Butterfly Cry

We all have our defining moments in life. If so, there are times when I hope that I haven't had mind yet. Because if I have, I failed miserably in that area. And I don't want that to be how people remember me. I suppose what it all comes to is the events detailed before. They all led up to one terrible realization. I wasn't looking for attention when I said I hated myself. I actually didn't mind myself then. The time would come though. It did come, it has come and I am now getting through it. I hated myself. I can say that in the past tense. I literally hated myself. I didn't care.

I was apathetic.

I was pathetic.

I was miserable.

I was lonely.

I was withdrawn.

It was a new kind of depression. For me at least. It wasn't like I ever thought of taking my life. I would never think of that. I'm too much of a coward to try. I hate pain, the thought of it terrifies me. But that didn't mean I had to actively live either. And so that was the route that I chose. I rarely bathed or showered. I almost never cleaned my room. I was a wreck. And no one saw it.

I laughed on the outside. That was easy. To pretend that everything was okay was a breeze. It was just like every other day. I had to just fake a smile and keep on moving. My school work declined and I lost my reason. When my parents came to pick me up from school to take me home for summer break, they found me a sobbing mess in my room as I attempted and failed to pack. I had lost everything and I wasn't ready to face it.

I know that now.

Even now it is hard to look at who I was then. I know I have changed. It is in small ways. Slow changes that are building up. People see a drastic change when I'm at home and around my parents. But it isn't the real me. And I think that is the real problem. I need to make these changes on my own. I need to be able to hold them up when I'm on my own. I have to be able to hold myself accountable. And though I love my family, I know that I can never do that when I'm home with them. It will always be some pathetic farce or facade. A lie to everyone, especially me.

We can say anything we want, but in the end, if we do not believe that, if we don't act it, how can it matter?

I ask myself that sometimes. That's when I realize that all the changes that I made only matter to me. My parents do not see them. At least, I don't think that they do. Which may be why I do what I do sometimes. It sounds so pathetic to blame them for the things I do. My problem is that I work to defeat myself more than I work to help myself. My mind is a complicated mess and jumble. I know what my problems are. Well most of them, though I could never tell you what the root of them are. I haven't been able to figure that much out yet. Unfortunately...I also know how to fix my problems. Well some of them. Others are more complicated that I care to admit sometimes.

I know that in the end, I have to distance myself from my family. Not emotionally or any of that. I can't lose them after all. I love them and I need them. But I can't allow myself to be around them either. As much as I might want to see them all the time, I have to find myself in another place. Just as my mother once found herself faced with the realization that to grow and become more her own person, I have to face this fact as well. In the end, no matter how much I might want to be with them, I have to leave. I don't have a choice. If I don't, I'll lose everything that I'm fighting for.

At night, I lay awake worrying and wondering. I try to pray myself to sleep sometimes. I want to believe so bad. And I know that I do. And yet, it's as if I can't believe that I'm good enough. I can't bring myself to believe that I might actually be worthy of love or of salvation or making things right. I mean, I don't hate myself anymore. I think I'm past that as much as I can be in my current state. But at the same time, I am a logical mind with an emotional way of thinking and being. It just doesn't work and so I tend to mess it all up.

In the end, I suppose, I'll just be left to wonder and consider. I can't seem to manage anything else.