How is it that the world can change so much for you without you ever even noticing? When does the reality of what you are actually doing coincide with the dream life you’ve always been living? What is the worth of a life if it is one spent in mere repetition and subservience?
This is never the world i thought I’d live in. I never thought I would be this person. I have made countless mistakes in my life… most of them a direct result of my decisions. Some of them are actually consequences of other peoples’ sins that I cannot control, and yet I am held accountable for. And yet still, through all of this, I always held on to a few set principles and paragons to live by. Until I didn’t.
Somewhere along the line, I lost my way. It is not an easy thing to come to terms with: you realize that all the sacrifices and mistakes you’d made until now were all for naught. This idea of writing seems such a simplistic, noble idea in principle. And it always came so easy to me. While that might come off as arrogant or egotistical… it is a matter of truth. I was never the one to be the life of any party. Instead, I was the one always on the perimeter, the chronicler of the world I saw around me. Ive always been fortunate enough to be blessed with friends and family that understood that outlier trait about me. In that characteristic, I’ve been able to see the world in front of me and, to be honest, multiple worlds that could be. Be it imagination or simply a different perspective… the ability for me to put down my rationality of the physical world via words was always a way for me to find my place.
Until those words stopped. Or, more accurately, until I stopped listening to those words. As the days, the weeks, the years pass… life has a nasty habit of distracting and discouraging us. Drama comes up; people you love disappear from your life; those you love are broken from events you couldn’t begin to predict. Long and the short of it is that it is so easy to lose almost anything to the nebulous schism of the moment to moment existence.
I really sound overly sanctimonious preaching like this. I have no right. These last past years have not been kind to me, but I have seen so much worse that I feel like a complete asshole even talking about this. Yet finally, after what feels like an eon of rudderless emptiness, I think I’ve found myself again.
Every day is a struggle. The joy (said facetiously) of living with mental health issues is that I cannot predict what comes next, who I will be next, or how I will deal with any amalgamation of this fucked up arithmetic. But I know that it is worth fighting through. While I feel that pain of loss, of sorrow, of losing… I know there are darker valleys to be in. And though this platform of mine is still diminutive, I feel its important to stand with a sense of pride.
I needed to put words to page tonight. I just needed to. It is how I process my reality and my pain. And it is also how I create my great joy.
I am not famous.
I am not a household name.
I am a writer.
I am a survivor of emotional disorder.
I am not alone.
And neither are you.
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