Doldrums
It’s January again and I feel very unloved. I’m trying to be rational and know this is a pattern; January comes, and I feel un-normal, January comes and I stop calling friends, so I keep trying. But trying is hard because the more I try to feel normal, the more I can tell I’m being weird, which is how I felt a lot as a kid. I keep trying to remind myself that I’m grown-up, and that the part of me who thinks she is strange and unloveable and unwanted is a little girl who doesn’t exist in a physical sense. But just because you learn to wear lipliner and color-match your outfits doesn’t mean you feel any less weird than you did back then. Which is hard, because then why should you even get dressed anyways?
People call me by the wrong name a lot more here, and I have to brush it off most days, but it just makes me feel that way again. I feel like when people laughed at my last name, or when as a kid you were made to feel so foreign you wanted to hide and cry. People don’t mean things personally, so I’m not supposed to take them that way. When you’re a sensitive kid, you have to grow to be pragmatic, which means you have to train yourself to hold back tears and get used to bile in your throat and knots in your stomach. And even when you grow, those feelings stay and nothing is supposed to be personal. Which makes you feel crazy, because it’s just a forgotten name or a misunderstanding, but you’re still ten and your friends still make you think your outfit is weird and no way is she your sister, because she’s much prettier than you (which therefore means, even though you never used to think it, your teacher was right, your laugh does sound like a chicken cluck, and everyone just has to tolerate you because you’re not leaving anytime soon). (Which is later reflected at home, where you feel like you have to hide yourself, and you do your homework while wishing you were fundamentally different, and if you do enough, maybe you will be, until a teacher treats your friend better, which reminds you, everyone can tell you’re a freak, but they all just have to tolerate you, because you’re not leaving anytime soon.)
You grow up and you find people you love and who love you back, but in some months (say, January) the sky is so gray, it doesn’t even matter. You go to dinner on time because you’re there and you’re not leaving anytime soon. But if you go to dinner, you have to pretend you’re (not un-)normal, which means you’re even more of a freak than when you were fourteen and just couldn’t tell what was wrong with you. So, in some months (January, for example) you feel like your stomach hurts all the time and you’re tired no matter how much you sleep, so it doesn’t matter if these people who love you don’t hear from you because you’re not you right now, anyways. And even if you were, in months like January, love hurts bad because you don’t know what you want but no one’s giving it to you, so you feel like when you were sixteen and had to sit alone because everyone who you thought loved you left you in a cafeteria in a school where no one really liked you much, anyways. But, don’t worry, it’s not personal, because no one meant to leave before you got to the cafeteria personally, and they didn’t mean to ignore you personally, and of course, they didn’t mean to hang out without you personally. If that’s what love means, you think, then you don’t want it anyways, because it really just hurts a lot. So you go home, where this is reflected because nobody sees you, so you keep doing your homework quietly, so you can grow up and leave and find a place where you’re happy.
But when you do, January comes again. And it’s dreary and drab, and no matter how many Addams Family references you make because you’re in New Jersey, you don’t really feel like yourself anyway. You feel a lot like a kid, because you feel like fruit that rots so badly that when you poke it, it just oozes and leaves an awful smell and horrible mess to clean up, so you don’t want to bother people with that kind of disturbance anyway. You put on pretty colors and paint your lips, but it just feels like a performance (since you really feel like you in frumpy pajamas and an unwashed hoodie). (So you text new friends, who walk faster than you, which makes you want to be slow, which makes you feel like when you were five and two kids said to each other that they should ditch you, which makes you feel like all the quiet and all the homework wasn’t really worth anything anyways.) (So you text old friends who post pictures without you, which you know really isn’t personal, but it makes you feel like when you were eleven and three girls told you that you weren’t part of their group, and so you couldn’t be in their picture.) You write poetry, but in months like January, you’re only really fit to write in your journal, because all your poetry turns out like this, which makes you feel like when you were ten and your best friend was chosen to give a speech instead of you (which you hope wasn’t personal), and no matter how many speeches you’ve given since, none really matter because she was prettier and your crush (and everyone else, but don’t take it personally) liked her much more than you anyways. Which makes you feel like you’re un-normal, and there must be some kind of a marker that makes everyone see this except you, but at least they tolerate you, because you know even if you were honest, you’re not leaving anytime soon.
I guess the thing that sucks about being a kid is that you never really grow out of how you feel. I want to be nice to myself like how I’d be nice if I got to raise me. I will try to spend January getting ready and doing my homework, and maybe journaling and maybe holding my soft stuffed animals, who I get to love and not expect anything from. I will try to go to dinner on time and maybe stop trying to make so many jokes and talking so much. Or maybe, I can impersonally sink into my sheets, or into the mud, where it’s warm and soft and I can just be alone. Maybe once January is over, my dreams from second grade will come true, and I’ll get to live on the beach, or in Coventree from Twitches, where I can train to be a princess. Maybe I’ll grow down and I get to try again from the start, so I can hold me soft and not expect anything in return.
