to love for the hope of it all

i think if there was one major thing i could have changed in my life, it would have been to have my mother and grandmother love me less. as honestly terrible as it sounds, it would have made it a lot easier to actually act and follow through with my contemplations of suicide. even times when i feel trapped and almost instictively resort to those types of thoughts, opening up to my mother only serves to make me feel infinitely worse, reminded that despite how much she expresses her love, it never is truly felt.

i feel the need to preface the next paragraph about inner thoughts with a form of disclaimer, both for whoever reads this, but i think even to make the differenciation in my mind: this doesn’t concern a.b.s. in any material way, besides just being the current object of my unwanted love. that is to say, being upset about my love life made over the holidays made me realise a much bigger, larger problem about unhappiness in my general life.

as a teenager i always felt i had to conform to whatever opinions people had of me, or what was expected of me as a daughter, girl, sister, relative and living human being. i don’t remember a time where being alive felt particularly easy, although i must have felt it when i was a child. it’s never come naturally to me to take care of myself in a substantial way, or even to really care; always focusing on either how i portray myself, or trying to understand what was going on around me to find how to fit in best. i always knew that i related to the concept of observing your surroundings in order to read a situation, having grown up around people who have never been able to express their emotions in a healthy way. i can’t exactly be surprised that i can’t either. i always thought i maintained a good grasp of it within the confines of my own head however, cocky and arrogant teenager that i was, believing that despite my surroundings i would be able to surmount my issues by leaving my childhood home and surrounding myself with ‘better’. that i’d be able to create a ‘better’ for myself. extending to the much larger obsession i have with love and finding an environment that i feel safe in.

i think that image has finally shattered. i think it’s been slowly breaking down over the last few years as i find myself unable to cope with my family situation on top of everything else. while covid marked a change in the entire world, i don’t think i truly ever understood the gravity of its effects on me. i knew it worsened my anxiety, caused me to face realities about the relationship i found myself in, my own physical self image, my friendships and most of my life; but i don’t think i ever appreciated its effects on my psyche. the breakdown of my family dynamic, always expected and wished for, constantly pending; the metaphorical last nail in the coffin; was my own doing. i made a decision years ago that have impacted every single day of my life since. i’ve never even really focused on how i felt about it. that, at the end of the day, i put in place everything happening now.

i suppose my initial instinct is to feel guilt, or regret, or just dread and self-hate at the consequences of my actions; but i don’t think that i do. i have occasionally in the past, especially when thrown in my face numerous times by my father, but i don’t know that i would have ever been able to continue living with the guilt of not being honest with my mother. it almost killed me when i was a teenager. that feeling of being trapped and stuck between two terrible outcomes; a rock and a hard place; seeing my mother hurt because of her failing marriage, knowing that i have to keep things from her (regardless of if she herself knew about it anyway), or exposing it and changing the family dynamic forever.

i think the overarching feeling since i was a teenager is that of being trapped. i was under the impression that moving to montreal, starting university and finding new groups of friends and spending quality time with my grandparents there freed me. i believed that for years while there. i can’t tell if it’s because i actually felt that way, or if i had just been expecting myself to feel that way for most of my life, and thus, did somehow. while there, i was plagued with terrible romantic decisions constantly, going from a horribly abusive relationship to one i deemed safe, but never really fulfilled in. i strived to allow myself to explore any friendships arising, trying to join a sorority to do so, being more active than i ever could manage socially through school unions and overly scheduled days to avoid my inner thoughts. although this is an oversimplification and not doing justice to the actual joy i felt in the moment, this isn’t a time where i find myself able to focus on those positive emotions.

i wonder if my inability to really consider how i feel about the decision to tell my mother about my father’s illegitimate child has ultimately, subconsciously, led to the insecurity i feel around decision making now. i find myself constantly worrying that i’m making a mistake, and ultimately, not doing anything to stop myself from making them. i suppose this is where a.b.s. comes back into play, as i truly do not know if i’m meant to walk away from the situation, for my own good, or not. it’s not even something i’m able to really consider right now after debriefing with my mother about the situation with family.

i worry that i constantly feel powerless. any attempt i make at reconciliation or helping my mother and father seems to fail, or worse, backfire. i feel so overwhelmed with my thoughts that i can’t focus on academic work enough to actually get a grasp on if i’m enjoying it or not. i’ve backed myself into a corner socially, where i can’t simply ignore my feelings until they go away as the friendship group is inevitably intertwined; one where i’m not even sure i can really trust anyone to have my best intentions in mind. i try to build a routine, stick to it, and most importantly incorporate healthy habits that will actually improve my quality of life; but am unable to really commit to them in a substantial way. i feel trapped in a life i’ve created for myself and thought i wanted my entire life with no way out of it without disappointing essentially everyone in my life.

