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[writings-saved-as]

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When I remember my childhood, I remember it in two parts: before my mom got a new boyfriend and after. From ages four to seven, my childhood was diverse. I knew my mom was sad and I knew we were poor and she hated when I called us that. I knew my mom liked meditation, sushi, and reading. We read chapter books together every night. I knew my mom didn’t like talking about her past, especially about her childhood. I knew my moms favorite food was pizza even though we never ate it that often. I knew my mom didn’t know how to cook but she could make cheesy rice and that was enough.

After my mom got a new boyfriend, she got pregnant, lost her job, we moved houses, she gave birth to my brother and got married, she got diagnosed with cancer, her husband cheated on her, she forgave him, and he abandoned us…At least, I think that is what happened. After those four years, I couldn’t recognize my mother. Actually, since I was only 7 when it all started, I wonder if I ever knew her to begin with. Perhaps I had imagined all the memories from when I was younger. I knew she was now angry and tired. She had no patience and was easily overwhelmed. She liked to keep secrets. I don’t remember her telling me about her cancer when it was happening but I assumed and years later she confirmed it. I was the one who thought her husband was cheating but she never confirmed it for me. I never knew she had attempted suicide during those years until she told me when I was in my twenties. She stopped being consistent about things. One week we started eating healthier the next she couldn’t do it anymore.

She wasn’t a good mom to me during that time, some people might not think she was even a good person. While I won’t excuse what she did, I’ve decided being a good person is a skill. People usually start to learn it from their parents. But if your parents were never around or never taught you, you’ll be far behind before you can even start recognizing your own behavior. Lets say you finally start on the path to being “good”. You work and work and work at learning how to better understand other people and empathize, but when things get hard you go back to what you know, you go back to what is easy. Sometimes it feels like life punishes you every time you try to become better and wonder what is the point of being a good person. It hard to improve yourself when you can’t get out of bed in the morning.

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Life is Hard

You always hear people say life is hard but I don’t think that is enough. When I was a kid, I thought life is hard meant that there will be challenges you will face in life, that you need to work hard to achieve. Now I know life will start kicking you from a young age and it will keep kicking you whether you are running at top speed or already on the ground bleeding out. Life doesn’t care that you’re struggling, it will pile the weight on till you give out.

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It’s an Experience

Depression does sad things to people. It wear you down until you see no hope and can find no joy. But in their better moments, I find depressed people to be some of the most fun. I get very overwhelmed by negative situations, even small ones, so I learned to cope by spinning bad situations into good ones. It’s one of the things I learned from my mother at a young age.

While I am not sure how reliable of a narrator I am, I remember how my mom painted her old car breaking down as me getting to experience riding in a tow truck. It’s because of that, when my best friend’s car ran out of gas on the highway, I sang Whitney Houston songs while we walked to the gas station at midnight. When my umbrella turned inside out because of the wind on a rainy day, I laughed and watched people run for cover while soaking wet.

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Abandonment Issues

I have a terrible fear of being abandoned. A fear that one day the people that I love will decide that I am not good enough to be in their lives and leave. Worst of all is when they decide to leave abruptly, leaving me without a chance to know what went wrong. Leaving me to sit alone and question if it is my fault. It usually isn’t. Even if I know that, I long for those that I love to love me back, just like everyone else does. This problem is not unique to me. But when I find myself in those situations, I cannot help but feel alone. Over the years, I have realized that I am a great person. I have even come to love myself. Which makes getting left behind somehow hurt that much more. I know I am good, so why would they leave me? So many people, including myself, need to learn that sometimes getting left behind has nothing to do with who you are.

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To all of the Parents in the World

When children watch their parents suffer they cannot help to take on a burden of responsibility. Of course everyone is allowed to have bad days and perhaps even hate their life but I can only ask that you not let your child believe it is because of them. 

When your child comes to you with a problem, do not tell them that they are only adding to your stresses. They will never want to ask you for anything again, afraid of being more of a burden than they already think they are. When you make your child serious promises, promising you will be there for them, do not break your promises. Your child will may never believe anyone when they say they will be there for them. 

Do not blame your children when they cannot forgive mistakes that you have made by simple apology. Being their parent does not give you the right to their love and trust after you have broken it. Of course teenagers are angry and rude sometimes but if your child continues to act that way beyond adulthood, perhaps you have wronged them well beyond repair for far too long. 

