Oh that I were able to adequately transpose raw emotion into simple words.
I regret to say that my first post in a year isn't a pleasant one. Far from it, in fact. I wish that my return was one of sheer joy, pure excitement, or even one of nervousness or giddiness...
I find myself more and more dependent on the words of Blue October to get myself through the days of late. In the years since becoming the sequestered prisoner of depression and fighting to keep myself above the crushing waves of sadness, loneliness, and the sheer insanity of my own emotions, never has the Sea of Depression behaved as such a tempest, threatening to drown me once and for all beneath its fury. Not even the loving support of my friends and family provides me the buoyancy to keep my head above the water lately, and my guilt and grief over that just adds more stones to my ankles, dragging me to the seabed where even sunlight can't reach me.
With each day that passes, I grow more and more numb, slipping into the old routine:
~wake up dreading the day
~dress to deter the glances of passers-by
~enter the eyes of people wearing a carefully crafted smile and a hand-tailored guise of confidence so as not to cause worry in the eyes of those who know me, and to create the illusion of a happy, normal girl
~exit the eyes of people with a guise of regret at the parting
~go to bed wishing nothing more than to not wake up in the morning
It's a routine I thought I had long since abandoned since rediscovering my heart's ability to fall completely, totally and undeniably in love with another human being. It's the routine that I built for myself after having my heart destroyed completely the first time, the routine that got me through four years of high school. It's the routine my depression built as a bubble of protection to keep me from reaching the seabed, and for years I hovered meters above the sands yet meters below the waves, bobbing back and forth between surface and seabed, waiting for something... someone... to dredge me up from the murky sea and show me what it was to be truly happy again.
I've long debated which song to use for this post, since many have the ability to be the perfect lyrical base for this long-winded exposure of my numbness. I've considered Dream Theater's Wait For Sleep or Wither, Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek, even The Script's song Breakeven. Surely with the ocean comparisons I keep making, Blue October's Into the Ocean would be perfect. Titles from bands like Hoobastank and Blink-182 and *tinyshudder* Bruno Mars even made their way into my mental "Now Playing" screen. After hours of consideration and lyrical analysis within my muddled brain, I settled on a song at last.
My blogger homecoming song is one of the band which saved my life, Blue October. Its title, Chameleon Boy, more than adequately describes the pattern of behavior I've taken on in the last few weeks, blending my colors in with those around me to protect myself...
I changed my color for you
I shed my coat with caution
I lack the beauty you display
See here they are the bruises
And some were self-inflicted
And some showed up along the way
I suppose my rantings deserve explanation, and for some, the answer may come as a dismal disappointment. Some may be wondering, "What on Earth could bring her to such an emotional low? What traumatic, life-changing event has occured in her life to make her dread the morning? What could possibly destroy a human being so utterly?" The answer is not that I've had a close family member die, or that I've been diagnosed with a terminal disease, or that the structure of everything and everyone around me is unraveling at an inhuman pace. I've not experienced something that makes an entire family question its direction, or cause a change in daily life because the daily routine doesn't work any more... though I suppose to me it is. To me, this event has made me question the direction of my life, change my daily life, and it feels as though everything around me is unraveling. Enough suspense at this, then.
After what I define as the best year and a half of my life, I'm single again.
That's it. I'm no longer in a relationship. To most, it just means a changed Facebook status and the returned ability to shamelessly flirt with whomever I feel. To me, it's the end of everything sane. More experienced humans consistently tell me that everyone gets their heart broken at some point, and that life has a funny way of sorting things out in the end, that The One is still out there somewhere, just waiting to be found.
Funny thing is, I'd already found him. He was the first guy in five years for whom I was willing to change my colors and shed my defensive coat, opening myself up completely to him in a way I thought I'd lost the ability to. He had this... confidence about him. Socially awkward, yes, but ever so confident in his beliefs and thoughts and opinions, a beauty I so clearly lacked. I've never been good at expressing my thoughts, or my opinions; Hell, the fact that I have a blog is almost laughable.
