exospherethoughts - Tumblr blog

[exospherethoughts]

I miss you so much it hurts. Memories still feel as detached as ever and it’s killing me because I can’t even sit in the emotions of a memory to try and relieve this overwhelming feeling of *missing* you. I want to talk to you about twenty one pilots lore and other music and crosswords and books and Star Trek and listen to you talk about lasers and geography and history and anything else you’d like to talk about.

Oh what I’d give to hug you right now. For an eternity, preferably.

[exospherethoughts]

I don't know how to feel. My psychiatrist told me I do have OCD, and now I just, don't know how to feel or what to do. I know logically speaking, having the label doesn't change my symptoms or what my daily experiences are, but it still feels so devastating to know there's another separate thing wrong with me. Some of the things I thought were just quirks are compulsions, habits I picked up that I *need* to do to keep my anxiety manageable are things I'm going to have to learn to stop doing, I'm questioning the source of every single thought I have now, I don't know how much of who I am is actually me and how much of it is the OCD (which things are quirks and which ones are compulsions? which thoughts are really mine and which ones are seeds of intrusive thoughts? do I even have any thoughts anymore that aren't obsessive spirals?), I feel the need to tease apart what is OCD and what's ADHD but that in and of itself is a compulsion, I feel like I have to monitor everything that goes through my head to check if it's an obsession/compulsive rumination (is that a compulsion too?), I'm so tired. I want a moment of peace and quiet, just a moment of silence, a break. But nothing makes it go quiet. Drinking helps for a little while but even that just numbs things out a bit, it doesn't make my mind go properly quiet. I wish I could put my head through a bloody wall.

[exospherethoughts]

Did you know that the thought crossing my mind in the split second between you saying “oh just come here” and us kissing for the first time was “oh god what if I’m misreading this entirely and this is not what he wants and he’s going to push me away grossed out and angry”?

[exospherethoughts]

This is getting so ridiculously meta. I got hit by a wave of "everything needs to be cleaned" this morning and didn't even bother trying to fight it this time, so I'm in the middle of doing laundry and washing the sheets, I've deep cleaned my bathroom, I did the dishes, washed some countertops, dusted a few things off, cleared out one corner of a shelf, and am currently resisting the need to deep clean my fridge. But I probably will when I'm done writing this, let's be real.

Once I started cleaning, my mind began to wander (it was already wandering but once I'm in the zone with some task then I get extra lost in my head and totally disconnect from the real world). And it started going down rabbit holes wondering if you were annoyed by how much I talked during our call this morning, questioning if you really wanted to talk to me or if you only agreed to avoid dealing with me pestering you about it, or if you really want to be close friends, or if I was too irritating, or if you wanted to leave the call earlier, and so on. But then I started thinking about how all of that stuff could be OCD-related intrusive thoughts (if I do actually have OCD), especially because I keep having these insanely strong urges to text you and ask all my questions because my mind thinks that having answers and certainty will relieve the anxiety, but I (try to) stop myself because I used to do that with my ex all the time and it was awful for him, and because it's unfair to you, and because I know that it won't help in the long run because no matter how often I get reassurance, the thoughts always creep back in soon after. They don't listen to logic. It's exhausting.

And then that got me thinking about if I really have OCD or not, and I started playing out hypothetical scenarios in my head of how I'll bring it up with my therapist when I see her this week, but then I started thinking that I'm acronym-hunting and that I don't actually have OCD and that I need to chill out with trying to slap so many labels on myself because there's no way I have so many different ones, but that made me think about my need to organize everything. Literally everything.

