xxviii. Words I Never Had the Strength to Tell You

I haven't eaten in days, and I finally had money to afford food, so here's incoherent writing until I eat something other than protein bars and microwaved potatoes again.

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Sleep and work. That's all I do. I'm too tired to rest, too restless to be tired. I don't have time to make friends, eat, or write. Working hours just to crash in bed after. I don't have the energy to get up to do anything, probably because of the fact that I don't eat. I don't eat because I need money; when I get money, I have other finances to take care of. Even if I wanted to sit down and eat, I'm too tired to cook anything. Diet Coke, Redbull, nicotine, and protein bars have been keeping me company while I waste my youth on work. As if work could help me get where I want to be. I don't even know where I want to be.

The day I was stranded at work, I was crying on the phone with my sister. I was cold, tired, and starving, and she really couldn't do anything about it. Told her how much I wanted to leave and take my sister with me, wishing I could be anything, anywhere, something, because I've never felt so lost in my life. It was late, so I let her go to sleep, and that's when the Uber driver started talking to me.

He told me that he was also a ward of the state when he was young, and how his sister was trying to adopt him, and how he was struggling financially, living in hotels and struggling to keep his car. He told me once that after he and his wife divorced, he couldn't hold a job anymore. And all I could do was apologize for even complaining in the first place. He specified that he didn't say that to compete with me; he was just saying that I'm young and should see what I want out of life and take it. I don't think I responded to that; I just stared out the window. I don't know what I want out of life. I don't know what I'm missing. I think after my lover broke up with me, I've just been in a strange space. 

I'm too old to mourn like a child. To drink and smoke all day. To cut myself and starve. So I do what any adult would do and slowly turn into a workaholic. Working 90% of the week to feel something. That money is the reward for my pain. That there is no pain when you are busy. Only when I'm alone do I feel everything all over again. And I look forward to that pain every night. To feel human once again, to hate myself, to touch myself, to cry over the milk I watch spill. 

One part of the conversation that left me thinking was his discussion of spirituality. He said himself that he was not spiritual. He's highly religious, but he has "spiritual feelings", and how could he feel pain and see the color of someone's aura. Out of curiosity, I asked what color I was. He said he can't see one, that even my space feels hollow. I just nodded, tipping him a five-dollar bill that a lady gave me for helping her server. 

I've been described as many things before; hollow has never been one of them. To feel like the soul I once had leave pains me. A shell of whatever lived there before. 

It feels like the house of someone who died. The pictures are still hung up, the clothes are cooling in the dryer, the fan was left on, a can of soda long gone flat, and yet no one is home, and a thin layer of dust starts to cover the kitchen counter. I'm still there, I think. In a different room, hiding in the bathroom, or out on the porch. Or maybe this isn't my house anymore, and I look into the window of a house that is locked as I watch myself polishing the photos and wiping the counter. There are plently of space to build a new house; I have time to create something, anything. But instead I stare at the fully furnished house that I wish I could just walk back into. 

I don't know what maturity will look like for me. Too scared to find out, I'd rather loiter and sit out in shitty weather than expand. 

Not in one month, not in one year, not in 5, and not in a decade. I said this once to someone else, and having the displeasure of feeling exactly that is suffocating. I'm missing something that everyone else seems to understand, except me. For that, I'm sorry. To be honest, I'm just as lost. I'll tell you the answer, and it's just maturity. It's time. Time with yourself, time with others, time to explore. To be able to let go of emptiness and allow yourself to fill space. Not with shitty decor and bad lighting, but something that is your own. Which sounds like a shitty answer, but I won't find that in a month, a year, 5 years, or a decade. I would rather start somewhere than end wherever this is. 

I feel like a child again.