I was completely comfortable showing my emotional bruises to him; those I acquired by my own foolish design, and those I gave to myself by masochistic desire to just feel something again. It was a trait that I didn't know I had, the pure exposure. I never thought that I would have the ability to peel back all my bandages and just stand bare for someone to see.
So I nod my head
I'm ready for the world to see
The secret I kept here inside
the man you thought I'd be
Slip into coma calm
The coma where I calm myself down
Here comes excuses why I let you down
In my mind, I am completely to blame for the breakup, though outsiders claim that it was a combination of many different factors that just couldn't come to support the relationship any longer. I blame myself because in the last several months, there was a forced distance. My year in the dorms came to an end, and I relocated myself to my hometown for what I swore would only be the summer. As the weeks went by, I became frustrated with myself and my relationship, because my mind wouldn't let me cope with the fact that I'd gone from being minutes from him, spending most days in his company studying, laughing, loving, and being happy... to being an hour's drive away again, seeing him once a week or less, and wishing for nothing more than to just be holding him close to me. I swore that it would only be for the summer, that at the end of three months, I'd be back in the same town as him, and we'd be back to our old sappy routine.
If only.
Life, it seems, has a cruel sense of humor, and denied me my return to happiness. I was unable to find a job in my love's town, and thus unable to find residence, and thus unable to return to school for the fall semester. I spent days crying to myself over it, wishing so hard to just be there with him, or have some way of seeing him more. My heart pined for him endlessly, and when I finally found employment in my hometown, my only goal was to save every penny so I could be back to him for the beginning of spring semester... I tore myself to pieces with frustration over being unable to change the situation at hand.
I hated it. I hated myself for not being able to change it. I hated the loneliness. I hated only being content with text messages and not actually getting hugged or kissed goodnight. As I went along hating the separation, I started taking out my frustrations on him, something he didn't deserve. He was being the most supportive and loving boyfriend any girl could ask for, and I was spitting in his face because he couldn't drive up to see me on every whim.
In the days preceding the breakup, I was... confused. I was so genuinely excited to see my love again, because we were going on a road trip to go see Nightwish, a band that by all means initiated our relationship in its own way, since one of our first conversations was based on his Seven Days to the Wolves shirt that he was wearing at the time. My confusion stemmed from having my ex in town on some self-initiated cross-country tour to visit all his old girlfriends, and on the top of his list was myself. I was confused because for the longest time, I didn't know whether or not he still had feelings, and I had this horrible deep-rooted attachment to him, because he was my first... the one who destroyed me the first time... the one who set The Routine in motion. I had been seeking closure with him for months when he finally came to town...
I made a mistake. I've made many mistakes, yes, but my biggest mistake was thinking that he was the one who could give me proper closure. The night before our road trip, I acted a fool and made mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake... each and every second spent with my ex was one giant black mistake, and with each mistake, my confusion grew. I wasn't sure any more if I wanted my relationship, if I wanted to be part of a relationship that wasn't fulfilling me as it used to, if I wanted to stay with my One. At the time, I really wasn't sure that he was The One, but in days since, there isn't a doubt in my mind.
I went about my business the next morning, getting ready to go and see what I anticipated would be a glorious show. I tried so hard to forget about the previous day, and what mistakes I'd possibly made. My love picked me up from my home, and I was ever so excited to see him, though I didn't show it, because we had been arguing about my sister and her attendance on our trip and her incomplete planning. I ought to have kissed him repeatedly and thanked him so much for coming up to see me. But we went about our routine, the hugs and half-emotional kisses, packing the bags into the car and getting on our way. It was a pleasant drive, full of a Nighwish marathon, laughs, energy drinks and jokes and singing. We arrived at our destination in good time, making it to the venue with time to spare and wait in line.