I'm constantly anxious and the only way my brain thinks I can escape it is to have everything lined up and in boxes and neat and clean and organized. The only way I can be calm in my room is for it to be extremely clean and to have minimal clutter-- so I get these episodes of over-cleaning and getting rid of a bunch of my belongings. The only way I can be calm in my own body is for it to be clean and feel "right"-- so I find myself needing to shower and scrub my skin and hair until it hurts and pick at my face and wear clean comfortable clothing. Every time I look at or think about my photo library on my phone, I start to get anxious because the photos aren't all in categorized albums, there's photos that I don't need or want and should be deleted to clean out clutter, but there's 12,000+ photos so I haven't ever gotten through all of them when I start to categorize them and clear them out. If I go to my music library or even just think about it, I start to get anxious, because not all my music is in proper playlists, and the playlists I do have are incomplete, and I don't have a playlist for every mood and category that I want, and my music library contains music I don't really listen to that I should get rid of, and so I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to organize it but never finish because there is *so much to do* to complete it and so I'm always anxious about my music library. Not everything in my room has a proper place for it to go and it drives me up the wall, I get panic attacks just looking around my room sometimes, and I've never managed to declutter enough to make it stop. I get anxious about forgetting things and start worrying about my memory and how little I know and how stupid I am and then want to make lists of things I know or learn and have neat little categorized places for all of it. I get urges to organize everything into extremely rigid routines: what I eat (I want to make lists of possible dinners and smoothies and snacks so that I have to choose from those lists), how I feel (I track my feelings in an app several times a day and often end up doubting if I'm accurately recording my emotions and then go into a spiral about that), my files on my computer (declutter and categorize!!!), even my memories (I keep wanting to journal about absolutely every detail of every day so I don't forget anything but ultimately the depression wins over and I don't have the energy to do it, but then I fall into spirals of panic about losing time and forgetting memories). If what I'm wearing doesn't feel right then I need to keep changing until it does, otherwise I feel anxious all day, and there's zero logic behind what is "right" every day, it keeps changing without rhyme or reason.

What I've read about OCD says that a lot of it is rooted in the fundamental need for certainty, despite everything in life being uncertain, and that set off alarms in my head because my psychiatrist specifically tried to lecture me about how everything in life is uncertain after I explained the symptoms that made me think I might have OCD. Like yes, I know logically I cannot be certain about things, but my brain doesn't care about the logic! It makes me anxious and panicky anyways! I know a lot of the actions/behaviours I'm engaging in are irrational or won't, by any form of logic, actually fix anything I worry about or fixate on, but I feel the need to do them anyways, and it is breaking me because I am a logical person and it makes no bloody sense. It's like my mind desperately needs to get rid of uncertainty and it won't listen to any logic. And that's where it gets really meta: I even want to find certainty about myself. I don't really know who I am or how people perceive me, so I go into these huge spirals about my identity and how I come across in social settings, and that makes me extremely anxious, so then I have urges to ask people questions about me or say leading comments (like asking what vibes I give off, making jokes with leading content to try and fish for information from people about their perception of me, asking people what their first impressions of me were, asking how much of an open book I seem to be, asking about quirks they've noticed, etc etc etc). Whenever I get hyperfixated on my identity and behaviour, I have this intense need to figure out every detail about myself and want to do long questionnaires or make lists of information about myself like a clinical autobiography or write down things I know or make lists of habits and quirks I notice I have, etc etc etc. And along with that, I keep getting urges to figure out how my brain works, and the only way to alleviate the anxiety is to go down research rabbit holes about different mental illnesses and question whether my diagnoses are correct or if they missed something or misdiagnosed something and then I think I shouldn't ask about OCD because it's just me getting way too hyperfixated on figuring out myself, but that behaviour in and of itself is something people with OCD sometimes do! It's meta and it's turned into this positive feedback loop that is just making me more and more anxious and my brain will not shut up.

Time to go clean more stuff so I can breathe just a little bit easier. I'm so ashamed of how my mind works, I feel like I'm crazy and irrational and whiny and I'm pretty much 100% certain there is no way anybody will ever be able to love me for the mess I am. I'll always have to filter out the majority of what happens in my head, I'll always have to force myself to talk less about things I care about or enjoy, I'll always have to lie about how I'm doing, I'll always have to hold back parts of me. I don't know how to change things that are so fundamentally part of me, I've been trying to my entire life without much success, and it kills me. I wish I could flip a switch and just be sane and likeable enough to find one person who I can be fully honest and open with, who I also like and trust. But that's never going to happen, not as long as I'm me.

[exospherethoughts]

I should be sleeping because I have to be awake in four and a half hours, but I can’t. I can’t because my photos aren’t all organized into albums and it’s bothering me so much and I’m trying to ignore it but my brain won’t let me. I want albums for certain events, ones for certain people, one for the cats, one for recipes, etc. But I have over 12,000 photos in my photo library and it will take much more than the next four and a half hours to sort all of them. But I can’t sleep because it’s stuck in my head and making me so anxious that my body won’t pass out. I feel like I’m going insane and I don’t know what to do.

