the reality of being human

1

It was almost midnight. I hadn't looked at the clock in hours. I'd been on Wattpad, tiktok and yikyak. The places I go on my darkest days. The places I can go to pretend I have a different life. But today it didn't work. Because with every sentence I read and every video I watched I was painfully aware I would never live the life I was looking at.

I managed to fight the 6 blankets of off me, place my feet on the floor of my childhood bedroom, grab my towel and a clean shirt, the pj bottoms I've been wearing for 4 days will have to work considering all the rest are even dirtier and it's much too cold to wear shorts.

I turn the lock on the bathroom door. My moms asleep my dads not home. I fall to the ground and breakdown. I can't even think of all the things I'm crying about because my brain simply isn't big enough to picture them all at once.

I'm almost 20, sitting in my childhood house instead of a college dorm. I did go to college, I barely finished freshman year and when it was time to go back in the fall, I couldn't. Panic attacks have taken control of everything. So I took a gap semester which quickly turned into a gap year. I didn't make many close friends my first year, the ones I did I lost. And my few hometown friends, I'm not close with 3 which breaks my heart, and I hope summer will bring us closer again. The last is still and always will be my best friend. But she's busy with school, her boyfriend, her college friends, her 2 jobs, internships and more. So when we talk we barley have time to get through all her exciting new news and my boring life updates. She knows I'm struggling but I refuse to put another burden on her by telling her how bad it really is.

My dad i love but im not super close with, im closer to my mom but still they both only know about my chronic illnesses and anxiety. The one thing getting them through seeing their kid suffer with 5 chronic illnesses is knowing im still happy, that im not depressed. And that was true until a year or 2 ago. Im not going to take that one sliver of happiness away from them.

So I deal on my own.

But clearly not well enough considering I've been on my phone in bed all day and now crying on my bathroom floor. 5 minutes have gone by and I realize how much water I'm wasting. I'm pull my clothes off and step in the shower. I get through washing my hair before crying again. I stop myself but reminding me my mom might hear it and I don't want to make her sad and I also don't want to explain why, because how do you explain there are 1 million reasons and she doesn't know about most of them?

I brush my teeth. Definitely not for 2 minutes but I'm starting to feel faint from my chronic illness and I need to lay down.

The problem with crying and having to keep it a secret is that it's impossible- my face gets red and puffy if I cry for more then 90 seconds. And if it hits 10 mins it will be that way the next day. If it hits 45 mins I genuinely have to miss school the next day because my eyelids stay swollen like a tick for 24 hours. On those occasions I tell my mom I'm sick and nap.

One of my dogs is on my bed which makes me smile until she runs in the hall and starts barking, which wakes up my other dog, which wakes up my mom, which means I have 13 seconds to blow my nose, switch from the big light to the orange tinted light since it covers the redness, wipe my tears and drink some water to clear my throat. I've gotten it down to a science. It's a habit. It's second nature

Which is pretty pathetic if you think about it. I cry enough and get caught enough that I know how to hid my real emotions quick enough just so I don't hurt anyone else.

She takes them outside, and helps me get some meds. She asks if I'm ready for bed. Now this part is embarrassing but whatever. Every night for the past few years my mom sleeps in my bed with me. None of my friends know because I'm embarrassed but it started one day when I almost had to go to the er because of my chronic illness so my mom slept in my bed because she was really worried and wanted to keep an eye on me. Then I was really sick that week so she did it every night and it became a habit. Honestly it's nice, I don't have to be scared about my sickness, and it stops me from crying before bed. I've found when I cry myself to sleep I wake up the next day with the worst sadness that I can't shake. So it's embarrassing but I love it. Except the part that my big dog also sleeps in my room and she LOVES to stretch out so I end up sleeping curled in a ball.

Tonight, I want to write so I tell her I'll fall asleep myself, she's tired so it's better for her anyway.

This night is now. This night is where I am. But all I can think about it what got me here. I live in the past. I relive all my worst days. And I go through them in so much detail it's like I'm back in that day.

Tonight, I'm reliving one of the first nights at college and one of the last.

I can't help but wonder where it went wrong. What happened that this is my life? I switch from my reading playlist to listen to gracie abrams and start replaying those days.