sight_unseen
When does the tired stop?
When does the tired come to an end?
When does the joy of living join my life and outweigh the tired?
Tired of being awake.
Tired of being in pain.
Tired of hurting.
Tired of wishing.
Tired of hoping.
Tired.
I’m tired of waiting for the sun to peek over the omnipresent clouds.
I’m tired of waiting for the relief of a painless deep breath; for a resurfacing from the dragging, heavy, cold water.
I’m tired of tired.
.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
I move through life
listless, but wanting.
It’s hard to know what to look for
when you don’t know what you want,
or when you want
nothing
at all.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
I’m the only person who ever cried over the child I never got to be.
Parenting instead of playing; mediating instead of mingling.
My self-imposed role was to ensure that the boat never rocked, no matter what it took. Nothing was okay and all I wanted was for someone to notice, but I had to make sure nobody noticed.
My skills became planning, preparing, conflict-managing, de-escalating, cleaning, organizing, memorizing.
Age seven felt like seventy really fast.
My world had just shattered and all I knew was overwhelming confusion. Was I supposed to just let things happen as they may? Absolutely not.
Off I went to earn the best grades, to cause the least trouble, to be the go-between, and to parent my younger brother and sister as necessary. I was instantly their protector, whether they recognized it or not. It was all so unbelievably painful and if I could spare them any of it, I would, and I tried.
But at what expense?
Oh, but at what expense.
I was just a kid.
I was made to fill the role of communicator between two parents who tried to hurl nasty insults at each other through me. They couldn’t stand to look at each other, let alone speak to each other on the phone. They wrote letters back and forth. Dad faithfully sent anniversary cards the first few years while my mother ran away with his best friend, half his money, and billed him for every expense under the sun.
I spent years locked in a state of hypervigilance, my persona made up entirely of trust issues. I remember everything and have hearing that can catch a mouse walking across my bedroom floor in the dark. I have a keen sense for people and my first impressions are rarely wrong. My entire personality is a trauma response.
Years later my heart is still broken and I am still the communicator, the mediator, and the organizer. I have always felt old beyond my years and have longed for nothing more than to fit in. I used to read everything I could get my hands on and was reading well beyond my grade level; books were the perfect escape. This did nothing to help me understand my peers who played, laughed, goofed off, and had their lunches packed for them.
I cooked suppers, drew endless purple stegosauruses for my brother, and sheltered my sister. I read bedtime stories and tucked them in. I carefully showed them which landmines to avoid in this new landscape of ours. Both of them have hazy memories at best of what life was like before. It was all I knew. I remember the happy, the good, and the sunshine.
Now we spend time in the same house but nothing is the same, though we are master pretenders. We ignore the cracks, the avoidances, and the things left unsaid. We pretend we cannot see the glaring holes in the walls but we all know that we all know.
Nothing has ever been the same but the same is still what I long for after all this time.
I wish to return to that little girl who knew nothing but happiness and joy, to when the worst thing she knew was having to go to bed while the sun was still up.
The sun has never felt quite as bright since.
I have found that after all this time, I am still carrying this weight around, still balancing the boat, still protecting them. They are both grown now, as am I, and the role is no longer necessary.
I can’t seem to make myself give it up.
My worst fear is of failure, of the boat rocking, of letting go. If I let go of the control I have struggled with for twenty years, I have to let go of my idea of ever having a whole family.
One small part of my heart wants nothing more than that, twenty years later.
There is no getting over this, when my identity seems so fractured. Am I still the little girl? Am I grown? Am I the adult? Who am I outside of this pain?
It does not seem to matter, as it hasn’t since the day the sun dimmed.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
The sun sets and without it the world grows cool and monochrome.
Life already feels grey, without the sun, more so.
The cool dark stretches for years ahead of me and years behind.
What does it take to cause the sun to return, besides enduring the long, cold night?
I am weary of enduring; weary of the dark and the monotone.
Have I adapted to the bleakness or have I forgotten how sun can light up the world?
Is it both; is there any difference?
The leaves fall from the trees; snow flies, wind howls, but spring never comes.
Somehow even the darkness is too bright for my eyes, so I shut myself away further.
The cold seeps under my skin and the dark leeches into my bones.
Still, I find I cannot bring myself to yearn for the sun’s return.
.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Trigger warning: eating disorders
Eating disorders aren’t just for skinny people.
Mine looks like:
-not eating for 12+ hours
-taking 2.5 hours to try and plan a binge that will satisfy all the cravings
-spending 5 minutes eating enough food for 2 people
-waiting 10 minutes to feel full
-spending 3 minutes throwing it all up
-brushing my teeth for 4 minutes
-going about my life as if nothing happened
-feeling both satisfied and empty
-feeling guilt and shame
My shift work life easily enables long spaces between meals and not resting enough. I’m a nurse. Do I know better? Absolutely. Does it matter? Absolutely not.