[exospherethoughts]

Of all people I think you would be the one to understand, but I can't talk to you about this (partially because I'm afraid to talk about this to anyone, really, but also partially because this absolutely constitutes emotional vulnerability, and you don't seem to be interested in that anymore).

I think I might have OCD. I'm not sure, and I need to bring it up with both my therapist and my psychiatrist, but I've done so so so much reading and scrolled through some places where people with OCD talk about their experiences, and it's terrifying to me how much I can relate to it. I'm guessing I would fall into the somatic and contamination subcategories of OCD, since the main things that tipped me off to OCD were related to my cardiac issues and my fixation on cleanliness and organization.

It never crossed my mind that OCD was even a possibility for me, because the cleanliness and organization stuff almost felt too stereotypically OCD to count, and I brushed off the somatic stuff as health anxiety. But the way it manifests lines up with the descriptions of OCD that I've been reading.

On the somatic side, I think it was triggered by the start of my heart problems last summer. I've always had health anxiety, and it's hard to squash it because I've been right on several occasions (like the cancer!), but ever since the first few cardiac symptoms arose, it's been unbearable. Even though the main tests (stress test, echo, ECG) have come back fairly normal, there is definitely something wrong (the doctors agree with me on that front), but I should be able to be calm because the chances of it being life threatening if all those tests are normal is extremely low. Yet every time my heart skips a beat, every time it spasms, every time it starts beating too quickly or too slowly, every slight pain in my chest, every time my breathing feels a little too pressured, I start spiralling into wondering "is it going to be a heart attack this time" and become hyperaware of my heartbeat. Sometimes it happens even when my heart doesn't do anything strange, I just start spiralling and feel my heart beating in my entire body, and I try to use logic to get myself to calm down, but I can't. And so I keep checking my heartrate, I use the ECG function on my watch despite knowing it's not that accurate, I go to a public space so I won't be alone if I collapse or something, etc etc. And even doing those things doesn't alleviate the incessant anxiety and thought spiral in my head. The only thing that genuinely makes my mind go quiet when I get into that headspace is being in an ER surrounded by doctors. But I can't go to the ER every single time the slightest thing happens, it's an irresponsible usage of their resources and a massive waste of time and it's irrational. So I end up ridiculously anxious and overwhelmed and unable to do the one thing my body is screaming at me to do to get my mind to be quiet. It's torture, I'm plagued by anxiety that wants to spill over into panic more often than not, and I can't get away from my heart beating. There's no escaping it.

The cleanliness one I attributed to my ADHD for a long time, but I'm starting to wonder if it really is an ADHD thing or if it's indicative of OCD. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by anxiety just sitting in my room, and it could be fairly organized or clean, but the anxiety will hit anyways. And I'll be acutely aware of every piece of dust, all the clutter in my room, the slightest feeling of sweat or grime on my body, every scent and visible thing out of place. It can get so bad that I have panic attacks, I feel like tearing my hair out or scratching off my skin and want to climb out of my body and get out of my room (but going outside oftentimes doesn't help-- I end up getting overwhelmed by the sensory stimuli and my clothes and skin and hair will feel dirty and I'll have the added stressor of being perceived by other people). Then I end up either paralyzed by panic and have a severe breakdown, or I clean. I clean and I clean and I clean. I sweep and wash the floors, I do the dishes, I wash my fridge, I throw out any food that is even a little too old, I clean the cupboards, I wash the sinks, I clean the toilet, I wash my sheets and do the laundry, I change my clothes, I clean everything. It wastes so much time. And then I clean myself, I shower and scrub my skin until it's raw, I brush my teeth, I wash my face and pick at every little pore until my face is red and bleeding, I wash my hair until it feels free of every smidgen of grease, and then I put on clean clothes. Only then does the panic properly subside.

On the clothes front, in the mornings when I'm getting dressed, I thought this was just a funny little quirk, but I sometimes will waste an hour or more just trying to find the "right" outfit. Clothing that I adore will just feel "wrong", it'll bother me in a sensory way or it'll just feel off or I'll feel gross wearing it, and if I don't keep changing until I find something that feels "right", it'll ruin my day. I'll keep thinking about it even though I don't want to, my mood will be off all day, my anxiety will be heightened, and it never feels like anything helps except for finding a different outfit. Once in high school it was so bad that I was at school, and in the middle of the day whatever I was wearing felt so *wrong* that I went to three different thrift stores trying to find a sweater to wear that would be comfortable, and eventually I found one for $8 and bought it and put it on without washing it, since you know, I was supposed to be at school. It was entirely irrational: it was a waste of money, I never wore it again after that day, all I had to do was wait 3 hours and I'd have been at home and able to change into something else, and there was nothing objectively wrong with what I was wearing that day. But because of whatever got into my head, finding a sweater and wearing it felt like the only option.

