It's been about a week and a half since school ended and I got out for the summer. (Less than 8 weeks until I have to do the whole thing over!)

I know I'm supposed to kinda ease out of this self-pity thing. Like there should come a point where I am happy with what I get and I'm content in the hot pile of FUCKING SHIT I find myself in every FUCKING year.

sorry that was a bit of a tonal shift

I don't know!!! I'm... exhausted!!!

This year felt kind of like - getting your foot caught in the door. I keep on getting my foot stuck in the door and I keep falling forward and I keep breaking my arm.

And my arm never set right, so I keep on fucking breaking it so that it might heal, and I'm thinking now that I'm a hemophiliac because I get cuts and I never stop fucking bleeding.

It's everywhere. There's blood on the walls and blood on the phone, and especially on the backspace key because I don't think I say things right sometimes, I don't think I do the right thing all of the time. I think I bruise too easily and I'm always bleeding, and I just wanna be cauterized like a gaping blood vessel, I wanna have the focused silence one would find in an operation room and I would like to lose this dogged persistence that plagues my every introspective moment. Like if I think hard enough, often enough, they'll come back to me. Like they even want to.

I just thought that I would be okay after sophomore year. I was sort of expecting it. Like how when you flip a coin, eventually you're going to get heads. Instead, my stumble was right out the fucking gate and I had to drag a broken leg all the way to the finish line. And it won't heal because I keep putting weight on it because I can't fucking rest and I can't slow down and I'm nauseous and dizzy and frustrated at my own inability to be happy for longer than thirty minutes at a time.

Sometimes people leave and it feels like a skewer jammed under your fingernails - acutely painful. Sometimes it doesn't. I never know how it's going to feel. I don't know how long it'll take until it's done. (I know he never cared but I loved him. The sin of it is the pretense.)

My best friend is leaving for college and then I'm going to be alone.

Maybe I wouldn't be if I was better... kinder... more forgiving...

And I know I'm not a victim. I have to deal with it. And I am. I have things going for me. I'm graduating a semester early and I worked my ass off for a 4.0 GPA and a 1400 SAT score and I'm taking a four hour course every Monday for computer science so I can be a rich motherfucker when I'm older (art unfortunately doesn't pay the bills). I know it's going to end soon but I feel like I lost something this year. It feels like a little piece of me broke away, a part of me that had trust and hope. If I learned last year that bitterness won't make you happy, that letting go of people that hurt you (over and over and over) is better than being angry constantly - this year maybe I learned about inexplicable grief and relentless isolation.

I learned that it's shitty and it's profound and it's profoundly shitty. And I had to learn not to expect anything from anyone. I had to learn not to expect the people I loved to give me the time. (Even when I walked up to him in a room filled with a hundred people, shaking, and asked him what I did wrong, begged for a reason, begged for something to fill the resolute silence that used to speak, that used to say words I wanted to hear, that made me feel like there were reasons to be strong.) Even when they saw me cry, I had to expect nothing. No answers. No reply. I learned that I am fragile and I need closure and it's endless, like a yawning cavern inside of me. And maybe I learned this year that the only person who fucking loves me unconditionally is my goddamned self.

I have cried on buses and in driveways, in public bathrooms and in hallways, in classrooms and in one (1) cafeteria. I have been there for myself through all of it. I am exhausted and I can do it all again.

ps. mark gatiss if you ever read this and you think this isn't about you, it IS about you and you can go fuck yourself for ruining my junior year. I hope your husband queerbaits you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!