Journal Entry #1

 It's been two years since I've felt the need to write my thoughts down. My mind has been plagued with existential dread that I can't get out of my head. The grey hairs that begin to line my mother's hairline more and more, or the way my friends have stopped dressing like we are still in high school. The thought of growing up has continued to sicken me more and more. The older I get, the less I begin to know about myself. I thought when I was 18 that feelings were fleeting and that nothing lasts forever, but I realized that's true only of the good things. I know I sound dumb to complain about how good my life is, about all the blessings I have.
My parents are still together and alive, my friends love me, and I love them back. I still do well in school, even though I lost the passion for it a long time ago. I know I'm lucky, but I think I will always feel undeserving of it. I wonder if it is because of that parochial school mindset that is engraved into my brain, "I will never be good enough, at least not without God." No matter how much I say I am open-minded or left-leaning, I don't think that mindset will ever leave a bone in my body. It will be in my mind forever; it will make me think about every relationship and every good thing I have. I almost always question how deserving I am of it when my life feels almost too good to be true. And although that may be just my self-deprecation crashing down on me, deep down I know it's because I still feel guilty, down to the deepest parts of my soul, for letting things happen to me and for being as mean as I was back then. My therapist used to tell me that healing isn't linear. I think about that, and ponder if what she meant was that healing is never complete, and rather there are always parts of me that will need to be healed, whether it be the random pangs of guilt I feel every now and again, or the forgiveness I need to feel for myself because it wasn't my fault. It seems confusing, doesn't it?
Hearing me talk about problems but not being able to say them out loud or even while typing, but saying my problems makes them real, it sends them out into the world, and I hate it when people know how I truly feel about the shit I deal with. Of course, I tell my friends about arguments I have with my parents or even with my other friends, but most of the time, it's just surface-level. I think the last time I cried in front of Lauren was two years ago. I can still remember when I called her coming home from work one day, just bawling in my car. The pain was unimaginable. It almost seems silly to think about now how much my heart broke over something that seems so minuscule now. I wonder from time to time if I really am allowed to get over it, but I think I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt to still think about it. Yet, crying in such a way that your eyes burn from all the tears that have fallen and your chest hurts because you can barely breathe was probably the weakest I've been in my entire life. I hate to think about the fact that I didn't cry when my grandfather died, but I cried over my heart breaking. It seems almost childish to me every time I reflect back on it. Then again, I was never that vulnerable or close to my grandfather, but I still loved him, just not as much as I should have. He always took me to church with him, sitting in a pew next to him, telling me to pray with him. I really didn't understand it back then, but the way adults prayed was different than what kids wished for. We wished for love, happiness, and peace because we were told to, while adults prayed for their lives to be different than how they were, for something I'm not quite sure I'll ever understand. Talking to God nowadays makes me feel unsure of myself, like I still need to be close with God even though I know how far away I am. Sometimes I wish I could just open my eyes and my heart and feel the way I used to feel when I sat at the dining room table, holding hands with my family while we prayed in a circle I led. I miss how much I loved God. It's confusing, though, how my childhood still clings to me, no matter how far I feel myself running from it. No matter what country I go to, what state I flee to for a bit, I'm well aware there are parts of me that will never change in the way I think, how it's bad to be provocative, but sometimes it's the only way to feel anything.
I've always known that most of my life is performative. That, in my head, there is absolutely no way that any of the people I am surrounded by actually feel pure joy and ecstasy from what they are doing, yet I always put on a mask to better shield the truth that I would rather feel something than nothing at all. Another thing I have started to hate is that I can still remember so much about people even after years have passed. I hate talking about people in the past tense as if they were dead. I can still remember everything about my old friends: that her favorite band was LANY, that she hated it whenever her dad tried to contact her, or that her favorite show was Grey's Anatomy. It feels stupid to remember these little things about people cause I question all the time if people ever remember these little things about me. I always wonder if I was a blemish or stain on people's lives. If they regretted ever meeting me or getting to know me. I feel like I've barely even changed anything about myself, that my walls are up, and I still get mean when I'm scared to lose. Which might be the worst thing about me. Being scared to lose. I've never dealt well with loss, even as a kid. I hated the thought of people being better than me. That's what made me start giving up on my passions much more easily when I realized I'm not the best at everything. So I pride myself in trying to act like I couldn't care less about almost everything, that nothing is really worth putting all my thought and effort into, because in the end, will it really amount to anything? I think this is why I can't seem to really be interested in someone. I begin to see people and relationships as things that will end, because everything always ends, so I can't wrap my head around why I would ever start something in the first place. I know I sound stupid saying these things because I wake up in the morning and realize I am just overthinking things yet again. Relationships and love are worth it, but I know I only said what I said because of how scared I am of what's real. I think the only love I have understood is love that has to be earned. And I think only God has ever made me feel like I don't have to earn it.