Then there's the organizational and perfectionism stuff. I get so focused on needing everything to be in place and aligned and perfect (whether it's the layout and format of notetaking, file organization on my laptop, organizing my music library and playlists and having extra music that I don't listen to cluttering it, things in my room and in drawers or cupboards, the food in my fridge and freezer, course planning for academics, planning entire parts of my career, etc etc). It interferes with my life so much, I fall behind in classes because I feel like I can't do the work if everything isn't perfectly organized and colour coded and labelled. I stop listening to music I actually want to listen to because I feel like I have to listen to all my music in order and organize it before I'm "allowed" to listen to stuff I'm in the mood for. And if I don't do said organizational things, I can't stop thinking about it. No matter what I try to distract myself with. The same goes for handing in assignments, if I don't do it perfectly and put in 100% effort on every single part, I feel like I cannot submit it, even though it's irrational to submit nothing and get a 0 than to just submit whatever I have at the deadline. I can't force myself to half-ass anything because my brain just refuses, even if it's a logical course of action in order to manage my time or prioritize things based on importance. There's even the meta-process of wanting to figure out every single little thought and process in my mind (which I think is fairly obvious by this whole bloody ramble in and of itself...).

Sometimes this happens with clutter in my spaces, much like with the cleaning, and I'll get this intense need to declutter and end up throwing out a ton of stuff, even if it's stuff I should have kept. If I don't do it (and usually the only reason I don't is because the chronic fatigue can get so bad that I cannot physically get myself to do anything), I end up having a panic attack and my mind won't leave me alone no matter what I try to do.

Or another one I recently realized, it's silly but my shoelaces. No matter what type of shoes I'm wearing (although there's only really one pair of shoes I like wearing), the laces have to be even when I tie them. The way I knot them is specific and I cannot do it any other way, and while I'm knotting them, the two loose ends (not the loops) have to end up being even in length. If they aren't then it will plague my mind and cause me so much anxiety until I fix them. It doesn't bother me most of the time because I've gotten extremely good at tying my shoes fast enough that most people wouldn't notice while still getting them exactly the same length, but there's one person who does notice and point it out (and has my entire life), and these days they leave me alone and let me tie my shoes how I need to, but they used to sometimes pull at the laces and force me to wear them uneven because they thought it was funny and thought I was being weird and difficult for wanting them tied a certain way. I would usually end up crying and feeling overwhelmed, and get into the meta thought spiral of feeling ashamed and confused about my intense reaction to something as stupid as shoe laces.

Then there's the relationship OCD theme that I relate to way too fucking much for my comfort. Labelling my thought processes as just "anxious attachment", or blaming it all on past unhealthy relationship experiences, never quite felt like it was really enough to explain the ridiculously intense thought spirals, anxiety, panic, and urges to find reassurance or ask questions. Even in a healthy relationship I spend so so so much time thinking about things I don't want to think about (and they have no rational basis), like constantly wondering if my partner really cares, hyperfixating on specific interactions or conversations and spending hours (days) picking them apart and trying to figure out if something had a hidden meaning or if I'm remembering it correctly, questioning if they like me or not, wondering what parts of me they find annoying, doubting that they really meant anything kind they've said to me, etc etc. And the only way I can get any relief is to seek out reassurance, so I'll hunt down mutual friends to see if I can extract any information whatsoever about what my partner has said about me (although even if I find anything out that way, I end up doubting the truth of that too because what if they lied to that friend?), or I'll compare behaviours and events from a current relationship to a past one, or I'll spend hours thinking about good memories with said partner to try and catch the feeling of certainty I had at the time, or I'll ask them repeatedly if I'm good enough / if they love me / if they think I'm pretty / if they actually enjoy spending time with me, or I'll tell them they deserve better (and I've gotten better at not asking these questions as often anymore, but I used to act on this multiple times a day, and even now I have the intense urge to do so at any time I'm not physically next to my partner, and even then I often have the urge to ask anyways). It's torturous and it ruined so many happy memories for me because (even though I was SCREAMING at myself not to), I would spend so much time stuck in my head going into spirals while I was with you. I wanted desperately to just be comfortable and enjoy myself, and sometimes I managed to, but far too often I would be sitting right next to you and spending every ounce of mental energy I had to stop myself from asking if you really wanted to be there (and to not show how distressing it was to be stuck in a meta spiral about wanting to not be distressed and distracted while spending limited time with you). I hated myself for it. I still do. And the second you would leave my sight, I would start doubting *everything*. I would start twisting the memories in my head, questioning if I misread your body language or tone, wondering if you really wanted to be there, thinking maybe I made it all up and you didn't actually want me at all, asking myself if maybe you were reluctant and I was pushing you to hold hands or kiss me or talk to me, it never stopped. It still hasn't stopped. I can't get my mind to stop. I don't want to be like this, I don't want to think these things, it is *killing* me, it is exhausting. But no amount of logic or talking to a friend helps. Nothing helps. I know talking to you directly about it would help... for the duration of the conversation and maybe half an hour afterwards. And then I would slip right back into new doubts and worries. It. Never. Stops.

