An Open Letter

I sat in the call for a bit with E, hearing her interactions with her family. She has so many good people around her and so much connection and security there. Must be nice. I know that I’m crashing and so I can’t hold anything I feel up to the light too much or it’d show up as just more faulty wiring. But fuck man, I think this is one of my red flags. The fact that it hurts to see people with good families. Or even families. It sucks to see people in relationships with their mothers, especially good ones. It’s weird healing and talking about this in therapy, because I then lose that sense of detachment from it. Before I’d hear someones mom on a call and think “aww thats sweet your relationship with your mom!” and there’s a disconnect between mother, and mother. One is something they have, and one is the thing that I won’t. And when I realize it, the bitterness seeps in and just coats every crevice of my mind. It’s a loathing that I almost don’t want to help. I wish you all knew how nice it was to be able to call your mom for help. Or to go to her when you’re hurting. Fuck you. Genuinely fuck all of you who have good relationships with your mothers. And parents. And siblings, and extended family and all of that. Fuck you for having something I never got to have. I can’t even think about what I’d give because I can’t think about how nice it would be to have a family. It’s not jealousy because I don’t have it. It’s envy, and it’s the color green. It’s a vibrant shade that paints everything and jars me out of whatever situation I’m in. That color isn’t meant to be there, and so neither am I. Fuck you. There’s so much bitterness in me in this situation that I don’t know what to do other than keep it to myself, where it festers. Fuck the people who go back and visit home. I’m 5 minutes away yet farther than they’ve ever been. I can’t get on a flight or call them because that house harbors someone so filled with poison that it kills anything it touches. I have this journal and it’s been cathartic since I can at least say something here. It hurts that E is able to vent to her mom. And I have digital bytes. The worst part is E hearing this would want to support me, and tell me that she is here for me. But I don’t want that pity. Yesterday I benched 255x2 and I wrote on my story that I just never wanted to be that weak again. I didn’t mean in strength. I meant being the fucking kid who got walked over and had no one there for him, who planned on killing himself too many times to count. That kid wasn’t strong enough to handle it, and unfortunately, he didn’t have support. And so I just struggled, drowning for 17 years before I could go to college and try to kill myself properly. I can’t stop mourning all of those years with no memories there. The only memories I have are horrible ones. My earliest memory is when I was in like third grade, and my sister had a jar of some chemical, like nail polish remover, and I asked what that was. She told me it was dangerous and if I drank it, it’d kill me. I couldn’t stop thinking about drinking it. And the memory changed, but it didn’t. I think about sitting in my closet crying on the floor so that no one could hear me, and writing my suicide note. I planned to hang myself over the balcony with a belt, so tomorrow morning my parents would come down and see my lifeless body. And then they’d realize that I deserved help. It’s painful to say “deserved help” like any kid doesn’t. I guess I want to see the best in everyone and think everyone deserves help, since maybe that would mean no matter what I would have then recieved it in my perfect world. But I didn’t, and it made me who I am. It’s a weird feeling when people tell me how kind I am or how good I am, since my first gut reaction is that I try so hard to be, but I still think I’m not. It sickens me that the things I try to do in private, and under any pressure, I bring them up like a receipt showing that I am good. I remember buying the homeless person a meal after six flags, and how I even journaled about it. And then I told N and D it was late at night when, during our conversation, they said “but you don’t buy homeless people food every time they’re at a fast food place”. I was aware I was leading the conversation in that direction. And then like an addict I jump to the needle. I tell them and I then feel that disgust of humility. I feel gross every time D tells others how I donated $50 to IRUSA in her story about M, since I then just confirm more and more than I did that so I could show others. What good do I do if I can’t do it quietly? I’m so desperate to be seen as something good, and something worth loving. Even when it’s not, I feel like it’s all I know how to do. I’m honestly just afraid of guilt. And god I feel guilty now. E is so sweet and they’ve done nothing wrong, they’re struggling even and I’m sitting here hurting because they have a family. Am I supposed to tell her about it? I don’t want her to walk on eggshells around me, but it feels like I’m disingenuous about it whenever I don’t mention it. But also I don’t know how you could possibly not feel guilt or try to hide it if she knew that it sometimes hurt me like this. And so I don’t know any other option other than to suck it the fuck up.

I fear that maybe the people I envy so much are people who somehow learned how to properly set boundaries. When their parents are bad, they can just step away and be safe. And then they can somehow reconcile it. My fear is maybe if they were put in my shoes, they would still have a mother. But I take some sort of shield in the fact that it’s on my parents to teach me and show me that. And fuck, how am I supposed to justify being ignored for months at a time for something I didn’t even do. Being ignored was what I learned growing up, and how to silently just accept what was happening. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair. And that’s all I can really say. It feels so pathetic to write like this, but where else is this supposed to go? I feel better after writing like this, and so that’s what I’m hoping for in the back of my mind as I keep typing.

The wave of emotions has now somewhat passed, and I’m now just sad in the aftermath. It’s a tiring sadness, the kind that just weighs down my spine and my arms. I can type, but I can’t press the keys to stop the music I’m listening to. It’s this weird paralysis. Something between my eyes and the back of my head. I think I face things head-on mentally, but I still mentally detach from family stuff so quickly. It just comes so natural. I don’t want to face grief anymore, I want this dull ache to go away. I don’t know what it feels like to not be injured in this way, and honestly I’ve somewhat given up the hope that it will go away. It’s always just be at best a migraine haze where a family should have been in my mind. I can walk and stand and breathe as a man, just one with this part missing. Something purposefully obscured.