Lost and Delayed

October 5, 2016

I hate who I’ve become on days like this. Anger seethes barely under my skin and I bark, forgetting the words I am responding to belong to another person with feelings.

She whimpers with tears welling below her lids and I feel like a monster. My mother is sick and fragile in body and spirit, and I am harsh and abrupt. She is scared to call for me to momentarily emerge from my lair. “Do you like who you are?” she asks. My eyes burst, followed by my heart…lastly by my brain. But I have already erupted. It is hard to breathe during the pain I feel and what I inflict on the one who loves me most in the world. So I cry alone and sleep.

When I snap, I immediately regret my words and actions. Even more, I regret how they hurt the one who grieves from them. I’ve been lost in a personal hell…living with my parents in a state I hate; where I have no friends; where I have no future; where I am trapped and will continue to be trapped. Life is a burden most days. I’ve stopped crying every day, not quite complacent with the life I’ve been forced to accept. A life where oxygen is always five steps away and new york is on the other side of the world—a world in which I simply exist and do not know how to live anymore.

When I drank too much, I slept like a baby. My mother doesn’t understand it. She’s never asked why. I needed to fall asleep—to fall away from the world and dream I was 28 again. When I lived alone in a studio apartment in Midtown, had hope for my future, and had someone I loved beyond comprehension—people aren’t supposed to love someone who is not a blood relative this much. I felt destined to be lonely when he showed up one day. Suddenly, my life turned on the “life” switch.

It was an adventure—cliché, but true. I was young and vibrant and he helped me realize I was worth being wined and dined once or twice a week. He was my best friend. He was loved more than life. He broke up with me twice. It crushed my soul. I refused to respect myself after that. Suddenly I knew he’d figured out I was a fraud…pretending to be this special person while I was just a giant mess of immaturity and emotional baggage. He woke up one day, and knew…and it took him a few months to gather the courage to do it. When I think of him, I feel dead inside and my throat closes. I stop breathing.

Being sick is stupid hard. I never feel even close to decent. It leaves me exhausted with a glass of wine, writing a confessional at the airport. So here I am. I am in a cubicle workstation, mascara running down my cheeks, nose dripping, waiting to escape the country for a week. I can be someone else for a few days. I am someone amazing and alive.