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Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

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I hate the persona that I've created after all this time. It's not who I want to be and at this point I don't know how to change it. The words that come out of my mouth are never things that I want to say. I only say what people expect of me. I don't think that I can ever be a full person. Just a hollow shell trying to act out a role that I never wanted in the first place.

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I really need the adults in my life to stop asking me what I want for the future. I can't say "death" or "to be sedated" so I just go for the standard idk and a shrug. I don't want to listen to your lecture on possible goals and aspirations. I was not supposed to make it this far in my life.

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You'll never love me in any way that actually matters. I know this. I've repeated it to myself over and over again. And yet it still hurts.

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mom

every time you insult me in front of people i care about, every attempt to humiliate & belittle me, i am a child again. i am weak and powerless. i am getting locked out of the house. i am listening outside your bedroom door to you blame me for every fight. i am getting things thrown at me. i am getting told that i am never living up to my full potential. i am told that i am a waste of a life for every choice i make. i am hearing you tell your other children that i am the bad one to never take after. i am your disappointing child. every mistake the other children make it is because i taught it to them. everything they do wrong is a result of my actions. i am punching myself in my room to keep myself quiet. i am cutting myself so i don’t cry loud enough for you to hear me. every time i am in pain it is a ploy for attention. every time i ask for help i am exaggerating or lying. i am stubborn and lazy. i am neurotic and a liar. i am ugly and unmotivated. every attempt to help myself is shot down as a manipulation tactic. every attempt to get help from others is a farce to garner sympathy. i need nothing yet i beg for anything. i am starving but i must act full.

i just want to be loved. you tell me you do but your treatment says otherwise. if i tell you that then i am ungrateful & you threaten to take away everything i have left. i love you. but i am hurting. i have nothing left to take away. i tried to form every fiber of my being to fit exactly your standards and it is never good enough. i have never been good enough for you. i hope i never become you.

i vow to never allow my own children to feel the way you have made me feel. i want to treat them well, make them feel safe and loved. i want to guarantee that they love and trust me. i want to guarantee that i will never hurt or scare them. i want to guarantee that i will never make them feel less than or not good enough. i guarantee that i never will. i guarantee that i will never cause a child pain the way you caused me pain. i guarantee this because i will never have a child. you have instilled so much fear in me that i will become what you became for me. i will never be anyone’s mother. i will never experience the miracle that my body is capable of. but i will also never be anyone’s tormentor. no one will never experience the torture that i am capable of inflicting. i will not allow that to continue. i will break the cycle.

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There’s a particular brand of loneliness that comes with being an eldest daughter and I’ve been struggling with it my whole life. I often wonder what it’s like to have someone I can talk to or depend on. My siblings are always free to ask me for help and advice, but when I need something, I have no one to depend on but myself.

I’ve gotten so used to turning inwards all the time that I don’t even know how to ask people for help. Deep down, I’m convinced that I don’t need anyone’s help, that I’m perfectly fine doing it all on my own. Which can and has gotten me into trouble multiple times. Nothing too major that I can’t dig myself out of, الحمد لله.

But, sometimes I still wish that I had someone by my side who understands. Someone to share this life with. It’s so very lonely being the dependable eldest daughter.

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Eldest Daughter Gothic

Your youngest sibling is in tears. You do not know why. Is it your fault? 

You are doing the dishes. You are always doing the dishes. You never finish. 

She loves you. She hates you. You’re her favorite. She only cares about your siblings. She never wanted to be a mother. She loves you.

You have a headache. Again. You are starting to forget what it feels like not to have a headache.

Everything is too much. You are going to shatter. But you cannot. 

If you give out, so will everything else

She is angry, ranting about something you said. You do not remember the last time you spoke. She is still angry.

Your younger sibling is ten years old. No, that can't be right. You are ten years old. They must still be an infant. But they’re graduating fifth grade now, and you realize that you are in high school. You did not notice the change.

She keeps yelling. You wonder if she is yelling at herself.

You’ve heard that 3am is meant to be unnerving. For you, it has only ever meant the comfort of being the last one left awake. Is there something wrong with you?

This is all you have ever known, so why does it feel so wrong?

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I took a test online once

To see if I was the Soldier

The Poet

Or the King

It told me I was the King

I always thought I’d be the poet

I think all kings long to be poets

In the same way that all eldest daughters long to just be children

Why bury your pain for the sake of others when you can turn it into art

Why raise children you didn’t make

But just like the test said

“The sword is at your side”

“It bore your name long before you did”

I never asked it to bear my name

I want to be free of it

But we all want what we are not meant to be

“You are tired of being steady. You dream of feeling alive. Not that you aren't, but, sometimes, it's hard to remember that there is a heart between your ribs.” -@atlanticsea

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Peace be upon the daughter who helped her parents grow up. Accepted their cold shoulder, excused their anger, pardoned their mistakes, taught them how to be human. Peace be upon the sister who paid the price of rebellion. Screaming to her fullest, shaking like a leaf but standing tall, never letting the dictatorship go without a fight, paving the path for her siblings to breathe easier. Peace be upon the first child of an immigrant father. Aching to find their own purpose in life, firm in their own beliefs, contradicting generations and generations of cultural values. Peace be upon the girl who shouldered her mother's trauma. Swindled it into her own, morphed herself into an image of the womb she once resided in, immersed herself into troubles that weren't even hers, covered up scars that she couldn't even recognize. Peace be upon the woman who forgot who she was. So determined to be the savior of everyone, to fix her family, to nurture and love everyone around her. So deeply lost that she forgot she's just as worthy of love. Peace be upon you.