Even if your child’s memories do not match up with your own, do not accuse them of lying. Because you do not have to tell a child you do not want them for them to feel unwanted or unloved. When you constantly ask your children to love you unconditionally, but you show them hate, regret, or absence, every act of love can be tainted by their impression that your love is fake. Which will only make them hate you that much more.  

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When you love someone you trust them. Trust, it seems, is one of the hardest things to do in today's world. Everyone is afraid of being the fool, afraid of being hurt. So, we hurt ourselves. Maybe I am the only one, but staying up at night wondering what is wrong because nothing is wrong and that is suspicious...isn't worth it. I've started asking myself "have they ever given you a reason to doubt them?" And the answer is always no. I am happy. Sometimes life even feels perfect. I'm gunna enjoy that. And if it turns out I am the fool, at least I spent these days in pure bliss, feeling something I never thought I'd have the chance to.

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The swaying lampshade hanging on the ceiling of my room always seems to loll me to sleep. Somehow the act of moving back and forth can be both a sign or tranquility or stress depending on the pace. I have always found the swaying unsettling to say the least. But that uneasy feeling has become such commonplace in my life that it is almost the mark of home.

If I didn’t lie awake for hours on end contemplating the darkest and the most trivial things in this world, it wouldn’t be a proper nights sleep. Likewise, there are days I can’t imagine living as someone without a mental illness. In the past, I may have dreamed to be “normal”. But my relationship with each of my mental illnesses is unique and in many ways each of them have shaped me into the person I am today. While they may have suffocated me in my own fears, held me back and simultaneously drowned me in my emotions, I wonder if they’ve also allowed me to have the life I have now. This life that I love with all my heart is partially thanks to my worst demons.

Depression, my own tale as old as time. A disease that slowly conquers the minds of its victims, starting with a whisper and ending in the mind numbing screams of a thousand voices, each touting an insecurity that you may not have even known you had.

Depression, that which has made me feel weakest, has showed me my strength. The strength to get out of bed when it feels like the covers hold the weight of all my mistakes. Even through years of bulling and abuse from those who were supposed to love me, nobody can be as hard on me as the person that stares back at me in my mirror each morning. Someone who is impossible to escape no matter how hard I try. It is because of this that in my moments of confidence, no matter how slim they are, I do not waver an inch. If even I can believe that what I am doing is right, I am. If I wasn’t those voices would not hesitate to let me know.

On the other hand, anxiety has shown me no use. No matter how long I deal with anxiety, it always finds some new way to shake me. Were it not for anxiety, I honestly think I would be living a much happier life. Perhaps my relationship with depression is simply my gratitude for no longer suffering with it daily. Perhaps none of the positives that I attribute to the disease are actually just attributes of myself I have yet to develop the confidence to claim. And perhaps we are all getting better every single day. Maybe one of these days I will be able to get up to force my lampshade to stop swaying and finally get some sleep.

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A Newfound Addiction to Love

The funny thing about growing up abandoned, or better yet, beaten by the two people who are supposed to love you the most is that you think basic human decency is people being nice. Wow, they didn’t yell at me about how much of a waste of human space I am. They actually care about my feelings and were worried when I cried. That creates a slippery slope when it comes to love. Not being an asshole can be confused with being nice and caring. But it's hard. It is hard not to fall in love with the first safe home you have ever been in, with the first person who stops when you tell them to. It’s hard to see someone see you. Maybe they don’t even know you that well but you are a person to them. They may even care about your feelings and opinions. That feeling, of being somebody to someone, is addicting. Luckily, I am self-aware. But there is always that voice. When they leave, I wonder what exactly will make them go? What if they hurt me too? Am I being too trusting? Am I worth loving? I guess we will find out. 

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The world at the end of my tunnel is one in which I cannot wait to be apart of. Rising from the depths of my past, I look around me and see others in their prime. Whether they are miles ahead of me or behind, their smiles proliferate the dark space of my mind. Are they mocking me or can they actually be that happy? Either way, I need to focus. 

I open my eyes, the darkness fades into the wonderfully blinding, fluorescent artificial lighting of this dingy office. And ah yes, the computer is still buffering, stuck on the Linkedin page of an old classmate of mine. She is the editor of her university magazine, a small business owner, and blogger, all before the age of 20.

What are you doing with your life? Still working unpaid internships in a field you’ve long moved on from?

Yes, yes I am. It’s called playing the waiting game. Only two months, three months and 4 hours till I find out if I was accepted into my dream school, one of the most prestigious universities, coincidentally on the other side of the world...

