#I am free wafflinf

[gunkbaby]

I turn 20 tomorrow so have is unedited, uncontrolled, self-pitying, semi-reflective waffle about my wasted teenage years and general misery (aita if i might be a little bit ageist?)

too long so it’s under the cut. This is my birthday gift to myself - I’m dreadfully self-absorbed and self-aware and i think it makes me better than everyone. No one will read this, but it’s for me. My relfection on my horrendous teenage self. Extreme moping. I miss when it was socially acceptable to waffle in self-pity on personal blogs. Gah. How gauche of me.

I’ve been thinking a lot abt the past recently. Especially as I’m abt to turn 20 (no longer a real teenage girl anymore). It sucks bc I really didn’t get to experience adolescence. I left school when i was 13, and an abusive parent meant I wasn’t able to really do anything outside of my home. No wonder I’m such a mess. I have so much anger. Anger of what was taken, what everyone else has, that I will never. I will never get this back. I will never go to prom. I will never know what a teenage party was like. I’ve been to about 3 sleepovers, all before I was 12. My teenage years were spent in hospital wards, doctor’s offices, arguing with my abuser, or in my room, desperately trying to educate myself on my own. I couldn’t socialise myself. No one tried. I had a roof over my head, but outside of the basic privilege of western living, I was kind of abandoned.

It’s kind of shocking to me that I’m 19, about to be 20. And I live alone, sure. I’m going to a great college, I’m about to go through the exams I should have done when I was 16 - that I have worked my ass off to get. I’m about to move up into a higher course, and after that, I’m likely going to university, and I’m going to study my dream degree - zoology/botany. I might be the person I had believed I would be when I was a child. I get to go horse riding every week - something my abuser actively leveraged against me. She leveraged my few social interactions against me. I get to come online everyday and express my love for the one thing that I have had for 8 years - almost a decade, and nearly almost half my freaking life - that I have clung to. That has actively kept me alive. I still remember that fourteen year old girl that was only living to buy the next manga volume, that only agreed to go to the eating disorder clinic because when she came home, the new episode would be out. Staying alive for something to take everything away for a little while.

I think of how I don’t remember being 15, because I had been addicted to alcohol for the past 2 years. How I woke up when Covid happened, but I barely remember that. It was bad when I was 16. I thought, so badly, that something would happen. I might get a little better. I tried recovering and lived with that placebo. I didn’t realise it then, but that was when things with my mother really started to go downhill.

I think of when I was 17, 18, and I first started to use the internet socially, finally started interacting with a fandom I’d lurked in for so long. I think of that girl, and I think of everything she did. Every dumb thing she did, the horrible ways she made people feel, the brazenly incorrect or callous things she said, so desperate to cling onto everything. How little she understood it. I think of her meltdowns, how quickly she’d end up in hospital over anything. I think about how desperate she was to fit in and how much she failed to understand that something like that had already passed for everyone else. Suddenly too old to be behaving how I was. I think about how things got back then.

I think about being so paranoid, I hid under my bed and didn’t eat for a week because I believed people were trying to kill me. I think about how often I’d run away from home. I remember I got lost in the woods once. It was November, and it got so dark, so fast. Hell, to my shock, I think my dumb 17 year old self blogged the fucking thing. I remember my mother had threatened me with hospitsalisation, and I had thrown my coat away, because it was bright yellow and I didn’t want her to follow me. It was so fucking cold. I had my Shuu plushie with me. I don’t think I’ve ever gripped something so hard. I walked for hours. I remember how scared I was. I wonder if I’ll ever not be that scared girl lost in woods. The next I ran away, it was in the middle of the city. I sat in my favourite park and I was scared, but I sat and looked at the city and everyone in it and I felt so calm.

My mother’s face when she tried to kill me. There’s this look people get, and I had never seen it before in my life. But I looked at her and I just sort of knew, you know? I remember pleading for my life, trying to force the car door open, begging her to just let me out. I remember she took me shopping afterwords, sat down and drank a coffee like everything was normal. I was having a panic attack, and she told me that I was being silly. She never said sorry. Recently I found out that she’d gone home and told people she’d ’thought everyone would be better off without us’. I think our relationship died that day, but I didn’t realise it until months later.

And then I think about how one day I decided that it was over. And I ‘chose’ to relapse and kill myself slowly and painfully, then ended up bulimic and more miserable than I have ever been. What a mess I have made of everything.

I am angry at that girl, for a lot of things, but more so, I think I feel sorry for her. In a cold sort of way, I view myself then distantly. I know she was hurting. She was scared and confused, . She was abused and didn’t understand it. She had a fucking personality disorder she didn’t even know the name of. She had a whole ass condition no one would even look at. I wish I could go back to that 17 year old. Part of me wants to shake her and ask why the fuck she’s posting dumb shit on the internet, how anyone could fucking justify how goddamn delusional she was being. But what would that solve - more of a ‘poor me’ narrative, no doubt. What I’ve done isn’t the worst thing anyone’s done, but you can’t escape that guilt, the way you made people feel, how fucking creepy you were - the things I did before I knew I had BPD. I’m not wise enough right now to offer that 17 year old any wisdom.

