beware of feelings

first part kinda

I don't know who I'm going to end up sending this to but for now I'm going to imagine I have a friend I can whole heartedly trust with the confidential information that is my feelings.

My name is Jane Doe, I'm 17, I like theatre, going to the mall, and fantasizing about what life is like for someone other than me. Someone whose dad wasn't deported. Someone who hasn't been depressed for the past 6-ish years.

Because I like to fantasize, I'm pretending the person I'm sending this to knows my melodramatic backstory.

I signed up for therapy today. Years after it all happened. I signed up for it today. Months away from when I become an adult and the option of having it gets taken away and I go off to Seattle and start learning how to help other people, when I don't even know how to help myself. I've never helped myself. For these past years, or what feels like my entire life, I've helped everyone else around me grow and prosper and find their purpose. Meanwhile, I sit at home supporting them and rooting for them as I cry in my bed, silently so the rest of my family cant hear.

I support them. They all tell me I don't. I don't think they truly understand what its like to be alone, and that's why they for some reason think having someone at their aid, ready to provide words of true love and encouragement at most hours of the day, means they are alone. I think not being thanked for giving away love to everyone else but myself is a big part of why I feel this way. Its like I give off a piece of myself in every action and they keep it locked in a little box and only open it to look upon it's presence, not realizing that while apart of me sits with them at all times, my box isn't even in existence. It was taken from me along with my dad. That's why when people actually do offer up apart of themselves I'm always hesitant to take it. Because I dont know where to put it. I have no where to put it.

Anytime I talk about him being taken away it makes me feel like he's dead. But he's alive. Living in Mexico in a pretty okay city. And even though some people lose their parents completely, and I have no way of knowing what that is like, I do feel like in a way our entire family died that day. We all broke apart and tried to re-assemble ourselves, but now we are just broken versions of ourselves, being held together by off-brand gorilla glue. I will never know exactly how the rest of them feel, but I bet it's similar to how I feel.

I watched him be taken away. It plays over in my head almost every day. Me standing in the kitchen, ready to go to school and gush over some guy with cute hair and talk to my friends about how cute his hair is and how gross penne pasta from the school is. But I couldn't. Never again did I ever go to school and solely worry about such irrelevant and mindless things. Every time I try, to this day, if someone smiles at me, or talks to me about gossip, or about literally anything, I see it. I see him crying while looking at my mom, I see the ICE officers patting him down, aiming guns at him like my Snickers eating, Wipe Out watching, handy-as -hell dad was some big ass criminal ready to sick the mob on all of them. Like he wasn't just getting in his Nissan Frontier to go caulk a nursing home, then go to Safeway, buy a chocolate milk, and come home and sleep in his recliner. Like he was a bad person. I remember thinking the cat died and that's why she told me to stay in the kitchen. I remember not staying in the kitchen, even though I didn't want to see my dead cat. I remember seeing something I never thought possible. I remember every detail. The spot I stood in and watched from the window. I remember screaming and asking the air why they were taking away my daddy. I remember feeling complete helplessness. They were guys with guns, pointing at one of the most important people in my life. I remember watching the SUV'S drive away and my mom running into the house and immediately calling my dad's family to let them know what was happening. Then calling people I didn't even know, and them immediately driving over to our house right away to come support us. I remember wanting to leave. It was the first time. I didn't know where I wanted to go. I didn't want to be there. I didn't understand anything. I just wanted to go. Now I know where exactly I wanted to go.

Every detail about that day stays in my head and every time someone tries to tell me I can trust them and that they are there for me I think about that day. That very moment of me standing there. Numb and alone.

I've told lots of people. I've become accustomed to people asking questions about my life and demanding answers. And in turn they tell people, too. My life events have become a sort of show and tell for people to share with others uninvitingly. I don't get upset with people about it anymore, though. I figure the more people hear about the real life effects of deportation, the bigger the subject will grow and something might be done. It's the part about other people telling my story without my permission that hurts. In a life where I'm constantly searching for some sort of safety, not being able to entrust my story with people makes trusting more difficult than it already is.

I've met people who think its what he deserved. I've met people who want to help but they dont know how. I've met people that simply just couldn't care less. I have never met someone who I feel safe and not alone with. Not even my own family. We're all too sad to handle one another. I use humor to tell the story now. It's a coping mechanism. People tell me I'm funny, but every moment I'm being funny, it's highly likely I'm just trying not to be sad. Some people drink and do drugs to cope with things like this. But quite frankly due to the situation, I find laughing about it helps.

But it doesnt help. Not in the long run. In the long run for every time I've laughed or made someone else laugh, I've cried. It's alsp been apparent that when I cry, no one else cries. People have gotten used to my tears, I think. At this point for the people who have crossed some of my many walls (which, yes, I know I have) they see my tears and know they don't know what to do. They just kind of watch at this point. Or tell me to stop. I know tears don't help. But what else am I supposed to do?

I want someone. I think im jealous of peoples relationships not because I want a significant other or anything like that. I've come to terms with the fact that everyone probably thinks I'm an over emotional freak and that there is 20 cats in my future. I see these couples and I crave that kind of sanctuary. Someone who you trust to give yourself to and who you can trust to give themselves to you. Someone who you know thinks good of you. And who at least tries to understand. Thats whacky and sappy as fuck but I'm only human.

On top of my unusual back story I have every other teenage thing happen to me as well. I have insecurities about my looks, my voice, my life choices, who my friends are, who my friends aren't. I have crushes, stress from school, and days out with my friends. Just along with the usual coming of age stuff, I have crippling depression caused by childhood trauma that has been repeatedly worsened throughout the years because, as I mentioned earlier, I've never helped myself with it. Because for the last years I havent been healing, ive been coping.

Tommorow hopefully I guess that'll change. I'll tell a complete stranger with a degree my life story, pray they aren't a republican against immigration, and see if they say "well sweetie, you might be depressed!" and then I'll leave and have to wonder why this is supposed to work, make jokes about my depression to my friends because self deprication is apparently funny, and secretly pray this shit actually works. The odds however, are that I'll pretend everything is fine, and move along with my life and grow up and secretly have a large hole in my heart that will perhaps never be filled. Or it will be filled and ill just have a negative outlook on everything anyways.

Ive decided to post this on the internet. Mainly because I want someone to know my true feelings. Even though this is still a tad bit humerous. No one has to read it or comment "omg im here for you". For once i want to be able to share my feelings. And not think there is some sort of filter.

So. I start therapy tommorow and im terrified.