People call me by the wrong name a lot more here, and I have to brush it off most days, but it just makes me feel that way again. I feel like when people laughed at my last name, or when as a kid you were made to feel so foreign you wanted to hide and cry. People don’t mean things personally, so I’m not supposed to take them that way. When you’re a sensitive kid, you have to grow to be pragmatic, which means you have to train yourself to hold back tears and get used to bile in your throat and knots in your stomach. And even when you grow, those feelings stay and nothing is supposed to be personal. Which makes you feel crazy, because it’s just a forgotten name or a misunderstanding, but you’re still ten and your friends still make you think your outfit is weird and no way is she your sister, because she’s much prettier than you (which therefore means, even though you never used to think it, your teacher was right, your laugh does sound like a chicken cluck, and everyone just has to tolerate you because you’re not leaving anytime soon). (Which is later reflected at home, where you feel like you have to hide yourself, and you do your homework while wishing you were fundamentally different, and if you do enough, maybe you will be, until a teacher treats your friend better, which reminds you, everyone can tell you’re a freak, but they all just have to tolerate you, because you’re not leaving anytime soon.)
You grow up and you find people you love and who love you back, but in some months (say, January) the sky is so gray, it doesn’t even matter. You go to dinner on time because you’re there and you’re not leaving anytime soon. But if you go to dinner, you have to pretend you’re (not un-)normal, which means you’re even more of a freak than when you were fourteen and just couldn’t tell what was wrong with you. So, in some months (January, for example) you feel like your stomach hurts all the time and you’re tired no matter how much you sleep, so it doesn’t matter if these people who love you don’t hear from you because you’re not you right now, anyways. And even if you were, in months like January, love hurts bad because you don’t know what you want but no one’s giving it to you, so you feel like when you were sixteen and had to sit alone because everyone who you thought loved you left you in a cafeteria in a school where no one really liked you much, anyways. But, don’t worry, it’s not personal, because no one meant to leave before you got to the cafeteria personally, and they didn’t mean to ignore you personally, and of course, they didn’t mean to hang out without you personally. If that’s what love means, you think, then you don’t want it anyways, because it really just hurts a lot. So you go home, where this is reflected because nobody sees you, so you keep doing your homework quietly, so you can grow up and leave and find a place where you’re happy.
But when you do, January comes again. And it’s dreary and drab, and no matter how many Addams Family references you make because you’re in New Jersey, you don’t really feel like yourself anyway. You feel a lot like a kid, because you feel like fruit that rots so badly that when you poke it, it just oozes and leaves an awful smell and horrible mess to clean up, so you don’t want to bother people with that kind of disturbance anyway. You put on pretty colors and paint your lips, but it just feels like a performance (since you really feel like you in frumpy pajamas and an unwashed hoodie). (So you text new friends, who walk faster than you, which makes you want to be slow, which makes you feel like when you were five and two kids said to each other that they should ditch you, which makes you feel like all the quiet and all the homework wasn’t really worth anything anyways.) (So you text old friends who post pictures without you, which you know really isn’t personal, but it makes you feel like when you were eleven and three girls told you that you weren’t part of their group, and so you couldn’t be in their picture.) You write poetry, but in months like January, you’re only really fit to write in your journal, because all your poetry turns out like this, which makes you feel like when you were ten and your best friend was chosen to give a speech instead of you (which you hope wasn’t personal), and no matter how many speeches you’ve given since, none really matter because she was prettier and your crush (and everyone else, but don’t take it personally) liked her much more than you anyways. Which makes you feel like you’re un-normal, and there must be some kind of a marker that makes everyone see this except you, but at least they tolerate you, because you know even if you were honest, you’re not leaving anytime soon.
I guess the thing that sucks about being a kid is that you never really grow out of how you feel. I want to be nice to myself like how I’d be nice if I got to raise me. I will try to spend January getting ready and doing my homework, and maybe journaling and maybe holding my soft stuffed animals, who I get to love and not expect anything from. I will try to go to dinner on time and maybe stop trying to make so many jokes and talking so much. Or maybe, I can impersonally sink into my sheets, or into the mud, where it’s warm and soft and I can just be alone. Maybe once January is over, my dreams from second grade will come true, and I’ll get to live on the beach, or in Coventree from Twitches, where I can train to be a princess. Maybe I’ll grow down and I get to try again from the start, so I can hold me soft and not expect anything in return.
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