So note from me in the future, so I wrote this on the date you see on the post, but I’m writing this a couple months later, just to say, I’m fine, don’t worry, I just feel like putting up the stuff I’ve written for the blog even when it’s not… like… pleasant to read because this is more for me than for you I guess, so yeah, I’m fine. Also any posts with the #vent tag are going to be something like this.
Quick trigger warning, this is a vent post. If you don't want to hear me bitch about my life, maybe skip this one.
Taken from this instgram post by @susitse.art
I’ve often felt like a background character in my life. One of those extras who’s, at worst, an inconvenience in the protagonist’s story and at best is in a supporting role. Head down, working hard, doing their best to make everyone else’s lives easier. For so long I made myself content with following the script I was given. I did what I was supposed to do. I did my schoolwork. I didn’t complain too loudly. I graduated highschool, got into college, got a girlfriend, got a job, moved to New York. All told I did everything I was told should have made me happy. I did make amazing friends, which are the most valuable things I got from my time doing as I was told, doing what was expected.
Throughout that whole time though, there was always a wrongness brewing. A sense that something didn’t fit. Being me, I assumed it was my fault. I tried to reshape myself into whatever shape that seemed the most appropriate. When that didn’t work, I tried to ignore it. If everyone else can do it, why couldn’t I? I’m not that special. So I put my head back down and kept working, kept working, kept working, kept working; stopped working; started malfunctioning; broke down completely.
I’ve given up the cushy job and the life in New York. I’m back at my dad’s house, in a room that’s never felt like mine, living out of suitcases and still, I have the compulsion to keep my head down, to work on whatever bullshit keeps me from actually thinking about my life, about how it needs to change so I can do something important, so I can feel like I’m important. I still find myself spending hours, days even, dissociating. But I’m not just doing nothing, no, I’m programming, I’m building something, I’m honing my skills.
Reader, these are the same skills that got me where I am right now: burned out and adrift.
Why do I think that those are the skills that are going to save me? I’m clinging onto a fantasy that maybe if I just go back to work the same way I’ve been doing the past 26 years, maybe this time I’ll do it right. Maybe this time, I’ll be okay with being quiet and inconsequential. Maybe this time, if I work hard enough and prove my worth enough, I’ll be happy.
I know I’m lying to myself. I know this is a dead-end that leads to me either checking out early or living a life as a husk. I know that because that’s how I already feel. That’s how I’ve felt for as long as I can remember, but change is a scary thing. Most days, what I really want to do is scream at the top of my lungs that I’m sick and fucking tired of being the person I’m expected to be. I’m tired of small. I’m tired of choking down the parts of myself that are aching to be alive. I’m tired of slicing myself into thinner, pieces. Pieces so small they just melt in your mouth. I want to make the world fucking choke.