paroxysm - diary

vii

so, it's been a while.

mark found this journal lmao

i waited a while in hopes that he'll stop checking this once he realizes i've stopped updating, and if you do find this, mark, can you just please leave it alone and not mention it. i've been going crazy without a place to organize my thoughts.

the past two weeks have been absolute shit, with a few of those days being so insanely terrible that they might just be some of the worst days of my life so far. i haven't been able to focus on much and i keep needing to stop, lie down, and just listen to music for a bit. 

i've been spending longer and longer lying in my bed in the morning, just trying to let myself relax before the day's even started because after the first ten minutes of being awake, i'm feeling down again. those ten minutes at the start of the day are what keeps me going, the ten minutes of just being deliriously sleepy and not feeling much.  

i'm listening to music right now, sitting by my practice pad and just not doing anything else. lately i've been thinking and realizing how harsh i am to my mother, and i've been feeling such a heavy weight of guilt because even though there's a lot she does that's just outright wrong, she's trying and i'm just shutting her down over and over despite knowing she's not trying to hurt me most of the time.

i haven't looked my dad in the eyes since, and i've been really nice to my mother, although a lot more quiet than i usually am when she says something that would otherwise irritate me. she's not irritating me as much anymore, she's realized something's wrong and she's just been there, letting me do my own thing unless she needs help with whatever she's doing. 

and from her perspective, she's helping, and from any perspective other than mine, she's helping. but to me, she's just making me feel more alone since she's the one person that's noticed i haven't been okay and she's the one person that's done something about it and she's my mother, she's bound to notice. i've realized that i've cut off most of my friends, and when i told mark this, i think he was a bit confused and he thinks i might be too dependent on my friends. i'm not entirely sure, he might be right, but i also think having someone to talk to is necessary, and being dependent on having someone to talk to is okay. 

(i don't know if i'm supposed to put a trigger warning or something here but there's that, i mention suicidal thoughts from here on out)

a while ago, i asked my friend about suicidal thoughts. everyone says that you shouldn't have suicidal thoughts and for the longest time i thought that every once in a while is okay. she wasn't sure either, and this isn't me saying i'm suicidal, but i'm wondering if those thoughts are normal. it's not something that's there 24/7 nor is it something i'd ever act on, but i've had those thoughts forever. whenever everything just builds up to be too much, i'd think about how things would be better off if i was dead, which obviously i have to tell myself isn't true. and it's never been something i thought i should be worried about until i was thinking about it and i was like "do my thoughts count as suicidal thoughts if i would never act on them?"

i'm not counting them. i don't think i'm suicidal/depressed/anything like that and to anyone that is feeling like they might be, maybe talk to someone? talk to me, i'm down for pretty much anything.

i don't like how things turned out now but i know in the future i'm going to look back at this time period and i'm only going to focus on the happy things, like talking to mark and getting into the drums, and tell myself that i miss this time.

i did the same with eighth grade, it's that time period that seems too good to be true now, and it is. i'm only looking at the friends i had then, the things i did, my personality back then, and i'm shutting out the toxic household that started to form then, the random arguments that i started to have with my parents and wouldn't tell my friends about because i didn't want my friends to worry about me. i always wanted to be that friend, the one you could tell everything, the one that was always happy and always ready to go do something stupid with you.

i'm not that friend and i can't force myself to be that friend because i can't keep things in. 

i've realized that a majority of my friends have been a specific type of friend. the friends you only keep around for a good time, not the friends you talk to and develop a close, deep relationship with. i only have that relationship with two (maybe three) people. all of my other friends i've only kept around as that emotional reset.

what i mean by emotional reset: let's say i'm a jar. and i'm filled with negative emotions and i need to make sure i don't spill over. so my options are to release those emotions at a consistent pace all the time, or i can let that emotional faucet fill me up until i'm at the brim and then dump all of it out at once. to add, it makes more sense to release those emotions at a consistent pace since the more emotions i have built up, the worse i will feel. 

rather than releasing them at a consistent pace, my mindset has been to hold in as much as possible and dump it all out at once when i'm alone, except that hasn't been working out for me. i need to have friends that can deal with me randomly having breakdowns and crying sessions out of nowhere and just consistently encourage me to keep working on releasing those emotions consistently. i thought i had two friends that i could talk to and i thought i was making progress but in the end, one of them had snapped at me and later became pretty distant, and the other is now dealing with issues of her own and those ideas of me being a burden if i talk to her have come back. i've been talking to another one of my friends too, but we only talk when we meet up, which isn't that often, since texting isn't the same with her. and i'm working on talking to mark more but i don't know how to start those conversations of oh, i'm not okay. on top of that he's been busy more and those ideas i mentioned of me being a burden have built up on my relationship with him too since he's not there to constantly remind me otherwise, and i feel like i might be too dependent on him always being there to remind me that he cares and i need to get over that and start reminding myself because i can't expect him to do that for me. 

this journal was my constant release for a while until mark found it, and this entire month has just been a downwards spiral since i haven't had that constant release i've gotten used to, and my negative emotions have been building up a lot faster and that need to release everything all at once has become a daily thing rather than a weekly thing. 

my entire body just went numb and i freaked out for a second. if i stop typing and hold still for a second, i go numb again.

a lot of this stems for me not knowing how far i can push my boundaries. if i push too much in a relationship, the other person might feel like i'm imposing on them too much (back to that idea of me being a burden), and if i don't push enough, i'm going to let those negative feelings build up and i'm not trying hard enough to shut those feelings down myself. i'm not independent yet and it's not a switch, i need it to be gradual. 

in every relationship i've been in, my main focus has been to not push too much, and this is saying a lot about how i was and how i was treated as a kid. i don't know if i've pushed too much with my parents or my uncles or my aunts or my friends back then but now i can't push for more at all and i'm just hurting myself and it makes perfect sense to start slowly pushing and find my boundaries but it's like i've got a mental block that won't let me. it's like when you hit a block in how fast you can run, and you just can't seem to get faster no matter how much you practice and push for it, even though it makes sense for you to get faster with how much you're pushing for it. that's what it feels like, i'm trying to push to be able to ask for more in my relationships with others but i can't because of that block and i don't know how hard i need to push for that block to finally go away.

i'm going to keep pushing that block and figure things out, just focus on myself more and hope that i can get somewhere. 

so that's it for now. maybe i'll update soon.

⬫ elle ⬫

july 31st, 2020