#i think kve finally given in to the idea of oversharing about my mental state on this website

[lunarsapphism]

i got my birthday cards from my dads family tonight. i swear i almost caught myself opening them more carefully this year. ive never kept any of them. i dont think it would have been good for me, but i wish i did. i think that getting rid of them makes doing this every year easier. more like a transaction, less like real people. im a sentimental person but i try not to be. people and things mean a lot to me and its really hard when i try to push everything away. i always pretend that i dont care about whats written in each tacky piece of folded cardstock with crudely printed cakes and balloons and flowers on each of them but i think i do. i think i always have. i read them quickly and make a facial expression that represents something between nonchalance and disgust in hopes that that performance is enough to keep myself from crying.

its an indescribable feeling, this one is. it comes out as tears but i dont think its sadness. I think its an amalgamation of every complex emotion ive ever felt. its grief, anger for sure, and something else. i mourn for something that once was, that i know ill never have again. half of the people i hear from every year are dead now, they all died this year. i could talk to the living ones again, but ill never get out of it exactly what im seeking because thats impossible. im not the child they knew and they're not the people i knew. we're different now, but everyone always stays the same in the worst ways possible.

my sister said "they're bad people, but they're still people," and i think thats what gets me the most. they are truly inherently bad people. they are harmful and unsafe. and i miss them. not for who they are, but for how i remember them. still they grieve and mourn for people i once knew too, regardless of how horrible they are and were.

its a weird thing, to mourn as an adult and a child at the same time. nobody tells you that that's something that can happen, but it is. how do i, at twenty years old, process something that ten year old me never got to? twenty year old me doesnt feel much for these people and this situation. she's been through a lot and has learned to expect very little of people. she cares too much and she's always scared but she'll never tell anyone that. ten year old me knew too much and not enough. she didnt know why things were happening, just that they were and that things were unsafe. she didnt know that that was the last time she was gonna see those people. she really cared about them. maybe she would have said something. i know she wouldnt have. she didnt know how. i still dont. not even when i had the chance. we're still the same person, her and i. we're different in many ways, but fundamentally very little has changed. maybe thats why this is all so hard.

id like to talk to the younger me, i think. someone needed to give her a hug and let her cry on their shoulder. i wish i could be that for her.

i hope that somewhere in another universe im living happily with no emotional burden. not for my sake, but for the sake of the little girl i was before i was me.