Venting My Beautiful Lie of Getting Better

[SatinSoul]

I am sitting here at noon on a Monday, and i just want to scream, but the sound would only be a burden to everyone now. I have been the "depressed one" for so long that my agony has become a familiar, grating static. It is a signal my family and friends have learned to tune out because it never changes, and it never ends. I can see the frustration in their eyes: the way they look at me and see a malfunctioning machine that refuses to be fixed. I have been loud with my grief, and I have become an expert of survival, yet people are just tired of me. They are exhausted by my stagnation, and the truth is that i am more tired than all of them combined. I can't even look at my phone and see three o'clock in the afternoon without feeling a crushing, leaden weight in my marrow: I cannot fathom a future when i am still drowning in the simple, yet terrifying tasks of a single day.

The only thing that feels like mercy anymore is the thought of disappearing. I look at the horizon, and I don't see opportunities, hope, or dreams. I see a door that I am not allowed to walk through yet. The idea of finally leaving this mess behind is the only thing that has a pulse in my world. It is a quiet, silver escape that promises the one thing no therapist or job board can offer: peace of mind.

I go through the motions to keep them quiet. I send the emails, i nod at the appointments, and i speak the language of recovery like a spy. I am crafting something precious: a masterpiece of a persona that i have no intention of living. There is an old ancient story of a woman named Penelope who spent years weaving a burial shroud, promising she would choose a new life only when it was finished. But every night, she secretly unpicked her work so she would never have to move on.

I am living that myth. Every morning, i sit in my dread, and I pick up the heavy, gray threads of a functional existence. I weave the recovering girl, and i lace the edges with the practiced smiles that make the people around me feel like their efforts haven't been in vain. But this garment isn't a career or a future: it is a funeral veil. I am weaving a shroud for my own mourning, a beautiful silk cover to hide the fact that i am already attending my own wake.

Every night i sit in the dark, and i begin the agonizing work of tearing it all apart in my mind. I pull at the stitches of the interviews and the progress until my fingers bleed. I do this because i am terrified of the finish. To finish the weave means i have to let go of the girl who is stuck in the past. It means i am being forced to heal, which is just a polite way of saying i have to murder the only version of myself i still recognize: the one who holds all my trauma and my pain. They want me to trade my real, broken history for a fake, polished future that feels like a stranger's skin. They want me to pretend the last decades didn't happen, and i would rather stay in the dark, unpicking the silk, than step into a life where my pain is no longer allowed to exist.

I am a masterpiece of existential dread. I am a skeleton draped in the most exquisite, expensive lace: a shimmering facade of "better" built to hide a heart that stopped dreaming years ago. I am screaming for help in a language that everyone has stopped learning. I am so incredibly frustrated with being strong for people who are bored by my weakness. I want the dread to break. I want the door to open. I want to look at the sunset and know that i don't have to wake up and weave the lie all over again.

I am not a work in progress. I am a long, slow goodbye that no one dares to hear.
And yet, here i am, picking up the threads once again...

 

[gunmetalblue]

I am a masterpiece of existential dread. I am a skeleton draped in the most exquisite, expensive lace: a shimmering facade of "better" built to hide a heart that stopped dreaming years ago. I am screaming for help in a language that everyone has stopped learning. I am so incredibly frustrated with being strong for people who are bored by my weakness. I want the dread to break. I want the door to open. I want to look at the sunset and know that i don't have to wake up and weave the lie all over again.

 

[Jamesbond]

Why lie to them? How is that going to help you or them? I'm in the uk and i literally beg for help and it's reached the point where they are honest with me and they say we don't have the resources. I don't understand why people make a game out of suffering. Whilst you're sat telling lies to them someone is dying because they can't access help.

 

[anomic]

Honestly your writing is so beautiful. I love the imagery and your words are so eloquent and intentional.

 

[SatinSoul]

View attachment 195813

@gunmetalblue That's hilarious! I'm dying! >ᴗ<

Why lie to them? How is that going to help you or them?

Honestly, it's a good question. I've had years of therapy and inpatient care. I did everything I was supposed to do. Yet, I never truly got over the trauma. I've collected dozens of coping skills, but most of the time, they feel like applying a Hello Kitty Band-Aid to a gunshot wound. So I just run from the conflict of admitting I need more help, even though I know the problems are only piling up. It's my own little psychological paradox.

Honestly your writing is so beautiful. I love the imagery and your words are so eloquent and intentional.

Thank you Carefully articulating my thoughts is the only way I've found to actually untangle the thought spirals my mind likes to create. It helps me more than any normal venting or coping technique ever has. It is the only thing that truly helps me work through my emotions consistently, instead of just pushing them down over and over again.

 

[panhandle5363]

This is beautifully written and very relatable.

 

[♡Sayori_Kinnie♡]

This is so like artistic Good writing with Shakespeare over here !! Sorry you feel that way, but it's totally understandable :(

 

[webb&flow]

Every night i sit in the dark, and i begin the agonizing work of tearing it all apart in my mind. I pull at the stitches of the interviews and the progress until my fingers bleed. I do this because i am terrified of the finish. To finish the weave means i have to let go of the girl who is stuck in the past. It means i am being forced to heal, which is just a polite way of saying i have to murder the only version of myself i still recognize: the one who holds all my trauma and my pain.

There are feelings which seek to kill the solitary one; if they do not succeed, then they themselves must die! But are you capable of this — to be a murderer?

Have you ever known, my sibling, the word "contempt"? And the anguish of your justice in being just to those that despise you?

You force many to think differently about you; that, they charge bitterly to your account. You came near to them and yet went past: for that they never forgive you.

You go beyond them: but the higher you rise, the smaller do you appear to the eye of envy. But the flying one is hated most of all.

"How could you be just to me!" — you must say — "I choose your injustice as my proper lot."

They cast injustice and filth at the solitary one: but, my sibling, if you would be a star, you must shine for them none the less on that account!

And be on your guard against the good and the just! They would rather crucify those who create their own virtue — they hate the solitary ones.

Be on your guard, also, against holy simplicity! All that is not simple is unholy to it; it likes to play with fire and burn — at the stake.

And be on your guard, also, against the assaults of your love! Too readily does the recluse offer xeir hand to any one xe meets.

To many you may not give a hand, but only a paw; and I want your paw to have claws.

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you ambush yourself in caverns and forests.

You solitary one, you go the way to yourself! And your way leads you past yourself and your seven devils!

You will be a heretic to yourself, and a sorcerer and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes!

You solitary one, you go the way of the creator: you will create a god for yourself out of your seven devils!

You solitary one, you go the way of the lover: you love yourself, and on that account you despise yourself, as only the lover can despise.

The lover wants to create because he despises! What does xe know of love who has not despised that which xe loved!

With your love and with your creating go into your solitude, my sibling; only much later will justice limp after you.

With my tears, go into your solitude, my sibling. I love xem who seeks to create beyond xemself, and thus perishes.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.