The same thing happened in my previous relationships (especially the one other serious one I had). I chalked it up to the toxic nature of said relationship and naïvety on both our parts. Whilst those were certainly contributing factors, I have grown up since then, I have done so much work to heal and improve my own behaviours and thought processes, and it's still awful. It's still so bloody difficult to deal with my mind. And you never gave me any reason to think you were lying to me about anything. But my mind won't listen to that reasoning, it just doesn't leave me alone. So now I'm starting to wonder if really this is part of the whole maybe-OCD thing instead. Or maybe I'm just a horrible person.

Who the fuck knows! I am at the point of wanting to cry and scream because my mind will NOT SHUT UP and I am talking to my psychiatrist tomorrow with the intention of bringing all of this up so I can get evaluated for OCD but I am so so so so anxious about it because I need it to go well and I'm worried she'll think I'm acronym hunting or laugh at me or shut me down before I can even explain (I really need to explain it) and I cannot breathe so I am done writing now.

[exospherethoughts]

you haunt this city

[exospherethoughts]

I hate that drinking makes my brain quieter

[exospherethoughts]

Even more questions are bouncing around in my head now.

I think it was on the last day, before we said goodbye, you said something when we were with other people about finding eating to be a chore and not really enjoying it. Was it a mistake then, for me to invite you over for dinner (twice) and take you out on a dinner date?

In a recent text you told me you mostly like movies for the sake of striking visuals and a good score, and couldn't care less about emotional impact. Did you hate watching The Breakfast Club with me then? Is that why you didn't want to finish eternal sunshine of the spotless mind when we started watching it together?

Do you listen to the music recommendations I send you? If you do, have you actually liked any of them or do I keep sending you music that you would never enjoy?

If I hadn't asked first, would you ever have asked me to call? If I stop texting you first, would all communication fizzle out? Will we ever talk about anything that isn't superficial again?

Why do you ignore my messages on Instagram (most of it is just memes anyways)? Or the ones on Discord? Everything feels so awkward now and I keep feeling like I need to filter out parts of me, like I'm walking on eggshells. And I know that's mostly my own fault-- you've given me no reason to believe you'd blow up or get angry or disappear if I do or say something wrong, but five years of needing to be careful and tiptoe around every single thing I do and say to avoid setting a certain someone off has ingrained it into me. Growing up I needed to filter out entire parts of who I am around my parents, at school, around friends, everywhere. I liked not needing to filter things out around you, but now I have to, and it's such a strange feeling, knowing that you know me better than most do, yet now having to watch what I say for fear of crossing into "emotional vulnerability" territory.

I don't know how to be less close friends with you. It seems like that's what you want, but I can't undo what you already know about me, I can't reverse the way my brain sees you. I don't know how to pull back from that without completely flipping into 100% superficial friendship, which would result in us almost never talking while you're away, because realistically I don't text most people unless it's specifically to make plans to hang out in person. And by the time you got back my brain wouldn't feel even remotely safe or connected to you anymore, and I would probably be a little bitter about what we lost, so the friendship would remain a "say hi if we happen to be in the same room and that's it" type of friendship. But I can't not pull back because I don't think that's what you want.