It’s the thinnest line I’ve known between control and out of control: the swing from binging to purging.
You couldn’t tell if you watched me at work or in public, eating carefully balanced and portioned meat, quinoa, and veggies or having a salad as my side.
Nobody sees because I don’t let them.
I’m fat, I have an eating disorder, and nobody knows.
I wonder about telling my counsellor about this but we easily use up our time talking about the myriad of other thoughts and feelings taking up my brain. Ironic that I take up too much space and I feel as though this, too, takes up too much space.
Admitting it to myself is a start, writing it here is a little further. One day I’ll say it out loud.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
(Before you get all up in my grill about me calling myself fat, objectively I am a size 3XL, ~280lbs, and 5’6”. I will not use my BMI as an indicator.)
I can’t explain the feeling other than to say it feels like I’m dying. It feels like a process and it feels like I’m fading out of my own life. Everything seems like it should be goodbye.
In Pirates of the Caribbean they have the black spot.
In Harry Potter they have The Grimm.
You can choose your own omen of death.
Reality has a dark cloud.
I just have this feeling.
It feels inevitable. I expected it to feel suffocating and am almost surprised that it doesn’t.
It feels like I’m just going through the motions of living my life, which is nothing new to me.
At this new stage in my life, I assumed things would be better than this. I have an actual chance to live the life I want to. I have a degree, I have a nursing license, I’m living by myself, I have a steady income. However, these check boxes and milestones do not guarantee happiness. I assumed they’d bring me the feeling of security I’ve been looking for all my life.
I still feel like I’m just walking on the edge. Added to that now is the dying.
I wish this feeling would tell me how much time I have left. I can’t help but wonder if it’ll progress and then I’ll know.
It’s still May. June is close but July feels as though I won’t make it that far.
Maybe I’ll just be forever fading away.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
“You don’t owe anybody thinness” is what I keep repeating to myself every time I find myself sucking in my stomach or hunching my shoulders in public. After a million or so times it should sink in.
For good measure I try to follow this up with “It’s okay to take up space.”
How silly it is that we live in a world where we’re judged by the amount of space we take up to go about our daily lives and that somehow our value should be derived from how much or how little space we use.
Has anybody directly told me “You take up too much space”? No. Is that message present in marketing and clothing sizes and diet culture? Yes.
My favourite feature is my face, I like nothing about my size or about my body. To even myself, I’m only just a pretty face.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Trigger warning: sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, depression, self-harm
It has happened to someone you know. Someone you know has done it.
There has been a lot of talk lately of sexual assault and the violence women face on a daily basis. Every woman knows, every man does not.
RAINN has statistics explaining that every 73 seconds in America someone is sexually assaulted.
It happened to me.
It was St. Patrick’s day. I had gone out with two friends of mine and friends of theirs. We went to a fundraiser for a mutual friend and then to a bar. I had had a lot to drink. At some point in the night, my friends decided that their friend “J” and I would be a “good match”. My two friends had decided to call it a night and left the bar without me after “J” told them he would bring me home.
I did not know they left me there or I would have gone with them but that decision was taken from me.
“J” told me that my friends had left but that he had to take me home. He then told me that his roommate needed a ride so we would be going to his house. He then told me that I could spend the night and sleep on his couch. At 2am, drunk, couches sound pretty appealing. We got to his house, we visited in the kitchen, and we decided to go to sleep.
There was no couch.
I was 19.
At this point I was so tired and I just wanted to sleep. He said that I could just share his queen bed and he would take me to my friend’s house in the morning, and drunk me agreed.
Rape doesn’t just end when their hands leave your body. The feeling of those hands has stayed with me.
I have chronic insomnia, I have attempted suicide three times, anxiety and depression are my constant companions, I have disordered eating, and my self-esteem is on shaky ground. It has been 9 years since that night.
It wasn’t until my counsellor at university pointed out to me that good people don’t lie about having couches for drunk friends to sleep on that I started to let myself off the hook a little bit for everything that happened.
My favourite colour used to be green but for years after I said it was blue because the thought of green made me feel sick.
I can’t tell you how many nights I have spent up all night, waiting for morning to come so that I can feel safe enough to sleep in my own bed, or how many days I’ve showered more than three times trying just to feel clean again. I have a very good memory and my subconcious used that to my own detriment to create hyper-realistic flashbacks for me to relive when I closed my eyes.
