A Little Ramble

I used to write every day on an old laptop that was my equivalent of a diary. Every time things seemed too big or too complicated for my frazzled teenage brain to deal with, I would write poems or letters or lyrics. Then later I would go back, read it through and feel exactly how I felt in that moment and understand myself and my emotions just a tiny but more than I did before. I went through a lot when I was younger and chose to deal with most of it through intoxication and creativity and I think after a while, the two became intertwined and I stopped being able to do one without the other. So, as I started spending more of my time sober and as I got older, writing became harder. Reading back what I had written before made me feel too much or scared because I felt nothing at all. Maybe it’s because being an angsty teenager you choose to embrace all the things you’re feeling and when bad things happen, or you react badly to things, it's ok because it's "hormones" and not mental health problems. Or I think that in some ways, drugs and alcohol made me more open with myself about how I was feeling and without them, I couldn’t reach that place that had always been so important to me.

After a while I threw out my old laptop, so I would stop going back and reading the things that made me feel too much and stopped writing, not because I didn’t want to but because I closed myself off from it. It wasn’t just writing—all the things that I used to use to express myself like art and singing I stopped doing. From all outwards appearances I was doing so much better. I stopped disappearing for weeks at a time and getting so off my face I couldn’t have told you what was going on if I tried. I had a small flat that was my first real home just for me and a boyfriends and friends who loved me. But on the inside, I felt like I was going backwards, back to when I was so scared of people that I wouldn’t talk at all for fear of judgement and ridicule, and to feeling like everyone hated me the second I was not in their presence.

The scariest part is feeling so alone even though you never are. I spent so much of my life fighting to be safe and strong and independent but somehow when I was safe, I had become fragile and dependant. I couldn’t go outside with out drinking but me and drinking were old friends and we had problems with each other, so I just stopped going outside. I became so detached from myself and so isolated because friendship is a two-way street and if you're too scared to contact people, all but a few will forget you are there at all. The home that I fought for had become like a padded cell and no matter how hard I tried to go to the front door and step out, that little voice, constant and persistent, filling me with fear, stopped me.

Then one day I started to create again. It wasn’t the writing or singing or even my terrible attempts at art, but it was small and new. I started building little things around the house like tiny shelves out of electrical tape and cardboard tubes and decorating with little things I found cheap online, like glow in the dark butterflies. I started making jewellery for my friends and started branching out to other things and eventually I started a small business selling them. I’m not saying it's all cupcakes and rainbows because most days are hard, and I still can’t really go outside. But instead of feeling like a padded cell, my home started to feel more like home and that part of myself that I couldn’t reach felt just a little bit closer. Then today I found this website and debated with myself about signing up because it's been years since I’ve really written anything, and my anxiety keeps telling me even now not to post this because why would anyone want to read my rambling. Then I look at this page and even though it's not really much of anything, at least I felt enough about it to write it all out, and when I look back at it in a week, a month, or a year, I will feel how much hope I had in this moment, that things were getting a little better, and I will know how proud I felt today because I wrote it all down.