I just want to cry. It'll at least help me feel better for a little bit, venting the feelings out, but I can't cry. I don't know why, I've tried all the usual things (watching something nostalgic, watching something depressing, listening to music that normally hits really hard, simply letting myself think too much, etc), but nothing is working. I feel somehow feel empty and overwhelmed all at once. And cannot cry.

[exospherethoughts]

I miss you. There is absolutely nothing I want more in the world right at this moment, than to go on a walk with you and hold your hand and talk to you about the things on my mind and listen to anything you want to talk about.

I miss you so much I’m teetering towards crying again, but I cannot right now, I am in public.

Maybe tonight will be one of those nights where I let gravity win and lie on the floor and let myself cry because you are so far away and when you eventually come back you won’t want me anymore.

[exospherethoughts]

There’s always a thousand different things running through my mind. Sometimes my mind latches onto the most unfortunate of them, rarely any of the important ones. It keeps latching onto questions that I can’t have answers to, because the only person who can answer them is you, and asking you any of them would be unfair to you. But my mind refuses to let go of them, it keeps playing them over and over and over again, they won’t leave me alone. I just want some peace and quiet in my head but I can never find any.

Does that ever happen to you too?

I know if I hadn’t asked you to hang out that first time, you never would’ve asked me, but if I hadn’t been so pushy with my interest after that first week, would you still have ended up changing your mind about us Easter weekend? Did you really want to kiss me and end up staying over that first night or did you regret it afterwards? Did you really feel strongly enough about me to want to stay with me if you weren’t leaving, or did you have fundamental issues with me that you just didn’t vocalize because you knew it was ending anyways? Do you miss me now or have you already moved on? Did you really feel an emotional connection to me or was I just your “bad decision of the month”? Did you really enjoy kissing me? Did you like talking to me or did you really just want to sleep with me? Did my weird quirks and random thoughts and incessant chatter and clinginess and health issues and awkward flirting and music recommendations and difficulty vocalizing certain things annoy you? Were you already sick of me by the time you left? Did you mean it when you told me you thought I was pretty? Do you really want to stay close friends or do you actually want to back off and stop opening up to me (you’ve already backed off anyways)?

Did you ever love me?

[exospherethoughts]

This isn't about you, but it's something I wish I could talk to you about, and I can't because if I try to then it'll be a wall of text I send you and it will be ignored. Or met with some short "thanks for sharing" type message. Even if you asked to call me, I don't think you want to do emotional vulnerability with me anymore, so the void gets this instead.

I wish my mind could grasp onto solid feelings and thoughts, but catching fleeting ideas or keeping track of a single coherent thought process is much akin to attempting to juggle thirteen wet thin bars of soap whilst rattling off the periodic table of elements in order. To communicate any of those bars of soap in a sensical and terse manner is practically impossible. It's highly frustrating to live inside my head, and when I think too hard about it, I want to tear my hair out. I'm trapped in a mental prison and I have no way of reaching out between the bars to talk about it or even just hold someone's hand. It's as though the version of me in my head is completely separate from that which everyone in the real world perceives, and when I let myself be consciously aware of that disconnect or try to reconcile the two entities, I run into walls, I feel trapped, and I panic. There is no way out.

Yet here I am, desperately trying to communicate it anyways. None of what I just wrote adequately describes what I've been experiencing my entire life (although it's been getting worse and worse lately as I become more aware of it), but I am trying. Maybe one day I'll land on the right combination of words for it. Probably not, but I can try.

I wonder how much of this summer I'll remember. Will it be lost to the depths of my mind like every other summer? Is it really just summers that are bad, or am I just telling myself that because I don't want to admit that every single month of my life ends up fading away so quickly, it's like my life only started two or three weeks ago?

What strange plane of existence is my mind on? Today was objectively good. I spent time with someone I really enjoy being around, they have been *incredibly* generous with their time and knowledge, I was productive today, I went outside, I got to do some crosswords, my smoothie this morning tasted good, I socialized with some fellow grad students, it was an objectively good day. I should be happy. I should feel connected and valued and appreciative and like I matter. But when I was walking home, I felt empty. The version of me that walks around and talks to people and makes facial expressions did all those things today. The version of me that exists in my head was holding her breath all day, for who knows what reason. Despite having felt like I was mentally present all day, it was as though that was a false perception, because once I was alone it was as though I was being set down after being tossed around in a hurricane, I had to catch my breath and felt overwhelmed by the day. But it was a good one. Why do I feel overwhelmed by a good, straightforward day? Why did that only kick in after I was alone and on my way home? Why did I think I was present in reality only to realize at the end of the day that I was as disconnected as ever?

