An Open Letter

The title says it does because I’m driving home with the windows down and I’m pretty sure that voice to text is going to butcher whatever I say and I kind of don’t care about editing it. I have slept past 3 AM the last two nights in a row and even though I have technically gotten seven hours of sleep, I understand that realistically I have slept like shit. On top of that I know that I have not been eating well and so I understand that these things will all factor into this current depression, along with the stress from life, recovering from this cold, and other life events that have happened. And so I’m fairly confident that this will pass and I just need to take care of myself and everything will be OK. Now that being said, I do not find myself having a shortage of things that I plead my finger towards in terms of trying to attribute this current emotional low. It feels so infantilizing to call it an emotional low compared to this complete sense of defeat and wanting to just be able to fucking put all of this down for a bit. But that is what I said, and I am not going to edit this now that I have said those words. I know that one of the things that I am sad by God that doesn’t even make sense grammatically fuck it, but yesterday with Halloween, I brought my camera off, and I took a lot of photos of friends and they saw how nice my photos were coming out and they wanted more and more photos of them. We didn’t even take that many group photos, and I didn’t really get many photos of myself. Thankfully, Jay did take some photos of me, but I feel pretty ungrateful for saying this, but they were horribly framed, and the lighting was terrible, you can barely see me. I’m completely covered with shadows, and there is no detailed to the photos, but either way I ended up staying up for about four hours, going through the raw photos and editing them, and I made some pretty cool photos of my friends, but the most I was able to do for myself, was make the photos essentially visible, and even then you can’t really make me out in them. And it kind of hurts because the photos of my friends came out really amazing, but I don’t really have too much to show for it, for myself at least. I have some photos of me, but a lot of them are kind of shitty or really lazy in comparison. And they are all really happy with the photos I think. And I remember one of the things was G was one of the people that had a time constraint, and so we were kind of in a bit of a rush and on the clock, and she kept asking for other photos of her because she really liked the way they were coming out, but that essentially took away from time from me being able to have photos and group photos, and so when it finally got to my turn, everything was super rushed, and it felt like it was just trying to be done to get it out of the way. And it feels like a little bit of one of those things where I’m not really upset at her for it, but it’s more just she spoke up and an open mouth gets fed, and a closed mouth does not. But on top of it, this is one of those cases where I feel like suffering from success, in terms of me having some skill or something that I’ve worked on, and it is something that benefits other people more than it, benefits me, and it is something that I would like to also be on the receiving end of if I’m being completely honest. Like in this case, it is taking photos of other people and posing at the editing and all of that stuff, But it’s also things like being emotionally, mature and handling certain conversations or navigating situations in certain ways. It is one of those things where Both benefit, but work is disproportionate. I also feel like my hands are tied because J did not need to take photos of me, and I am very thankful that she did. But at the same time I feel like if I complain about the photos or how high ultimately don’t feel like they were up to the bar of what I was hoping for, or that I was able to do for others, it will only make her feel bad and be less willing to do it in the future, which is understandable. I am so it just feels like I kind of sit here and suffer quietly with no real way to vocalize my want. And so I don’t really know what to do about that and it just makes me feel trapped.

Also, today it took me 3 ½ hours to finish my powerlifting training. And I still didn’t even do the weights I was prescribed. I feel like such a weak bitch. I feel so incredibly discouraged and demotivated because I have been not able to keep up with the training while sick, and it feels like every time I start to give it another good attempt or something, I can’t really keep up almost. And so it feels like I’m not making any progress, and it feels like I just don’t have that dog in me. And it makes me feel like I’m trying like I really am, I put a lot of time into it. More often than I really don’t have much in me, but I still try. I spent over an hour taking notes on the first video he gave me, i’ve tried to find a coach on my own, and I’m spending a good amount of money on it. and honestly way more often than not I don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything. It’s been months now I think and I have trash and random things on my kitchen counter that should be put away by now. I have so many small little things just piling up and I don’t have the energy to even do tiny things like throw away, trash here and there, or just take a second to fucking wipe some hair off of the counter. I have mess after a mess and small little thing of small little thing and they all just pile up, there’s laundry that needs to be done, there are things that need to be moved or put away and even good little memories like these photos that I need to find a way to display. And they just accumulate and accumulate and I can’t bring myself to get them done. I haven’t vacuumed upstairs in God knows how long, let alone mopping. And I’m tired. I really really really wish that I wasn’t like this. I wish I had the energy to do these things, but obviously I don’t. And so I really am trying hard. But that’s not enough. It feels like. Sometimes it feels like I need more than what I can give for so many different little things. And God I’m tired. and I feel like such a pathetic bitch for all of these small little things like just moving something from point A to point B and I feel like there are so many people that work harder than I do and would kill to trade places with me, but instead here I am struggling to do these basic things. I tried to stay away from self hate because I know that it is very painfully natural to me and it is something that I’ve worked really hard to move away from, but why did God make it so easy? Why was I raised in a way that taught me that it is so natural to hate myself. I’m trying really hard like I feel so pathetic for saying this, but I’m trying to cry saying these words out loud because it’s not like I’m not showing up for myself. I really am. Like I have never worked so much at something as I have for trying to overcome my childhood and to be able to lead a happy or normal life. But sometimes in days like this, it really just feels like I just might not be able to do enough. I don’t know what to do. And it’s such a shitty thing that I think about how I have squandered this life, and so many opportunities that I have been given, but I also understand that it’s not like you could have the good things without the bad and you could argue that someone else put in my situation from the start would struggle in a lot of the same ways that I have. But at the same time, what am I to do. I feel like it’s too early in my mind to be kind to myself already, but I have finally cleaned up all of the shit from the bathroom counter that has been here for months. And I could both be hateful at myself to think about how much this took for me to finally do something so simple and arguably, trivial, but I could also be kind to myself and recognize by virtue of the fact that it is taking me so long that this is something that I have struggled with, and so I am proud of myself for doing this. And it’s not like I just have to prioritize this or have to thought about it, like some of the creative projects that I wanted to do, but this is something that I have wanted to do and I’ve even tried chicken away at. But finally here I have actually done it. and so I am going to choose to be proud of myself for it.