My Voice is Spilled Ink

I have a secret. Everyone who knows me from outside these walls do not know. I’ve stayed silent, bit my lip when there was joy and averted my eyes when there was destruction.

I told you time again that you’d never win.

There is so much happening around me, and I feel like I’m stuck, standing still. Everything is moving too quickly for me to comprehend. I am surrounded by streaks of bright colors that others have left in their wake. I am grays and blacks.

I told you time and again.

It’s hard, having these moments in my head, pushing against each other, wanting to claw their ways out. Having this hurt and sadness welling up and knowing that I absolutely cannot let anyone in on it. I just want to erase everything, but then again, I don’t. So I write and write and write, and pretend people don’t exist, and listen to music, and scream with it when I should be quiet, because I’m quiet with everything else. I pretend that people don’t see the vacancy in my eyes, and that they don’t wonder, Where is she? Because I don’t feel here. And I hate myself for the people I’ve lied to. I am selfish and naive and do not deserve the trust of others. I can’t even trust myself.

So I continue to wander. And all of those people who don’t really care about me, some of them are gone. Some of them continue to hurt me. And I’ll just pretend that I know what I’m doing, and that what I’m saying has meaning, and that I have purpose. I’ll pretend that I don’t care when I do. Of course I do. I care more than I can even believe. And I care that you don’t care and that you have no tact or class or compassion for what you’ve done to me and what you’re continuing to put me through. And you know what you’re doing. Everything you do has a plan to hurt me behind it. And I don’t know how to hurt you, because you have no heart. You only care about yourself.

I didn’t win.

He won’t tell me what happened. I secretly hope that she left him, but he won’t talk about it. Even if she did, I don’t think it’d make any difference. The chapter of me is closed in his book.

He texts me when he’s with his girlfriend, and then acts like he’d rather not when I tell him he should focus on her, and talk to me later.

He is blind. To me, that is clear. But I’ll be here, still.

Because even though I don’t know her, I know she can make him happier. I have no right to feel bad when I read their exchanges of I love you, because I am like poison. I break the things I care about if I get too close, anyway.

I’ve heard that writing with a sort of mindless, reckless abandon can be refreshing and therapeutic, especially when your life is filled with stress and your mind feels like it is overflowing with all of these thoughts with nowhere to go. I guess that makes sense-if there is so much going on up there, I might as well try and put it somewhere, right? And I should probably just ramble and rant and make no sense whatsoever. I need to not think, I need to not care, I need to not try and articulate every word and every sentence into my weird, rhetoric-ridden perfection of imaginative and creative sentence structures. I have no idea if that made any sense. I don’t really care. I feel like I’m on the brink of collapse. What? Oh noes! Tarryn feels upset? Tarryn feels like things are going bad? Is she depressed? How could this be possible? She’s NEVER upset. It’s all just peachy in Tarryn-land!

What the fuck.

Where the hell am I going? I have no fucking clue. I have no friends-I don’t. I have people who are supposed to be my friends, I have people who I want to believe are my friends, I have people who tell me they’re my friends, I have people I wish were my friends but I desperately feel like I have no friends. I don’t want to share with any of these people because ultimately, either they don’t want to share with me or don’t want to listen to me. And I don’t want to waste my time trying to find a communicating friendship when I know I’m not going to find anyone who really gives a shit. They’re all either disinterested, selfish, or looking to gain something from being near me. But then I wonder, what is there to gain? I’m a generally unpleasant person. I wouldn’t want to be near me either. I’m anti-social and self-loathing and look angry all the time. I’m depressed and unhappy and just bring things down. If I were everyone else, I’d have already screamed FUCK YOU in my face and walked away.

