Britney
The vocalist of the boy I like’s band sings, “Step back, and over-romanticize,” and my heart skips a beat because the line resonates with me far too much. Is it possible to be nostalgic about the present? Is it possible to neglect current moments to the point of missing out on your own life? Is it possible to live a combination of the two? I am living proof that the answer to all of these questions is a weary “yes.”
How am I 16? I feel as if I am wasting my life, my adolescence, everything that I idolized years ago. I am constantly disappointing myself; I do not want to live this way. This is my youth, and yet, it feels like borrowed time.
I search “dissociation in a foreign country” and “in foreign country nothing feels real” but nothing that could help me comes up. It’s awful—my mind refuses to fully process anything so it feels like everything is a dream, like I’m existing on a separate dimension from everyone else. I’m going to be in France for another month and I don’t know if I can handle this mindset.
I can’t find comfort in my own skin, or in my own dreams, or in my own thoughts. They have all become menacing—I am an enemy to myself. I am alone in this country. I do not know the family I’m staying with, or the people in the program that I’m in. I get more depressed by the hour. Zoloft, don’t fail me now!
I pick at my face and avoid mirrors as often as I can. I think I’ll cut my hair again when I get the chance. My features are beginning to show signs that I’ve entered my 16th year. My thoughts are constantly in French now and that confuses the rest of my body, for it is not used to taking commands from this foreign source. I think about my mother a lot and try not to cry every day. I miss being a child and finding comfort in her arms. I can’t remember how her face looks or how her voice sounds. Every time I try, I get a blur of a memory. My sadness induces nausea.
Am I ever really present anymore? The glazed look in my eyes says otherwise. I’m even absent in my own writing. Perhaps this is another coping mechanism of mine. I’m reading Breakfast of Champions and now I am very convinced that I was put on this earth for destructive testing, to see how much one human being can take before breaking. I’m breaking, breaking, breaking—going, going, gone. ♦