i fear the worries about my friendship group and social life are exaggerated at the moment as my thoughts are muddled by emotions. i would be remiss to not acknowledge that it is a lifeline i’m clinging onto at the moment, but that more than simply that, i hold so much love for the people i call my friends. i realise that it gets tossed aside as people pleasing or a willingness to fit in; but i know at my core that it’s a love for them as people that won’t allow me to make a change: i simply don’t want to. i suppose it’s a much too similar situation with a.b.s., where my feelings are even more difficult to dicypher as the separation of platonic and romantic is impossible to make. i must admit though, that distinction is not one i plan to focus on now, or that has even been on my mind recently. as far as things are concerned with him, this morning’s conversation has given me enough peace of mind to focus on other things, content with just leaving it as an unknown for the time being.

ultimately i think i just feel unable to make my own decisions when it comes to huge, life-altering ones, because i get put into a position where i feel i must act a certain way despite what i would actually want to do. i wonder if i project my (at least internal) obsession with what is necessary onto a.b.s. to some degree – having momentarily considered it, i suppose we’ve actually grown up quite similarly, at least to some degree. i knew it played a part in initial attraction towards each other but i think somewhere along the line i realised that we must have had two completely different experiences to make the decisions we have since, and have the separate outlooks on life that we do; but perhaps it’s just been different outcomes from a similar past.

despite my recent and best attempts not to, i think i still try to understand the person across from me in a situation as best i can to predict their behaviour. over the last few days when writing out the love letter i was hoping to deliver on what is frankly one of my favourite days, i realised that for the first time i was comfortable not doing so, not acting on my instinct to protect myself in the situation when it comes to him. i don’t know whether that is still the case. i can’t tell whether i’ve just become blinded by my own infatuation that i’m creating something that isn’t there, or if i just have a better understanding of him than most. i truly don’t know at this point. i don’t even know if i want to maintain that understanding right now.

debriefing with my mother about the self-doubt the divorce has done nothing but strengthen my own difficulties with trusting people. i feel it’s been brewing over the last few weeks as people refuse to acknowledge my point of view (namely, friends refusing to even hear my own opinion about my romantic life) and anything i hear from my parents is about the terrible mistake that has been their marriage and i think ultimately, their life. my mother makes it a point to say that the only good things to come out of it are my brother and i, but that somehow just makes me feel infinitely worse. i suppose almost an hour after the first paragraph that sentiment hasn’t changed. i feel like i’m supposed to represent a beacon of hope for those who care about me, because otherwise they attempt to help by ‘being honest’ or ‘acting for my own good’; but that gets increasingly difficult as i feel i’m unable to express myself to anyone really.

it feels like i’m stuck pondering my life alone, which does nothing but activate and reinforce my own confusion and indecision about my life. i’ve been acclimating myself to being more alone recently, not because i want to be, but because i feel i must for my own sanity – which ironically, i’m not sure is even the best idea.

i haven’t even been able to feel any joy or excitement about my academic life, something i normally focus on to avoid all else, as it feels i’m just stuck in a cycle of exam burnout. i don’t allow myself the time to get interested in the topics i’m actually supposed to be learning as i focus on studying for exams and the anxiety that the mere concept imposes. i feel the loss of school friendships has played a massive part in it, but it’s also too late for me to go back on actions i’ve already taken. i miss studying with people. i miss the mere act of really discussing things with people. a.b.s. is the only person i’m able to do that with at the moment; who i feel truly matches if not surpasses me in intelligence and simply, being interesting. i worry that too much of my life at the moment remains surface-level, not really pushing me. which also completely contradicts the feelings of overwhelm i experience; resulting in the ultimate feelings of confusing that plague me.

i haven’t lost my flair for writing though, it seems. i truly adore the dramatisation it allows me to express, as it has reached a point where i simplify my thoughts and occasionally feelings in an attempt to minimise them. i get to write weird turns of phrase that seem plucked out of some intense tale rather than what it is: thoughts of a 24 year old woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing or what she wants for herself. rather, i get to be the longing, confused and lost protagonist that is searching for answers within herself and her environment, thriving to advance the story in some way. perhaps that approach would be more conducive to genuinely unraveling the mystery of ariana.

as 1 am approaches (less than a minute it seems), i shall return to my pursuit of commercial contracts in hopes of somehow absorbing information despite the sleep deprivation i have felt creeping in all day. i should attempt to write more often; allow myself the opportunity to actually do so.