Life is not a storybook, you’re not special

I’m sat here at the beginning of another year, wondering what on earth to make of the 365 days ahead of me and the decade that now sits behind me. I’m not ok and I don’t know what to do. My moods are up, down and all over the place. I’m sat here in the dark wondering if this will ever really change.

I feel like I’m always making out to be some creative, artisanal type that whimsically stares out the window of cafe’s writing about all the profound views I have to share as if I know better than everyone. I don’t and I’m not. The reality is I am once again cowering in my bed having hit a terrible depressive episode, staring at all the clothes I put into bags at the start of last year and realising that a whole fucking year has gone past again and I’m still here fighting to find the energy to complete basic tasks wondering how the fuck I get myself out of this bed and just get through all the shit I need to get on with.

I know it’s completely normal to feel quite lost in the limbo of the new year, I also know that it’s totally fine to feel that way and it’s OK to have spiralled as a result, especially as I close off a decade that carried a lot of change and a lot of trauma and embark on a new one, but I can’t seem to be ok with it. I can’t stop beating myself up over falling down so hard. I can’t pull myself together. I can’t stop crying. I can’t keep talking about it. I can’t just write another piece. I can’t write another poem. I can’t go through another year blinded by the ignorance that my life will ever be more than this.

I‘ve spent years now working on my shit. I’ve pulled myself out of dark places, I’ve got through difficult circumstances and I’ve overcome demons. I’ve enjoyed some incredible experiences, done amazing things and been the happiest a person could be. I know what to do when I’m struggling and I know how to help others, I’ve done enough therapy and been given enough tools to understand myself and how to have a conversation internally and externally. Chat to me in the pub, hang out with me for the day or take a look at half the stuff I spew online and you’d say “yeah, she has her shit together”. But I don’t, and none of it makes a difference and I am exhausted. No matter how much I try, no matter how much work I do on myself, no matter how much I know better, I never feel better.

So I guess that’s why I’m turning to writing again, in an attempt to pull myself out of this dark place, so I can turn around in a few months and tell everyone how great I feel, how ‘happy’ and hopeful I am, and how “we all have the strength we’re looking for; we just need a little help digging it up”. Until it all tips back and I end up here, ignoring everyone, hiding from the world and staring at these stupid fucking clothes that I still haven’t dealt with.

I’m tired of people always saying “it gets better”. Yes, it does, but then it also goes to shit again, and then it gets better, and then it’s shit. Round and round and round. I am stuck in this painful cycle that I will likely keep repeating until the day that I die.

Of course it’s easy to exist in those highs, you come back around and everything is good, for a while you’re ignorant in believing that it does get better. Even when you slip and it gets difficult you’re able to hang onto the hope deep down that you know you got through it before and you will again. It’s what I keep trying to tell myself now. I know I will be ok again, I know that. I just don’t know if I can keep living through the lows. These episodes where any thought reduces me to a hollow shell that can’t get out of bed, and every day is so painful I cry myself to sleep. Again, it’s easy to live when you’re in the high, but learning to accept and be comfortable in the discomfort is the hardest lesson to learn and one I really don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.

I’m just always so tired. I’m tired of having the same conversation, I’m tired of writing about the same things, I’m tired of writing poems about stupid boys who don’t know how to value me and trying to get over this incessant craving to find a companion who will give me the love I will never be able to give myself. I do not have the energy or emotional capacity right now to welcome someone new into my life. Not only am I too fearful of pain but I genuinely don’t think there is someone out there for me any more.

I think the biggest problem is I was raised my whole life to think I’m special, and that there’s something in me more valuable than anything else in the world. Obviously, I’m not. There’s nothing unique or ‘special’ about me, there’s no superhuman quality that can excel beyond the norm, no ‘magic’ in me that can change the way things work or change people into something better, nothing in me that deserves to be adored. I am just another person who’s spent their life thinking they were made for something more, only to realise that they’re not, and the reality is that this is all I am and all I’ll ever really be.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to achieve with this. It’s pretty much just whiny drivel about how shitty I think my life is because I’m struggling to exist in my head. Maybe I just needed to get this out, so I’m sorry to those that actually made it to this point in my pitiful monologue, I hope you don’t relate to this, and I’m sorry if you do. Maybe it provides some comfort that you’re not alone, that there are others out there trying to figure out where they fit and how they can ever begin to learn to live with themselves in the meantime.

Like most kids I fell victim to fairytales and storybooks so I usually feel the need to end things on a positive, hopeful note but right now I’m just not really feeling that hopeful, sorry.