healing is overrated
so in love that i acted insane
I will stay sick for the rest of my life. It’s a fact that I’ve been dealing with, a chronic sort of melancholy that I have put off with a good attitude of finding humour in everything. A pretty quick scroll on Quora tells me that people like me who laugh at everything have bright, upbeat personalities that help them find joy in the most dire of situations – I reckon it’s the touch of the ‘tism that helps me with this sort of thing.
Last night, I cried over the phone to my friend (and her boyfriend who muted himself out of respect). One moment I was giggling while saying, “fuck, I think I might kill myself” and the next, I was sobbing about how I thought I was defective.
Three things here:
I was laughing over dying because I knew that it wasn’t true; I would never actually kill myself. The part that’s funny is how I realised that I couldn’t find another way to express my grief, and that itself was so fucking sad yet so hilarious because I always thought that I was the eloquent sort – but all I could say to express how upset I was, was “I’m going to kill myself.”
After sobbing for a bit, I began tee-heeing again because I knew that I was being dramatic. Rationally, I can’t be defective. If anything, I am flawed, not broken like a 13 year old teenager whose parents don’t understand them. This time, the laugh was more of exasperation towards myself and amusement at my own theatrics.
I’ve taken just a bit too much pride in being “literally crazy” and now it has actually bitten me back. Within the first five minutes of the call as I flip-flopped between pouring my heart of self deprecation out and howling with laughter, my friend asked me if I was okay – not in the mentally ill way, but in the “is there something wrong in your brain” way. Which did make me cry even more.
I’ve been a little faker for too long – tilting my body towards someone is a deliberate act because I read in a book that it shows “interest”, “hm”/”really”/”you don’t say?”s are my fillers used for backchanneling (which in linguistics, is the act of giving tiny interjections to give the impression of paying attention to someone) in conversations, and according to the etiquette books I read when I was 9, I should keep eye contact when speaking. (And if I am unable to, I should look towards the eyes for a quick second, then let my gaze shift to something at the side. This should be repeated, unless I have something important to say, and in that case, I should try to hold eye contact for as long as possible.)
I know how to show all of that, but I don’t think I know how to show an unabashedly and intensely vulnerable self that hasn’t been altered for a voyeur. Etiquette books don’t teach you the fine line between venting and trauma-dumping; they don’t help you learn how to say difficult things like “i think i might be crashing and burning and i don’t know how to fix it”.
So between “happy” and “sad”, there is me: somewhat passively dissatisfied with myself and easily amused. Making sport of people is easier than getting disappointed over them; making sport of myself is more enjoyable than getting angry over myself. I am funny; I am fucking hilarious, I am never sad or pitiful. I will certainly lie about many things. I will text “LMAOO me when i’m ill in the head (insert pleading face emoji)” to my friends, I will definitely gossip about someone who doesn’t deserve it, I will tweet 新年快乐 despite it not being Chinese New Year, just for the hell of it. Do you understand? Do you get it? Do you see why Taylor Swift lyrics will never be more than just so true because she’s so vulnerable and honest？
(That part about Taylor Swift isn’t accurate to how I actually feel about her music. My first reflex when writing that was to simply say words that didn’t make a lot of sense when linked together, because I thought it was a little ironic that in this reflection, in an attempt to be understood and understand myself, no one can understand me at all by virtue of my nonsensical methods of writing sentences. And I did give a little wry sort of smile after writing that.)
However, please do not misunderstand me. I don’t make light of anyone’s troubles except for my own (the gossiping comment was actually another lie). I don’t know how long I can live this way, but I have a therapist who I have shared half of the burden with. I’ve told her that everything feels like a game, not because it doesn’t matter to me, but rather because I feel like I’m just pushing the right buttons to get the right lines of dialogue, as if I’m in a visual novel and the goal is to try not to commit social suicide.
I enjoy myself. I love living so much that the only way I can express unhappiness is to talk about dying. I relish in lying about myself and my thoughts online, since being honest is scary. Being “literally crazy” while self-aware that I’m ruining my capacity to take myself seriously, is tempting me to write even more reflections like this one. There is nothing more wretched than apathy; something is better than nothing.
This is a figurative illness that plagues me, whittles away at my certainty in identifying emotions while making me feel better by letting go of all of my grievances. The only cure is a mix of therapy, sense and sensibility. However long that cure takes, I will wait.
(Final caveat: I don’t know how honest this reflection is.)