Where do I go from here

I didn't like to think of it as running away. Rather, I was running toward something, I just wasn’t sure what it was yet. I think that’s why I was always leaving, always searching. I wasn't really sure of anything, only that I was sick. I was so sick, and I had been for as long as I could remember. Gripped by a relentless vice, a constant reminder of all I was not. For that was truly all that occupied my mind, what was not. And I was not. I could never be all that I hoped. I had to learn how to live and it wasn’t an easy or beautiful journey. I remember the shaking, tear-stained nights and fear-ripe days of a loneliness as deep and tumultuous as the sea. I didn’t want to try. Why was it so much harder for me than others? Or maybe it was easier and I was simply the weak link. Only the stars know. All I knew was that it would be a hell of a lot easier to simply sit in existential thought forever and never make another move, never do. The romanticism of the sedentary life certainly lulled me into a false sense of being for years, but I refused to allow it to take another second. It all sounds so sudden and dramatic, but it was truly just the rambling thoughts of a twenty year old, privileged girl who didn’t know how to operate on a basic human level without being consumed by a total encompassing panic attack. I didn’t know I wanted people until I was truly alone and realized I liked it. I know it doesn’t make any sense to realize that you want people when you are finally happy being by yourself, but for some twisted reason it made sense in my mind. It was as if finally beginning to accept myself allowed the space for others to finally occupy parts of my life that I had previously thought uninhabitable. 

Planning the absolute annihilation of my life plans seemed like an easy enough task. Relatively speaking. Getting to this point has honestly been the hardest part, right? It couldn’t get any worse. 

Lazy summer days had a habit of making the world seem both wide and small at the same time, and I ricocheted between crippling self-doubt and complete narcissism. Sure, I had no money and even less motivation to make some, but the vastness of my own ambitions when allowed to see the light of day were startling and unsettling in a way that sparked action where there was none. Intrusive thoughts spiked shards of doubt and harsh reality through my mind, but I couldn't let myself believe in anything other than lunasy, as that was truly the only way I was going to pull this off. 

My life was simply one method of escape after another. I would do anything to not be myself for a moment, one peaceful and beautiful moment where I could pretend I was important and happy, truly happy, not this illusion of happiness that is only the mere absence of anxiety. Am I so used to chaos and pain that a moment free of that hell is considered happiness? I don’t know if I want this life if that is all it can offer me.

I find myself narrating my everyday chores, as if the presence of an audience would somehow make it worth doing, worth living. I look for patterns where there are none. I seek symbolism in the simplest things, grasping for meaning in the mundane. I implore the universe to dedicate a single dead star to me, for I am sure that no one speaks to the stars as often as I, and, if it is already dead, then it may lead me home. I scrape that hole in my chest, that bottomless pit, hoping, hoping, that poetry or art or nature or the stars or someone may slowly begin to fill it. It is a sort of madness, looking for the source of my soul, like separating the salt from the sea, only, even the sea is more forgiving. I am bound someday to find the words that evade the tips of my fingers as they search, reaching for those things that are full of meaning and life. I suppose anything could be given meaning, and I suppose that is exactly how I find myself in this whirling pool of slapping meaning onto anything that sticks, occasionally coming up for air before being swiftly pulled under again. My lungs burn, and I don’t know how to take full breaths anymore, I can't remember the last time I did. Such a marvelous thing, air, you don’t realize how precious it is until it’s gone, like most things I suppose.