St. Patrick’s day will maybe never be a celebration for me. Having your air cut off by your own shamrock necklaces can have that effect on a person.
I’m not telling this because I want your pity or your well wishes. I’m telling you this so that maybe you no longer see rape and sexual assault as one moment in a person’s life. It’s not just a physical recovery. I’m still feeling the ripple effects of that stone thrown in the pond.
I don’t feel safe at night out walking. I don’t go to bars alone. I don’t drink alcohol on dates.
Sexual assault is any non-consensual act. My story is not the only version, but there are countless similar ones out there.
If every 73 seconds someone is being sexually assaulted, then every 73 seconds someone is sexually assaulting. Don’t be that someone.
Be an ally: No means no. Practice explicit consent- only yes means yes. “Maybe later” is not yes. “Not now” is not yes. “I don’t feel like it” is not yes. Teach your friends; teach your children. Call out the behaviour when you see it. Rape jokes are not funny. Believe people when they say they’ve been assaulted. “Not all men” is not a valid argument. Don’t assault people.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
If you or someone you know needs support right now, there is help available.
I didn’t expect my twenties to be like this. I didn’t expect to spend my life waiting for my life to begin, waiting for adulthood to start, waiting for the inevitable to strike. Maybe it’s because I’ve felt old since I was young; spending too many years making too many decisions above my age. Perhaps because I’ve spent many years hoping and waiting for death. It’s already been more than a decade since I first wished to leave. It seems as though I’m always waiting for what’s next.
High school, done.
Driver’s license, done.
Relationship, done.
Post-secondary acceptance, done.
Graduation, done.
University, incomplete.
Breakup, done.
Diploma, done.
Job, done.
Nursing school, done.
Job, done.
The rest of my life, …?
I work too much, I pay bills, I buy groceries, I wash dishes (most of the time), I have a cat, I do laundry, I call my grandma.
When does the settled feeling start? When does the relief come? What next? When do I feel like I’ve got it all under control?
I’ve been striving for control since I was seven years old and I have yet to find it. Does peace come with letting that go? Probably. Will I? Probably not.
Perhaps the inevitable is me spending my life striving and searching for things beyond my grasp; spending my life waiting.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
At funerals, people love to use phrases like “she loved life and life loved her right back”, or “she found joy in the everyday living”, and “she lit up any room she walked into”. Even worse is “she was the life of any party”.
Anybody who uses sayings like those at my funeral will be lying or they never really knew me at all.
I’ve never really loved life, and life hasn’t loved me back. I’ve just been lucky enough to have loved people in this lifetime.
I have spent my life wishing that I could take up less space and wishing that I could take up none at all. Even as an adult, I spend my days cowering in my basement apartment, trying not to make noise or bother my upstairs neighbour.
I don’t want to be a bother.
I work hard to appear okay and work even harder to avoid vulnerability. If people don’t get close to me, I won’t be hurt when they inevitably leave.
That’s the truth.
Also the truth: I just want to be seen.
I only get hugs in my dreams, and I dream often of reuniting with people who truly know me; without me having to reach out first.
I am the friend who checks in with everyone else, I am not the friend that anyone checks in on. When I’m lonely, I reach out to others, though I doubt if I didn’t that they would notice.
I wonder, frequently, who would notice if I quit posting, quit communicating, and quit being.
I’m not sure my own aching loneliness could stand to be out of touch with people in that totality.
“Hey, how are you?”
“……. you?”
“Alright!”
This leaves no space for knowing, for wondering, for caring. I box myself into a corner by wanting people to ask how I am but then not answering truthfully when they do.
Life has always been lonely for me and I feel like it always will be. That looming perpetual loneliness is a heavy weight, one that I’m unwilling to bear.
I wish for sunshine, joy, and warmth to filter into my life as if I could remember what they feel like and I could recognize them if they came. By now, I’ve spent so much time in the dark, surely I could recognize light when I see it.
Perhaps not, perhaps all my days will be grey and cold. Maybe all my life will be empty.
I’m tired of taking up space in this world.
I’m so tired.
Nobody will say “she dreamed of death” or “she lived an aching life” at my funeral, though both will be true.
What will they say, then, to phrase the constant loneliness, emptiness, and chill that I have lived with? How can you spin looming despair into a personality trait?
If my friends can look me in the eyes and not see that I’m not okay, either I have done my job well or they’re not really looking; they’re never really seeing.
Life gave me loneliness. I searched so long for safety and protection, and now I only feel lonely. Loneliness is the only thing I am certain of.
There is no “life of the party” in me.
I do not light up any rooms.
Everyday living has no joy for me.
Who can see me?
.
.
.
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Sight Unseen 