Going Through Something
At what point must you stop using the excuse of “I’m going through something”? I have been saying that for how long now? I used it again today. The thing I’m going through is just being myself.
My roommate asked me how it is that I’m not high all the time like I used to be. This question wasn’t out of the blue, we were counting our blessings and I mentioned it. I gave two reasons; that I realized I don’t actually want to be high all the time, and that I’m better at emotional regulation now than I used to be. I guess this is true. I didn’t say this but also what I was running from then has since caught up and getting high doesn’t drown it out anymore. It stopped working.
I want to survive, I want to live a good life. I am and it feels so precarious, like I’ll wake up at any moment and be lying on the blacktop looking up at the shape of the sky through a basketball hoop with no net, like that one time in school I can’t forget. Looking at the sky pretending I was lying in a casket at my own funeral, and the anesthesia didn’t take so I could hear everything. Kids saying what is she doing. I think I wanted an adult to come over and ask me if I was okay, but they didn’t. Now I’m the adult so they’re especially not coming now.
I told my friend at the bar last night about how my decisions to push people away are actually totally justified because I’m in no position to give them what they want. I suggested that they find literally anyone else, and she agreed. You’re not ready for any of that, she said. What that means or if I’ll ever be ready is unclear. “I’m going through something”.
Everyone is going through something, the way I feel is not special or different really. Other people handle it better or worse than I do. People kill themselves, people shove it down into their mental trash compactor, people hide in loving someone else before themselves. People are just fine. I’m just fine. In fact I’m better than fine, motherfucker.