Just another day (and night) in the life...

Another night spent alone in my apartment contemplating life. Things in my head have been really up and down lately. I was in a really bad way last week, and this week I’ve been slowly trying to pick up the pieces. Needless to say, it’s been really rough going. I came to realize that while I’m popular in the sense that people generally like me, I’m not in the sense that people don’t necessarily want me around. I don’t get invited to events, I don’t get called up just to hang out. I’m just kind of in the background, there if needed, ignored if not. Not to say that popularity is everything, but I think everyone has an innate desire to feel wanted, or at the very least appreciated.

I admit, I have abandonment issues. Sometimes it feels like people string me along because they feel sorry for me, or like it’s some kind of obligation. I get invited places and then left to fend for myself. It really makes me feel like I’m a burden on my friends’ lives, or like I’m a toy that’s there to be played with and then left on the floor, and it’s not a feeling I like. I’m probably just blowing things out of proportion in my head, but I can’t help what my life has made me. I’ve been trying to get over this, to change this wiring in my brain that results in panic attacks followed by a feeling of loneliness so deep that it makes me wish I could cry to at least have some sort of release.

For now, all I can do is try to endure it. Every day, the lock I wear around my neck feels heavier. Every time a panic attack leaves me collapsed on the floor with my sides on fire, all I can do is claw my way back up to my feet and press on. Every night that I lie awake wondering whether or not I want to wake up the next morning, I decide to hope that tomorrow will be better. It’s funny, because so many people come to me for help, asking for advice in dealing with relationships and whatnot. But every night as I’m sitting in my apartment, staring at the ceiling wishing I had someone to spend time with or talk to, I sometimes laugh to myself how all these people are so stressed out over their relationships but don’t actually realize how lucky they are to have them.

I’ll close this entry with a quote by Joseph Conrad from his book Under Western Eyes:

“Who knows what true happiness is? Not the conventional word but the naked terror. To the lonely themselves, it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”