Where the hell am I going? I have no fucking clue. I’ve desperately been trying to create even the smallest idea of a plan about what I’m going to be doing after high school, and no one will cooperate with me enough to help me make the choices that need to be made. I’m running out of time. I’ve been trying to convince my family that I need to submit my deposit to NAU and no one listens. They just tune out when I talk. This is normal. They never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER listen to me. And I’m usually right. But that just doesn’t seem to matter. My nana just ignores me or pesters me for information that I can’t give her right now and my mom just flat out tells me that I can’t leave. I NEED TO LEAVE. Why can’t they just let me? Why can’t they let me maybe fall and fail on my own, out there, rather than sit here and fucking ROT. I’m ROTTING. I have nothing here. I have nothing.

And then I’m worried I might not even graduate. I’ve become so completely terrified to be around people and deal with being around them that I’ve let all of this work build up and now my grades are shit and I’ve got two weeks and I have no idea where I stand. My counselor is a hound dog-I’d think she’d have confronted me if she thought I wasn’t going to graduate, but even so, I can’t help but be terrified. What if I don’t graduate? I don’t know if I’d go back and get the credits I need. Hell, if I can’t get to Flagstaff or Tuscon and get housing and just get the fuck out, I don’t even know if I’d end up going to community college. I’m just that unmotivated. I’m just that much of a failure. I don’t want to deal with anything. And it’s statements like that that make me know, without a doubt, that I need to leave, because I’m sounding more and more like my mother.

I feel like my life is completely pointless. I don’t know how to be really happy anymore. I don’t know how to feel okay. I’m just losing.

You, how dare you try and keep me locked up? How dare you try and dictate who I am and what I do and what I’m capable of? I don’t want to be you. I don’t want to be anything like you. I don’t want to be as miserable as you and each moment, I drift closer and closer to your existence. Let me the fuck out of here. You’ve kept me gated, and chained and locked and mind-fucked, and it’s not fair and it’s not right and you need to let me go. You need to let me go.

You, I left your life and you left mine and yet you still haunt me even though you make me sick. Go away, I don’t want to know your existence, I don’t want to know that you’re happy. It’s not right that you are such a terrible person and yet your life is light and you are joyous. Every moment with you was filled with hurt and yet none of that is coming back to you. I don’t want to know you’re alive.

You, you fucked me over, I need to stop caring. I don’t want to try and decipher anything about you anymore. Go away, go away, go away, go away.

You, stop encouraging me when you’re the biggest hypocrite every. Don’t compare us, stop being this person who blames and blames and blames. IT’S ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULTS.

You, I hate you for breaking her. I hate you for messing something up that was already so fragile. I hate you for making promises and for packing up and leaving. I hate you for the fact that I still remember your face.

You, why can’t you be more? Why can’t we be more? I’ll listen and listen and listen and listen, so now listen to me and read between my lines and maybe we can save each other, but we can’t, we won’t, we don’t match.

You, though, you, we could match, I think we could match but it won’t connect. I’m disappointed in you, your reactions and your attentions. We try and create meaning but we never, ever succeed. We’re just lying to ourselves.

You, and your bitter. You and your mean. Why must you bring everything down? I guess I don’t understand, I guess I’m blind and selfish and can’t possibly know what you’re feeling every day but then you walk around and tumble and fall and slur and I can’t respect your hard work because you diminish it with pretty little pills.

You, you’re not the person that I knew. You’ve become someone vindictive, someone I wouldn’t befriend if I were to meet you now, rather than then. You remind me of the people I dislike. You look down on me. I won’t lie-I’m jealous of you. But that doesn’t prevent me from knowing that you’re becoming a truly bad person.

You are being abused, and taken advantage of and you’re letting your life be ruined. You’re letting him blemish your already tainted skin. Your mind is being screwed and scrambled. He’s got a knife in you and you fear that if you pull it out, you’ll bleed to death, so you let him stay because you think that if he is the one to pull it out, he can save you before he leaves-but he’ll never pull it out.

You, you’re so desperate but judgemental. You cling but then you throw me away when I’m not who you expect, then come running back with an awkward smile when you see something you appreciate again. I am not always good, you cannot only choose that part of me. That is not how it works, and if that’s what you want then stop being near me because that’s not what I have to give.

