naive. And maybe I like the challenge of having to know myself so well that I can predict whether a headache is from glucose, sickness, or just stress. The few moments of pure adrenaline I have before I succumb to hypoglycemia have given me some great stories. But the panic that descends afterwards? Not so nice. I don't know. Maybe I just want a break. Maybe I just want to be attached to a dialysis machine and some IVs and just be able to lie down somewhere without wondering every five minutes if I should poke myself with a needle or just wait for the headache or the feeling of despair to leave. Just a little bit of time would be nice.  I really don't want to do this anymore. I just really want to be normal. I just really want to be optimistic about my future.

Screaming in the Darkness

I had nothing to be angry at so I was angry at myself. No one caused this, so it must have been an intrinsic problem. Even so, I didn't know I could scream so loudly. I was good at being loud, but how many decibels was I forcing out of my larynx? My head bowed into the steering wheel and my car shook, either because I had lost sight of the road or because the increased pressure in between my ears had caused the entire world to lose its steadiness.

I scared myself. Even with the radio playing at maximum value I could hear my voice. I scream in a steady A, if I had to guess. You could tune to it. I guarantee. And it was not like anything I had ever heard before. I hate screaming. I have PTSD when it comes to screaming. I see Han Solo tied up on Cloud City when it comes to screaming. I want to run and never stop running when it comes to screaming. I am loud so I know that no one else will out yell me. I don't want to be as loud as I am, but I do not want anyone to think that they will ever be able to out yell me. They won't. As I see it, the louder person always wins. I don't want to lose again.

And I don't think I ever will. I scared myself with the way my voice stretched itself out, longer than I thought possible, past the point of forced expiratory volume almost. I stopped for a few moments, and then screamed again. Am I pretty? Even if I am not, no one should be able to make such a noise. If such a thing can hide within me, within the small space connecting my lungs and my mouth, than what even more evil things can hide in the dark? In between an all consuming fog? In a friend's otherwise pleasant face?

So I cried. For a scant thirty seconds, but the tears wouldn't evaporate. Even after I had made it off the highway, still they just lingered. I found such an affront insulting, confusing. To feel any emotion besides happiness is wrong. This should not happen to me. But to feel anger and sadness so intense at the same time? That is not right. What would this feeling even be?

To hate oneself so much as to want to end everything--how can a hate be any more involved than that? I hated that I had let myself live in this world where I am constantly trying to make myself into an image that is not naturally me. I have been overly socialized to want to be things I literally can never be. And I hate myself for that. So much so that the only way out seems to end everything. But then I become sad, knowing that no, I will never be able to kill myself, and no, I will never again be capable of suicide. Even the thought of consciously ending my life seemed like a great insult against so many things. What a sham for me to have that option--to live or die--when people I loved had been denied such a thing. People I had loved.

People who deserved love and life far more than me.

People I had loved.

How can I ever stop screaming? I cannot.

And what an idiot was I to think that I could control anything in my life? I can't. Everything that I hate, everything that I want to change, regardless of whether or not they are my fault or arise from external factors, no matter what they are, they will never change. There will always be something to make me unhappy. There will always be the unfairness of it all. And it will never end. And I will never know what to do about it. It will never end. It will never end.

I do not know what is wrong with me, truly wrong. I am depressed, clinically so. But on days like today, when I reach lows that I think shouldn't happen anymore since I've been "treated," my first thought is that somehow it is all my fault. My second thought is that I should hurt myself. But besides losing my voice and scaring myself to death, it is hard for me to find other ways to display hatred for myself. That's the only nice part of being sad I suppose.... it spares you from doing really anything, ever, at all. Tomorrow will always have to come. Not because I want it, but because I can't do anything to stop it.

Every night, when I lay down in darkness, I just only think that tomorrow might be better. And on nights like this, statistically, tomorrow has to be better. That is a comfort. It is the only comfort I get, but usually, it's the only comfort I need.