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i told myself i wouldn't vent post on here, but...

last year, i was seeing a therapist who specialized in treating addicts. i went to see him after i blacked out and confessed to my husband that i wanted to kill myself. i do this from time to time.

i have been wanting to die for as long as i can remember. since childhood, when i would write out "wills" bequeathing my books and toys to my sibling and school crush (which i would then panic and tear up into tiny shreds, fearing someone would find it and tape it back together, and my desire to die would be found out), i have been yearning and praying for a car accident that spares everyone in the car but me. for a ruthless and terminal illness to strike me. for me to finally get my head out of my ass, stop fearing temporary pain, and put an end to my other pain, the pain that's been weighing on my chest forever.

sometimes when i get very drunk, that pain lifts, and i see the world as i should. i see other people and understand them, and feel understood as a human being. i feel the interconnectedness of all things, i use my hands to lift my glass and imagine they're the hands of my ancestors, touching cold and wet as they did, swallowing as they did. in the bathroom, alone, i piss as they did, as we all do.

then it occurs to me that my connection will be severed. the weight will settle back down on my chest and prevent me from dancing. the handcuffs will go back on.

i overcompensate by dedicating myself to drinking -- i will overdo it. i will feel good. i get desperate, and that's when that pain does come back, tenfold.

i get angry with myself, frustrated at my inability to live my life unencumbered. i feel useless and heavy. and then i black out.

the therapist i mentioned earlier calls this "emotional weather". he says everyone has their own emotional weather, and to think of particularly melancholy days as if i had a raincloud in my head. acknowledge that this emotional weather sucks, pack an umbrella, and muddle through it. not to ignore it necessarily, but to remove its power to impact your day and decisions.

it's monsoon season in my skull. thick fog obscures all landscape. when i turn on my side in bed, water pours from my ears.

it's difficult to concentrate - i oversleep, but awake exhausted. every little thing irritates me. i'm bored, yet nothing is satisfying to do, so i end up doing nothing. i feel claustrophobic in my home, i feel naked and exposed out of it. i'm ashamed of every movement i make, every breath and sound i produce. i can feel myself wasting the life i was given, and i don't really give a shit, because i don't want to be living it anyway.

i've been trying to put every part of myself into work, but there isn't much of me left.

i am ok at faking being a person with most people, but it is hard work. i have a coworker friend who i think sees through me, but then i say the wrong thing, and suddenly we're in the middle of an argument that my only wish is to disappear from. i'm never invested in these arguments, and most of them are circular arguments about the concept of us arguing, or about how we got there, or about what we said, versus what we meant to say.

today, during one such argument, my friend told me that i'm rude, because i "smile and nod" instead of contributing. i focus too much on "asides", or saying something negative, or providing my unprompted opinion. i "poke holes" in conversations by focusing on the negative. i am not enthusiastic enough when i agree with him, but too enthusiastic when i disagree. i'm uninformed, uninteresting, and unintelligent.

i have tried to explain to him that i'm a farce. i don't know how to converse, i just do my best. i'm exhausted from wearing my heavy human suit, and conversation skills are not my main focus. i am at work, and i want to kill myself, and your approval means everything to me because i love you, my friend.

today, sitting in my chair, seeing him frustrated with me, i felt tears welling in my eyes. i was determined not to cry in front of him, especially since that would make things worse. so i bit my lip and kept nodding and smiling as he spoke, which frustrated him more. i was proving his point by being a terrible conversationalist. when prompted for something, anything to say, no words could come to me and he threw his hands in the air in frustration. i felt so trapped, so huge and cumbersome. a massive mute idiot.

smiling and nodding has helped me muddle through so many interactions, except for a conversation about how i can't do anything but smile and nod.