Am I running? Yes.

 I am running as far and as fast as I can. 

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Traces of Lead

I wake up with bruises on my legs and shoulders. 

Evidence. 

I spend most of my first class in a daze. My friend is just two seats in front of me. Close enough to remind me of what I need to tell her and drive me mad with anxiety but too far to actually talk to... Yet. I trace my thoughts on my arm with my pencil. It keeps me from focusing on them or perhaps it keeps me focused on them until I become comfortable with my own sick ideas.

Kill me. 

I write in print and in script going over the same idea until it stops hurting to think it. It’s a simple enough request and the feeling of the pencil on my skin feels good. I like to vary the pressure each time I write. Sometimes it is just a whisper, barely tickling my skin. Others I can clearly make out the letters on my arm.

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Another fight. I can’t quite remember what it was about. Dishes? My grades? Maybe it was how I spoke or how I refuse to speak at all. If all my life had to be encapsulated into one moment, would it be too depressing if I said it was this one? Well, I guess this is not just one moment. But when the same situation presents itself every few weeks, it gets harder to remember the individual characteristics of any of them. 

I’ve learned about the flight or fight response but I never really experienced it. I never had anything too scary happen to me. Even if something was scary, it was never too out of the ordinary. Mom comes home, angry as usual, ruffles me up a bit and goes upstairs to cry. After a while, you get used to it. Plus, a hand can only hurt so much. And if you don’t believe that the person on the other end would ever want to kill you, you can only fear so much. But when the hand turns into a frying pan… Yup, now we’re talking. I don’t even blink before I am in my room, the door closed behind me. Safe. 

It’s funny how being grounded can inhibit your ability to protect yourself. I don’t have my phone or my laptop. Am I going to die here? 

No.

Why?

I hear her footsteps, hard and heavy, up the stairs and around the corner, ending in the slam of her bedroom door. 

See? Safe.  

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Choices Made

My mother came with a suitcase full of my things. It’s only been a few days since I left home. She asked to be alone with me and my heart sank. My first thought was: is she going to kill me?

From the floor, I can see her Old Navy flip-flops. The same ones she has beaten me with since I was a child. 

“Look at me,” Her tone is soft, almost desperate. And yet those words feel like they are better suited to her normal growl with an accompanied hand directly on my throat for extra measure. Either way, I cannot bring myself to look at her. 

“I know I have not been the best mother. I know I should not have hit you. But I am so frustrated. I am so tired and I just don’t know what to do with you anymore. Do you really hate me this much?” 

I finally look up at her, trying to maintain a cold stare but I am shaking. I am so scared of this woman. But I also feel so guilty. Her hair is tattered and greasy, pulled together in messy bun probably with one of those clips she stole from grandma. Her eyes, dark brown, which normally look so empty somehow seem full when they’re brimmed with tears. 

“You can come home whenever you want.” She pulls me into a hug and somehow I don’t flinch. 

Does she love me? 

No. She can’t love me. She almost tried to kill me. 

But I am her daughter. She is my mom... I don’t want to hurt her.

“I want to come home,” I whisper.

The drive home is silent. I walk to my room and unload my suitcase. It feels like forever since I have been in my room. But, once I walk in I feel the biggest weight on my body.

I’m back. I escaped and I willingly came back...  

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Addressed To: the Void

I have never understood why people pity the dead. Those who have left us are just that, gone. I do not pity the dead. I pity the living, those left behind in the wake and those unable to witness it. Those who want nothing more than to hold on to every word their loved one ever said, every lecture and praise. Isn’t it ironic that in these moments we cannot seem to remember a single one? There can only be so many people at one bedside, and whether it is for a physical or emotional barrier, many miss out on the last moments. But will that even matter? If your person is in and out of consciousness and delirious are they still the family member who cared for you. In that state, they have lost their defining characteristics. They lose their wit and pride. Will I be meeting a stranger at this bedside? I understand why so many forfeit their last moments with their loved ones but I would at least like a chance. A chance to understand why we all turned out like this, to ask the questions everyone said a young child should not ask, to know the truth. And in an unapologetically selfish way, to know whether or not I have done right by him. If he is proud of what I have become despite the mess we are all in. Why must the world be so cruel to take a father, grandfather, scholar, mentor, and friend from this earth? Even after 83 years, it is too soon. Not for him but for me. I have so much more to accomplish and show him. But he is not watching anymore, and I will never know if he ever was.