It has been a while since my last entry. For months, I have been agonising because I have lost the ability to write, and it used to be my only (healthy) escape. It was always easy to find words to express my thoughts, despite it sounding clumsy – at least, no matter what, my feelings had an outlet.
Somewhere along the way, during those agonising moments, I decided to get online to escape my own thoughts and the unbearable loneliness. I am not certain how much luck I had to have saved up *trộm vía* to be able to cross paths with my current boyfriend.
After 11 months together, I have been asked by many friends, “So do you love him?” It’s a strange thing to be asked, because I don’t exactly know what “love” entails, what exactly falls under its umbrella. I know for certain that I feel safe with him, that even until now I still can’t believe my luck, and there are more times than I could count when I am willing to go out of my way to make him smile. Thinking of him makes me smile, but not in that teenage dramatic way with all the giddiness and butterflies; I feel warm, and I feel safe.
Knowing me, however, you know what I’m about to say. There are moments, despite all my happiness, – or actually, perhaps because of my happiness – I feel absolutely scared of how this could end up. Crazy, isn’t it? Who sits around and imagines all the ways the good things in their life could go wrong? Weird…
I have cried, as a result of these made-up scenarios in my head. Those heartbreaking scenarios sometimes were strong enough to make my heart race, giving me an adrenaline rush, and because there was nothing I could do, I would usually end up in tears while remaining completely immobile. All of this happened because my mind has conjured up some unreal story, one often so strong that my body believed it was real.
There is little to love about who I am, that’s what I always believe. Logically, there must be a bit more than that, at least enough for some people to like me. My personal view is, however, as a person, I couldn’t bring myself to love who I am. I have tried again and again, to no avail, to change how I feel about this. I know most of us have learned by now that it’s not about being told the opposite by other people. We of course appreciate deeply the knowledge that there are those who are kind enough to think highly of us, but our opinion stands, as strong as theirs do (or in most cases, stronger), and it’s hard to get that point across. This is how I feel about myself, miserable, horrible, ugly, and so sad. I may smile, I may laugh, and most of the times it is all genuine, but there is a part of me that can’t rid itself of so much darkness. Where did the darkness come from, I don’t know. I don’t have a tragic story to back anything up, and personally I don’t think I need it. After all, the need for a tragic story is mainly in order to seek other people’s approval of my feelings. I have grown out of that to some extent, because I no longer want to explain myself.
But these moments when this darkness comes back, I can’t shut them up, and I can’t stop thinking I would be abandoned if the people I love knew about them. I know some would. How do I tell anyone about this? It’s made me so vulnerable, I have tried, and I have failed, and I have given up. When I was in a group counselling session, there was this young lady who kept looking down and repeatedly adding to her every sentence, “I’m sorry. What a mess.” That filled me with so much sadness.
Because that’s how I feel about myself, too.
the forgotten one 