Is it perhaps not that I am really disconnected in the moment, but that External Me is present in reality and Internal Me is not, and when I am alone, External Me goes away (except for the part that goes through the motions of making tea, cooking dinner, and typing on my computer right now), leaving Internal Me to take over the majority of my mind? Is it really just an issue of Internal Me not being the one who is experiencing any of the things I say or do every day, and External Me has no real short or long term memory, so whilst I may be "present" in the sense that I am doing everything I can to experience things in the moment, I do not remember any of those things as if it were really me there? Is that why all the memories I do have feel like stories someone else told me rather than memories of my own experiences?

Is that why, when I think of anything we did together, any time we spent together, my chest feels devoid of any emotion and my mind plays out vague images as though from a film? Is that why I keep finding myself sobbing on my bathroom floor playing music I know used to make me feel love or longing or heartbreak or joy or warmth or safety or forlorn about you, desperately trying to feel any of those emotions again, closing my eyes and imagining myself in those memories, searching for a shred of reality to cling to; but instead finding only grief for the lost parts of those memories? The lost parts... the important parts. The parts that made them *my* memories. The parts that made me feel something rather than remember a description of what I was feeling. The parts that kept your face and voice crystal clear. The parts that made them feel real.

It's funny how this wasn't supposed to be about you, but we ended up here anyways. Sometimes I wonder how I know I love you, the you sitting on the other side of the planet texting me once a day (if I'm lucky), because to my mind you've already turned into some distant character entirely separate from the person who I fell in love with and spent so many dozens of hours talking to.

Then I look at the mug on my desk with so many dried flowers in it, all picked for you. I notice how every time something good, or happy, or painful, or funny, or interesting, or mundane, or anything happens, I want to text you about it. I think about how I do grieve the lost parts of those memories, rather than being indifferent to them. I see how I have to exercise so much self control to wait until next week to ask you to call me (I really want you to ask first). I find myself running down the same paths we used to walk together, letting your ghost haunt me, wishing I could go back and do it all over again, just to hold your hand and hear your laugh and listen to you talk about your day.

I may feel empty, I may not be able to reconcile the you on the other side of my phone screen with the you I knew here and love, but I would be doing myself a disservice to deny how I feel about you. Even if my mind cannot grasp that you are still the same person, even if my mind cannot remember any of what we had as reality, I think my heart knows. It knows and it grieves for my mind because it knows how much my mind is missing out on. It knows how wonderful those memories are in full colour and emotion and reality, and it is in pain because without my mind to remember them for it, it cannot relive them. It cannot miss them properly. It can only grieve.

And so I sit here, ribcage hollowed out, grieving something I know I've lost but cannot fully experience the pain of losing because it does not seem real.

It is a kind of torture I wouldn't wish upon anyone. My entire life is going by and none of it has felt real. Not you, not any of the time I've spent with friends, not any of the time I've spent with my parents, not any of the trips I've gone on, not any of the things I've learned, not any of the music I've played, not any of the places I've seen, not any of the things I've said or done. I don't even really know who I am, I don't know how others perceive me, I look in the mirror and see a stranger staring back. I see a body but I do not comprehend that I am inside that body. I know when I speak my voice comes out but if I listen to it, it does not sound like me. I know I interact with people but those interactions are like watching two other people interact, neither of them seems like me. I don't know who I am and none of my life has felt real. At least when you were here, I had moments of feeling real in the moment, I had moments of feeling loved and safe and I felt like I could be completely myself with you. It was the closest I've gotten to feeling like Internal Me was the one existing in reality in a very long time. But apparently it wasn't close enough, because you are now another lost part of my memories.

The worst part of it all? Despite sitting here, typing away, trying my best to line up my thoughts in a row, grabbing at any ephemeral emotion I can, it still doesn't come anywhere close to properly conveying what I'm experiencing.

It's one thing to suffer. It's another to suffer knowing you cannot make anyone else understand your suffering.