I can’t hate her. I compare myself to Shuu too much. But it helps sometimes. I forgive him for being unhinged, it’s harder to forgive myself, but I am nothing if not consistent. That girl isn’t all dead yet. She’s shrivelling, slowly, but I still act in ways to people I’m not proud of. I’m still ill.

I’ll still be ill in my twenties. Recovery is no longer the goal - living a life the sick mind can tolerate is. I’m not going to live as long as other people - not of my own accord, though that remains a possibility - people like me just don’t tend to make it that far. I can’t say the idea of old age is appealing. I find oldness detestable - call me ageist, but I am so sick of seeing old people who look like they should have already died. Sometimes you look into the eyes of an old woman, or she will speak to you in such a kind way, and you understand then that there is beauty in old age. I believe, perhaps controversially, that modern medicine might be working too well. We are meant to die, naturally. I think whilst it’s lovely that our grandparents might live to be 100, sometimes I look at old people and I consider than society has chosen quantity over quality. Some old people look at the world with this confusion. I read cosmic horror, it reminds me of that a bit. I feel bad for them, because my world is not theirs anymore. I see anger, confusion, and have the knowledge that these ancient people will never live long enough to come to terms with it. I see it and all I can think about is how, maybe, some people simply should not live to be 90. The body lives, but does the mind? Can our minds handle living so long?

Whatever. Back to me being self-important now.

I can say a million sorries to people I have hurt. To people I made feel uncomfortable. I can apologise for all I have said. For the hatred and negativity I have brought to people. I could say it a million, billion times, but sorry is just a word. I’ll never not feel ashamed of who I have been, I live with guilt in the hope that one day, I might manage myself well enough to not need to think of everything. I hope I make it so far.

I’m not going to be a beacon of mental health. But I’m about to get my basic qualifications, then more advanced, then university. I’m going to be a biologist. :)

Writing has come back to me, slowly, surely. So will drawing. Maybe soon, maybe later, I will have beautiful work and I might say ‘hey, that’s not bad, kid!’. I still have Shuu. He’s still here for me. He’s never not been. I will have him as long as I need him. Not a day goes by where I am not grateful for my oldest friend. Art has returned through my desire to celebrate him. He has saved me, once again.

I live alone, and I like it. I get to go horse riding every week - I love it, so much. My abuser is no longer near me. I have a father who tells me every day, how proud he is. I get to see my wonderful little dog once a month, and I have three beautiful guinea pigs. In the summer, I’ll study a botany diploma and I’m planning on volunteering at a local horse & donkey sanctuary. I’ve never had a job before, it’s never been possible, but maybe.

i guess, not all sunshine and rainbows. I still can’t order coffee or really speak to other human beings. I want to, but I can’t stand to be seen. I’ve never hated myself more than I do right now. Things online are still messy, because I made them so, and I continue to. I’m still ill. Still, maybe things are not as messy as I had once made them. My bulimia has never been this bad, and now is not the time to handle it. I’m fairly certain that my exam stress will end me in hospital. I am still, utterly alone, the mental health services don’t seem to care. But I’m about to start ADHD medication soon, which, maybe, would make some things easier. A lot of things.

I guess all this extended waffling is a form of self-comfort. I fancy myself a wonderful writer, can you tell? I think reflection is a healthy tonic, I’m unable to journal consistently, so forgive the long post about me and how interesting I am.

But. I’m going to be 20 tomorrow. I’m going to wake up tomorrow, and nothing will have changed at all. Except I’m no longer a teenager, and it’s never going to happen for me. I’ve lost it. Forever. And my heart is breaking.

It’s so funny. I spent so long wishing I was 20. 24 especially has always sounded like such a cool age. And 22, and 28 - how I love the 2x tables. But now, I’m scared. Because I haven’t had what I should’ve. Being a teenager wasn’t cool, I thought it would be. Maybe then, the conclusion to all this is simple: being a teenager isn’t something I should miss. So I didn’t grow up normally. So far removed from everything. But I don’t think growing up ever stops. When it does, then you become one of those old people - waiting, confused and angry by a cosmically different world that no longer has use for you.

So maybe being 20 will be okay. Maybe adolescence comes later for me. I last had a birthday party when I was 12 - I bought a Tokyo Ghoul DVD, root A, to my utter shame. But, maybe I can have a 21st birthday party. Maybe I can be who I wanted to be when I was a teenager, but a little more wizened. Maybe growing up like this has been a good thing. I’m starting to go out into the world, and I have a backlog of teenage fuckups separate from teenage joy - maybe that joy will come in my 20s. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

There are flowers in my home. If flowers bloom, then things are never that bad. I think.