An Unravelling.

I barely enjoy anything anymore. I have to force myself to watch shows, read books, talk to friends, study for exams, work to earn, clean my room, go out to eat, daydream about a future where I am “happy,” and even after all that, I feel numb, and I have to tell myself I am doing everything I am capable of that people at my age would do to make their early 20s worth living.

I wake up every morning and sigh at the thought of going through yet another day, but then I somehow do, and at night, all my thoughts rush towards me, and suddenly, everything goes still. I’m asleep, but I am not asleep. They say, “I think therefore I am,” but I cannot think then why am I?

Relationships feel like a burden hence I am the burden. Time is relative, and all feelings fizzle out with time, all ambitions will be for nought with time, I will lose all purpose with time, then what am I here for? What am I waiting for? To my friends, I will always be the kind friend, the happy, reliable, warm friend, and I wear that with a badge of honour, but I feel like a fraud because all I feel and see is my inability to be truly vulnerable.

I am known for letting out everything at once or none at all. Both are exhausting to people. The latter makes them frequently complain about my sincerity in any relationship. I feel alone because I’ve spent years building a front that I still use to hide myself. Every time I feel too much at once, I remind myself that it’s time to “isolate, relocate, reinvent” and that even if I let it slip a little, no one can know the entirety of the void I created inside my head.

Happiness is a concept I am not unfamiliar with, but I doubt I can ever fully achieve it. I once read on Tumblr, “Girls who dream are bound to unhappiness.” I constantly feel inferior; to people, to time, to existence. I am always at war with my pride and sometimes the lack of it. Crying feels pointless because what am I crying for? Do I even deserve to? Am I not being childish and immature? Or am I? How do I validate my own feelings when a part of me disagrees with all of them?

I write, write, write, but letting go of these thoughts doesn’t make me feel any lighter, so I choose to write about someone else’s, and they’re more intricate than mine, more nuanced, more delicate. My identity is less than a fictitious one, yet they’re attached.

Reading was my escape, but it has become a mediocre task because of my major that I chose of my own accord. I find no joy in analysing one poetry after another. I find no purpose in knowing the poets that came before me. Why was I so sure I could defy all odds that were stacked against me if I took my fate into my own hands?

I can feel myself slowly getting detached from my sanity. I feel it in how heavy my thoughts feel. I feel both buried deep in it and floating above it. Here but not. It’s incredible how something as simple as cutting off your waist-length hair and dyeing it your favourite colour can make you feel different and anew. But the hair keeps growing back, and the colour keeps fading, and I’m not sure how I can outrun the inevitability of time catching up to me.

I keep telling myself I’m getting better, that I’m healing from the heartbreak of my shattered dreams, that I’m almost there, but now I’m not so sure that ever was the case. Most of it is like a broken record. The same bullshit over and over and over again. I keep myself busy enough, distracted enough, distant enough. Never really feeling any of it. I often sit with my grief, my sadness, my longing but only ever at arms length because these feelings feel too big for me. I am too tired already. I cannot write, I cannot read, I cannot think properly.

Maybe this is a crisis, a phase or a sifting, an unravelling. A coming back to myself.

Eventually. One day. Almost.

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