I haven’t written here in a long time but I think it’s alright now. A summary of what’s been going on: I went through a strong depressive episode. It’d been some time since things got that bad. I suspect they aren’t quite right just yet.

I’ve been thinking maybe I’ve got BD. I have a lot of female family members that have it. Being bipolar was something that I though possible before but I dismissed the idea. I got a new psych recently and he prescribed me meds again. I think they’ve been working. Or they had been. There was a couple days I wasn’t tired or sad. I recall one day when I opened my eyes a little early and when I realized I could sleep in some more I thought, “yay, I get to wake up soon.” I’d never thought that before.

Today I wasn’t cheering for much of anything. I’m not sure if I’m having an anxiety attack right now but I think it’s something akin to it. I’m hoping writing will make it go away.

I haven’t spoken to my dad again in over a month. I’m angry with him for not talking to me. He said he wanted to be in my life, that he wanted me to meet my siblings and stay at their house. That he’d help me with college. For a couple weeks I had a new vision in mind, one where I had a dad and another family that I could connect with. My support system was growing, and I was getting to connect with someone who loved me very much but had to stay away because life made it so.

But now he’s faded again, this time with every access to me. I don’t want to be hurt by it but I am. I wish I was cold and didn’t care. Or so emotionally mature that I could understand and move on. To be untouched by those around me, but I’ve never been that person. Even when I pretended I was.

The guy I have feelings for won’t stop telling me about the girl he has feelings for. She sounds amazing, and before I met him I had never envied a single woman. But here I am, suddenly making up mean things about her in my mind. Hoping she’s got some major flaw he’ll hate her for. Then I realize what I’m doing and I scold myself. It turns into badgering myself for not being enough instead of her being too much. I think if I were more like her, if I was better in some way that I’m missing now. It’s such a strange thing, to yearn for people that want nothing to do with us.

My friend who I’d been writing to has disappeared too. They’ve got a busy life, I know, but their letters seem to be no where. The last time we texted I made a joke about their absence but that went unanswered too.

I miss a lot of people who don’t miss me.

I don’t want to pity myself too much, although I’m sure I do. But it mostly interests me, in a painful but curious way too. How could it be? What kind of coincidence is this? How is it that so many people can walk away from me, can be so unaffected by my existence when they imprint so deeply on my heart? What is it that I’m doing, or not doing. Why does everyone long for someone else.

I was reading about the heart. Takotsubo myocardiopathy, broken heart syndrome, and how people actually die from it. How it happens when we lose something and the grief is just too much. I feel as if I’m always carrying around a broken heart, trying to nurse it back to health with the little things. But never the right things. Never enough of them either.

My therapist always gives me the same advice. Make new friends, she says, don’t talk to your dad if it makes you sad. It embarrasses me to admit to her that I’m bad at it. That I haven’t taken her advice and dwell in my loneliness. That when I try to talk to other people my face turns bright red and my hands get sweaty and I make no sense.

I hear a lot of adults have trouble making friends. Or maybe that’s just one of those things they say to make losers feel better.

Sometimes I imagine a world in which I am beautiful, and funny, and loved. People miss me and love me back. I look in the mirror and fix my hair and never cringe even once. It’s all very indulgent and silly.

I’ve been reading like when I was a kid again. I remembered reading so fondly, I used to think back to childhood and the hours spent with my nose buried in a book. But lately I’ve felt exactly what it was really like back then. The hours spent in a book because it’s the only place comfortable enough to exist. The only place bearable. I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts or try and interact with anyone around me.

I can replace human connection with drowning myself in information. Stockpiling random facts … for what? So that I might regurgitate them later. So that I can be satisfied for some passing moments.

I know all about eels. Medieval beasts. Gardening. The heart. Octopuses. Arthurian legends. Several classic artists. The holocaust. North American insects.

I imagine I’m friends with the people I pass on the street. With the cashier at the store. I wonder what they’re like and what makes them laugh. That they laugh at the things I say. I imagine all the people that have left me come back and they say, we’re sorry, we’ve missed you so much. They say I never forgot you.

Why is being forgotten such a painful feeling? Why is it so all encompassing? It’s like a stench and no matter how hard you scrub it never goes away. It’s not something you can cast away because it was something thrown upon you by someone else. An unliftable verdict given by the highest court. The punishment can only be stopped if you are remembered.

I know I should love myself, validate myself. That’s always the advice from everyone alive ever. Learn to love yourself and you won’t need others to do it for you. But I feel like that’s not true. Like it’s only human to need as much external validation as we need internal validation. It’s well and truly good to love yourself. But can’t you want someone else to love you too? Can’t you want to love someone else? Must I be the only person who loves me?

I feel like my family is growing tired of me too. I don’t know how to act around anyone. It worries me that I’ll never be able to form a deep and lasting connection with another person. It feels like there’s always a thin veil between me and everyone else, even those I love. Even those who try and love me back. Can I break it? Can I learn to see through it? Why is it there?

I hope I can sleep away this ache. I hope I don’t feel like I’m suffocating anymore. I want to breathe in peace. I want to breathe knowing there are people on this earth thinking of me too.