on the really bad days–a letter to T

Some days are just really bad days. Sometimes it feels like the bad days are never going to end and I’ll be stuck with them for the rest of my life–like they are branded deep into my bones.

I don’t feel as though I’m good at emotions–having them, understanding them or expressing them. I get so confused that I start to feel agitated and anxious and lose all sense of what I’m supposed to be doing or feeling. On these really bad days I struggle immensely with my self worth and seem to lose all sense of purpose in my life. I’ll remember things that were said and done in my past and I’ll find myself in really dark places where I feel isolated and alone.

I hear what you say when I tell you how bad I feel, but it makes me so uncomfortable that I’d like to leave my own skin behind as I escape from the place we are in. In those moments of deep despair, every single thing you say feels wrong to me. Every single thing you say makes me angry because it doesn’t match anything I feel or hear inside of me. And it’s going to sound selfish but I don’t care about all of the other people in this world who may or may not feel the same way as me. I mean, I care, but I don’t, you know? For so many years it’s always been about everyone else that for once I just want it to be about me, about how I feel and what I need.

On these really bad days, you and me–we feel a hundred million miles away from each other–and I feel like I’m trying to reach someone who is on the other side of unbreakable glass. And I’m yelling at you and you’re yelling at me but neither of us can hear what the other is saying. We still have so much work left to do and I still worry that we’re going to run out of time. And to be honest, I think that thought has been there right from the very beginning of you and me. I don’t know how to feel better about it and I don’t know how to make these thoughts go away.

On these bad days, I especially don’t know how to own the fact that I am someone with a mental illness. When I was told at TBRHSC that the reason they were allowed to keep me was because a) I was suicidal and; b) because I had a mental illness I didn’t know what to think about all of that. Sure, I got the suicidal part–although I still stick by the belief that it’s not breaking any laws so what gives them the right to force me to stay–but not the other. Hell, I barely even own the fact that I have lupus and that’s been 3 years now. And to add to the sense of not owning mental illness, for days I hated you for getting me put in a place like that (I get it now, why you did it, but I at the time I hated you for it). And maybe it wasn’t even the idea of being there, but the fact that you has promised you’d be with me–and you weren’t–not physically anyways. And sometimes that all it need–your physical presence. I know that sounds odd but when you feel the way I feel on these days, nothing else becomes a good enough substitute.

And on these really bad days I want to see the light and have faith that everything is going to be okay but the only thing I see is darkness and faith is just a word that has no meaning for me. And I try to be good and I try to follow the rules but sometimes I don’t even know what they are. And therein lies one of my biggest fears–breaking the rules and you leaving me. And you can say it again and again that you aren’t going anywhere but on the really bad days I need to hear it a hundred million times. Because as soon as it’s said the words simply disappear.

These really bad days make me feel bad and awful and like I can never wash the filth from my skin. And I feel evil, like I’ve done all of these awful things that I deserve to be punished for. These are the days that Destruction takes over, drowns out everyone else and tries his damnedest to make me disappear from the face of the earth. I won’t lie to you. Sometimes it feels like death would be so much better than what we’re going through now. It’s just so scary and painful and so, so unfair.

I really hate these very bad days…

But most of all, the thing that I need the most is to hear again and again and again that you are still here and you aren’t going to go anywhere–not even on these really bad days–especially on these really bad days.

I need to hear that everything is going to be okay.

Even if I don’t feel it.

Even if I don’t see it.

Even if I can’t convince myself to believe it.

On these really bad days, I only need to know that at least someone else feels, sees and believes that we’re going to be okay…