Don't Jump Just Yet!

In the most demure way possible, what the fuck is wrong with me? I keep saying things that I don’t mean, but want to mean, but don’t. I keep doing this to myself even when I know that another bout of self-destruction is bound to welcome me around the corner. Why do I wrack myself for answers (I prepare the questions too) and prepare and plan and organize so hard just to be disappointed.

Why do I keep setting myself up when I know how simple and kind things could be? How simple and kind I can be? I hate how pervasive my OCD has become that I keep going out of my way to forget myself and I hate how I feel when I forget myself. How many times has this searing feeling pervaded me so deeply that I dread my birthday because it feels too much and too little all at once? Because the cake and balloons I found across my desk this morning made me feel embarrassed instead of appreciated.

Last Thursday, my dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I didn’t have an answer, but I knew that it’d make him happy if I did. I went to go look for something. Over the weekend I walked around LA and felt like everything was meaningless and devoid of what I really wanted.

I came back home on Sunday and asked him for a Cigarettes After Sex record, spearmint gum, a bag of Gala apples, some almond butter, and a jar of kimchi. The record, I had hoped, would distract him from the groceries because, although I haven’t felt connected to food for some time now, it’s the least I can do to care for myself - to show the people who care about me that I can care too - that I should know better.

I called my mom and told her how I felt. She said she felt the same about hers and I joked about how that sad sinking feeling passed down. She told me not to feel sad, that I didn’t have to. I was making this call on the second floor of the building and an older coworker of mine passed by and jokingly told me, “It’s not that bad. Don’t jump!” I laughed and looked over the staircase. My mom asked me what should we do tomorrow. I ended the call and cried in the bathroom.

My birthday is tomorrow and I’m being asked, “Where do you want to go eat?” That’s the last thing I want to think about. I want to go somewhere else, far, far away. 

It feels as though I’m trying to find ways to get back at myself when all I really want is to be involved in the love that I’ve gone out of my way to avoid. I've deluded myself to look in places where it has no belonging. I've made myself feel like it was something that didn’t align with my life. I think that being saved from what I’ve wanted so badly has made me ill. who am I to not be deserving of experiencing instead of yearning at least once?

Jennie played Bermondsey Bosom (Left). We laid in a dimmed room with concrete walls and she said it felt romantic, like she should have been there the moment things changed. I laughed for a bit, but then I thought about how I felt about that time.

I was in a similar room and the burning visual of the television in the background and the phone call in Dutch and the sickly feeling when the shower ran, and in the morning when it rained again like it did the night before. How I made eye contact with an elderly woman and she looked at me like I was an alien - the way I’ve been looked at all of my life. Only to find out that it wasn’t because it was me, it was because of what happened to me and how it branded me a fool. 

Jennie gifted me flowers. She knows me all too well. I almost didn’t even bother planning anything because if she couldn’t be there, I wouldn’t have felt like I was on Earth while everything happened around me. I watched the pink and white bouquet of carnations and Persian buttercups live, wilt in the car, come back to life in the champagne bucket in the hotel, fall asleep in the car while we drank green juice at brunch, and live out the rest of its days until they finally died at my bedside. They have yet to die as I write this (I heard that flowers last longer as calculated by the depth of love of the giver..), but I can see their future like I can see mine.

Today at work, I listened to a choir of happy early birthdays and I felt sick. One of the office employees named Taylor walked by and joined the choir and then told me that hers was on Thursday. I managed to regurgitate a happy early birthday back after hearing it all day. Taylor said that she was turning 31, but she would let people keep telling her that she looked like she was in her twenties. I dittoed. Then I told Taylor, “I live in my delusions too.”

I'm always thinking of ending things and starting new. Maybe soon I can go to sleep and wake up and things will go differently. Maybe it will get better once and for all.

Photo by Boatshallow