is there room in the bad i don't need to be the frontman

This semester has so far been a long drawn buzz. I’ve made friends and habits, then lost some. I’m compelled to look back and run some diagnostics on the events of the past few months. However, if you asked me now what I did today, last week, or all year, you’d catch me scampering for some strings to tie it all together. It’d be fair to point out the dramatics of my reply if I were to say I’ve just been dissociating for the longest time, but it wouldn't be too far from the truth either. My therapist used to ask me that, and it would always put me in such a tough spot because I always found recollecting to be unforgivingly labor intensive. In her defense, she was probably trying to help me map out my experiences that my current feelings are derived from. Unfortunately, all I can tell now for sure is what I’m feeling now, and if I’m going to draw a portrait of my mind, it would have to be a freeze frame of its current state. There are some trade-offs in trying to understand the present by looking only at the present, but I don’t think that’s completely useless. People make trade-offs between stills and dynamics all the time. Maybe my therapist should read up on The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

I’ve spent the last few weeks feeling very unproductive and feeling the heavy load of the motions of day to day life bearing down on me. I’ve missed so many classes, more than I’d like to count, without a proper excuse. On most days, it was simply because I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d wake up every morning and have to regain my inertia anew each day. My schedule could be all too full, but not full enough to muster the same drive in me that I had left somewhere behind. Mornings were for acrid conversations with myself, of repeating silently that I had things and people to attend to. I wouldn’t leave my bed until the last minute, when I was already too late for the first commitment of the day, and then be in a frenzy to present myself to the world. I don’t think I had much agency over my life in these past few weeks, I had no will to be the active agent anymore. I had outgrown bodily autonomy, and slowly started to fit myself into the molds of my daily planner.

I think I’ve been rather quiet these past few days, and by my standards, I’m usually a bit more talkative. Most of the time I’ve just been scapegoating conversations by saying I feel unwell, which is true to an extent but not entirely. I’m afraid some of my old anxieties about social settings are resurfacing, and I’m reminded of the days when I was not on medication. Back then I would get so overwhelmed at random times that I would freeze and not be able to process anything at all. I’d go quiet, and look blankly, with my mind racing with thoughts I’m too guilty or embarrassed to ever give life to in words. I’d be the spitting image of a turtle retracting in its shell. I hadn’t felt like that in a while, until now, and I’m finding myself going back to the same coping mechanism I had wanted to leave behind by taking medication. The only thing worse than not being able to get back on the ground is having others around me take notice of my sudden detachment. I wish I knew how to come out of my shell, or have a proper workaround, but I don’t, and I find myself grandly annoyed when I have to answer people asking me if I’m doing alright. To find a reasonable explanation for my not being there mentally at a time when I’m struggling to be there at all is more taxing than I’d prefer it to be.

It feels like most times I’m sitting on uncomfortable pleadings for kindness, without much words to accompany my needs. I’m aware I have trouble communicating my needs, which I’d attribute to being stringent with confrontations and the desire to be regarded as kind and easy going myself. This explanation is, to the best of my knowledge, complete, but if I might cut myself some slack here, in my defense I’ve also never been the best with words. Maybe, if I knew how to compartmentalize my emotions to my satisfaction, I would have the words to let them out. That’s why sometimes I’ll find a song that says just what I want to say myself, but did not have it in me to speak it to those around me. However, this explanation is not a justification, since my inarticulate self has caused me enough troubles and pushed me further back into my shell. In the end, I feel like I’ve been treated in ways I would rather not be treated, and being disenchanted when my wants are not acknowledged.

I know feelings are like passengers, and I’m only supposed to be a vessel. I’m not too sure of this now, because I feel so heavy, and I don’t think letting things pass you by is the key to happiness anymore. I would like to make a formal apology to myself for taking things as they are, and not checking to see if they are right for me, and a promise to change that. Also, this post reads like a long, angry monologue, which I suppose really doesn’t capture what I feel like right now. I’m only making a gentle request to be understood, and I don’t think I’m the best at making that happen.