Ode to albatrosses

I’m… not happy. I haven’t been happy for a while. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been unhappy for; going backwards I guess this has been for at least three months now. Probably more. And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know why I’m unhappy. I feel… bereft. I feel like I’ve lost someone, and I think the person I’ve lost might be me. I’m not the same person I used to be, we aren’t even similar. And I have this huge, horrible feeling of loss, like I’ve lost someone important, like there is this huge hole inside me and no matter what I pour into it to fill it up again, it just won’t.

I look out the window and I see sunlight. I see kids coming in on the school bus, walking past the house and chattering to each other. Happy. I hear dogs outside in the garden, playing with each other, yapping, and I go to look. It brings a smile to my face. A small, bitter, smile. Like they’ve got something I don’t, like there’s something that I’m missing.

I’m crazy. Sometimes I am happy. Sometimes I genuinely feel joy with myself, and the people around me. But there are other times. Times when I’m sitting there with my friends, and I go silent. I look at myself, I look at them talking, giggling, and I just think, “What’s the point?” I love them to pieces, but sometimes I can’t work out why they care, why we need to have stupid conversations about food colouring or chalk, why we bother with each other when I’m pretty sure that most of them don’t even like me. I look at them and I realise that I’m only there because they’re used to me being there. Because I drag them out of themselves, I call them up and organise things, and in clubs I drag them onto the dance floor and make conversations.

And I’m tired. I’m tired of chasing people to work out a situation. I’m tired of people telling me that I’m doing things wrong. I’m tired of being told that I’m a bad friend, when they aren’t doing so brilliantly themselves. And mostly I’m tired of feeling like I’m alone.

This is stupid. I sound like a little kid screaming at her parents that everybody hates her; the whole world is picking on her. It isn’t like that.

I don’t know. I have a good life. I’ve got everything I want, and more. And if I truly want to eradicate the loneliness then there are numerous ways of doing it. But I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work. I’d be trying to make myself better on one level, by giving myself more on another.

My problem is that I feel like it’s all superficial. You get men, talking to you, flirting, watching you, blowing kisses, whatever. And they don’t know you, they see meat and that’s all it is. Christ, I play to it. I let them think of me as meat, I objectify myself to the extent where if they were ever going to consider me as something more, they can’t. I’ve done this to myself, and suddenly I’m not happy.

I feel superficial. I feel like I’m a dumb blonde who no one actually cares about other than for stuff thats completely shallow. I’m not blonde. But I’m going to go through life with meaningless relationships with men who use me up, then get bored. And generally I’m okay with that, mostly I chose this. But underneath everything I question it. I want to know what it is that makes me act like me, and if I have to put myself through this, then why can I not be content with it?

I feel schizophrenic. I feel like there is this layer of me on the outside that everyone talks to, that smiles and flirts and acts confident. And that girl on the outside is happy. But there’s another one. Another girl on the inside, deep deep down who barely ever gets noticed. But she’s screaming. She hates how shallow the girl on the outside is, and she hates that the girl is the only one people see.

So I’m torn. I’m torn between a life that makes me happy and sad all at the same time. And I’m torn between which one of me to listen to. And all I really want, what I want most in the world out of everything, is just for a little while, to be happy.

Labels: Demons