I can't sleep. My neck is stiff my leg and knees are hurting. My joints are swollen. I've just started crying. I had a horrible coughing fit about two minutes ago. I am just generally upset and I am so sick of getting yelled at for not....idk. I don't even know what I'm doing wrong anymore. It just...all of it feels wrong. Happy. Sad. All of it. I feel like I'm forcing it. But at the same time I want to say that I'm not. I'm really not sure.

I'm tired. I really want to sleep. I'm sure this is making no sense, but if it does......

What?

Why this strange compulsion to put it online so that the whole world can see? What's the point? Usually people like to hide away their weaknesses and failures, but somehow this internet culture has created a generation that seems to thrive on online emotional purging. Nothing is private. Perhaps it is our own quest at feeling somehow real? It seems believable because right now I feel only half here, whereas just yesterday I was unconquerable. I feel faint...as if I'm not really here, if that makes sense at all.

But I know I'm here. I feel and I see and I taste and I am interacting. And yet, it all seems so distant at this very moment, when just hours ago I was reveling in the feel of these same keys beneath my hands and the texture of the comforter on my bare legs and the sounds that seemed to just sing out of everything. And now it all seems so distant.

It's because I was thinking about my father again today. I'm pretty sure it is. But saying it makes me feel like I'm over-analyzing it, y'know? But I know that that is what went wrong. I remember the smell of fireworks and the sound of his voice telling me what to do. Watch out, be careful, light it there, hold the flame to the wick longer, step back... I can't get it out of my head. But I can't say it either. Why is it so easy for my brother to verbalize his sense of loss for our father to mom when I can't? Aren't she and I supposed to be closer than she and he?

I know the answer. I really shouldn't be using so many rhetorical questions. It makes the whole thing seem even more depressing. I grew up too fast. I keep feeling like I've lost my childhood. Mark told me that it wasn't right and that I should stop taking care of my mom and start taking care of myself. I can't. It's a train wreck. I'm driving right off the edge by taking on everyone else's problems and working through those whilst not doing anything about my own issues. But somewhere along the way, I somehow got it into my head that I'm not important and I don't matter. I know it isn't true, and yet it is like a tape stuck on repeat...the same thing going over and over again. I'm small. Insignificant. One. And as long as I take care of the people around me, they will acknowledge me and love me and I'll be something. Yet there exists this contradiction within my mind where I know that isn't true and that I don't need to handle everything the way I do.

I just don't want to lose anyone else.

I had a shitty time in middle school, high school wasn't much better. I begged and pleaded and did whatever I could to fit in and be accepted and that just wasn't me and whatever it was that I did wasn't even working. In order to garner any attention at all I kind of became a rug and allowed people to treat me how they wanted under the guise that I just didn't care. But I do. And I'm sick of getting tossed around and shoved in dirty corners and being stepped on. It doesn't happen much anymore because I isolate myself quite often out of fear of reverting back to being...taken advantage of?

I've become a very anxious person. Because of the way I've been treated by friends (now former friends) in the past I have difficulty interacting in groups of people larger than two or three. I actively avoid any sort of confrontation because I've adapted into the sort of person who will automatically lose simply to avoid argument and more pain on my behalf. I need to overcome this and become more comfortable with myself--and I am--but it's hard to forget years of behavior that I took on as a means of self-defense.

I'm trying to become the type of person I admire. I have plenty of great role models around me. People I look up to for various reasons, because they have traits I wish to emulate and have a way about them that I desperately wish I could have. If you are reading this, then perhaps you are one of them. I'm constantly seeing traits in others, and they seem so much better than what makes up myself. But I want to become like the person who is comfortable in herself that others look at her and admire her. I don't want to constantly be looking at people and comparing myself and feeling like I am surrounded by these brilliant beings. I am, but I need to believe that I deserve to be shining right up there with them, and right now I don't. Slowly that is changing and I am evolving, and everyday I try to integrate traits from the people I admire into my own life.

I think that is why I have never actually been able to finish cleaning my room. Somewhere along the way, it became messy, and I began hiding myself in doubt and insecurity as a way of protection. But now I am working to change myself, so I hope that one day I won't feel as if I am less than anyone else and I'll feel strong enough to tackle my demons and clean out my past and rid myself of whatever darkness is hanging over my shoulder. But until I can beat away that dark thing that is keeping me down, I don't think I'll be able to finish cleaning my room to the point where it looks the way I'd like it to, because somehow, by keeping it messy and cluttered and unpleasant to myself, I am channeling all of my doubt into that damned room. I know how stupid that sounds. It sound ridiculous to me. But really, I'm not lazy; I love to clean things and get rid of clutter and I love the thought of a great, epic transition and change of state--so what else could it be? I've created some sort of mental block within my mind, and a part of that block has me frightened of what could happen if I become a stronger person, and so I am subconsciously trying to make every facet of my life sad and pathetic.

I feel stronger now than I did a year ago. Being away from all of those same people has helped me to grow into myself a bit more. But I still have a long way to go after years of tearing myself down. This is just a brief moment of doubt and I just have to keep pushing forward, remembering to be gentle yet fierce when interacting with the world around me.

It's so funny, how I somehow went from complaining to blaming my mood on my father and then somehow came to talk myself out of my own slump. My friends and family have always come to me when they need someone to pick their brains--I guess I've finally just figured out how to pick my own. Maybe I missed my true calling there, hmmmm?

I feel better. I feel a bit stupid posting this where everyone can see it, but I think it needs to stand as testament to how much of the negativity in our own lives is just created by ourselves, and that by taking time and just letting it all flow out, we can instill positivity where there once was only darkness. I started out skirting the problem, but ended up confronting it and my own weaknesses and then from there I was able to derive my strengths and a solution. I feel a sense of clarity. I just had to reaffirm that I wasn't going to allow my past to tie me down.

I miss my father; I wish he were here, but that doesn't mean I have to be any less of a person. I spent years degrading myself in my mind's eye because I thought that it would lead to people being more accepting of me. I realize that it only hurt myself, and I've come to learn over the past year that I would rather be alone than miserable and with people doing something inauthentic to myself. Being alone does not always equate loneliness and, as much as I repeat it, I need to remember it. I am surrounded by love and I am a creature of glitter and light. I need to remember that, too. All of these people near to me and my heart that I admire do not waste their time with inaction--that is why I admire them. Even when doing nothing, they still manage to act because they each have, in their own way, purpose and being. That is what I admire. When I picture them, I see them in glitter and lights and stars, because they radiate goodness and confidence and ferocity. I am also made of glitter and light and stars and I need to remember that. I am not less. Like them, I am more.

TL;DR version: I am insecure, but I don't need to be and I am slowly getting over all of my little insecurities. You guys are, essentially, amazing. And there is glitter and light. :)