Old Yellow Pages ✓

33. better

19th january, saturday, 2019

dear diary,

I have been feeling better lately. I have started studying properly now, almost 12 hours a day. I think I will get a good college and be able to study psychology. In the past one week, I haven't had a single suicidal thought. My confidence is rising back up. I think this is because I am treating the roots of the problem and not just the symptoms.

And I obviously haven't been doing everything on my own. Dad asked me about my maths exam when I came home from school. I didn't really say anything except for that I will score 60 out of 100. He asked me how much I had studied for that test. I told him, 4 days.

He asked how much my output was. He saw my notebook. On the day before the exam, I had sat on my desk for 12 hours, but only filled 20 pages. I had solved just 30 questions in the entire day.

He called the entire family there. He made me look up the net for the cutoffs for good colleges, and when it became clear that I wasn't going to make it, he asked me what my plan for the future was.

My eyes were welling up and till a point I somehow controlled myself, but then I broke down. I have never cried like that before. I guess it had become too much: I wasn't getting good grades, I had no friends, I had no time for my hobbies, my life was dull and bland, I was feeling useless and suicidal. I was having depressing thoughts and constantly doubting my own capabilities. Who knew that not being academically good could affect someone so much?

I remember my third diary entry in this journal. I had written about how, last year, I was facing the same problems. Nothing has changed. I have been running in circles for the past two years and I think it's time to change that.

Anyway, now dad sits with me when I study, doesn't let me take breaks and doesn't allow my focus to wander, and I have been getting work done.

But what I feared the most is coming to life. In recent days, I have been thinking only and only about studies and nothing else.

I fear that participating in the real world will kill my creativity somehow. And to think that my parents ask me to give up — or take a break from — my hobbies for this entire year!

Here's a song called "better" by a youtuber Holly Henry that describes what I'm feeling better than anything else:

You know, it's been a while since I've seen the sun,
I guess you can tell.
But I'm getting better

I forgot what words to say or how to behave,
I was overwhelmed.
But I'm getting better, 

And I'm so scared of trying, I hid so long that I forgot who I was.
And I was so scared of dying, until I realized that I already was.

And when my eyes weren't drying,
I was so scared that this was who I was.
And I was so scared of dying,
Until I realized I already was

Did you miss me while I was lost?

When my eyes weren't drying, I was scared that it was who I really was. I was afraid that I wasn't who I thought I was. I wasn't the happy chirpy person that I wanted so badly to be. I dug a deep hole for myself, and I worked myself up, telling myself that I wasn't capable of anything, and hid there, scared of failing my exams or "dying".

Or like Paramore said in the song When it Rains, built myself a bed at the bottom of the blackest hole, and convinced myself that it wasn't the reason I didn't see the sun anymore.

I think my problem has been that I want to be good at everything, but I when I don't succeed immediately, I lose heart and tell myself that I can't do it.

I need to give myself time.

I don't know if I can reclaim myself, but at least I've realized that I was the one at fault, and I guess it's a step towards healing.

❄