dear mom,
I've told you before that I'm okay, but maybe that's not entirely true. Maybe I've found a way to hide in my own brain, convincing myself that my own thoughts are my own problem and there is no one to blame but myself.
I feel the slow weight of the entire year ended in me finally telling my therapist of almost two years about my emotional support vicodin bottle that I carried with me from high school until around 2020 or 2021 when I finally threw it out.
I had missed last week's session because I was napping in increments and couldn't pull myself up off the couch. I didn't even want to do a session that day - on freaking New Year's Eve. I was so tired and I just wanted to cocoon myself in that holiday blur. You know I've never cared for this season since your death. It was already hard to sit through the previous week's Christmas Eve session and pretend like there was anything deeper to uncover in the fact that I just hate the holidays because I wasn't raised in a household that knew how to love me the way I needed.
I haven't been able to sleep through the night since I got back from China. I've been having more difficulty falling asleep, and I don't have it in me to figure out how to fix it. If you were here, I'd never tell you that I'm going to ask for sleeping pills. I'm afraid you might judge me. Or get angry-concerned with me the way dad did when I told him I started therapy in grad school.
I slept through last week's session and saw the $190 charge come through, and I wondered if therapy was even working. Why then do I still feel so sad? And why does it feel like it'll never go away? Why is it so hard to hang onto the glimmers of joy? Why can't I see past anything but my flaws? Why am I so obsessed with wanting to die?
I have moments when I think about the future, and I get so fucking afraid that everything fades to dark and all I want is to pass away. I feel like I'm constantly waiting for my plane to crash, my home to burn, my heart to fail, because the thought of enduring through change scares me so much I don't know how to cope. And more than anything, I wish these thoughts would just go away. I wish I knew what it was like to feel secure in what I know I have that's good. I wish I could receive bad news and grieve it and then move through it with grace. I wish I had my emotional support vicodin bottle back. I wish my therapist would tell me she has nothing else to help me with because I'm doing so good.
My therapist instead asked me to consider anti-depressants again. Mom, I imagine you'd be shocked to learn how many of my friends are on anti-depressants. We are a generation that celebrates mental health care (even if we can't afford it), wearing our diagnoses on our sleeves. It's not a big deal, and it sounds like it really helps... Yet, I never felt medication was right for me. My problem isn't brain chemistry - my problem is my stupid brain that thinks its somehow better and worse than everyone at the same time. My problem is that I hate myself, and I've always hated myself and I just need to learn how to not hate myself.
...or is my problem clinical depression?
Everyone says they want to die, don't they? We literally joke about it every other week. I bet you've even wanted to die before you actually did. How seriously unique can this be? I don't need anti-depressants because what if they don't work and what if I feel worse and what if I get even fatter and what if I'll never be able to live without them?
...or what if I am just clinically depressed until the day I die?
I have nothing for you tonight, Mom. I prepared for myself a packet of ramen. And then I dumped a handful of frozen green peas in it to pretend like I was taking care of myself.
I cannot feed you, but I miss you all the same.
Amelia
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