Isla Haraya: Maria (Published under IMMAC)

[FUCK NEW YEAR]

Trigger warning: May contain sensitive topics such as death, sex, profanity, suicide, self-harm, drugs, alcohol, mental health, sexuality, etc. Please be guided accordingly and read at your own risk.

— ;

25 years old.

Time check: 12:05AM

Happy fucking new year, I guess?

I can't believe I'm writing one of these during the new year! This is supposed to be a time for celebration and happiness and I'm with my mother's side of the family. They're the good ones! They're the amazing side of the family and everyone's in a party mood but I just had to hear that.

My cousins and I were watching a New Year's live on TV when I heard Tatay from the outside. He was drinking with my uncle and my aunt, Nanay's sister, and they were obviously talking about us kids. It's nothing new. If anything, it's normal. At every family reunion, parents talk about their kids. May it be about the good things or the bad things. It's a given and I was expecting it.

But just as the clock hit twelve, when we were greeting each other, I heard Tatay say "I'm so tired of her. She's an adult and I'm so tired of dealing with her." And I know it's about me. Who else will it be? Not kuya. They love kuya.

He's married. He has a kid on the way. He has a successful career in a path Tatay loved so much. They are both in the same industry, somehow.

Who said a black sheep is only the middle child?

I'm the youngest and I'm blacker than any sheep. To my parents, anyway. It's kind of funny.

I had not been drawing red lines for a good six months but guess who started the year doing it again?

This bitch.

Every year, I welcome it with a pocketful of hope that I would finally be good enough. I'm fucking 25 and I have been writing these dumb letters for years, ever since I was 9. I had folded papers, diaries filled with my thoughts and feelings, and a fucking folder on my laptop filled with suicide letters and diary entries. For fuck's sake, I have recordings of me crying as my way of venting. They even questioned the red lines on my arm but they blamed me for it. They just got mad. They did not care about the reason behind those lines.

Maybe they were angry that if anyone saw it, people would think that they are bad parents for letting me do that to myself.

But maybe there are bad parents and I have been blaming myself for not being enough for them. But shouldn't parents love their kids equally? I mean, come on.

If they can't love me, why did they even make me?

Why was I given life only to be ignored, forgotten, blamed, and just for them to be tired of me?

At this point, I'm a hundred percent convinced that I'm better off dead. Quarter life? That's a good way to go.

No more 26.

I'm fucking done. I can't keep on doing this to myself anymore. I'm so tired. I can't. I can't do this anymore.

I've said it before and I'm saying it one last time.

Goodbye.