First off, anyone's welcome to reply as much as they want to this journal. When I started it, I was happy to hear other people's opinions and experiences - that hasn't changed. This is a safe place, and a free space, so if anyone wants to have a say, anytime, I encourage it.
This one's a bit negative. Okay, so a lot negative.
Feel free to skip this one if you don't want to be sad.
Yeah. After walking out of that trial exam after writing two paragraphs yesterday, hiding the rest of the day, then crying myself to sleep last night, I’m feeling pretty empty. Like, I woke up this morning and just lay there. For hours. I only got up when my mother marched into my room and yelled at me for wasting valuable study time, which I’d told her I was going to use. And didn’t. She cleaned my hellhole of a room for me because I couldn’t do it myself. I hadn’t vacuumed in more than a month. My floor was covered in dirty clothes. I hadn’t brushed my hair in three days. Everything was covered with dust and I had left notes to myself scattered everywhere. She dragged me downstairs and force-fed me because I don’t want food right now, especially because of my braces – but also because I just don’t want to be here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m giving myself goals. Just focus on the time day by day. Hour by hour. Paragraph by paragraph. Mark by mark. But I keep fading. Looking out the window and watching the birds spin on wings I’ll never have. With freedom I’ll never win. And it frustrated me, and deflated me, and now I’m sitting here and wondering why I ever thought I could try. Thinking of the impact I could ever have on the world. Thinking of my place, and the reason I’m here. Thinking of thinking and why I have to think so much when others don’t seem to think at all. Would it be a better life, not having to think about my worthlessness in the scheme of things? Or a worse one, never knowing that I had no heroic end? I want to live for others, but this… thing in me - I guess it is me – keeps pushing back. It’s not a hole I can hang onto the lip of with my fingernails. This is walking on the beach, way out on the sand, and never realising that the tide rises around you until you look up and you’re there, all alone on an island far away from shore. And there’s no-one you can blame but yourself.
The panic keeps rising, like the water. I keep pretending I can’t see it. I tell myself it’s fine. The tide doesn’t come up this high. I can stand here and the cold will never touch me. But it does. It does, and does, and climbs up my spine and squeezes my lungs and clenches my throat and then my head is underwater and I’m drowning, drowning, and grounding, and drowning, and breathing but there’s not enough time because my nose is underwater and I can’t swim in this storm. Then time’s up. And I’m done.
The positivity is melting. It’s so hard. But there’s no-one I can blame but myself. “I’m excited for the finish!” I said. But why should I be? There’s no real future except this stupid tide flooding its markers again. And again, and again. I have times when I’m done fighting. Maybe this is one of those times. I need to rest, I need to breathe, but the black water won’t let me.
Wings. I need wings.