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I am trying so hard to be your little girl again. I'm trying so hard to be the person you used to love again.

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anybody randomly just get exhausted while talking? like u can still talk, but it’s fucking debilitating

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Back in my spring semester of sophomore year, when I was still going to North American Mental Health Services for therapy, I got asked one question: "Do you want to get better?"

It seems like an easy question, yes? "Of course I want to get better. Anything but this." Yet back then, this stumped me. Being in the worst slump that I had experienced, I didn't know if I was even going to live long enough to get better. I told him that I didn't know.

The way he explained healing to me was simple to understand. "Right now, you are at the bottom of the sea. It's not great in the slightest, but it's familiar. To go up will make your life better, but there's always a chance you'll sink back down. Do you want to go to the surface? Even with the risk of sinking back in?" Still stumped, I asked my English teacher the same thing the next morning. "Would you stay in a familiar place even though it hurts you?" He said no. We talked about my health after, until the bell rang to start class.

The rest of the year was chaotic. My former therapist referred me to the county for more intensive services, and I became worse during that gap of treatment. June was rough, but I started to heal during July. That is when I learned the one thing that no one told me, not my therapists, not my elders, not my peers. No one told me that Depression never leaves you.

The first day I noticed that I was feeling better was 6/18. I was laying down, and for once, my head was empty. And it was nice. No suicidal urges, no worthlessness, nothing. Little by little, things got better. I ate 3 meals, I felt good enough to brush my teeth and wash my face, I even felt fine going out, even if it was just a cousin's house. I thought that everything was getting better. I thought that it would be the start of a new chapter. I thought that finally, the Prozac and daily therapy was working. Yet I was wrong.

Reality quickly set in. Who was I, without my illness? For so long, I let it reign over my being, puppeteering my body for whatever it needed. Sleeping, cutting, crying, ruminating, rotting. I had no real life outside my mental illness. In those past two years, I was depression. That wasn't the only thing. As the rainy skies cleared from my life, light shone down on the reality of living. I thought that everyone would be happy 24/7, you'd have enough energy to do things all the time, life would be perfect. Yet I found myself still struggling to do things most people could do with ease. Assignments piled up, and burnout was all that was waiting for me under it all. I felt nothing most of the time, finding myself neutral rather than numb. I quickly learned that life was not all it was made up to be. Because why would I want to feel nothing? Better to feel something than this.

It all really came into culmination when summer break ended. I left as a horrible mess who's humanity could be put to question, only to come back as a hastily put together person. People who supported me were happy that I was doing better. Things felt different walking around campus, like the suffocating weight that once encapsulated my being left, the air around me just a little bit more accepting. Yet it still didn't feel right. I was normal. So why? Why did I feel so different? Was it the restrictions still placed on me for safety? The raised scars on my left arm? The concern teachers still had for me? I had no clue.

That was until one day. I was just innocently scrolling through TikTok until I stumbled across one post. "Trying to heal Pt. 5". It talked about how they weren't ok, even in early life. How they hated how they felt, but not being able to do anything. How they have all these horrible habits from their repetitive depressive past that cling to them, like seaweed that wraps around your leg. And something clicked. I will never truly be "cured". Depression will never not be a part of my life. Every single day, every single moment, I am still "depressed". Even if I feel better with meds, with therapy, with support, I will always be different. I will never be able to wash away the past.

So to Aaron, who told me that healing was merely swimming up from the deep end of the ocean, you were wrong. Even if I make it to the surface, the seaweed will still desperately cling around my ankles, and I will always be drenched in the sea water that once held me back. Even if I don't sink back to the bottom of the sea, it will always stick with me. Even if I reach the shore, I will still walk the earth, dripping with my past. Even if I get better, I will never be cured.

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even these short few minutes

stretch for hours at a time

no schedules, no hindrance,

no thoughts in my mind

time beyond my limits

future worldview blind

for each second stabbing me spinous

when this solitude is over, left no more of my kind

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I wish to be carried away from life by gentle hands. ones that nurture and heal. ones that can patch up the cracks in this body I live in. and when they are done, they can send me back down to earth so I can continue living on like everyone else.

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I'd rather live without knowing love than taste it once and never again