I spent the time in the line standing away from him. We made the excuse that it was because we both had to pee, and embracing would cause our bladders to explode. I think part of him could see my frustration and confusion on my face and didn't know what to do with it, and really, all I wanted was to hold him close to me.
And then we got into the show, and I lost all my confusion. He stood behind me, protecting me from the crowd, and I looked up at him and just saw the life in him that I love so much. The life that just explodes out of him at a concert, the life wherein he loses all inhibitions and cares and is just... bright. At a concert, he loses his social awkwardness and is loud and raucous and excited and free and I looked at him and I felt my heart swell with love and joy and happiness and giddiness all at once. We sang along, I kissed him with passion, I embraced him with all the love I could, because I realized at that point that I wanted to save my dying relationship and that I could put up with the distance if it meant just seeing him, because at that moment I realized just how much I love him, just how much I'd be willing to die for him, to give him my all, to be everything he wanted me to be. I spent that evening in complete bliss, just wishing that I hadn't made the mistakes I'd made.
That night, we shared a sleeping bag, and I spent the night pulled close to him, hardly an inch of us separated from the other, and I slept happily. I ought to have kissed him to sleep, told him how much I loved him until the words couldn't come out any more, told him how much I cared, but instead, I slept, and in the morning, he went out for coffee alone, and I didn't join him, choosing instead to continue sleeping. Like a moron, I chose sleep over coffee with the man I love.
So we drove back to my hometown, and I smiled to myself for the love I had felt the night before... When we returned, my love helped me carry my bags inside, as he always did when we spent nights together. He greeted my family, said goodbye at the same time, and proceeded to walk me out. I stopped him on the porch, intent on explaining my epiphany to him and telling him how much I loved him. I started the conversation...
It all seems like a dream now... well more than a nightmare than a dream... the scene haunts my nightmares of late, making it difficult for me to make it through the night. "You know how when we're together, we're so damn happy, and then when we're apart, we always seem to fight? Well, lately, I've been considering the idea that we should take a break from one another, just a communication hiatus to clear our thoughts..."
And then it happened. He dropped the bomb... He spoke the words I thought I'd never have to hear again... He said the phrase that in an instant killed me and brought me back to life just to die again slowly... "I don't think a break is going to work. In all actuality, if that's how you feel, we should just break up now."
I couldn't help myself. I cried. I didn't have the strength to finish my statement. I didn't have the stability to tell him how I was feeling... I just... cried. I cried and whispered "This isn't what I wanted..." as he started to apologize and explain himself. And I cried, unable to finish my statement... "...but I realized last night how much I want to save this, and how much I love you, and how much I want to prove to you that I want to keep us going, and I've made some mistakes and I just hope that you can forgive me... because I love you so much..." and in a mess of tears and concert-sweat and blubbering, I kissed him, held him close for as long as I physically could, and then ran...
Stand by for another breakdown
Sound off the alarm
Is this the chameleon boy I swore I wouldn't become?
Chameleon boy
Chameleon boy
If there were anything I could change, I would change the way I treated him. I would have loved every day I saw him, passed every day between in hopeful bliss as I used to, made each and every moment count as if it were the last time we'd see one another, because I had no idea that I would have such a wonderful time and have everything wonderful just fall apart the next morning. I would have remembered the days when we first met, the days when we were giddy teens together just content to giggle and grin at one another.
I spent hours crying, some of which my mom supported me through, some my sister, some were my friends... I've cried so many tears in the three weeks since that day that were they collected in a container around me, I'd drown in a second. I've cried tears of regret, tears of anger, tears of loneliness, tears of sadness, tears of fury. I've thrown objects with no aim, I've slipped into my comatose state to try and calm Depression's tempest, spending hours and hours wrapped in a blanket on the couch, just staring off into space with no purpose to myself...