[exospherethoughts]

It's so strange, the way my mind handles you most of the time. On occasion everything will feel real and will hit me like a ten ton truck (get the reference?), and I'll end up lying on the floor listening to a certain set of music sobbing like there is nothing else in the world but the floor, the music, and the pain in my chest.

The rest of the time? I feel the distinct lack of *something*, especially when I walk past somewhere we spent time together. I constantly have this running undercurrent in my mind of longing for some vague missing thing. But you don't feel real, none of what we had feels real, so there's no twang in my chest, no tear-inducing sadness, no heartbreak. Just a void, a weird hollow feeling that nothing seems to fix.

I don't like it. Sure, it makes it easier to go through the daily motions: I don't need to spend much time during my day directly thinking of you or dealing with the overwhelming love I feel for you. But that isn't worth the trade-off: I can't enjoy thinking about the memories of us because they feel so distant and false, I can't talk to you without feeling a little uneasy and guarded anymore (you feel less familiar to my brain now), nothing I do or think fills the emptiness I constantly feel, when I do try to sit with the love I feel for you it ends up being unsettling and vague because it isn't directed to any tangible human (you don't feel real), my mind plays tricks on me and refuses to let me feel anything in response to memories of you saying kind things to me or showing real interest in me.

It's like being in emotional purgatory. Only purgatory is temporary, and this doesn't feel temporary to me. How can I move on from something that doesn't feel like it ever really happened? How can I process my emotions when I can't get myself to feel said emotions? I'd rather be in pain than be empty.

[exospherethoughts]

I really miss talking to you. Of course I miss holding your hand and kissing you but above all else, I miss talking to you. What I would give to have you next to me right now, so I could tell you about how seeing the northern lights last night made me cry, or about how I listened to Cosmic Love sitting there on the beach and felt this intense longing for you to be there so I could share the incredible experience with you, or about how much my current state of physical health is affecting me, or about all the things I want to be doing but can't because I'm so exhausted all the time I can barely take care of myself, or about the music I've been writing and the music I have in my head but haven't written yet.

I really miss you. I hope you'll ask to call me soon.

[exospherethoughts]

It's unfair. You get to be in new shiny places and have adventures and be distracted. I'm stuck walking around seeing you haunt every street, every stairwell, every room, my bed. You're everywhere and I cannot escape it. I can't even find solace in my shower-- you've been in there before.

[exospherethoughts]

I think I'm disappearing for a few days. I'm so tired. I'm so so so tired. If you were here I'd talk to you about it, I think I'd have trusted you enough to let you in even when I want to run away from everyone and everything. But you're not here. And where you are now, I don't think you want me to let you in.

I've already lost so much to various illnesses, and it's looking like I might finally be getting a diagnosis that will cover the majority of my symptoms. The problem is, it's one of those diagnoses that is really just a way for doctors to say "here's a label to show we've done our due diligence, but we don't actually know what's wrong with you, and by the way, there's no cure or treatment". The prognosis isn't great-- this disease doesn't go away. Symptom management is very difficult. I won't ever be able to lead a completely normal life, and employers aren't generally very understanding when it comes to this illness.

I'll be spending my life asking the universe: why me? Why do I have to live my entire life running off of 10% battery and using what little energy I have to convince people my experience is real and not over-exaggerated? Who is going to love me and choose to spend their life with me when I'll be a shell of a human painfully frequently? What if it gets worse?

I don't know what to do. There's more tests, more appointments, I'm not giving up, but it's looking bad. At least with the cancer, there was a solution. It was terrifying, and I never want to go through that again, but there was a solution and now it's over (hopefully... I'll always be afraid of it coming back). But there's no solution for this. I don't know how to accept that this is my life now. I was clinging to the hope of some hard-to-find diagnosis that would have a treatment.

Isn't the universe supposed to balance it out between career, love, and health? Isn't there some bullshit about how you can't have all three but if one of them is bad then the other two will be okay? This is a cruel joke, my health has always been rocky, and it's dragging my career into a trench, and we all know how my love life is going. I knew being happy wasn't realistically going to ever happen for me, I've always known, despite trying so hard to make it happen.

I'll be alright, I always manage to find my way through these things (or at least find a way to stay afloat), but it would be easier if I had someone who I felt safe with here. If I had you here.

[exospherethoughts]

You don't feel real anymore, every memory I have of you feels more like a fantasy than a real instance in time. It's breaking my heart.