You, you anger me because you pretend to want me and I know you’re giving a bunch of people the exact same words that you’re giving me. You’re not fooling anyone, it’s so obvious. But I hate the fact that you play on how I want to feel special and cherished, when all you’re doing is treating me like an interchangeable toy. And I’ve had this so many times, I can’t take it anymore.

You, WHERE ARE YOU. I miss you, I need you, come back. You, let’s start over, you give me another chance. You, forget the names of the other, you. It will probably always be you.

You, I love your crooked smile. You’re my secret dream. You’re what never can be. I love the way you look at me, so confused, but as if something else is hidden there when you quickly look away. I want to explore, but I know either I’d find that none of it existed or I’d ruin the fragile situation with a single touch, and so you are my secret dream.

You, I hate the way you can’t look me in the eyes. I see the disappointment, but you haven’t taken a part in my life enough for me to feel that your disappointment is correctly placed. You don’t know me, or anything about me, so avert your eyes.

You, stop it. Stop telling me such things, stop lying, stop it, stop it, stop it. Don’t make me feel like the villain when you were the one who hurt me. Stop calling to me, stop making it harder. I have no sympathy for you and I feel inhuman when I look at you, when I hear you speak, when I read your words, because all of it makes no difference in my opinion of you. You are vain and stupid and I have no time for your histrionics when I have to deal with my own.

And I return to you because I feel unfinished. Are you that blind? Are you scared? Am I delusional? I’m delusional. I guess I appreciate that you still pretend with me but maybe I’d feel better if you gave me no hope. Then at least I could write you off just like everyone else.

I feel like crawling out of this skin, I feel like running and running and running until something forces me to stop. I feel more hopeless than ever. I should just shut the door. Nothing on the other side matters, it seems. Nothing on the other side seems to be meant for me.

If I could drive, I would run you over and then go pick him up and try and mend the broken pieces that you’ve left him as.

A loneliness like this makes me willing to sell my soul.

I always feel like I’m less important to someone than they are to me. When I’m friends with someone I cannot fathom that they might appreciate my friendship more than I do. When I date, I can’t imagine I might mean more to them than they do to me. When I miss someone, there is no way that they miss me back, especially not in the depths and lengths that I miss them. It really does mess with my mind because can you imagine how it feels when I don’t like someone? How I think they must feel about me? It’s terrifying. I feel totally disposable at all times.

Of course, I can’t say that these feelings haven’t come from somewhere. Of course they have. They’ve come from all the times that I was the back-up plan, second best, go-to girl, that person you went to when the one you really wanted wasn’t at your disposal. It’s happened again and again so how am I supposed to honestly believe that anyone is capable of actually feeling something real for me. Even if it sounds honest or I have no reason not to believe it, I just don’t. I can’t help it. I’m broken.

And alone. God, I can’t even describe the loneliness that I feel in all possible senses of the word. I’m disconnected from my family because their dysfunction is tearing us all apart. Home is the only place I have and I feel so empty here. I have no place of my own, I’m surrounded by anger and upset and addiction and unhappiness. I’ve lost most sense of friendship this year. The ones that I spend time with don’t feel like friends. And the ones that I seem to have a decent relationship with are the ones I can only talk to through text and who ignore me in person. I’m the girl who will help you with your problems but who you refuse to stand next to in public. I’m a secret. And when it comes to dating, don’t even get me started. I don’t trust-I don’t trust anyone. I can’t trust that a guy has feelings for me. I can’t accept anyone, probably because I can’t accept myself. Besides, I can’t actually think that there is anyone truly interested. I’m not actually desirable, and anyone who tried to disagree would never take any action to prove me different.

I miss feeling like I have a home. I miss having a friend who understands me. I miss having a guy loves looking me in the eyes. I miss hugs. I miss kisses. I desperately miss feeling close to someone.

I want to feel missed.

I’m really not as irreplaceable as you seem to think.

I don’t want you, but I don’t want you to want anyone else.

But I’m so tired of being alone.