Don't get me wrong, the last three weeks have consisted of more than just moping. I've tried to get out into the world, spend time with friends, make progress toward getting over it... but in the twenty-one days since my heart died, progress is the one thing I lack. People always say getting over a breakup is like climbing a slope, that the sadness is only hard in the beginning, and as the days go by it just gets better as you get closer to the top. Not so is the case for myself... in days past, maybe, but this... this is different... This isn't some slope that I can work my way up with slow and plodding steps... normal people have the slope...
Normal people get to work their way out of it conventionally...
Normal people get to be happy again with just a little bit of perseverance to the top of the hill...
With depression, it's not so easy. I wish it was. I wish that I could just climb a hill and be over it. I wish that I could be like normal people and get over things in a traditional fashion... I wish I had the slope, but instead, I get the cliffside... it's a sheer, smooth surface, stretching endlessly in each direction, with no way out but a series of small notches barely big enough for fingers and toes. True happiness waits at the top, and all you have to do is climb up to the top and take off running. I've tried climbing out, I've struggled internally to climb that cliffside... each time I fall, and every time I fall, the hole I land in gets deeper, and the cliffside gets harder to scale...
I feel trapped by my own sadness, chained down by my own insecurity, weighed down by my thoughts, where each and every one of them is a stone tied to my ankle. As the days go by the stones grow in number, the pit grows ever deeper, my feet grow closer to the sandy seabed where I'll surely be swallowed by the murk. I feel hopeless, helpless, and deep in my heart, I know there is little chance of my survival, because that ship which drew me from the depths of the sea is now sailing off toward better horizons, leaving me to sink... I know that my reaching the bottom is imminent, unless by some design, I can find a way out... a way back into his arms... a way back to happiness...
So now we've come upon the hardest thing I've ever done
It's telling you that I'm a mess
What sort of mess I mean
Is self-destructive gasoline
The kind that strips you of your best
I thought endlessly about how to explain myself to him... I thought for hours on how I could possibly make him see how much I'm hurting, how much I want us to just be happy again... I thought of what words I would say, what memories I would share, what stories I would tell, what regrets I would share, what apologies I'd make... In the end, I started writing it all out in a letter... page after page emerged from beneath my pen, just blathering and words and nonsense, all my feelings jumbled up into ink and letters and lines... I spent a week working on the letter, writing a little every day, making no sense to myself, trying with everything I had to pour my heart and soul into the pages, to convey my one and only wish...
..."I wish we could be together again"...
I fought through rapid cycles of anger and sadness and regret, bringing myself to exhaustion day after day with only one thought in mind: no matter what, I will fight, because I've found True Love, and I've ruined it, and I need to fix this... Day after day, I wrote...
...and when the letter was done, I set my plans in motion, to get the pages to him, to make him see how I was feeling... in the year and four months we were together, my biggest problem was explaining my feelings to him, because I'd often say the wrong thing and stick my foot in my mouth without meaning to, but I had done my best to convey exactly what I was feeling on those pages of purple ink and tears...
Oh that I were able to transpose raw emotion into simple words...
And while I play instead
the way that most would end up dead
You sleep alone at home
and wish that I was in our bed
With the letter done and my determination set, I made the plans, brought the trip together, made the drive down to my love's town, and with no real knowledge as to how it would end, I met him. Letter in hand, his sweater on my arm, a photo clasped in a locket around my neck, I went to him, and gave him the pages.
With this I'm telling you
My color changes back to blue
How do I ask you this?
Will you help me through?
He read them stoically. I sat anxiously, awaiting his answer, hoping with every fiber of my being that he would say yes and give me the last chance I would ever need him to give me...
Page after page... he read.
Minutes passed by in silence as he read my jumbled words, and as the minutes passed, my mind whirled, my fingers twitched, and all the while nearby there were children playing, laughing, screaming in joy. All the while I agonized internally... it was the most emotion I'd felt in all the days since the breakup, just pure anxiety and sadness and hope... so much hope. More hope than I think I've ever felt before in my life.
And then he put the pages down... looked at me and asked... "would you like me to respond now, or later?"
