Please Understand This
I want to be clear
#1
This will be the first letter I will ever write to you.
I want you to understand something.
I want to be clear, but you have to understand that none of this is even clear to me.
My mind is a hazy fog and sometimes I think I see clear patches in it, but most of the time those are just lies.
I want you to understand that I am pushing myself through my life not because I have to or because I need to but because that was what I was told I’m supposed to do. I don’t feel the emotional motivation that so many other people describe to me, and that’s part of why I think I’m not well.
I smile because I’m supposed to and I frown because it’s socially acceptable. I say the words that people want to hear because when I say what I really need to say people frown and it makes them uncomfortable to hear that I’m not sticking to the normal script of their lives.
I was always told to be unique, but what they mean to say is that you have to be unique in a certain order with specific parameters and a god damn set of hierarchies because otherwise it’s too awkward for people to ingest.
I grew up an angry child.
I wasn’t violent, but I was angry, and at first I didn’t even recognize that I was angry. I just thought I was being me, and I suppose I was, but I was angry. My parents moved me from country to country every two years and my dad left me every week and my friends went on being happy with other people every time I left and it wasn’t fucking fair.
But I didn’t say any of that to anyone because it’s not something that you say out loud, it’s the type of thing you say in private to your pillow and pound into the blue light of your laptop.
So I pushed it down.
I pushed it down really really far into my heart and mind, and the pressure of everything I buried it under turned it into this ugly black tar that sticks to my lungs and throat.
It’s an emptiness that I can’t get rid of. It’s this dark thing that burns my throat when I push everyone away and want to claw my ears off and smack myself because feeling anything is better than this yawning hole inside of me. I’ve grown up with this hole, I’ve grown to love this empty part of me, and it has become part of me.
It sits on my chest at night and claws at my thighs and shoulders and whispers sweet nothings about how I don’t deserve any of it. So I push my happiness and any ridiculous irrational emotional response away because those things cloud judgment, and I’m only safe if I’m rational. I’m only safe if I don’t let anyone who is a threat to me close. I have to be safe. I can’t let anyone hurt me. I can’t let anyone break me again.
They don’t care.
She’s stupid.
He’s obnoxious.
They don’t understand me.
They’re leaving in four months anyways.
He’s nice, but he’s just another guy.
Don’t let them in, don’t let any of it in because it will eat you up whole, and I tell myself that it’s probably wrong, that maybe I should open up and say what I want to say. Maybe I should stop analyzing and changing my own body to fit that of those around me. Maybe I should stop hiding away.
But see, then someone, because there is always someone, comes and proves to me why I should never ever let anyone in. So I put fresh cement and brick on that wall. Better build it up high.
Because the pit inside me gets bigger every time that happens and I lose a little bit of myself to the pit and I hate that. I watch as that piece of me breaks off and falls in, and you have no idea how much rage fills me when I lose another part of me.
So I’m angry and alone in this God forsaken cavern with nothing but a pit of angry black tar and my angry desperate spirit and I’m so sorry that I will never love or feel or laugh the way you do.
I can’t.
I can’t because I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to break apart into a million fucking pieces the day that I decide to breathe and let something besides the tar and smoke and ash into my lungs.
I want you to understand why I will never be the image of normalcy that you need.
I can pretend all you want, and you’ll even come to believe me after a while, because I’m very good at looking like what people want me to be, I’ve gotten very good at it over the years.
But I will never be whole.
I will never be what you need.
I just need you to understand that.
Jenna
This will be the first letter I will ever write to you.
I want you to understand something.
I want to be clear, but you have to understand that none of this is even clear to me.
My mind is a hazy fog and sometimes I think I see clear patches in it, but most of the time those are just lies.
I want you to understand that I am pushing myself through my life not because I have to or because I need to but because that was what I was told I’m supposed to do. I don’t feel the emotional motivation that so many other people describe to me, and that’s part of why I think I’m not well.
I smile because I’m supposed to and I frown because it’s socially acceptable. I say the words that people want to hear because when I say what I really need to say people frown and it makes them uncomfortable to hear that I’m not sticking to the normal script of their lives.
I was always told to be unique, but what they mean to say is that you have to be unique in a certain order with specific parameters and a god damn set of hierarchies because otherwise it’s too awkward for people to ingest.
I grew up an angry child.
I wasn’t violent, but I was angry, and at first I didn’t even recognize that I was angry. I just thought I was being me, and I suppose I was, but I was angry. My parents moved me from country to country every two years and my dad left me every week and my friends went on being happy with other people every time I left and it wasn’t fucking fair.
But I didn’t say any of that to anyone because it’s not something that you say out loud, it’s the type of thing you say in private to your pillow and pound into the blue light of your laptop.
So I pushed it down.
I pushed it down really really far into my heart and mind, and the pressure of everything I buried it under turned it into this ugly black tar that sticks to my lungs and throat.
It’s an emptiness that I can’t get rid of. It’s this dark thing that burns my throat when I push everyone away and want to claw my ears off and smack myself because feeling anything is better than this yawning hole inside of me. I’ve grown up with this hole, I’ve grown to love this empty part of me, and it has become part of me.
It sits on my chest at night and claws at my thighs and shoulders and whispers sweet nothings about how I don’t deserve any of it. So I push my happiness and any ridiculous irrational emotional response away because those things cloud judgment, and I’m only safe if I’m rational. I’m only safe if I don’t let anyone who is a threat to me close. I have to be safe. I can’t let anyone hurt me. I can’t let anyone break me again.
They don’t care.
She’s stupid.
He’s obnoxious.
They don’t understand me.
They’re leaving in four months anyways.
He’s nice, but he’s just another guy.
Don’t let them in, don’t let any of it in because it will eat you up whole, and I tell myself that it’s probably wrong, that maybe I should open up and say what I want to say. Maybe I should stop analyzing and changing my own body to fit that of those around me. Maybe I should stop hiding away.
But see, then someone, because there is always someone, comes and proves to me why I should never ever let anyone in. So I put fresh cement and brick on that wall. Better build it up high.
Because the pit inside me gets bigger every time that happens and I lose a little bit of myself to the pit and I hate that. I watch as that piece of me breaks off and falls in, and you have no idea how much rage fills me when I lose another part of me.
So I’m angry and alone in this God forsaken cavern with nothing but a pit of angry black tar and my angry desperate spirit and I’m so sorry that I will never love or feel or laugh the way you do.
I can’t.
I can’t because I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to break apart into a million fucking pieces the day that I decide to breathe and let something besides the tar and smoke and ash into my lungs.
I want you to understand why I will never be the image of normalcy that you need.
I can pretend all you want, and you’ll even come to believe me after a while, because I’m very good at looking like what people want me to be, I’ve gotten very good at it over the years.
But I will never be whole.
I will never be what you need.
I just need you to understand that.
Jenna