I told him to respond whenever he was ready... I wish I'd asked for a letter in return instead of sitting there in my emotional turmoil and letting him respond right off...
It... it hurts to remember the details... the sharp, angry look in his eyes as he denied me my wish. The number of times he said "no" escapes my counting abilities, and the tears ensued again... I tried so very hard to convince him, to make him see, to show him how sorry I am, to pour every ounce of love in my heart into every word I spoke in the hopes that somehow I could get through to him... each phrase he spoke was a knife into my already bleeding heart, until the phrase "not even an act of God could get me to give us another chance" plunged the final blade, and the pulpy remains of my strongest muscle fell to his feet.
Stand by for another breakdown
Sound off the alarm
Is this the chameleon boy I swore I wouldn't become?
So I slip into my chameleon state, blending into my surroundings as I used to. I keep the public eye drawn in any direction but mine. It's been a week since the letter passed from my hands to his, a week since my words became my downfall... a week since I lost hope. Part of me still hopes that someday, somehow, we can be together again, but with the days that go by, that flame dims and flickers, becoming a flickering candle on a dark windowsill.
Stand by for another breakdown
Sound off the alarm
Is this the chameleon boy I swore I wouldn't become?
Chameleon boy
Chameleon boy
As far as I can tell, the letter I poured my heart and soul into was futile... the pure and insane honesty I put onto pages has just meant my downfall, back into the pit at the base of the cliff. All my attempts at reconstruction have been met with failure, all my attempts at expressing myself to him have been met with resistance, sharpness, and I feel naught but despair. I am glad for the honesty I was able to give to him, the truth I exposed, the clarity of it all... I can appreciate at least that I was able to tell him the truth, that I made my mistakes, cheated, lied, failed as a girlfriend...
Oh that I were able to transpose raw emotion into simple words...
There is only sadness now, sadness and regret that I wasn't granted my one last chance. I understand that I have been given more chances than are deserved by most, dealt more emotional blows than most would take lightly... I've been a shit girlfriend. I've been the worst kind of girlfriend I could be, and now that I know just what I could have done to make it better, it's much too late to change...
I try to think of all the people I look up to
Or growing up who would I be?
Now the twisted part
Where did all my idols end up?
They all passed away
Passed away
I just try to get through my days, waking up with the simple goal of returning to my couch again. I can't sleep in my own bed, because I just feel alone, and sleeping with the cushion of warmth from the couch is the closest thing I have to sleeping next to someone. Each day is just the beginning of a cycle back to the couch cushions, back to Netflix and the internet and my pencils and paper and every distraction I can find.
To most, I'm sure, my sadness and rantings over this breakup just seems like fierce co-dependence. In all honesty, I really am codependent... I can't stand to be alone, I hate it even. I'd say I'm most comfortable with a loved one at my side, holding me close to them, and having lost the most comfortable side to lay by, I feel so empty without it.
I'm sorry my homecoming post isn't ever so happy, or jittery, or excited as it ought to. I'm sorry my first phrase wasn't "Hey, I just remembered that I had a blog, and I have had such a wonderful time lately that I just wanted to share it with the world!!!" and that instead of good news, all I have to share are the rantings and ravings of my broken heart and depressed mentality.
Stand by
Its chameleon boy
Stand by
Its chameleon boy
Chameleon Boy
I'm chameleon boy...
Chameleon boy...
I feel like I should clarify, for honesty's sake. I'm grateful for all the support I've received in the last three weeks, from my family, friends... everyone. Were I able to, I would give a piece of my heart to each of them, gift-wrapped in gossamer and red silk ribbon, because they deserve it. They offer support to a drowning woman like a life-raft in the water, despite my inability to return to the surface... I really do care for everyone who is trying so hard to help me through this, and I'm just sorry that I'm too much of a Chameleon Girl to show it. It's the Chameleon Girl I swore I wouldn't become...
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